"Beyond Good and Evil"

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by MISSunderstanding@, Mar 28, 2004.

  1. BMW-Guy www.SendMeToChernobyl.com Registered Senior Member

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    There is (in my humble opinion) 2 reasons for "doing good":

    1) For yourself (you personally get something for doing good).

    2) For a religion/diety. It is God who is perfectly Good, and it is God who requires you "do good".

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  3. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    P.M. Thorne:
    Interesting.

    But imagine having done all that hard work for a stranger who looked down on you as vermin, what then? Would you still feel as proud as you do today in having broken your back chopping wood instead of playing video games in your childhood? See the difference?

    Unless I've gotten ahead of myself and assumed you worked for a loving family- in that case kick my head in, my apologies.

    Dr. Lou:
    Lying to you about what you are capable of.

    Not nuclear science, my boy, let's go at it again. "I could crush a man's skull in with a hammer, comrades! Won't even flinch! Why? I can't stand humans, those egotistical swine!" says Lou.

    The reply:

    You have allowed distance, sterility and what looks like Western comfort to lie to you.

    One cannot base their capabilites in a vaccum of sterility. Here is where you get lost and wonder waht the fuck I mean by sterility.
    Defficiencies in exposure, experience, maturity- you lack opportunity to test your 'claim' in much the same way Galileo did in testing his after the Inquisition. Sterility.

    You cannot base your caliber only on the contempt you feel for humanity.. Akin to the Jews who base their distiction and genius on their contempt for the Phillistines or Samaritans. This simple trait does not make them any more genious, moral, or powerful than a Christian or a Muslim.

    I do not deny you hate people, I do as well. Most. However, you are gong around blowing your horns about something you know little about and I don't, realizing the hypocrisy and reticence I may show once given the chance.

    Are you any more brutal and value-neutral than a Hun or a Bundy? No. In that case you are only like those little boys on "Jackass" beating each other up with bats. OOhhh....ahhhh....how primitive.

    See or no see?

    Quaint- you don't understand what I am saying at all- WOOOSH and WHIIZZ- there it went right over your head and gave you a haircut, huh?

    You know damn well what I am saying. Its pubescent to keep reverting to the 'animal world' as reasons for your misanthropy.

    Like a Baptist appealing to the animal kingdom as proof of why homesexuality is not 'natural' yet there they are those baseless imbeciles standing there with clothes on, on the cellphone, driving a car and cooking. All 'unnatural' traits.

    In short, this tells me the idiot has not thought out his reasons why homosexuality is 'sinful'. Its in much the same way that a person appealing to 'baby whales' everytime morality comes up only comes off as an idiot, a teen snot, a yapping wannabe when we hear his cute claims of being able to crush a man's skull in with a hammer without flinching.

    Riiiiiiiiiiiight...........

    Still lost?

    Unless you could take that babe by its legs and smash its brains against the wall like nice little Roman, then would I reconsider your claim.

    Til then- no cigar, chico.

    Fuck.You.


    Now for the second post.....................
     
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  5. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    Wolf:
    Damnit, Wolf, you went there.

    Computers- my field. In the spirit of Turing- ever heard of a kernel? I'm no expert in this field (I only hold a degree in it) but these are something like a sieve or a net that ensures secure access between programs and hardware. Think of it like this- imagine that all around this kernel that stands between the hardware and the program is a sea of bacteria and damage, a quagmire of noise and bugs.

    The kernel is there to ensure clean or easy communication between the program and the hardware, limiting use or freeing it by not allowing the boat (kernel) carrying information to and fro to be infected- kind of like ensuring no mice or bacteria from the Old World jumped ship in Columbus' time and infected the New world . Now imagine the brain as program, limbs as hardware.

    Maybe these brutal, value-neutral people, these few that do exist (and I doubt it is me)....are missing this kernel.....thingy? The 'crime' is a manifestation of infection?

    The checkbit analogy I like as well- how its placed at the at the end of a chunk of code and based on whether that bit is a "1" or a "0", the alarm sets off and the software detects an error. This error would be like a compunction or remorse or emotion invoked by the brutal act.

    The majority of us have this in ther program (or brain) and true barbarians, so to speak, do not have it.

