The Importance of Ethics

The Importance of Ethics

As was stated in the Definitions section of my discourse, Gestalt comes about when Beliefs, Systems, and Paradigms are granted efficacy through Power. Without Power, a Belief will not matter to anyone besides the Adherent. A Belief is just a thought. The Beliefs of an Adherent are personal, but the Gestalt is very public. One Adherent’s Gestalt can dramatically affect another person’s life.

A Gestalt’s efficacy scales directly with the Adherent’s available Power. The greater access an Adherent has to Power, the greater impact the Adherent’s Gestalt can have. From the standpoint of the examination of morality, it would seem that available Power directly controls how important or impacting a Gestalt is.

Accordingly, the importance of the examination of morality rises as the Power of the Adherent rises, for the impact of the Adherent’s Beliefs will rise as well. The greater the Power, the more important examination becomes.

Individual humans are more powerful now than they have ever been. An individual has access to vast amounts of information, expertise, and resources. Further, the density of the global population prevents an individual from needing to travel far in order to find people to affect. Any aspiring individual can conduct a brief search of the internet, travel to a local hardware store, and create an explosive device capable of killing dozens in an instant. Alternatively, a wealthy individual does not have to travel far to find those who want, and it takes little effort to provide sustenance and shelter to others should the desire be present. The scaling of Power is even more dramatic when viewed at the macro level.

Mankind is more powerful now than it has ever been in its brief history. Having harnessed the power of the mighty atom, Mankind has for the first time acquired terrible and massive destructive Power. Many nations of the world have control of such weapons at their disposal, which totals to enough Power to annihilate all life on this planet. Mankind witnessed its own terrible might within the last century, specifically during World War II. The world saw what groups of people united under a Paradigm could do when backed up with considerable Power. The Gestalt of the Nazi Regime’s Beliefs, Systems, and Paradigm was painfully obvious – suffering, death, and destruction. On the other end of the conflict, the world saw what one group was willing to do to prevent large-scale losses of their own people: the utilization of atomic weapons. Beliefs made manifest through the use of Power, the Gestalts shown during that time period articulate my point in bold red text.

Considering the above statements, now is the most important time in the study of ethics than has ever been present on this planet. Because the importance of ethics scales with the available power of humanity, that importance will do nothing but increase as humanity’s mastery of technology increases. More so than ever before in history, we stand on the brink of oblivion. Never before have we actually had the Power to destroy ourselves utterly and permanently. It is for this reason that I pursue ethics, and advocate its consideration and study.