Your conclusion is incorrect. Right and wrong are inevitably based upon survival, and wrong kills the beast. Nature ultimately judges right and wrong, and we have the choice, but nature has the hammer. Look at morality. Does it not always re-enforce healthy behavior, and condemn the causes of social disease? Think about it.

You're making a grave over simplification here.

For one, you're regarding the survival of a species as good, when it fact it really doesn't matter to the universe. If the beast dies, that is not wrong, it's just existence and ultimately means nothing. Nature, also, is just a term used in an attempt to explain what we don't understand, a differentiation from humanity, and attempt to have something concrete. There is nothing concrete.

Also, what is healthy behavior? Again, the universe does not judge. Such a thing only exists because we place meaning to it. Likewise, condemning social disease only has a negative connotation because we apply it as such.There is no objective "right" and "wrong". Such a thing can only be subjective.

As for morality, does it always condemn the causes of social disease? Absolutely not. In fact, morality separates us as a species, and can be viewed AS the social disease. Think about it.

My attitude is: it is their commandments, and if they do not take them seriously, why should anyone.

Well, just because someone else doesn't listen to something that makes sense, doesn't mean that you shouldn't, whether the source was yours or theirs. My attititude about coveting is that it often harms the one coveting more than the one who has the thing being coveted. What good does it do me to pine over that which I do not have? Which isn't to say that I have never coveted, it is only to say that if anyone suffered for it, I did, cause I wasted my time and energy on that rather than on something constructive.

Fido,

:)When you speak of nature and in the same breath speak of morality, you should realize that morality is not NATURAL, in fact the formation of society was in all probability to seek refuge from an amoral world. "Right or wrong are inevitably based on survival", an unusual statement, right and wrong are biological determined and I suppose at times your life would be the stakes of the game. Right and wrong are meanings however, and are determined of the relation between subject and object, all meanings belong to the subject, so, right and wrong are biologically determined. All meanings, not just right and wrong, are relative to a subject.

The experience of coveting could have gained you much needed insight and ultimately benefited you (proving to be constructive)

As Nietzsche said,

"Not everything which makes us suffer is necessarily bad for us. Not everything which makes us feel good, is necessarily actually good for us.

To regard extremes of suffering as an evil, as something to be abolished, is a supreme idiocy"

I'm not saying that it will necessarily benefit you to covet again and again, but the point being that things that we perceive as harming us may in fact be doing us more good than many things we perceive as benefiting us. Suffering is part of life, and from which you can build something wonderful - I tend to agree with Nietzsche here, and try to have this outlook as much as possible.

Well, just because someone else doesn't listen to something that makes sense, doesn't mean that you shouldn't, whether the source was yours or theirs. My attititude about coveting is that it often harms the one coveting more than the one who has the thing being coveted. What good does it do me to pine over that which I do not have? Which isn't to say that I have never coveted, it is only to say that if anyone suffered for it, I did, cause I wasted my time and energy on that rather than on something constructive.

"There is no such thing as right and wrong only thinking makes it so." Williams Shakespeare

"There is no such thing as right and wrong, only to man something are and somethings are not." Heraclitus

Just because morality is expressed socially, or spiritually does not mean that the end and the beginning of it are not rooted in nature. The universal morality is the incest taboo. This is because we are many people made from quite few, who, like Lot in the Bible, left larger communities and began to believe they were the only people in the world. The forced inbreeding which occured soon resulted in the curse of birth defects, and the only way to avoid such defects was to control ones behavior, so that in this example, as in most others, our own nature forced us to practice and accept social control. And I will grant you that some people, like the Jews, and the Egyptians pharoes, and the Inca kings practiced incest. My guess is that one chanced teratomas to have a few geniuses, and without any general benefit. A father daughter consanguineous relationship has a 50/50 chance of resulting in some anomaly.

They are both wrong. Humanity is a constant and by whose benefit or detriment all acts whether of nature of our own making may be judged either right, or wrong. So the words: only to man, are not correct. Rather, always to man somethings are or are not right. And thinking is judgement.

Fido,

Its all adaptation Fido, culture, society and technology are biological extension, if man had known this ahead of time, he would have considered reciprocity, at present, it appears to late. Apparently reality, its all biology!

Nietzsche was a nutcase, and this illustrates it well. Extremes of pleasure or pain each shut down the thought process, and force a person to live in the moment; and this is death for both people and for societies. All our social organization and technology is aimed at homeostasis. Not too hungry, and not too full. Not too cold, and not to hot, and not too wet, and not too dry. We are not morally or physically built for extremes.

:)Fido,Your very passionate, but about what?? The purpose of these forums is to understand, I just stated in a previous post the foundation of understanding, which you seem to wish to dismiss. I am not even sure what you are saying, do you seriously think that the physical world has meaning, evaluatates and judges?

I think people as part of the physical world determine meaning, and evaluate all, and judge all. Clearly, people find meaning in concepts representing no physical reality -for which no value can be determined; so I accept that they are not finding meaning, but sharing the meaning they posses by virtue of life, and that all reality, whether moral or physical, has meaning in relation to life, and and are valued by whether they support life, or not. If we should value courage more than cowardice, it is because the one has always been found necessary in support of our lives. The same is true of all considered as right or wrong.

