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Philosophy (a Foundation)
The first step in coming up with a philosophy of life is to decide on the meaning of life. Although we may be able to have fun in life without knowing its meaning, I feel that true happiness and joy come from finding and fulfilling our purpose, which we can derive from the meaning of life. As I observed in my earlier section on life, the ultimate meaning of life appears to be the survival of life’s genetic codes. Although this may or may not be the only meaning of life, it is a place from which we can start.
For some of us, just being a parent and passing on our genetic code to the next generation may be enough to make us feel happy. On the other hand, many of us want more out of life. Likewise, I do not believe that this ultimate meaning of life is enough to build on to create a philosophy of life. I feel that we, as a species and as individuals, must also take on a higher purpose. That is, we must take on the responsibility to protect and to safeguard the survival of all life and all its genetic codes. If done correctly, this higher purpose fits nicely with our ultimate meaning of life.
Many of us may also say that we must include the afterlife as part of our meaning of life. I would say that the afterlife, if it exists, might be more of a reward for fulfilling our purpose in life, or a punishment for not fulfilling our purpose. Of course, if there is an afterlife, I hope that it also has some meaning beyond just being a reward or a punishment. Nevertheless, if we live a good life where we fulfill our purpose in life, then we should be well prepared for any afterlife, if it exists.
Many of us, including myself, may still want more meaning out of life. I think it should be up to each of us to find our own special meaning or purpose in life beyond the meaning and purpose that all of us ultimately share. It is this extra meaning and purpose that we as individuals have that gives life that extra spice that we humans seem to crave.
My philosophy of life embraces and builds off this ultimate meaning of life, our higher purpose and our desire for more. Therefore, my philosophy begins with our need to take on the responsibility to protect and to safeguard our environment and all the life with whom we share our world with, so that our descendants and the descendants of all other species will be able to survive and can continue to pass on their genetic code.
I even believe that, as a species, we must embrace this as our mission, and we must use our knowledge and our understanding of our universe to that end. This would also mean that it would be our responsibility to explore and to learn about everything that can help us in this mission and to support this mission in whatever way we are best able. To date, I do not believe that we humans have lived up to this higher purpose very well.
To help us build a solid foundation for a better and brighter future, I have come up with three principles that I believe we must observe, defend and promote. I have based these principles on the philosophy of protecting and safeguarding all life according to my three fundamental rules ("do no undue harm", "protect everything from undue harm", and "allow all living things to live their lives their way") and of giving each of our lives its own meaning and purpose.
The First principle is Options. These are the options that we must provide for ourselves and for all living things so that we can all have an opportunity to choose how we want to try to live our lives. The Second principle is Respect. This is the respect we must have for the rights of all living things to try to live their lives according to their nature while we respect each of our own rights to live our lives as we want. The third principle is Balance. This is the balance that must exist between all living and non-living things so that our world can maintain and improve its ability to support life for as long as possible.
We must provide all the necessary Options for how to live from which all living things, including ourselves, can choose how best to try to live each of our lives from among all those possible options. We are often given the option to take it or leave it. This is often a False Dilemma Fallacy, since there could be many other possible options. We should have the opportunity to choose from all the possible options that do or could exist. We may not always be able to get an option we want, but we should always be given the opportunity to try.
We all must Respect the rights of every living thing to live its life according to its nature with all the good and bad consequences that come with it for each living thing. For most living things, this is built into their very existence, since they live mostly by instinct and have a very limited ability to prevent other living things from living their lives by their nature. Even a predator like a fox is not preventing a rabbit from living how it wants, since it is in the very nature of being a rabbit that it is the fox’s prey.
All species must live in Balance with their environment so they need to make tradeoffs during their evolution to find the niches where they can survive and hopefully thrive. If a species is unable to find this balance, then it may perish or cause the destruction of its environment or the extinction of other species. For instance, we can see that we humans have yet to find our balance, since we are destroying much of our environment and are causing the extinction of numerous other species.
