by Terry 60 Replies latest watchtower bible
There is no absolute morality just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Morality is defined by concession of a population. This is why what is "good" and what is "evil" in the US is different from what is "good" and what is "evil" in the Middle East.
Bloody hell thats a bit harsh, have you ever considered the possibility that your one of the lucky ones that is strong enough to cope with what life throws at him? I know beggars can be a pain but to be totally unsympathetic to another human being in trouble and at the bottom of society smacks of arrogance, have you any idea what that person's live has been like? i doubt it, just because you seem to be o.k and able to look after yourself doesn't make it ok to look down on others, ok don't give him money if u think thats best, personnally i wouldn't either but i'd give them a drink and some food if they needed it, just like i hope someone would help me if i was at my lowest ebb. To me thats the moral thing to do, help another human if you can.
I think you missed the point of my post. I agree with you completely about how I should treat this gentleman. But my reasons for doing so are instinctual, religious, and cultural. They aren't based on logic or on expectation of reward or longterm good. I just refuse to give him money because I feel like that is the wrong thing to do. I couldn't tell you why. I would give him a meal, though - but I also couldn't tell you why other than I have had to rely on the kindness of strangers myself.
In reality - yes, I agree, I have bought meals for them, even tossed the odd coin their way when I felt like it and could spare it; but Terry feels that all morality can be proven by strictest logical argumentation. And I personally can't agree with that. Sometimes it just feels right, and that's all there is to it.
CZAR
As regards this particular gentleman, I am large enough to chase him away myself. I did so the other day when his presence became unbearable. He hasn't been back in our parking lot since.
However, a lot of the leftists I work with criticized me as being unduly harsh. Whatever, I'm happy enough now.
CZAR
The so-called "bleeding heart" contingent of Liberalism detaches effects from causes.
Poverty, to them, has no paternity other than social irresponsibility.
There is nothing wrong in helping people, if and when they are__*worthy__of the help you can afford to give. But, charity is far from a moral duty.
The receiver of charity is reduced to a helplessly miserable object of pity who holds a mortgage on the giver. The giver is the one judged! The receiver is not held accountable for bad choices, self-destructive behavior or self-enforced ignorance. They are excused because they are pitiful!
The Giver of charity is judged on whether he gives at all and enough and with the right "face" on it. This casts the giver and the receiver in the roles of sacrificial victim and moral cannibal.
It is morally proper to accept help, when it is offered, not as a moral duty, but as an act of good will and generosity, when the giver can afford it (i.e., when it does not involve self-sacrifice on his part) and when it is offered in response to the receiver's VIRTUES, not in response to his flaws, weaknesses or moral failures, and especially not on the ground of his need.
The moral question I raised in using the word "worthy" above was purposeful.
A begger who is unwilling to work is different from one who is unABLE. Misfortune on my part does not give me entitlement to slave labor on my behalf. I have misfortune and you have to work for me? Why?
There is no such thing as a right to consume at the expense of another's hard work. That is the guilt-trip of those who use emotional thinking to counter logical thinking.
Remember, the bottom line is always enslavement! Emotional blackmail has only one goal throughout history: to get you to do the bidding of others.
The warning bell should always peal loudly when you are asked or compelled to perform at your own expense on behalf of others on the basis of __"uncaused"_effects. The dishonest phrase that always pops up is "those less fortunate than you". As though it is fortune that brings you a paycheck and not skilled labor. It detaches personal responsibility from one's status as an earner. It gives the right to consume to a non-earner. It serves to demolish rational thought.
Rewards, logically, can only be made on merit. What you reward you get more of. What you punish, you get less of.
Reward a non-earning person and you enable them to be scofflaws to cause and effect.
Villastu says:
Bloody hell thats a bit harsh, have you ever considered the possibility that you're one of the lucky ones that is strong enough to cope with what life throws at him?
