Reply
Tue 4 Oct, 2005 01:14 am
I have been arguing a lot with my friends about morals, ethics values.
What are the differences between these three concepts?
Are all morals the same or do they differ in cultures, traditions and race groups?
Please do not post an exact definition from dictionary. Elaboration would be much appreciated.
If you could elaborate about your argument, we could help you more.
Morals are usually based on religious beliefs/laws and specify what you ought and ought not to do. They vary widely among groups and cultures and often have no logical basis, such as exposing various areas of skin.
Ethics take into consideration the effects of your actions, not the morality or legality.
Values are what's important to you. For instance, you may believe that the life of an embryo is sacrosanct and may not be taken no matter how many people it benefits, but it is OK for thousands of young soldiers to be sent to their deaths in a futile war.
Terry wrote:Morals are usually based on religious beliefs/laws and specify what you ought and ought not to do. They vary widely among groups and cultures and often have no logical basis, such as exposing various areas of skin.
Ethics take into consideration the effects of your actions, not the morality or legality.
Values are what's important to you. For instance, you may believe that the life of an embryo is sacrosanct and may not be taken no matter how many people it benefits, but it is OK for thousands of young soldiers to be sent to their deaths in a futile war.
Apparently the mass graves in Iraq, the gassing of the Kurds and the torture chambers and plastic shredders (used for people) of Iraq that kept the brutal Baathist party in power with their leader Sadaam Hussein must have represented values that were ok with you, Terry?
So we should leave and let the Baathists regain power by force and terrorism and bombings now, right?
Should we give them back the 500 tons of uranium that they had stockpiled for 'peaceful' purposes as well as help them rebuild the hijacking school at Salman Pak?
Yes protect the guilty, but abort the innocent, by slicing and hacking, by chemical burning or just by puncturing their skull and sucking the brains out with a vaccuum. Are those your values, Terry?
Real life, what is the point of fabricating "values" for someone you don't even know instead of answering the question? I gave an EXAMPLE to illustrate my point, and you did not even get that right. I was referring to stem cell research using surplus eggs from fertility clinics, and soldiers who have been sent to their deaths in futile wars including Vietnam and Iraq. But that is not question at hand.
Let's see your thoughts on the differences between morals, ethics, and values, if you have any.
Terry wrote:Real life, what is the point of fabricating "values" for someone you don't even know instead of answering the question? I gave an EXAMPLE to illustrate my point, and you did not even get that right. I was referring to stem cell research using surplus eggs from fertility clinics.....
If this is what you are referring to rather than abortion, then you didn't get your own example right in your response. Once an egg is fertilized by a sperm it is no longer a 'surplus egg'.
This is a very typical mischaracterization to try to distort what is at stake in this issue.
To create a human being in a lab so that you can kill her and harvest parts (whether stem cells in the early stage, or organs in later stages) is abominable. I can understand why you would not want people to know that this is what the issue is all about because your position is absolutely indefensible.
Terry wrote:......and soldiers who have been sent to their deaths in futile wars including Vietnam and Iraq. But that is not question at hand.
As for 'fabricating values' you should know. To imply that anyone had foreknowledge that soldiers under his command would die for no reason and that he sent them anyway is an arrogant statement of foolishness, to say the least.
It's easy to second guess what 'shoulda' been done. But if you were in the position to make the same decisions, with only the data available at the time and not the hindsight of years later, I doubt seriously that you would have done better.
And of course the characterization of these wars as futile is highly subjective anyway, because you lack knowledge of what
would have happened had the war not occurred. To speculate on the alternate path history might or might not have taken is simply that. Speculation.
How many more of his countrymen would Sadaam have killed by now if the US had left him alone? Have you investigated the mass graves that he was responsible for filling when left in power?
real life wrote:As for 'fabricating values' you should know. To imply that anyone had foreknowledge that soldiers under his command would die for no reason and that he sent them anyway is an arrogant statement of foolishness, to say the least.
It's easy to second guess what 'shoulda' been done. But if you were in the position to make the same decisions, with only the data available at the time and not the hindsight of years later, I doubt seriously that you would have done better.
