there seem to be some smart people on this site, so i'd like some thoughts... i've been hit many times w/ the ? "Why do bad things happen to good people?" (ie, why did lil' Jimmy die when he was two via malaria or whatever the case). In other words, somehow i've adapted in my nature that there are certain things that are simply not right in this world (rape, starvation, disease, you name it, fill in the blank). Which leads me to the question how I came to this conclusion in the first place. What, in me, in us, instictively knows that there are certain things in this world that just aren't right? Does a fish feel out of place in water (perhaps they do, i'm not a fish)? Terrible things happening to people isn't a new thing, by any means (bad crap has been happening to us for quite a while, right?). Then why am I so perplexed by it? How can thoughts like, "This shouldn't be happening" or "This isn't the way it's supposed to be?" come to me unless, somehow, instictively, I know of a way things ARE supposed to be? Another example, for instance, is time. Why am I so amazed by it? ("Look how time flys!" "Why, I feel like I was just sixteen yesterday.") If I am meant to be in time, why is there something inherent in me that is simply not temporal? Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks armyboyjay
Why do we seem to have certain instinctive ideals/values? Evolution. We needed to be social animals to survive natural selection. Otherwise we would have been tiger food and such. To facilitate the functioning of groups, we have ways of getting along. A group can hardly function if some go around torturing others and such. What we see as "right" or "good" is generally based on what worked and stayed with us through groups that survived and proliferated.
Don't forget that the flip side. Murder is just an extension of survival instinct. It's really just another population control. I try to avoid the terms "good" and "evil." They are relative. What may be good to one culture may be evil to another. Our coda is based upon Mesopotamian and later European extrapolations of western ideas. Still they preach that murder is evil, while practicing the crime on others. Murder is almost universally accepted in these terms. Only Quakers hold staunchly to pacifism. We are perplexed because we know that another way exists. Right now we are locked into this system by virtue of a common seperation. There have been strides to avert public reactions to killing through graphic representation in media, but we need to bring this to the world less it be in vein.
I wouldn't say all our ethis and stuff are based on the early Mesopotamian city-states. There was a lot going on everywhere else when they were doing their thing. The various peoples of Europe, for example, did survive in groups before any serious ongoin contact with the middle east.
All humans seem to have ethical systems that are intended to result in well-being for the group. Much of ethics is about cooperation and unselfishness -- imagining what you would want if you were in the place of another person. This has a lot of evolutionary advantages... utilitarian groups of animals reproduce more as a group.
Simply put, a community of organisms working together has much better chances of survival than if it were an "every organism for itself" type of deal.
Here is the problem with that: we have no specific instances of organized civilized Europeans prior to contact with mid-eastern systems. Even after contact we have a large swelling of barbarian peoples without an organized coda. The most likely culprit was a lack of written language. Greece and Rome introduced these ideas to the Northern Europeans. The Goths, Angles and Franks existed at the nexus of nomadic and sedintary tendencies. Only after gaining infrastructure did true philosophy develop. This is a rough pattern of development for all groups of humans from Egypt to the Inca to Greece to the Chinese Dynasties. We have instances of coda being taught through oral histories but only in the loosest sense. The ten commandments for instance were probably taught on the ten fingers. These are always basic and on the shallow side of content. True ethics are only the result of advanced civilizations.
***i've been hit many times w/ the ? "Why do bad things happen to good people?" (ie, why did lil' Jimmy die when he was two via malaria or whatever the case).*** Part of the problem, I think, is the assumption we make about death based on our life experience. That is, we who are still living "feel badly" when someone dies. Therefore, we assume that death is a bad thing. In reality, we really have no proof that death is bad. In fact, it might be quite the opposite.
