Thoughts & Essays on Developing Personalities

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In Thoughts & Essays on Developing Personalities v. 1. the Thoughts, I am attempting to challenge the common perceptions of how human personalities are developed. The premise overall is to present an anti-ethical perspective; or basically refute ideological ethics as a manufacture of social controls by cultural design.

The first and most obvious cultural design is that of right & wrong behavior. This type of ethic begins with king/god typing of early who pronounced themselves as gods or as being king by virtue of being appointed by gods.

As such, most religious/ethical statements of behavioral rightness and wrongness emerge as “Superheroes” or “Supergods” who command both obedience and allegiance. The state of the hero, be he half-gods as seen in many Greek heroic tales, or semi-mortals with super-power, even though sometimes these heroes might also have heroic flaws; ot be they the gods that can frequently enter contests over the behavior of humans. ‘

But ultimately the goal of the ethic is to do right in the eyes of the hero-king; or hero-god. Sometimes it might seem that rightness should be right, “Don’t kill”, for instance, most of us probably think is something we should not do. However, upon inspection, the rightness of do not kill is only relevant if the killing is unauthorized by the state/religion. The state itself, or the gods who might support that state, or are supported by the state, can certainly demand people to kill, or violate their own ethic. Or the state or kings could sacrifice others for the appeasement of the gods; or simply take the life of those disobedient to the cultural ethic.

Utilitarian hedonism, again, seems on its surface to be a proper ethical perspective if it benefits the most. And yet Hobbes suggests that what benefits the most is to succumb to the will of the king, because the nature of humanity is otherwise complete egoistic hedonism and nothing but individual selfishness would be able to determine what is right or wrong. Bentham certainly expands that to what is best for the most, but actually how do you determine the ethic that is most beneficial to the most?

A show of hands might be nearly equally divided on any issue, and the losers might protest and lobby to increase their own support by attempting to modify ideology to their own preference. This process could lead to conflicts and a great deal of immoral or wrong behavior against either those that most think are right by those who think the most are wrong. Or the converse, again, could be true and those that the most consider wrong could try to affect or alter the behavior of what the most might consider to be wrong because those considered wrong more than likely will not consider themselves wrong but the majority to be wrong.

We are right back to good gods/powerful people fighting over the behavioral souls of human action. Consequentialism supposedly avoids this pitfall and tries to determine the rightness and wrongness of any particular action, and there are a multitude of variations of consequential ethics that have been pursued, but then almost any behavioral act could have both some positive and some negative consequences.

Another approach might be to determine proper ethical behavior as accepting one’s duty, (or responsibility) to society. But then, we are once more thrown into determining what is the right duty or what exactly anyone may be responsible for individually. If it is only the duty to perform what the culture says is one’s duty then we are back to the initial establishment of being responsible to the right and wrong dictums of the cultural leaders be they god,king, or state.

I might except Kant from this deontological duty. To English ears, duty is often something one must do to be responsible. If we only read The Groundworks of Metaphysics and Morals, it might be possible to assume Kant was an initiate of the deontological perspective, but if you continue through the Critiques, The Metaphysics of Morals, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant continually refines this concept. In other words one does not obey the ten commandments because one is told or because one might be rewarded (in the afterlife) for doing so. Nor does duty include always obeying the commands to the state. Kant sees this duty to be a duty of wanting or willing oneself to behave correctly but cannot be coerced by forces outside,or something one does to benefit oneself, but must be a reasonable behavior.

Morality for Kant is a first person question of oughtness; duty is actually an unconditional and a priori human will in which the Moral Law is decisive is motivated by the thought of one’s duty. A societal or divine will that promotes the actions goodness must take would not be good at all because it would not be motivated by thoughts of duty because such a will does not of itself have natural inclinations of the self; and so fulfilling moral requirements without feeling constrained to do so can be the only manner by which good can be done.

An individual in contemplating any action then must not just consider whether the action is appropriate now but would it always be appropriate and if it is then that moral duty is the duty that allows the self to act correctly towards society without selfishness for self or imperative by the other.

It becomes correct because it is not harmful to self or to the other, and can be acted in a manner that has not been coerced, then it is a recognition of an a priori belief that we should act goodly towards the other.

There are certainly imperfections in Kant’s ideology of morality that he represents, and possibly it is absurdly impossible to act universally or that Kant seems to ignore the consequences of actions to the society but focuses almost completely ion the self-reflectively determined morality that is his conception of dutifulness.

In a way it is deontological, but the duty to behave properly comes from within and not from without. There is something to be said for that perspective in my judgement—but so much of an individual’s behavior comes from internal learning and so much of the a priori conceptions of what is correct behavior is learned at an early age and so Kant’s self-reflection will not always result in an a priori rightness but more than likely an a priori wrongness that has affected the ability to self-reflect responsibly towards what might be consequentially right behavior.

So in the book, I try to tackle the ethical consequences of behavior not through standards of ethical behavior but through the consequences of behavior that leads to unethical behavior. I first try to understand how behavior is formulated and how, or if, there is a methodology for setting apart human behavior from the natural forces of which we exist; I try to understand the consequences of human learning and human awareness; and finally understand the psychological consequences of human behavior by the methodologies of how our behavior is developed by the how that we learned.

My ethical perspective, therefore, that I attempt to present in The Thoughts, is to look at behavior as a cultural rather than as a individual responsibility. As a cultural responsibility, then it is the society as a whole that must be examined in order to eliminate the wrongs the society places upon individuals. That is to say, it is the societal structures themselves that are responsible for the behavioral actions of the individuals within it and that morality is not what one believes is moral but what one has learned is moral. And ultimately morality cannot be separated from the behavioral expectations of what the society imposes upon its members.

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Hardcover coming soon.