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I notice your wording with interest. You attach the "cause" of a person's financial status to two things:
1.Luck
2.What life throws
This is interesting to me. Those are two "floating concepts" detached from tangible referents.
Why do people go to school? What do they make a personal effort to get good grades? Why do they enroll in accredited colleges? Why do they acquire skills for employers to assess? Why do people buy insurance and start savings accounts? Why do these people try to better themselves through PERSONAL EFFORT if one's condition in life is determined only by __luck_and _what life throws at them? Are they fools?
Yes, they are fools! But, only if they do all that study and self-improvement to benefit people who chose NOT to go to school and learn or acquire skills because they believe there is no cause and effect to one's actions!
EARNERS who labor for NON-EARNERS are victims unless there is a compensating social contract that counter-balances the give/take ratio.
A parent labors for their child because the child has many values compensating for the parental contributions to their welfare. A child grows up with love and companionship and is a comfort for the parent later in life, ideally.
But, a person who drops out of society and takes drugs and drinks alcohol and wallows in the charity of others has thrown away self-esteem. They become parasitic lesions on society. They give nothing back nor do they wish to!
We can all name somebody in our family who lives off the labor of others with seeming impunity. They are the deadbeats who get a pass in life because they have run afoul of: "luck and what life throws at them." Nobody seems to hold them accountable in any way for their own misfortune because the law of cause and effect just doesn't find a place inside their thinking.
Don't read me wrong! Yes, there are SOME people who are born with physical and mental impairment who will never be able to self-sustain. They cannot do what they cannot do. No personal choice is possible and consequent personal responsibility vanishes from the issue.
Those people are NOT the people I'm discussing. I'm talking about the gold bricks, the layabouts, the drop outs, the slackers, the bums, the panhandlers, the schemers, the con-artists who prey on human EMOTION detached from cause and effect.
As long as people keep themselves unaware of the fact that morality is cause and effect they will continue to let slackers hold a mortgage on their assests and guilt-trip them into a free-ride and an endless free supply of "causeless" largesse.
I only ask that you examine your premise! See how you have attached the cause of poverty to phantoms floating linguistically in space and not to reality.
I have nothing against charity or your kind heartedness per se. But, only a few people merit our charity and those are not out panhandling and spewing vomit in public places.
Elsewhere says:
There is no absolute morality just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Morality is defined by concession of a population. This is why what is "good" and what is "evil" in the US is different from what is "good" and what is "evil" in the Middle East.
**************************************************************************************************************** I reply: Let us substitute the word "gravity" for the words "absolute morality" in the above sentence. >>>There is no GRAVITY just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Beauty is a subjective evaluation by a personal standard. Gravity is not. But, is morality? Gravity applies to our physical body whether we wish it so or not. No matter what thoughts and beliefs we hold in our mind when we jump off a high building; gravity will affect the consequence of that jump. Belief or no belief, opinion or no opinion, we smash into the pavement below! I'd like to ask you to think, just for a moment, as a kind of "try it on and see if it fits" process, in the following way. Consider the force of gravity and morality as being identical. Let us walk out to an expansion bridge over a river for a moment, shall we? Now look down. It is a long way down, isn't it? Yes. If you jump off this bridge and hit the water at maximum velocity you will be smashed upon impact. Right? Right. That is the law of morality. You cannot escape the fact that your body will travel at gathering speed and strike the surface of the water with great bodily damage. But, what if you dive, tuck, and straighten out at the last instant and, upon entering the surface, begin curving in an arc upward again? Could you turn a suicidal fall into a spectacular dive? Yes, it could be done with proper training and skill. That is morality. The difference between jumping and diving is a moral issue. The jump that kills us we will call "immoral". The jump that demonstrates superior diving skill we will call "moral". In both cases we left the bridge and travelled through the air and entered the water at the same speed. Can you see the difference? Of course you can, but, what am I driving at? Morality is the same for everybody in the following absolute sense: WE CANNOT ESCAPE CAUSE AND EFFECT IN OUR ACTIONS we can only modify the result by training and skill. There! That is morality in a nutshell. It takes training our mind to develop the skill to see how one action differs from another in the results it produces: death or skillful display. Man must choose between being a rational being or a suicidal animal. The code of skills he adopts to turn a suicidal jump into a spectacular dive is his MORALITY. A rational man knows the difference. An irrational man simply cannot see the difference. One more point, if I may.... For centuries, the mystics of the spirit have existed by running a protection racket--by making life on earth unbearable, then charging you for consolation and relief, by forbidding virtues that make existence possible, then riding on the shoulders of your guilt, by delcaring production and joy to be sins, then collecting blackmail from the "sinners". I hope this is lucid.
