How Syai links ethics to how a society of well-being and sustainability can be maintained.

A happiness ethic requires a clean, pleasant natural environment (see picture).

Is there an ethical standard to all our variety of belief about what makes an action right or wrong (morally speaking)?  The founder of Syai (according to Terres, our visitor to the Syai world) formulated such a standard in a line of only a dozen symbols. Something like that line is set out here as best remembered:

I=g --<  K(t.S)=G.

Of course this won't mean anything without explanation. The symbol '--<', for instance, is only my made-up symbol for "if-and-only-if". What Fahraa, the founder, pointed out was that 'Good', writ large, was not to be derived from the same word with a missing 'o'. We are lost if we try to relate right action with our particular culture, religion of collective gut-feelings. We then start exchanging blows about what's good, what's bad, what's right and what's wrong. The law of the land guides us, but it can be an ass, as can some of the guidance given by the moral precepts that come from ancient traditions and individuals who have set themselves up as 'God's interpreters'. 

According to the Syai, the 'Good' which reliably guides our actions can only be established by what they call "The Naturalistic Axion".  It states that we, as a species, have the power to destroy our world and ourselves. Naturally, at the same time, we have within us the instinctual desire to continue to survive (as a species) for as long as the changing universe can allow us to, although we can subvert that desire by giving priority to other, more immediate ones. Furthermore, survival on that scale is only possible if we flourish. Furthermore, the condition of our flourishing is a care for ecological balances with consideration for the species we share the planet with. Given the appeal and rationality of this axiomatic approach, we can interpret the symbols as follows: I = the individual as active agent; g = what he needs (ethically) to consider good;  K = our state of collective knowledge based on everything that objective observation and the scientific method can reveal to us; S = 'Survival' but as a function of  't', time, which must be taken into account as we can make good predictions based on present knowledge but can only speculate as to the more long-term future on what it will take for us to survive. All these considerations a process that add up to the best notion possible of what is the good that we must strive for - 'G', the greater good for all.  Because of the 't' factor, there is a degree of uncertainty inevitable about 'G'. Unfortunately, we cannot invent a time machine to bring persons back from the far distant future, to test whether the ethical guidance that our formula gives us is absolutely reliable. But there are no absolutes in real life.

Picture by Severin, 6 y.o.