How many would act morally if the law did not exist?
I recall reading about the Stanford Prison Experiment by Phillip Zimbardo, in which if ordinary people, who are not necessarily "evil" or "sociopathic" were in certain situations, they might do evil things, such as torture inmates if instructed to do so by a perceived "authority" figure.
Supposedly there were exceptions, such as people motivated by a higher moral philosophy or purpose.
Generally, I'm against the notion of "anarchy", and I think there is enough evidence and legal and moral philosophy indicating that, at least some, would potentially act immoraliy in an anarchist scenario in which there was no centralized legal system
Most "anarchist" ideals are utopian, and would only "work" in small, voluntary groups of people with some measure of morality and respect for one another, but the overly "rosy" view of human nature which some anarchists and libertarians hold seems to be false (I do find the other misanthropic extreme, such as the Hobbsian view to be somewhat faulty as well; given that even before modern cultures and civilizations, there were men and women who helped to build civilization, law, and order to begin with, rather than act akin to "animals"; obviously Hobbes himself did not believe HE was low enough to act this way, he merely believed it about others he considered to be morally and intellectually inferior).
What are your thoughts?
Supposedly there were exceptions, such as people motivated by a higher moral philosophy or purpose.
Generally, I'm against the notion of "anarchy", and I think there is enough evidence and legal and moral philosophy indicating that, at least some, would potentially act immoraliy in an anarchist scenario in which there was no centralized legal system
Most "anarchist" ideals are utopian, and would only "work" in small, voluntary groups of people with some measure of morality and respect for one another, but the overly "rosy" view of human nature which some anarchists and libertarians hold seems to be false (I do find the other misanthropic extreme, such as the Hobbsian view to be somewhat faulty as well; given that even before modern cultures and civilizations, there were men and women who helped to build civilization, law, and order to begin with, rather than act akin to "animals"; obviously Hobbes himself did not believe HE was low enough to act this way, he merely believed it about others he considered to be morally and intellectually inferior).
What are your thoughts?
Comments (237)
First, anarchism is not against there being laws or government, it's only against states, which are monopolies on the use of force. It's basically a kind of radically liberal, radically democratic government; it doesn't mean anything goes and nobody can do anything about it.
Secondly, in the Stanford Prison Experiment, it's arguable that "law" was the cause of the "evil" behaviors, because it was an authority telling people to do them and people's obedience to that authority that lead to it being done. The people on their own, in absence of any authority telling them they must do so, may not have been so inclined to do those bad things.
There's a case study of chimpanzees, I don't recall the attribution of now, where a tribe of chimps came across a disposal heap of infected meat, and because the alpha males insist that they eat first, they were the ones who died off, leaving only the females and beta males behind. In the absence of those alpha males, the tribe's behavior changed radically, becoming far more egalitarian and peaceful than a usual chimpanzee tribe would be. And that change lasted over generations, not degenerating back to the violent hierarchy of other chimpanzee tribes immediately. Even when outcast males from other tribes came into this tribe and tried to assert alpha dominance, they were basically shunned and taught that that's not how things work around there, and then changed their behavior to mimic the more peaceful egalitarian ways of their new tribe. The point of this story is that it doesn't take a violent hierarchy to keep violent hierarchies at bay, like Hobbes would have it: a peaceful egalitarian society can enforce that peace and equality against small deviations from it, maintaining itself stably instead of immediately collapsing into the worst kind of tyranny.
Crazy story! It can be found with a quick google search. It was baboons not chimps, but otherwise, it pretty much went down as you said. Not sure if there are implications for human society, but very interesting nonetheless.
Quoting IvoryBlackBishop
Well according to Kohlberg's stages of moral development law and order (deontology and rule following) is stage 4 of 6. Kohlberg estimated that only 20-25% of people reach stage 5 or higher. So according to him, it seems like society might go to a bad place without laws. Of course we could replace secular laws with religious ones that are not enforced and maybe that would work. But this one theory at least suggests that some sort of imposed rules are needed for most people.
I am not sure if I agree with Kohlberg or not, but I will certainly admit it is likely much more complicated than one of Kohlberg's charts would suggest.
The level of moral judgement a person attains depends on the person's belief system and education. Now if the belief system explains it is our nature to be evil and therefore there must be authority over the people, then the stage of moral development will remain low.
For the level of moral judgement to increase, there must be education for higher order thinking. That is where a person thinks about what he thinks and is moved to pursue information and expand his consciousness. That is a totally different level of thinking than average Christian thinking, and the 2012 Texas Republican agenda was to prevent education for higher order thinking.
Text books in Texas are very much controlled by Christians, however, when teachers protested teaching creationism and having it put in science text books, the supreme court ruled against including creationism in science books and against teaching it as science. That is, at the supreme court level, reason trumped religious belief.
We desperately need to return to understanding what morality has to do with liberty and what education has to do with good moral judgement or the lack of it! the 1958 National Defense Education Act decision to end education for good moral judgment and leave moral training to the church, was a huge mistake! The following social upheaval did improve some things, but we now have a technological society with unknown values and too few people to figure out what our values should be. We have intensified our dependency on religion and that is a problem. That is behind Trump becoming our president and mass amorality.
When the only God is an impossible to believe God, the nation is split between the believers in that God and non believers. The union of our nation that was built on reason, is being shredded! Our liberty is being destroyed and our growing dependency on authority over us is frightening.
I have to run for the night but your very first sentence is actually something I considered adding to my post. I definitely look forward to reading the rest. If I have not responded in the next couple days, please give me a "bump" reply as a reminder...I should get to it tomorrow though :smile:
I will make a note to return to this thread. Security gaurd said it is lock up time, bye..
Lack of laws and lack of social coercion to behave, so to speak, would drive society to lawlessness. Because of the deterministic effect of legal punishment, society is relatively a peaceful place in the western industrialized world.
You can curb crime in some of the people all of the time, in all of the people some of the time, but you can't curb illegal behaviour in all of the people all of the time.
I love even the sound of this! (Sarcasm.) Some corollaries:
Regional Gun Firing Marital Fidelity Act
National Prevention of Rod-Saving Child Act
Municipal Police Brutality Act
National "Deeds, Not Words" Policing award gala
"Let them shoot each other into a heap" Drug Diffusion Crime Prevention Act
1958 "Dumb 'Em Mother-Fuckers Into Submission Via Stupidity" Education Act
Martha and Abigail Bishopp Violent Behaviour Enhancement and Proliferation Act
Roe v. Jane
Doe v. Jade
Dr. No v. 007
The UN-sponsored International "Let Us All Deny the Holocaust" Festivities and Mardi-Gras Week
High School Intramural "Body Fat is Ugly, But So is Will-Power" Long-Distance BigMac Eating Marathons
KKK Summer Solstice Sacrificial
High School Confidential
Prom night
Shit Myself Silly
Bad Trips
Telling little school children (grade 2 or 3) that blue-eyed kids are inferior, and brown-eyed kids are good children. Then next week, after a social structure had solidified on this precipt, the teacher saying to kids that she had been mistaken, it is actually the brown-eyed kids that are inferior.
This supposedly would teach the kids the value of prejudice.
This has been done actually and for real by a school teacher, but the experimenting was short lived, because the local school board trustees thought that the moral of the story was too complex for 8 to 9-year-olds to internalize.
Lying to children is always immoral.
My first grade teacher actually did this to us, but she told us the moral of the lesson within five minutes.
So...teaching creationism in bible school is immoral. Or that christ has risen. Or most other bible stories.
I agree with that.
then how come the religious claim that the core of their (and others') moral behaviour is based on the bible?
Are you ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY sure that lying to children is ALWAYS immoral?
That's like taking the mystery out of "how much is two plus two", and then the next second telling the kids, "Well, it's four, of course, you little cretins."
Come to think of it, I also think, to this day, that two plus two is four. Sometimes these teachers are wickedly good in what they do, as far as teaching life-long moral or conceptual truths go.
Yeah, teachers are pretty awesome. If only they could teach some motivation and emotion control into me. :grin:
Be careful what you ask for. Hitler did not come up with his ideology by himself in a vacuum. Nor did Noriega, Nigeria, or Nagasaki.
"Hallja, maga, Nagasaki!
Mit gondol on, miben szaki?
Nem vagyok egy ki muszert szar ki,
De megy nekem a faki, szaki."
Lol. I guess that’s why they think that I have to be medicated.
What does that translate into?
Well, that would be the place to start then wouldn't it? Why don't you lay out a little of that evidence?
Quoting IvoryBlackBishop
This would be a good place to start with that 'evidence'...
Quoting Athena
Again some evidence would be useful to go on...
Quoting Athena
and again...
Quoting Athena
...once more, any evidence for this?
Certainly if we look at the Sapolsky's baboon group, which has already been mentioned, the results of their follow up study would suggest the exact opposite. That pedagogic education played absolutely no part whatsoever in maintaining the more egalitarian society created by the sudden removal of the alpha males.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I applaud your sense that it's probably more complicated. A quick run down of the issues with Kohlberg.
The biggest, for me, attributable largely to Dennis Krebs, is that he does not distinguish between moral judgement and moral behaviour and yet the work by Krebs and his colleagues has shown that there is a strong disconnect between making culturally appropriate moral judgements and behaving in a manner consistent with those judgements. As people like Jonathon Haidt have said, much of this moral judgement is post hoc rationalisation for actions which we took for more basic behavioural reasons anyway.
As Hyunjoo Baek Showed with Korean children, and Anisha Lakhani with adolescents in Mumbai, Kohlberg's stages are not cross-cultural. They basically reflect Western modern cultural institutions in various forms, and as Joanna Fleming demonstrated people operate at different levels in different circumstances, it's not necessarily about developmental stages as it is is about an assessment of the appropriate moral codes to apply in different circumstances. As a child grows up in a culture their circumstances change and different moral approaches become more suitable to their situation.
Creationism is a story, the bible tells a story. It is fine to tell children stories, so long as they are not posed as factual or true.
You can base moral behaviour on stories if you want, there is no particular problem with that, Aesop's fables are a good place to start as are the stories in the bible.
So you say the bible stories are all fiction. But to present fiction as true events, is a lie. And that is precisely what Sunday schools do.
I don't for a moment believe that Christians teach bible stories merely as stories, not as something that is to be believed as true.
Swahili.
Lol. I’m a big boy. I can handle it.
Okay, since you can handle it, you must be able to get a grip on it.
Go for it.
Fine, Sir Buzz Killington.
Since we do live in a world with leaders and laws, we are all too traumatized by oppression and submission to ever live in a society without laws. Blame Big Brother.
As it stands now, most of us are oppressed and traumatized serfs. Given the chance, many of us would kill the king.
Would not be "bad behaviour" the behaviour that countervened the expected? So the expected behaviour would be the uncodified law.
And the expulsion: would that not be the punishment for countervening the unwritten law?
Sure nuff, there would be no leader, but the community would take over the role of the leader inasmuch as their consensus would make the unwritten law that prescribes behaviour. If there were no prescribed behavior, no punishment for any behaviour would be forthcoming.
So the community is the leader, in a communal form of government. Much like in our present day societies the demos, the electorate, is the leader of what should happen in the world. The elected representatives are only spokespeople for their constituents. This of course is bastardized these days, and that is very sad, but it has good advantages, too, for instance that we have laws of non-convenience for the individuals, that promote trade, business and prosperity.
That's why they say that democracy is the worst possible form of government, except for all the currently available other forms.
Agreed. If only we had a democracy in the US. We never did.
But the king is he demos. The electorate. You and me.
I actually condone your premise. Let's all commit suicide. Last man standing needs no laws; laws and leaders are meaningless terms to a man living alone on a desert island.
Maybe it seems more like that in Canada. Not here. It never was.
How much freedom do you feel like you have or had in the workplace?
This is all very bad of the government to not care about the little feller who is suffering in a meaningless existential angst because his boss ducked his pay for whatever reason.
Would you rather that the government would send an inspector every day to every place where a job is happening to make justice? How much do you think your taxes would be then?
It is the extreme pleasure of every Canadian to do our patriotic duty for country and king, because we know that at least half our tax money goes toward the social safety net.
And that is the one thing that provides the stability for the feeling of basic security that enables us to go on living happily, which is denied from the American public, which rather not pay taxes at the expense of risking personal wealth and liberty at the drop of a hat when they get ill.
For the religious believer (Judaism and Islam), "the law" means religious law, which is largely a matter of self-discipline and not so much of enforcement. Still, if there is enforcement, then that revolves mostly around victim compensation.
In Islam, any other definition of the term "the law" is considered to be a pagan aberration.
Associating other lawmakers as partners to Allah is called "shirk". Shirk is the only sin that will not be forgiven on the Day of the Last Judgment, for which the person will always be refused access to Paradise, and for which he will always burn in hell.
For the believer, morality emanates exclusively from religious law, while attaching any moral value to non-religious law is strictly forbidden.
Furthermore, since it is the corporate oligarchy that controls secular law, that would amount to giving control over your morality to the ruling elite. In line with the Quran, I can personally not imagine a worse depravity than doing a thing like that.
I doubt that. It sounds completely implausible to me.
Allowing the corporate oligarchy to dictate the law and its resulting morality is considered utmost evil in Islam:
Quoting Sunnah on the problem of prioritizing the corporate oligarchy
While trade and commerce are clearly permitted, all the while taking into account that usury is strictly forbidden, it is not permissible in Islamic law to give free rein to greed.
Furthermore, the believer resolutely rejects a system in which the corporate oligarchy dictates the law with a view on turning greed into the core moral value of society, i.e. a false god, because associating such corporate lawmakers as partners to Allah is impermissible behaviour for the believer. According to the Quran, the punishment for such behaviour is eternal damnation.
I don't know what any of your rant has to do with my comment. I said that I doubt "Shirk is the only sin that will not be forgiven on the Day of the Last Judgment, for which the person will always be refused access to Paradise, and for which he will always burn in hell."
I said nothing about corporate oligarchies.
You'd still look for a partner if you were lonely.
A finite organism already implies morality, you ought to be good or...
If I was an infinite organism, only my care for others, or fear of something else, would stop me being immoral, but I may just want to counter that fear, and my care might be dangerous...
I’m optimistic and think most of us would act morally save for a few opportunists. But then again it would be interesting to see some statistics on whether people abide by laws out of principle or because they fear being punished.
Well then it follows that the Sunday schools are acting immorally.
Children are impressionable, and they are trying to understand the world and how it works. If people, who supposedly care for them, are feeding them lies then this will distort their view of the world and to their detriment.
So if a child's father went to prison for murder or child molestation, would you tell them at 5 years old or wait until they are older?
You would introduce them to the ideas in a way that they can understand and without telling a lie. eg 'Daddy did a bad thing and has been taken away by authorities and locked up. We can visit him once a month' If asked what bad thing he did, you could say 'he hurt someone very badly'... etc
The establishment of the Military Industrial Complex. The 1958 National Defense Education was only part of the establishment of the Military Industrial Complex but perhaps the most significant part because of the resulting cultural change. President Eisenhower explained the reasoning for establishing the Military Industrial Complex and he warned us of the dangers of it in his farewell speech.
No more "group think"! and back to education for independent thinking.
There is an important difference between story telling as Hebrews did to get across a point and teach morals, and interpreting them literally. Hebrews understood the stories as stories and I am not sure why Christians interpreted them literally but it is the literal thinking that is the problem, and not all Christians interpret the Bible literally. Christians who interpret the bible literally are the problem and Texas education promotes this. Teachers took Texas to the supreme court because Christians had forced creationism into science books and were forcing teachers to teach creationism as though the story were equal to science. The teachers won, but still the Texas Republican Agenda in 2012 was to prevent education for higher order thinking. To be clear, the Texas Republican Agenda was to assure ignorance and unquestioning obedience to authority. The political ramification to this should alarm everyone.
The highest moral level can be explained with a pyramid of thinking skills and this is found on the upper right of this page https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Higher+order+thinking+skills&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
So to begin, this is absolutely right. I am not sure exactly how much of this Kohlberg takes into account when he says only 25% of people go beyond level 4.
Quoting Athena
Well that certainly provides a potential explanation of a large chunk of the planet not reaching higher levels of moral reasoning.
Quoting Athena
Well I know Texas has a rather pathetic history of educational practices...so that seems fitting.
