Making the world a better place

[garyb]

correct Ken(imho)...

all this intellectualizing....
Alfonso, defending one's self is moral.


the world being defended is false(it's not real, it's in the human mind). relativism is part of that false reality.

btw-the root of mos is a form which can't be written by this keyboard but is written with the letters "me". it means "expressing a certain quality of mind". words having this root are mind, disposition, mood, wont, humor, manner, more', moral. i would interpret this to indicate that moral indicates a state of mind that is represented by the "better" aspects of human nature. there are certainly degrees and colors of morality, but we don't need to go there for it to exist. one thing's sure, the existance of that state of mind, just like the emotional and the spiritual don't require subjectivity or understanding to exist. the subjectivity exists in the experience, which as any adult should know can be deceiving. the reality itself which leads to the experience, just is...human knowledge and wisdom are not required for the universe to operate, so all the intellectualization, while entertaining, won't make things any better(unless better is slavery). moral behavior would, however(false morality is intellectualized, it is false, it's what people think, so it will also bring slavery).

[ReD_MuZe]

at this stage i would raise the harder question, which is what do you want to do, to make the world a better place?

i think we will get some more actual examples and enrich each other, rather than battling on the meaning of the world "morality".
people have done it rather successfully here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

[garyb]

it's not about talking about it or wikis as i see it. it's about what you think and do.

no examples are needed. you already know the difference between good and still behave wickedly(the generic "you" living in this "modern" world). splitting hairs is silly. just a good word is better than a bad word. this stuff isn't hard. no one is suggesting that one person alone will change the world for the better, but one could make at least a little difference. iron sharpens iron...there is no real excuse.

[alfonso]

it's not about talking about it or wikis as i see it. it's about what you think and do.

Really? Wasn't this a discussion? I hope this thread is not about stating definitive rules for us all.....
Sorry, but if you want to use words, like in a discussion, you have to know and to make clear what do they mean for all the participants, If you want to share your point of view you imply that there are other that differ, otherwise it would make no sense to discuss at all.

"It's about what you think and do". You want to talk about it or not?

The cool thing is that probably most of us act in a very similar way towards the others, with love and respect and what we believe or theorize doesn't change that too much. Maybe because the real rules that we follow come from relations and necessity and we share a common context. That way you can explain historical and cultural morality differences. Behavior is determined by the context. Metaphysics are a way to control the process. Societies change and revolutions occur when the ideological burden set by the elites to control the society doesn't reflect anymore the real dynamics of relations.

Relativism is not a choice but a description.

[braincell]

"defending one's self is moral"

Not if it means the death of many other innocent people!

[Cochise]

Yes, more common moral, more common way of thinking based on preconception often encroach on dumbness.
Though, many people can't own enough time or mind fastness, or mind energies, to leave this way for the analytical one.
Going to consider as minds manipulation, or (even!) enslavement, the synthesis process of complex, and likely often anyway subjective and relative, concepts into more accessible or "handy" ones, the only other way I can find to try to make world a better place by music is report and condamnation of hidden crimes. Using the more objective and plain way to do it.
Right, we have newspapers and other medias doing that, but till which point they're free?
Moreover, reports from newspaper or tv appears and desappears; a song stays around much more time and could have more expressive power due to the enhancement effect the music brings ...

[alfonso]

what a dilemma. Who judges which life is to survive when there is a choice.

Usually who has the power decides. Regulation of this power is what politics is about. What has to be left to the individual alone? What has to be decided through a collective mechanism? Who is entitled? Anthropology and history show infinite variations...usually a certain system endures until the structural necessities are favored by it. Those structural necessities are what people think as necessary for their own survival and happiness. Religion is the way to condition people's desires and aspirations in order to stabilize a certain distribution of power. Fear is the other one and like in all integralist religious systems strictly connected to the first one.

Imagine you are moderately hungry, you enter in a restaurant and order some meat. They bring you an awesome dish with a human arm cooked perfectly. What do you do? Nobody has been killed by purpose, and the preparation is very good. The result, I'm sure is disgust, sorrow, anger, you'll watch the waiter as a criminal and probably run away screaming. All this reactions are not triggered by the fact that the cooking was bad or you waited too much for the second course. The reaction is moral.

Now, imagine yourself lost up on snow covered mountains, far thousand miles from any form of life because your plane crashed, together with few survivors and some dozens of poor victims died and progressively covered by snow. This is a true story happened some years ago, somewhere in Latin America if i recall well. Well, after a week of famine and the temperatures going below zero it's not surprising if the survivors start to eat the corpses. This is what actually happened, before they where found after more than a month...nobody screamed away and nobody in the public opinion was particularly shocked by what happened up there in the mountains.

I'm sure that all those survivors would have had the same reaction described above in that nightmare restaurant.

So you might deduct that morality is quite flexible because reality is flexible. And again, advanced juridical systems take in account this and are able to distinguish contexts, as the conscience does.

[dawman]

You obviously have heard the tale of the Donner Party that passed through the Sierra Neveda Mountains that survived by eating human flesh to survive.
Interesting enough the statue is of the normal pioneers looking west towards a new life w/ the family.
It would not be politically incorrect I suppose to have a statue of these poor chaps knawing on a cooked Femur, but we as " Moral " people want to leave this statue for future generations to understand what happened here back in the early half of the 19th century.
Personally I would have preferred a more realistic statue.
My son has been there on field trips as his school sits in the mountains close by, and if wasn't for the teacher explaining what happened here, these kids would have never known, as the statue and plaque are your typical symbolism over substance approach of history and education in the great socialist state of California.

