[quote]Cortes wrote:
Can anyone here even imagine a society where lying is considered a virtue? Where charity is an evil? Where rape is desired (that’s not even definitionally possible)?
MORALS are not about Levitican law. They aren’t about situational problems.[/quote]
In order for a moral truth to meet the condition of being absolute, it must be true in every circumstances.
So no, you cannot ignore situational problems if that’s what you meant.
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
I think the core value of a man can be summed up with one word: CONTROL
self control, lifestyle control, financial control, relationship control, penis control, etc…
Failing to control your impulses, instincts, cravings and addictions makes one less of a man.
Successfulling controlling them makes one a successfull man.
I’m not touching the moral argument here. LOL[/quote]
I like this.
Assuming that all cultures across time and space share the same core morals makes zero sense because it is a generalization not based in fact. The fact that people even believe in Christianity came down to politics, random chance, and military might behind the nations who believed in it and wanted to emulate the Roman’s ie Vikings. You can say that Martyr’s made Christianity as well which I’ll admit is an insane sacrifice for one’s beliefs.
Say if Constantine’s mother had followed some other religion from let’s say for the hell of it an Etruscan religion who the Roman’s exterminated. Morality as we know it would have a different look. Morality that you speak of grounded in Judaeism or Christianity lasted the test of time because it was protected by law and state.Christianity developed into a good form of population control. If they did not slowly accept it and completely whiped it off the face of the earth we would not be having this debate.
The fact that we are tells me that their were underlying reason’s to keep Christianity around, you can not dethrone a character in a book as where worshipping living men as they deified the ruling family in Rome would not stand the test of time. My point is that morality has not been the same through out time and changes depending on the time and place. I respect anr religious person that can adhere to strict codes for their personal conduct but I don’t believe that you can really think morality everywhere is the same.
Cool. Well, if morality is relative then outlawing abortion, and re-outlawing gay marriage (at least on the state recognized level), isn’t an immoral thing to do. You might disagree, but it’s not actually immoral. It’s more like one favoring the color blue, and the other favoring red. On some illogical level you might think I made a “bad” choice of favorite color. But as an intellectual person you push it aside to remind yourself there are, in actuality, no bad choices of favorite color.
And if morality is relative, why even use terms like moral and immoral, good and evil?
It’s like saying favorite colors are subjective, but here’s what I’ve determined to be the ‘good’ colors and ‘bad’ colors.
A social contract isn’t for me to follow at every moment. It’s for the other poor suckers to follow
Sloth!
Good to see you here, buddy!
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Sloth!
Good to see you here, buddy![/quote]
Appreciate that. Haven’t seen you in a bit, either. As always, it’s a better thread with you contributing, so I’m glad to see you’re still around.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Sloth!
Good to see you here, buddy![/quote]
Appreciate that. Haven’t seen you in a bit, either. As always, it’s a better thread with you contributing, so I’m glad to see you’re still around.
[/quote]
You know I certainly feel the same about you.
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Sloth!
Good to see you here, buddy![/quote]
Appreciate that. Haven’t seen you in a bit, either. As always, it’s a better thread with you contributing, so I’m glad to see you’re still around.
[/quote]
You know I certainly feel the same about you. [/quote]
Get a room you two
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Sloth!
Good to see you here, buddy![/quote]
Appreciate that. Haven’t seen you in a bit, either. As always, it’s a better thread with you contributing, so I’m glad to see you’re still around.
[/quote]
You know I certainly feel the same about you. [/quote]
Get a room you two [/quote]
It’s all relative anyway, why not?
[quote]therajraj wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]Cortes wrote:
Sloth!
Good to see you here, buddy![/quote]
Appreciate that. Haven’t seen you in a bit, either. As always, it’s a better thread with you contributing, so I’m glad to see you’re still around.
[/quote]
You know I certainly feel the same about you. [/quote]
Get a room you two [/quote]
Raj! You thought I forgot about you old chum?! Get over here, pal!
Lol… I’m not going anywhere near this morality stuff… I hadn’t realized this thread had blown up so much. That said, I’ve been thinking a lot about values. The integrity discussion from earlier has me thinking that that really should be #1 on the list. Some I think have a similar thought but call it there relationship with God or Jesus. Hmmmmmm… Not sure how to order my to five now. Anyone else have an top five? Anyone else change their list?
