Seven Values ➔ Moral Definitions
➔ Ethics Statements ➔ Expressed Ethics
Ethics Statements tell us HOW TO fulfill Moral Definitions.
Ethics Statements give us the basic understanding of how to fulfill our moral relationship with 7.3 billion people on this planet.
My preference is to create Ethics Statements as affirmations for positive behavior, rather than proscriptions for negative behavior. Using both, however, provides a broader understanding of the two sides of Ethics Statements.
Ethics Statements For the Four Primary Values
Life — The Ultimate Value
Proactively Moral Definition: Assign value in all of your decisions to protect and save life.
Ethics Statement: Protect and give value to all life (Buddhist). Take the life of other species only for your meals. Do not to take the life of species for sport, or to sell protected species.
Do not create more life that will infringe on the life, quality of life, growth, and equality of others. This means to procreate only enough children to replace you when you die.
Equality
Proactively Moral Definition: Make decisions and take action for improving the quality of life and unleashing the potential of others as you do for your self.
Ethics Statement: Treat others as you would your self means that you do not treat others less than your self; and it also means that you do not treat yourself less than you would treat others. The value of others is equal to that of your self, and your value is equal to that of others — act accordingly. The importance of this value is that others are not excluded from consideration, and from opportunities to grow and to improve their quality of life; and neither are you.
Growth
Proactively Moral Definition: Make decisions and take action that create opportunities for you to develop your innate potential; and, whenever possible develop opportunities for others, and assist them to grow into their innate potential to improve their quality of life as you would for your self.
Ethics Statement: Assist others to grow into their innate potential just as you would do for your self. Show others, as you are able, to recognize the opportunities that may be of assistance to them to grow and improve their quality of life.
Quality of Life
Proactively Moral Definition: Make decisions for yourself and others that improve the quality of your lives.
Ethics Statement: See others as an equal of your own life to know how to support your efforts to develop their innate potential to grow to improve their quality of life as you would for yourself. When making decisions or writing policies and laws put your self on the receiving end to see how you would react, and adjust the parameters of your decisions according to the seven values.
NOTE: As you can see, the above proactive Ethical Statements are general in nature. Use them to guide the development of your own Ethics Statements and policies involving specific issues.
Ethics Statements For the Three Secondary Values
NOTE: In their bare essence the three secondary values are easily identified as “value-emotions,” and inherently and morally proactive in nature. Empathy is the reaching out to sense the situation of others. Compassion is reaching out in action to assist others in their situation. “Love” for others is the great arc that goes out from each of us individually to encompass the whole of humanity collectively and individually.
When the three secondary value-emotions are used Ethics Statements are unnecessary because exercising the three secondary value-emotions becomes the guide for moral and ethical behavior — to see and value others as we see and value our self. For those who do not, the following are provided:
Empathy
Proactive Ethics Statement: Extend your awareness past your own life to that of others to sense their situation in the seven spheres of human existence: physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, social, cultural, and spiritual. Reflect on what you sense and compare that to your own awareness(es) of your own seven spheres of human existence.
● Feeling and expressing the urge of empathy more clearly defines our humanness and capability of being humane than any of the other six values. Just as primary value “equality” is the pivotal value for all proactive morality and ethics, “empathy” demonstrates the pivotal value of our humanness and humanity to others, while also reflecting our own self-image and self-worth.
Compassion
Proactive Ethics Statement: Based on your developed sense of empathy, take action to come to the aid of others, to support the improvement of their quality of life, and to grow into their innate potential equally as you would do for your self.
“Love”
Proactive Ethics Statement: Love in the context of proactive morality is defined as the combined energies of empathy and compassion for others, as you have for your self. This is truly the most developed definition of equality — to see and value others as you do for your self, and choose to act accordingly.