@Weenis
This has been evident for a very, very, very long time.
Even those of ideologies claiming they are subjective, like having good things happen and cry for justice (or vengeance) when something evil happens to them.
Undoubtedly.
Change one of the following and you get a different decision:
Culture
Time
information known.
Example(s)
What is acceptable in terms of clothing varies drastically from culture to culture. Some cultures wear *literally* NOTHING – i.e. the people of the culture wear NO clothes, whereas other cultures dress head to toe, not a millimeter of flesh exposed. Should we demonize the culture who goes around naked as the moment they were born? No!
What about the anti-hero who goes around eliminating the scum of society who can’t be touched legally? Or what about Robin Hood, who steals from the rich to give to the poor? No! We applaud them
Or consider the alien race that destroys everything in its path… simply because it has no means of communication that we can understand, and once it’s discovered what it’s doing isn’t meant to be destructive, but only because it’s fighting for its own survival, we can sympathize with it.
Those who can’t understand context have problems in the head.
How did the Nuremburg trials not prove beyond any doubt there is such a thing as objective evil, that no culture or context can excuse?
To waffle on this is to admit one can see circumstance where the torture and murder of children is acceptable.
Clothing, vigilantes and aliens? We’ve talked before about extremist ideologies requiring extreme exceptions to maintain their dogma. We need to remain vigilant (our own vigilante!) to guard we are not falling into ideologies that keep requiring “extremist excusing”.
We are not yet at the point of extremist demonizing my friend!
We are just talking about whether there are “crimes against Humanity”, and perhaps even crimes against Life itself . . . that one might mistakenly believe are OK at the time.
@griz nazi war crimes trials tribunal? Under a different set of knowledge/ information even *that* can be excused. The concept of rhe crime behind that trial is essentially tries to cause a sector of society to go extinct. How about a disease that selfsame sector of the population has that is so contagious that it threatens to wipe out the whole of humanity in a year or less? And this disease is such that even waiting around to test for it would cause thousands more to die by the time each test is done, and there us NO protection against the disease. You’d wait, humanity to be doomed, wiped from existence. My solution, cruel as it is, gather them up and kill them, the “innocent” along with the guilty (of having the disease). Knowledge, information, my friend, is king.
Under what set of circumstances would you personally call forcefully removing children from their parents, torturing them, conducting destructive medical experiments on them and then killing them . . . an “excusable” (ie good) thing?
Under what set of circumstances would you personally find goodness in condemning a child to death (conceivably agonizing) for the promise of thousands being saved later?
We need to consider that we might be in the grips of a very very dark ideology, when we are driven to even contemplating that such things might in some way be just or good.
At what point do we become evil’s apologeticist? And is such not a shocking place to suddenly find oneself??
@griz when himanity’s entire future lie in these things, 100%, that every other option had been examined, exhausted, and failed at every turn, and these are literally the last options, humanity’s survival is paramount to any morality.
@Jear77
When do you propose the wholesale destruction of Humanity’s future (the children) becomes necessary for Humanity’s survival?
When does the justification of horrendous evil (abandonment of morals) become Humanity’s greatest survival tactic?
Not necessarily the doing of it; but the advanced justification of it?
For that is how it always begins.
This is pre-Sandy Hook or Columbine High thinking. For a chilling examination of where the path of resentment of God and life leads, read the memoirs of Harris and Klebold. (Klebold’s are more articulate. But it’s not an easy read).
A serious question Jear.
Is some part of you still able to entertain that you may be wrong and you may have been misled, and are still enforcing that misleading in yourself? And that it might be good to get out from under all of the suffering these various ideologies are requiring of you?
One doesn’t need to fantasize about an accepted reality.
No person can be truly good until they recognize the evil monster that they are. Before this there is no instantiated comparison. Only extrinsic examples that one is then driven to demonize away for the sake of trying to prove they are “nice”.
Which is not the same as being good. Psychopaths thrive on their ability to appear nice. But they are not good.
Consider also that the desperation to prove one is nice, is what enables the postmodern lie that morality is relative.
@griz meh. No big revelation there about being a monster. I never claimed to be otherwise. If we’re all monsters – or all have the capacity to be one in the right (wrong?) Circumstances… which means it makes no difference. It goes back to my saying everything is smoke and mirrors. So?
@griz or… maybe we all are (psychopaths)… and only the thin veneer of society, of social niceties, of the illusion that we are… that we can be more prevents us from acting out on them. This is quite evidential in riots. In the collapse of society, it’s (more or less) evey man for himself.
@Jear77
Veneers are basically something of lower value wearing a suit of higher value. This links to the story of the Prodigal Son, and the welcoming father just putting a robe of value over all his pig-slopping, road-grime sweatiness to make him “fit” for the celebration. Cut through the robe, and all that nastiness underneath is revealed.
But then Paul talks about the process of sanctification by the Spirit. This in essence, takes the veneer of value deeper, and deeper and deeper still. At what point is the allegorical table for example solid wood: no matter how deeply you scratch, it’s still uniformly the same?
The world descends back into chaos so easily because as you’ve said, our niceties gained by human means are just a veneer. Scratch the surface and the nastiness is revealed. And the veneer seems to be growing thinner and thinner [skinned?)!]
