Basic Premise - You have the right to your own life

The primary premise I am working on is that everyone is entitled to their own life.

It is immoral to require or ask anyone to live or die for you.

Your life is your own.  No one else's life is yours.

Secondarily you need to look at how a people live, what is the main tool by which we live?

Wolverines have ferocity, Gazelles run and Ants live in colonies.

We can't truly say that our thumb is our main tool.  After all, primates have been shown to use tools to crack nuts or get ants, otters use rocks to open clams and beavers dam rivers to build homes.

Fire?  Well, a great many tools and a means of living can be eked out  without it.  It's not pleasant, but on a small scale people can live without fire.

I would say that the greatest tool we have is our ability to think and reason.

Because of that, anyone or anything that asks us to live outside of reason is immoral.

Would we ask a lion to eat tofu?  Of course not.

Would you ask a gazelle to hunt lions?  You'd be nuts.

Forcing any animal to act against its nature will result in the death of the animal or its life in captivity.

Rational thought as a guide for actions

I'm interested in creating a moral philosophy whereby rational behavior is used as a guide for moral actions.

When I say rational, I mean behavior judged by its merits and the ends it causes rather than by the emotions it evokes or whether it feels nice.  For instance, it would not feel nice to amputate a gangrenous limb, but to do so creates a better end for the body than to let it continue.

This is the first time I have tried to express these principles outside of a classroom and I will try to do so using different schools of thought as justification for the conclusions I draw or for possible explanation for differing conclusions that others may draw.

For my examples I will try do examine current affairs as well as classic postulates and where real-life examples are used I will try to ferret out the ultimate rather than proximate causes of the situations.

I will welcome any reasoned response to my writing, and would rather have someone disagree with me with clear and rational arguments for disagreeing with me, than to agree with my in a mindless chanting sort of way.

Please avoid reducto ad nazi, responses as well as using 7337 if you do have something to say.

The assumption here is that someone is reading this and of course, that is a huge assumption.

Thanks