The purpose of ethics: cultivation of ethos. An ethic, through practice, creates or preserves a particular world-view.
The ethic of ethics is morality: namaste/shalom/gassho/I-thou.
Morality can sometimes demand the self-sacrifice of an ethic.
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I was thinking about those little praying hand sculptures, fingers touching, chopped off at the wrist. It is the front half of a gassho, touching at the extremities, but missing the unity of the body to whom the hands belong.
the praying hands are the effect of a cause, that cause being the segmentation of thought.
We are finite, therefor we segment our thought because we must, to approach symmetry as finite beings (or this is how it appears to most of us).
The symmetry of segmented thought brings comfort to a finite being because symmetry is infinite or rather the infinite is self-symmetrical.
Socially, everything has to be segmented or we can’t find any comfort in it. The praying hands are supposed to be comforting hence….
What comforting ethic can anyone suggest to a wretch such as mankind?
Were wretched, it’s the only reason most ever strive to be more, and that’s pathetic but no less true for being pathetic.
A few progress only because they love to progress, I don’t know what to say about them, they are mad no doubt. Bless them.