Philosophers think they know it all - they are never wrong.

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido wrote:
Quote:
and no religion would make much headway if it supported immorality.
is a non-sequitur.

Let me explain it... Morality in its broadest sense is community, and the similarity of the words ethic and ethnic bear this conclusion out... What religion would capture the faith of followers if it went against the people and the morality which has always supported their community???... Morality in the spiritual sense, in the sense I use it in moral forms has to do with the life of the community, the spiritual health of the community as we use the word Morale, as opposed to physic, which is physical health... Those who consider morality consider the health of their community and what is immoral is also damaging to the health of the community, and if religions did not take up and support the morality of the people they would never have been accepted by the people... For this reason one can lay the christian calender neatly over the top of the top of the pagan calender, because the cause for celebration remained the same, and very often, even the symbols... Only the sacrifice, symbolic for real, changed...

1 Reply

@Fido,

I guess in your world, Germany and Hitler never existed. Ever hear of the Inquisition?

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I guess in your world, Germany and Hitler never existed. Ever hear of the Inquisition?

These massacres are against the morality of the current societies we live in, but, then they happened, they were not (at least, not in nazist Germany and medieval Europe).

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@manored,

You mean to say it was okay back in the early 20th century?

What say you about the US massacre of the Vietnmese and Iraqi people?

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I guess in your world, Germany and Hitler never existed. Ever hear of the Inquisition?

A lot of events came together to bring Germany and Hitler together, and it was the moral forms, which is what Hitler talked of and appealed to that made his rise possible... All people had to do to be rid of him was to see through him as he saw through them... That is what the swing kids did, and they disenthralled themselves of the beast...The most certain victims in this world are those who confuse faith with thought... All our forms, even moral forms make thought possible, but taken whole they are no substitute for thought... If philosophy has a job, it is not just to take forms to their conclusion, but to get inside of them, so to speak, and check them for accuracy against the reality they presume to mirror...

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@manored,

manored wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

I guess in your world, Germany and Hitler never existed. Ever hear of the Inquisition?

These massacres are against the morality of the current societies we live in, but, then they happened, they were not (at least, not in nazist Germany and medieval Europe).

The actions of the nazis were to an extent support by prejudice, experience, philosophy and pseudoscience... And still the Nazis took great pains to hide the extent and the quality of the treatment they were handing out to the jews and others deemed anti social, or sub human... People can be willfully blind to injustice, but consider, that up until the end, Jewish men were surprised when told they were smelling their wives and children being cremated... There was a lot of cruelty support by willful misinformation, and it was ubiquitous... There was enough guilt to go around, even up to the Jews and the Catholic hierarchy...The primary Jewish victims were the young and the old...There were means of escape made available for the young, fit, healthy zeolots for Israel..

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

You mean to say it was okay back in the early 20th century?

What say you about the US massacre of the Vietnmese and Iraqi people?

What the jews do the Palestinians and what the palestinians do back is moral... It is moral to fight for your community and defend your community... There is no human morality for most of us... We simply cannot reach the mentality of a world community... The notion is foreign to us... Our people give us our morality, and that is why ethics and ethnic are so similar as names...

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

You mean to say it was okay back in the early 20th century?

What say you about the US massacre of the Vietnmese and Iraqi people?

I though I had made it clear. I didnt say it was ok, but that the people who did it though it was. The same goes for the those two modern wars. "Okness" is relative. The people of the past are simply immoral in our eyes.

1 Reply

@manored,

manored wrote:

cicerone imposter wrote:

You mean to say it was okay back in the early 20th century?

What say you about the US massacre of the Vietnmese and Iraqi people?

I though I had made it clear. I didnt say it was ok, but that the people who did it though it was. The same goes for the those two modern wars. "Okness" is relative. The people of the past are simply immoral in our eyes.

What is moral and what is Ok are entirely different questions... Morality is community, what ones people do out of a nearly objective sense of their own immediate welfare; but what is Ok from a larger perspective introduces morality as a human ideal rather than a practical reality...

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I certainly think I know what I am saying when I am saying it, otherwise why would I say it ? (...of course the matter of knowing is entirely different... )

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@Fido,

Fido wrote:

What is moral and what is Ok are entirely different questions... Morality is community, what ones people do out of a nearly objective sense of their own immediate welfare; but what is Ok from a larger perspective introduces morality as a human ideal rather than a practical reality...

I would say that what is "ok" is simply what is fine to do or not in our own system of morality. In the morality we live in today, massacres are not ok.

1 Reply

@manored,

manored wrote:

Fido wrote:

What is moral and what is Ok are entirely different questions... Morality is community, what ones people do out of a nearly objective sense of their own immediate welfare; but what is Ok from a larger perspective introduces morality as a human ideal rather than a practical reality...