The only lasting resolution, is a super-human (even super-natural) one. But those who have never tried it — and especially those who have been hardened against trying it by religious ideologies — have no idea such a resolution even exists.
@griz up to and including the total sanctification by christ’s blood, even that is a veneer, as human we remain.
It’s interesting that you claim and protest for all the world (at least on here) that these things are true… yet i have to wonder if you’re protesting too much.
@Jear77
That’s just the beginning of the sanctification process Paul spoke of. Yes, we remain human.
But also slightly more, as we can exercise increasing spiritual control over the flesh — the emotions and feelings, the attitudes and outlooks. Forgiveness. The veneer grows deeper. And over time, perhaps control over even more??
How (and what) am I protesting too much?
Our decision to settle for the mere victim-hood of ideological possession . . . when we are capable of so much more.
@griz for all this control… for this shard of divinity… we still can’t use it as we please. Useless.
In regards to how you’re protesting too much… the topic(s) of god / belief/ salvation is (are) never-ending with you. Doesn’t that seem even a tad suspicious to you, now that I point it out?
@Jear77
Oh absolutely!
To use power however one pleases with no plan beyond the moment or regard for consequence . . . is tyranny!
Which iirc, is one of the things that really irks you and that you like to demonize God for . . . with only the evidence of a very limited child-mindset when it comes to the small “bedroom” we currently call reality.
The way we’ve advanced to where we are (to the point where some are comfortable and lazy and ill-informed enough to proclaim there is no meaning and wanting to throw it all away!) . . . is by seeking out the patterns that work over time. They are something akin to Truth. We used to get them from time-proven narratives from across cultures. (Now many seem to get them from small ego-centric political-power identity-groups!)
And I keep returning to what I have growing daily personal evidence IS Truth.
And you seem to keep returning to what you seem to have growing daily personal evidence is false.
Consider that in the Hero Archetype common to all peoples and societies across time, it is not the person who seeks out the things that fail and are not true, who is valued. Any schmendrick can do that.
@luftballooneyegouge
Restore the context of the thread and it will make more sense. Of course it’s absurd, and no person in their right mind would propose it.
But to not support the verdict of the Nuremburg Trials that there was such a thing as objective evil (punishable by law) happening in Nazi Germany — and the legal existence of such a thing as Crimes Against Humanity that transcend time and culture — is little different than proposing the ghastly torturing, medical experimentation and murder of children might in some cases be justified.
@griz
They put people on trial at Nuremberg, not concepts. That was not a verdict in any of the cases.
Why do you have to give the abstract attribution that Crimes against Humanity transcend time & culture?
The time & culture of the occurrence are very much a part of any Crimes against Humanity.
@luftballooneyegouge
It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of the Gulag Archipelago that noted Nuremburg’s triumph for the species was that it was not about prosecuting individuals, but establishing the legal precedent of “Crimes Against Humanity” that essentially removed the precedent for claiming local or subjective morality should supercede objective morality. (objective good and evil).
And all the world agreed.
But I suppose I would have to respect your right to assert that there are times and places and circumstances where the forced removal of children from their parents, torture and destructive medical experiments, their murder and vivisection, and wholesale ethnic cleansing could be morally justified.
@fosheet I think good and evil are completely subjective based on each individual person.
Vegans think killing animals to eat and utilize their hides, etc. Is wrong. Growing up in the country that is a way of life, and it is respected and appreciated. I wouldn’t go slaughter 3 cows just for giggles, but I would slaughter 1 cow to feed my family through the winter.
General consensus seems to be Hilter was evil, but he legitimately thought he was bettering the race of humanity.
Look at religions that disagree. There are some religions that say man is between a man and woman only, there are some that say a man can take multiple brides, there are others who say a man can marry a child because the child is pure.
@luftballooneyegouge I understand what you are saying. What I meant was I was raised on a family farm. We raised our own cows and pigs and chickens to feed our family. We gave thanks for the animals life because it provided us with nutrition.
When I said that, I meant taking unnecessary lives for the simple fact that I can do so.
@fosheet
You’re not used to the way my head coughs up thoughts.
My thought process was when you said 3 cows, my head pictures 3 cows. When you said You wouldn’t kill 3 cows for giggles, but one for your family, the #2 cow, in my head is thinking that means you’d kill one for family, but you might be open to killing #2 for giggles, just not both 2 & 3.
@fosheet
If they were completely subjective I don’t think we could have ever formed civilizations. I have no doubt that they start as subjective. But if they never go beyond this there can be no consensus for . . . well, anything. Not even formal language. There has to be a shared consensus of worth for any enterprise (from language, to civilization, to society, to family, to an economic or social venture) to work. Otherwise everyone is just running their own program — or the program of the most oppressive tyrant! (Marxism!).
There HAS to be a certain degree of shared (therefore objective) morals. And there IS evidence of this coming from across cultures and time. Yes, they vary here and there.
But to touch on your example of Hitler, he subjectively determined he was not just “right” but God’s veritable Right Hand in bringing about the fascist Utopia. But in the Nuremburg Trials essentially the whole world came together and set the legal precedent once-and-for-all: Morality was objective. There were such things as Crimes Against Humanity — things that were evil regardless of culture, time, circumstances. And there was precedent to exercise justice over such objective evils.
The whole world essentially agreed that there is objective morality (which they arguably never could have done without objective morality already in place!)
