Flavors

Some old notes on "flavors":

Ethical Flavors

An ethical dilemma: do the right thing now vs. trust the less immediate thing which is better in the long run. Probably everyone leans on both the former and the latter, in other words, balancing deontology (the former) and consequentialism (the latter).

But which right things do we do now? Which less immediate things which are better in the long run?

Ethics has a structure (virtue, deontology, consequentialism) and a flavor. (Virtue ethics: Be the kind of person who does (which?) right thing now and trusts the (which?) less immediate thing which is better in the long run.)

With belief in God, your heart needs to be right, and you believe, trust, know that everything will be right in the long run, every dark part of a person will be exposed to truth, the timeline is long enough to do the right thing in the long run.

Without belief in God, you do what feels moral now, or not, and you don't expect justice or truth to win, you might not have a firm belief in or even a concept of justice or truth, everything is uncertain, you need to make tradeoffs, your heart doesn't need to be right if you get results, the timeline is uncertain and may not be long enough to do the right thing in the long run.

That's more virtue-ethical (in that the flavor of trust or non-trust in God affects the kind of person you are in approaching deontology or consequentialism).

A question you could ask: "What would be a really theistic thing to do right now? Or to trust in the long run?"

Without belief in God, it doesn't make as much sense to go against societal norms. Maybe the norm just is moral.

Holiness (being set apart, especially for, or to God) is an ethical flavor. Trust is an ethical flavor.

Social relativism (it's important to index yourself to your society) is a set of ethical flavors (one for each society). "Human well-being" (the concept) is decided on by humans. Related: human relativism (it's important to index yourself to what humans want).

Flavors in Capitalism and Democracy

Liberalism's two children (capitalism and democracy) both forms of "democracy", broadly/literally taken. Capitalism is about the will of the people: the consumers and those who lead the consumers. Same with democracy: the will of the voters and those who lead the voters.

Both capitalism and democracy are self-regulating competitive systems. We might want a cooperative self-regulating economy. Then we might also want a cooperative self-regulating political system. Society has a structure (or structures) and a flavor (or flavors), in parallel with ethical flavors, above.