    Something as simple as a boolean value, its either this or that. Irresistible to grind 'morality' down to something so simply but alas, I know its fucking retarded.

    But see what I am getting at?

    A million things I can say here but watch the little runt (the good doctor) accuse me of bragging.

    (I remember reading an account of a Holocaust survivor who had been inured to the presence of death, and the only reason I remember it is because she pinpointed how and when.

    She was standing speaking with a fellow prisoner in Auchwitz or Drachau (sp?) I forget where, but she said in midsentence her friend dropped to the floor in a pool of blood. That brief instance, that small margin that seperates life- a warm, loving, vulnerable, perfectly scared living being like she was full of prayers and hopes with a dead lump of meat..........seeing those two states so easily juxtaposed is what killed God for her.)
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2004
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  7. P. M. Thorne Registered Senior Member

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    "IN ANS. TO GENDENKEN, WHO WROTE: But imagine having done all that hard work for a stranger who looked down on you as vermin, what then? Would you still feel as proud as you do today in having broken your back chopping wood instead of playing video games in your childhood? See the difference?

    Unless I've gotten ahead of myself and assumed you worked for a loving family- in that case kick my head in, my apologies."

    The details of such things startle folks of today, and I am not looking for sympathy, but understanding. No, Hon, our folks had nothing, those of us who had folks. We worked for others, but you what, we did not envy them. Some were good to us, some did not give a flying flip, (they were the worst, I think), and some were butts, but we worked for them anyway. I was not intending to imply in any way that it was really the same as working in a sweat shop, but I do similarities. Awakening at three in the morning, taking a couple piece of lightbread with baloney in between, or jelly, if there was no baloney, coffee or kool aid in a fruitjar, and heading for the fields. It was not fun for me most of the time. I hated picking up potatoes. It about kills the back of a skinny little girl. Some of my people lived in housing for the hired on property owned by folks much better off. When went bad for the bosses, everyone was sad, and worked harder. Maybe we were/are simple minded, but we do not hate people. I like almost everyone I meet, like you give a crap. But, I just thought I would follow up. Actually, I was surprised that anyone responded. Some times were better than others depending upon how well we were. Sometimes, being transient was very demeaning, because was crippled and divorced, unlike all her siblings, we were pretty pathetic at times. Once she, my first stepfather and I were looking desperately for a field. I was about five or six. The steady followers knew the fields like the backs of their hands, and usually only the desperate would repick. We were among the desperate, almost out of gas enroute to God knows where, no place to lay our heads and nothing to eat. We were finally allowed to "repick" this cotton patch. It had been picked twice already, so you can imagine. After a couple of hours or so, there was so little cotton gathered that we laid the sack down and left. I remember my mother saying that she would pick s... with the chickens before she would ever be humilated again like that, and I remember the strength I felt from her words, and never forgot it. Sometimes being hungry is not the worst thing. We slept behind a big sign board on the highway that night, and I vowed I would never ever sleep behind a sign board again.

    My kids never did without much of anything. They had a nice home, nice clothes, good food, and took it mostly for granted like any other kids, but often as I lie on my bed I thank God for shelter, food, clothing, what education I have and for the strength of character and love of mankind I have in my heart.

    I promise I will not bother you guys anymore with your more intellectual things, unless I have something more pertinent to offer, but I get so tired of people thinking that everyone should be like America is today. We are overweight, depressed, anxious, anarexic (sp?), greedy and unthankful. Did I mention sue-happy?

    Is evil then much like darkness, having no color of its own, and as darkness is the absence of light, with no speed of its own, is evil simply the absense of good? I think so. .............There is interesting about you, and something kind of scary in some of the stuff you say, Gendanken, if it were not for some sensitive reasoning showing now and again.

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    Take care.
     
  8. Xev Registered Senior Member

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    Nasor:
    Nope. He was simply referring to a state of pure nihilism that is neither good nor evil but above and across *jenseits* in German. Having reached such a state, the free human - or an overman - is ready to create new values.

    Or rather that society has decayed because of them to a point where we are about to transcend them.

    BMG-Guy:

    Uh-huh, and neither of those applies all the time, and the second does not apply at all. Even if they did, your motives are base.

    gendanken:
    This is somehow an insult?