Both @Weenis & @jear77 make good cases, but you can’t see it because your mind is made up?
@jear77 was just saying if you change the “objective ethical standards” cited by @Weenis, different things will be Viewed At That Time to be permissible & even accepted as holy.
Your filter is set to binary, so you have tunnel vision instead of truth.
And there is compelling evidence that a common morality (objective good and evil) exists and is not just a subjective or cultural construct. It may even be biologically mandated.
The Nuremberg trials are the first evidence. They found there was such a thing as crimes against Humanity that transcend time culture or circumstance (ie. not subjective).
To hold that this was an unjust verdict, would be saying it’s okay under certain circumstances to remove children from their parents, torture and experiment on them, and then medically vivisect them or just murder them. Who do you know who wants to go there?
Then there is the behavioral evidence. Rather than looking at what people say is and isn’t real, you look at the things they behave as if they were real. And even the strongest advocate of purely subjective morality may or may not like it if people treat them good, but will most likely register offense if others treat them in evil and immoral ways. The whole goddam neo-Marxist identity-group victim-hood culture insists “subjective harm” that only they can detect was done to them (micro-aggressions, systemic racism/sexism); but want the alleged perpetrators treated as if they committed some objective evil!
And did you know that rats exhibit what some scientists are calling pre-moral behavior? Like us they are very social and enjoy playing games (and apparently can even laugh); but will refuse to play an unfair or unjust game. (Contrast that to a gullible cat or dog who will keep playing even a rigged game!)
The older rats will also let the younger rats win approximately 30% of the time, so they don’t stop playing feeling the game is unjust because of the size and strength difference.
Where the hell would a rat get this kind of behavior if not from biology?
What language, culture, or subjective self-awareness would be triggering it??
The ideological belief that morality is subjective doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny. It’s greatest evidence seems to be nearly subjective feeling.
So do some thinking, and get back to me about that binary-filter tunnel-vision truth thing.
I don’t know where you guys get the idea I can’t understand your agreement with what you wrote in the original op, but obviously you’re the confused party.
@griz
How does your throwing out false attributions that I take your errors as personal attacks get us any closer to the truth?
You’re running away from the subject now.
@griz said confused, “Actually I was agreeing with @Weenis! ”
If you read what I said, it’s obvious that I knew you were agreeing with weener.
You’re stuck on the Nuremberg trials because of your binary bias.
sub·jec·tive
səbˈjektiv/Submit
adjective
1.
based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
“his views are highly subjective”
synonyms: personal, individual, emotional, instinctive, intuitive
“a subjective analysis”
as·sess·ment
əˈsesmənt/Submit
noun
the evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something.
“the assessment of educational needs”
synonyms: evaluation, judgment, rating, estimation, appraisal, analysis, opinion More
You seem to want to separate personal feelings with grouped personal feelings, which is where your tunnel vision starts kicking in.
The Nazi atrocities still fall under the category of subjective assessment .
….then you re-play your grate-est hits once the fuck again.
It seems like everything you come up with is setting you up to bitch about how every political group you don’t like is a red threat.
…over & over &over
Seriously, I think you’re reinforcing mental programming like Krishnas do mantras.
Which is not seeking the win, but seeking the highest truth possible by current understanding. So it’s less a battle than an exploration.
I guess you could say that is binary, but we shouldn’t be afraid of commitment to an ideal we believe in. Otherwise we’re just a boring weak uninformed amorphous mass of blah. A taupe banner on a beige wall. Contrasting colors can be “scary”, but they certainly get a point across.
The point in bringing up the Nuremberg trials is that if one does not take an active stance for objective good, they are enablers and eventually willing participants in evil.
Try asking the German citizens from the Nazi reign, or Russians from the Marxist era if there was any non-committal middle ground for them to stand on when all was said and done.
I can see that for some reason you have started taking this very personally. So run the proper epistemology on the beliefs you are holding to and fighting for.
But if you are truly playing the postmodernist game of there being infinite interpretations of everything and none should be favored over the others . . . Why such obvious vitriol against my interpretations . . . or such a conviction that yours are right!!?
Especially when I’ve gone to such lengths to properly ground them in something more concrete than just my feelings?
@griz
….taking it personally? Repetition is repetitious. I’m not taking anything as a personal attack on me. I’m attacking you for being a broken record.
I battle both people & misconceptions, because misconceptions don’t come from plants or minerals.
You can wrap-up calling things you say as wrong, as competition, if that makes you feel better, but I wished you’d pay more attention to why I’m calling what you’re saying as wrong.
Maybe that highest truth bullshit you want to prop up on a pedestal would come down to a reachable level?
@luftballooneyegouge
The misconception is the only true enemy. Because if it falls, the very nature of the person changes for the better. (I did notice the other day how “bothered” you were (if that’s the right word) that @Weenis and I were in agreement on something. That can only happen, and happen so quickly, when it’s not the person you see as your enemy).
That is why I repeat. Many misconceptions — particularly those weedly ideologically mandated and enforced ones — are pernicious. Repeat applications are often necessary.
Actually I’m paying rapt attention to almost everything that you say — and not for the purpose of finding fault. If you’ve not noticed, I’ve partaken of and liked several of your comments — but refrained from commenting because they were essentially good and should remain that way without regressing into something not so good.
