Reality is deceptive. Life is all lies. We all live in subjective states of existence. One man’s truth is another man’s oppression. There is only one thing that is truly universal in life and that is the human need of empowerment.

The qualifiers of this universal principal are the different levels of empowerment. This is the secondary universality and it is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. From there universality breaks down and qualifiers spread to each individual and beyond.

This method focuses on studying ideas. Ideas are the bonding mechanism of society. They are the bond between individuals that make society possible. Without ideas… and the ability to communicate these ideas, there is no society. This is not a development of a new social structure but a new way of looking at ourselves and the societies we have created. This is a method of better understanding ourselves and of more efficiently utilizing structure of society already in place in a new way and with a conscious understanding of ourselves and our relation to external forces.

Fundamental Tenets:

Humanity is the universe’s awareness of itself.

All life on Earth is related and interrelated and can be described as an organism in and of itself, just as cells are component parts of the human body. This can be further applied to human society, and thus to any species. This principal is intrinsic to all life from cells and single organisms to life on earth as one whole, each group operates, as general entities, as a single organism with its autonomy qualified by the fact that it consists of individuals.

Life operates on a physical and a psychological level, objective and subjective planes. The more developed the mind of the organism, the more subjective and less objective the world is to that organism. Life at its most basic level is subject to the whims of the objective world completely. Once psychological ability reaches the human state the lines between the two planes blur dramatically. Evolutionary habits, social order, religion, moralsðics, and philosophy are not objects of the objective world. They are not dictated by physics as we have qualified it per se. These are attributes, in ascending order, of subjective states in relation to the objective world surrounding them.  Humanity has developed the ability to comprehend the objective world to a point in which the objective world affects them to a lesser degree, and their own subjective actions are able to dictate their futures. This is shown in the fact that we can manipulate our environment and ourselves by cognition, learning, “This action taken will produce this result” and thereafter implementing this notion. Housing, food production, government and genetic engineering all are evidence of this principle, we are enacting upon the objective world by imposing our subjective views upon it.

By this logic we can come to the conclusion that our subjective mental world has its own reality that comes about by our thinking it, what we think can come in contact with the objective world and produce objective results. This does not mean, (at this state of life i.e. humanity in our current physical or intellectual state), we can impose whatever whimsical physical properties we contemplate on to the objective realm (at least not yet!), however what it means is that our ideas in the subjective realm take on a form of reality in that they are able to interact with the objective world. This is more intuitive in the most basic sense of an individual thinking “I want to manipulate this object” and then physically manipulating it, however this reality is more ethereal when we are speaking of notions that a group of humans think is truth.

The idea of a “god” for example, does not make this god a reality in the objective physical realm; however, the idea of a god can manipulate the objective reality in that it has the ability to influence individuals to influence the objective world for it.  In this sense we may even define an Idea or meme as an individual there by instilling it with a form of life (the meme itself not being cognoscente but the humans it possesses being so). Even if the state of the concept can only be equated to an ameba in terms of its relative condition of life, it still would be considered a form of life. That being said, it is subject to evolution and death, as all life forms are. Not all ideas are as good or as valid as others, and those will be evolved out of the life cycle. We as humans are the driving factor in the evolution of these ideas and they must be submitted to the same rigors as nature imposed upon us during previous stages of evolution.

Right and wrong, good and evil have no meaning at this level. These are subjective judgments based on individual human perception.  What is important is that there are positive and negative memes. On this level all that matters is the extent to which Ideas benefit Life.

Allow me to preface this by stating that this is not a traditional ethical system, it is not intended to replace any other system of ethics by design. This ethical system is a tool for determining the validity and efficacy of ideas that are held on a large scale and for decision making that effects large masses of populous, not necessarily for everyday individualized ethics.

So how do we determine how we should interact with these memes? What discerns a “positive” meme from a “negative” meme is a good starting point. A good Idea should be subjected to the following questions.

1: Does this idea promote the continuance of the survival of the species? This question is the most basic as it is what the primary evolutionary standards are.

2: Is the idea benign or beneficial to the greater being of the earth i.e. does it apply positively to other species, plants, and elements that make life possible (water, air etc.)?

All of the following are contingent upon these above all other qualifications. Beyond this we move further into the realm of the subjective plane of existence

3: Does this idea promote the happiness of a larger proportion of individuals?

4: Does this idea have the ability to expand to individuals outside this secondary qualification i.e. upward mobility is innate to its existence?

5: Does the idea promote further learning? As in, does it allow the investigation of the nature of things in an objective manner?

6: Does the idea promote growth and further evolution of itself?

Not all ideas are broad enough to apply all these criteria; however, they should be workable within these boundaries.

The intents of this writing are as follows:

Provide a philosophical and political framework of conduct that will replace authoritarian and nihilistic ideologies.  This will discredit both religious and relativistic ethics putting forward situational ethics that give meaning and direction to human life in a scientific manner, emphasizing that blind faith must be replaced with rational discourse. Implicit in this is the acceptance of unknowns while still addressing the human needs of meaning and hope;

To attempt to understand the relationship between the objective and subjective realities and how, if at all, the human mind differs from physical reality in function i.e. does the human consciousness constitute a separate plane of existence. This is essential in the basis of situational ethics to understand how human mind is able to manipulate our destinies. I feel the understanding of this relationship will further our understanding of the implications of life within the universe;

Apply these concepts to the human experience in past present and future.

In order to understand popular opinions we must also understand historical and philosophical backgrounds of social movements. The forces that drive human social community are not always conspicuous. We must investigate where ideas stem from. Mass opinion does not appear from nothing, there is always something driving it. These opinions drive social change; if we are to understand sociology we must also understand history. If we are to understand our future we must understand social change.