Terry,
If the giver is the one judged, wouldn't it be in the best interests of the giver to give. All people deserve mercy, because we don't know about their "lives". At some point in time it does become hard to pity people that are obviously "blind" to their "consequences". At that time some might become the teacher as well as the giver.
michelle
this is where the "do unto others " part of the equation comes in
myelaine says:" All people deserve mercy, because we don't know about their "lives".
I reply:
So, the basis for giving charity and dispensing mercy you attribute to "WE DON'T KNOW".
That is an action based on what we don't know. It is an argument from ignorance rather than from knowledge.
To base a moral action or a moral judgement on what "we don't know" is a rather tenuous basis.
Rational action is based on what we DO KNOW.
Mystical obedience to what others expect of us is always based on what "we don't know"
That is how we are controlled!
A mystic tells us what to do based on secret information, divine information, mysterious information that WE DON'T KNOW because we are not among the chosen few. It is mind-control at its worst.
The JW's have their mystics who are the "anointed" and how they are annointed and how they get their inside information WE DON'T KNOW. Our job is just to do what they say because they control us.
Do you see how easily we can be made to serve?
If we base our actions on what we DON'T KNOW we are always at the whim of ignorance.
Where do we draw the line? When do we become responsible for our own actions? If we must always err on the side of mysterious non-knowing and we are going to be judged by the GROUP on our performace to that mysterious standard detached from FACTS--we are a slave.
A slave must obey. A slave must not act according to their own will. A slave must act on orders and not on facts or decisions made by their own mind. A slave is denied personal morality. Why? Morality comes from rational decisions as to what is best based on data and not on ignorance.
The strange man in the car who approaches the playground and asks the child, "Will you help me find my puppy?" is counting on the child to feel an emotion that will motivate her to get into the strangers car. The child acts on emotion and ignorance and it leads to her doom.
A well informed child approached by a stranger in a car is skeptical and acts on data and self-regard; not emotion. This child will escape and live.
Knowledge is powerful.
Ignorance is slavery.
Given the same conditions gravity will always have the same effect.
If you ask 1000 people if euthanizing a person who is suffering unbearable pain is moral or not, you will get many different answers. Some will say yes, some will say no and many more will offer many different "gray area" answers.
You cannot compare gravity to morality.
WE CANNOT ESCAPE CAUSE AND EFFECT IN OUR ACTIONS we can only modify the result by training and skill.
Cause and effect are irrelevant in morality. Morality is based how the effect is perceived by a population. Is the effect of euthanasia good or evil? Again, everyone will give you a different answer.
Is it moral for a father to kill his daughter for having premarital sex? In the Middle East the answer is yes and is considered an honorable act, in the West the answer is no and is considered to be a terrible act.
Is it moral to let a person bleed to death when a blood transfusion is available? Ask a JW and they will tell you that it is moral, and in fact for a greater good to allow someone to bleed to death.
Is it moral for a South Korean woman to suffocate her crying baby to save a group of people who are hiding from a North Korean death squad?
You are confusing Morality with opinion ABOUT morality.
In the Middle ages people had opinions about whether the world was round or flat. Did that mean the world was whatever consensus said it was? No.
Morality is what it is.
Morality is not what the consensus tells us.