No need for hindsight. Foresight would have been much better.
Norman Schwarzkoph knew it.
Quote:In a 1996 Frontline Special on The Gulf War General Norman Schwarzkoph spoke these prophetic words.
Gen. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: On the question of going to Baghdad_ if you remember the Vietnam war, we had no international legitimacy for what we did. As a result, we, first of all, lost the battle in world public opinion. Eventually, we lost the battle at home.
In the Gulf war, we had great international legitimacy in the form of eight United Nations resolutions, every one of which said, "Kick Iraq out of Kuwait." Did not say one word about going into Iraq, taking Baghdad, conquering the whole country and- and hanging Saddam Hussein. That's point number one.
Point number two- had we gone on to Baghdad, I don't believe the French would have gone and I'm quite sure that the Arab coalition would not have gone. The coalition would have ruptured and the only people that would have gone would have been the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
And, oh, by the way, I think we'd still be there. We'd be like a dinosaur in a tar pit. We could not have gotten out and we'd still be the occupying power and we'd be paying 100 percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq.
If Dubya had only listened to his father.
Quote:In his memoir, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Bush Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.
"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
But he didn't.
Quote:Asked by Woodward, an assistant managing editor at the Washington Post, if he had ever consulted the former president before ordering the invasion of Iraq, Bush replied that "he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that I appeal to."
Nope, he went ahead anyway. They fired the generals that advised against invasion, or that advised for a larger invasion force to assure we could maintain the peace post invasion.
real life wrote:And of course the characterization of these wars as futile is highly subjective anyway, because you lack knowledge of what would have happened had the war not occurred. To speculate on the alternate path history might or might not have taken is simply that. Speculation.
It is not speculation that the justification for entering Viet Nam's civil war was to prevent the spread of communism. It is not speculation that after 50,000+ American lives and more than a million Viet Namese lives, South Viet Nam became and still is communist. We were supposed to have learned from that one.
real life wrote:How many more of his countrymen would Sadaam have killed by now if the US had left him alone? Have you investigated the mass graves that he was responsible for filling when left in power?
Why is it that that question was never used as justification until the pumped up WMD scenerios went flat. How many Iraqis have died and will continue to die since the invasion?
Values? They differ from person to person. Morals and ethics are more universal in nature. Personally I base such truths on my inner peace.The phrase, "circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself" taken from James Allen book "As A Man Thinketh" tells much about ones eithics. (Now, all you women that dislike anything male, go buy a copy of As a Woman Thinketh, so you don't feel left out.) This important concept of "self revelation" from this book can also be told in a story that is used in philosophy class called the Ring of Gyges or Myth of Gyges. The story taken from Plato's Republic and recounts how the shepherd Gyges finds a ring on a hand extending from a crack in the earth and removes the ring from the hand and puts it on. Gyges discovers the ring gives him powers to be invisible at will and then uses these powers to kill the king, rape the queen and take over the kingdom. Afterwards, his lack of virtue catches up with him.
What is virtue and ethics? Some authorities define it as moral excellence or excellence of the soul. In readily understandable terms we can define virtue for us from this story of Gyges and ask ourselves the question, "What would we do if no one was looking or we knew we would not get caught?" Yes, circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself. Virtue or moral excellence cannot be bought. Virtue is not learned from the classroom, other than memorizing definitions. Remember, a fool can only say what he knows ~ it takes a wise man to know what he says. How do we develop living a virtuous life and really know what we say? As Professor Daniel Robinson mentioned in a lecture on virtue, "We develop virtue by practicing being virtuous or morally excellent 7 days a week and each day being better than the day before -- in other words we make it a habit of being virtuous." And as he quotes Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
I was at a religious discussion one time where the group was composed of a wide spectrum of believers and non believers. One atheist said he ran his life by the golden rule. Another person piped up that the golden rule came from the bible, which made the atheist wince. The atheist seemed to take pride in his self sufficiency and did not like to run his life by anything that came out of the bible. Every religion was made by man and as such every religion is imperfect as it is run by man. Despite these imperfections, each religion also has many "perfection's" within it as well. We can still be open to peace generating tools from any of the religions and spiritual traditions that are available to us if we are serious about being at peace. This requires us to run our life by truth and not by prejudice. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said: "Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them" (Matthew 7:12). Nowadays this verse is commonly referred to as "The Golden Rule," and is more commonly quoted as: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Now, whether you believe in God or believe in Jesus or are an atheist or Buddhist does this wisdom not apply to you? In this case, you can adopt a peace generating tool from the Christians and apply it to your life irrespective of your religious beliefs or lack thereof. Wisdom for living a life at peace is all around us for the taking. But many of us get blinded with labels and personal prejudices. As such, I practice from many religious and spiritual traditions without problems or prejudices and readily look for such gifts irrespective of what label they come under - on the contrary I am most grateful wherever I find them.
