Morals, Ethics, Politics

I've been puzzling out the distinction between these three categories for well over a year now. I'm at a place where I can at least put something down.

Morals are values. That is, they are the specific instances of right/wrong or good/bad. The death penalty is a moral issue because it begs the question: Is it right? or Is it good?

Ethics are the rules used to create values. What I have recently come to realize is that ethics rely paradoxically on two very fundamental values: the opening of possibility and the closing of possibility. All ethical systems have these fundamental issues in mind, but not all ethical systems equate thus: opening of possibility=life=good=right and closing of possibility=death=bad=wrong. Our culture's ethics do produce morals out of such equations, and this is a product of the next (and I would argue, most fundamental) concept, politics.

Politics is the inevitable condition of opening one possibility at the expense of closing another, and is thus a fundamental principle of organic life. There is no actual distinction between biological processes that occur and the recent presidential election. Here's why (and this will take patience and a willingness to embrace dialectical thought):

Envision one molecule within your body that desires to remain in existence. The molecules surrounding it, however, need it to die (need its possibilities of procreation to cease) so that other molecules can grow (and open possibilities) so that your body functions. This molecule loses its power (its open-ended possibilities) at the expense of the "community" of cells around it.

But this molecule does not embrace our ethics because it only exists as part of a whole. It does not think of itself as "I." It embraces a communal ethics that recognizes rules that govern the collective rather than the individual. Within the collective, death is often required for the opening of possibility. In many cases, the artificial prolongation of life can lead to the closing of possibility. The molecule I described earlier as "desiring to remain in existence" is a myth. But picture the molecule's loss of possibilities without its status as "I" and you have molecular politics. It's very difficult to understand, though, because we cannot envision what it would be like to exist as an entity that does not conceptualize itself as a Gestalt, as a unified "I."

Molar politics is what we understand. The "I" that sees the opening of possibilities for "itself" rather than for the whole. Our ethics are governed by molar politics; the ethics of many indigenous peoples are governed by molecular politics.

I will be writing more on this. The implications are mind-boggling.