Quoting Athena
Yep. They also had to change certain history textbooks they were using that referred to slaves as workers (I think a lower court was enough to reverse that one) :yikes:
Texas is even worse because of their influence on the textbook industry. Texas has a single board that picks the textbooks for THE WHOLE STATE. Whereas states like California have each district pick books. This means that textbook companies cater to Texas' whims because one sale can float the whole company...which means the rest of us are occasionally stuck with Texas' garbage textbooks.
Quoting Athena
For sure. Also it is strange because one can't teach say, history or literature, without introducing some serious moral considerations.
Quoting Athena
Unfortunately in this country (USA), us non-believer are still outnumbered by at least 6 to 1 (maybe more like 9-1, I still don't think atheists plus agnostics adds up to 10% of the US population). People are quick to drop religion, but it takes longer to dismiss those nagging supernatural feelings.
Quoting Athena
I am not sure how I feel on this. Some days I see the religious "nones" increasing and people generally being more open to (and demanding of) peace. But then the next day, I see the push toward the idea that "all opinions are equal" and wonder if that idea is the death of democracy.
Well, I was expecting to argue a bit more...but I think I agreed with almost everything :up:
Thank you very much for this explanation.
Nothing makes people more willing to fight for what they believe than the notion that they know the will of God and are fighting for God. In the US both the south and the north believed they were fighting for God, making the civil war a terrible struggle. Germany was the seat of the Holy Roman Empire and the Protest Reformation and these people fought terrible wars against each other, with the 30 years almost destroying Germany opening the way for Prussians to take control of Germany leading us to the world wars and finally to the US being the strongest military force on earth with the Christian Right supporting Bush in a war against non Christians, while Muslims fight for their existence against the Evil Empire that is the US.
Isn't the idea of new baboons coming into the tribe and trying to assert dominance then being shunned and shown by the rest "this is not how we do things around here"...a type of pedagogy? I understand this new pedagogy was worthless until the large die-off of alphas...but I am not sure we can entirely dismiss the role of the new social norms...and I hope that with a little extra intelligence (perhaps very little haha) humans can potentially replicate the positive results without mass killings/dyings? I get I am into somewhat (understatement) hopeful/wishful thinking here...but it doesn't seem entirely absent of reason or evidence.
Quoting Isaac
Well thank you. As I wrote that I was thinking that I was taught this stuff in my education classes...and education departments are not exactly know for their rigor.
Quoting Isaac
Well that certainly seems accurate (I personally even maintain certain morals that I HOPE I stick to in some serious emotional situations, but I have not convinced myself of my moral fortitude until I actually experience it).
Quoting Isaac
Seems reasonable. I like to chalk up much of "morality" as grey area stuff where the answer doesn't really matter either way, so hopefully this helps me avoid this a little...but I am sure I still do it more than I like to think.
Quoting Isaac
I didn't know this, but it is no longer surprising to learn that some concept was only ever analyzed from a purely western perspective then applied to everyone.
Quoting Isaac
Nothing here that seems unreasonable.
Are you a professor? Or some sort of sociology professional? I just mean...why do you know all this?
Just in case you know even more...should I dismiss Piaget's stages of cognitive development or Erikson's stages of (I don't even remember, maybe social development?)?
Thanks again for the info. I may have to spout off more often on things I know just a little about to see if anyone wants to give me the whole story :smile:
If by law you mean a legal framework codified and enforced then it's just the tip of the iceberg. There are other moral laws people follow and it's my suspicion that these are invariably religious morals.
Given that the above is true, people can be divided into two categories: Category 1, the religious-good, are those people who use religion as a guide for their behavior and category 2, the legal-good who either have no idea or simply don't care about religion and the only thing that keeps them from transforming into thieves, murderers, etc is the legal system.
If the law broke down or didn't exist then the legal-good would immediately complete their metamorphosis into criminals and chaos would ensue but the religious-good who are guided by religious morals would continue to be good as they were never actually dependent on the legal system.
If this tells us anything, it is that there must exist at least one set of laws to prevent immoral behavior. The legal system just happens to be the first line of defense.
:lol: Isn't it awful when there is nothing to argue.
I think our most serious problem is we lost the memory of what science (reason) has to do with over coming evil and what morals have to do with liberty and democracy. This happened because we stopped transmitting the culture that is the foundation of democracy and began preparing our young for a technological society with unknown values- this manifest exactly what we defended our democracy in two world wars because we replaced education for Greek and Roman philosophy with German philosophy and we adopted the German model of education for technology and the German model of bureaucracy that crushes individual liberty and power.
The problem isn't Christianity becauseminterpreting the Bible abstractly brings out the best in it and reduces the problems arising from ignorance and superstition. Because it was Greeks who were the first to write the Christian Bible it is filled with Greek concepts such "the word" or logos meaning reason, made manifest in speech (discovering truth) is the controlling force of the universe. This is why when the Roman and Greek documents were rediscovered and literate people knew Greek and Latin we had the renaissance bringing a love of reason back, and why it could win out over ignorance and superstition and replace the kingdom (a belief in God's will controlling everything) with democracy (rule by reason and the people who can cure disease, stop flooding, and more). But dang, we imitated Germany, and now, we live with the beast that is stronger than ever, and good Christians are thrilled about us being the end of times and proving the Bible is right- belief not reason. They do not see the human decisions that are manifesting our reality and their freedom to make better decisions.
:grin: I sure hope there are comments, questions or arguments to advance this discussion.
Looks to me like you want to return to the good old days when Martin Luther thought witch hunters were necessary, and God chose who would rule and who would serve?
Man's understanding of the gods and law is older than Christianity and really the Christian God is not that good. He is jealous, revengeful, fearsome and punishing, the role model of an abusive husband. He is the same God worshiped by Muslims and Christians and Muslims share more in common than say Mormons and Catholics and Evangelical Christians. All these people worship a god of war except the Quakers who do not refer to the old testament and follow Jesus. While Buddhism and Hinduism provide excellent teachings on morality.
The God of Abraham religions did not give us the highest morals and peace. Democracy and science, with science being understood as knowledge of the universal laws (God), lifting humanity higher than what Christian Europe could accomplish before the age of reason. It is about how to come to know the laws, through the authority of the bible or through science and reason?
The South depended on slavery and did terrible things while seeing themselves as good Christians. There was a time when good Christians beat the devil out of their children, and today we recognize that as abuse and know it is very harmful. Christianity without education for higher order thinking skills is not a good thing. Christianity sustained ignorance and mistreatment of human beings for hundreds of years. I would not expect humans to do better without better education.
Agreed. I couldn’t make good use of anything in the Bible until after I got my degree in philosophy. It takes a liberal arts education (I got a Bachelor of Science instead of Arts which I think helped me read the sacred text more critically but still with some background in history and the other humanities) to understand how the text was created, which parts are spiritual truths, which parts were matters of practical law for ancient Hebrews, which parts are “good” moral philosophy (the Golden Rule and forgiveness, as examples), and which parts are utter propaganda by the Church founders and rulers like King Solomon who had to subdue his subjects.
Now that I am more well-rounded, I can appreciate the Bible and value it as it should be. However, with my mental and emotional problems (clinical), I find the Bible is more of a comfort some days than a check on my self-destructive behaviors. Other days my faith does check some bad inclinations.
I don’t think Christ is everybody’s answer, though. For some people, I think their religion actually makes them worse people, unbeknownst to these people who lack self-awareness. Some Jesus freaks are truly awful people. I can be an awful person, too, but at least I’m not cloaking myself in religion to look down on others or to feel superior. I love Christ for the meaning it gives my life. Some people use Christ for self-serving ends. I love the story of Christ. It helps me to not be so afraid of suffering, a natural part of life.
I have also studied Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism. I know that studying these religions have also enriched my life, and I take from each of them to better understand reality; along with my studies of mathematics (up to Calculus and statistics), physics, biology, psychology, history, sociology, and English literature. And, of course, Anglo-American analytic philosophy. (I took one course in Existentialism and Continental philosophy).
Anyway, not to give a curriculum vitae, but just agreeing with you with an illustration of my journey.
It is very hard to test, because the fact that we are brought up under threats, both social and legal, means that if we are suddenly without these outside forces and potential punishments it is a very specific situation. We are, then, precisely, people who have been under threat, released from threat. A real test would have to be, what happens if people are raised not under threat and have freedom from potential incarceration? Adn the only way to test that would be to take over an island.
It's a bit like how people who really judge anger can sometimes explode. And their explosion seems to confirm their judgments of anger. But the truth is they have very little experience with things like self-assertion and other balanced expressions of anger.
So we can look around and think we know what it would be like, but what it is like now, includes the fact that we have been presumed guilty, not really trusted and threatened since early on. That's hardly a control (as in controlled experiment) situation where we can draw conclusions about what must be present in human society.
I have this problem.
You misunderstood me but that's entirely my fault. I was struggling to get across the fact that the law, as in a legal framework, doesn't figure much in our day to day living and dealings with other people; seems like I chose the wrong words here. Anyway, I assume, pethaps with good reason, that the first real moral codes were religious in nature.
Also, I consider the current state of morals to be the result of a filtering process: morals began associated with the divine and now that has been almost nearly purged from morality. Much of the problems you mentioned, things like witch hunts, are directly/indirectly the result of associating god with morality. It's been a long process but it seems that we've managed, like good chemists, to extract and purify the essence of our relationship with god, morality.
So, when I said there's a kind of morality that's religious I was referring to those moral principles that were plucked from religion, assessed to be worthy, and then adopted by people. The connection between god/the divine with this kind moral code is perhaps best described as filial - they are offsprings of divine morality and the link terminates there for some and maybe most.
Thank you for the links. I actually had the good fortune to work with one of Kahneman's doctoral students for a short while so I'm fairly familiar with his work, but I will take another look. What I was looking for was some support for your assertions about the possible effects of education, specifically that it "is possible to use education to manifest a culture that promotes morality and decreases social problems." I don't recall anything in Kahneman which demonstrated anything of this nature - could you point me to the particular experiment or implication you're referencing here.
No. I'm using pedagogy in it's strict sense here, in that no actual direct teaching took place. Sapolsky even tested directly for this with the tribe when the alpha males first came into it from the nearby Forest Troop. He says
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Yes. I'm sort of retired now, but my academic career has been in social psychology. My wife's a child psychologist though, with a special interest in education, so it's more dinner-table conversation stuff that I've picked this up from, rather than my own work.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Well. That's a whole other thread's worth of stuff - we can go into it any time you like, but probably not on this this thread. Piaget suffers from the same twin problems many of the early child psychologists did - limited sample variety and failure to adjust for context. Margret Donaldson is good on undermining a lot of the Piaget stuff. She doesn't throw it out or anything, but it's remarkable what she gets the children to do (which Piaget said they couldn't) when they're in a less stressful environment. Stephen Shanker is doing some work on the link between stress and educational ability at the moment which might also be of interest, but again, I don't want to derail the thread.
Around age eight our brains become physically changed and so does our thinking. This is when critical thinking begins and parents stop looking like gods who should not be questioned. When I hit that age I began questioning religious truths and when a Sunday school could not give me a satisfactory answer to my question, I decided religious folks may not have truth. I reasoned if they had truth, there would be one religion, and so many different opinions of God's truth. Not people going to this church and sure they know God's truth better than people who go to that church. Obviously that meant I would have to study all the religions and determine truth for myself.
I think it is important to study the world religions as you have and I don't anyone can know what Jesus was thinking without also studying Buddhism. The class system of Hinduism and all the strange looking gods are a turn off, but I really like their explanation of being a better human being!
It is very hard to test, because the fact that we are brought up under threats, both social and legal, means that if we are suddenly without these outside forces and potential punishments it is a very specific situation. We are, then, precisely, people who have been under threat, released from threat. A real test would have to be, what happens if people are raised not under threat and have freedom from potential incarceration? Adn the only way to test that would be to take over an island.
I think it is important to understand the difference between eastern and western logic and what Rome had to do with closing our consciousness and making it so materialistic. While Greek logic became more linear than eastern logic. Which goes back to what I said about the importance of knowing Buddhism, because I really don't think we have a good understanding of Jesus without a more eastern perspective.
You do seem to have a well rounded education, so are you familiar with Quabala? (sp?) The off shoot of Hebrew. And I very much regret the lack of my understanding of Semitic languages and their tie to math. I am afraid without that understand we are missing a huge part of understanding. And I hope no one throw stones at me, but I think understand Aztec consciousness is just as important as any other knowledge.
Oh, ah, that assertion comes from knowledge of the Age of the Enlightenment and development of thinking leading to science and democracy. :lol: Picking through my brain to find the thoughts behind my thinking is a challenge because my thoughts today are a combination of so many thoughts. You know what I mean?
Can we being with the Greeks and the notion that a moral is a matter of cause and effect and science is about cause and effect. Science is to democracy, what religion is to autocracy or monarchies.
Destroying our environment is immoral because that damage to our planet threatens life on this planet. Native American consciousness was spiritual and animated like most primitive people's consciousness. We might do well to have that consciousness and think of plant and animal life and rivers as having spirits, and then think about the morality of destroying a mountain and streams to extract a mineral. A main objection I have of Biblical morality is it is way too narrow and materialistic and way to dependent on superstitious notions of good and evil supernatural powers, instead of practical, if you destroy the environment or act on the wrong decision, the consequences will be bad. The natives depending on nature had to learn how to live in harmony with nature. I think that is a pretty important concept.
Then there is Cicero, and hey, there is no supernatural being that is going to save our sorry asses. No amount of animal sacrifices, or burning of candles, or incantations are going to make our wrongs right. What happens is the consequence of our actions, and therefore, we better do our best to make the right decisions. Understanding this is essential to understanding democracy and our liberty!
This thinking is also important to our willingness to go to war or not. The US war on Iraq was immoral and the consequences are extremely bad, and it was this war that determined me to bring an end to Christianity. I believe Christians have done so much harm to our planet and the rest of the world, the belief needs to be brought to an end.
We have the necessary information because of anthropology and the fact that primitive people living on isolated islands can be studied. Primitive human beings on islands with plenty of resources tend to be gentle people who share and are highly moral because it is our nature to want to have social harmony and be a well liked and valued member of the group.
However, nomadic people from the harsh environments such as where mongols live, have a more aggressive nature. Where humans do not have adequate resources and do not live in a Garden of Eden of environment, they are not nice people and tend to think the notion of a god or goddess who takes care of them is absolutely ridiculous. These people are hunters and do not have to consciousness of agrarian people. Genghis Khan and his followers killed everyone in their path and razed the ground so it could return to pasture for their horses, until a man from China who had agrarian consciousness convinced Genghis Khan to 'harvest" the living in settlements and cities. That is to ask for a tribute and allow everyone to live if it is paid. What is important here is the notion of concepts and how the environment shapes our concepts and understanding of life. The Mongols were highly moral people, intolerant of lying and stealing and committed to providing shelter and food to strangers. He thought it was the city people who are highly immoral because in the city lying and stealing are essential part of survival. You want to discuss this?
We also know people become aggressive or gentle because of child rearing practices. Our nature is not exactly what Christians think it is, but is dependent on our environment, resources, and child rearing practices.
I don't see him doing anything as deliberate as that. His exterme egotism and narcissism does not allow him to see beyond his nose.
I can just see what the other baboons are teaching the newcomers in a direct pedagoguical way:
"Fuck you. You are just a fucking baboon, kid, don't you forget that. Now repeat after me, and write a hundred times on the blackboard: "I solemnly swear to stop trying to be a goofy alpha-male wannabe, I shall remain docile, peace-loving and listen to John Lennon records for the rest of my days"."
:lol: You pretty much said this to me in another post.
History shows this is certainly true. However, I sometimes think it is the "knowing" part that is more dangerous than the "will of God" aspect. Don't get me wrong, the "will of God" has a long history of convincing people they "know" what is best. But I worry that any moral system that people consider to be "objectively correct" would lead to strong feelings, which have the potential to be acted upon (but I can agree that religion has been the biggest cause of this up until now).
Quoting Athena
hahaha, right?
Quoting Athena
Interesting topic. After thinking about it for a bit I have a question...do you think our belief in a more inclusive and egalitarian society has anything to do with this loss? Perhaps an equal percent of the population (or even a little higher than in the past) agree with the importance of science and reasoning, but now the masses have more power in society? I certainly believe that more power for the masses has many benefits, but it seems there will have to be downsides as well (at least in the short term anyway).