For example, I’m paying considerable attention to your impression that I’m perhaps the one thinking themselves on a pedestal to come down off of. I’ve never proposed that I’m “highest truth”.
Only that such exists; that our evolutionary existence, the rise of civilization, even language is based on it; and that it’s worth continuing to seek no matter what the cost. I’m fully aware that any Truth I may be sharing, is not intrinsic to me.
So please don’t assess it to me.
@griz said, “(I did notice the other day how “bothered” you were (if that’s the right word) that @Weenis and I were in agreement on something.”
You need to work on reading comprehension. I was annoyed that you guys were claiming I didn’t notice you were agreeing when it was completely obvious you were. I could care less if you were agreeing.
The worst part,…. I’ve already explained this once.
But a big part of it is biological. Our developed pre-frontal cortex is where we test abstractions and plan (with morality being an aspect of testing abstractions). That is where we create scenarios and populate them with an abstracted avatar of ourselves and run the projection forwards to see how our avatar fares — without risking the whole organism.
It evolves out of the motor strip in the brain — but “disconnects” from the rest of the body so it’s our avatar acting things out and not our physical self.
The rat’s motor strip is evolving into the structure we are familiar with as performing these tasks. But the split from the rest of the body’s nervous system is not yet there. If they are “imagining” some scenario for the sake of planning or testing morality, the rest of the body cannot help joining in the escapade.
At least that’s my best understanding of the current (often rather advanced!) understanding.
But according to the Genesis story is a convention God approves of. Labeling is fundamental for language which is fundamental for civilization.
Provided we don’t use the labeled objects or our ability to label them, or the civilizations that spring from them or the individuals those civilizations produce, as a point of worship greater than God.
It all fits together in a very meaningful way.
In a bio-evolutionary way if one’s belief structure doesn’t have issues with that terminology
@luftballooneyegouge
Subjective assessment is the earliest stage of epistemology.
But if it never goes beyond this there is no epistemology. Only egocentricity
(opinionated assertion based mostly on feelings).
Which is what then drives us to take things personally.
This is intellectual discussion not personal attack. Remember, I was praising your contributions to the group not that long ago to a newcomer.
@griz
You seem to want to relegate emotions down with opinions, but emotions go past mere opinion. Emotions are reactions so powerful they’re involuntary.
They are very much a part of us & not always a hindrance, but often a valid alarm that should be paid heed to, instead of categorizing as just feral hold-overs or whatever it is you keep catching your mental sweater on.
Your whole passive aggressive attack you’re labeling as concern for intellectual discussion is another of your grate-est hits.
I’ve never said nor implied that emotions are not both powerful, and biologically based (in the amygdala actually); because this is what I believe. They feed responses directly into not just the limbic system of the cortex but are mapped directly onto the spinal cord. They are powerful. They are what causes us to jump even before our minds can begin to formulate the intent to jump.
But the main power of the cerebral cortex, is inhibitory. It’s what enables us to “have the emotions without them having us” (I repeat this, because people either forget or ignore it! Pernicious weeds require repeat-application!).
Are we not concerned with intellectual discussion? I’d even welcome spiritual discussion.
But emotional discussion? That usually just results in the impression we are being personally attacked.
@luftballooneyegouge
The rise of emotions doesn’t have to lead to a loss — or a permanent loss — of objectivity.
Returning to a repeat application against that same pesky weed, having the emotions doesn’t have to mean the emotions have you.
Instinctive emotions and primitive responses do have their purpose. But it is a purpose that has little to do with realizing our full potential as Human beings. That comes with self-control — perhaps starting meager at first, but growing over time.
And another point of apparently necessary repetition: controlling something doesn’t have to mean eradication.
54 responses to “Are good and evil merely subjective assessments?”
Good and evil are terms that stem from an objective ethical standard.
@Weenis
This has been evident for a very, very, very long time.
Even those of ideologies claiming they are subjective, like having good things happen and cry for justice (or vengeance) when something evil happens to them.
Undoubtedly.
Change one of the following and you get a different decision:
Culture
Time
information known.
Example(s)
What is acceptable in terms of clothing varies drastically from culture to culture. Some cultures wear *literally* NOTHING – i.e. the people of the culture wear NO clothes, whereas other cultures dress head to toe, not a millimeter of flesh exposed. Should we demonize the culture who goes around naked as the moment they were born? No!
What about the anti-hero who goes around eliminating the scum of society who can’t be touched legally? Or what about Robin Hood, who steals from the rich to give to the poor? No! We applaud them
Or consider the alien race that destroys everything in its path… simply because it has no means of communication that we can understand, and once it’s discovered what it’s doing isn’t meant to be destructive, but only because it’s fighting for its own survival, we can sympathize with it.
Those who can’t understand context have problems in the head.
@Jear77
Absolutely not.
How did the Nuremburg trials not prove beyond any doubt there is such a thing as objective evil, that no culture or context can excuse?
To waffle on this is to admit one can see circumstance where the torture and murder of children is acceptable.
Clothing, vigilantes and aliens? We’ve talked before about extremist ideologies requiring extreme exceptions to maintain their dogma. We need to remain vigilant (our own vigilante!) to guard we are not falling into ideologies that keep requiring “extremist excusing”.
We are not yet at the point of extremist demonizing my friend!