    "Girl" does describe you perfectly. You have even the cattiness and the perpetual fear of your own gender down perfect.

    Your attitude is uncalled for. I was nice to you. But now you've lowered yourself to neurosis and paranoid musings about shit that doesn't even matter.
    I was hoping it was simply some little boy barking about trivialities that inspires it. But that's not it!
    PMS would at least be acceptable.
    But that's not it either.
    It's simply because we just can't trust other women when it comes to boys, can we?

    Stupid cunt.
     
  9. BMW-Guy www.SendMeToChernobyl.com Registered Senior Member

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    85
    Ok, then Xev,

    As one less-knowledgable philosopher (me) to a more-knowledgable philosopher (you), how would you respond to the question?

    Thanks!

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  10. Xev Registered Senior Member

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    BMW-Guy;
    Don't do that, I don't know shit.
    What reason do we have for "doing good"? Because it's instinctual to "do good" for some. It's instinctual to do evil for that matter.

    Why should we restrain the latter instincts? Because we'll be imprisoned if we don't.
     
  11. BMW-Guy www.SendMeToChernobyl.com Registered Senior Member

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    85
    Okay, say I develope a method for stealing apples that allows me to steal several apples without out ever getting caught. In addition, I don't even feel guilty because I've done it so much. I lose nothing.

    Why should I ever even consider NOT stealing--I always win, don't I?

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  12. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    Xev:

    "Like, *nervous twitch* why don't you go back to chatting with gendanken about what I may or may not be telling people..... *queef* "

    Far from paranoia, of course. You stupid, stoopid cunt, case closed.


    P.M.T:
    All that tilling soil and living hand to mouth, and now look at you in the luxuries of the digital world. How's it feel? This is why life intrigues, the nuance and unpredictablity.

    Humans pale in contrast.

    (quick question- what do you mean by "my people"? Are you Hopi? Navajo? Only curious.)

    Bah- don't say things like that, you bother no one.

    We can even make it pertinent- the slavish desire of all nations to naturalize into an American state. We are seen as evil, powerhungry tyrants but if an inferior freely submists itself to the manipulations of its superior why attach moral connotations to the act?

    Biologically speaking, when a stronger cell assimliates a weaker one is that evil? Of course not, there is no alternative.

    Not so- considering this thread concerns Nietzche there is no reason to think in terms of mutual exclusivity or hybridism.

    Think of floating above both concepts "good" and "evil" in an entirely new realm- it will not do for one to either frown or laud either.
    And this realm is not a means for healthy coopearation among people so as to peacefully coexist- its meant for the creation of individual human greatness, even at the cost of others.

    This is freedom.
     
  13. BigBlueHead Great Tealnoggin! Registered Senior Member

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    1,996
    BMW-Guy: You always win the apples you get, but you may spend the rest of your time looking around your house saying "Where'd all my stuff go?"

    Okay, picture yourself in the olden days. BMWs didn't exist in those days, and "ChariotGuy" sounds stupid, so let's just pull a name out of the air for ya... how about... Hammurabi?

    Okay, so one day you go home and all your furniture's gone, your money's gone, and someone killed your grandmother and pissed in your hanging plant. You can't figure out who did it, and you're sick of this happening every day (except for the grandmother thing, which is new). So, you figure you're gonna fix it up with that new-fangled technology, the written word.

    Sound stupid so far? Well, you're a smart guy... you've got a PLAN. It all started three weeks ago, when you heard one of your neighbours scream out "God can suck my hairy balls!" Since then - not that you've been paying that much attention - nothing has happened to the dude, and you're pretty sure that, whatever else God may be, God is stone deaf. You are also banking that God cannot read, which is not much of a stretch, considering that God never does anything.

    So, you get started right on in there with your wedge-shaped writing implement on that piece of clay.

    "God says don't steal Hammurabi's stuff," you write.

    Nah, they'll never believe that. I mean, if everyone knows you wrote it, that's gonna sound pretty suspect. Wipe wipe wipe.

    "God says don't steal people's stuff," you write. Better, better. You were never any good at stealing anyway, bad luck or bad genes, doesn't matter. Now it sounds like God's doing the talking here, takes away that suspect edge, let superstition do the work.