[quote]angry chicken wrote:
I think the core value of a man can be summed up with one word: CONTROL
self control, lifestyle control, financial control, relationship control, penis control, etc…
Failing to control your impulses, instincts, cravings and addictions makes one less of a man.
Successfulling controlling them makes one a successfull man.
I’m not touching the moral argument here. LOL[/quote]
Good post
Cortes,
You mentioned earlier that all great stories have some sort of hero in them and that we basically never root for the bad guy who personifies all that we deem to be immoral. I used the example of Michael Corleone or Tony Montana to argue otherwise, but let’s face it. Those are bullshit pop culture examples.
Let’s examine some more time-tested examples instead. I agree that in general, we do “root” for the “good” guy, for the hero. But my point isn’t so much that we sometimes root for the bad guy. My point is more that what constitutes the good guy or the hero is relative and changes. For all intents and purposes, the hero is heroic and the good guy is ?good? because he personifies what we deem to be moral. He is an example of morality and his enemy is the personification of immorality. But what makes the hero and the villain what they are can change, and therefore morality can change as well, making it relative.
Take The Iliad for example. Achilles is the hero and Hector is the villain. But we know that many of the qualities that Achilles had, those which made him heroic, are the antithesis of later virtues that originated from Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Achilles was prideful and sought honor. He gained honor through killing people, more or less. He was covetous and bedded many women. He sought immortality and fame. He was petulant at times and refused to fight early on in the Trojan War because he did not feel it served him any purpose to, revealing his selfishness and an instinct for self-preservation that was only overcome by the chance to win glory in battle. He was consumed by this desire for immortality, to be remembered forever. We don?t really hold those qualities up as virtues anymore, but they were considered virtuous by the Greeks, and later the Romans.
Jesus is the source of most of Christian morality, morality which is completely at odds with certain aspects of Homeric morality displayed throughout ancient Greek culture and embodied by Achilles.
Jesus warned against pride and a desire for things like immortality or honor or glory, all things that the hero, Achilles, pursued through killing others. But is the ?bad? guy in The Iliad, Hector, the embodiment of Christian morality then? No, not at all. While he isn?t as egotistical as Achilles was, he wasn?t much different from him either. He too sought honor. In fact, if anything, he was more virtuous than Achilles because at least he killed in defense of his home, Troy.
But he was still the bad guy, for lack of a better term. Why? Because he lost, because he was killed by Achilles. He was not different than Achilles on any fundamental level, but since he was not a Greek he was not ?good? for the Greeks, so he was not moral.
Take a look at the story of the creation of Rome. Romulus is the hero. Why? Did he display what you argue are universal, never-changing virtues/morals? No. He killed his brother, Remus, in a fit of rage. Hardly a moral act by today?s standards. What made Romulus the hero, the virtuous one, is simply the fact that he was the victor. He made his own morality in that case. And he was not like Jesus or any other personification of Judeo-Christian morality.
What about slavery? For centuries, slavery was not considered to be immoral. It was simply a fact of life. The weak were enslaved and forced to labor for the benefit of their masters/owners. There was nothing immoral about this at the time, unless perhaps you were a slave. Now, there is almost universal agreement that enslavement is immoral, but that is a concept that did not really come about until the rise of ?slave morality?, which has its roots in Judeo-Christian morality. Later on, it gained even more traction during the massive revolution within political philosophy that started during the Renaissance and carried into the Enlightenment.
And speaking of political philosophy during the Renaissance, I assume you?ve read The Prince by Machiavelli. Well, who is the great hero in that text? Alexander.
But what made Alexander virtuous to the Greeks and Romans? Was it his compassion for others? No, he was a victor; he won, he conquered people, he took from them and gave to the Greeks. Today, we don?t look at being the victor in a conflict as a virtue in and of itself, and we don?t look at successfully conquering other people as an example of morality. If anything, conquering people and taking their resources for one?s own benefit is immoral now.
But in the time of Alexander those things were virtuous. Although Machiavelli takes a more realistic, pragmatic approach, in the time of the Greeks and Romans virtue/morality was measured by results and consequences, not intent.