We are just talking about whether there are “crimes against Humanity”, and perhaps even crimes against Life itself . . . that one might mistakenly believe are OK at the time.
@griz nazi war crimes trials tribunal? Under a different set of knowledge/ information even *that* can be excused. The concept of rhe crime behind that trial is essentially tries to cause a sector of society to go extinct. How about a disease that selfsame sector of the population has that is so contagious that it threatens to wipe out the whole of humanity in a year or less? And this disease is such that even waiting around to test for it would cause thousands more to die by the time each test is done, and there us NO protection against the disease. You’d wait, humanity to be doomed, wiped from existence. My solution, cruel as it is, gather them up and kill them, the “innocent” along with the guilty (of having the disease). Knowledge, information, my friend, is king.
@Jear77
Step carefully.
Under what set of circumstances would you personally call forcefully removing children from their parents, torturing them, conducting destructive medical experiments on them and then killing them . . . an “excusable” (ie good) thing?
Under what set of circumstances would you personally find goodness in condemning a child to death (conceivably agonizing) for the promise of thousands being saved later?
We need to consider that we might be in the grips of a very very dark ideology, when we are driven to even contemplating that such things might in some way be just or good.
At what point do we become evil’s apologeticist? And is such not a shocking place to suddenly find oneself??
@griz when himanity’s entire future lie in these things, 100%, that every other option had been examined, exhausted, and failed at every turn, and these are literally the last options, humanity’s survival is paramount to any morality.
@Jear77
When do you propose the wholesale destruction of Humanity’s future (the children) becomes necessary for Humanity’s survival?
When does the justification of horrendous evil (abandonment of morals) become Humanity’s greatest survival tactic?
Not necessarily the doing of it; but the advanced justification of it?
For that is how it always begins.
This is pre-Sandy Hook or Columbine High thinking. For a chilling examination of where the path of resentment of God and life leads, read the memoirs of Harris and Klebold. (Klebold’s are more articulate. But it’s not an easy read).
A serious question Jear.
Is some part of you still able to entertain that you may be wrong and you may have been misled, and are still enforcing that misleading in yourself? And that it might be good to get out from under all of the suffering these various ideologies are requiring of you?
@griz the point is simply this: if there are… a few handfuls or… less of people left isn’t any price worth saving humanity, even becoming a monster?
@Jear77
You are a monster.
So am I.
One doesn’t need to fantasize about an accepted reality.
No person can be truly good until they recognize the evil monster that they are. Before this there is no instantiated comparison. Only extrinsic examples that one is then driven to demonize away for the sake of trying to prove they are “nice”.
Which is not the same as being good. Psychopaths thrive on their ability to appear nice. But they are not good.
Consider also that the desperation to prove one is nice, is what enables the postmodern lie that morality is relative.
@griz meh. No big revelation there about being a monster. I never claimed to be otherwise. If we’re all monsters – or all have the capacity to be one in the right (wrong?) Circumstances… which means it makes no difference. It goes back to my saying everything is smoke and mirrors. So?
@Jear77
But there’s a serious incongruity in always coming back to extreme justifications for monstrousness.
It only makes no difference if one is playing the slave mindset to circumstance. Which is psychopathic
And there is nothing”smoke and mirrors” about psychopathy.
@griz or… maybe we all are (psychopaths)… and only the thin veneer of society, of social niceties, of the illusion that we are… that we can be more prevents us from acting out on them. This is quite evidential in riots. In the collapse of society, it’s (more or less) evey man for himself.
@Jear77
Veneers are basically something of lower value wearing a suit of higher value. This links to the story of the Prodigal Son, and the welcoming father just putting a robe of value over all his pig-slopping, road-grime sweatiness to make him “fit” for the celebration. Cut through the robe, and all that nastiness underneath is revealed.
But then Paul talks about the process of sanctification by the Spirit. This in essence, takes the veneer of value deeper, and deeper and deeper still. At what point is the allegorical table for example solid wood: no matter how deeply you scratch, it’s still uniformly the same?
The world descends back into chaos so easily because as you’ve said, our niceties gained by human means are just a veneer. Scratch the surface and the nastiness is revealed. And the veneer seems to be growing thinner and thinner [skinned?)!]
The only lasting resolution, is a super-human (even super-natural) one. But those who have never tried it — and especially those who have been hardened against trying it by religious ideologies — have no idea such a resolution even exists.
@griz up to and including the total sanctification by christ’s blood, even that is a veneer, as human we remain.
It’s interesting that you claim and protest for all the world (at least on here) that these things are true… yet i have to wonder if you’re protesting too much.
@Jear77
That’s just the beginning of the sanctification process Paul spoke of. Yes, we remain human.
But also slightly more, as we can exercise increasing spiritual control over the flesh — the emotions and feelings, the attitudes and outlooks. Forgiveness. The veneer grows deeper. And over time, perhaps control over even more??
How (and what) am I protesting too much?
Our decision to settle for the mere victim-hood of ideological possession . . . when we are capable of so much more.
@griz for all this control… for this shard of divinity… we still can’t use it as we please. Useless.
In regards to how you’re protesting too much… the topic(s) of god / belief/ salvation is (are) never-ending with you. Doesn’t that seem even a tad suspicious to you, now that I point it out?
@Jear77
Oh absolutely!
