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Written by Bob Guyer
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All behavior can be judged relative to the purpose of expanding the scope of consciousness in the service of life. Imagine a scale that has a zero as a neutral point where an action is neither positive or negative in it's effect, negative 10 is the most negative point on the scale, positive 10 is the most positive point on the scale. Individual actions that effect single individuals would occupy the middle range of the scale from 0 to 3.3 in either a negative or positive direction, group action would range out to the 6.6 range of the scale, and systems would range all the way out to 10 on either side of the scale.
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Written by Bob Guyer
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With the onset of freedom and power moral responsibility for the effects of choices arises.
Freedom, the awareness of alternatives, and power, the ability to choose among alternatives and act by consciously applying energy to the chosen course of action gives rise to moral responsibility. Another choice could have been made; a different amount of energy could have been applied to the choice taken. The effects of the action taken on the scope of consciousness of the acting individual and others affected by the individual’s action and the effect on the entire body of life, if extra-biological force is used, are the measure of how the action contributes or subtracts from the human purpose.
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Written by Bob Guyer
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Force = Energy subject to conscious direction
Being self-conscious and having an ability to direct ones movements, attention, thoughts, and feelings, gives human beings the ability to direct energy. The addition of other sources of energy, cultivating crops, diverting streams, making fire, making tools, steam engines, electricity, forming group boundaries and motivating coordinated collective action have given human’s more energy to direct than their individual biological energy.
This magnification of human energy conducting and directing capacity does not alone give rise to moral responsibility. But the presence of alternative possibilities combined with control of the energy required to act on those possibilities does give rise to moral responsibility. Energy is a multiplier of human capability and when combined with alternatives and choice it does multiply moral responsibility.
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Written by Bob Guyer
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Power = Conscious Possibilities + Conscious Choice
Power is the result of combining possibilities with conscious choice. Where there are no conscious possibilities choice is not possible. In circumstances where there is only awareness of possibility and no opportunity to take action based on those possibilities, there is no conscious experience of power. When both possibilities and the ability to act on them exist consciously, then power is experienced.
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Written by Bob Guyer
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The high level of extra-biological force now wheided by human being requires that we re-think the foundations of morality. Moral directives, like the 10 commandments, were developed beofre extra-biological force was a prominent feature of human life. The effect of extra-biological force on the biological health of individual human lives and also on the health of planetary life overall should be the prime measure of the moral efficacy of any new system designs.
Individuals are still the primary unit of life, but our collective magnification of force through extra-biological means is the most prominent feature of human life that needs to be understood in terms of its impact on self and others. The speed of Global climate change is the key factor driving the need for a shift in moral systems focus from the individual to the morality of system design that directs the application of extra-biological human forcefulness.
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Moral Context
