Ethics

Ethics is the inner, freely grown attitude according to which we act: how we deal with other people, with animals and nature – and with ourselves. At the Kyborg Institute we understand ethics as something that comes from within and is freely chosen, not as a prescription imposed from outside.

What is ethics?

The word comes from the Greek ethos – “custom”, “habit”, “character”. In „Die Ethik des Neuen Menschen” D. Harald Alke describes ethics as the attitude that has grown from our natural origin and determines our dealings with the world – including the obligation towards ourselves. In this view, ethics remains the same at its core across the ages, while outer rules change.

A memorable short formula for it runs:

“Do good, injure no one – not even yourself.” — D. Harald Alke, Die Ethik des Neuen Menschen

Ethics and morality – the difference

Ethics and morality are often confused, but mean two different things:

• Ethics is the inner attitude – constant, freely chosen, grown from within.
• Morality is the outer rules of a society – dependent on time and culture, changeable, often written down in laws.

Both words originally mean “custom”. The difference we emphasise lies in the direction: ethics comes from within, morality is set from outside. An attitude that carries from within needs no compulsion. This tension between inner attitude and imposed order is also the core of Collectivism & individualism.

An ethics of altruism

This line joins the spiritual tradition of the institute with science: in his specialist book on loving-kindness and altruism, Tobias Alke argues for understanding selflessness as lived ethics rather than as imposed morality. Helpfulness that comes from a free, inner attitude carries – one that is decreed does not.

Ethics and responsibility

To ethics belongs responsibility: the awareness that our action has consequences that work back on us. Harald Alke describes this with the law of cause and effect – in many cultures called karma. Whoever does good out of an inner attitude works beyond the moment.

What does that mean in practice?

• Ethics is not a catalogue of rules, but an attitude that one practises in one’s own life.
• It includes self-care – “injure no one, not even yourself”.
• It works from within, voluntarily – never through pressure, guilt or fear.

Autoren: D. Harald Alke, Tobias O. R. Alke