    So you write up a bunch of rules, mostly rules against things you'd never want to do, some rules against things that you might want to do but you hate when they happen to you so much that you put 'em on there anyway. Then - here's the brilliant part - you wait for a good time and go running out to the marketplace at a dead run.

    "Holy crap you guys!" you shout, sounding as sincere as possible. "God just gave me these tablets! They say all kinds of stuff on them!"

    You let someone else read them aloud, and stand in the crowd panting from exertion and saying things like, "Don't piss in people's hanging plants? Whoa, what a concept! I don't know how many times that's happened to people I know!"

    Since you know that your friends are a cowardly and superstitious lot, you figure that by working this situation a little, you can get them to follow the rules out of vague, inchoate fear of holy reprisal, which means - !! you get to keep your furniture !!

    All you have to do to seal this deal is get some hot coals, and secretly introduce your neighbor's hairy balls to them, just to make sure that his little blasphemy does not expose God's total indifference.

    Morality is a technology, like shoes. It has real, immediate payoffs if taken as an average across society, particularly because it protects you from petty crime...
     
  14. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    4,779
    Blue:
    *chuckle*
    Muhahaha- cha cha cha.....

    In the spirit of saying much with little:

    Crowd control.

    BMW:
    What are you babbling about?
     
  15. BMW-Guy www.SendMeToChernobyl.com Registered Senior Member

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    LOL............That's quite the theory you have there!

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  16. Xev Registered Senior Member

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    BMW-Guy:
    "Why should I ever even consider NOT stealing--I always win, don't I?"

    Why should you? I don't see the issue here.
     
  17. Semon Howdy, hi and hello. Registered Senior Member

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    285
    Its my mind My concept learnt when I was a child make me to do good
     
  18. Fenris Wolf Banned Banned

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    567
    Gendanken :

    Niiice... you've taken my half thought out idea and put flesh on the bones. As a side thought, there is something in the way computers work that reminds us so often of the human brain... as though we've designed them using our own minds as a template without even fully knowing how our minds work. It's so easy to draw parallels between ourselves and computers but back when the first computers appeared we had little idea of how the brain worked at all (and still don't). Hm. Anyway.

    So we're basically considering the kernel to be not only a controller, but a filtration process betwixt bios (instinct) and conscious thought?

    Aye. But I don't really believe that that kernel is ever actually missing... or at least it would be extremely rare for it to be. Alright, so I'm considering two separate things here - individuals who break this mould, and groups.
    I'm assuming the kernel to be there as a result of some evolutionary process, a survival mechanism for the species. What then would give rise to it's dampening or nullification? In the case of individuals, most often this would be a result of circumstance or experience - in a word, trauma. I'm willing to consider the possibility of the occasional few being born with it "missing", but as I said I don't consider this to be common even in those who break the mold of society.

    So we have two the possibility of a few being born with a "lack", and a majority in my opinion with it having been nullified to some extent through traumatic experience, leading to serial killers and sociopaths. There is a third type I'm considering as well - those who break it down themselves. With modern access to education and "advanced" thought, there are many (particularly in the West) who embark on a kind of personal deconstruction. Those who not only know of the concept of absolute morality, but understand and believe in it's non-existance. The majority act without full consideration of their actions, their code of morality never fully explored. The "sheep", in short. Then we have some who almost reverse-engineer their own beliefs - and over time, once these beliefs or values are understood for what they are, they become of far less importance and their impact or control over actions reduced. I might be reaching here, but a comparison of The Sibling to yourself - one who reads but does not absorb, and one who does. Which is more capable of breaking the mould... with me?

    In groups, it is probably different. Your use of the word "barbarians" above got me thinking about the the tribes of old and modern day barbarians - the mongols and the Khmer Rouge, as examples. circumstance, again. In the case of the mongols, children would be innured to violence by dint of it being a part of life from a very early age. Thus, they form as a society with it being of less importance. A bare-bones or different kernel to that we might possess. The modern day example is a bit more difficult - this being an example of a kernel already being in place and then removed later. Indoctrination and education of sorts, forming a ... password? allowing it to be bypassed to a large extent.

    I'm still considering all of this. You're right - it's all very simplified.