Quoting Athena
This is part of what I was referring to above. The Renaissance brought a love of reason back to a tiny percent of the population (and I would be fairly confident it was not much different in greek/roman times). The Gutenberg Press was only invented half-way though the renaissance so we know that, primarily, only the clergy and super-rich had access to texts for most of this time period...the Protestant Reformation occurs at the end of the Renaissance, largely as a result of more people reading (and more bibles available to be read).
So I guess I am just questioning if there was ever a time when a majority of people preferred reason over intuition and/or superstition. But I certainly agree that we should make more effort to get there.
Fair enough...I don't think the New York Times article I read went that deep :grimace:
I have a few more questions related to this, but I would expect them to be annoying at some point (if I just need to spend time reading and researching feel free to say so), so only if it is somewhat enjoyable for you:
Why did the new alphas that entered the group NOT assert dominance? I am struggling to see how they were prevented from doing so, without being taught to not do so? Or is it just because the teaching was not INTENTIONAL? I am struggling with the word "direct" because I could learn "directly" by imitating social norms...I guess pedagogy is about teaching not learning (so that is part of my error)...but I never really considered that the teaching had to be intentional?
Quoting Isaac
Both of those answers explain a bit. I have always done reasonably well in school, but if I don't use a piece of information, the knowledge quickly deteriorates. You seemed to have all the details on this one just ready to go...so that is why I asked (I also very much enjoy talking to people who really know a subject because they can just give me the important bits without all the fluff - although at some point I am sure it gets old for them, so I take what I can get :smile:).
Quoting Isaac
Sounds interesting. I may look for some of this stuff. And if I am ever in another thread on related topics I will know who to tag :smile:
Thanks for the info.
I don´t see how "morality" works without a religion. Maybe you are referring "ethics", which is similar but not the same. Atheist morality is not possible, atheist ethics is. I know the difference is often ignored, even in dictionaries, alas. But if look at the contexts where the terms are used, it becomes clear.
It is the Christian Right that supports the conservative presidents and the skyrocketing growth of our military budget and wars fought without being budgeted, such as Bush's invasion of Iraq. The mentality is also what gave the world Hitler. These folks know the will of God is what they want. They know this by faith not reason.
Morality is based on reason, or on faith. I can not think of another foundation for morality.
The masses are too ignorant to have power. They have extremely little control of their lives and have willingly given up their power, and far too many are thrilled by the idea of robots running everything. And they sure as blazes are ignorant about autocracy being the enemy of democracy and that our lives could be radially different with everyone enjoying much more personal power and liberty. In the US we have become what we defended our democracy against. We have the organization of the enemy that crushes individual power and liberty and we have prepared our young to think this is new and improved and that they are superior to the rest of humanity. They are supporting the most expensive military might in the world.
Whose story of God are you using? Do you prefer one holy book over another? Why?
How divine is it to destroy the planet we live on? Whose morals are effectively opposing this? Or do you accept global warming as a wonderful sign we are in the last days and feel happy about this?
So this is one of the reasons I vote Democrat. But I am not convinced the average Democrat is any more reasonable than the average republican, I just like where their faith is taking them better. If a magical deity suddenly gave Democrats what they wanted, we would live in a perfect, peaceful utopia. If a magical deity suddenly gave Republicans everything they wanted, we would have America in the 1920s with better technology....pretty pathetic, have some damn ambition Republicans. But I am not convinced either group has a reasonable and achievable plan to get where they want to be.
I think I would agree with you pretty consistently on government policy (besides automation, based on reading below). But if we are trying to suggest one side has better thinking skills, I am not convinced (although Trump's support does have me closer than ever to agreeing with you on this, haha).
Quoting Athena
Do we expect this to change? Or should we just start coming up with a better option than democracy? I actually largely agree with this idea, but I get the sense from you that you are very much in favor of increasing democracy and personal liberty. How will democracy ever work if the masses are too ignorant to realize their power?
Also, if we wanted MAXIMUM personal liberty we could NOT have democracy, right? It would only be a matter of time before someone voted in a way that would limit personal liberty.
Quoting Athena
Put me in that boat (not that our technology has reached that level). I have had enough of the world being run on emotion and opinion.
As weird as this may sound, I am happy to give up some autonomy if it means increasing my liberty. That may sound like a contradiction, but it works. If I live under a dictator, but doing so gives me access to a free education, then I have given up some autonomy in exchange for some liberty. The problem with dictators is that some are awful tyrants. History does not show that dictators are inherently bad. It just shows that one bad dictator can undo the progress of multiple generations. I am not worried about living in a "free society" (yes, yes, only the privileged mind of someone living in a free society could say such a thing :roll:), I am worried about the things I am free to do.
I think I made a comment relevant to your question on a different thread. What is the essence of religion? Is it cosmology? No, we have a secular fully developed cosmology - no religion required. Is it god? No, we have Buddhism which remains silent on the matter. We may continue this line of questioning until we arrive at the essence, the thing religion wouldn't be a religion without and that, in my opinion, is morality. Morality is the cornerstone of religion and religion would cease to be religion sans morality.
I'm not concerned about the problems of explaining evil in this thread and as far as the OP is concerned it seems irrelevant.
Things are dramatically changing. I don't think anyone would disagree with that. It is a matter of if the change is good or bad. Rick Steves recently did a program about Germany and Hitler's rise to power, and the show came with a warning about our need to protect our our liberty. We adopted the German model of bureaucracy and the German model of education for technology, and no one seems interested in this. The increase in federal power should have us alarmed. The more the federal government supports industries the more power the federal government has to control our lives. There is much to talk about but who is ready for the conversation?
The way democracy is defended is by defending it in the classroom, not by defending us with a military budget and power that is crushing. Any walls around our nation to keep "those people out" are walls that keep us in. Our ability to cross from one country to another is being closed and controlled by the federal government. You may be able to get a "real identity" card that allows you to cross boarders but your freedom should not be confused by the real loss of freedom we are experiencing. We are marginalizing people as we never did before. The privacy act gave the federal government the ability to track us through education, medical care and banking, but not through the libraries that refused to cooperate with it. The libraries could stand firm against the federal governments control because the federal government does not fund our libraries, and as the federal government funds more and more industry our liberty is increasing threatened.
Defending our liberty in the classroom means preparing everyone to make moral decisions without religion. Defending our democracy means teaching a set of American values. It means understanding we defend our liberty by obeying the laws, and if we think a law is wrong, such as ordering Socrates to drink hemlock, it is our duty and responsibility to speak out and if possible change the law. Our liberty does not mean we can violate laws we don't like, and Socrates agreed to drink the hemlock.
I think we have a problem with understanding liberty and democracy. Democracy is an imitation of the gods who argued until they had a census on the best reasoning.
Jim Hightower is perhaps the best voice on democracy and liberty of our time. Here is a link to google search. https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=Hightower+and+democracy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
What is a better option than democracy? Change is the purpose of public education and should be the purpose of public broadcasting and newspapers. We need a new American revolution to throw out the scoundrels who use our institutions for self serving purposes and to get our nation back on track with the ideals that gave us democracy in the first place.
It sounds terrible! Would you live with your parents to avoid the responsibilities of being an adult?
Buddhism and Hinduism and Taoism are not religions equal to the God of Abraham religions, Judaism, Islam, Christianity. The god of Abraham religions are organizationally different from the others and this is very important, because it is that organization that results in the power to force the will of the religious organization on others. The god of Abraham religions and war go hand and hand, with war being good for the religions and the religions being excellent for war.
Morals that are understood as a matter of cause and effect do not require religion. The reason for staying virgin until marriage is it takes two parents to raise children. Institutions are not good substitutes for parents.
A strong democracy demands strong families, and strong families are not dependent on the government, and not being dependent on the government or any other institutions means having liberty. Liberty is not equal to freedom but means being responsible for the consequences of of one's words and actions. We are no longer educating for this, because of the change in our bureaucratic order that crushes individual liberty and power and stands as authority over the people. Celebrating Presidents Day is hypocritical because those men were independent leaders without being tyrants. Trump is independent but also a tyrant who is undermining our democracy.
Many laws, traffic regulations for example, have no moral value at all. Driving on the right is not ethically superior to driving on the left and even evil people would choose to travel on the conventional side for their own convenience, even if there were no law.
Further, most moral issues that we generally obedient citizens encounter, are not dealt with by the law at all. We all do things against others that we later regret and find bad, and it certainly merits an “I’m sorry” even if we know that no law has been broken.
In fact, it’s perfectly possible (and maybe not so uncommon) to be a very bad human being without ever breaking a law.
We generally respect other people and are more or less polite even though there is no law telling us to do so. For most of us, the law is not the reason why we behave decently.
No, but I might live with my parents if it gave me more freedom to live the way that I wanted.
Won't get into this one, but as far as the law goes, responsibilities outside of what are required by law (e.x. respect for people rights, such as not stealing, murdering, etc) are in the domain of private contracts or relationships.
Some people, for various reasons, practical or otherwise might negotiate a living arrangement, such as sharing or inheriting familial property, all of which is totally legal and ultimately at the domain and discretion of the people entering the private contracts or agreements.
(Despite popular and mass media misninformation designed to 'sell' things to people, this is where most of the "big money" or the "super rich" make their money from, whether one is talking Wall Street Executives, Professional atheletes or CEOs - through negotiating deals or private contracts, rather than exchanging time or labor for "fixed" wages).
Even if "credentialing" plays a role in establishing it, ultimately it's at the discretion of the individuals engaging in the private contracts (e.x. the law cannot "force" a company to hire someone even if they have the most exemplar resume in the world; the company could still choose to hire someone with "fewer credentials" on the basis of other desired factors, whether something such as rapport of familiarity (e.x. the company's owner is friends with the person's family, etc).
For that matter, even in the contexts of credential systems (e.x. a specific trade or college program), bar perhaps 'professional' trades in which law plays a direct role in credentialing requirements (e.x. law school, medical school, government jobs such as military or law enforcement), the credentialing is still a tool or means of negotiating or establishing a "trust" with someone else, legally it's ultimately at the discretion of the employer, much as how a private company can choose not to take someone's money or do business with them (bar scenarios in which legal or civil action might become involved, such as racial or religious discrimination).
Social customs. Societal needs.
However, some dictator's awful wrongdoings free up society after the dictators' downfall, to the extent that incredible growth and prosperity follows.
Hitler's awful rule was followed by the bourgeoning of the consumer society, with more wealth to nations than ever before had been thought possible. Germany went completely democratic, Jews were more tolerated after wwII than before, social benefits to the poor, downtrodden, sick and misalinged were pumped up, taxes took on an equalizing role. Technology doubled every three years, medical science performed near-miracle-strength healing via aggressive advancements.
All because of one fucking bad dick tater.
Slavery is moral then? It fits both those categories.
That is sweet but perhaps a little immature. The past standard for an adult was a person who welcomed responsibility. That had something to do with our understanding of the difference between being a child or an adult.
The US Declaration of Independence could also be called a Declaration of Responsibility. The American Revolution was about throwing off the control of kings, who saw their subjects as children, and taking responsibility for self-government.
Is that an explanation of reason or something different from reason?
That depends on your society. It is not possible in a society based on democratic principles. Slavery in the US was based on the Bible, not democratic principles. Textbooks were printed in the North and there was hope of preventing a Civil War through education. However, the South became aware of the textbooks printed in the North undermining slavery so the South began printing its own textbooks supporting slavery. The North won the war and that brought an end to slavery.
Unfortunately, the US modeled its industry after England's autocratic model and autocracy is the enemy of democracy. Because of this, the US is not fully living with democratic morality. I really want to stress this point, because we stopped educating for democracy in 1958, and only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended. Autocracy is much stronger in the US with nothing to stop it from fully replacing democracy.
I am sure many people would agree with ZhouBoTong answer to my question "Would you live with your parents to avoid the responsibilities of being an adult?"
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Every child would want that and I think it is what people who vote for Trump want. They want a "Lion King" like the one in the Disney movie and the Bible. A king who makes life good for them, instead of accepting the responsibility of making life good. The problem is children are not moral. They are obedient like dogs but they are not capable of having good moral judgment. Unfortunately, that is now the problem with education. It prepares the young to be obedient but not to have good moral judgment. and this creates a culture that wants Trump to fix everything for them. So they can have want they want without the responsibility that interferes with their freedom. It is also what leads to a thread like this one with zero understanding of liberty and what morals have to do with democracy.
So there is hope after Trump or is he just the set up for worse dictators to come?
:lol: That comment got a really bad grammarly tone detector judgment. I would like to know how that judgment is made.
Ah, I think there is a moral reason for having and following the traffic law. Not having driving agreements, or violating the traffic agreements, can have very bad consequences. If the law says to drive on the left or the right does not matter. What matters is having a system of agreements and going along with it, That is being moral. Amorality is a failure to have laws.
Moral people are so regardless of what the law says.
All moral people. <-----that's the answer to your question in the OP.
Depending on the moral system. I.e. in islam, yes slavery is completely moral.
All you do is underlining that it is society-dependent.
I did not say all social customs are moral. I meant (but did not say) that some morals come from social customs.
Ok, gotchya.
I also concur with @Nooberforlife. The basic problem with morality is its complete transformability of what is moral and what is not. I would abhor a system of slavery, per se, but to southern cotton farmers in the USA this posed no moral or ethical dilemmas whatsoever.
Now, consider this: Am I so different from Southern cotton farmers? I am white, privileged, like to fuck women, like wealth and pomp and adoration, social acceptance, winning at Poker, getting drunk, living it up.
So what is it that makes my blood boil with disgust and anger when I think of slavery, and what is it that makes the Southern Man cool and not think about it twice?
I am always scratching my head about this American obsession with their slavery history. They did not invent slavery, their history is relatively short, and they ended it themselves. Why not address slavery where it exists in real life today, like in the slave markets in Libya, created by Hillary Clintons ill-advised destruction of the Gaddafi regime?
Morality doesnt have to be a arbitrary, transforming quagmire. It depends on what its based upon, what axioms you are operating from.
If morality is about human suffering, then slavery is clearly not moral. If morality is about doing unto others as you would have them do to you, then slavery again is wrong. It depends on what morality is based on, then you can operate from that to determine whats moral in a non-arbitrary, transforming way.
So now youre going to shift the burden of “transformability” of morality to those axioms, fair enough. But I dont think those are arbitrary (correct me on using that term if thats not what you meant by “complete transformability”) either, I think we determine the basis for morality the same way we do for everything else. What makes sense as a basis? What is effective as a basis? Those questions have answers that are not arbitrary, at least not in any sense that science or other things we don’t think of as arbitrary wouldnt also be.
So maybe a person doesnt have any basis or axioms for their morality, but I dont think its accurate to call that an arbitrary or completely transformable morality. I would describe that as not having morality, as what is moral/immoral has no meaning anymore. It would just be whatever the person feels like doing whether it makes sense or not. As soon as a person wants to make sense, they have rules to follow, a non-arbitrary basis.
That's me :blush:
Quoting Athena
Ugh, yes it was, although they had (and continue to have) a very narrow definition of "responsibility". They also believe that the more hours I work the better person I must be :roll:
Responsibility means taking care of myself without causing undue burden on my fellow man. Multiple generations used to live under one roof. Why is it now irresponsible to live that way? I don't like the idea of living with my parents, but it is a happiness and lifestyle choice, not a responsibility issue. If we care about the environment, it is actually MORE responsible for multiple generations to live together.
I would imagine, even in a anarchist government, a subset of the population would rise up and become vigilantes and for lack of a better phrase "lynch mob justice". No offense intended, it just so happens to be an extremely common historical concept all through out history. Don't assume you know my ethnicity.
You make me think it is a fool's game to compare that past with the present, but awareness of people being very concerned about morality is highly important to me. Unfortunately in trying to make my argument with you, I realize this is opening a huge can of worms! :grin: and I love it. This is why we come here, isn't it? To think about what we think.
For very, very sure, most people did not live in multiple generation homes but were more apt to be driven away by age 14 because there just wasn't enough food for a lot of people, and Social Security is about the needs of people too old and crippled to work, with no one to care for them. Especially girls were unwanted, so by age 14 they were married off to older men who wanted someone to wash their clothes and cook for them. By age fourteen some young men were pony express riders.
The men women married could, of course, get what they wanted from their young wives by hitting them. I read a book written by a journalist who interviewed pioneer people and I was surprised to read of the resentment of a war being fought to end slavery while the reality of these married women was ignored. I have also known some of them. They died many years ago. so there is no chance of knowing them today, but would you believe me when I say they were tormented women who were very glad when their husbands died and they finally had their freedom. Neither a son nor daughter would want to stay in such a home. Except, the oldest son who would inherit the land, had reason to stay. You can bet, the father made a different investment in this son, then other children, because that son was an extension of his mortality, and fathers, the head of the household, held all the power. What we have forgotten today is the importance of submitting to power and how this goes with being responsible and self-government.