Zetherin wrote:

I'm reminded of Aristotle's theory of persuasion. This suggests people involved in persuasive conversation must choose how to balance the the three appeals of humanity: emotion (pathos), character (ethos), as well as logic (logos), in order to be the most persuasive possible. Every rhetorician must choose the proper balance, and often it's hard to find that balance, but the consideration itself tends to make arguments stronger. Why? Well, for very much the same reason as what Nietzsche suggests.

I think you should consider that truth is not something we discover, or speak, but is something we are. Whether we are mistaken, dead wrong, or have our heads clearly in our horns is not at issue. We are all wrong all the time. Yet, truth is not external to a person, but is the person. Each one of us thinks we are true. No one considers themselves wrong in regard to simple or complex truths. We all think we know what is going on, and more than this, what we know is what we are. People can live in different paradigms with different truths, and they may step into one and out of the other but they are never clear of the truth. Newton believed in a God more unitary and omnipresent than any God accepted today, but he did not accept that God was the only truth. If a person thinks he knows the truth, then he is the truth, and he is guided by truth. This explains the emotion with which people defend their ideas, and it explains why so many take offense when others try to persuade them they are wrong. We are all emotionally attached to ourselves and our notions of truth, and it is for this reason that art and drama, which play upon the emotions also have the most profound ability to change an idea of truth. We all think we are rational, when rationality is what we seek, to justify what we think we know, which in fact, is self justification.
Now, I notice that I shut a lot of people up, but I do not sense that I win a lot of arguments. I take it as a given that to change a mind is to change the person. I prefer to do this with kindness, but others do it with facts. And the central truth and issue remain the same. When you give the truth you are communicating, and relating to people. And this is a great gift, this truth, if you have it. But you have to remember that a new truth means a lot of labor for the person exposed to it. They must often reavaluate all they know for the most simple notion of truth; and yet truth is the difference between survival and extinction. So, if you think you know something essential you should try to share it as kindly as possible because the object is not to be right, but to have as many as possible right.

Quote:

As one considers the perceived "bad" situation, action, thought as being something other than "bad", it paves way to enlightenment and potential benefit to the individual. For instance, anxiety may make one panic and deny the problem with medication. Or, the person could acknowledge the problem for what it is, which may shed light on an accurate analysis of the root and potentially a solution. Jealousy and envy may create bitterness, anger, regret, but, if properly harnessed, could create a positive drive that could allow the individual to accomplish.

What you suggest, seeing bad in a different light, I do on every issue. Everything makes me think, and in thinking I put everything I know in relation to what I only think I know, which is how I percieve of self, as true to what I know.

Quote:

Though the correlation between Aristotle and Nietzsche isn't crystal, my point is: Self evaluation is key, and effort should be made to balance logic and emotion in order improve one's character. So, while you do have a very solid point, I take from Nietzsche's quote a bit differently. It isn't so much the extremes that I focus on, but rather the betterment of myself and hopefully those around me.

"So, if you think you know something essential you should try to share it as kindly as possible because the object is not to be right, but to have as many as possible right."

Now, I notice that I shut a lot of people up, but I do not sense that I win a lot of arguments.

I've enjoyed reading this thread, and two quotes in particular have caught my attention. One was the same one that Zetherin just pointed out,



I don't mean to be cruel in saying this, especially after the nice sentiment expressed in this quote, but it strikes me as terribly egotistic that any of us actually think we know something worth sharing. (Believe me, I include myself in this as much as anybody.) Which isn't to say that we don't know anything worth sharing, only to say that in a thread about right and wrong, it begs us to consider the ego involved in passing off any of our thoughts as being essential to the well-being of another person.

The other quote was this one,



Amen to that. One thing has been reaffirmed for me in the short while that I've been visiting this website, people hardly, if ever, admit when they're wrong about an issue. I've read several threads, most often with conflicting, often even very opposite, views and arguments, but rarely does anyone look up and say, "Hey man, you're right, that makes sense, I like you're way of thinking." (With the exception of Zeth, he seems a lil more open-minded than the rest of us.)

I guess my point is that too many of us (again, including myself,) have something to say, but little want to listen. We dive into issues headfirst with our minds already made up about where we stand. Then we realize there's no water and we hit the cement pool floor, and we wonder why trying to reason with what seems to be an obviously intelligent individual feels like beating your head against a wall. Well, it's a wall that we ourselves create.

I came here with the same aspirations as many of you. I told myself that I just want to learn new things, share other people's experiences, but when the time came to tap my own two pennies or else to do the wiser thing and just keep it to myself, I chose to rattle the old coin purse, and the only experience I ended up sharing was my own. The truly sad thing is that I'm really the only one that I shared it with. (If I was schizophrenic at least we'd both have gotten something out of it.) Only now am I beginning to realize just how poor I am. It turned out I just wanted to say something to help others, to share my vast expanse of wisdom, to teach another what I know, which seems beligerent on the surface, but is, in fact, completely self-serving. Or as Fido put it, self-justification.

I hate to say it, but I'm beginning to see that the only person that I can truly help here is myself. If, and only if, I do what I told myself I came here to do in the first place, quit sharing and start taking it all for myself. There are things I can learn here, and if everyone who came here decided that they were here to learn and not to teach, then the grand goal of enlightening others would at last be reached, cause we'd all learn something essential.