I believe that the main challenge of the 21st century will be to align our actions with our ethics on why and how we act. The dawn of humans let us emerge from only being driven by the need to survive and being guided by emotions towards evolving into a world of communication, culture, tools and cooperation. Hence the dawn of humankind unraveled a world where we had the capability to act with but also beyond our emotions, and consequently discovered reason, logic and goals transcending our personal individual surrounding. Human civilisations began to thrive, marking attempts in our history to create diverse cultures, and often also differentiating ourselves from our neighbours. It was often through these differences that progress was made, yet one should not oversee the conflicts rooted equally in such territorial identities. While such conflicts characterised the last century, these times may soon come to pass. The rate of conflicts and casualties has gradually decreased, and armed conflicts become more and more localised. On the other hand did many global challenges emerge calling for responsibility especially among the wealthy, and unity in diversity among all people on this planet. This would call as well for unity in our ethics, because not being united to this end would be a source for continuous and newly emerging conflicts. After all, it is one of the main sources of current conflicts, beside culture and resources. Only culture shall remain a source to honour our differences, yet our ethics-what some would call our moral compass- shall no longer divide us.
The thought of harmonised and unanimously accepted ethics has long preoccupied philosophers, yet it was especially during the last decades that this ambitious goal gained momentum. Building on these previous writing, basically no thought here is new, or even original. Instead I use this opportunity to order my thoughts when my thinking indeed needs order as a beacon towards the future. Any lapse in clarity, lack of grace or flaw of structure is thus nothing but a reflection of my failure towards an ordered overview towards a united ethics. Writing these texts -which I plan to do for the foreseeable future- anyway is thus a selfish act, but my need towards more clarity and freedom makes it important at least to me.
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