In our abundance, we have very different lives and history books do not convey the consciousness of the past. Marriage was about survival, being an adult, family duty, not love, and sure as hell, not about happiness! Do you understand family duty? Are you being a good child or a good man? I am saying our consciousness is very different today, I am not judging you in a changed reality. We used to think age 30 was still youth. :roll: The guardians of truth are confusion and paradox. It is paradoxical that a 14-year-old boy could work as a man and still be considered a youth, right? A human life was cheap and poverty was great. There is no way a discussion about government assistance would have come up because the consciousness just wasn't right for that.
I say too much but quickly I want to say, outside of the can of worms, we need to know of the Age of Reason to understand what morality has to do with our liberty and democracy. I really hope we can discuss this more.
How full is your belly and how safe do you feel? We are nice to each other when our bellies are full and we feel safe. Hunger and insecurity lead to a very different consciousness and therefore different behaviors. When we are hungry enough, parents begin leaving their children in the forest to fend for themselves. We are wrong to take our civility for granted. But this is different from the point of the prison experiment.
The behavior of the prisoners and the behavior of the guards was the result of how each reacted to the other. As Trump seems to become increasingly an egomaniac to some, we might want to be aware of what happens when a person has more and more power. Any of us would loose a sense of boundaries if we began to think nothing stood in our way of getting want we want. We should be careful about electing rich people who understand power, but not boundaries, for they become tyrants and threaten democracy and sometimes the world.
On the other hand, the prisoner's experience is one of powerlessness. If I can't even use the toilet without your permission, pleasing you will become very important to me, and if you do not have very strong moral standards and boundaries, you will react to the signals of my powerlessness as your power, just like Trump. It is an interaction between the powerful and powerless that drives each into more extreme behaviors.
Good gravy, :yikes: I am now thinking the democrat and republican parties look like the prison experiment.
Perhaps this has been hashed out prior to my posting, but I'm simply going to field a thought, as requested by the OP.
By "the law" we're speaking of some sort of state law, religious law, established social law... I'm not quite sure exactly... but nonetheless, law is typically conceived as the whole of legal moral norms/values in society (a system of law) as well as the practices and institutions that are associated with those moral norms/values.
Maybe I'm off the mark, but for a system of law to be established one needs to have an understanding of morality. Otherwise, one would have no variables of morals upon which a system can be constructed.
I'd suggest that a notion of morality would exist prior to law being established. If "the law" was not established the notion of morality would still exist, just it would not be set in to an established standard of "the law", but rather individual standards or standards of small affinity groupings.
Long story short...
Morals predicate the establishment of morals systems... including systems know as "the law".
If "the law" did not exist, moral notions and values would still exist, but not not according the standards as set in "the law".
As to how many would act morally...
I'd say everyone would act morally according to their own standards or standards of their small affinity groupings, but would not/could not act morally according to an established "the law", as there is no "the law" set as a standard of measure.
It's just a thought... that's all.
Meow!
GREG
No, I don't agree that morality starts with axioms and definitions and categorical truths. Instead, I am convinced that the categorical truths follow the accepted moral behaviour, and that is based strictly on what is positive for society, or else for positive for segments of society.
Did cannibals start out by dreaming up the Categorical Imperative that eating the brain of your enemy will make his spirit the slave of your spirit, or you gain his courage, and accumulate the courage the more brains you eat? therefore eating humans and their brains by humans is moral? NO, it did not start that way. First they ate humans, they tasted good, so they were FORCED to create an ideology around it. Their morals are practice-based, and so are Western, Christian morals, make no mistake.
Is theft a sin? A morally deplorable thing? Yes. Who made that moral established? The wealthy, who had something to lose by theft. For the poor, theft is a godsend. But no, they won't steal, because the church and schools and society makes them not steal, it's against morals.
Is polygamy a sin? An immoral act? Why should it be? It is only immoral because one of the Ten Commandments commands it.
Christians always accuse the atheistic society of no morals, that there would be moral mayhem if it were not for Christianity.
Atheists reply with saying that morals are inherent in every human, and they act accordingly, without god.
I think they are both lying. I can show the lies, and uncover them. I have a good answer that explains this apparent conondrum, but I can't write it here. It is publication-worthy, I think, and yet I can't publish it, because I am not an academic philosopher, and therefore publishers poop on me.
Right on. (The sarcasm.) Case in point: "Arbacht macht frei." ("Work liberates", in German. The slogan on the entrance gate to Auschwitz.)
oh ok.
I think you are conflating law and morality and culture together. Anyway, not much point in continuing if you cannot talk about these explanations you have, we will keep hitting a wall.
You're right on hitting a wall. But I still have to give you a point, for thinking I am conflating law with culture with morality. Because I am not, but it's a point of contention I hadn't thought existed, so I must clarify why I think I am hitting on morality, consistently, while you claim I mix the three up.
Theft is both a morally despicable act, and against the law. The theft hurts only the rich. The rich are the people who impose morality and law at the same time. They are the ruling party. So they impose the moral "thou shalt not steal" and they impose the law, "if you steal and get caught, you land in jail."
The two are not equivalent, only form a parallel. The law only applies if the courts find you guilty of it, and that necessitates a catching or proving a crime on you. The morals, however, are an imposed self-governing value system for one's own behaviour. You can steal if your morals allow you, and if you don't get caught, you can practice theft indefinitely. If your morals forbid theft, then you never steal, even if your hunger is more painful than the hunger of the guy who steals not due to fear of criminal charges and of what they might lead to.
My argument applies to both processes. But because I brought up this argument, it does not mean that I can't separate the moral from the legal. It's just that there was no need to, seeing the effect of either.
You said this:
Quoting god must be atheist
I read that as morality is “based strictly” on whats good for society. If thats wrong, please explain what else you mean by that.
Thats what law is for, whats good for the society. In the rest of your post you describe a distinction, which I accept, between law and morality but in your argument you are not making much distinction at all.
In my post that you quoted I offered a number of basis for morality, human suffering and based on doing onto others as you would have them do onto you. I offer another, based on what is good for society. Thats what you are going with, so my that point of mine stands.
So I think where we disagree is what the best basis for morality is. I dont think we should consider whats best for society as morality because there are so many examples of the law being wrong, ignorant and/or batshit crazy. I think when those of us that figured out slavery Is awful and immoral we weren't just changing whats accepted, we were getting it right. (Morally speaking).
You disagree, right?
Morality or amorality refers to individual conduct. If you lived in a society without laws or with bad laws, your behavior would still be moral or immoral. It would still be morally wrong to kill someone even if there were no law against it.
If there were a society of angels, no laws would be necessary since it would be perfectly moral anyway.
There is certainly a moral reason to follow the traffic laws, and the proof is that one’s conduct in the traffic matters even if there were no such laws. We should drive carefully, not because we are afraid of getting caught by the police, but because we want to avoid hurting other people. In fact, the presence of traffic rules blurs this fact since we are led to believe that the rules are important in themselves and not for moral reasons.
If there were no laws most people would probably follow the most important tendency of the laws we now have anyway. The laws are there to take care of those relatively few who wouldn’t. Social conventions would regulate much of our behavior in the absence of law, and the intuitive sense of morality that many people have, would stop them from being immoral. (For example, normal people wouldn’t kill even if there were no law against murder.)
Right. I agree with your second approach ("what is good for society"), and disagree with your first approach (axioms are the guidelines for morality) as the BASIS for how morals are formed. In my opinion axioms are created after the morals have solidified, and they act as rationalization, as justification for the morals. Deceptively portraying themselves, these axioms pretend to be the root, the basis for morals. That is a mistaken view. Axioms may be the distilled truth of how the current morals work, and they may give them raison d'etre, the axioms may be logical and they may make sense, but stil, they are not the basis, not the root, not the reason for the current morals. These are my points.
I think thats true some of the time, that moral axioms are just ad hoc rationalisations, but thats not true of all moral systems. Having an ad hoc justification is an error in logic, a fallacy. Thats not the only way people come to moral stances or adopt moral systems, and its not the basis for all morality.
Also, why did you only respond to the middle paragraph of my last post? That comes off as bad faith engagement so if there is another reason Id like to hear what it is.
Is this the paragraph you demand I respond to?
If it is, okay. In our morals, cannibalism is out. Eating people, dead or alive.
In another society, cannibalism is in. Eating people, dead or alive.
What is the moral principle, or moral system, that covers both? that's why I bought up that example, and I had hoped you had read it and arrived at the conclusion.
But no, I am not advocating ad hoc moral justification. You somehow miss my point, which I may have not communicated clearly. MORAL SYSTEMS, MORAL PRINCIPLES, SUCH AS "DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WANT THEM TO DO TO YOU" AND ALL OTHERS COME OUT OF PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS, AND THESE MORAL PRINCIPLES ARE AD ACTA JUSTIFICATIONS TO MAKE THE MORALS PERVASIVE IN A SOCIETY.
That is my view, not ad hoc moral decisions. I don't know how I could have miscommunicated that, but obviously I have.
I actually never attacked your point of view. If your point of view is that behaviour of individuals are guided in a society by moral principles. I also beleive you that moral principles can be summarized and systemized into moral systems.
But if your point of view is that moral principles are derived from moral systems, and the moral principles and the moral systems both preceed moral behaviour, and the principles were adopted before the behaviour was developed and adopted, then I challenge that view.
In my opinion a behaviour is judged moral if it is acceptable to the society, and immoral, if it's not acceptable. Acceptability depends on practical usefulness. From acceptability and inacceptability grow out the principles, and the systems.
Though it can be pointed to, the pointer would be more in one corner, of a square or rectanglar path, metaphorically.
In effort to point out the way, I would need to square it; including each corner of the path. Thus, morality has four definitions.
Try defining morality with one point and there is a regress.
For example, morality is judgement orientated beneficent progress.
A. Excludes that which is good progression, without adult judgement. Can be contradicted.
B. Excludes that which is maleficent but good.
C. Excludes that morality isn't - in a sense - because thinking, morality is, is detramental.
(You may notice a pattern in logic here;
We talk about:
(A) in the sense of social group's defining what's good for their group.
(B) in the sense of what may benefit one does not for another.
(C) in the sense of no morality exists.)
Walking along this path, taking in all elements (the four corners we pointed), the definition for morality is:
Judgement(D), or judgement-less orientated beneficent progress(A), including sacrificial beneficence(B), and zero point alignment(C).
(accounting for a central to path pointer, exclusive of the outer).
Well no, that is the paragraph you DID respond to. Lol
You just quoted the exact same paragraph you already did.
Quoting god must be atheist
Right, Im didnt suggest you were advocating it. You were the one that made the point about moral axioms “after the morals have been solidified” as “justification for the morals”, and I was saying thats true some of the time but not all of the time. I used the term “ad hoc”, which wasnt the best way to describe what you were saying so Ill take the blame for the confusion on this part.
Quoting god must be atheist
Yes, this is where we disagree....although the wording has changed to “acceptable” to society instead of whats good for society.
Just so we are clear, which do you mean?
Quoting Congau
Might we change the word "conduct" to individual "consciousness"?
Quoting Congau
It is morally right to defend one's self, one's family, one's group. This defense may include taking another life, in times of war, it is mandatory. In the days of dueling, dueling was considered moral and the way to maintain morals. Not everyone agreed with that, but I think that is a legitimate point of view.
In Socrates' day, there was an argument that justice is an eye for an eye and this was met with Socrates' argument that justice never harms someone but always lefts the person up, and I like the way Greeks included Greek ideas in the teachings of Jesus when they wrote the Bible.
Maybe there is a morality and a higher morality? If we are amoral, moral, highly moral, it is a matter of consciousness, right? That makes morality a matter of education and until 1958 the US had education for good moral judgment. Back in the day, we had a very different culture, but we stopped transmitting that culture in 1958, in favor of preparing the young for a technological society with unknown values, an amoral education manifesting an amoral culture, leading to a police state and Christians being sure we are in the last days. :chin:
Quoting Congau
Satan is one of the angels, isn't he? People have fought wars over if Jesus is God or the Son of God, but how was He created differently than Satan? That could lead us off topic but confronting religion seems a necessary part of speaking of morals because education since 1958 has resulted in thinking morals are a religious matter not a matter of logic, and that is terrible for our understanding of liberty and democracy. :grimace:
Quoting Congau
When I was young and learning to drive, I was a terrible driver! I was compelled to take corners way to fast until finally, I failed to make it around a corner. Anyone who has raised children knows they hear the words, but they don't understand the reasoning. "Stay out of the street" does not give the child an understanding of the command. We need to put a fence around young children and we need to leash our dogs because neither understand the reasoning for desired behaviors and they follow what they feel compelled to do, as I did until I didn't make it around a corner. Using words to declare a law, and attempting to enforce them with punishments, is somewhat useful but not always effective. A fully conscious person would be compelled to make the right decision (Cicero). There is your angel if you like, a fully conscious being. Young children can not possibly have that consciousness and even at age 30 we do not have as much consciousness as we hopefully have at age 70.
PS I think our education and criminal justice system suck. :rage:
Good point. I have to choose between "acceptable to society" and "useful for society". I choose "Whatever is useful," because it is acceptable. Whatever is neutral, is acceptable. Whatever is bad, is unaccepable. Thus, whatever is good, is moral; whatever is neutral, is amoral; whatever is bad (damaging), is immoral.
The above apply to practicalities in society. These practicalities are judged for moralilty or immorality by the society's ruling class, which could be a stratum of society, a person, or the entire society. The ruler (individual, class, or entire society) will force his or their or her will to make society accept what she he or they deem to be moral.
Its hardly a “wild goose chase”. I referenced the last post I made, if you cannot follow the discussion one post past, I dont know what to tell you. You dont seem to be paying attention to what Im saying...i mean, you responded to a quote of mine and then asked me if that was the quote you didnt respond too. When I brought it up you completely ignored it and acted as though I had an unreasonable expectation in asking you to follow the discussion. Now you want me to quote myself for you, but Im sorry to say that I have no reason to expect you will do any better if I put in that effort.
Hard pass.
Easy. Quote me the paragraph. It is obviously beyond me to find it. You are capable of it. Why stall the discussion with such technicality? Go, quote. I'm ready.
NUMBER TWO.
Thank you for your compliment, Athena. What did I say that relates to education? I can't be held responsible to guess other people's thoughts. Please refer me to WHAT I SAID or summarize it, because as god is my witness, whether it exists or not I can't guess what I said that you consider beautiful. Honest. Not being funny, not trying to be funny. Just can't see your thougths, read them, or feel them.
The drawback of the cosmic arrangement of the self's spot in it. Don't blame me, please. Just summarize what I said that you are referring to, and I'll give it a go how that relates to education. No promises, though.
I am quite sure what you said is totally awesome, and I do not understand it. For me, it is like poetry created of words I know, but with a meaning, I can not grasp.
Quoting Michael S. Schneider
There is a graph on this page listing this fourness at different periods in history and through different belief systems. The number 4 is associated with mother/substance. Everything coming from the same mother.
I am struggling to understand this talk of fourness. It appears to hold a superior truth to the either/ or thinking, good/ evil thinking.
I did not say any of this. You may have had Qwex in mind when you complimented me. I shall disown the compliment, as it clearly does not apply to me.
Hence this mistake we keep making with morality is. One corner extrapolated to it's limit. There is at least a break point.
Socrates was most concerned with raising our consciousness so that we might have better judgment and before we became enthralled with the Germans and their powerful Military Industrial Complex, we were focused on Greek philosophy and had education for well rounded individual growth, focused on teaching concepts and preparing the young for good moral judgment. This goes with Cicero a Roman statesman who studied in Athens, and the observation that we are compelled to do the right thing and if we fail to do so, the problem is our ignorance of what is the right thing. Not that long ago, even those who dropped out of school in the 8th grade to go to work, thought ignorance was the root of evil.
You also did not reply to my challenge.
I have no problem with that. You refused to quote your own self, fine, but then don't give me a hard time for not following through with the posts.
