@cicerone imposter,
cicerone imposter wrote:
Fido, It's obvious all those books you claimed to have read have done you no good; you're still ignorant. Morals do not emanate from any group morals. Local laws attempt to control unlawful behavior, but crimes continue. That's the reason most communities have police departments, and even they break laws. It's also the reason we have courts. What community do you know of that doesn't have a police department or courts? Please name any one group or community that hasn't committed any crime.
I will agree that I am ignorant only because that is a universal trait of human kind... Other than that, I do not think you can grasp the relationship between morals and laws which is the difference between moral form and social forms... When people take their moral understanding of good, for an example, and use it to formulate a law to prhibite and punish bad behavior, that is moral forms used to create a social form.. Another example is love as a moral form making marriage as a social form.. Your complaint about law is valid enough, but you must understand the causes... Old social forms often lose touch with the moral forms they are founded to achieve.... People thinking law is a thing apart from morals often make laws that result in immorality, or contradict moral sense, as when law promotes injustice, or defends promiscuity... Since the time of Socrates, people have been looking for an individual morality, and also an underlying logic, so it could be taught... All morality is community...Morality for the individual is a form of relationship with his community... No person is more a member of his community than his acceptence of the community morality, and that acceptence, which is a deniel of self gratification at the expense of the community, is what it takes to belong...
On the other side, law does not work because it undercuts community control of its members which has been the universal norm in society up until a thousand years ago in Europe, five hundred years ago in North America, and is still the norm in many places in the world... Little law was needed when every community defended its members, and controlled its members certain that if they went abroad to disrupt the peace, that all might suffer the actions of the individual... Individual self consciousness is not very old... Before the first milenium, the number of true individuals might almost be counted on ones fingers... People like St. Paul, or Caesar were very rare... In fact, the law upon which individual equality is based at first only put forward the notion that each nation was equal to another, and this Roman law of nations became the basis of natural law...
We in modern society are left with laws, and police, and courts, and prisons, all overburdon to society, and all essentially ineffective... Those who are moral need no law, but for all the rest, no amount of law is enough, so that the more law one has, the more law one needs... Children learn in kindergarten to call 911 on their parent if they feel it is will help their cause... The parents and teachers find they have no authority, and little influence at the moment the child learns he has legal power... You can try to discipline your child according to your moral understanding, but law, and the threat of law which has destroyed many communities is now breaking down the vestiges of the community in its basic unit, which means it is the law itself that is teaching lawlessness... Law gives those without moral sense power in their own affairs as legal individuals, and only when they have reached nearly to adult hood do they find too late that they are as powerless before the law as everyone else... For some, those who gain their moral sense before they learn their legal power, the moral lesson taught out of influence are enough, but only because most people are naturally lawful and moral... For them, no law is needed, and for many, no law will ever be enough... They cannot figure out that there is a cruel mailed fist inside the silk glove of law...
