Are there universal ethics, universal rights, like freedom of speech?
A busy week. Newborn kittens, a folk music festival,
and thoughts on life, ethics and Islam.
Diary Blogs. Blog Journals.

newborn kitten


4 newborn kittens


newborns kittens
with mother cat

Universal Ethics,
Facebook Fan Pages,
Baby Kittens
and A Folk Music Festival

A busy week, like so many other weeks.

There's the everyday stuff - like taking care of a mother cat and her 4 newborn kittens. Such a pleasure seeing the tiny changes - like seeing the eyes slowly opening.

But that's not the big and meaningful stuff.

For that, I took on the question: is there a universal ethical standard?

The short answer: yes. I can put it into 3 words: liberty until harm. In other words, we must be free to flourish, safe to flourish, and for this we need, for instance, freedom of speech and equal rights for women and men, people of all races and all sexual orientations.

For the complete piece, click here.

Why bother writing the piece, instead of just enjoying the kittens? I find it important that we can put our ethical position into words - especially when we're challenged, for example by someone crying, "This hurts my feelings." or "That offends me." or "How dare you say that. That's critical of my religion."

More on the mishmosh of life. Yesterday I went to a small local music festival - and felt I had stepped into another world. A hippie world. Folk music. Lots of babies and tattoos, handcrafted jewelry and friendly people sitting on the grass. Good to spend a bit of time in that world.

And then I went home, to finish the piece on ethics, motivated by events in the world that felt unreal when at the folk music festival - the encroachments by Islam against the freedoms taken for granted in that world. Islam - when at the folk music festival, one wouldn't imagine it could exist.

More on this past week. I've just faced something that is a huge challenge for me. A couple of weeks ago, it was technology: the technical aspect of interviewing over the phone or via skype. This week: setting up a Facebook fan page.

What got me to face the challenge? The sense this was really important. Quite a driving force, for me. It's what got me to create the teleseminar series, for instance.

I have a request for you. If you're at all concerned about Islam, please come to the Facebook page and register, and also please Like the Facebook page. You can click here.

And that's it for now.

All the best,

Elsa

July 30, 2012

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PS. By the way, what got me to take on writing about universal ethics?

I've been doing the first interviews for the series. Such different caring people. Kindness, caring, thoughtfulness. And yet, profound differences. For instance, Robert Spencer asks: did Muhammad Exist? Bill Warner accepts the Islamic religious texts as the literal truth, and does a detailed comparison between the content of these texts with the Old and New Testaments, in terms of hostility to others and calls to violence. The Qu'ran massively outscores the Bible. And Raheel Raza is a moderate Muslim who holds that the true Islam is a loving one with, for instance, male female equality. She cares deeply, seeks out scholars, speaks out against other Islamic interpretations.

What links these people, I asked myself. And why give voice to such different perspectives?

That got me thinking about ethics. All 3 people - like me - uphold a universal ethical standard. So I sat down and started putting it into words, to the best of my ability.

Upholding that there are universal rights
- the best personal ethics. More here.

Another thing to consider:
the ethics of caring.

And what is next?
What comes after caring for newborn kittens,
personal and universal ethics,
creating Facebook fan pages because of
a personal commitment,
and stepping into different worlds?

Diary blogs, blog journals
on my vision of the world as a garden,
sparked by my dog's probably killing a young skunk.