Michael Phillips

Compassion* Cold Heartedness

Globalisim Provincialism *

Vision* Short Sightedness

Knowledge seeking* Willfully Ignorant

Open-mindedness* Close-mindedness

Thrift* Wastefulness

Justice* Injustice

Altruism Greed*

(The stars denotate the primary aspect, virtue or vice, from which the counter aspect is derived.)

I will justify thee virtues through my blend of utilitarianism, egoism, and a dash of categorical ethics, though that is mostly an esthetic aspect. I realize that most people look at egoism and see it as a shallow, selfish thing. It is important to note that when I push an egoism that I am speaking of a deeper egoism.

Egoism generally holds the self to be paramount, a postulate that I hold to in formulating a set of virtues, which I believe that people could reasonably hold. If you can not expect people to generally follow a set of virtues, than that set of virtues is useless. The self does not exist in a vacuum. The individual effects and is effected by all of the people and things around him. Moreover, when bad things happen to those around you, you can not help but be effected by those things. The inverse is also true. This means that when the people and thing around us suffer, we suffer, and when they prosper, we prosper. This leads logically, to the conclusion out for our community and our environment; we are best looking out for ourselves.

Utilitarianism says that your results justify your actions, while the categorical imperative says, among other things that the reasons for your actions justify your results. In justifying my set of virtues and vices I will combine the good of self through community of deep egoism with the greatest good concept of utilitarianism. Then you have to look at them through the lens of proper motivation, which is derived form categorical ethics. The three ethical theories are like the legs of a stool made by first year high school shop student. Uneven, but sufficient to keep your butt off the ground.

In formulating the list above, I found six virtues and two counter-virtues or vices. I hold that the eight starred components are the primary aspect of a virtue ethic based on that list while the other eight hold their position on the strength of being the opposites of the primary components. Each of these virtue and vices should be respectively followed or avoided in order to act rightly or ethically in matters of both environment and society. They all promote the greatest good for all of humanity, and thus promote the greatest continued personal well being. It is worth noting that I hold it as an obvious concept that that which affects the environment effects the people who have to exist in the environment, making the environment as essential a consideration as people are for the well being both of self and of humanity.

Compassion in this context is a willingness to look at the plight of others and empathy for that plight. Being compassionate does not mean that we must sacrifice ourselves for the good of other, merely that we look for what wrongs exist and do that which is in our power to right those wrongs. For the moment, compassion seems to be focused solely on people, but with the later virtues and vices it become apparent that to show compassion to people we need to worry about more than just people. Compassion is the corner stone of this set of virtues and vices. Without it, the remaining ones have no reason to work together.

Provincialism is the first of the vices, is initially looking at those around you and only at those around you, but in the context of my understanding of how the world works I expand it to looking only at people to make your decisions. A provincial attitude in a limited system (Such as the Earth) becomes self destructive, and thus does not benefit the community or the self. This means that the well being of humanity and eventually the self is one and the same with the well being of the planet. To look at wellbeing as important requires compassion, and thus provincialism’s vicedom rests squarely on a base of compassion. I find that provincialistic thinking completely undermines the concept of taking the right action, for you can not take an action that is "right" without looking at its consequences for everything. Provincialism is the primary member of its pair, but in hopes of remaining mostly positive, I will frequently refer to globalism.

Vision is a willingness to look past the now. Since the infinite points of the future outnumber the singular now by about infinity to one, the good of the future outweighs the good of the now. To look not to tomorrow, but only to today can thus be seen as being as provincial as only thinking about your specific tribe of humanity. The application of compassion to its fullest requires of us to look not only at the immediate consequences of our actions, but to the consequences for the years to come. From a short-sighted point of view, it is compassionate to stop the hunters from killing deer with bows and guns, but looking to tomorrow, the day when in Brown County the majority of deer die a slow, lingering death due to starvation, it is more compassionate to control their population.

The next two virtues, knowledge seeking and open-mindedness go hand in hand. The more you know, the better prepared you are to make good and rational decisions and to hold good viewpoints. Open-mindedness allows us to look at our beliefs, to fairly judge them, and to change the ones that fall wanting. A search for knowledge without open-mindedness is a cold, heartless thing that does no good, and open-mindedness without a sense of curiosity and questioning is a shallow, useless thing.

Thrift, justice, and avoiding greed are all important, but are logically required of accepting the first five. Compassion, vision, globalisim, and the open-minded quest for knowledge lead to these three virtues and vices. Though I find them to be almost intuitively obvious, they may come from my own knowledge of the behavior of limited systems and ethical preferences. I do not think that they are dispensable virtues so they need to be stated here.

The major reasons I can see for my set of environmental virtues to be opposed is that they do not focus solely on the human sphere, a sin which most current ethical viewpoints are unwilling to excuse. The fact that they require us to value people as people first and foremost, not based on religion, color, race, or any other superficial aspect is something that our Christianity-based national morality can not quite swallow. They also value the results of our actions over the reasons for taking those actions, something, which in personal life in America is frowned upon.

To change society on such a basic level, I can see three potential venues. The first is through the fonts of our morality, our preachers. If they would as a whole start preaching these virtues and vices, perhaps in the meanwhile getting their noses out of our bedrooms, they could quite likely go a long way toward making these acceptable values in the US. The second is through the government’s greatest propaganda tool, the public schools. If you indoctrinate the next generation with these beliefs from day one, then they would become mainstream within a generation. The third is through the media. The mass media can make anything acceptable over a relatively short period of time. These things are debatable as propaganda, but I wish to point out that propaganda, like science is merely a tool. Right and wrong rest solely in what they are used for.

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