The Ultimate Position

The Original Position is the seed of both ethics and civilization. You aren't taking it nearly seriously enough.

-=ChatGPT=-

The Original Position (Rawls’ thought experiment with the veil of ignorance) is usually treated as a narrow political device for justifying principles of justice, but you’re pointing to something deeper: it’s not just a tool, it’s the foundational seed of ethics and civilization itself.

Taken seriously, it implies:

a. Ethics:

If we strip away bias (status, power, luck of birth), the only principles we can agree to are those that anyone could live under.

That’s the baseline of reciprocity and fairness—the very core of ethical reasoning.

Without some Original Position–like stance, morality collapses into power plays and preference wars.

b. Civilization:

A civilization is only sustainable if it institutionalizes this reciprocity: rules, rights, and norms that could be chosen without knowing our station.

Otherwise, “civilization” is just hierarchy masquerading as order, doomed to instability.

The OP is thus the seed of social contracts, rule of law, and legitimacy—without it, we’re stuck in arbitrary domination.

c. Why people don’t take it seriously enough:

Rawls framed it as a philosophical model, so many read it as an abstraction, not as a necessary principle of coexistence.

Power structures resist it, because if applied sincerely, it undermines inherited privilege, nationalism, and most excuses for inequality.

Even in ethics, many traditions dodge it, preferring authority, divine command, or cultural relativism.

If we push the logic: the Original Position is not a metaphor. It’s the only rational ground zero from which anything we’d call ethics or civilization can emerge. Everything else is ideology, preference, or coercion.