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Jon Miller
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can people exchange names?
Jon Miller
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Jon Miller
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I woudl like to be krazyhorse
Jon Miller
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:29
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quote:
Originally posted by Elok
I never said I know what good and evil are. I just stated my certainty that they exist. It is dependent partially on my belief in a creator god, yes.
I believe that there is an inherent limitation to our conscience similar to our limitations in the physical world; we cannot sense right or wrong from where we stand any more than we can sense that the earth is round. We have a hard time conceiving the shape of our world because our concept of space is largely shaped by its gravity and our own experience, and we cannot understand good and evil except very loosely and mostly in retrospect because our consciousness is shaped by our personal desires and the innate flaws of our individual perceptions. That is largely what I meant by shades of gray. The black-and-white is there, we just all need glasses, so to speak. It's interesting that, in terms of physics and biology and such, we tend to make the assumption that any unknown quantity shows a need for further investigation, whereas a disparity in morals and philosophy-an older and far more complex set of mental disciplines-the assumption is that what we are looking for simply does not exist, or worse there is a concession that it does exist but we should stop looking for political or social reasons. The alternative is to investigate further, which generally proves far too painful and personal, which in turn is why we as a species can split the atom and travel through outer space and still want more but rely on a continuously shifting base of ethics and controversy and see it as normal. And don't even get me started on that "your opinion is just as valid as mine so let's just say we're both right" BS. What kind of idiot civilization founds itself on the principle that nothing is true? Stumbling around in the dark spitting out quotes from dead philosophers and hoping we're doing the right thing, not trying to turn a light on for fear that someone will be offended. The proof of God is that we are not dead already, living that way.
Evil is, practically speaking, a failure by a conscious being to follow the best possible course of action out of whatever number of choices are available, the choices in any given situation being limited by a similar failure of others who came before. Generally evil is the defiance of reality-an attempt to have things exactly as desired despite the fact that current circumstances don't allow such ideals to be truly fulfilled. The "evil" answer to such limitation is temporary and ultimately destructive circumvention of problems by any means possible.
In response to your Old Testament troll, I call that harsh laws for hard times. At least, that's my guess. I've personally never tried to impose order on a race of fugitive nomads raised in a state of accustomed brutality, but I bet it's a real *****. |
You say that evil is going up agains reality: how so? Lets take Hitler and his acts: was his invasion of Poland an amoral, or perhaps agood, in this resect? He wanted to conquere that land, he had, in reality, the ability to do so, and he did. Had Hitler never invaded the USSR he could have exterminated all of Polands undesireables and made it into a new land: there was nothing unrealisitc about his ability to carry out the policy of annexing Poland and doing whatever he wantde on there.
The same can be said of countless acts that we would term evil. Rape is a hard thing to prosecute if you lack certain evidence, and we all know the rich have the ability to pay for good legal ciounsel: knowing this, would we say it is unrealisitc for a rich intelliegent man to brutaly rape someone and expect a very good chance of escaping any reprecussion?
As for investigating moral difference further..do you think people have not tired? Many philosophers have tried, in fact, trying to create a system to explain the basis for morality is one of the most common things philosophers used to do. But the fact that you can;t possible experiment with the issue creates limits. One thinkre could sue logical arguements against the ideas of another, but that is as far as they can go, for they can show NO empirical evidenc for their positin or the other. The only ones left to ofer any empirical evidence about morals are anthropologists, but even they run into limits of what they can find.
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Lung
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of my princess Anastasia!
Mar 1999
time: 15:29
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If i delete people from my "shouldn't go to hell" list according to what i find unacceptable, i find the vast majority of everyone should be given a one-way ticket 
Most people have the capacity to be good, but ultimately fall into the "other" category. I find this grossly disturbing.
What irks me most of all, is that most people quite willingly throw their ethics out the window the moment they decide that a person is one of "them". By "them", i mean anyone who is considered to represent or belong to a group which they despise. Yet, we mostly willingly accept bad deeds done by governments we prefer, people we like or who can improve our careers/ambitions. It's a small step from discrimination to prejudice, and few of us can say we don't cross that line.
Let us consider how a mob acts. As far as i'm concerned, if a mob acts badly, then anyone in it who doesn't consciously walk away from it is individually guilty of it.
Politicians should all go to hell, because at some stage they must decide whether to do the wrong thing for the sake of their careers. The problem is that once they do it once, they never seem to be able to stop.
So, who should go to hell, according to Lung?
-edit-
Sorry, but i don't have all day. Not only are their endless unacceptable crimes, but there are endless exceptions as well. In any case, i don't believe there's a hell, but non-existence for eternity is pretty bad, anyway 
If i was St. Peter, there wouldn't be many getting in 
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Elok
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Land of Ramen Dragons
Mar 2003
time: 00:29
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
You say that evil is going up agains reality: how so? Lets take Hitler and his acts: was his invasion of Poland an amoral, or perhaps agood, in this resect? He wanted to conquere that land, he had, in reality, the ability to do so, and he did. Had Hitler never invaded the USSR he could have exterminated all of Polands undesireables and made it into a new land: there was nothing unrealisitc about his ability to carry out the policy of annexing Poland and doing whatever he wantde on there.
