I know, I know, I still owe you guys the rules for my new wiki game. I haven’t forgotten; they’re about halfway written, I just haven’t finished them up yet. Mostly due to laziness. But that’s another post.
I was having a conversation the other day on the topic of… well, just generally being nice to people. Later, thinking back on it, I came to the realization that there are essentially two schools of thought when it comes to kindness to others:
- Being nice is the default state, but niceness can be revoked; or
- Not being nice is the default state, but niceness can be earned.
I realize I run the risk of oversimplifying here, but it seems to me that option 2 is probably the most natural for humans in general, but most systems of ethics and morality are basically trying to get people to go with option 1.
Experiments in Ontological Relativism 