Journeyman Philosopher

Continued from yesterdays post. As we cannot purport universal morality we need someway to compel people into following a certain ethical standard. Or at the very least we should want to, to protect our own interests and the interests of others.

My version is amazingly simple but is something that I believe compels people more than we give credit for.

‘Come on… be a nice guy!’

I know, I know! this seems a little bit to simple. But in general a ton of our actions in life are motivated by this. We, or at least I, feel it is very important to be a nice person, and as such adapt our actions in accordance.

What’s good about this concept is its very flexible you could just as easily use it to justify vegetarianism as you could not cutting someone off while driving. We clearly acknowledge that people like nice people and in general most people wish to be liked.

If someone values you as an individual or friend and you make it clear that you are only friends with nice people and thereafter explain to them what it is to be nice, in a manner you can affect their actions.

Although this sounds cruel a similar thing is practiced in Japan. Recently a service has been introduced where etiquette inspectors in japanese trains go about and speak to individuals being uncourteous about their poor manners. In such a manner they attempt to change the habits of others by simply saying ‘Come on be courteous, we like courteous people.’

The blaring problem of this is who defines what is nice? Well it would be me WA-HA!!! You could easily imagine someone saying ‘Seriously just do some crack, a nice guy would do crack.’ and try to force their beliefs on others. And this is bad, but on the other side how am I to know forcing ‘nice guy regulations’ on other people wouldn’t be just as bad? Is the ‘nice guy’ my crack?

I think fundamentally compelling people to be nice is a good sentiment, dependent on the considerations it takes. If ‘nice guy ethics’ took into consideration the well-being of others, I would argue, with simple compelling aside, that this is completely justified. As a matter of fact I don’t think this is so far fetched, as we do do it in every day activities.

But what is good? And really how do we judge well being?
Rawls’ theory of competent judges leading to decisions which thereby produce a moral/social code is very close to this. The difference is, I really think that most people know what to be nice is (even if we do not act on it). We need to put our society in a situation where this is emphasized completely, if this was the case I believe it would benefit many much more easily than his theory would.

I don’t think this is so far fetched, we must grab our commonly understood social concepts, develop them further, and thereafter idealize them. In such a manner we can acknowledge that although it may not be justified in 100% solid ground, it is something we can all relate to. And as such a good place to start.

Regardless I think this idea warrants more examination.

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