The same can be said of countless acts that we would term evil. Rape is a hard thing to prosecute if you lack certain evidence, and we all know the rich have the ability to pay for good legal ciounsel: knowing this, would we say it is unrealisitc for a rich intelliegent man to brutaly rape someone and expect a very good chance of escaping any reprecussion?
As for investigating moral difference further..do you think people have not tired? Many philosophers have tried, in fact, trying to create a system to explain the basis for morality is one of the most common things philosophers used to do. But the fact that you can;t possible experiment with the issue creates limits. One thinkre could sue logical arguements against the ideas of another, but that is as far as they can go, for they can show NO empirical evidenc for their positin or the other. The only ones left to ofer any empirical evidence about morals are anthropologists, but even they run into limits of what they can find. |
Okay, you missed my point. Hitler's "barrier" to Poland was simply that he did not own the land and that he had no practical, honest means of acquiring it. His circumvention was to steamroll his way into it and take it by force. I want things my way, they aren't my way, tough ****, I'll take it with tanks and to hell with what anyone else thinks. The consequences were the devastation of a country, the enmity of its people, the disgust of much of the rest of the world, and eventual military retaliation, among other things. The Poles were of course powerless to fight back, but by attacking Hitler consigned himself to life with yet another enemy to guard himself against. He had to rule with an iron fist or take the risk that he would be overthrown. Barbarity is a childish tantrum that limits your own future choices and those of others.
Rape is actually rather similar. I don't know much about the psychology of rapists(I don't know much about WWII either, I'm afraid-you probably noticed), but what little I have read about it was to the effect that rape is generally a crime of abuse more than of passion; an attempt to exert your own will and dominance on another human being, similar to the behavior of bonobos. Dogs will frequently show dominance by pretending to mate, even among the same sex. The thrill of rape is probably the thrill of domination, and turns what could be an expression of affection into a crude, vicious form of browbeating abuse. What precisely is the benefit? Do you derive any gain except the temporary satisfaction of your own desire? Does any rapist, even an accused and acquitted one, ever earn the respect of his community? A trial, embarassment, and, again, another enemy on the list. Who needs that? I'm not saying he's guilty, but if Kobe Bryant actually did what they say he did, how did he really profit from it? Even if the jury says he's clean, the damned scandal will follow him for ages. Who the hell likes that kind of man?
Another example might be the oil tyrants of certain countries in Africa, like Sudan and Nigeria; they pump the oil out and don't bother to clean up the mess, angering the locals. The locals complain about the abuse of their home, and get shot for sedition. The locals are forced into uprising, but the tyrants just don't care, because they can funnel their oil money into lots of shiny helicopters and tanks and a well-fed army to stomp the rebels as fast as they appear. Meanwhile the country's ecology gets shot to hell, people starve and die from disease because the continuous war disrupts transportation of the necessary goods within the state, foreign investors pull out for fear of association with the regime, and state officials can't go anywhere without a massive bodyguard for fear of assassination. Those in power are forced to keep funneling cash into the military to save them from the rebels, and it works as long as the oil keeps flowing. If the oil ever runs out, or if the alternative energy sources Bush keeps blathering about are ever perfected, the army will collapse for lack of funding and the ensuing bloodbath when the rebels take over will make what's going on in Iraq look like Pleasantville by comparison. That sort of thing is going on in many countries all over the world. It's a losing game, but nobody can stop playing.
Do you see what I'm getting at in general here?
As for empirical evidence: my position is, quite frankly, that the evidence is there; it's just far too personal for us to look at objectively, so we seem to have stopped trying as a species. Also, the continuing rise of science seems to have taught us that we are God again, and above good and evil. I thought we learned that that was BS back in the Victorian era? My apologies for any historical error.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:29
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The problem I have wit your theory is that you are trying to base "good" and "evil" as "most efficient", "least efficient". Lets take this:
quote:
Barbarity is a childish tantrum that limits your own future choices and those of others. |
First of all, "childish tantrum" is hardly a well defined scientific terms, but on the notion of barbarity: there are tiems when barbarous behavior is simply the thing best called for.
quote:
Okay, you missed my point. Hitler's "barrier" to Poland was simply that he did not own the land and that he had no practical, honest means of acquiring it. |
BUt you see, if Germany invaded Poland, won, and got Poland to sign a peace treaty demarking new borders, or got POlands ex-neighbors to demark new borders, then Germany's acts would have been legal: there is no sanctions against wars, if you couch the war on certain terms, like a "war for defense". Hitler did have a [ractical way of getting it, and "honesty" has little to do with international relations, speically in stating "rights" to something.
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22-07-2003 03:07
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