Have you ever heard the phrase ?the gods have smiled upon him?? All that means is that someone who is doing well, such as Alexander, must be moral by virtue of his success. Because he is moral, the gods have allowed him to be successful and shown him great favor as a reward for such morality. Greek literature is filled that basic idea of morality.
But we don?t look at things like that at all anymore. So, morality has clearly evolved throughout history.
Interesting discussion. I get the point that no other species as far as we know has any moral drive, but I wonder if earlier human species like Neanderthals, Homo Erectus and all those others would have had some concept of morality. I am no expert but from what I read there is not a big difference in potential intelligence between us and Neanderthals. I would think they might have had some idea of good and evil. I think that several other early human species showed signs of at least understanding the concept of taking care of the weak. Member of their tribe which could no longer survive on their own were kept alive by the others. I would not be surprised if they too had some concept of what is morally justified and what is not.
Unfortunately we cannot go back in time and ask but if they had a similar concept then maybe mortality is more than just a human thought and more like a part of a evolutionaryl law that only applies to species with a certain level of development. Of course all these species are part of the human tree of evolution, therfore morality could be a human only concept. Still I would think if it is true that multiple human species developed this concept It must be more than a nice philosophical idea. Too bad we don?t know any other highly develop species so we could see if morality is necessary for a species to reach that level of development.
Personally I think looking at what I know of history there are a lot of moral codes that change from one civilization to another. Like how much of your body needs to be covered in cloths, how to treat people outside of your community/race. In lots of societies it was not immoral to steal land or possessions, rape, enslave and kill people from other countries/ communities. But to me it seems that when it comes to how to treat people from your own community there are universal principal about what is morally justified and what is not. I don?t think any sane person at any point in human history would consider breaking into your neighbor?s house, stealing his processions, raping his wife and then killing him and his wife a morally acceptable act. Therefore I belief there are some moral principles that are bigger than just the time in history you happen to be born in.
[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
Lol… I’m not going anywhere near this morality stuff… I hadn’t realized this thread had blown up so much. That said, I’ve been thinking a lot about values. The integrity discussion from earlier has me thinking that that really should be #1 on the list. Some I think have a similar thought but call it there relationship with God or Jesus. Hmmmmmm… Not sure how to order my to five now. Anyone else have an top five? Anyone else change their list?[/quote]
I never posted my list because by the time I found this the morality argument had gotten underway. However since you brought it back up:
Faith/Spirituality/God don’t really know how to separate these
Marriage
Family
Integrity/Honesty You cant have the former without he later, not necessarily true in rever
Number five gave me some pause. I originally had self-reliance or independence in their but then I think about my grandpa, who has had Parkinson’s literally take every ounce of that away from him and think there needs to be an asterisk stuck on that one because no one as proud as he was should feel ashamed because of something out of their control. Think I might go out on a limb and through patriotism in there but I am still working on that fifth spot.
I’ll throw my list up. However, I have enjoyed the morality argument going on. I would like to see more of DB’s points addressed, but still entertaining nonetheless.
Sorry, DB, not ignoring this, I’m just going to have to get to it tomorrow. Too tied up all day long today and it’s too late now tonight.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
Cortes,
You mentioned earlier that all great stories have some sort of hero in them and that we basically never root for the bad guy who personifies all that we deem to be immoral. I used the example of Michael Corleone or Tony Montana to argue otherwise, but let’s face it. Those are bullshit pop culture examples.
Let’s examine some more time-tested examples instead. I agree that in general, we do “root” for the “good” guy, for the hero. But my point isn’t so much that we sometimes root for the bad guy. My point is more that what constitutes the good guy or the hero is relative and changes. For all intents and purposes, the hero is heroic and the good guy is ?good? because he personifies what we deem to be moral. He is an example of morality and his enemy is the personification of immorality. But what makes the hero and the villain what they are can change, and therefore morality can change as well, making it relative.
Take The Iliad for example. Achilles is the hero and Hector is the villain. But we know that many of the qualities that Achilles had, those which made him heroic, are the antithesis of later virtues that originated from Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Achilles was prideful and sought honor. He gained honor through killing people, more or less. He was covetous and bedded many women. He sought immortality and fame. He was petulant at times and refused to fight early on in the Trojan War because he did not feel it served him any purpose to, revealing his selfishness and an instinct for self-preservation that was only overcome by the chance to win glory in battle. He was consumed by this desire for immortality, to be remembered forever. We don?t really hold those qualities up as virtues anymore, but they were considered virtuous by the Greeks, and later the Romans.
