Society is based on an economic system in which each of us devotes himself to furthering the purposes of others as an indirect means of furthering his own. Because social cooperation is the great means of achieving nearly all our ends, this means can be thought of as itself the moral goal to be achieved. Our dominant moral rules can therefore be aimed at achieving or intensifying this social cooperation rather than aimed directly at achieving happiness. As no two people find their happiness or satisfactions in precisely the same things, social cooperation has the great advantage that no unanimity with regard to value judgments is required to make it work. The sacrifices that a mother makes for her child, or any of us for our loved ones, are seldom regarded as sacrifices at all.
Immoral action is nearly always short-sighted action.
If it occasionally helps an individual to achieve some immediate particular end that he might not have achieved without it, it is usually at the cost, even to him, of some more important or enduring end. And immorality can achieve even these minor successes only to the extent that it is rare and exceptional, and confined to a tiny minority. A corrupt or immoral society is ultimately an unhappy or dying society. The distinction between asceticism and self-discipline is that the first tends to undermine our health, shorten our life, and destroy our happiness, while the second tends to build up our health, prolong our life, and increase our happiness. Ethical propositions are not true or false in the sense that existential propositions are true or false.