How can we define the way life 'should' be?

Question

How can we define what happiness is, in fact, happiness (like all other feelings) are in the eye of the beholder. With each new life, each holds it's own reality. So how can anything properly be defined? Is this question in vain? I think a better suited question would be, 'Can they be defined at all?'. How can we be sure what we do is good, when people like Hitler believed what he did was good? Can we just call him 'crazy'? Just dismiss The Holocaust as 'wrong'? Every one person sees life from a different perspective, so there for, who has the right to decide what good and evil are? What right and wrong is. Try not to bring 'dietys' and 'gods' into the affair, because this is a question we must ask ourselves as humans. Not something that some 'all mighty being in the sky' can tell us. One thing all humans must accept is that we are alone. When god's and such want to come down and actually do something, I'll listen to what there books say, until then, what do you, as a human believe?

Answer 1

That standard by which an organism is created by its nature Aristotle called "qua." Thus the standard of an eagle's best interests in nature are called "eagle qua eagle." It is the description of the conept of the organism "in the thing itself."

His most famous "qua" is "Man qua Man," and all the standards of behavior, of mental health, of necessary nutrients, of the nature of his being at his best--is Man "qua" Man.

Hitler did not meet the standards of Man qua Man. Marcus Aurelius did, Thomas Aquinas did, the Founders of America did, and many millions upon millions of other men and women throughout the history of humans have lived to the highest standards they knew.

"...rational selfishness [ ] means: the values required for man’s survival qua man—which means: the values required for human survival—not the values produced by the desires, the emotions, the “aspirations,” the feelings, the whims or the needs of irrational brutes, who have never outgrown the primordial practice of human sacrifices..." Ayn Rand