Jesus is the source of most of Christian morality, morality which is completely at odds with certain aspects of Homeric morality displayed throughout ancient Greek culture and embodied by Achilles.
Jesus warned against pride and a desire for things like immortality or honor or glory, all things that the hero, Achilles, pursued through killing others. But is the ?bad? guy in The Iliad, Hector, the embodiment of Christian morality then? No, not at all. While he isn?t as egotistical as Achilles was, he wasn?t much different from him either. He too sought honor. In fact, if anything, he was more virtuous than Achilles because at least he killed in defense of his home, Troy.
But he was still the bad guy, for lack of a better term. Why? Because he lost, because he was killed by Achilles. He was not different than Achilles on any fundamental level, but since he was not a Greek he was not ?good? for the Greeks, so he was not moral.
Take a look at the story of the creation of Rome. Romulus is the hero. Why? Did he display what you argue are universal, never-changing virtues/morals? No. He killed his brother, Remus, in a fit of rage. Hardly a moral act by today?s standards. What made Romulus the hero, the virtuous one, is simply the fact that he was the victor. He made his own morality in that case. And he was not like Jesus or any other personification of Judeo-Christian morality.
What about slavery? For centuries, slavery was not considered to be immoral. It was simply a fact of life. The weak were enslaved and forced to labor for the benefit of their masters/owners. There was nothing immoral about this at the time, unless perhaps you were a slave. Now, there is almost universal agreement that enslavement is immoral, but that is a concept that did not really come about until the rise of ?slave morality?, which has its roots in Judeo-Christian morality. Later on, it gained even more traction during the massive revolution within political philosophy that started during the Renaissance and carried into the Enlightenment.
And speaking of political philosophy during the Renaissance, I assume you?ve read The Prince by Machiavelli. Well, who is the great hero in that text? Alexander.
But what made Alexander virtuous to the Greeks and Romans? Was it his compassion for others? No, he was a victor; he won, he conquered people, he took from them and gave to the Greeks. Today, we don?t look at being the victor in a conflict as a virtue in and of itself, and we don?t look at successfully conquering other people as an example of morality. If anything, conquering people and taking their resources for one?s own benefit is immoral now.
But in the time of Alexander those things were virtuous. Although Machiavelli takes a more realistic, pragmatic approach, in the time of the Greeks and Romans virtue/morality was measured by results and consequences, not intent.
Have you ever heard the phrase ?the gods have smiled upon him?? All that means is that someone who is doing well, such as Alexander, must be moral by virtue of his success. Because he is moral, the gods have allowed him to be successful and shown him great favor as a reward for such morality. Greek literature is filled that basic idea of morality.
But we don?t look at things like that at all anymore. So, morality has clearly evolved throughout history.
[/quote]
Okay, I get what you’re saying. My original example was probably not properly fleshed out.
I will take actually take your earlier pop culture examples, as they finally DO demonstrate what I mean.
First, no one is saying that we must support only the purest, most virtuous characters and historical figures in order to see the moral theme that has run through human history, Indeed, if that were the case, there wouldn’t be too many we could congruously support at all. However, we DO NOT support someone who openly transgresses taboos, for the most part.
Tony Montana’s entire world collapses, and he KNOWS it will, because he refuses to kill a woman and her child.
Darth Vader refuses to kill his son, and actually reverses and redeems himself at the end by saving his son and killing Emperor Palpatine.
I don’t think we actually root for Alexander, per se, so much as admire his power. That’s fine, my point is that we DO NOT and WILL NOT support or encourage someone who is openly evil, a child murderer or rapist, a pure sadist, a serial killer, or even just a lazy bastard.
To say that morals are relative, you need to be able to demonstrate that there are actual instances of massive plasticity in our moral code. I have yet to see an example anywhere of a society where wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony are the norm. Find me one of those, or show me how we can practically create a society with these “virtues” as its pillars, and I’ll concede my point.