

Drawing on many of the world's religious and spiritual traditions, it identifies four essential affirmations as shared principles essential to a global ethic. Towards a Global Ethic: An Initial Declaration is an interfaith declaration.

Recent work by Harry Gensler recommends formulating the golden rule as: “Treat others only as you consent to being treated in the same situation.”Īctions that increase the survival and flourishing of individual sentient beings are good. These two ideas are often combined into the Golden Rule. In short, experiences similar to those that contribute to your well-being might also contribute to theirs. Symmetry, an apparent balance, helps you understand that what matters to others is likely to be similar to what matters to you if you were in their situation. It provides you a respectful understanding of what others are experiencing and what they might want to have happen. If that is not practical, then you can use empathy, symmetry, and the golden rule to extrapolate from your own experience to estimate their needs.Įmpathy is a deep appreciation for another's situation and point of view. The most direct way is to ask the other person, perhaps by engaging them in a thoughtful dialogue. There are several ways to learn what matters most to others. That is not how you build good character. We try to cut out or cut off these negative or bad qualities. What I mean is this: when it comes to change, our focus is usually on the aspects of our lives that are bad. You may wish to acquire the various character strengths identified there.īuilding good character is more about addition than subtraction. The Character Strengths and Virtues handbook of human strengths and virtues represents the first attempt on the part of the research community to identify and classify the positive psychological traits of human beings.Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities.".Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.In positive psychology, flourishing is “to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth, and resilience.”.Eudaimonia is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare however, "human flourishing" has been proposed as a more accurate translation.The term is used in a wide range of contexts, including the fields of international development, healthcare, and politics. The term quality of life refers to the general well-being of individuals and societies.Also, you can study a variety of other concepts related to your well-being. As a starting point, you may wish to consider the topics in the Wikiversity course on what matters.


Think deeply about what matters most to you. Let’s examine each of these in more detail. Help others achieve what matters to them.Recognize and respect reasonable limits to freedom for yourself and others.This can be accomplished by following these steps: Do not diminish the well-being of others, and.We can achieve both by pursing these goals for good behavior: This requires us to consider our own well-being along with the well-being of others. Good can also be thought of as “character traits we are most likely to admire in others.” Can we be more precise?īehavior that increases human well-being is good. Intuitively we understand it as a conception of what is of most value in human life what is regarded as a fully worthwhile life. Defining virtue as "excellence in being for the good" places a heavy burden on the concept of good.