Other than certain natural disasters, it is only us humans who have any real ability to throw all of nature out of balance. Our large brains have allowed us to go beyond our instincts and to create powerful tools that we can use to reshape our environment. With this great power comes great responsibility. Just because we have the capability to do something does not mean that we should. The true sign of intelligence and maturity is to know what the right thing is to do and to have the courage to do it.
Of course, there may be many different possible lifestyles options that we can conceive of which will not throw things out of balance, which will allow us to do the right things and which we can all respect. Within these possible lifestyle options, we must each decide on how we can best live our lives and then try to create that lifestyle for ourselves.
In keeping with these principles, no one should be allowed to impose his or her beliefs or lifestyle on anyone else. This also means that nobody has the right to a lifestyle that unduly harms other living things or our world. For instance, we should not have the right to steal from others to earn a living. In addition, even when we have earned our money honestly, it should not give us the right to use it to waste or to destroy our world’s resources.
We need to adjust the way we live our lives based on the limitations imposed by our world and the existence of its other inhabitants. To be a great civilization, we need to protect the life and the property of all our world’s inhabitants, human or not, from anyone who does not respect the right of others to live their lives their way. In a truly outstanding civilization, it should even be considered an obligation to do so.
The above principles together and each on their own both directly and indirectly imply and demand cooperation between us and with all living things. That is, we cannot have Options, Respect and Balance without also having cooperation. On the flip side, if we cooperate with one another on our shared goals, then we will give ourselves options, we will show respect for one another and we will promote a balance between us. As you may recall, our Moral Values of Authority, Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty and Purity help us cooperate with one another. The stronger we adhere to these moral values, the better our cooperation and the better chances for our shared success.
This cooperation also leads us to the concept of equitably sharing the resources and the fruits of our shared productive labor. Everyone should be given the opportunity to contribute to our shared success and prosperity, and everyone who does their fair share should be rewarded with their fair share of the results. This means that no one who is willing and able to work and to earn their fair share of our success and prosperity should be deprived of the chance to do so. That is, we should all be allowed to contribute based on our ability to learn and to work and not based on our being lucky enough to be at the right place at the right time to get the opportunity to work.
We also need our world to be able to continue to sustain life, at the very least, until we have found someplace else where we can all go. This means that we must cooperate with one another to restore and to maintain our natural resources at an appropriate level so that they will be available for all of us and for all the other living things with whom we share this world. If we are to regain balance in our environment, then we must cooperate to give all current and future generations of living things the options and the respect to allow them to have and to use their fair share of our world’s natural resources.
No individual should have the right to deprive others of a good life by denying them the opportunity to do so or by wasting our human and natural resources. We must remember that for life on this planet to be truly successful, it is not the success of some subset or our lives that is important, but the continued survival and success of all of us and all the various species that live on our planet today and that will live on it in the future. To that end, we must all learn to cooperate to achieve our shared goals.
Given the large number of humans in the world and their great diversity, I doubt that any single philosophy could ever be fully accepted by everyone. On the other hand, since these philosophical principles of Options, Respect and Balance would fully embrace this diversity, only individuals who feel a need to meddle in or to dictate other individuals’ lives should find fault with them. The key is for each one of us to not only protect our own lifestyles, but for us to protect and to defend the right of everyone and every other living thing to try to live their chosen lifestyles.
If a solid majority of us followed these philosophical principles of Options, Respect and Balance, then we would have the freedom to try to live our lives in a way that we believed was best for us. That is, if we do not cause any undue harm to others and help protect them from undue harm, then we should be assured that even our most unusual lifestyle choices, even ones that others may not necessarily approve of or understand, would receive protection.
On the other hand, if we do not follow these principles, then we risk having some undesired lifestyle imposed upon us by others. In fact, throughout the world today, to varying degrees, individuals are being forced to live their lives in ways that are not of their own choosing.
What about those individuals who do try to prevent us from living our lives as we choose or who do try to impose a lifestyle on us? The simple answer is that we need to respect their right to believe that individuals can interfere with other individuals’ lives. Of course, in respecting their belief, we would in no way be giving them the right to force their will on us or take away our options. However, by respecting their beliefs, we would earn from them the right to control their lives, and only their lives, just as they would have done with us, and in doing so, do what is needed to prevent them from harming us.
