#aproval

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A conscientious objector Thomas Moynihan being abused at Wanganui Detention Barracks New Zealand, 1918. Photo Archives New Zealand/Flickr

Imagine that one morning you discover a ring that grants you magic powers. With this ring on your finger, you can seize the presidency, rob Fort Knox and instantly become the most famous person on the planet. So, would you do it?

Readers of Plato’s Republic will find this thought experiment familiar. For Plato, one of the central problems of ethics is explaining why we should prioritise moral virtue over power or money. If the price of exploiting the mythical ‘Ring of Gyges’ – acting wrongly – isn’t worth the material rewards, then morality is vindicated.

Notice that Plato assumes that we stray from the moral path through being tempted by personal gain – that’s why he tries to show that virtue is more valuable than the gold we can get through vice. He isn’t alone in making this assumption. In Leviathan (1651), Thomas Hobbes worries about justifying morality to the ‘fool’ who says that ‘there is no such thing as justice’ and breaks his word when it works to his advantage. And when thinking about our reasons to prefer virtue to vice, in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751) David Hume confronts the ‘sensible knave’, a person tempted to do wrong when he imagines ‘that an act of iniquity or infidelity will make a considerable addition to his fortune’.

‘’This is just the beginning of dropping the fear of public opinion. The more you think about what people think about you, the less you are concerned about your own well-being. That's how we create false images. We go on smiling so that people will think we are happy, rather than really being happy -- we choose a very poor substitute. But just by people thinking you are happy, can you be happy? Forget about what people think happiness is. You be happy, and if they think it is good, good. If they don't think, that too is good.

Everybody has to live his own life. People go on thinking whether others think them intelligent or not. In the same time and with the same amount of energy they can become intelligent. But people are not worried about that -- they are worried about what others think. That's a very cheap substitute.

If you are hungry and everybody thinks that you are well-fed, is it going to help? And if you are well-fed and everybody thinks that you are hungry, then who bothers?’’

Osho.