In fact, to me this site is fun, I don't use it as an exercise in responsibility to reply to all the lines of all the posts that have been written to me. If that's what it means to you, well, you are barking up the wrong tree.
thanks, Athena! This is what I got you found beautiful:
"Good point. I have to choose between "acceptable to society" and "useful for society". I choose "Whatever is useful," because it is acceptable. Whatever is neutral, is acceptable. Whatever is bad, is unaccepable. Thus, whatever is good, is moral; whatever is neutral, is amoral; whatever is bad (damaging), is immoral.
The above apply to practicalities in society. These practicalities are judged for moralilty or immorality by the society's ruling class, which could be a stratum of society, a person, or the entire society. The ruler (individual, class, or entire society) will force his or their or her will to make society accept what she he or they deem to be moral."
How it applies to education? Formal or informal? That is, formal education in school, or in peer-induced or authority-induced informal education?
OMG :love: I may fall in love with you with questions like that. :lol:
Your answer begins with Socrates, and Cicero and finally the reasoning for our liberty and democracy and Thomas Jefferson's fight to have free public education and therefore an educated society capable of having liberty and being self-governing. Jefferson thought that education was essential to having a strong united nation. I wish everyone asked questions about education because I fully agree with Jefferson and if we knew the history of Germany and its Military-Industrial Complex and the rise of Hitler, we might have a better understanding of what is happening to our country. We replaced the education we had with the German model of education for technology for military and industrial purpose in 1958. , and left moral training to the church as was done in Germany. We also replaced reliance on Greek philosophy with reliance on German philosophy.
That is major cultural change and increasing the power of the church to define good and evil, has us where Germany was as it manifested its Military Industrial Complex, or what Hitler and Bush called the New World Order. We are no longer united but we are very divided and our politics are now as reactionary as Germany's politics were. We are no longer the democracy we inherited and defended in two world wars. There is a moral lesson in what I am saying.
My take is that moral attributions and conclusions are necessary for the development of more formalized systemic applications of morals (i.e. laws, codes of conduct, rule books...); thus one can logically infer that a notion of morals must precede and system of morals.
If notions of morals must procede the establishment of moral systems that would indicate that morals must indeed exist independent from the systems; therefore morals have to exist even if there is no moral system in play or yet developed.
Now it is indeed extremely likely (If not almost certain), that subsequent moral attributions and conclusions can (and do) evolve as a result of establised systems morals, but that does not negate the necessity of moral notions to exist prior the the development of a system of morals.
I can understand the confusion in this as morals systems have existed for such a long time they are part of the given *** in our experience of reality. These systems appear as if they have never not been there and did not require any development (or place value upon looking critically into the development), but rather simply exist and continue to evolve.
The notion of natural law seems to also be a subsequent construction of a system of morals, as this might well be our desire to place a systemic order onto what might well not have any systemic order.
In many way humans are hardwired for seeking out patterns. This sort of recognition is crucial for the survival of the individual as well as the collective; thus in the face chaos humans will indeed seek out a pattern... even if the pattern is self-imposed for the sake of having an ordered pattern and not intrincic.
I'm not too clear on this part myself (or what I wrote prior to this bit), so please don't think I'm writng any of this in stone, but my take is that this hardwired pattern seeking in what is chaos coupled with the worldview experience (a constraint?), the given, of there never being a time or place without some sort of moral system in place we fall prey to an ideology that we don't really see well, as it's basically hiding in plan sight.
I find this the given to be for any individual very difficult to admit and next to impossible to try an overcome, yet this sort of "given" results in us asking question or making an accusation that without a moral system one cannot possibly be moral.
It reminds me of the religious folks who are baffeled at the thought "how can someone be moral who is not of my particular religious belief?", as they simply do not and cannot see the constraints of the ideology at work on them. They fall prey to the given.
Anyway...
This is just an incomplete thought rant. I should hit the brakes before I get so far off course so fast that I can't remember what we were speaking of and (as is usually the case for me) get my head chopped off.
Meow!
GREG
*** I believe what I'm hitting at here with the given is very similar to Pierre Bourdieu's Habitus: "...ingrained habits, skills and dispositions. It is the way that individuals perceive the social world around them and react to it. These dispositions are usually shared by people with similar backgrounds (such as social class, religion, nationality, ethnicity, education and profession). The habitus is acquired through imitation (mimesis) and is the reality that individuals are socialized, which includes their individual experience and opportunities. Thus, the habitus represents the way group culture and personal history shape the body and the mind; as a result, it shapes present social actions of an individual." - wiki
Also, I don't really believe that the given is always wrong or false pattern recognition, but as it is so strong within the individual via social conditioning there is very little critical review regarding the given maybe being an error or false.
:love: What is important is teaching the young how to think, not what to think. Education for technology is all about teaching them what to think, and Core education coming from Texas is a huge evil that is very destructive to our democracy. Now get in line soldier, for yours is to do or die, not to question why, and don't worry Trump has everything handled, and soon we will have robots controlling everything.. Isn't that wonderful? :smirk:
I both agree with you and not agree with you. I agree that people must learn how to think for themselves, and that we are all individuals. We are all different. (Well... I am not, but that's a different issue.)
But where we differ is the teaching of core subjects such as math, physics and chemistry. Those subjects are ridiculously under-taught in high school in north America. Especially in the USA.
If you want to teach independent thought, you must let the kids develop logical thinking and an ability to question, and an ability to answer. That can be fostered easily and almost automatically by challenging the kids with mental exercises. How to solve a math problem. How to solve a physics problem. These are things that develop the mind.
The mind is also a very flexible thing. It can transport skills from one area of the brain to another. If the kid learns how to quickly solve math problems, instead of being death scared of them, then he will gain confidence and brain power to solve moral dilemmas.
The problem with education in North America is not the heavy leaning on SAT subjects; it is a problem of heavy leaning on making the kids do mindless busy work. To give them homework that they can copy and paste from wikipaedia, instead of giving them age-appropriate logic problems that will exercise their brains, not their ability to cheat.
Yes, the USA has long been supporting an education system of mindless busywerk, that fosters kids to pull levers in factories all day long, go home and drink beer in front of the tv and fall asleep in a blissful state that they are doing the right thing for self, family and the nation.
While I certainly agree that concern for morality is important, life has beat me down when it comes to being optimistic about MOST people being INTERESTED enough to actually engage and analyze their morals (they would agree that morality is very important to them, but as soon as we begin to question and analyze, they want no part of it).
Quoting Athena
Dang, I like talking philosophy here much better than in real life! I can be very picky and annoying, and I could care less about my tone, so thank you for keeping things pleasant :smile:
Quoting Athena
:up: And occasionally to confirm that I am not the only human to think what I think :smile:
Quoting Athena
I am a little confused here, because your previous paragraph described a scenario where the power was illegitimate and tyrannical. So you agree with all those wives who just stuck with their horrifically abusive husbands until death? We don't think they should have left after day 1? I get the culture was different so that was not an option, but I don't see how that example leads to us learning the importance of submitting to power?
Quoting Athena
Surely we all have different opinions on "family duty" and "good"...?
Quoting Athena
I am happy to. Be warned that I don't accept any moral theory as "right" because it was popular in the past. Any people are "judged" within the time they lived, but any morals are analyzed as completely as possible (they can be "judged" from a modern perspective).
I would love to invite everyone to the community room where I live and we could eat snacks while listening to lectures about Aristotle and then discuss them. This is essential to understanding our democracy and liberty and political aim.
The Puritans and Quakers were competing with each other to produce the most Saints. Methodist believed they had a method of manifesting excellent humans. The effort of manifesting excellent humans begins with Greek philosophy, not the Bible. Greek philosophy is about human excellence and so democracy.
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
Back in the day when we thought literacy in Greek and Roman classics was essential to our democracy, we thought virtues were synonymous with strength. There is a Bahia' women who made and cards and videos to help people learn the virtues. Knowing a virtue is only the beginning of developing it in oneself. To become an excellent human requires knowing the virtues and practicing them. Through this process, a person finds it easier and easier to be a well developed virtuous person.
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
It became obvious to me that textbooks Americanized and updated the wording of essential information resulting in that information being disconnected from the past, and this results in a collapse of that knowledge because it looses its importance. It is important if God said it, or if our founding fathers said it, or this is the way of the tribe.... how do I say? In our ignorance, we stop valuing the words of the past and get the notion we are superior and don't need knowledge developed over thousands of years in the distant past.
Yipes time! I got to go.
That is a total bummer! Lets us work on that problem and see how much we can eliminate that in our lives. Some people may not like this but eliminating it in our lives, involves not associating with people who are not willing to think about what they think and lack an appreciation of virtues. Creating some social pressure on everyone to make the effort to strive for excellence and creating a support group that supports that effort.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Wow, that is not usually how people react to me. I am accused of being offensive, and condescending and other unpleasant things. I think how we are judged depends a lot on the people judging us. These people usually can not argue the subject but make personal attacks. They are fast thinkers and reactionary. There is a saying, "Do not argue with ignorance". To take care of ourselves, we need to avoid these people except maybe as friends to do simple things with, like go to a movie or play cards. For discussions, we need to find people who are thrilled to shared thoughts and have good virtues. They need to be slow thinkers who question what they think they know and are open to different insights. We have not educated for this since 1958, and this is causing a serious social problem as Germany had when Hitler took over.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Oh my, you opened another can of worms! Male and female relations, what it means to be manly and a woman and family responsibility and economics. :roll: In my grandmother's day well-bred women were closer to 30 years old before marriage and having children and they did not have sex outside of marriage. Can you think of any benefits for that?
I was bloody horrified to see my daughter acting as though virginity and marriage didn't matter, and then she had a slave/master relationship with her husband, several years after "women's liberation". How could she betray the movement like that? It has something to do with growing up in an amoral society where the young were taught, with today's technology they are smarter and superior to older people. Excuse me, but our society is in a real mess right now. We are functioning at the level of animals, not civilized human beings. I am not saying, the past you speak of, was better. I am saying the masses were poorly educated and we didn't have an economy to support independent career women, so acting on instinct, not reason, was part of the times. Human beings are not born nice. We have to learn how to be excellent human beings or that won't happen.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
That should not be. Concepts of family duty are concepts of civilization. But then we are not living a shared concept of family, are we? A technological family is any combination of people we want to put together. There are some big problems with that notion. That subject needs its own thread. Warning that subject can be very ugly because when we are not organized by family, how are we organized?
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Our democracy and liberty are defended by literacy in Greek and Roman classics and we have destroyed that, throwing away thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and wisdom gained from that accumulated knowledge, just as it happened when Christians took over when Rome became weak. :grin: The best way to learn history is to repeat it. :lol:
It is as Zeus feared, With the knowledge of the technology of fire we have discovered all other technologies and now we rival the gods. We are technologically smart but lack the wisdom essential to a good life.
Universal laws exist but our knowledge of them is incomplete and most certainly the knowledge we have is not universally known. We are not born with this knowledge, only the ability to learn. Previous to 1958 public education in the US attempted to prepare the young for well rounded individual growth capable of independent thinking and good moral judgment. The 1958 National Defense Education Act, replaced that education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose, as dogs are taught to obey commands. The void in their education was left to the church and now our democracy is in crisis.
Perhaps we should have a thread for education? Do you watch movies about teachers who have made a real difference in students' lives? I love these movies, besides having a library filled with books about education.
What has happened to education since 1958 is a horror story, and well-meaning writers of what has gone wrong with education have created a myth that is part of the problem. The myth is about industrial leaders wanting students prepared to do mindless work in factories. Before the first world war, those industrial leaders wanted to close the schools when we mobilized for war, claiming education was not giving them their monies worth, and that the war had caused a labor shortage. Child labor laws were relatively new, and industry would have loved to closed schools and return to child labor. This history is very ugly and well worth our attention because the autocratic mentality that exploits human beings is still with us. It is a history capitalist do not want us to think about.
Teachers argued an institution for making good citizens was good for making patriotic citizens. We seriously need to be clear on this! Up to this time education as about Americanizing the mass of immigrants andpreparing the young to be good citizens in a democracy. The only technology children learned was reading, writing, speaking skills, and math. Our military force was in a huge crisis because the modern war, with typewriters, trucks and such things demanded a trained workforce that could use all this technology and build bridges, repair trucks. For the first time, in 1917 vocational training was added to public education. Later, it was the technology of the second world war that completely brought education for citizenship to an end with a focus on technology for military and industrial purposes.
If you care, please, come look at my books. :sad: I know that is not practical, but maybe I can figure out how to get the copier working and post pages from the books? In my mind, I am fighting to preserve the democracy we inherited and defended in two world wars. I would like to create a miracle before the next national election.
We have a serious problem in Texas that stands against higher order thinking skills, is behind things like no child left behind, increasing control of education and CORE education. This is the problem of which you speak and is about the Military Industrial Complex controlling education, our nation and the world. The most threatening danger to our country is not forgien. It is internal.
What is a moral system?
Just this morning while listening to a lecture about Aristotle and ethics, I got we can learn virtues and we can develop our ability to habitually react virtuously. But that may not be a moral system such as we may find a moral system in a holy book. It does, however, lead to liberty and good leadership.
We have forgotten in a democracy we seek to elect good leaders and leaders are made strong by our willingness to follow. While at the same time our own desire to be an excellent human being should mean preparing ourselves to lead. :chin: Hum, we need to be good followers and prepared to lead. Our ability to be a good human is based on virtues, and one of the virtues is to expand our consciousness so we have good moral judgment. That is not exactly memorizing the 10 commandments, nor praying to a god to make things right.
We can overcome being virtually weak by exercising a virtue until it is a strong part of who we are. We can expand our consciousness by traveling, reading books, going to college, carefully choose media that is informative. We seriously need to improve knowledge of this and then working conditions and salaries so the average person has the opportunity to travel and learn through various means.
A democracy is about enabling the most people to make their best contribution to the democracy. Our supreme court has not been ruling for this goal, when it rules in favor of large corporations and declares using money to get desired laws is freedom of speech. That ruling should make it instantly clear that it means the poor and unincorporated citizens, do not have freedom of speech because they can not pay enough to be heard.
My old books give lists of the characteristics of democracy. Would those lists be a moral system? If so shouldn't that moral system be taught?
I appreciate your optimism here, and I will try to keep an open mind. And I certainly was not suggesting that people like us stop engaging with philosophy. We like it...and it seems beneficial too :smile:
I guess you have not had the same experiences as I when it comes to talking philosophy with other people. I have exactly one friend, and one family member who are somewhat comfortable discussing this stuff. If you think people are comfortable try this, ask them why they identify with whatever political party they identity with. Some will already be uncomfortable, but many will answer. Then ask them "why" they believe those reasons are true. More will get upset and drop out, but for those who don't, ask "why" they believe those reasons...and so on. You don't have to argue at all. Just keep going deeper and ask them to explain their thoughts...most will get angry and end the discussion.
I started getting more excited about philosophy when I met people who challenged my beliefs and forced me to go 6 or 7 "why's" deep into beliefs (each time they asked further, I realized they were justified in asking further!). But normal people hate this crap...so much so that they cannot believe I am actually interested and I must just be messing with them.
Quoting Athena
I get that a lot too (well around here I am too uneducated to be accused of condescension, but I get it a lot in non-online life). I think it tends to happen when I think I am just being matter-of-fact. From my experience with you so far, you just come across as someone who is interested in the topic and likes to argue their opinion (we can recognize our own). I know a lot of the time I upset people is when I am getting excited about an argument and sort of forget the other person's perspective :grimace:
Quoting Athena
Precisely. Just because they have very little willingness (or ability in some of the cases you may be describing) to engage with philosophy, doesn't mean they can't enhance other areas of my life (and hopefully the other way around too, so I am not completely selfish).
Quoting Athena
Agreed, that would be ideal.
Quoting Athena
Well I was born in 1981, so even my parents were educated in the 1960s and 1970s. While I agree it would be helpful for education to be more in line with what you are describing, I would not expect massive changes in people's mindsets. However, as I have only lived in the post 1950s America (with a god on the money and in the pledge of allegiance), perhaps I am wrong. I am certainly happy to try.
Quoting Athena
I can think of benefits and downsides. However, I would think in your grandma's day the vast majority of women were married much sooner than 30? But I think you are referring to the upper classes so that seems plausible. When was your grandma born (if you don't mind me asking)? Just trying to pin down the time period. Was she a flapper?
Dang, I have to run. I only responded to about half of your post. I should get to the rest tomorrow.
I don't really find this too difficult to answer on the surface.
Morals are value assertions related to what is good or bad/right or wrong.
