Applying these systems to the kind of choices that I make in everyday life I can see all of them basically saying something like:...
The tricky thing with these kinds of ethical examples is that a bunch of selfish (read: amoral) people would totally take care of their bodies, be nice to they’re in iterated games with, try to improve themselves in their professional lives, and seek long-term relationship value. The only unambiguously selfless thing on that list in my opinion is donating—and that tends to kick the question of ethics down the road to the matter of who you are donating to. This differs in different ethical philosophies.
In any case, the takeaway from this is that people’s definitions of what they ought to do are deeply entangled with the things that they would want to do. I think this is why many of the ethical systems you’re describing make similar suggestions. But, once you start to think about actions you might not actually be comfortable doing—many ethical systems make nontrivial claims.
Not every ethical system says you may lie if it makes people feel better. Not every ethical system says you shouldn’t eat meat. Not every ethical system says you should invest in science. Not every ethical system says you should pray. Not every ethical system says you should seek out lucrative employment purely to donate the money.
These non-trivial claims matter. Because in some cases, they correspond to the highest leverage ethical actions a person could possibly take—eclipsing the relevance of ordinary day-to-day actions entirely.
There are easy ways to being a better moral agent, but to do that, you should probably maximize the time you spend taking care of yourself, taking care of others, volunteering, or working towards important issues… rather than reading Kant.
I agree with this though. If you want to do ethical things… just go ahead and do them. If it wasn’t something you cared about before you read about moral imperatives, its unlikely to start being something you care about after.
The tricky thing with these kinds of ethical examples is that a bunch of selfish (read: amoral) people would totally take care of their bodies, be nice to they’re in iterated games with, try to improve themselves in their professional lives, and seek long-term relationship value. The only unambiguously selfless thing on that list in my opinion is donating—and that tends to kick the question of ethics down the road to the matter of who you are donating to. This differs in different ethical philosophies.
In any case, the takeaway from this is that people’s definitions of what they ought to do are deeply entangled with the things that they would want to do. I think this is why many of the ethical systems you’re describing make similar suggestions. But, once you start to think about actions you might not actually be comfortable doing—many ethical systems make nontrivial claims.
Not every ethical system says you may lie if it makes people feel better. Not every ethical system says you shouldn’t eat meat. Not every ethical system says you should invest in science. Not every ethical system says you should pray. Not every ethical system says you should seek out lucrative employment purely to donate the money.
These non-trivial claims matter. Because in some cases, they correspond to the highest leverage ethical actions a person could possibly take—eclipsing the relevance of ordinary day-to-day actions entirely.
I agree with this though. If you want to do ethical things… just go ahead and do them. If it wasn’t something you cared about before you read about moral imperatives, its unlikely to start being something you care about after.