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| Thread: Morals; Ethics; Philosophy; Religion, Science, Law, Organisms, and Rights |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 · «PREV |
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 02, 2014 09:09 PM |
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Edited by artu at 06:38, 03 Nov 2014.
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xerox said:
To be fair the libertarian principle of property is an excellent de-facto regulation against enviromental pollution. To bad it's rarely enforced due to corporate welfare...
How come?
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Keksimaton
Promising
Supreme Hero
Talk to the hand
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posted November 04, 2014 05:41 AM |
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The thread was TL;DR, so I'll just tell ya'll something I thought about morality.
First of all I'd like to superficially define morality and then delve deeper into its inner workings.
Morality is a structure that guides behaviour, thoughts and norms in individuals, groups and societies by consciously or sub-consciously assigning values to things.
Structures
The world is a collection of physical, mental and social structures that "live" and "die" much like the organisms on our planet. Just as an individual human being is a structure that lives in interaction with other stuctures (the planet's ecosystem, other humans, heavy falling objects etc.), I'd rather knock down "Morality" from its throne as an untouchable universal concept and claim that morality is not a lone immortal god, but a myriad swarm of individual "moralities" that are all suspectible to the same laws and patterns that shape and destroy any other structures.
What could possibly kill a god?
The morality is a structure roaming the realms of the individual mind and the interactions in society so you do not simply hunt it and kill it like a Predator would an Alien (or vice versa). For the destruction of an individual's morality structure, one needs simply a change of heart or termination of brain function. The death of societal moralities can be a bit more complicated, but the most plain and vague example would be a radical change in the environment that the society lives in: in Shou Fumimura's famous "Fist of the North Star" series of graphic novels the old structures of our civilized world are ravaged by nuclear war in the year 199X and these once rational and civilized Japanese men and women suddenly grow huge mohawks and start gathering children for slave labour to build a pyramid. An extreme example of this cocept appearing in popular media, but it drives in the point I think.
In the light of "the mortality of moralities" my answer to the original question of the thread about "inalienable rights" should become clear. The deification of any concept or structure is nothing but rhetoric.
Violence and moralities as memes
My superficial knowledge of meme theory has given me the idea that the spread of ideas works like the spread of a virus and are subject to be overshadowed by more effective species of virus(idea). History teaches us that violence is the ultimate driving force in the survival of memes in society. All the societies that didn't use violence well enough died or got beaten up and assimilated into the societies that had a better understanding of violence. For the survival of a society in a constantly evolving world of violence there is a demand for the society to "produce sufficient violence." So in order for these societies to have survived, there has been "a minimum acceptable limit of moral development," these minimum requirements drawn in the sand are the crude outlines of what many societies deify as their "universal/inalienable/absolute" morals.
Finishing thoughts A.K.A. RAMBLING AND MUSING
Before I give anyone a chance to blame me for morally nihilistic levels of relativism, I'll throw more wood to the fire. There is a value in this world that seems to be king value of moral mountain: SURVIVAL, the prolonging of a structure's existence (it's what all the organisms and ideas that are still around heve been doing). Heck if a vampire sucks blood to survive, it's doing good for himself is waht I can tell ya and I know a guy who can relate to being good to yourself.
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Noone shall pass, but no one besides him shall pass.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 04, 2014 10:51 AM |
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Glad someone finally brought up memes but you are oversimplifying it excessively. If capability of brute force was the only parameter, civilization(s) would have turned out more and more authoritarian through historical progress and the moral mindset of, say, the Mongol invaders or the Visigoths would have spread as the global norm.On the contrary, civilization(s) softened by time.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Keksimaton
Promising
Supreme Hero
Talk to the hand
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posted November 04, 2014 04:14 PM |
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Through the centralization of power and high reproductive rate of the lower class it became necessary for the continued monopolization of violence to make concessions to the lower class or face the threat of a violent uprising. Violence saves the day again.
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Noone shall pass, but no one besides him shall pass.
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JoonasTo
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
What if Elvin was female?
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posted November 04, 2014 04:18 PM |
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So what you're saying we should all beat our neighbour as we wish we'd be beaten 
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 04, 2014 04:37 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:43, 04 Nov 2014.
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That would be an analysis of authority rather than morality. If I'm not mistaken, it was Althusser who said that the state has Ideological State Apparatuses to teach the masses "who they are" such as public schools, broadcasting, national anthems etc.. And then, when/if they don't work, it had apparatuses of brute force: The military, the police, customs bureau etc. The thing is, regimes that depend on sheer brute force sorely, don't last long and in our age, they are surpassed by more advanced forms of government. Of course, every state depends on brute force up to some point but again, that's a discussion about the nature of authority rather than morality.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 28, 2014 03:22 PM |
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A very good reply on a question about lack of absolute morality and the very common misconception that deciding what's right or wrong is a bad thing (as opposed to following an archaic doctrine blindly):
Youtube
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Tsar-Ivor
Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
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posted November 28, 2014 03:51 PM |
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I agree, it relates to 'justice' too, I am deeply opposed to any policy that judges based 'one shoe fits all' idiom. Of course it is efficient, and it works well with the fairy tale that all are 'equal under the eyes of the law', but it is not justice. Absolute morality is inapplicable with society, I believe that there is such a thing as that, but it would require an almost inhuman person to live life in such a way.
Morality has to be tempered with context.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 28, 2014 04:11 PM |
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Well, as I stated earlier, any claim of deity based absolute morality is void as long as you are not literally talking to God yourself anyway, it's still your interpretation. YOU are the one who is subjectively convinced that this or that morality is God's word: We never hear God himself, we only hear people born into some cultural habitat claiming it is their religion that is God's word simply because they were raised that way. And even if it's not cultural (as in someone from Japan converting to Islam by choice) it is still as subjective (hence not absolute) as any other moral philosophy. The only difference is, it requires blind faith which is an act of obedience, not wisdom.
However, even if we skip that and analyze things on the level Dawkins does, accepting the claim of absolute morality at face-value, it still does not suffice as a good thing. You know who follows God's order's without any objection, the ones that are most loyal and who surrender without questioning anything with their own intellect: IS militants who behead infidels.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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Tsar-Ivor
Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
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posted November 28, 2014 04:25 PM |
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You have to remember the purpose behind absolute morality, the reasoning behind it is: to be without regret. Therefore, it is almost imperative that you follow your own interpretation of it. Of course it all collapses if you encounter disillusionment at some point in your life, which is almost inevitable if you just followed your own fantasy vision of morality. This the way that I view religion, but it is even worse, since you take responsibility out of your own hands, so when the disillusionment does occur, it is catastrophic. God may be infallible, but scripture, as much as people would like to believe so, is not.
Thus to live and die without regret is absolute morality, therefore you must understand yourself, and the world around you.
I mean look at stonings, a collective's vision of absolute morality clashes with an individual who considers it ok to mate outside her vows.
The correct thing to do would be to banish such a person rather than to kill, but that is my own morals, I believe that everything has a place in our collective world. Non conformists should not be punished or forced, our world is not perfect, to pretend that it is by using brute force to get people to adhere to the law is simply juvanile.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted November 28, 2014 04:31 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:32, 28 Nov 2014.
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I'd say, the only ones who feel zero regret are sociopaths and that's simply because they are incapable of it emotionally. Making your own decisions will eventually result in some regreted ones. To make sure they dont surpass the correct decisions is a more realistic goal. But that's a question about happiness rather than morality.
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Are you pretty? This is my occasion. - Ghost
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