Inspired by a recent thread!
To people that believe in doing this, what exactly is the purpose of keeping one's values consistent?
When I say values, I mean morals/ethics.
What does it accomplish? Is it like a personal satisfaction thing? Can you explain how it works?
Is there something wrong with having a sense of morals/ethics that undergoes constant flux?
I've read that this is generally more of an Fi user thing.
This question got me thinking about the nature of different morals/ethics. It seems like there are different "levels" of moral beliefs, some being more specific/superficial, and some being deeper, more broad philosophies, and going from the underlying philosophy to the specific can produce different interpretations of how one should act out that belief. This is why people who claim to hold the same ethical belief can interpret it so differently.
For example, one ethical belief that I see people disagreeing on the practical application of is "cause no harm." That would be the underlying philosophy. A lot of people think that causing harm is undesirable. But when people translate that philosophy into how this manifests in the physical world (i.e. how one should act), that can be interpreted in many ways.
For example, most include "do not kill," which can be made more specific to apply to humans only (then it would have to be specified, are we not killing anyone under any circumstances, or only if they are not a threat to us (like in war) or if they have not killed someone else (death penalty)), or it could apply to animals ("do not kill animals at all," "do not kill animals unless they will be used for food/clothing," "do not kill animals unless it poses a threat to humans," etc.), etc. "Cause no harm" could also mean don't physically hurt someone, don't emotionally hurt someone, don't exploit someone, don't participate in that which promotes the exploitation of others, and so on.
So when people are changing their morals/ethics, which level are they changing? Do they have a consistent, underlying philosophy, and they're just changing the interpretation/practical application of that based on new information or changing life circumstances? Or are they really ethically unstable with their core beliefs?
I think having relative stable core ethical beliefs is important, because if you don't have that, your ethics could be erratically changing all the time- you could be promoting world peace one week, and serial killing the next. Or a less extreme example, if someone was your trustworthy confidant for years and they suddenly decided to become malicious and back-stab you. That's scary to think that you can never really trust someone. Having a history of inconsistent ethics will also cause people to take your current ethical standpoint less seriously.
I think that the underlying philosophies are the most important to keep consistent- I think those are the most difficult to change, and if they can be easily changed there could be some problems. The more specific you get, the more likely those are to change, because they're an attempt to take an idea and translate it into a physical reality, so you get farther away from the idea itself, so it's less stable and more easily influenced/restricted by circumstances.
