Live Ethically

'Is there still anything to live for? Is anything worth pursuing, apart from money, love and caring for one's own family? . . . In this book I give one answer. It is as ancient as the dawn of philosophy, but as much needed in our circumstances today as it ever was before. The answer is that we can live an ethical life.' In How Are We to Live? Peter Singer suggests that people who take an ethical approach to life often escape from the trap of meaninglessness, finding a deeper satisfaction in what they are doing than people whose goals are narrower and more self-centred. He spells out what he means by an ethical approach to life, and shows that it can bring about significant and far-reaching changes to our lives.

This book begins with one of the finest concise introductions to ethical systems ever written for general audiences. The engaging and readable text is enriched with anecdotes and step-by-step exercises that reinforce the strategies of each chapter.

Live Ethically will clear a path through the minefield of information available on green issues and give you everything you need to know in order to make informed choices about the goods, services and products you use on a daily basis. Designed for anyone who wants to live more responsibly without huge effort or cost, it is a realistic guide to understanding the issues surrounding every area of consumer life, from clothing and food to energy saving and environmentally friendly travel. Each section explains the pros and cons of every choice we make as householders, then shows the practical steps you can take to make changes that will really have an impact. NOT GOT MUCH TIME? One, five and ten-minute introductions to key principles to get you started. AUTHOR INSIGHTS Lots of instant help with common problems and quick tips for success, based on the author's many years of experience. TEST YOURSELF Tests in the book and online to keep track of your progress. EXTEND YOUR KNOWLEDGE Extra online articles at www.teachyourself.com to give you a richer understanding of how to live ethically. FIVE THINGS TO REMEMBER Quick refreshers to help you remember the key facts. TRY THIS Innovative exercises illustrate what you've learnt and how to use it.

How can we conceive of freedom and responsibility when our power is limited and we are subject to the forces of society? Melissa A. Odie asks what it means to live responsibly amid historical harm and wrongdoing, in the wake of slavery and genocide, or in the face of severe resource asymmetries. By connecting resistance to evil with reflections on the nature of power and political action, Odie reveals the daily ways people commonly exercise power, inflict harm, and show themselves capable of actions that transform both selves and the world. Viewed in this context, truly ethical political action may appear miraculous but could happen at any time. Odie asks what it means to live freely when advantages are distributed disproportionately according to race, gender, class, culture, and religion. What do freedom and responsibility entail when, for example, creating a home for oneself implies social and economic commitments that render others homeless? To address these questions, Orlie links diverse intellectual concerns and constituencies in the social sciences and humanities, offering original interpretations of Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Thomas Hobbes. She compares their thinking to that of the seventeenth-century Quakers who found political possibilities in the powers they called "spirit" in the world and in themselves.

In a world of increasingly confused ethics, Living Ethically looks back over the centuries for guidance from Nagarjuna, one of the greatest teachers of the Mahayana tradition. Drawing on the themes of Nagarjuna's famous scripture, Precious Garland of Advice for a King, this book explores the relationship between an ethical lifestyle and the development of wisdom. Covering both personal and collective ethics, Sangharakshita considers such enduring themes as pride, power and business, as well as friendship, love and generosity.

Unlike other animals, which are born with strong instincts, we humans must learn how to live socially—and we learn from the people around us. As a result, we’re closely linked to the community we’re raised in. Our daily lives and identities are affected by the common experiences shared with the people in our community. We learn the community’s values, history, and rules. When we become part of a community, it becomes part of us. Citizenship is the state of being an active, engaged, and productive member of a community. As citizens, we get certain rights, but also certain responsibilities. To be good citizens, we must live up to these responsibilities. That’s because we share our future with the other individuals in our community. Our actions affect them, and theirs affect us. A community can only grow and flourish through time if good citizens do their best to improve it. We all have a sense of right and wrong, but we don’t always follow our better judgments—good citizens must also live ethically, or morally. Whenever we decide not to live ethically, we risk hurting the people around us and ourselves. Being a good citizen has immediate rewards. Ethical living and good citizenship can improve your academic and social success, your happiness and quality of life, and your future prospects for professional success. By being good citizens and living ethically, we encourage others to do the same. This book provides ten tips on how to be a good citizen and live ethically—ethics 101, consider the consequences of your actions, be a good neighbor, take every opportunity to make friends, be respectful, obey the law, know and stand up for your rights, know your rights, stay informed, and get involved. The book also provides reasons why readers should care, and how they will benefit their community and self by being a good citizen and living ethically.

The world is in a terrible mess. It is toxic, irradiated, and full of injustice. Aiming to stand aside from the mess can produce a seemingly satisfying self-righteousness in the scant moments we achieve it, but since it is ultimately impossible, individual purity will always disappoint. Might it be better to understand complexity and, indeed, our own complicity in much of what we think of as bad, as fundamental to our lives? Against Purity argues that the only answer—if we are to have any hope of tackling the past, present, and future of colonialism, disease, pollution, and climate change—is a resounding yes. Proposing a powerful new conception of social movements as custodians for the past and incubators for liberated futures, Against Purity undertakes an analysis that draws on theories of race, disability, gender, and animal ethics as a foundation for an innovative approach to the politics and ethics of responding to systemic problems. Being against purity means that there is no primordial state we can recover, no Eden we have desecrated, no pretoxic body we might uncover through enough chia seeds and kombucha. There is no preracial state we could access, no erasing histories of slavery, forced labor, colonialism, genocide, and their concomitant responsibilities and requirements. There is no food we can eat, clothes we can buy, or energy we can use without deepening our ties to complex webbings of suffering. So, what happens if we start from there? Alexis Shotwell shows the importance of critical memory practices to addressing the full implications of living on colonized land; how activism led to the official reclassification of AIDS; why we might worry about studying amphibians when we try to fight industrial contamination; and that we are all affected by nuclear reactor meltdowns. The slate has never been clean, she reminds us, and we can’t wipe off the surface to start fresh—there’s no fresh to start. But, Shotwell argues, hope found in a kind of distributed ethics, in collective activist work, and in speculative fiction writing for gender and disability liberation that opens new futures.