Immanuel Kant

So in the process, I learn all of these incredibly wonderful theories that the smartest people who have ever lived have developed over the last 2,500 years that help us make better decisions and become better people. For example, I learned about Immanuel Kant and the categorical imperative. So Kant says when we're about to do something we have to design a rule or a maxim that we could will to be universal. Meaning, we have to imagine, what if everyone did what we're about to do, what would happen to the world? Would it be OK or would it get all screwed up? So the maxim I'm designing here is something like, anytime two people are in any kind of negotiation, one of them can drag into the negotiation an entirely unrelated global calamity and tell the other person that they shouldn't care about whatever they care about, because they should care about that instead. That world would suck, right? Like, your sister borrows five dollars from you, you ask for it back, she says, "How dare you care about five dollars when the polar ice caps are melting?" No one wants to live in this world, right? Kant also says, by the way, that you should treat people as ends in themselves, and not a means to an end, meaning, you shouldn't use people to get what you want. Well, that's what I was doing.