Ethics is the field of study regarding these morals.
A moral system is a system of principles, rules, ideals, and values which work to form one’s overall perspective.
Now as to how many morals system govern one's behaviour is a larger question. One can indeed have individual morals systems, yet find themself living within the matrix of a much larger morals system, such as a government of law.
Quoting Athena
It seems to me what you are pointing out is that we should indeed look into various sources in an effort to refine our ability to act virtuous... only problem here is virtue a fixed point of moral behaviour or is virtue something relative to the context in which one find's themself (as in what can in one case be a virtue prove to be a vice in a differing context)?
Another question would be liberty. Liberty seems good, but where does one draw the line?
This example is jumping a bit ahead, but there is the old maxim of The Lord Acton:
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
There seem to be a large number of arguments about claiming this is why we need to empower the people with liberty... but here's the rub.
If liberty is to be the goal of individual empowerment, that would imply that liberty is a power and with maximum liberty often being the goal, so back to the maxim with this revision...
Freedom and liberty tend to corrupt, and absolute freedom and power corrupts absolutely?
I don't have an answer for this querry.
Good leadership is also something of a mess. Some view this as a benevolat, knowledgeable leader looking out for the common good of the common man. Others may view this good leadership as someone with a strong hand and making concrete decisions. There are various views upon what exactly this notion of what good leadership entails. How do we find something that serves all opinions? Afterall this leadership is suppose to represent the people... all the people, so how do you manage as a good leader when you can only represent a portion of the people?
Again, I have no answer to this one.
Quoting Athena
I really don't have a lot to say here, as it simply reads like a commentary, which is OK, but there are a lot of loose ends and sweeping generalizations that are in need to clearer evidence, clearer definition of terms and perhaps a bit less pleading of special cases. It does read as if one wishes to bend the topic into a very specific and political direction. At the moment I feel we haven't address the basis of terminology to get that far into the topic without fostering confusiion and possible lacks of objectivity; thus making things seem as personal rather than a discourse about ideas.
I believe I sort of understand what you are driving toward (probably agree with the vast majority... I left the USA over 25 years ago for various reasons one of them being I really could not handle the ultra authoritarian libertarians both "right" and "left"... why do I always feel that needs a rim shot? ;) ), but I wish not to assume that direction.
Quoting Athena
A list of characteristics is not the same a a code of moral actions of what is right/wrong or good/bad. The former is simply a description of what a thing is, whereas the latter is an interpretation of how one is suppose to act and live accordingly.
I'd say a list of the characteristics of democracy is not a moral system, but rather a description of a is found within such a system. If one were to subsequently take these characteristics and interpret them into specific notions of right/wrong or good/bad and set these notions into a systemic set of laws governing the actions of themself and others, then it would break into the field of a moral system.
The movies that made a real difference for me were where the students made a real difference in their teachers' lives.
Don't ask me, please, for the titles, because I am hopeless at remembering trivial information.
One such movie was where a literature teacher comes home, brings home the homework assingments of his grade 11 students, and moans and groans to his wife as he reads them. The assignment was "What I did in my summer holidays" and the essays followed: "Watched TV." that was the entire essay. "I hate stupid homework assingments on what I did on my summer holidays." That was the essay. ETC.
Until the teacher starts to read a few lines of a more meaty essay, and his eyes bulge out. This kid produced a literary piece that the teacher (no doubt a writer-wannabe in his youth) only dreamed of ever writing.
In the rest of the movie he embraces the kids' education, but in my opinion the teacher's approach is stupid; he keeps on severely criticising the kid. That's not the way to foster creativity. The kid gets involved with a very good looking married woman, but nothing ever happens.The movie from there fizzes out, and I was fast asleep by the time the last ten-twenty minutes rolled out.
I bawled my eyes out at the moment when the teacher's eyes bulged out. The kid was so much what I had been.
---------
Another movie in which the student made a difference in the life of the teacher was where a female teacher has a physical affair with a boy, and she gets expelled by the profession. It was not so much focussed on the boy or on the effect, but rather on Judy Drench, who played the host for this hapless young teacher, whom the media was chasing down. Judy played her real life role, a closet Lesbian, who only kept the young lady who was straight, in her home, so that she (Judy) could live out her sexual fantasies on her.
--------
The third example is a song, by Sting:
You consider me the young apprentice
Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis
Hypnotized by you if I should linger
Staring at the ring around your finger
I have only come here seeking knowledge
Things they would not teach me of in college
I can see the destiny you sold
Turned into a shining band of gold
I'll be wrapped around your finger
I'll be wrapped around your finger
Mephistopheles is not your name
I know what you're up to just the same
I will listen hard to your tuition
You will see it come to its fruition
I'll be wrapped around your finger
I'll be wrapped around your finger
Devil and the deep blue sea behind me
Vanish in the air you'll never find me
I will turn your face to alabaster
When you will find your servant is your master
You'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger
It's by Sting, the song is called "Wrapped around your finger", and you can hear it here on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svWINSRhQU0
I could look at your books, but I must warn you, that though I used to work in the audit department in a major bank, I am not an expert in accounting principles. If you need some advice re: taxes, or bank loans, I would suggest you talk to a CRA, or CA, or a RPA. If the problem is simple, maybe even an accounting student could help you. Or if it's really huge, such as you may suspect that a bookkeeper in your concern is embezzling, then you need a forensic accountant.
May I humbly suggest that a likely reason that people are like that is that life has beat them down too much. Children are naturally curious and love to learn, until life beats that out of them. I was fortunate to have maintained many (positive) child-like qualities into my early adulthood, and other adults around me seemed like they had been blunted somehow. I used to think that that was because I was better in some way than them, but as I've gotten older and older, life has begun to blunt me in similar ways that I remember seeing in others back then, and I realize now that most people just suffer too much trauma (at the hands of people who are themselves reacting to their own traumas, generation over generation) in their lives to maintain that child-like "innocence", that desire and ability to learn and teach and be helpful and useful to others.
"The single biggest obstacle to make progress in the war efforts in Viet Nam is presented by the public resistance at home", the White House announced. (News, 1980.)
As you can see, the danger lies at home, always at home, always, always, always at home; but what someone considers danger to be, is always different. "Where you stand is determined by where you sit."
So you see, Athena, there used to be a voice heard once in America; the voice of the people. But they poof-poofed them down, one-by-one, like they do rabid dogs: JFK, MLK, MTK, FTC. What are we left with? KFC and Walmart.
Listen to some old and new Neil Young songs.
Also, watch this:
I don't really find this too difficult to answer on the surface.
Morals are value assertions related to what is good or bad/right or wrong.
Ethics is the field of study regarding these morals.[/quote]
I am quoting you so I can find this spot in the thread when I have time to read and respond. I wish there were a better way to do this. If anyone knows of a better way, please PM me.
Life can so interfere with our discussions. :worry: There must be a better way to identify our place in the discussions so it is easy to get back. :lol:
A system is not unstructured. The God of Abraham religions have structured moral systems. Philosophy does not have that kind of structure, although Aristotle is responsible for structuring logic and dividing areas of thought in such a way that gives each area of thought a degree of structure. For example, Aristotle gave us physics, metaphysics, and ethics. Ethics being the study of what is good. I am sensitive to this distinction between structured and unstructured morality because democracy does not have a Bible, but is large collection of Greek and Roman classics and later books advancing western culture as it was shaped by Christianity. This important difference between structured and more or less unstructured morality leaves us not understanding what morals have to do with liberty and democracy. and leaves us stuck with a myth that our success is the result of Christianity and it is Christianity that makes us better than the rest of the world. :grimace:
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
:gasp: You don't read many political books do you? The US government has not been about morals for many years. Defending that statement could take this thread way off-topic, so I will restrain myself, but government is more about power than morality. I think in our past literate people were far more concerned with morals than they are today but the war changed everything, just as war changed Athens.
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
A virtue is an internalized concept. There are many virtues. Assertiveness is one of them, I choose this one to demonstrate the importance of developing a virtue by intentionally acting on the concept until it becomes a habit and automatic response. We can understand assertiveness as standing up for ourselves and what we believe is important. We can know it by knowing its opposite, being afraid to speak up and feeling powerless and then perhaps becoming angry and acting inappropriately. It may take courage to be assertive, if one is not in the habit of being assertive, or has not gotten a good response to being assertive. In this case, speaking up is frightening and we have to muster all the courage we have to behave in a way we do not normally behave. However, with practice, we can gain confidence, and one day realize we are speaking up for ourselves and what we believe without fear.
We call our criminal justice system a correction system, but in most places, it does nothing to correct the problems that are manifested in harmful behavior. I am sure Socrates would declare our justice system unjust, because it is geared to punish and inflict pain, not to correct an individual's knowledge of life and self. Our education for good citizenship and good moral judgment, prevented social problems, but today we think education is about preparing our young to be products for industry, and we think someone who speaks against it is just old and doesn't value technology. :lol: Sorry I am ranting. Back to your thoughts....
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
:chin: To respond to your concern that a virtue could be a vice....
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
Liberty is not freedom. Liberty comes with responsibility. It seems pretty clear to me the present problem is a lack of understanding. Just how much responsibility do you want? :smile: As a female, I could dodge a lot of responsibility by being an obedient wife. But when I became the president of the Toastmister Club, I took on a lot of responsibility. :lol: One might ask who is the slave, when realizing the responsibility of leadership is giving service and delegating duties to people willing to accept them. Leadership is not a power trip that flatters the ego. But not all people in power are good leaders, some are tyrants with big egos and when the majority do not understand what we are talking about here, it is likely the president will be a tyrant. Quoting Mayor of Simpleton They do not understand liberty and democracy and they probably rely on a Father in the sky and look forward to His kingdom. :zip:
Keep in mind those who thought democracy was a good idea were only a handful of people, but they united and shared the cause of throwing off the existing power, and then they remained devoted to manifesting a new way of life. That is simplistic, but it is possible to become passionate about liberty and democracy and to experience waking every morning to share that passion. Today books that give me hope of a new American Revolution are appearing in book stores. I had almost given up as moderators threatened to ban me and some did ban me, and people constantly attack me for what I say. But the books started to appear. I am not alone but right now we are outnumbered.
You may have a completely different passion. I am also passionate about teaching good health practices and if you look for something to feel passionate about and don't find it, check your health habits. It is hard to feel positive when our energy level is low and we just what to curl up in a cave and get away from it all.
And consequently, that we can get people to recover that childlike positivity by helping them to heal from the traumas of life. The penultimate essay of my philosophy book, On Empowerment, is all about that.
I suppose 5 semesters at a university focusing upon what is now an incompleted BA in Political Science that was shifted to a B.S in Philosophy (seriously... a B.S. in Philosophy ;) ) doesn't count.
Just as a heads-up for the future, take care in what you assume about posters in this forum. It was a bit hasty to make such an assumption about me based upon very little data. Perhaps the rub here is that I haven't read the books about politics that you have read or endorse or maybe I have?
In short you might wish to avoid allowing topics being discussed to be linked with a personal indictment. Personally I don't care, but others might loose sight the words you are saying to communicate an idea in the face of an (hasty) indictment.
Anyway...
I indicated that I'm not interested in turning this in the direction of a political debate, but rather stay closer to the topic. Especially one so obvious located in just current affairs in the US.
One thing I would suggest is that you open another thread about wherther or not the US Government has become more or less concerned with morals over the past 40 years. I'd ask if the morals in question are simply the absence of (all) morals or the absence of morals one particularly has an affinity toward; thus one feel it is a moral vacuum due to lack of reprensentation or possibly something else?
In any event, I'd suggest that for another thread and not as a tangent here.
Quoting Athena
This is more interesting than the politics.
That virtue is an internalized concept (an internalized notion of value - moral value) is what I wanted to illustrate. Internalized concepts tend to be relative to the standards/experiences of the individual who has them internalized; thus I fail to see how one can establish the notion of a virtue being all good or all bad in any absolute sense.
Let's look at assertiveness...
Of course there are circumstances where it does indeed have a postive effect/affect and we stand up an take a stand for what is right, but what if our efforts are founded upon false information or fallacies of logic? What if we are basing these efforts upon facts that once where the cutting edge, but have become outdated and no longer accurate? Is the assertiveness in this case still a virtue or perhaps a case of fools rush in?
*** I filled in the rest of the Aristotle quote in your quote for the sake of clarity.
Here are a few questions.
By who's standard is a vice determined?
By who's standard does one determine if there is excess or defiency?
By who's standard is a "balance" determined and considered to be achieved?
Quoting Athena
... and freedom does not?
OH... and then there's this:
Definition of liberty
1: the quality or state of being free:
a: the power to do as one pleases
b: freedom from physical restraint
c: freedom from arbitrary or despotic (see DESPOT sense 1) control
d: the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges
e: the power of choice
Definition of freedom
1: the quality or state of being free: such as
a: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b: liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : INDEPENDENCE
c: the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous
freedom from care
d: unrestricted use
gave him the freedom of their home
e: EASE, FACILITY
spoke the language with freedom
f: the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken
answered with freedom
g: improper familiarity
h: boldness of conception or execution
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liberty
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/freedom
Quoting Athena
I'm not too sure that responsibility is simply a question of what one takes on. Quite often responsibility is thrust upon someone without them having a choice in the matter like it or not.
Quoting Athena
As a human, I would try to eliminate the concept of an obedient wife.
Anyway...
Quoting Athena
The problem here is some are and some aren't... some are on a power trip, some are not, some are like tyrants, some are not... where some clearly do not wish for a leader who is one a power trip or a tyrants there are some who actually do wish for this. Both types can be leaders and can both be either effective or ineffective... it is in the end a question of preference and individual standards of measure, as well as what one individually places as a priority when it comes to leadership and it's methods/effects/affects.
Quoting Athena
That could be the case with some (I'm assuming you're back to US politics again), but indeed there are many who simply look at the policies as being a easy way to make money or that the policies only negatively effect/affect others in a dog eat dog manner or simply want immediate answers even if those are answers for the sake of answers as to have no open questions and endless debates with pregnant pauses even if the answers are terrible or some people just want the certainty of knowing their place in a system, be it a good place or a bad place.
Meow!
GREG
Ok, and that is exactly what my understanding of liberty and democracy is all about- having that wonderful feeling that we matter and we are capable of doing something important. That is the argument made in the Declaration of Independence. That was what education prepared our young for when my grandmother was a teacher. A favorite story in my home was of a retarded boy who found it hard to keep up in school (the meaning of retarded) but was amazing when it came to carving a monkey out of a pit. The teacher held up what he could do and made his accomplishment equal to any other. Our notion of equality had nothing to do with being the same, except under the sun we are all equal, however, each one of us is special in our own way. A teacher's job was to help a child discover his/her special interests and talents and then nourish them.
:cry: That is not what IQ testing and Core education are about. And the difference is a huge change in culture-making us the enemy we defeated in two world wars. Our liberty is being crushed as we prepare the young to be products for industry, and that industry is run by policy and we have absolutely no say in that policy. We are now marginalizing people as Europe did but we stood against, with privacy laws that really protected our privacy and prevented anyone from discrimination against us because of something we did in the past that is kept in a file.
What has happened to the US is extremely depressing and is exactly what the Prussians did to Germany. Our sense of powerlessness is a rational conclusion in this industrial and political climate. But in threads like this one, we can exercise hope of returning to the democracy, with liberty, that we once had. Here we can talk about what virtues and morals have to do with liberty and democracy. Here we can connect with other people who might pick up the cause and become a part of a new American Revolution which is not violent but a return to the intellectual revolution that began our democracy. AND THAT WAS NOT CHRISTIANITY! . The more voices that repeat the messages, the more power the movement will have. Around the world, it is very important everyone stops seeing us as a Satanic evil and once again sees us as a highly moral nation that stands for liberty, truth and what is good and right (ethics).
I want to cancel the rest of my day and stay with you. :love: Oh my goodness shall we compare each other's education and see what get? Mine was gerontology and public policy and administration. I was never depressed as much as when I went into the public policy and administration program. Don't tell anyone but if I were to join a violent revolution, I would begin by burning the colleges down. Okay, my love, what did you learn? :grin:
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
I am sure you have not. I am 15 credits short of a degree because I refused to bend to the system and instead chose to stand against it. OMG, I am more of a rebel than when I was young because of returning to school after having children, and from this more mature position, what I learned about our white middle-class education and public policy. Part of my passion is the result of buying old books about education to understand what it meant to defend democracy in the classroom and old books about Germany because I knew we adopted the German model of education. You said I should not assume, but I would really be shocked if we shared the same books!