    And would this not seem to confirm that rather than being missing to begin with, the kernel can be modified or nullified at some later stage as a result of experience or traumatisation?
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2004
  19. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

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    4,779
    Wolf:
    Indeed- the brilliant mute reflecting his gods, yes?
    Pretty hard trying not to fall in a slump of making programming language or computers in general too much of a pscycholgical pursuit, I feel one needs a more technical mind to avoid this.


    Simpler- more like a middle-man between mind and body, psyche and limb.
    But that between insinct and cognizance is more feasilble. There is definitely something like it between the two that is "kernel like"- the limbic system,that which stands between the reptilian brain and the cortex.

    Reptilian- the insitinctual, 'agression survival center":

    "All social issues, good or bad, are in the end dependent upon man's reptilian brain. The so called reptilian brain is the oldest, most primative region of our gray matter. It is the aggression-survival center of our existance. The basic ruling emotions of love, hate, fear, lust, and contentment emanate from this first stage of the brain."

    The outer cortical areas are the mark of the sapien and higher mammals, consciousness and thought.

    It is the limbic area that stands between these two "brains", the cortical and the reptilian one. Quick defintion:

    "As animals became more complex, other structures were added (around the reptilian brain) in a shell, or "girdle". The Latin word for arc or girdle is "limbus", and this brain is called the "limbic system". We humans share this brain with older mammals like dogs, cats, and horses, and even mice (as opposed to newer mammals like chimps; we'll get to them in a moment). Their brains, and this part of our brains, are extremely similar.
    Think about the difference between a mouse and a lizard, or between a cat and a snake, and you'll recognize what this mammalian brain adds to a creature's capacities. Mammals have "feelings" like ours"


    What I like is the mention of it as a "shell" which is very kernel like and its function is very much like a kernel's function in a computer system.Sweet.

    People that are crimminal or overtly agressive seem to- ok, not lack you're right I will take it back, but have this monitor in between (the limbic system) turned off or damaged so that filtration goes haywire

    or

    the lower brain has overriden the higher parts in the cortical mantle

    Or

    the cortical mantle has rationalized this filtration component down to a desenstitized lump of fat, what you are calling 'dulling' to which morality means nothing. Beyond Good and Evil. This is why they (criminals) seem like animals at times, you are seeing only one brain whereas the 'normal' ones show you three. I've covered this with Lou who wondered at the criminal mind once-
    http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=34311

    However, I am by no means saying that the only way to transcend beyond good and evil is a neuropsycholigical glitch or malfunction.
    Hmm.
    How about a stepping stone? No- more like a leash, I can't stand it.

    No I doubt it is missing as well, I stand corrected. And I do not think it as only trauma being a culprit- I've given four possibilites. Remember Phineas Gage? He would fall under trauma.

    But someone like Gacy or Chikatiloh, Gein or Dhamer would be examples of a rationalization of that monitor or shell down to a fat lump of inert tissue, if you follow. The rationalization then could be seen as what I called 'infection' that allows this detachment they show from what people see as decadent evil.

    Yes, I'm sounding anal here but its either sit and think about this in a class of programmers that do not care so long as their programs are running or share it with someone as anal to make it some kind of pretty thought or medicine.

    No- if the 'sheeple' only acted with their lower brain we would be back in Sparta or a Hunic commune of which none of this fatted gloabalized world looks like anymore, instinct is over. Sheeple are more like watered down versions of the Sibling.

    But as for those that reverse engineer as you put it- these are the Gacy's and Dahmers and to some extent the Leopold and Loebs, that have almost immunized themselves (perhaps not Dahmer, still not sure) to their actions and any moral imperatives involved.
    One cannot have an obsessive nature- those that do fail in the process as Raskolnikov did for he obsessed over the implications and details.
    For the hypersensitve, nuance beomces quagmire- this is why he failed despite his endeavor. On these kind it is too philosophical.

    The Abbe Maudit says:
    "The result was that I remained morose and self-centered, inhibited and friendless. The process of increasing mental strain went on subconsciously but surely.........in a flash I began to understand myself. I realized why little everyday troubles assume catastrophic proportions in my eyes; I saw that I was so constituted that I felt everything overkeenly and was hyper-susceptible which was intesified by my abnormal sensitiveness....Happy indeed are those to whom nature has given a thick skin and the ardour of stoicism!"- Maupassant

    Raskolnikov was too self centered- this is why he failed and why we are both full of shit if we think ourselves capable.

