Universal Self-Interest

How do we know right from wrong?

How do we know right from wrong? At first glance this might sound counterintuitive, but my guess is that one's self-interest is how one knows right from wrong. That each person's own sense of self-interest is magnetic north to the compass needle of the moral landscape, always making it very clear right where Right Street and Wrong Lane are each located. The question of why - 'why do we do the right or wrong thing?' is an entirely different question. But my guess is that everybody knows right from wrong - specifically, and only, because of everybody's own sense of self-interest.

But isn’t self-interest one of the bigger causes of doing the wrong thing? Yes. Self-interest just might be the biggest motivator of doing the wrong thing. But at the same time, your own self-interest is the very thing tells you what you don't want done to you - to which the only possible thing to imagine is that ‘nobody else does either’.

Self-interest being what points the moral landscape's compass needle north is not only not counterintuitive - it's the very thing that makes the Golden Rule possible. Self-interest is the very thing that tells you what 'you would have them do to you' - whenever you're deciding what to 'do unto others'.