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No there aren’t more important things. Love, beauty, passion, art, theater, music - that is life. Man cannot live by bread alone. Perhaps, I should say I don’t want to live by bread alone. I don’t want to live in an ivory tower even if everyone on earth lived in the same ivory tower. I want color and drama - I want Caravaggio and Delacroix and Scorcese.

Your stoicism and your goals relative to it are admirable. But, it is only one way to approach life and society. Your goal seems to be to form a perfect society. To what end? It seems to me for the longevity of the human race - for survival.

I have on a number of occasions asked here on SMP why folk are so concerned with man’s survival. If I am understanding you correctly - and this is THE question you are concerned with, then let’s start a new thread and talk about it. I have been wanting to discuss this idea for some time - you sound like the perfect apologists for such a position.

Basically, what we are talking about is this: What is/should be man’s ultimate goal(s) in life?

Sample answers - survival, procreation, help others, make money, sex/drugs and rock and roll, cure diseases, get into Heaven.

p.s. Regarding ethics already being decided by nature - even if this is the case, we are thinking animals. We are not bound but what nature has decided. We have the ability to say NO to anything that we have been “programmed” to be.

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I just want to go along with nature, and the process of life. I realize that we have the potential to say 'No' to nature, but really, can we? Do most people? Do most people NOT have sex? Do most people NOT care about survival?

I want to make a theory of living that is accessible to EVERYONE. The fact is, everyone possesses (well, aside from those incredibly different genetic anomalies that eventually don't have success in reproducing) the innate things that drive a human being, or any living organism - genetic survival.

Why create a lifestyle based on anything else? This one aspect of life that pervades every single society, and every single individual. Constructing an ethics system around anything but genetic survival would be the equivalent of ramming your head into a brick wall. Your reasoning, and many others is this "I mean, I know a sledgehammer works, but why not use your head to break it down?" I prefer choosing the path of least friction when attempting to build anything. Building a system of ethics is no different. Society requires a code of ethics to live by, it's ingrained in the dynamics of group behavior, so there's no avoiding it. If you build an ethics system on anything but genetic survival/procreation, you are literally fighting against the force that drives life. The desire to survive is universal throughout time, and no other belief or desire is. No matter what, nature will ensure that people who survive will be the people who want to survive.

By the way, my comment about literature is to be applied to it's acceptance as academic study. I don't mind people doing whatever they want to do in their leisure time, I have a many leisure hobbies that are... well, futile to my goals, but I enjoy them. But, I mean, how many hours have I wasted away in an English class throughout my entire life pouring over mundane, recycled arguments over what Hamlet felt? I didn't have a choice of whether or not I had to go, my education required it. I don't mind being introduced to English (or any leisure subject) as a topic of study, but eventually I get to age where it seems kind of futile if I don't want to put time into it. I am a very experimental person, I enjoy variety in life. I enjoy Love, Art, Poetry, Music, what have you, I just don't enjoy it when they are the focus of my education when many more important things should be (like staying happy, staying creative, staying knowledgeable, and having a desire to learn, understand and reason).