The Muslims have a practice of praying five times a day to Allah. For those that do not know, Allah is the same God of the Jews and of the Old Testament that the Christians worship. The Muslims pray at sun up, when the sun is at its zenith at noon, when the sun is part way down in the afternoon, when the sun sets and when they go to bed. Even though I am a Christian and not a Muslim, I borrowed from the Muslim's prayer schedule to use as a reminder for my own prayers. If you are an Atheist you can borrow the Muslim's prayer schedule to be mindful of "gratitude" in your life - you can commune with the universe for all the good that that has been given to you at these same prayer times the Muslims use. If you do not want to develop a practice of gratitude, then what about using it as a reminder 5 times a day to relax your breath, practice mindfulness and bring your thoughts back to the present moment? When you have come to a point of gratitude for being able to open your eyes in the morning and being able to take a breath of air everything else is just gravy so to speak. Gratitude plays an important part with finding inner peace, just as being mindful of the present moment and being aware of anything that causes this mindfulness to wander.
A group of Catholic nuns has a motto of "Charity, Simplicity and Humility." Are these not all qualities we can benefit from whether Jew, Protestant or Atheists? If we think not, then what about developing peace from the opposite end of the spectrum by using Selfishness, Complex Living and Pride? Well, all these qualities whether they be the first group or the second are needed for a balanced life. The key here is that of balance and not to get too far in the extreme territory - for even though water and air are life sustaining necessities, too much of them will still kill us. The point I am trying to make is this; no need to discriminate or form prejudices against other religions - just take what you can apply from these spiritual traditions and use it in your own life to develop peace and contentment within yourself - all it takes is being honest, open and willing.
One time I asked an old Catholic priest if he ever studied about Buddhism when he was training in the seminary. He scowled at me like I was the devil shaking his head and quickly walking away from me. If he was a little more open minded to finding inner peace he might have been able to adopt a few peace generating tools from the Buddhists. Many monotheists believe that Buddhists worship the Buddha like he was a God / god. Well, some do, the misguided ones, but the Buddha was just a human, like the rest of us. Some misguided Christians worship the Pope or a favorite saint, so this worshiping of humans is not limited to the Buddhists. Before leaving his family and princely life for that of a renunciate, the Buddha was Prince Siddhartha of India. Some of Siddhartha's concepts were borrowed from the Hindu's. He added a few things and now other spiritual practitioners are borrowing them from him. Catholic priests are not exempt from being at peace either as the recent headlines shows. With just a little open mindedness, that old priest could have made use of many easily adopted peace generating tools from Buddhism. If you look into your own life, you will see anyone can make use of these 3 pillars of Buddhism that are common to all schools of Buddhist practice. Such tools are available to all irrespective of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. What is stopping you from your life of inner peace?
1- Practicing mindfulness and meditation to develop peace and self awareness of our own true nature.
2- Accepting the liberating wisdom of impermanence and practicing non-clinging and a lessening of craving and desires.
3- The development of compassion for others.