To use power however one pleases with no plan beyond the moment or regard for consequence . . . is tyranny!
Which iirc, is one of the things that really irks you and that you like to demonize God for . . . with only the evidence of a very limited child-mindset when it comes to the small “bedroom” we currently call reality.
The way we’ve advanced to where we are (to the point where some are comfortable and lazy and ill-informed enough to proclaim there is no meaning and wanting to throw it all away!) . . . is by seeking out the patterns that work over time. They are something akin to Truth. We used to get them from time-proven narratives from across cultures. (Now many seem to get them from small ego-centric political-power identity-groups!)
And I keep returning to what I have growing daily personal evidence IS Truth.
And you seem to keep returning to what you seem to have growing daily personal evidence is false.
Consider that in the Hero Archetype common to all peoples and societies across time, it is not the person who seeks out the things that fail and are not true, who is valued. Any schmendrick can do that.
@griz said, “When do you propose the wholesale destruction of Humanity’s future (the children) becomes necessary for Humanity’s survival?”
Nobody proposes that absurdity.
…more false attributions from the guy accusing others of reaching for extremes,…. YOU MoNsTeR!!!!
@luftballooneyegouge
Restore the context of the thread and it will make more sense. Of course it’s absurd, and no person in their right mind would propose it.
But to not support the verdict of the Nuremburg Trials that there was such a thing as objective evil (punishable by law) happening in Nazi Germany — and the legal existence of such a thing as Crimes Against Humanity that transcend time and culture — is little different than proposing the ghastly torturing, medical experimentation and murder of children might in some cases be justified.
MoNsTrOuS indeed!
@griz
They put people on trial at Nuremberg, not concepts. That was not a verdict in any of the cases.
Why do you have to give the abstract attribution that Crimes against Humanity transcend time & culture?
The time & culture of the occurrence are very much a part of any Crimes against Humanity.
@luftballooneyegouge
It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of the Gulag Archipelago that noted Nuremburg’s triumph for the species was that it was not about prosecuting individuals, but establishing the legal precedent of “Crimes Against Humanity” that essentially removed the precedent for claiming local or subjective morality should supercede objective morality. (objective good and evil).
And all the world agreed.
But I suppose I would have to respect your right to assert that there are times and places and circumstances where the forced removal of children from their parents, torture and destructive medical experiments, their murder and vivisection, and wholesale ethnic cleansing could be morally justified.
I guess.
I suppose.
But you would be MoNsTrOuS.
I quickly formed an answer… But I’m gonna sit on it for a day or so and think it over before I give my response.
@fosheet I think good and evil are completely subjective based on each individual person.
Vegans think killing animals to eat and utilize their hides, etc. Is wrong. Growing up in the country that is a way of life, and it is respected and appreciated. I wouldn’t go slaughter 3 cows just for giggles, but I would slaughter 1 cow to feed my family through the winter.
General consensus seems to be Hilter was evil, but he legitimately thought he was bettering the race of humanity.
Look at religions that disagree. There are some religions that say man is between a man and woman only, there are some that say a man can take multiple brides, there are others who say a man can marry a child because the child is pure.
@fosheet said, “I wouldn’t go slaughter 3 cows just for giggles, but I would slaughter 1 cow to feed my family through the winter.”
Cow #2 doesn’t feel better with that answer. She backs away slowly….
@luftballooneyegouge I understand what you are saying. What I meant was I was raised on a family farm. We raised our own cows and pigs and chickens to feed our family. We gave thanks for the animals life because it provided us with nutrition.
When I said that, I meant taking unnecessary lives for the simple fact that I can do so.
@fosheet
You’re not used to the way my head coughs up thoughts.
My thought process was when you said 3 cows, my head pictures 3 cows. When you said You wouldn’t kill 3 cows for giggles, but one for your family, the #2 cow, in my head is thinking that means you’d kill one for family, but you might be open to killing #2 for giggles, just not both 2 & 3.
Basically it was my sad attempt at funnies.
@luftballooneyegouge now that makes sense. Lol
@fosheet
If they were completely subjective I don’t think we could have ever formed civilizations. I have no doubt that they start as subjective. But if they never go beyond this there can be no consensus for . . . well, anything. Not even formal language. There has to be a shared consensus of worth for any enterprise (from language, to civilization, to society, to family, to an economic or social venture) to work. Otherwise everyone is just running their own program — or the program of the most oppressive tyrant! (Marxism!).
There HAS to be a certain degree of shared (therefore objective) morals. And there IS evidence of this coming from across cultures and time. Yes, they vary here and there.
But to touch on your example of Hitler, he subjectively determined he was not just “right” but God’s veritable Right Hand in bringing about the fascist Utopia. But in the Nuremburg Trials essentially the whole world came together and set the legal precedent once-and-for-all: Morality was objective. There were such things as Crimes Against Humanity — things that were evil regardless of culture, time, circumstances. And there was precedent to exercise justice over such objective evils.
The whole world essentially agreed that there is objective morality (which they arguably never could have done without objective morality already in place!)
Both @Weenis & @jear77 make good cases, but you can’t see it because your mind is made up?
@jear77 was just saying if you change the “objective ethical standards” cited by @Weenis, different things will be Viewed At That Time to be permissible & even accepted as holy.
Your filter is set to binary, so you have tunnel vision instead of truth.
