Column Research Audio

Ethics

(Aug 2026: Ethics)

~ 10 to 12 minutes of audio

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I’m your host, Michael Alan Prestwood and this is the column research for the

August 2026 edition

of The Prestwood Column.

This is the expanded story mode edition.

This month’s column introduces the TST Ethical Roadmap, but the practical message is simpler: be a good person. That gets you through much of ethical life. When things get harder, keep one principle in mind: act in a way that supports flourishing for all.

Most daily choices do not require a philosophical framework. Conscience, character, empathy, and ordinary decency usually carry us well. But difficult decisions do arise, especially when duties conflict, every option carries harm, or no choice feels morally clean. In those moments, the TST Ethical Roadmap offers a disciplined process:

Group ethics guides. Personal morality chooses. Act with good intent. Weigh the result. Adjust.

Many of the deepest edge cases belong mostly in philosophy classrooms, but a few will eventually find each of us—especially those making decisions in corporate boardrooms and government war rooms. When they do, the roadmap is there. It scales from ordinary daily choices to decisions involving institutions, public policy, and war. For the average person, return to this column every now and then, especially when life becomes hurried or self-focused, for a simple reminder: be good, support flourishing, and remain willing to learn.

With that, let’s frame the key idea.

Ethics.

This week, we explore the idea of Ethics.

Now for the 6 research tidbits. The goal, to blend intersections into wisdom.

These short pieces do the quiet work of verification, helping ideas stay grounded in reliable scholarship rather than repetition, assumption, or memory alone.

The key ideas are available on the home page, but this is the only place to get the “rest of the story.”

1.

Philosophy Story.

Ethical Roadmap.

New Look

30 Philosophers, Chapter 27: From Aristotle’s virtue to Mill’s greatest happiness, ethical systems have explored both sides of the “good intent-good results” approach to morality. In modern philosophy, most have decided there is no single rule to ethics. For many, a holistic approach is the key. The basic idea is to understand and avoid fear-based ethical systems while embracing the two-tong approach of good intent and good results. For example, your actions should come from a place of good intent, but you should also evaluate your motivations and measure your results to alter and guide future acts.

The TST Ethical Roadmap is a five-step process for making, evaluating, and refining ethical decisions.

Group ethics guides. Personal morality chooses. Act with good intent. Weigh the result. Adjust.

For most everyday decisions, the simpler principle is enough: act in a way that supports flourishing for all. When a decision warrants more care, use the five-step roadmap. For unusually difficult or high-impact decisions, the roadmap opens into the deeper framework and its situational ethical tools.

That Philosophy Story,

was first published on TST 2 years ago.

2.

Philosophy Quote.

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”.

William James.
1902.

Stress is not only about what happens to us. It is also about what our mind does with what happens. A problem can enter your thoughts and then grow as you replay it, imagine worse outcomes, and focus on everything that might go wrong. You cannot always choose the first thought that enters your mind, but you can often choose which thought gets your attention next. That is the useful idea behind this quote.

William James wrote extensively about attention. In The Principles of Psychology in 1890, he described attention as selecting one thing from several possible objects or trains of thought. In other words, your mind cannot focus equally on everything at once. What you repeatedly attend to helps shape your experience. That does not mean pretending a problem does not exist. It means deciding whether your attention is helping you deal with reality or simply feeding the stress.

Stress or anxiety can sometimes be a cue that you need to slow down and look more carefully at what you are doing. Not every stressful feeling is an ethical problem, but when the tension comes from a difficult choice, conflicting duties, possible harm, or uncertainty about what is fair, go deeper. Listen to the guidance around you. Clarify what is actually your responsibility. Think through your intent, likely results, and who may be affected. Sometimes the stress is your mind telling you that the easy answer is not enough.

So, when stress starts taking over, take control of what you can. Notice the thought. Ask whether it is useful, accurate, and actionable. If it is, deal with it. If it is just another lap around the same worry, choose another thought and move your attention there. You may not control every thought that appears, but you can get better at deciding which ones deserve your time.

That Philosophy Quote,

was first published on TST 2 hours ago.

3.

Science FAQ.

Did morality evolve?.

Yes it did. Long before humans wrote laws or argued philosophy, animals were already cooperating, forming alliances, and sharing resources. You’ve seen packs of animals react to threats. In primates especially, we see behaviors that look like early building blocks of morality. Not what we call human morality, but that indicates that morality has roots reaching deep into our evolutionary past.

Evolution gave us impulses that helped our ancestors survive, but survival instincts are always the best choice today. Anger can protect you, loyalty can bind us together, and self-interest can keep you alive, but each can also push too far.