    Exactly.

    What is Faust to one who is already like Faust? What is savagery to the savage? The Muslim grows up in a mileu of passion and angst in his faith while the Christian lives the life of complacency in a Sunday school- this is why the Chritian responds to the brutallity of a Gibson film, he lacks it in his own life and it agitates an animal sleeping inside.
    "The Passion of Muhammad" would have little impact if nothing else on a Muslim since his faith is more beastly.

    No no no- if we are going to speak of "passwords" then fine, metaphorically speaking I feel only the ostracized capable of any passoword. By and large only a small few.
    Bundy is a wonderful example.
     
  20. Fenris Wolf Banned Banned

    Messages:
    567
    Much clearer to me now (I must have missed the "Three Brains" thread, incidentally. I wonder how we'd scan?). Just a couple of things though :

    He would indeed - but I was thinking of psychological trauma when I wrote that. Psychological trauma is an odd one, though. We might have two separate people, both experiencing "troubled" childhoods - one goes on to become a killer, the other adapt to it and transcend the experience. Strength of the "Kernel"?

    Precisely.

    Here I was talking of more modern groups, for example the Khmer Rouge (rather than individuals) being different to more ancient cultures in which violence formed a regular part of life. One can imagine that prior to the events leading to the formation of such a group, its members would have led relatively "normal" lives. As a group though, they were capable of comitting atrocities that perhaps they never dreamed themselves capable of (or thought about at all). This is different from being brought up in such an environment. Thus, I was thinking that firstly indoctrination led to dampening the influence of the kernel and then group mentality removing it altogether. Pol Pot himself was purported to be a kind man to his family and children, and a "grandfatherly figure". This kind of separation is fascinating too.
     
  21. gendanken Ruler of All the Lands Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,779
    Wolf:
    More like more ballsy or less sensitive, it is interchangeable.

    Something someone like Lou does not have- speaking of which, where did the little runt go? Funny how he's fallen silent so soon after his fevered testimonies to being able to, ahem, bash men's heads in with hammers without flinching.

    This is why nightmares will always be dreams to one like myself- even killing in silence over a long stretch of time (and it is possible with arsenic or doses of antifreeze) would weigh down on me like an incubus.

    Isnt it??

    Understood.

    It is mob mentality- this is why the fat Christain simpleton we call an American soldier does not think of his blowing a village up with his bombs as murder. It is a state where the human mind transmutes humanity down to furniture or commodity by virtue of its being in a mob- slaughter becomes depersonlized and almost perfunctory as if though atrocities were being unleashed on farm and not a village with people in it; he thinks of himself as only a farmer doing his job, not a murderer.

    It is also why the little lady is a whore at a Mardi Gras, or the arthritic, kind, gentle grandmother a veritable demon when in a church full of people filled with the Holy Bullshit...sorry, Ghost.
     
  22. 15ofthe19 35 year old virgin Registered Senior Member

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    1,588
    With certain jobs come certain responsibilities and if those responsibilities are compromised or completely ignored due to a crisis of conscience, then the whole system falls apart and we retrograde to a state of anarchy. I would wager the farm that none of you would be foolish enough to advocate that state of nature.

    The bombadier looking through his site as he flies over Hiroshima has a job to do and if he fails then he is accountable to every single member of his organization, and he must explain himself. If his explanation is that he simply didn't think it was morally correct to push that button, he has usurped the power of millions of people. At that moment of release he is in control of the fate of potentially millions of people on the ground and accountable to millions of other people around the world. The system is structured such that his responsibilities are limited as much as his accountability for his part in the chain of events that led up to that seminal moment. Would it be correct to hold him singularly accountable for the deaths of all of the victims of his actions? Only a fool would say yes. Does he share in the responsibility? Of course, but only as much as every other human alive at that moment that had any impact on the course of events that led to him pushing the button that released the bomb and sent it on its way to accomplish its role in the operation. Blaming him for the deaths of the Japanese in that city is as illogical as blaming Hitler's third grade teacher for not slitting his throat in the cloakroom of the school.