I would say that what is "ok" is simply what is fine to do or not in our own system of morality. In the morality we live in today, massacres are not ok.

What you say is clearly false since what is immoral puts a person outside of society, and we cannot say that of those who massacre... They go home to the welcome of their wives and children and often live long lives and die in bed...The most moral of people have a human morality, but most of us who are moral in the traditional sense simply do not..

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@Fido,

I believe both of you are missing the most important issue of your "massacre," and that is "what was the reason behind it?" There can be a debate on the whys, but it can be very difficult to arrive on an agreement.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

I believe both of you are missing the most important issue of your "massacre," and that is "what was the reason behind it?" There can be a debate on the whys, but it can be very difficult to arrive on an agreement.

I am certain that if you look at human behavior you must look for reasons and not a reason.. All I was trying to point out was that morality is from the perspective of ones community, so one may see massacres tha tare essentially moral, even if seeming imoral from the perspective of an ideal world community... We are not there without a thought... I mean, the situation in which we find ourselves is in small natural communities is surrounded by enemies who are little more than animals... Being surrounded brings out the best in people... They swear to make common cause...They share their land and common wealth... And, they compensate for the restraint their members know when outside of their commity, with a nearly perfect freedom while in their community...

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@Fido,

Even when a community as a whole may agree it was moral, that doesn't make it moral. Group approval of anything that affects others cannot be judged internally.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Even when a community as a whole may agree it was moral, that doesn't make it moral. Group approval of anything that affects others cannot be judged internally.

Bullshit! You have no understanding what morals have been as morals since the Cicero coined the term... Since the life of the community is a spiritual conception as are all concepts, that life and that health are clearly a common concern for the group... If they cannot decide for themselves what is moral , then who could better decide??? You forget, that in days past up to the present moment, that communities were held responsible for the actions of their members, and people went so far as to believe that if they did not judge themselves and eliminate the bad element that even the gods would judge them... It is in that sense that Ethics means custom, or character; what one would be expected to reveal outside of ones group... Each person depends on an honorable reputation, so consider how you would feel if some one from your family went about destroying your honor in your home town and neighborhood... You might say that their behavior should have no affect on your honor, or you might disown them, but in some societies where honor is essential, that person might be killed...

Law, in breaking all people up into individuals and destroying group power have made lawlessness universal... When communities had power over their own, and resonsibility over their own, crime was minimal, and everyone played by the same rules... The individual you mention is immoral, and morals are what a person accepts to become a member of society... It has taken a thousand years of Western law to destroy community control, and it is the greatest injustice to communities like the blacks, who have no real control over their members to have to suffer group resonsibility for the actions of their individuals, but it is a fact...

1 Reply

@Fido,

Have you ever heard of cannibals? It was practiced in a "group environment." How is that "moral" by any standard?

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@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Have you ever heard of cannibals? It was practiced in a "group environment." How is that "moral" by any standard?

Friends do not eat friends; or at least, do not kill them to do so... Anything one does as a community is moral, even if it is the most outrageous violence on another people... Surely you can see the simlarity between ethic, and ethnic... Do you suppose that similarity to be accidental???

1 Reply

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

Quote:

Friends do not eat friends; or at least, do not kill them to do so... Anything one does as a community is moral, even if it is the most outrageous violence on another people..

Yup, just like when GW Bush chased out those UN Inspectors and started his war of "shock and awe" that killed thousands of innocent Iraqis.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Fido wrote:
Quote:
Friends do not eat friends; or at least, do not kill them to do so... Anything one does as a community is moral, even if it is the most outrageous violence on another people..

Yup, just like when GW Bush chased out those UN Inspectors and started his war of "shock and awe" that killed thousands of innocent Iraqis.

Moral forms, like love, or freedom, or justice, or wisdom are spritual qualities, and morality too considers the spiritual life of the people as a whole, the community...What we do within our communities must not injure the life, the spirit of the people... If a people decide that for their welfare they must fight others that does not affect their morality...What anyone does within the group has the potential of affecting the relationships with in that form... That is where morality has meaning... There is no human morality... We have shared rules like the incest taboo, which has kept us all human; but nature forces that rule, and not us...Invariably, morality divides people in one community from people in other communities... If you use the nation state as an example of humanity, then children soon find that there is no penalty for bad behavior as there once was.... It is threats from without that make the fear for the life of the community into a reality...Unity is never easy...It is not always fun to live a healthy and moral life... To belong anywhere requires a sacrifice, and the usual sacrifice is our selves, our individuality...But it not a lie that virtue is its own reward...Where people are moral they are also free and healthy...

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