Even when other individuals’ actions do give us the right to control their lives, our first step should always be to confront these individuals to make sure that they understood what they were doing, and what the consequences of their actions would be. If these individuals understood and changed their ways, then all would be good. Otherwise, we would gain the right that they would have given us and could use it to control their lives and to take the appropriate corrective actions that would set things right.
Unfortunately, some individuals, for some strange reason, may still want to live lifestyles that are destructive to others or to meddle in our lives. If these individuals will not respect these philosophical principles of Options, Respect and Balance, then we will gain the right to do whatever is necessary to stop them from ruining things for the rest of us. To have more rights and freedoms, we must all take on the responsibility to do what is needed to protect those rights and freedoms.
By applying these philosophical principles of Options, Respect and Balance to the rebuilding of our civilization, our lives would gain more possibilities, and the world would be a better place for all of us and for all living things. Each one of us would be able to decide on some appropriate lifestyle options that would make us happy and give our life meaning while still respecting and balancing things like freedoms, rights, responsibilities, safety and community.
Now that we have come up with the philosophical principles of Options, Respect and Balance, we need to use them to set some basic goals. We will use these basic goals as guideposts when mapping out the steps that we can use on our path to a better and brighter future. A central theme of these goals is finding ways to protect our rights and the rights of all living things while we take on the additional responsibilities needed to protect those rights.
From our basic philosophical principle of Options, we can derive the goal of creating a world where we all have the right to choose how we want to try to live our lives from among all the possible options that do not harm others. To accomplish this goal, there are many problems that we will need to solve, including, but not limited to, discrimination, hate, pollution, climate change, diminishing natural resources, overpopulation, poverty, crime, and corruption.
From our basic philosophical principle of Respect, we can derive the goal of creating a world where all living things are given the chance to live their lives according to their nature while respecting the rights of other living things to live their lives according to their nature. To accomplish this goal, there are many problems that we will need to solve, including, but not limited to, discrimination, hate, pollution, climate change, overpopulation, crime, and corruption.
From our basic philosophical principle of Balance, we can derive the goal of creating a world where the environment and human civilization are sustainable into the foreseeable future. To accomplish this goal, we will need to solve problems like pollution, climate change, deforestation, diminishing natural resources, suburban sprawl, crumbling infrastructure, war, terror, and poverty.
To fulfill these goals, we need to set another goal. We need to reshape our civilization so that our global society can progress to the point where we do not continually create new problems for ourselves. We want to be able to concentrate all our efforts on finding solutions to natural problems such as floods, draughts, disease, earthquakes, and asteroids, and not on problems that we create for ourselves. This will require that the basic laws for every person and business in the world be standardized based on our principles of Options, Respect and Balance. Then we all, based on our abilities, would have the same freedoms, responsibilities and opportunities to try to create a life of our choosing.
With these goals and the latest scientific information, I put together a list of some useful guidelines that I believe are very important to consider when looking for solutions to the problems that stand in the way of our path to a better and brighter future. Ignoring these guidelines would make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to create a truly great future and could even bring about the endangerment and extinction of many more species, including our own.
The following are some of the more important guidelines.
- Respect the right of all living things to live their lives.
- Allow all species to have a large enough habitat to support a population sufficiently large enough for them to maintain a healthy genetic diversity.
- Protect and support a diverse and complete array of habitats where a wide variety of species can live.
- Prevent pollution and keep habitats as clean and pristine as possible.
- Do not waste or destroy our resources.
- Allow all living things to share in the natural resources that they need.
- Preserve all nonrenewable resources as much as possible and only use them when we have no other choice.
- Reduce the problems, conflicts and complexities in our lives that prevent us from living our lives to the fullest and from working on our mission.
- Allow everyone the opportunity to live a life of their choosing if it does not cause any undue harm to any other living things.
- Do whatever else is necessary to ensure that the Earth can sustain life for as long as possible.
- Explore the universe to find a future home for life.
Historical Perspective -
An Historical Perspective that will help guide Our Future Path.
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