The problem with defining ethics is that good and bad are not some cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken and there is no middle ground, other than the energy of the chicken becoming the fox.
We have to build our ethical systems from the ground up, yet once they settle into patterns, cracks start to appear, because it is a dynamic process.
As mobile organisms, we move about and project our wanderings towards some better state, creating an ideals based culture. Though what drives us is our desire, not so much the objects of it. When we think we might have grasped them, they can never totally fulfill our wants and often fall woefully short. A large part of this problem is that very ideals based culture, where some state of perfect form is thought to exist over the next hill, or maybe the next.
Nature, unfortunately, doesn’t follow our rules. She tends to be cyclical and reciprocal. A tension and balance of opposing forces.Our actions begat reactions. There are no ups, without downs. The alternative would be a flatline. The price we pay to feel is that much of it is pain.
What drives us is that energy, the light shining through. But it does as multitudes of desires and impulses. Logic is not primary, but a referee of all these competing and occasionally complementary feelings.
Hopefully promoting those more beneficial to our community, though short term tends to outweigh long term.
The fact is that we have what we have and we are what we are. As our minds function as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, which we then build civilizations on the cumulative knowledge of the collective narrative, we are indoctrinated to the present moving past to future, but in reality it is change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
So there is just this physical state of energy, experienced as emotions, bubbling up, while form, distilled as logic, coalesces in. Even galaxies are energy radiating out, as mass gravitates in.
Our bodies have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on and we do associate emotion and intuition with the heart and gut. While our “powers of reason” have to wait until this energy crests and creates semi-stable forms, for us to swirl around in our minds and extract any useful signals. Maps of the territory. Some overlapping, some based on opposite sides of the cycle and going opposite directions.
Motor and steering, but little in the way of braking.