Quoting Mayor of Simpleton
:broken: What goes up must come down. I just crashed and burned. I think I better pick up my toys and go home. I don't know what meaning you all think this topic has if it is not our liberty and democracy and standing in the world, and I will not force myself on anyone.
"How many would act morally if the law did not exist?" The answer is, it depends on their culture and their culture depends on their education. And the "they" that shoots me down is people in forums who don't get what morality has to do with liberty and democracy and don't want to talk about it.
The important question is, did humans evolve or were they created special by a God who then cursed them resulting all our suffering, because we are sinful and can not do better without supernatural intervention. Can human beings achieve excellence without the help of a supernatural power or are they doomed by a condition of sin and must they have authority above them and must that authority hold the ability to punish them to control them? And is education for technology enough?
No it does not. If freedom has conditions it is not freedom. So it is desirable to stay in the parents home and be free as long as the parents don't interfere with that freedom.
That is equal to having a job that is defined by someone else without having a say in what the controlling policy should be. This is acceptable as long as s/he believes the money earned gives him/her freedom, or if everyone else is doing it. And if the employer is unethical and the business practices are causing people to become diabetic and die early, or increasing the number of people who develop diabetes, or people are loosing their homes and the rich get richer by buying up the property, etc. so what, we are just doing what we are told to do, and as long as we have the good life, that is all than matters and we can forget about the politics that can make a difference, because we are all free! That is freedom. It is not liberty. Go out and vote for the person you believe will give you the most freedom and live with your parents if they give you more freedom.
And education for that, does not defend our liberty and democracy. :chin:
Europe does not even ask this question. Obviously there is no supernatural power that is consistently interfering with the world's affairs on an individual basis or on group basis. This is a question to ask Americans. I live in Canada, but in this aspect I am very European.
Yes, according to you, what does morality have to do with liberty and democracy? I am curious about your precise opinion. What is the core value in morality? Who put it there? Not god, please let's not get silly. How do we decide what is moral and what is not? What is it in a moral action that separates it from a simply good action? If I see a man drowning in a river, and I jump in the foaming waves, and save him, was that moral, or good? If either, why, and why not the other?
Put it to liberty and democracy. What is a good citizen to do that is moral? Why is his moral action moral, and not simply good? What is the difference between a good social act, and a moral social act?
And if there is a difference that you can find, Athena, who is the authority that decides with you? Are you the decision maker, or is there an objectively measured, always-true benchmark to separate the good from the moral? If not, why are we talking about morals in the first place?
:lol: Is it necessary to draw a line between good and moral? I think our democracy starts with the reasoning of Greek philosophers and Aristotle gave us the category of ethics. Ethics according to Aristotle is a question of the good. When we go further along this line of reasoning it follows that ethical actions require virtues. Virtues may begin as a thought of what is good but that isn't enough. I may want to save the drowning man, but I am afraid I would recoil in fear of my own life. To do better requires the virtue of courage. That is a feeling, not just a thought. I would gain courage by acting courageously repeatedly and in time it would become a habit and a true feeling of courage.
The goal stated by Aristotle is human excellence. Aristotle believed it is human nature to strive for excellence and I agree with him. I have no doubt that are plenty of people how don't come anywhere close to excellent. Here we can fall back on Gibran who wrote when we feel good we do good. I went through a long period when I felt terrible about myself and life. I could not possibly have done much good at that time. It is like being lost in hell. However, feeling bad and failing in life is the flip side of wanting to be excellent. All that negativity is pain and not knowing the way out, and is not proof that it isn't our nature to want to be an excellent example of a human being.
Sorry for being so wordy but answering your questions is kind of explaining a loaf of bread. Bread is not just ingredients but also the interaction of ingredients, kneading, letting the dough rest and the yeast to rise. Morals, ethics, virtues, the moment in time and the act all go together like the ingredients of bread. If the process of making bread isn't done right, it doesn't come out right. That is so true for human excellence and when our culture embraces that, we optimize liberty and have democracy.
A moral is a matter of cause and effect. We used to read children stories like the Little Red Hen and the Little Engine that Could. At the end of the story, we would ask, what is the moral of that story. The answer would be a cause and an effect. No one would help the Little Red Hen make bread so she didn't share it. In a democracy, we must share in the work and we share the benefits.
Liberty is the right to determine what is the right thing to do, the moral thing to do. What will get good results? The problem here is the person may not have enough information to have good moral judgment, and that is what makes education, and culture, essential to good moral judgment, liberty, and democracy.
So we may not want the 1% running our government because decisions made for a profit might cost those who are not part of the decision making too much! That 1% might make decisions that cost people their lives, destroy the environment, or destroy the future of the following generations. Monarchies had that problem and democracy is supposed to be the solution, but without education for democracy and good moral judgment, democracy fails.
How did I do in answering your questions?
:lol: The definition of bread, does not provide the knowledge of how to make bread. That definition of liberty is just as lacking. Without knowledge and virtues, instead of getting the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges a person could end up in a personal hell incapable of accessing any or those benefits.
I wish everyone had as much contact with the homeless people as my granddaughter who works with the homeless. Trust me, these are not people who just don't want to work. They are mostly really messed up in the head. I challenge everyone to spend 6 months as a homeless person. It is a life-changing experience and for most people, it is like being trapped in hell and not knowing the way out. The middle-class people are dependent on the social benefits they take for granted and may lack the virtues that enable a person to pass through adversity and come out smelling like a rose.
That definition of liberty could be homelessness, no job, and no property to care for.
Quoting Athena
Case in point to question in quote 2 is the statement in point 1: If there is no line between good and moral, then the first quote becomes "The problem here is the person may not have enough information to have good good judgment," or else "The problem here is the person may not have enough information to have moral moral judgment," both of which necessarily follow the reasoning of why we need line, because both of them necessarily make no sense.
In my esteem yes, we need to draw a line, because a lot of confusion can come from saying "ethical" or "moral" when one says "good". If the two concepts are interchangeable, then we don't need two concepts, and yet there has not been a separative declararion that separates good from moral.
If Aristotle wanted us to have virtues that drive us to do good (moral) things because we strive for excellence, then how can wars be possible?
A man H, of country Hungary, is brave and wants to do good, which is to feed the people of Hungary.
A man A, of country Austria, is brave and wants to do good, which is to feed the people of Austria.
Virtuous people are good, and a good person shalt not harm another virtuous person.
Yet H will fight A.
This is how Aritstotle's (the great, the genius) model breaks down. His model of what makes one engage in moral actions is faulty.
How can wars be possible? Spread the God of Abraham religions and leave the moral training to the church. I hate Christianity because it has so screwed up the understanding of morality. Please, this can very politically hot and that might not be appreciated here? I hate Christianity because it has so screwed up our understanding of secular morality and everything else! Education for technology has lead to the "Christian good" being ignorance and superstition, and not good! And without the Christian Right, Bush would not have had the support to invade Iraq and seriously make global matters much worse :vomit:
Good or bad, are qualities of moral, not something separate from it. To have good moral judgment is the ability to determine what will get good results. The inability to do this results in things going wrong, such as the invasion of Iraq and what has followed. That is bad moral judgment. Ignorant people are doomed to have bad moral judgment. They can be very good people and have very bad moral judgment because of their ignorance. Understanding this is essential to understanding secular morality and having a moral justice system and a moral economic system. It is essential to our liberty and democracy.
I wish we always worked with the word "moral" as we did in the recent past. We read children moral stories such as the "Little Red Hen" and asked, "what is the moral of that story". The answer is the cause and effect. That outcome can be bad, such as the fox did not get the grapes because he gave up. The "Little Engine that Could" did because he did not give up. Good moral judgment is the ability to understand those things. If we make the wrong choice things will go bad and Cicero tells us, sacrificing animals, saying prays, burning candles will not get good results from a bad choice.
When we left moral training to the church (1958) we made a terrible mistake! Christians now think their God will save their sorry asses, no matter what they do as long as they are pleasing to this God. You can be a good child of God, destroy this planet and get rewarded with heaven on a new planet. We don't need to understand how this can happen, you just need faith. And we think that education for technology that brought us to this ignorance is a good and necessary education. :rage: And Texas republicans want to be sure education continues this ignorance and the whole nation bows to it, while we ignore the needs of humans and pour money into military spending and act as though the only people who matter is US, the people blessed by God. That is bad moral judgment.
That depends on the decinition. THe definition I used bases morality on a religion, and ethics simply as a societal standard. So yes, if you do not believe in religion, you can have ethics without morality. But of course if you use a different defintion, you get to a different conclusion.
I see problems with religion. If Christianity stayed with the Bible and didn't claim everything good as Christian, that would help. Especially when it comes to morality and democracy. We really do not want to go back to the dark ages, and our progress did not come from the Bible. Especially our morality should not be left to religion! The US is having some serious problems because of the Christian myth of our democracy and the false notion that morals are a religious matter, not a secular matter. We should know without a doubt that a moral is a matter of cause and effect and virtues are habits we develop over a lifetime that help us be moral. Absolutely no religion required.
That is a serious problem with religion. It totally screws up our understanding of democracy which is rule by reason and dependent on moral reasoning (cause and effect). From there it screws up every other notion of humanity and after screwing up every thought with false and superstitious ideas, it leads people to war. We live with a notion that we can not avoid war because it is in our nature, but what about the religious cause of war? So is wetting our pants in our nature, until we learn to control our bladders. Throwing tantrums is in our nature until we learn to use our words. The goal of adulthood should be learning to control our animal impulses and to live with a sense of social justice and reliance on reason. Really when the reasoning for democracy is understood, so is the advancement of humanity understood and religion stands in the way of that.
1. This attributes the faults of specific individuals who claim to be religious to religion itself. You might as well say "Speech creates a serious problem because some people lie."
2. In what world is democracy rule by reason and dependent on moral reasoning? Certainly not this one.
I don't think religion is about truth. I believe we evolved as all animals evolved and we are not specially made from mud by a goddess or god. Which explanation of humans a person holds strongly matters. and I have a strong preference for basing decisions on truth.
Quoting Pantagruel
Democracy is an ideology. It is not universally understood and that is most certainly true in the US! The US is Christian and Christianity supports autocracy and the US is more autocratic than democratic. I doubt if anyone in the US can write 10 characteristics of democracy, while a professor in Syria, I met online, had a far better understanding of democracy than people in the US. When I praise democracy it sure is not the US I praise.
Fascinating. You have completely failed to respond to point 1, that you have committed the fallacy of generalization, by employing the fallacy of misdirection.
Meanwhile, while you are not willing to allow religion to assume an idealized character, independent of the shortcomings of its adherents, you are more than willing to be an apologist for democracy.
Do you see the irony?
You should stop generalizing about "religion". There are very different religions out there, some more beneficial or dangerous than others. I.e. How many wars were fought on behalf of Jainism, Buddhism, or Bahaism? Can you spell zero?
Typically when people like you generalize about "religion", they are thinking about medieval Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. But that is not all there is. Generalizing about "religion" is like generalizing about "ideology".... as if all ideologies were the same.
So please stop doing that!
Thank you.
Which religion would like to rule the nation where you live? We may have a good discussion if you focus on the thoughts and not on me. :flower:
Okay, I will try again. Which religion do you think is based on truth and nothing but the truth?
Yes, I am devoted to democracy and I don't see any irony in that. Please, explain the irony.
The irony is that, in your devotion to democracy, you are prepared to defend the abstract ideal of democracy, despite the shortcomings of its implementation by specific individuals. Whereas you completely deny that exact same freedom and right to the ideal of religion.
Well of course. Democracy is about discovering truth and basing life decisions on truth. Religion is not. Democracy is about human excellence, religion might strive for that but the way it attempts to achieve that is very problematic because it is not based on truth.
Firstly, that isn't even close to any definition of democracy that I have ever seen.
Secondly, it isn't about what democracy is or isn't, or what religion is or isn't. It is about whether one allows that an ideal can still exist, even if it fails to be implemented well or effectively. If Democracy can be corrupted, yet still be an ideal towards which we strive, then so can Religion.
I am always amazed how frequently otherwise open-minded people stop using reason and start reacting from prejudice as soon as the word "religion" comes up. You do know that "religion" is a generic term, and is therefore not the same as "Catholicism" or "Christianity" or "Buddhism"? Just like "democracy" does not reduce to "American republican democracy" or "British socialist democracy", etc.
None. I live in a place with a pretty good attitude towards religion.
Anyway I am not interested in discussing you or me.
My point stands. Do not generalize about "religion". There are very different ones out there.
WHICH religion? You are still generalizing about "religion" which makes absolutely no sense. Also, where do you get the idea from that "Democracy is about discovering truth and basing life decisions on truth"`? You completely made that up, didn´t you.
Lol, we don't have a democracy in the United States of America. It is a constitutional republic. A democracy can be explained pretty simply (if fifty-one wolves and forty-nine sheep get to vote on what is for dinner we're havein lamb chops). That is not the way things work in the US.
Your position smacks very much of the social problem that is criticized in the book I just started reading, Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action.
Basically a fallout of the Enlightenment, when people came to have an unreasonable belief in the inevitable superiority of the rationalist-reductive approach, inspired by Newton's accomplishments. Culminating in the dreary technical anomie of our modernist world.
"The progress of societal rationalization...turned out to be, according to Weber, the ascendency of purposive rationality....not a reign of freedom, but the dominion of impersonal economic forces and bureaucratically organized administrations"
So much for the ideal of democracy as an ideal of rational human excellence.
I'm curious what you mean by "secular" vs "religious" matter; in practice most of those popular dichotomies are false.
For example, the Common Law system evolved from older ones, including "religious ones", though most would call it "secular" and not belonging to any specific religion or "sect", despite the influence of Christianity and other systems such as Roman on its development.
Well of course. Democracy is about discovering truth and basing life decisions on truth. Religion is not.
[/quote]
Well, when you say "democracy", none of the governmental systems in the US, UK, or Europe are "direct democracies", and were never intended to be; the US is considered a "democratic republic", or a "federal Constitutional republic".
I also fail to see the correlation between "democracy" and "discovering truth", or why "religion" as is ambiguously and probably incorrectly being defined is exempt from that.
I don't understand what that means, what difference is there in a religious moral "truth" such as prohibition of murder, and a "secular" system such as Common Law asserting a moral truth or rule against murder?
The dichotomy is somewhat false, given that many "religious" systems were also legal systems, and even "secular" systems developed out of systems which were considered "religious" and incorporated various truths or axioms from them.
The basic premise or philosophy of the law is the "golden rule", which is an axiom that is also part of world religions, and as far as "truth" goes, I'm not sure how one could "prove" this axiom to begin with in a religious or a secular context, it's something which one either merely has to accept or not, or run the risk of punishment or retribution from the law if they decide to break it or ignore it.
Excuse me for talking about something you don't know.
If you follow this link you might have a little better understanding of democracy and then we might have a discussion I might enjoy.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Aristotle+and+puruit+of+excellence&rlz=1C1CHKZ_enUS481US483&oq=Aristotle+and+puruit+of+excellence&aqs=chrome..69i57.26676j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Come on this is a philosophy forum. We will get no where talking about the US or the UK unless we are talking about where the idea of democracy began and why some people were willing to risk everything to have a democracy, instead of a monarchy when Christianity taught God choose who will rule and who will serve, and going against the king is equal to going against God.
That is an intelligent question. It is a matter of where a person looks for truth in how things work and if a person is questioning the knowledge or going on faith. This is really as much about "how" people think as it is about "what" they think.
Yeah! You know enough to make this a good discussion! :love: It isn't just that you know the enlightenment had something to do with democracy, and that high hopes became discouragement, but you did not attack me and questioned me instead. That is about how you think. Those who attack me are reactionary and that is not the kind of thinking that advances knowledge. It is pretty futile to argue with reactionary people. But you opened the door for a good discussion.
I think what is really important here is understanding how we think is just as important as what we think. The higher-order thinking skills must be taught because they do not come naturally. Unfortunately, in 1958 our public schools dropped the Conceptual Method and replaced it with the Behaviorist Method. Now our young lack the concepts of democracy and also the thinking skills needed for better thinking. They are reactionary and this has serious social and political ramifications.
