What does the moral code of idealism look like?

[Lou Gold]

The moment you sit them down and calmly explain that all those who experienced Hiroshima and Nagasaki were You, and all those who experienced the Holocaust were You, and all those who experienced the slave-trade were You.... that's when things start to get interesting, and you end up getting nailed to a cross.

INDEED!

[Soul_of_Shu]

What could possibly be 'right' about being responsible for crashing a car resulting in the horrific death of one's wife and child? What possible good and profound meaning could from that? One might be astonished at the possibilities ...

[electricshephard]

@electricshephard ... Out of curiosity, what is your take on this realization eventually being actualized on a mass scale of any significance, rather than just in a few seers who are 'nailed' for their trouble ~ albeit not so much literally nowadays, but rather just cynically lambasted for talking rubbish in suggesting that we're not inevitably destined as a collective to dysfunctionally carry on under the suffering-prone spell of maya, with just an endless series of 'train wrecks' awaiting us until, at best, we shed this corporeal form and its veil of tears, never to return again, forsaking any foolhardy Bodhisattva vows.

I suppose the scientific method would be to try to identify the variables that are preventing mass-realisation.

As humans, do we all have the capacity to understand such things (but have not been furnished with the right information) or is it more of a structural problem, like a fundamental blindness / biological inhibitor?

There is much space for awkward conclusions.

For example, if one looks at suffering / discompassion within the animal kingdom (specifically animal vs animal violence) it’s difficult not to conclude that there is something fundamentally “unfair” about this whole reality. Even if we were successful in teaching every human to recognise the Universal Self in others, what about the animals? How do we solve that?

If the sentience of the Universal Self is present of animals as much as it is humans, how do we convince the lion not to attack the buffalo, or the spider against the fly, the crow against the worm and so forth? It would appear that in this realm, everyone is algorithmically committed to perpetually eating each other in a never-ending game of Agario!

Nonetheless, I’m an optimist. Those that have an ear let them hear, because the more of us that are on the same page the sooner we can start to solve impossible problems.

In my view, a fundamental first step is teaching the wisdom that pertains to the impossibility of absolute unconsciousness in the 1st-person. Understanding the logical rationality for why you are are an Eternal being is a critical basis for further ontological inspiration. The sleeping masses seem to have a catastrophic indifference toward Eternal existence, predicated around axioms such as “you only live once” and “the only things that are certain are death and taxes”.

The impossibility of absolute unconsciousness in the 1st-person completely destroys all of that. Beforehand all you had to worry about was death and suffering. Now all you have to worry about is Eternal existence and suffering!

For me at least, this understanding that you are Eternal is accompanied with a sudden and urgent need to permanently solve the riddle of reality, almost (ironically) as though it were a race against time.

[Eugene I]

The impossibility of absolute unconsciousness in the 1st-person completely destroys all of that. Beforehand all you had to worry about was death and suffering. Now all you have to worry about is Eternal existence and suffering!

Exactly. The Eternal existence has a tremendous power to fool itself. Whether it does it for entertainment, or as a way to further develop its cognitive abilities, it uses this ability to fool itself into very weird beliefs - like a possibility of dying or being unconscious, or a possibility of existing as a separate entity in a seemingly existing "external" world, and of course (what a surprise!) suffer as a consequence of such beliefs. But the very suffering motivates it to find its way out of the fantasized labyrinth and to dispel the self-fooling.

[Lou Gold]

The impossibility of absolute unconsciousness in the 1st-person completely destroys all of that. Beforehand all you had to worry about was death and suffering. Now all you have to worry about is Eternal existence and suffering!

Exactly. The Eternal existence has a tremendous power to fool itself. Whether it does it for entertainment, or as a way to further develop its cognitive abilities, it uses this ability to fool itself into very weird beliefs - like a possibility of dying or being unconscious, or a possibility of existing as a separate entity in a seemingly existing "external" world, and of course (what a surprise!) suffer as a consequence of such beliefs. But the very suffering motivates it to find its way out of the fantasized labyrinth and to dispel the self-fooling.

That one suffers to realize or to demonstrate that suffering is not necessary may capture the difference between the Buddhist and Christian approaches.

[Mandibil]

Metaphysics should not concern itself with ethics, that is an exercise in itself.

It goes stepwise something like this :

Metaphysics => Epistemology (=> Objectivity) => Ethics

- Metaphysics deals with what is always the case, can be the case and that which you do not have access to
- Epistemology determines what is meant by knowledge (among that which can be the case)
- Objectivity should in my opinion be a discipline of its own but I suppose it is usually put into epistemology
- Ethics deals with potential principles guiding interaction between individuals

Hope this helps