@luftballooneyegouge
Actually I was agreeing with @Weenis!
And there is compelling evidence that a common morality (objective good and evil) exists and is not just a subjective or cultural construct. It may even be biologically mandated.
The Nuremberg trials are the first evidence. They found there was such a thing as crimes against Humanity that transcend time culture or circumstance (ie. not subjective).
To hold that this was an unjust verdict, would be saying it’s okay under certain circumstances to remove children from their parents, torture and experiment on them, and then medically vivisect them or just murder them. Who do you know who wants to go there?
Then there is the behavioral evidence. Rather than looking at what people say is and isn’t real, you look at the things they behave as if they were real. And even the strongest advocate of purely subjective morality may or may not like it if people treat them good, but will most likely register offense if others treat them in evil and immoral ways. The whole goddam neo-Marxist identity-group victim-hood culture insists “subjective harm” that only they can detect was done to them (micro-aggressions, systemic racism/sexism); but want the alleged perpetrators treated as if they committed some objective evil!
And did you know that rats exhibit what some scientists are calling pre-moral behavior? Like us they are very social and enjoy playing games (and apparently can even laugh); but will refuse to play an unfair or unjust game. (Contrast that to a gullible cat or dog who will keep playing even a rigged game!)
The older rats will also let the younger rats win approximately 30% of the time, so they don’t stop playing feeling the game is unjust because of the size and strength difference.
Where the hell would a rat get this kind of behavior if not from biology?
What language, culture, or subjective self-awareness would be triggering it??
The ideological belief that morality is subjective doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny. It’s greatest evidence seems to be nearly subjective feeling.
So do some thinking, and get back to me about that binary-filter tunnel-vision truth thing.
@griz and @luftballooneyegouge
And my post was in agreement with @griz OP.
@Weenis & @griz
I don’t know where you guys get the idea I can’t understand your agreement with what you wrote in the original op, but obviously you’re the confused party.
@luftballooneyegouge
When seeking greater Truth is one’s goal and meaning in life, one can agree with any exercise of Truth.
Such freedom does not have to be as confusing as you are trying to make it!
Not everyone has to be either friend or opponent! (Tres binary, donchaknow!).
It’s a lot more fun when we don’t have to take everything personally
@griz
How does your throwing out false attributions that I take your errors as personal attacks get us any closer to the truth?
You’re running away from the subject now.
Obfuscation
@luftballooneyegouge
I can only look at how you respond to them as if they were some kind of threat.
Which often is a truer assessment of a person than the actual words they say.
@griz said confused, “Actually I was agreeing with @Weenis! ”
If you read what I said, it’s obvious that I knew you were agreeing with weener.
You’re stuck on the Nuremberg trials because of your binary bias.
sub·jec·tive
səbˈjektiv/Submit
adjective
1.
based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.
“his views are highly subjective”
synonyms: personal, individual, emotional, instinctive, intuitive
“a subjective analysis”
as·sess·ment
əˈsesmənt/Submit
noun
the evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality, or ability of someone or something.
“the assessment of educational needs”
synonyms: evaluation, judgment, rating, estimation, appraisal, analysis, opinion More
You seem to want to separate personal feelings with grouped personal feelings, which is where your tunnel vision starts kicking in.
The Nazi atrocities still fall under the category of subjective assessment .
….then you re-play your grate-est hits once the fuck again.
It seems like everything you come up with is setting you up to bitch about how every political group you don’t like is a red threat.
…over & over &over
Seriously, I think you’re reinforcing mental programming like Krishnas do mantras.
@luftballooneyegouge
I don’t battle people. Only misconceptions.
Which is not seeking the win, but seeking the highest truth possible by current understanding. So it’s less a battle than an exploration.
I guess you could say that is binary, but we shouldn’t be afraid of commitment to an ideal we believe in. Otherwise we’re just a boring weak uninformed amorphous mass of blah. A taupe banner on a beige wall. Contrasting colors can be “scary”, but they certainly get a point across.
The point in bringing up the Nuremberg trials is that if one does not take an active stance for objective good, they are enablers and eventually willing participants in evil.
Try asking the German citizens from the Nazi reign, or Russians from the Marxist era if there was any non-committal middle ground for them to stand on when all was said and done.
I can see that for some reason you have started taking this very personally. So run the proper epistemology on the beliefs you are holding to and fighting for.
But if you are truly playing the postmodernist game of there being infinite interpretations of everything and none should be favored over the others . . . Why such obvious vitriol against my interpretations . . . or such a conviction that yours are right!!?
Especially when I’ve gone to such lengths to properly ground them in something more concrete than just my feelings?
@griz
….taking it personally? Repetition is repetitious. I’m not taking anything as a personal attack on me. I’m attacking you for being a broken record.
I battle both people & misconceptions, because misconceptions don’t come from plants or minerals.
You can wrap-up calling things you say as wrong, as competition, if that makes you feel better, but I wished you’d pay more attention to why I’m calling what you’re saying as wrong.
Maybe that highest truth bullshit you want to prop up on a pedestal would come down to a reachable level?
@luftballooneyegouge
The misconception is the only true enemy. Because if it falls, the very nature of the person changes for the better. (I did notice the other day how “bothered” you were (if that’s the right word) that @Weenis and I were in agreement on something. That can only happen, and happen so quickly, when it’s not the person you see as your enemy).