As humans became increasingly social, we survived by cooperating, raising children together, sharing food, remembering who helped and who cheated, and depending on others for protection and knowledge. A group filled too many selfish individuals falls. So evolution favored empathy, guilt, trust, fairness, reputation, and the ability to punish people who repeatedly harmed the group. Somewhere along this path, our ancestors also became increasingly capable of thinking about their own behavior. We did not merely cooperate; we began judging whether we should cooperate. That was the great leap toward personal morality.

That is where taking control matters. Notice the impulse, think, listen to group guidance, and then choose with good intent. Morality today is neither purely biological nor purely invented. Evolution gave us the machinery; culture spent thousands of years reprogramming it. You are the moral agent. Your biology gets a vote, but it does not get the final decision. Watch what happens, watch the result, and adjust. Turn your inherited nature into a life lived with purpose.

That Science FAQ,

was first published on TST 2 hours ago.

4.

Philosophy FAQ.

Is the Me Too movement consistent with TST Ethics?.

In many respects, yes — because it highlights a central moral truth: impact matters.

For decades, certain behaviors were normalized. Many were defended on the grounds of intent — “I was joking,” “I meant it as a compliment.” But when people began listening to the lived experience of those harmed, awareness increased. And with awareness came obligation.

TST Ethics holds that once harm is understood, adjustment is required. You cannot hide behind intent if your actions consistently degrade others. Flourishing is relational. If your words produce unnecessary harm, virtue demands restraint.

This does not mean every accusation is automatically true or that due process disappears. It means moral evaluation includes listening to outcomes and refining behavior accordingly.

That Philosophy FAQ,

was first published on TST 6 months ago.

5.

Critical Thinking FAQ.

When should you stop following the crowd?.

Most of the time groupthink is useful. Your family, your tribe, and the culture itself all carry accumulated wisdom. If you think about it, group ethics is just advice. It coaches you: hey, this way. Don’t steal. Follow the rules. Most of that guidance exists for good reason. But guidance is not the same as authority.

This is where conformity bias sneaks in. When everyone around you agrees, agreement itself starts to feel like evidence. And it’s related to confirmation bias: your mind’s focus on hearing only things that agree with what you already agree with.

All of us are members of multiple tribes; and we want to conform because we want to belong; and that’s why too frequently tribal thinking replaces our own. If your people treat it as normal, questioning it can feel wrong. But watch out. Popularity should not guide how you act. The crowd can carry wisdom, but it can also carry old mistakes. Critical thinking means noticing when the group advice is wrong.

Ultimately, you are your own moral agent. Even when you make decisions with a spouse, you still own your part of the choice. You can listen. You can compromise. But you cannot hand away your responsibility by pointing to everyone else. If the group is wrong, your participation is wrong.

Know when to stop following the crowd. Do listen. The crowd can carry real wisdom. But always judge for yourself. That’s you acting as the moral agent of your life. If your best judgment tells you the group is causing unnecessary harm, choose better. This means you always act with good intent; which is not just a feeling; it requires you to think well. Then watch what happens. Adjust.

Listen to the group. Learn from it. Then decide for yourself.

That Critical Thinking FAQ,

was first published on TST 2 hours ago.

6.

History FAQ.

What did the Nuremberg Trials clarify about moral agents?.

The Nuremberg Trials did not invent the idea that you are responsible for your own actions. Humanity has wrestled with that for thousands of years. East, West, and everywhere else, thinkers have challenged rulers, traditions, and crowds when they believed something was wrong. But after World War II and the horrors of Nazi Germany, the world had a very specific problem to face: Can you excuse horrible acts by saying, “I was only following orders?”

At Nuremberg, the answer became clearly no. Governments act through people. Armies act through people. Companies, churches, and political parties all act through people. The Nuremberg Principles later made this explicit in international law: individuals can be held responsible even when acting under government authority. Following orders does not excuse bad acts.

Personal morality is where this becomes yours. A group can advise you and tell you what is normal, but you are still the moral agent making the choice. And that is where Good Intent matters. Good Intent is not simply meaning well. It is the process of thinking through what you know, listening to good advice, considering likely results, and then choosing the best action. You might still get it wrong, but it is you getting it wrong, not the crowd.

That is the lasting lesson. Listen to your friends, tribe and government, they have historical wisdom worth considering. But ultimately, you are still the moral agent of your life. You decide what you will do. When the group crosses into unnecessary harm, “everyone else was doing it” and “I was just following orders” are not enough. History clarified that at Nuremberg.

That History FAQ,

was first published on TST 2 hours ago.

That’s it for this issue!

Join us again next month. A new set of ideas lands on TouchstoneTruth on the first of the month, and emailed the next day.

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Rather than chasing completeness, each piece aims for clarity at the time it is written — and openness to better clarity later.

Thanks for listening.

The end.