Universal Ethics

The idea of universal ethics is definitely a very loaded one. My first thoughts were “of course” and “how could humans function without them?”. However, once I tried to tease out an individual rule or idea I reached an impasse. In class, we looked at religion, both western and eastern, as a starting point for his discussion, but I found that these did not satisfy the task of “being universal”. For example, a recurring ethic among many group secular and non-secular is the idea that one should not steal, but this idea is based that of possessions. The laptop I wrote this on is mine or my house and land surrounding it belongs to my family, specifically my mother and father. This is an idea that I respect and believe in, to a certain extent, but this is not true in cross cultural sense. Some groups, such as Native Americans and extreme communist, do not believe that one physical object belongs to a single individual, but rather to the earth or universe as a whole. Similarly, the idea that adultery is unethical seems to appear frequently; however, there is no universal idea of marriage. Even within the United States, politicians squabble over the idea of same-sex marriage and various marital laws. Being that there is no universal definition to marriage, how can one describe adultery as universally unethical.

This process lead me to two ideas. Firstly, it is nearly impossible (at least for me) to pinpoint exact, clear-cut rules that apply to all. Secondly, while one can not exactly nail down what is ethical on a universal level, one can say that these laws or codes that rule over millions (if not billions) are based on maximizing pleasure (happiness) and minimizing pain (sad/anger). Since ethics are meant to guide larger groups they not only take into consider the pain/pleasure of the individual, but also that other the masses. The cause of this underlying principle is simple human desire -- no one wants to be in pain and even if they cause pain in some way it generally meant to cause some form pleasure. On a personal level, I would like to create universal ethics, but I don’t think that would go well in that cultures vary so widely that imposing my personal ethics may have a converse effect on a certain cultures and do damage that I could not foresee. I, also, do not think I have enough knowledge or life experience to create a perfect ethical system for my own culture.