That is why I repeat. Many misconceptions — particularly those weedly ideologically mandated and enforced ones — are pernicious. Repeat applications are often necessary.
Actually I’m paying rapt attention to almost everything that you say — and not for the purpose of finding fault. If you’ve not noticed, I’ve partaken of and liked several of your comments — but refrained from commenting because they were essentially good and should remain that way without regressing into something not so good.
For example, I’m paying considerable attention to your impression that I’m perhaps the one thinking themselves on a pedestal to come down off of. I’ve never proposed that I’m “highest truth”.
Only that such exists; that our evolutionary existence, the rise of civilization, even language is based on it; and that it’s worth continuing to seek no matter what the cost. I’m fully aware that any Truth I may be sharing, is not intrinsic to me.
So please don’t assess it to me.
@griz said, “(I did notice the other day how “bothered” you were (if that’s the right word) that @Weenis and I were in agreement on something.”
You need to work on reading comprehension. I was annoyed that you guys were claiming I didn’t notice you were agreeing when it was completely obvious you were. I could care less if you were agreeing.
The worst part,…. I’ve already explained this once.
What were you saying about misconceptions?
@luftballooneyegouge
I never made any claim, until you made a fuss!
@griz
Why can’t rats just have morals? Why the pre-….?
@luftballooneyegouge
LOL!
Part of it could just be Human hubris!
But a big part of it is biological. Our developed pre-frontal cortex is where we test abstractions and plan (with morality being an aspect of testing abstractions). That is where we create scenarios and populate them with an abstracted avatar of ourselves and run the projection forwards to see how our avatar fares — without risking the whole organism.
It evolves out of the motor strip in the brain — but “disconnects” from the rest of the body so it’s our avatar acting things out and not our physical self.
The rat’s motor strip is evolving into the structure we are familiar with as performing these tasks. But the split from the rest of the body’s nervous system is not yet there. If they are “imagining” some scenario for the sake of planning or testing morality, the rest of the body cannot help joining in the escapade.
At least that’s my best understanding of the current (often rather advanced!) understanding.
@luftballooneyegouge
Actually no. @jear77 hasn’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about. Which is generally par for the course.
@Weenis you might be surprised. But of course you’d never know, because I value my privacy…
Attaching labels to things is a human convention
@Scarlett
It is.
But according to the Genesis story is a convention God approves of. Labeling is fundamental for language which is fundamental for civilization.
Provided we don’t use the labeled objects or our ability to label them, or the civilizations that spring from them or the individuals those civilizations produce, as a point of worship greater than God.
It all fits together in a very meaningful way.
In a bio-evolutionary way if one’s belief structure doesn’t have issues with that terminology
@griz
…& now you’ve just agreed it’s a subjective assessment under the 2nd definition.
sub·jec·tive
2.
GRAMMAR
relating to or denoting a case of nouns and pronouns used for the subject of a sentence.
@luftballooneyegouge
Subjective assessment is the earliest stage of epistemology.
But if it never goes beyond this there is no epistemology. Only egocentricity
(opinionated assertion based mostly on feelings).
Which is what then drives us to take things personally.
This is intellectual discussion not personal attack. Remember, I was praising your contributions to the group not that long ago to a newcomer.
@griz
You seem to want to relegate emotions down with opinions, but emotions go past mere opinion. Emotions are reactions so powerful they’re involuntary.
They are very much a part of us & not always a hindrance, but often a valid alarm that should be paid heed to, instead of categorizing as just feral hold-overs or whatever it is you keep catching your mental sweater on.
Your whole passive aggressive attack you’re labeling as concern for intellectual discussion is another of your grate-est hits.
@luftballooneyegouge
I clearly said that the former leads to the latter.
I’ve never said nor implied that emotions are not both powerful, and biologically based (in the amygdala actually); because this is what I believe. They feed responses directly into not just the limbic system of the cortex but are mapped directly onto the spinal cord. They are powerful. They are what causes us to jump even before our minds can begin to formulate the intent to jump.
But the main power of the cerebral cortex, is inhibitory. It’s what enables us to “have the emotions without them having us” (I repeat this, because people either forget or ignore it! Pernicious weeds require repeat-application!).
Are we not concerned with intellectual discussion? I’d even welcome spiritual discussion.
But emotional discussion? That usually just results in the impression we are being personally attacked.
@griz said he said, “I clearly said that the former leads to the latter.”
Sounds like more binary tunnel vision as objectivity can lead to subjectivity as well.
Cold calculated thinking can lead to emotional thoughts.
For example, reading about symptoms one has had in the past might make them emotional if they think they might have some disease.
As for the rest, I’ve already gone over that. I do believe I remarked something about REPETITION!!!!
@luftballooneyegouge
The rise of emotions doesn’t have to lead to a loss — or a permanent loss — of objectivity.
Returning to a repeat application against that same pesky weed, having the emotions doesn’t have to mean the emotions have you.
Instinctive emotions and primitive responses do have their purpose. But it is a purpose that has little to do with realizing our full potential as Human beings. That comes with self-control — perhaps starting meager at first, but growing over time.
And another point of apparently necessary repetition: controlling something doesn’t have to mean eradication.
Or would you disagree? And if so, why?