Morality and burden upon society

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by timojin, Jun 30, 2017.

  1. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    i want to clarify that i don't mean that those who are in fortunate positions in life should feel guilty because of that, it's just that the human mind tends to desperately want to tie up any loose ends and justify even the unjustifiable to do so, which is, also unethical and insulting to those that are victims of events and circumstances in life that they may also not deserve. so the idea of the infallible something whether it's science or religion, is blind, when it pertain to how life really is here.

    for instance, the case of the 3 year old girl who was literally raped to death which was told to me recently by someone who knew personally of the case is not justifiable. there was no good purpose for that. this idea that everything happens for the best or that others are just examples of positive or negative is not always true because not everyone had a choice. it's not just the religious that is prone to self-serving and erroneous philosophical ideas. this is a messy, faulty and imperfect world/nature and anything one can imagine as well as the unthinkable and abjectly unfair or unethical also occurs.

    to declare everyone has a purpose in the sense, again, the assumption it is justified due to some notion of universal infallibility is also wrong. who are you to say what someone's purpose really was? this is a place where one's purpose can be lost, marred, twisted, misused, degraded and even stopped. people can even kill you for your purpose, even it it's true or good. there are no guarantees here. so it's insulting and even unethical to assume and proclaim that everything that happens is for the good just because that good is mostly what you experience in this life which is temporal and mostly due to circumstances or even luck in many cases. if you are blessed in life, that is great as i would hope many more should be blessed but don't insult others by saying what happens to them differently is what they deserve. there are good things to happen to those who are undeserving just as the opposite as (bad things that happen to the undeserving) well as every other possibility. the best combination being good people who also are in good positions or blessed. they also do much good here because they have the power to do so and blessed enough to do so in a way that doesn't unfairly deplete or sacrifice them.

    a very simple but true example: animals in shelters who were abused. some will be saved, some will not make it and literally they all can't anyways. the world is not fair because the system is not fair. the very laws of nature are not fair. some pets have good owners and some will have bad owners who beat, torture and abuse them. did they deserve that? of course not. but that is where we are. in the same token, don't insult other people because you assume their lesser or bad lot in life was something they deserve.
     
    Last edited: Jul 15, 2017
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  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    First let me apologize. It was supposed to be a PM and I didn't know it would show in the public forum side-bar. Moreover I should have identified the thread
    And indeed you identified it correctly in your earlier post #16 in another thread.

    So, this must have been just posted in haste. See post #97
     
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  5. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    I apologise

    I only remembered #16 not the big booboo #97

    Kicks himself in the ass and no dessert tonight

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    Cheers

    PS

    I'm no good multitasking looking at the time #97 would be watching news

    Even news is hard

    Does anybody else have trouble reading the scrolling text AND listen to the news reader?

    And I added chat Sciforum

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
    Last edited: Jul 16, 2017
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    Back in the days before penicillin and the rest, syphilis was a major cause of death.

    AFAIK there isn't a single communicable disease that kills as high a proportion of Americans now as syphilis did in 1917, unless old age pneumonia is lumped in with old age flu and the deathbed nature of them both is ignored. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/lead1900_98.pdf

    So we have apparently improved in our morality a great deal in the past 100 years.
     
  8. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    3,252

    I am not so sure, in the late 1970 we slopped down in morality we got HIV/ AIDS to add into venereal diseases inventory. A product of HIV in the USA same sex marriages, which is the ultimate.

    http://science.sciencemag.org/conte...sci_2017-07-20&et_rid=41087911&et_cid=1451066
     
  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Or through a standard common blood transfusion, before we started testing blood donations for the HIV virus. As I understand it, the origin of HIV may well have been from a monkey bite in Africa. Homosexual monkeys?
    HIV is a virus with a very long incubation period before it becomes symptomatic. For some people with very healthy immune systems it may take years.
    IMO, resistance might possibly be due to sickle cell anemia, which is a peculiar African "disease" which is actually an evolved defense mechanism against malaria.
     
  10. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Or by accident.
     
