The First World War was the war to end all wars; the fall of communism was the End of History — or so they said. But we have the means to destroy life on Earth: with war, or environmental collapse, or runaway greenhouse, or pollution — you name it. And peace, true, secure, safe peace, is as far away as ever, and the danger all too real.

If things go on as they are, sooner or later, disaster is inevitable. So what's missing?

• It isn't technology, we've got that in spades.
• It isn't good governance, we know what kinds of legal and democratic systems work, if not perfectly, at least well enough.
• It isn't social structures. We know how to do that, even if we are busy destroying the fabric of what previous generations built at great cost.
• It isn't a great economy: many of our problems come from the wealthiest quarters of our planet.

The one thing we don't know how to do, is choose between right and wrong: if we did know, we wouldn't think that ethics is just a matter of personal opinion. Only when ethics can be studied like a science and debated like good philosophy, and only when it can explain and validate our deepest emotional and spiritual feelings of good will towards every soul, only then shall we gain the wisdom and resolution to fix the problems and remove the dangers once and for all.

The Principle of Goodness is the first statement of the nature of ethics (in particular, the realities Good and evil) that holds up against the actions and understanding of the wisest and greatest of our species. Why did Socrates refuse to help kill an innocent, even when he knew that person would die anyway, and refusing just added his own name to the death list? Why did Jesus say that harming the most insignificant soul was the same as harming Him? Why did Buddha teach non-violence towards all life, when a bit of violence can be so profitable? And why is it that those who "got the point" behind the acts of these great souls have been able to uplift their own lives and those around them?

There is a consistent principle behind all these things, and the Principle of Goodness is the key insight that makes sense of it all. Try standing a pencil on its end on a table. It might stay up or it might not, but when you bump the table it will certainly fall down. Our world, so full of the means of destruction, is like that pencil balanced on its end: the crash will come, it must come. When we "bump the world table" (start a world war, release environmental destruction, etc.), our planet will be destroyed. Only if we can defuse the bomb in time, only if we can gain the wisdom and the means to 'lock in safety', can the end of all life be averted. Dramatic, maybe, theatrical, perhaps; but true: certainly. The Principle of Goodness is the only hope.

What's On This Website?

This is a never-ending work in progress. We shall be adding papers written by ourselves and others on any of the following topics (and others that we haven't yet thought of, just as long as they are relevant to the academic study of the Principle and its consequences):

• theoretical study of the Principle;
• personal living in accordance with the Principle;
• implications for the structure of society, laws, customs;
• derivation of secondary ethical principles, such as virtues.