A Note Regarding Bad Ethics

Consequentialism is enabling . . .

Consequentialist ethics judge a thing as “good” or “bad” by its end result, but what goes unsaid is that this “end” is measured materially (via the body). A thing is “bad” when it hurts, and “good” when it does not. Nor should we grow confused by new abstractions. Political and economic arguments are ultimately about that very same thing. 

Now, since it is material on accident, Consequentialism encourages very subjective ethics. It is “bad” for “me” and my “in-group” to feel pain, but good if it is felt by “someone” we dislike. There are those who “ought” to experience pain as a categorical imperative, and those who “ought” not to. So everyone everywhere is positing the same pain-and-pleasure ethic, but none are able to apply even that objectively.

Good becomes bad and bad becomes good in accordance with “who” is experiencing it. Republicans, democrats, christians, muslims, blacks, whites, it goes on and on. If pain must be inflicted onto one group, so that another can have what it deems to be “good,” the act that facilitates this is “good,” or is mysteriously exempt from moral judgment. The religious rely on exactly this trick, scripturally and practically.

There is something hilarious in the bulk human beings that compels them to be wantonly evil. But at the same time, they are compelled to find some way to still justify themselves as “good.” Flexible and outright contradictory ethics are a requirement . . . otherwise they’d be cognitively ripped in half.

Beyond that, this dynamic is probably the reason such a wanton Will to Power has prevailed, but that is beyond the scope here.