In brief, my position on this is a modified version of Bentham and Mill’s views on Utilitarianism, as well as Socrates’ on Ignorance as the root of evil (harmful) actions, and Immanuel Kant’s on our universal responsibility to each other. See also Panpsychist Non-Duality and Sam Harris’ “Moral Landscape”.

Basically, we must strive to minimize our objectively measurable harmful behavior to others (including ourselves) while simultaneously striving to improve the subjective well-being of our fellow Earthlings. No matter how smart we may be, if we cause harm to each other it is because we are Ignorant of our interconnected nature. Tribalistic delusions of Dualistic Separation — such as racism, nationalism, sexism, even speciesm are, perhaps less pernicious than is Religion (the Abrahamic three specially) because it grants a moral justification for our continued primitive Ignorance, Hatred, and Fear. In terms of how to gage what is “Good”: First, we must divorce ourselves from preoccupations over the unknowable (and, I would argue, irrelevant) caprice of genocidal gods. Next, we must focus on reducing tangible harms. For example, if we can agree that genocide and enslavement are ” bad”, we can then empirically measure what beliefs/actions cause less of them. In this way we can begin moving away from “worse” (more harmful) beliefs and closer to “better” (less harmful) values. The key here is that it must not become a Tribalistic endeavor. We need to leave behind the primitive, zero-sum, “Us vs Them” mentality. We must work toward the betterment of All Earthlings. The moment we begin to make exceptions for cruelty to an out-group is the moment our motivations become corrupt and our project for Betterment becomes just more selfish tribalism.

Finally, we must take subjective notions of well-being into account. This calculus may seem hard to implement, but it is not difficult to understand. Generally, if it doesn’t harm another living being, then its fine. For example, whatever momentary pleasure of drive-reduction a rapist may get from torturing another person is greatly outweighed by the immense suffering of their victim. In the same vein, all things being equal, Humanity’s current (purely optional) generational enslavement and predation upon 80 Billion land animals and 2 Trillion fishes per year is easily the single worst threshold of suffering ever inflicted in the history of this planet. The point is not to condemn or try to be “perfect”, the point is only to strive to be Better. And that is something we can all start doing, Today.