- I might never have come to ethics had not the bare and pressing question ‘what to do?’
already proven fruitful in the past
- I say ‘bare and pressing’ because I had come to a point where I could no longer see any purpose
or meaning in my life
- this made the question especially urgent, while at the same time stripping it
of all context that might yield an answer
- after brooding over it for many months, I finally gave up on the question
- there followed a brief period when I lived simply for the pleasure of it, for I was young
- and in this happy state, I had a thought that restored my hope of an answer,
of meaning and purpose, and has stuck with me ever since
- even now it makes me pause to look at the sky on clear nights
- because my thought was that there in the vastness of space and the limit of light speed
is an existential refuge, where we might endure forever
- the same thought now brings me to ethics, here to ask, ‘are we morally obligated to endure?’
- and then, ‘who are we, that are so obligated?’
- for the obligation would bear on one’s identity