  12. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    3,252

    It may have started in Africa , but over here , it was noticed on some Haitian homosexuals , I notice in the Discover magazine , the confusion was with potosi sarcoma then the spread continued in San Fransisco in the homodexual comunity. After once the individual was infected and if he was a junkie he passed down with blood
    with used needles . As far morality , after the casualty increased among homosexuals some passed HIV to their wife and so women got infected , and the circle wern on . Because the high casualty among homosexuals and they had partners and as they got sick they promoted same sex marriage so the survivor would get the benefit of social security.
    As the epidemic flourished there was a big cry for safe sex, and a heavy promotion for condoms.
    So this is the morality of this latest 40 years
     
  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Yes, it also prevents unwanted pregnancy, and gonorrhea, and syphilis and a host of other STDs, which were problems in heterosexual sex hundreds of years before HIV came along.
    https://www.cdc.gov/std/general/default.htm
     
  14. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    3,252
    I agree with you all the viruses existed . But we are talking about morality, in the 1950 to 1970 the only diseases I knew was chancre . gonorrhea and syphilis , now day we have added HIV, chlamydia, and other. I think they come with promiscuity, and promiscuity is related to a decrease in mortality were abstinence is a status quo .
     
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    There is a danger in uninformed teenagers having safe sex as well as the stigma associated with teenagers buying prophylactics.!
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    How about cancer? That rate is drastically on the increase also. Does that have anything to do with sexual morals?

    You want to hear about morals, as usual George Carlin nails it in unambiguous terms.;
     
  17. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    I wonder how you feel about a head of state willfully doing nothing effective about an epidemic in hopes that it kills people he doesn't like?

    That's the morality of American moralism.
     
  18. timojin Valued Senior Member

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    3,252
    Every head of state is a killer or he gives order to kill. "{The moral is thou shalt not kill"
    Now lets look upon mass population, and compare the killing in the last 40 to 50 years .
    I hope I understood your post.
     
  19. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    37,882
    No, actually I'm talking about deciding to take a moral stance against doing anything useful to combat a rising deadly epidemic because a head of state wants to believe the disease is God's revenge against sinners. That really did happen in the U.S. People had to fight tooth and nail just to fight back against HIV. (See #84↑ above for a brief reflection, from a moralist, on how "AIDS is not the enemy".)

    Or some bizarre overlap and therefore seemingly obvious conflict from overseas: While local authorities were among those spreading superstition that having sex with a virgin girl will cure a man of HIV, government ministers told women they are raped because they look too slutty.

    What's really sick about that latter is how it sounds the same anywhere; the moralists presume men simply unable to not force themselves upon women, and would have women pretty much plan their lives around this expectation. We hear it in the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia—wherever people roam, human beings tend to expect men to rape, and require that women are to blame and have responsibility for stopping them, and that apparently primarily by appeasement and accommodation, by saying yes so it isn't rape anymore. I would say, funny how that works out, except it's not.

    The species still has some work left to do on these points.
     
  20. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You were very ignorant, now you are less so. That's not the same thing as other people becoming immoral.
    There is no human society in which abstinence is a status quo.
    Mike Pence, while governor of Indiana, defunded and thereby closed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Indiana that was the only HIV testing site in its county. At the same time, he blocked the needle exchange programs in Indiana. And right about then, the current opioid boom among Republican voters and their children started, and that county was a hot spot.

    So in that county, among largely Republican voters, a needle drug boom happened with shared needles and no HIV or Hep testing.

    The result, in that one county, was an extra 200 HIV infections and several multiples of that in other shared needle diseases. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mike-pence-indiana-hiv_us_57f53b9be4b002a7312022ef

    Of course these were mainly Republicans and their children, which mitigates Pence's guilt somewhat - they kind of volunteered for it. But still there is the extra cost and risk for regular, innocent folks and their kids in the world outside of Indiana.
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2017
  21. birch Valued Senior Member

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    5,077
    Its telling that the more evolved one becomes, the more ethically people become beyond the base laws of nature. We can see and understand that life lives at the expense and suffering of another life. That its really a zero sum game. We can see that its not 'right.' So if we are a product of this universe entirely, why could we realize it?

    We shouldnt cower under the notion of the infallibility of a god, universe or anything or worship that which is irredeemably wrong or just because we exist within it. We obviously can grow beyond it as beings in our own right.

    The universe is merely something to learn and manipulate to our benefit because it is not concerned with yours or best interest. There might be some cool or interesting things about it but that doesn't conclude putting it on a pedestal of a god. The universe and the laws of nature are not to be trusted with some naive notion it all works out for the good. There is no such thing and any living being will realize that when you trust the universe as if its some benevolent entity as there are predators waiting in the wings ready to eat you alive as well as even extreme forms of abject amorality and ruthless disregard, even destroying the very best or precious or could be most helpful. It runs the way it runs and is the way it is trying to kill, block, taint, damage or cripple at every turn. It does not care.

