Five principles for a moral framework

In the previous post I have set out that old holy scriptures are not a good source for ethics in our modern society. No doubt my religious readers see this as a proof that atheists are an immoral bunch of heathens. This surely is true insofar as that we are immoral in a biblical sense and don't accept scriptures as a moral guide.
If God were really as wise some claim he is, he would have sent another prophet down here somewhere in the 20th century to give us a new moral guideline that works in our modern society. But he didn't, and the increase of the number of Atheists can partially, but not completely, be attributed to the fact that existing scriptures are far from contemporary. If it would say in some modern holy scripture 'thy shalt not download from the Internet pictures of undressed minors and lust after them' then it would make a whole lot more sense. But it doesn't, and child abuse is not a feature we find only in Atheists (cough).

Some people do not accept any man-made laws but only divine ones, which is why some countries are stuck in a ethical framework that is as old as the scriptures they subscribe to. This goes so far that certain immigrants in western Europe accept the hospitality of the country they reside in (including social benefits) but not their laws because these are man-made. Are these people to be considered morally right because they abide to divine law? I think not.

In our modern civilized world we have a complex system of laws that keep us from doing harm to other people or the state, and punish infringement of these laws. Yet these laws still leave room for acts that are perfectly legal but may infringe with the desires, wishes and entitlements of people around us: there is no law without a loophole. Additionally we should not want to have laws for absolutely everything because it would create a state that is oppressive and belittling. Think of the European parliament which sometimes passes laws about trivial things like the degree of bending of banana's.

Laws, divine or not, can nor should ever be a comprehensive guideline to what is right or wrong, neither are the 'unwritten laws' of society. Rather than relying on a set of rules that tell us what to do and what not to do, there should be a set of ethic principles that we can use to make decisions about right and wrong when existing laws of state and society fall short. A kind of 'moral compass' so to say. Bear in mind that the old testament says we should not develop such a moral compass of our own, because it reserves for itself the ultimate truth. But as said book doesn't provide satisfactory answers we have no other choice than to think about ethics 'out of the book'.

When thinking about ethics it is important to make these simple realizations:

- Everyone is equal.
- Every life can be lived only once.
- Everything you do has a consequence.
- Everyone has desires, opinions, wishes and entitlements.
- Everyone has ownership of their own lives and achievements.

When you think closer about these simple and straightforward ideas, and what it leads to, you have a pretty comprehensive guide for interaction with other people. And that is all what ethics is about: interaction with other people and societies, even those that you don't see or know about. If there would be only one person in the world he wouldn't need a moral framework because nobody could take offense from his actions except he himself. But there are more than 6 billion people stuck on this planet and we somehow have to get along with each other. So far, the known scriptures have largely failed in guiding us to a state of harmonious co-habitation and, looking at how much evil and immoral behaviour can be found in these scriptures, this doesn't come as a surprise. Consent and compassion are the cornerstones of moral behaviour, but not of holy scriptures, even though religious people like to believe so.

Anyway, let's elaborate on the points stated above

Everyone is equal.

It is important to realize that you as a person have no more 'value' than others or you are better than somebody else. Maybe there are some things you can do better than others, or you have more money, or you are more intelligent, but this makes you only more valuable in an economic sense, not in a humans sense. This equality of all human beings is not an opinion the bible or clergy share, and many religious people think they are 'better people' than those who don't believe in the same religious doctrine, for which they even find 'proof' in the bible. Moreover, the bible endorses and even regulates slavery, which is not only contrary to human equality, but also to other principles set forth in this post.

Every life can be lived only once

Until proven otherwise, we must assume that we live only once. We cannot take ideas, memories, experience or other 'things' with us to a next life. This makes life a limited resource: you can spend it only once. Therefore, life itself becomes the most valuable thing we have in life.
What we do with this one life is our own business, but taking into account the limited nature of life we should at all times consider what (negative) effect our acts can have on the lives of others.

Everything you do has a consequence.

Everything you do has a consequence, intended or unintended, on the world around you and possibly also on other people's lives. Therefore, with everything you do, you should take care not to do harm to others or the world around you, for damaging the world around us also harms the people who live in it.

Everyone has desires, opinions and entitlements.