[dawman]

Here's the politically correct statue.
We wind surf up there every summer as Jet Ski's, Boats etc, are not allowed anymore.
Just the solitude and sound of those beautiful wind sails.
Tahoe is to the right about 12 miles.
The famous railroad and tunnels cannot be seen but are also on the right side of the lake. It's a beautiful ride from the Wharf & Marina in San Francisco to Reno.
The pic is from the road to the top which is 12,000 feet in altitude.
When it snows, the deer and elk go to Reno, which is why the brave pioneers starved.
They knew very little of the 60 feet snows that come there yearly, and therefore knew little of the game trails.

I still think the guy laying down in the background should at least have bone in his hand, it doesn't have to show the fleshiness.

[kensuguro]

well the middle guy and the wife looks pretty well fed. yum yum.

[braincell]

In theory I am not against eating humans once they are already dead. I am an atheist. Once you are dead, you are a piece of meat. Having said that, I have ordinary prejudices such as the revolution of eating human flesh. I have heard it tastes sweet though.

[alfonso]

You obviously have heard the tale of the Donner Party that passed through the Sierra Neveda Mountains that survived by eating human flesh to survive.
Interesting enough the statue is of the normal pioneers looking west towards a new life w/ the family.
It would not be politically incorrect I suppose to have a statue of these poor chaps knawing on a cooked Femur, but we as " Moral " people want to leave this statue for future generations to understand what happened here back in the early half of the 19th century.
Personally I would have preferred a more realistic statue.
My son has been there on field trips as his school sits in the mountains close by, and if wasn't for the teacher explaining what happened here, these kids would have never known, as the statue and plaque are your typical symbolism over substance approach of history and education in the great socialist state of California.

I was referring to something happened between the 70's and the 80's in consequence of an airplane crash, never heard about the Donner Party. Anyway, another proof of how much stretch a mind is capable of under certain circumstances.

[garyb]

who decides who survives? if it's my life, I do. no moral relativism required. if i have to make the choice, we'll see what happens, then. morals aren't hard, they only require doing what's right, to the best of your ability and knowledge. easy peasy...


who says i won't talk about it Alfonso? i just think all this intellectualization is just masturbation. in the same way that masturbation won't create offspring, it's not really for the purpose of greater understanding, it's for being awesome and supporting an opinion(that's my opinion, anyway). if you noticed, i commended you for going to the Latin root of moral, and then i even went to the root of that word. isn't that a conversation? what's the use of an arguement if all sides don't learn and grow?

[garyb]

civilisation is a fine layer on top. Underneath the instincts are strong.

civilization is b.s.
there is nothing civil in civilization. civilization is strictly predation upon the masses with a happy face plastered on it. men can be very wild and be quite civil(although there are no truly wild men today)....what we call civilization is probably more properly called domestication...

[Cochise]

I'd willingly bend a bit the flexible rules of tolerance of my morality in favour of a scaling down of the nichilism

[Liquid Len]

You would be willing to be less tolerant if it meant less nihilism? I find that a puzzling thought. It's not like tolerance by definition leads to nihilism - tolerance implies not tolerating some things (like intolerance). So the very word speaks of a set of complicated realities, like to speak of shoes is to speak of feet.

[Liquid Len]

i just think all this intellectualization is just masturbation.

When rational thought is able to defend your theories, then it's "facts that can't be changed". When it doesn't, then the whole process of logical thinking is thrown out because it is too limited to describe the supernatural, or something. You can't have it both ways. Or put another way, what makes your arguments accurate description of reality, and your opponents' mere intellectualism?

[garyb]

nothing.

things are what they are. no need to be upset about it.

really, it's just a bunch of people talking. look, here's a concrete example: we have no connection other than i come over to your hose and break you stuff and stab you mother. was that good in ANY sense? if i start trying to convince others that that would be a good idea is there anything good or nice in that? here's another way, i just make the suggestion from time to time that we should try to do the right thing, is there anything wrong with that?

this thread began with someone(Ken) talking about how he had really noticed that most music currently out there suggests questionable activity and how he was thinking it might be good to say something good where possible, to try to use the powers for good rather than evil...this leads into a discussion of is there any true "good", rather than "yeah, i know i want to be more positive in my influences on others" or "screw 'em all". i'm just pointing out that it's pretty easy to try to do a little good, that there's only the very basic "common" sense required, we all have a pretty good idea of right from wrong, but this relativism will defeat that pretty good idea and leave us with a bad idea.

i hope that i have communicated more effectively this time. i realize i'm not very good at it...

the reason i used the word "masturbation" is that it(masturbation) is pleasurable, but there is no fertilization of an egg, no new life, no completion of that certain biological function, much like... the topic WAS making the world a better place. i'm reminded of the The Peoples Front of Judea

[Cochise]

You would be willing to be less tolerant if it meant less nihilism? I find that a puzzling thought. It's not like tolerance by definition leads to nihilism - tolerance implies not tolerating some things (like intolerance). So the very word speaks of a set of complicated realities, like to speak of shoes is to speak of feet.

I tried to mean: My morality includes principles of tolerance, but sometimes I feel like it should be better to be anyhow less tolerant as for nichilism...

[Cochise]

things are what they are. no need to be upset about it.

Sometimes things are what we all let them to be. I'm not sure this is anyway also pertinent with the nichilism concept, but probably it is.

We can constantly be upset against things dominating us of course, since it's a chance of illness.
There are many ways: irony is a way; to let them be till we're again strong enough to face them is another, and many others ways exists..

EDITED: Sorry, I've intended to wrote: We CAN'T costantly be upset.....