Ethic 2: An act is good if it benefits at least one person, including the person acting, and harms no one. 

We seem to have forgotten to name the specific value to be maximized and to define the belief system that must be associated with it for the ethic to be valid under all circum-stances.  So let’s tighten up our definition.  The word “benefit” is simply too general a value, because some perceived benefits lead to unwanted social consequences; thus contradicting the intent of the ethic.  Values such as wealth, profit, political power, and even happiness suffer from this weakness.

On the other hand, consider the values of creativity, love, awareness, and personal evolution.  These values are particularly interesting because an act that increases any one of them also increases the others; while an act that limits or diminishes any one of them also limits or diminishes all of the others.  Thus these values, and perhaps many others, may be said to be logically equivalent to one another.  So let’s redefine Ethic 2 as follows:

An act is ethical if it increases creativity, or any of its logical equivalents, for at least one person, including the person acting, without limiting or diminishing creativity for anyone.

This ethic, it turns out, is valid, in that its adoption by an individual or a group invariably results in an increase in creativity and its logical equivalents.  For convenience, let’s refer to this ethic from now on as E₊ or as the E₊ Ethic.  It is worth noting at this point that all prosperity and happiness can be causally traced back to someone’s creativity or one or more of its logical equivalents.                      

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