I wrote about desires earlier, what important influence they have in our lives, and that critical thinking influences our moral. I will also mention freedom of speech and that having an opinion of their own is a right but not mandatory. Furthermore, everyone has entitlements to something. In other words, everyone has some kind of possession, most important of which is life. We are to respect other peoples desires, opinions and entitlements as long as they don't conflict with other peoples well-being.

Everyone has ownership of their own lives and achievements.

This is probably the most important principle here: self-ownership. The principle of self-ownership not only implies freedom of man, but also implies freedom from infringement of life from others. The principle of self-ownership means that the time of my life is owned by me and I have the freedom to do with it whatever I wish, and that anything I create is also mine. Without self-ownership, capitalism wouldn't work because if my time and what I create in this time is not mine, I couldn't sell it to make a living. It's as a simple and straight-forward principle but often its importance is underestimated.
It is one reason why communism never got off the ground very well: because peoples lives were not their own but the states property, and everything around them too. An individual didn't count, only the community as a whole counted. In strictly religious states like we see in the middle east this is also applicable, except that peoples lives don't belong to the state but to their deity. An individuals life has no value in totalitarian states (religious or communist) which is why such states can be considered (as a whole) to conflict with the principle of life ownership.
During our life we constantly make decisions on how to spend our time. It's our time, our 80 years or so that we have on this planet, and it's entirely up to us what to make of it. We could see it as an entitlement: once you are born you have the right to live. It may be true that society and our duties within it make claims on our time but generally we can choose how we live through our days. We can choose how much of our time we trade in for money by paid labour, how much time we trade in to amuse ourselves with television or games and so on.
we can consider life, or the entitlement of life, from two sides: quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative aspect is how long you live, and the qualitative aspect is how well you live ie to what extent you can fulfill your desires, opinions and entitlements as set out before.
There is one important aspect about self-ownership: because everyone is equal, everyone has it . It's an entitlement that is valid for everybody in equal measures, and thus it is wrong to interfere negatively with that entitlement, either qualitative or quantitative.

This covers a great range of moral behaviour.
For example, if I kill somebody, I take away the entitlement on the rest of his life. He would have lived longer if I had not killed him and therefore I rob him from his quantitative entitlement. It may very well be that this person voluntarily gives up his entitlement on the rest of his life because the quality of his life has been reduced to such a level that his wish to live has turned to a will to die. In that case the person has an entitlement to end the entitlement on life. I still don't endorse that any appointed individual would take this entitlement, after all the entitlement on life cannot be given back once taken. But I do feel very strongly that if a person wishes to do so, he should be able to give up the entitlement on life in a respectful way. This has everything to do with consent. We can only interfere with other people's lives if it is with their consent. If they give us their consent to influence their lives negatively this can be considered to be ethical behaviour, providing that person is in a mental state to take such decisions etc. Look at the sexual practice of SM for example: everyone would agree that beating your wife is immoral behaviour. But if she clearly states the pain and the submission sexually arouse her, the situation is completely different.

Another example: if I steal something from another person it is not so much that I remove a certain object out of his control, but I negatively influence both his qualitative and quantitative entitlement on life. Say I steal this persons' I-pod. Assuming he didn't get it as a gift but performed paid labour for that I-pod, I am not only removing the quality of life this person derives from the stolen object, I also take away the time (ie quantitative entitlement) he spent working to acquire the object in addition to the qualitative entitlement during the time of paid labour. After all, instead of working to acquire this I-pod he could have gone to the pub with his friends or do some other activity he enjoys.
It is not always so straightforward. Take lying for example. In principle, lying is wrong because by deliberately giving somebody a wrong piece of information you can harm him, and even others if that person acts on the information given to him. But imagine your 6-year-old daughter is terminally ill from cancer, she lies in her bed and whithers away, and at some point she asks you if it's really true what the nurse said, that after death you go to heaven. Would you really tell her that we don't know? It's probably not in her interest to hear this truth, but to be consoled by the idea that there is some kind of life after her short life here on earth. In that sense, it could be considered morally correct to tell her that life after death exists because it benefits the person who is being lied to. (whether life after death corresponds with the truth is another matter altogether)

As you can see, the principle of life ownership and the preceding principles provide a concise but powerful system of ethics, based on logic and compassion. The system in itself is morally right because it evolves around the respect for other peoples life, opinions, desires and entitlements. It is in itself a proof that holy scriptures are not only redundant as a guide to ethics but also that there is a viable alternative.