I seriously what to argue for the education that we had, that was modeled after the education of Athens, for human excellence. We must allow for the reality of very few people getting more than an 8th-grade education until recently. Our education system was doing good if it could at least convince the young of the importance of education, but even if that effort succeeded, people didn't earn good wages and few could afford books. They did not have the media we have today. Mostly they were rural people and Christian. Let us look at our history and base our judgments on that knowledge. We have come a long ways, and I don't think those who felt discouraged would be disappointed if they could see us today. But, they would surely be alarmed by what the change in education has done to our consciousness.
Also, and this is very important, we did not know that much about how we think and how a child's brain develops. What we have achieved is amazing considering all the challenges our republic has faced. That is a republic in form, that once upon a time, had a culture for democracy and understood the importance of unions, granges, and fraternal organizations. For darn sure, without education for democracy, it is not known! We have a Christian Republic and that was not the goal of the enlightenment.
Quoting Nobeernolife
Yes, belief systems that are based on fiction are problematic.
The notion that democracy is something very different, and is about discovering truth, comes from philosophy, the Greek and Roman classics. The idea also comes from an old grade school textbook series called the "Democracy Series" and other books written as we mobilized for the second war world, clarifying why our democracy must be defended.
Back in the day our democracy was defined like this...
"Democracy is a way of life and social organization which above all others is sensitive to the dignity of the individual human personality, affirming the fundamental moral and political equality of all men and recognizing no barriers of race, religion, or circumstance." (General Report of the Seminar on "What is Democracy?" Congress on Education for Democracy, August, 1939.)
There are usually 12 characteristics of democracy listed in the books and one of them is "The search for truth". Coming from math and the art of medicine, Athens was leaning more and more to scientific thinking. This was lost to us when Rome fell and it resurfaced during the Renaissance leading to the Age of Enlightenment. That is what Renaissance means, the return of that knowledge and reasoning. You know, the thinking the church suppressed and that eventually lead to modern sciences. Religion must be taken on faith, that is not the same as basing one's life on reason and demanding proof of evidence.
When the Protestants split for the Roman Catholic church and these different religious groups began killing each other and persecuting Jews do you think you would have taken one side over another or talked about religious tolerance? On what grounds would you defend heretics and those who promote religious lies and serve Satan? Is there a moral we can learn from that history-based on faith in God and Satan, not self-evident reason?
Very true. We have a Christian Republic, not a democracy.
You do realize that the notion of all people being equal is a concept based on Christianity, don´t you? As are other concepts fundamental to Western civilization, such as the sanctity of life or neighbourly love. Islam, for example, has none of those.
So PLEASE stop this stupid naive repeating your dogma of generalizing about "religion". there is no such thing a chararacteristic of "religion" that they all share.
You are really running around in circles, returning to your original false assumption.
If your morals forbid theft, then you never steal, even if your hunger is more painful than the hunger of the guy who steals without fear of criminal charges and of what they might lead to.
That's my take, my understanding of what you wrote. There's a bit of a change, but... would you agree with it?
Is that what you mean? Does "without" stand in place of "not due to" without loss of meaning?
It is an axiom in many world religions, but not in al. For example, in islam there is no Golden Rule.
Like Athena, you should stop generalizing about "religion" or "world religion" in your case. It is a romantic, but delusional idea. Religions are very different.
Thank you for asking, Creativesoul.
I think what I meant is that it is of no consequence how MUCH your anti-moral act would change your life situation from the worse to the better, if your morals forbid an action that would make your life situation better, you still don't do it. No matter how much suffering by you could be avoided and how much pleasure could be attained.
For instance, if a religious person considers my position on faith in a god, he would say ""God must be atheist" would rather forego the pleasures and rapture offered by a heavenly life and choose eternal suffering in hell, by refusing to believe in the holy spirit and accepting the way of life and deity of Jesus, in order for him to obey his own spiritual morals, which forbid him to believe in supernatural beings."
I fail to understand what your saying, or what this has to do with "Romanticism"; as far as Islam in specific, I haven't studied it in depth.
I said nothing about romanticism. I just addressed the "Golden Rule".
I'd argue your statement is not particularly relevant here, in asserting that there's no "Golden Rule", or whatever your point is or was.
There is no distinct subjective morality, it is tied with objective morality in morality - if you judge yourself as good you are right or wrong.
If you have personal morals, they are righteous, or non-righteous.
The claim was that all religions are based on the Golden Rule. I simply pointed out that that is incorrect.
What is your objection?
You made that assertion, but I have no reason to believe you are "right".
Do you realize in the US the South used the Bible to justify slavery? That war was so dreadful because both sides thought God was on their side.
At the beginning of the US, Catholics were not allowed to hold office. I have a quaint book about how the Catholics are trying to take over.
We have done better than Europe when it comes to persecution of the Jews, but a main reason for the US constitution declaring freedom of religion was Christians killing Christians. The Mormons faced terrible persecution.
I have to wonder if young Christians today know anything about history? They sure do not know that God and Satan were feared! There could be no Satanism with Christianity. The notion of a loving God and apparently forgetting the religion is just as much about Satan, is relatively new.
The Golden Rule in its prohibitive (negative) form was a common principle in ancient Greek philosophy. Examples of the general concept include: "Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." – Thales (c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC)
Golden Rule - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Golden_Rule
The game is not over yet. I think the pandemic will bring about changes and there is hope we will realize the democratic model for industry can greatly improve our economy and democracy! With the books coming out now, there is a good chance we willreturn education to education for democracy and that would be a huge improvement! I would love it if you responded to all my thoughts, not just the words you want to argue against. We can see the glass as half empty or half full and you are working on the negative while I am working on the positive and defending our democracy as I wish everyone would do. If you are right and I am wrong, then why should we support a very expensive military to defend our country. Morally it clearly would not be worth defending.
Cicero said it is our nature to make the right choice when we know what that is. In our past, those who dropped out of 8th grade to get a job, associated ignorance with bad choices, and this could be a national and private problem. It was their duty as citizens to be as well informed as they could be, so they could participate in civic organizations (unions, granges, fraternities), and government, to correct our problems and lead us to a nation of human excellence. WHEN WE THOUGHT LIKE THIS, WE WERE THE LEADER OF THE WORLD. We are no longer seen as the leader of the world.
Here is the introduction to a grade school history textbook first written in 1936 and reprinted in 1939 and 1942...
"The central purpose of this book is to make citizens better equipped to face realities. At every step the readers are made to see their relationship to everything that surrounds them. The role of people in every historical movement is made prominent so that the reader will understand his place and his importance in modern society, and accept his own personal obligation to be an intelligent and responsible citizen." America's World Backgrounds
This grade school text was written when we began mobilizing for the second world war....
"A democracy thrives upon criticism. When a free people, alert to change, studies its institutions to make them serve more richly the aspirations of the common man, it necessarily discusses the points at which improvements seem to be needed. On the public forum and in the national press interested citizens concentrate their attention upon the defects in the democratic pattern to the extent that a Martian observer might draw the conclusion that, in the opinion of its followers, democracy is a failure.
What the observer does not understand is that the public critics accept the fundamental principles of democracy so completely that they do not need argue about them...." Democracy Series
That last statement was true when we educated for democracy, we stopped doing that in 1958 and began educating the young for a technological society with unknown values. Our reality is very different today. Some changes have been good, but our lack of understanding of fundamental principles and believing the Christian myth that it gave us democracy, is wrong. It is seriously wrong. Our Christian Republic is not the democratic republic we inherited and defended in two world wars, and that is the result of the change in education.
Moral- only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended. And yes, democracy is about morality. Without that education, our morale is very weak. Morale, that high spirited feeling we have when we believe we are doing the right thing. The Spirit of America is dying. Just as the spirit of Jesus would die if churches turn to preparing the young for a technological society with unknown values.
Whoo... where did you get that idea? For someone who wants me to respect all religions and not generalize, that sure seemed like a very US Christian thing to say! How many times have you read the Quaran and how many of your friends are Muslim?
:brow: And I was worried about offending you. No more worries about that. That was a hateful and wrong thing to say. It was so unbelievable that you would say that, I had to read and reread it several times to be sure that is what you said.
The objection to what we said about all religions being based on the golden rule, is your ignorance.
If you want to participate please get informed. You have to be a US Christian because you are repeating their false beliefs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
He was wrong - humans do not do that all the time - not even a big percentile.
We need a push; incentive.
There is high ground for good, what Athena projects is some sort of alternative. Abusing the moral high ground, even perverting it.
We decide what's good, not individuals. We are what's good. What we think are evil, are some mix of good and evil.
I have grew 10,000 trees, to do a great burning of people. I could have grew 10,000 trees and that's all - that would have been good.
I have simply pushed my body to the limit but I've murdered 10,000 cattle. I could have just pushed - that would have been good.
Not all good requires forethought - you are made from good. You push your body - you grow a tree. What you do with that can be evil - but also good.
I did not say that the Golden Rule is unique to Christianity. I said it does exist in Christianity, but not in all religions. Please read before commenting and do not make up false statements. Thanks.
I have read the Koran and the Haddiths, have you? Obviously not, otherwise you would know that what I said is correct. Concepts like the sanctitiy of life, separation of religion and state, and neighbourly love do not exist in islamic teaching. I was simply stating a fact.
Please stop making up things. I never said I want you to "respect all religions". I simply said you stop GENERALIZING about all religions, since they are very different. And, fwiw, I am neither US citizen or Christian.
Here's the problem I have with your position in general - it is too ideo-centric. You don't seem to have a healthy sense of cultural/normative relativism. There is no limit to the possible number of ways to solve a problem and core institutions are precisely what need to be reformed from the bottom up. Democracy, socialism, these are just labels, not recipes. The solution required needs to unite many different domains, economic, social, spiritual, political. If the political dimension is going to be "democratic" then it will certainly have to be a different brand of democracy than I have seen in operation. I like the way many European democracies work, however, coalitions of parties. That seems to me a good model of co-operation.
But you missed these verses.
Well, that was a great maneuver avoiding all my arguments and leading things off in a different direction.
The subject of this thread is morality. The reasoning for democracy comes from Greek and Roman classics. One of my favorites is the Roman Statesman Cicero. He was a must-read in the day of the forefathers of the US. This is the literacy that is essential to our liberty and justice and could there be any reason for arguing against that, or arguing this is not what our founders believed democracy is about?
His quotes are so good it is hard to know where to stop, but with that last one, I must say, our social and economic justice would be much better if we read Cicero rather than when people read the Bible with its notion of why we are less than noble. The God of Abraham religions are not good for democracy because its moral reasoning is not compatible with the reasoning for democracy. Followers of the Bible tried to manifest Saints, but I believe we are more liking to achieve human excellence with the Greek and Roman classics.
For the organization of democracy, that is not what this thread is about, except perhaps if we focus on the necessity of checks and balances and what is wrong with tyranny. That would be very relevant to this moment in time and the problem with trying to rule as though single-handedly a person can rule a country and get good results. The importance of democracy and moral choices is knowledge, and one man can not possibly have that breadth of knowledge essential to good government yet the US is now run by a President who has dismissed everyone who doesn't kiss his ass, and put in their places people willing to kiss his ass, even though they don't have merit for the job and certainly lack honor because those with honor are walking away. That is a Christian problem.
I would absolutely love to talk about the US adopting the German model of bureaucracy that is Prussian military bureaucracy applied to citizens, and what Christianity has to do with this problem, and the New World Order, or the Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower of warned us about, but shouldn't that go in another thread?
Exactly. I would act morally whether or not legislatively required to. I internalize normative authority, as I'm sure do many people. Traditionally, the internalization of moral authority is viewed as a normal part of socio-psychological development.
Traditional we educated for that, and the 1958 National Defense Education Act, ended that education.
Did you read the Cicero quotes and get this moral judgment is based on nature, not religion? That is, democracy is about searching for truth using scientific thinking, not "faith-based on mythology", and that search leads to good medicine and good government and is what made us great.
What is extremely important to us today is understanding why our president needs to be humble and honorable? Is a president someone who flaunts health precautions and speaks in favor of denial and carelessness, someone we want leading us now? Is he being a good example? Do we want our children growing up to be like him, and should money be the bottom line of all decisions, or are we having a moral problem?
Can anyone see, Iran and Muslims have grounds for saying we are Satan on earth, and why they are feeling far more pious and justified in opposing us because we no longer stand for a high morality? Since 1958 our bottom line has been military power and money. The values of the Military-Industrial Complex originated in Prussia and was adopted by the US, discontinuing education for good moral judgment and leaving moral training to the Church, and "authority" to those in power. Religion that has been behind one war after another. Our world image has changed and nations that were our friends now threaten us.
Can we talk about morals as Cicero did
It was morally wrong for the US to invade Iraq and doing so escalated wars and human suffering and the potential for a world war. A moral must include the future, and that must be more than 5 years. It must include more than what is good for the US at this moment in time. We are not thinking morally because public education stopped preparing the young for good moral judgment and left that to the Church. We now think Christianity invented democracy, and God favors us and His will is what we want and He will give us His "Power and Glory" to get it. I assume we should not take political discussion too far, but our image is no longer what it was. The world thought we would be the last nation to be a Military Industrial Complex and here we are, the strongest Military Industrial Complex on earth with China now right on our butts technologically and economically. The world expects much from us and we have a President who is making it very clear our focus is on our own interest, and that is not exactly a moral interest because it is only about our own interest. China has made it clear, it will play the power game with us. Russia has wanted to out-compete us. Too bad, the competition is not a moral one.
None of those are from strong Haddiths and refer to interaction with kuffars. You really do not know what you are talking about here.
Quoting Athena
I am not sure what any of your long confused ramble about US policy (which I certainly do not defend) has to do with morality or with my complaint about your generalizing about "religion"?
Lenin was glorified for his virtues by millions. Then and now.
Lenin was hated for his vile, evil acts by milliions. Then and now.
Athena: who is the ultimate judge? Without invoking god.
There is ALWAYS two opposing solutions to every moral decision. Nobody can declare to be the ultimate judge, or name an ultimate judge.
Your fighting for morality and morally sound solutions to problems is making castles of sand on the seashore. A couple of waves, and they are washed away.
If you want to build relationships, morality is a nice word, but you must consider actual interests, needs, and wants, without any regard to morality, as morality is a mirage, a phantasm, a here-today-gone-tomorrow thing.
You got all it all wrong; what's definite creates the moral way(way because if we're discussing morality, there is being moral or immoral) if you're muttering under your breath that morality is a made up concept you're wrong. If your text looks wrong, it probably is, where it looks wrong, as your eyes are more advanced tools for thought than your hands/mouth. Look where you're wrong.
Please understand that there can be no good with no mathematical constraints. Killing wouldn't ever be bad if a life wasn't lost. Your words point to kill being a personal, solipsistic phemonenon, judged as evil because it's superficially maleficent. When the reason it's maleficent is clear, we lose a good life. For the point of fact, killing isn't always losing an important life - it can be good.
None of the words you said would string together if you could not target good with your sense, prior (by focusing and following the moral way), and then type accordingly.
To conclude morality is a real phemonenon which consists of a moral way that you can neglect.
I do not see how that follows from what you wrote.
Yeah I have a lot of pain in my mind. I went to type something else and I was distracted.
It's not the answer, it's a summation.
If you can sense me at all here, it has released this thought and is currently trying to evade with a softer lock.
Trust me, times are harsh for me.
It creeps up on me while I think and steals my thought train, trapping me in a word world of awkward silence. I falter, try to think - and am pressured so my thought is silent, neglect.
I'm like wtf let me think, I shout, get wrathful and it chases and punctures my senses.
I can talk or move my eyes.
Trust me I know the answer it's currently trapping me like that.
Whoa Nelly.
I think you preceded me in creating my ultimate invention: a parser, that takes nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc. etc. at random, and arranges them into syntactically proper sentences, with no regard to semantic meaning. Then watch the outcome.
Correct, I never see a consistent or honest definition of "religion" used, usually just a strawman or neologism in which it refers to "anything a person doesn't like", or neutral concepts such as "dogmatism" or "legalism" or "legalistic attitudes or behaviors" which have nothing directly or inherently to do with "religion", and exist in other contexts, such as political ideology, or secular "religion" or philosophy.
Such as the principles of the Secular Humanist "religion" (or philosophy if that is prefered), often ignorantly or dishonestly conflated with "atheism" by its adherants, which are simply accepted on "faith", "axiom", and so on, unable to be further asserted except by circular reasoning, and highly questionable and debatable to begin with, whether from a "religious", a "secular" perspective, or anything else; just being one of many different sets of philosophical axioms in existence.