You are Part of It

As force amplifies the effect of choice and action, moral responsibility must expand proportionally. The more force applied to any action the greater its effect. Human beings have become tremendously more forceful since the beginning of industrial revolution. The increased forcefulness that we have used to extract benefits from nature has had helped to expand the scope of human consciousness.

As force amplifies the effect of choice and action, moral responsibility must expand proportionally.

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.

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. Force is often confused with power.

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 attribution of prior independent existence of the higher power or purpose is often, although not always, made in the religious and spiritual traditions of humanity and there is a sense in which this attribution is used to imply authority. Authority is an attribute that is assigned by a conscious individual. Attributions of authority are not independent and absolute but depend on the consciousness of an individual who then assigns authority to something.

The religious and spiritual traditions of humanity often assert that a higher power or greater purpose exists and that human life is best lived in positive alignment with that higher power and or higher purpose. Whether this is true or not is meaningless outside the context of consciousness existing as a potential in the universe and being specifically active in the life of humans.

Human consciousness, whether you take a materialist, idealist, spiritual, theistic, or transcendentalist, position on it?s the nature and origins, is obviously our species core capability. Without awareness of our own existence nothing can be said. The other primary component of individuality is the boundaries that make entities appear and function as a distinct living form of some kind. These boundaries are not solid and absolute, they are semi-permeable. Without awareness and the intuitive knowledge that we are aware, the existence of any individual living entity is meaningless.