Temporal Ethics exists to try to simplify morality into an easy to understand framework.
At the most basic level it treats morality as a function of time, where the greater the time the greater the moral injustice while relying on consent.
For something to be immoral, in this framework, we need to know two things:
- How much time will this take from the person?
- Did this person give their consent?
It is easy
If you’re stuck on an island by yourself there is no need for morality or morals. You can’t commit a sin against yourself as your time is yours to waste (assuming you are in a healhty state of mind).
Once you introduce another person (or honestly any form of life – anything that is temporal), we need to establish a framework for which we interact with one another.
In this framwork we treat the wasting or theft of a person’s time as the greatest and only sin – all rules follow from this.
We’ll go through the 10 Commandments (the ones pertaining to human interactions) and explain them one by one within this framework to try to show how this idea can replace any divinely inspired frameworks.
Honor thy father and mother.
Parents take their time and invest it into their child’s time. To not acknowledge would be disrespectful.
Thou shalt not kill.
To kill someone is to remove their access to the remainder of their alotted time without their consent.
Thou shalt not commit adultery
Marriage is an investment of people’s time in each other. To break up that marriage without the consent of both parties is a theft of their time. If you don’t want to be in the marriage you should communicate that so both parties can be on the same page.
Thou shall not steal.
Money is the result of your labor in respect to time. Material possessions (or the wages of your labor) or a product of that time; to steal is to steal the time that was invested in creating that labor to gain the material possession.
Thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
If you lie against your neighbor, they have to spend their time defending themselves from that lie. This is a theft of their time which they are not allowed to use as they choose.
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
This is similar to the “adultery” commandment. You are wasting time coveting when you could either spend that time on your own marriage or relationship; you’re also possibily putting a wedge between the neighbor and his wife which they now have to spend their time fixing without their consent.
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s goods.
This is similar to the “not steal” commandment. Don’t make your neighbor feel like they have to spend their time protecting the product of their time (labor → wages → material goods)
As you can see, you don’t need a divine source for these commandments. All of it boils down to engaging another person’s time and making sure you have their consent. If you don’t have their consent, you have committed a sin. We can expand (and will) this framework to help decide if a moral sin is worthy a physical punishment by the state or if it should be resolved at a civil level.
A quick way to decide if you’re commit a temporal ethical sin you can ask yourself these questions:
Are you engaging with someone’s time without their consent?
Are you in a good enough mindset to be a steward of your own time? (you can’t give consent yourself if you’re mind is not stable)
We will need to discuss what consent is and how one can grant it as a lot of abuse stems from people convincing someone (or others) that the affected party has given (or was even able to give) consent.
This will help us navigate through more and more complex issues and showcase how we can easily apply this framework to each scenario.