    The higher truths we realize has nothing to do with our circumstances and where we reside. The most pure and true part of us is superior to that. Our consciousness can grow beyond our circumstances not second guessing ourselves to conform to a beta, fragmented or probably compromised universe for life with a blind assumption its the ultimate truth.

    Its very telling that its the very best of human consciousness that is trying to improve life standards despite the laws of nature that work against it. Its a pure and fair love, respect, understanding and compassion that is beyond this suffering and predatorial existence.

    God created this universe? Would you worship such a god if it existed? That's a pure moral test of your own ethics.

    We had no choice to exist here but ask yourself would you sign up for a system where your life could only exist at the expense of another? Would you realize that is insane?

    Based on pure, unadulterated abstract ethics, we are all guilty just by existing. Does that sound like a loving god who pits your survival based on the loss of another? But we're not truly guilty unless we dont realize it or add greedily or gratuitously to the pain of others because we didnt ask for this. Those who use the excuse that what they can do is justified because the universe allows it are unethical as just because you can do something, doesnt mean you should or its justified. What if this universe was a moral test? Would you use the justification that anything is okay just because you can? If one were to devise a platform or playground to test ones true ethical character (beyond of course what is necessary for life/survival), well, this would be pretty apt, no? Would you add to additional pain and suffering in the world and justify it with the laws of the universe while ignoring your moral compass as imaginary? What if that moral compass is the source of the real or higher truth beyond this existence?

    Even the concept of the sacrifice of one man such as jesus christ is a moral test. Even if one person must suffer so others dont have to, it is still unethical because they are also a life. That is what true, pure and actual ethics means.

    The gnostics were totally on point in pointing out the real uncomfortable truth.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2017
  22. birch Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,077
    One of the most pervasive and insistent character flaws of many in society is their myopic, petty selfishness and misplaced jealousy/envy/ill will.

    There have been many people throughout my life who were always trying to pull me down in some fashion. This is a degenerate and negative coping mechanism or sense of competition. I've had people very superficially evaluate me as being better off when they have no idea the hells ive had to endure or overcome. They just assume i have an unfair advantage. Unfair to them is anyone with anything they dont have or exactly equal which could be anything and really none of their business. Instead of focusing on themselves, they would like to damage others to feel superior. This is the cause of a lot of negativity and bad relations/enemies or even secret enemies in society.

    This started with one side of my family because my father was wealthy to just general people who dont even know you thinking you should be hurt just because you may keep getting up. And if you get up, they assume you had no challenges. Its sick and they can get an advantage that way but what ive learned is the world is full of lies amd impostors so as long as you try to maintain your integrity as much as possible and not stoop to their level which can be tempting when frustrated, thats more important.

    Let me give you an example of how stupid , base and ignorant your average person is. When i was in the military, i had a roommate from mexico who seemed to think she was entitled to feel sorry for herself as if others couldnt possibly have had challenges or suffered in life. So she assumed i was born with a silver spoon in my mouth (really?) and was very judgemental/prejudicial. So she felt entitled to steal from me because i must have had it better. Her life story was that she had a poor but good family who cared for her which was way better than my situation and would whine about being lonely due to sporadic bfs at the time as if others dont go through that, as if others of different races cant be poor or from abusive or unfortunate backgrounds. Even throughout my life, i dont have that attitude towards people who may have better lives. This is the difference between the mentality of those who want to improve the world vs the social meme of lowering or spiteful toward others to have more advantage. These types of mentalities add to the problems already there in society. This is just one example. There are many people like this across all spectrums of society.

    Its very hard not to have contempt and anger toward humanity when there are so many selfish and small-minded people who want to hurt you more than you've already been or have no idea or care of your struggles. They would rather sabotage or trip you up if they could. This type of mentality is what is the root cause of all the envy and ill will between people.

    Ignorance, selfishness and inequality.
     
  23. river

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    17,307
    Bertrand Russell would agree with you . Pick up the Magazine , Philosophy Now , issue 120 , it is dedicated to this philosopher and otherwise I agree with you .

    Read about " cognitive dissonance " it is a fascinating understanding of human psychology .
     

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