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Introduction

This book is offered to some of those who are looking for answers to questions such as: what’s it all about? How should I live my life? Does life on earth have any point or purpose? Presumably such people are dissatisfied with the answers that are given by any Church or organised religion that they have encountered, or they wouldn’t still be looking. However, I say “some” (only) because it seems likely that there are several different ways to such answers, of which one or perhaps one or two at most may suit any particular person.

The way that is explored here starts from questions of right and wrong. What does it mean to say that a person’s conduct is right or wrong, other than in an obvious or trivial sense? That is, does right conduct or wrong conduct really matter? If so, why, and what do “right” and “wrong” mean? It isn’t enough to appeal to the need for avoiding anti-social conduct, for why should that count with one who may feel that he owes little enough to society? Going into such questions is taken to be the business of ethics, or of moral philosophy if you will, and that is where our exploration begins – a dull enough start perhaps, until certain possibly not-quite-expected implications begin to appear, and certain more interesting questions need to be addressed.

What became this book began, not as a book, but as a personal search for understanding that turned out to involve almost a lifetime’s work and that arrived only by stages at the subject of ethics. That ethics came to be the focus simply reflects the discovery that for this searcher at least, ethics and ethical questions present the most down-to-earth and effective way of getting a grip on the largest questions of life. Amateur explorations in the fields of biology and physics were rewarding and likewise in the fields of mysticism and parapsychology. However, mysticism and parapsychology will not be given any significant place in the argument that is sought to be developed, if only because of a problem of credibility that arises.

The authority that the accounts of mystical experience might otherwise carry has largely been appropriated by one organised religion or another (or is thought to have been so appropriated, which raises the same problem). In consequence, the worth as evidence of such accounts tends to be rated on a par with estimates of the overall worth of the religion concerned and one who is looking elsewhere for answers may throw out the one with the other. As regards paranormal communications, the apparently ineradicable uncertainties attaching to the conditions necessary for proof of reliable communication leave their worth as evidence even lower, if anything, in the general opinion. So most of the time, virtually all the time indeed, the facts to which argument appeals will have to be the ordinary, admitted facts of everyday life.

Getting from the facts of everyday life to the kinds of answers we are looking for is going to take work. I believe it can be done, though not easily, and the reader who glides through this book with his mind in neutral gear is perhaps unlikely to find the argument persuasive. No answers are to be conceded in advance: the case must stand or fall on argument and on ordinary, ascertained (or ascertainable) fact. If you want to make the essay, please read on. Even where you disagree you may find yourself – assuming you take the trouble to clarify and then criticise and evaluate the ground or grounds of your disagreement – with a few worthwhile new ideas.

It may need acknowledgement that some people seem to take offence nowadays if the masculine pronoun only is used to refer to the human person. The old-fashioned rule is so far still the simplest one and it is followed here, that is, the rule that “he” Includes “she” except where it obviously doesn’t. Here it always does.

Chris McAllister

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