The Gnostic gospel of Thomas was not included in the New Testament due to prejudice. Gnosticism was persecuted at that time and the bishop in charge of what went into the bible only wanted 4 gospels in the new testament. The reason the bishop liked the idea of 4 gospels stemmed from his predisposition with the number 4. There were 4 seasons, 4 directions , (north, south, east and west), the human body had 4 limbs and so on. Jesus' quote in Thomas's gospel sums up man's quest for enlightenment very succinctly in an almost eastern like fashion.
"The disciples asked Jesus, when will the kingdom come? Jesus replied, 'The kingdom will not come by watching for it. It will not be said - look here or look there. Rather, the kingdom of heaven is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it."
The seeds of enlightenment are all around us - we only have to seek the truth and come to peace within to realize this if our guiding light is truth and not prejudice.
mesquite wrote:real life wrote:As for 'fabricating values' you should know. To imply that anyone had foreknowledge that soldiers under his command would die for no reason and that he sent them anyway is an arrogant statement of foolishness, to say the least.
It's easy to second guess what 'shoulda' been done. But if you were in the position to make the same decisions, with only the data available at the time and not the hindsight of years later, I doubt seriously that you would have done better.
No need for hindsight. Foresight would have been much better.
Norman Schwarzkoph knew it.
Quote:In a 1996 Frontline Special on The Gulf War General Norman Schwarzkoph spoke these prophetic words.
Gen. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF: On the question of going to Baghdad_ if you remember the Vietnam war, we had no international legitimacy for what we did. As a result, we, first of all, lost the battle in world public opinion. Eventually, we lost the battle at home.
In the Gulf war, we had great international legitimacy in the form of eight United Nations resolutions, every one of which said, "Kick Iraq out of Kuwait." Did not say one word about going into Iraq, taking Baghdad, conquering the whole country and- and hanging Saddam Hussein. That's point number one.
Point number two- had we gone on to Baghdad, I don't believe the French would have gone and I'm quite sure that the Arab coalition would not have gone. The coalition would have ruptured and the only people that would have gone would have been the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
And, oh, by the way, I think we'd still be there. We'd be like a dinosaur in a tar pit. We could not have gotten out and we'd still be the occupying power and we'd be paying 100 percent of all the costs to administer all of Iraq.
If Dubya had only listened to his father.
Quote:In his memoir, "A World Transformed," written five years ago, George Bush Sr. wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War.
"Trying to eliminate Saddam...would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible.... We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.... There was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."
But he didn't.
Quote:Asked by Woodward, an assistant managing editor at the Washington Post, if he had ever consulted the former president before ordering the invasion of Iraq, Bush replied that "he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that I appeal to."
Nope, he went ahead anyway. They fired the generals that advised against invasion, or that advised for a larger invasion force to assure we could maintain the peace post invasion.
real life wrote:And of course the characterization of these wars as futile is highly subjective anyway, because you lack knowledge of what would have happened had the war not occurred. To speculate on the alternate path history might or might not have taken is simply that. Speculation.
It is not speculation that the justification for entering Viet Nam's civil war was to prevent the spread of communism. It is not speculation that after 50,000+ American lives and more than a million Viet Namese lives, South Viet Nam became and still is communist. We were supposed to have learned from that one.
real life wrote:How many more of his countrymen would Sadaam have killed by now if the US had left him alone? Have you investigated the mass graves that he was responsible for filling when left in power?
Why is it that that question was never used as justification until the pumped up WMD scenerios went flat. How many Iraqis have died and will continue to die since the invasion?
You claim 'foresight' on the part of Bush Sr and Norman. However in your quote, Bush Sr gives his opinion that Sadaam would probably NOT be apprehended. Well........................so much for that guess.
If Bush Sr's memoir that you cite was written pre- 9/11 then it is easy to see why he might have had a, uh, SLIGHTLY different perspective.
Also do you willfully ignore both the terrorist training camps such as Salman Pak, the financing and harboring of terrorists, and the stockpiling of 500 tons of uranium as evidence of the massive threat that Sadaam was to the outside world?
That's before you start counting the bodies of his own countrymen, women & children in the mass graves. Do they count for any less than the European people, for instance, of Bosnia -- where we went in with a whole lot less reason? Or is it only because GWB is president now and Clinton was then? (BTW , I am an Independent.)