    The point: Under the current system all sorts of people are responsible for carrying out orders that others may find morally reprehesible but this is the system that we live in, and we have a limited power to change it. I live in a country where at least in theory anyway we have relatively more power to quickly adjust and modify the system than just about any other country in the world, and that's why I believe it to be a superior system to some of the other models that have been tried at various points in recent history. The thinking is that the power is distributed as much as possible to prevent a handful from being able to speak definitively for millions. It's not perfect by any means, but I would stack it up against anything else going right now. I'm as bitter and cynical about the general nature of politics as anyone you know, but despite that fact, I haven't seen anything that looks substantially better than what I have available to me today.

    The way of nature is brutal tyranny; not freedom. Isn't it ironic that so many of the so-called "enlightened" people on this ball of rock go to their deathbeds screaming about freedom and liberty but actually vote such that they constantly further centralization of power and thus loss of freedom and liberty. Asshats.
     
  23. moementum7 ~^~You First~^~ Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
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    Hi:
    I am interested in philosophical thought. I have a tiny bit of knowledge of it.
    This is my first time that I am on this forum.
    I was reading that without God , there is no logical and philosophical reason to do good or to avoid evil.
    Is it really so? Does doing good becomes logically and philosophically meaningless when there is no God?
    Does "good and evil" find its true place in religious thought?
    thanks

    Well, let's try and take this a step at a time.
    To begin to talk shop about philosophy we will first have to define what "philosophy" is exactly and why we need it.
    A philosophy is a system of beliefs about reality. It is one's integrated view of the world. It includes an understanding of the nature of existence, man, and his role in the world. Philosophy is the foundation of knowledge. It is the standard by which ideas are integrated and understood.

    Philosophy is a necessary product of man's rational mind. To live, man must gain knowledge of the world. To understand the world, man must form conclusions about its very nature. For instance, to gain knowledge of particular objects, man must recognize that objects have identity. He must recognize that conclusions are possible because the world does exist, and exists in a particular way.

    Philosophy provides the framework for which man can understand the world. It provides the premises by which man can discover truth, and use his mind to support his life. Every man has an understanding of the world. Every man must have a philosophy, even if it is never made explicit.

    Then we must define what "good and evil" would imply with regards to mankind and its realtionship to morality.

    For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

    Life is the process of self-sustaining and self-generating action. Life requires action, and action requires values. Philosophy in general, and ethics in particular, attempt to answer the questions, "What do I do?" and "Why?" People study philosophy so they can know how to live their life.

    So that you can live life successfully and happily, you must learn which values to hold and how to achieve them -- this is your life as your moral standard. All moral questions (questions of right action) are questions of how to live happily and successfully, and all moral principles must be measured against how they promote and benefit your life and happiness. Your life as your moral standard holds all things promoting your life as the good.

    To every living thing, there is one primary choice, and that is to live or not -- to engage in the action required to further its own life or to engage in action that destroys its own life. The only other alternative is death. Choosing life as your standard of value is a pre-moral choice. It cannot be judged as right or wrong; but once chosen, it is the role of morality to help man to live the best life possible.

    This is from another thread, but very much realtes to this topic.-
    The opposite of choosing life is altruism: the moral doctrine that holds death as its moral standard. It holds sacrifice as the only good, and all things "selfish" as evil. According to altruism, it doesn't matter what you do, as long as it does not further your life it is considered good. The more consistently a person is altruistic, the closer their actions are to suicide. The consistent altruist will give up every bit of food he owns to other people because that is what he considers good, and die because of it.

    Your life as your standard does not mean Hedonism -- the spur of the moment instant gratification, doing whatever you feel like. Your life as your standard means acting in your rational self-interest. Rational self-interest takes into account the long-term effects of every action.

    Your life as your standard does not mean trampling on other people to get what you want. This is not in your rational self-interest. It is in your interest to be benevolent.

    Nor does your life as your standard mean cheating people to get ahead, even if they don't realize it and you never get caught. Fraud is not in your rational self-interest because you lose your independence and you sacrifice honesty to an unreality that you have to maintain to perpetrate your fraud. This is self-destructive in the long run.

    In order to know what is good, which actions are objectively in a person's self-interest, we develop virtues which are principles of action.
     

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