Since this is a thread on values, I highly value consistency.
real life wrote:You claim 'foresight' on the part of Bush Sr and Norman. However in your quote, Bush Sr gives his opinion that Sadaam would probably NOT be apprehended. Well........................so much for that guess.
How long did it take to catch him? How many of our top special forces were diverted from the search for the real enemy, Bin Laden? Of what significance was Sadaam's capture other than removing a bit of egg from the face of George Bush? Perhaps you should read those quotes again and try to find the really significant parts.
real life wrote:If Bush Sr's memoir that you cite was written pre- 9/11 then it is easy to see why he might have had a, uh, SLIGHTLY different perspective.
Well yes, five years ago was before 9/11. In case you forgot, we were attacked by Bin Laden, not Iraq.
real life wrote:Also do you willfully ignore both the terrorist training camps such as Salman Pak, the financing and harboring of terrorists, and the stockpiling of 500 tons of uranium as evidence of the massive threat that Sadaam was to the outside world?
Overstated pre-war hype. Sadaam was contained. His weapons programs were in shambles.
real life wrote:That's before you start counting the bodies of his own countrymen, women & children in the mass graves. Do they count for any less than the European people, for instance, of Bosnia -- where we went in with a whole lot less reason? Or is it only because GWB is president now and Clinton was then? (BTW , I am an Independent.)
You are comparing our Bosnia action with Iraq? Get real.
real life wrote:Since this is a thread on values, I highly value consistency.
I do not value consistency when it means pumped up ego, head in the sand, one dumb move after another.
mesquite wrote:You are comparing our Bosnia action with Iraq? Get real.
I guess you are actually correct. There really is no valid comparison.
Sadaam was a huge threat to us since he harbored and financed terrorists, had hijacking training conducted just south of Baghdad and was stockpiling 500 tons of uranium (overstated? check the NY Times --
post invasion. Oh yeah I forgot. It's a right wing rag. Sorry.) while Bosnia was never a threat to us.
There is no sense in my attempting to refute the bogus case for an Iraqi threat when kuvaz has already done a class act here.
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1605495#1605495
and here
http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1605505#1605505
I can see that real life hijacked this forum. Instead of providing his/her own opinon about "morals, ethics, and value," he/she would prefer to attack another poster. Ad hominem anyone?
cicerone imposter wrote:I can see that real life hijacked this forum. Instead of providing his/her own opinon about "morals, ethics, and value," he/she would prefer to attack another poster. Ad hominem anyone?
Hi CI,
Terry posted her ideas on what constituted values and what did not and I disagreed.
I guess it is ok for everyone who agrees with you to post, eh CI? But if they disagree, then they have "hijacked the thread."
Those wascally wabbits.
I value dissent. Do you?
If you think I don't value dissent, you haven't been reading my posts. LOL
cicerone imposter wrote:If you think I don't value dissent, you haven't been reading my posts. LOL
I didn't say that you don't. I asked if you do.
Then how is my dissenting response to Terry's example of values (or the lack she perceived thereof) equated with 'hijacking the thread'?
Be specific please. I value clarity.
Fricky frak, real life what are you doing?
I didn't expect to see a discussion on American wars and abortion on this thread.
Morals, ethics, and values.
Morals: A set of rules or laws within a belief system
Ethics: More directly related to action and personal behaviors. The system which enables a person to make the choices he/she does.
Values: What is most deeply important to a person. What a person places their trust, faith, and hope in. The 'engine' that drives the car of life experience.
I dunno. I'm still figuring this out myself. Reading the Dalai Lama and his ideas on ethics right now.
flushd wrote:Fricky frak, real life what are you doing?
I didn't expect to see a discussion on American wars and abortion on this thread.
Me neither. Terry brought up what she considered relevant examples. I was simply responding.
However, it would be tough to imagine a purely hypothetical discussion of morals, ethics and values without examples of some kind being introduced anyway, so I'm not saying that she shouldn't have.
I value examples.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace