Right and Wrong

@Zetherin,

Zetherin wrote:

"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."

That's exactly what I'm trying to do, right down to the word. As I've stated in other threads, I feel it's my responsibility to consider, and not only consider but enlighten others, allowing them to consider. And, I see the power of kindness, as you note, as a tool to allow others the comfortability to consider. I simply want to give people the option, not push my ideals or beliefs. If I find something that I may be able to shed insight on, I do. Yes, our thinking can be revised, and yes it can lead to the betterment of humanity. I try not to make it seem others are wrong, but rather help them to advance their thinking. Yes, this is my truth, and yes, I have emotion for this motivation - the motivation to better humanity.

Regardless of how we define "truth", I do think positive change can be made by the spread of knowledge, and that's the premise behind what I stated earlier, and in almost every thread I've posted in thus far. I could be completely wrong and you may be right - unless the wrongs really affect a person's well being, any insight I try to share may just fall on deaf ears. More importantly, the problems I see may be infinitely more complex than I could ever comprehend. I acknowledge this. Hell, I even think this may be the case. But I will still try. I want to try. I have to try.

Nonetheless, thank you for your post, as you're very insightful. What you've just done for me, is what I hope to do for others - allow them to consider, peacefully.

These are hard times. Times that try men's and women's souls. When we look around us and see that even with our great advance of technology that few of us are happy, and that even the rich, who it seems should live untroubled by the wants and withouts of all the rest do not sleep easy, and are not happy it whould meake us think and search for solutions to what is really a very common, and human problem. These forums are all over, on every subject imaginable. Even those who come with all the answers know there is something missing. I feel like I have the first piece of a puzzle, but the piece can literally fit anywhere. If it is true, that we need a new way of looking at life in order to construct relationships that serve us all, and since it is clear to most that the old forms no longer serve people -then, we also need to clear our lives of the debre of the past, to keep what is essential to all people, and build a structure that can serve to protect all, and that will never become a prison for minds or bodies.

Perfection is the enemy of mankind. I agree with the Muslim who says: Only Allah is perfect. If we cannot break from old forms that feed off many of us it is because some one some where thinks they are perfect, and rather than blame the form, they instead blame the peole in the form for not measuring up to perfection. I am a married man. I don't believe in divorce. But marriage is a form of relationship, and if the form does not work at feeding and facilitating the relationship, then it should be trashed. And the same is true for governments, religions, economies, and philosophies. And etc.

Human beings progress by exiting one form and building another. Usually they do so out of desparation to save their lives and at great cost. We cannot risk a change of forms in a half hearted and haphazzard manor. We live in a very dangerous and oppressive world. If we would change our forms of relationship, we should do so all together, talk it out, and think it out well in advance, to minimize the risk of violence and reaction. No one can change the world without being changed in the process, and yet the world is changed every day, so nothing I talk of is beyond our reach. It is not the desire for change that is wanting, or the fear of change. What is needed is a clear path to a certain destination. Thanks

@Fido,

I stand corrected. That was worth sharing. Thank you Fido.

Quote:

These are hard times. Times that try men's and women's souls.

This reminds me of a line from a great song, one that is actually quite relevant to this thread even. Now I'm going to listen to it.

@Fido,

Fido,

I think you are indeed on to something, though I am probably not grasping your vision in full. In philosophy, a nihilistic understanding of reality is upsetting to many, for there is only one thing left standing when one realizes the physcial world is meaningless. That one thing is the realization that all of reality is relational, and relations, relationships constitute reality itself. You stated no one does it alone, biology contains much wisdom, for even when your intellect will not tell you that being alone is a danger, there is that growing discomfort. To be alone is to begin, to cease to exist, there is a reason in this reality that there is no such thing as a closed system [utterly closed], there would be no relations-- thus existence impossiable. At anyrate you have caught my interest, I shall be trying to fully grasp your thinking and fellow its development here. Very Happy

@boagie,

boagie wrote:

Fido,

I think you are indeed on to something, though I am probably not grasping your vision in full. In philosophy, a nihilistic understanding of reality is upsetting to many, for there is only one thing left standing when one realizes the physcial world is meaningless. That one thing is the realization that all of reality is relational, and relations, relationships constitute reality itself. You stated no one does it alone, biology contains much wisdom, for even when your intellect will not tell you that being alone is a danger, there is that growing discomfort. To be alone is to begin, to cease to exist, there is a reason in this reality that there is no such thing as a closed system [utterly closed], there would be no relations-- thus existence impossiable. At anyrate you have caught my interest, I shall be trying to fully grasp your thinking and fellow its development here.

I don't know if this adds anything relevent. I find it upsetting when I hear of people thinking they will exist after they have died. Some idjit with a gun killed a bunch of people at a mall and said: Now, I'll be famous. The thought that he might have to be, literally, alive to be anything other than dead never seems to have crossed his mind. So he intentionally walked into a place with people and used them for target practice. If he had shot everyone leaving only himself alive even the concept of life would have been drained of meaning. And, if we associate religions with salvation as much as with blood shed and torture, it is because those who believe they are immortal and will not die are capable of unspeakable acts of cruelty in the pursuit or their ideology. Those who think they live but once may seek vengeance, but they are inclined to live and let live.imo

@Fido,

I don't think the problem is the belief that we will have eternal life, per se, but that we think we have to do something to get it. The fellow who killed a bunch of people for no reason is just plain sick. Those sorts of people are a problem, but they aren't nearly so large scale a problem as the people that think it's okay to kill, or otherwise mistreat, someone who believes something other than what I believe. That sort of mentality is very often driven by the notion that I have to do something to earn eternal reward. It's zealotry to the N'th degree. But it isn't truly faith. True faith in a God that loves me automatically presupposes that he will save me, not that I must prove myself to him and earn his reward.

@Fido,

Fido wrote:

I don't know if this adds anything relevent.quote

Fido,

:)Yes, sorry, I guess I am somehow missing something here. At first I thought you were going to take relations and relationship to a new level but, we do not seem to be talking about the same thing here. Thanks for the response anyway.

@Quatl,

Justice, system of Nature, Natural Laws are write
and Injustice, disorder, chaos, and Unnatural Law are wrong

@pathak09,

pathak09 wrote:

Justice, system of Nature, Natural Laws are write
and Injustice, disorder, chaos, and Unnatural Law are wrong

I am posting this from the other Right and Wrong thread.

Consider this: You get in a fight with your significant other. While you bicker back and forth, it occurs to you that this fight will continue until one of you ends it. So you get up from the argument, explain that you cannot continue as the argument is going no where and you leave. Once you leave, your significant other kills themselves out of a strong feeling of neglect.

Was your action right or wrong?

#2: You and your girlfriend (I am male so I can only see this one from my point of view), in a heat of passion, make love and she ends up getting pregnant. Concerned about the child, you go and get a second job, work all day and night and when you see each other, you are too tired to do anything and so you sleep a great deal. Realizing that you have been far too worried and that she could not raise a child in this environment because it would be unfair to you and the child, she goes and gets an abortion. She knows that your views on abortion are somewhat wishy washy so she does so without telling you in order to save you the extra grief. Was this action right or wrong?

Before you answer for each of these, let me explain that neither one is right or wrong. My reasoning may be a bit backwards in most of your minds but I will attempt to explain.
In the first situation, your choice was to walk away in order to end the discussion: you took the action which seemed most correct. The result was that your significant other killed themselves. This would, by most ethics, define your action as incorrect, especially deontology. So your action was right and the results wrong.

In the second scenario, she took the action which she felt was in the best interest of everyone. She knew that the child would not be raised properly and she loved you so much that she wanted only to make you happy. Thus she took a life. Again, by most ethical standards, this is wrong and yet, by standards of the situation, she took the best action that she was aware of.

In the first example, the results were not known because the perverbial "you" did not know everything about the situation so took action according to the knowledge that you had.

In the second, the result were known but were considered the lesser of two evils. Taking a life was better than forcing three to live in misery. So were these right or wrong actions?

These situations may seem ridiculous and extreme but let me simply say that both have happened to me. These types of situations are what have formed my opinion of right and wrong. I have come to the conclusion that, without absolute knowledge of the situation, that is to say without knowing EVERYTHING about the situation, you cannot hope to make the best choice because you do not know all of the options available to you. Without making the best choice, you can never hope to be "right". All you can hope for is a close proximity to something remotely close to correct. In other words, if everything HAS to come down to right and wrong then you shall always be wrong as you do not know everything about a situation. So if there IS a right and wrong then we are never right, but if there is not then all we have is action and consequence (cause and effect).

@pathak09,

pathak09 wrote:

Justice, system of Nature, Natural Laws are write
and Injustice, disorder, chaos, and Unnatural Law are wrong

Why??? You do know that natural law comes from the Roman law of Nations, which is about the first official recognition anywhere that all people are equal.....

@Icon,

Icon wrote:

I am posting this from the other Right and Wrong thread.

Consider this: You get in a fight with your significant other. While you bicker back and forth, it occurs to you that this fight will continue until one of you ends it. So you get up from the argument, explain that you cannot continue as the argument is going no where and you leave. Once you leave, your significant other kills themselves out of a strong feeling of neglect.

Was your action right or wrong?

#2: You and your girlfriend (I am male so I can only see this one from my point of view), in a heat of passion, make love and she ends up getting pregnant. Concerned about the child, you go and get a second job, work all day and night and when you see each other, you are too tired to do anything and so you sleep a great deal. Realizing that you have been far too worried and that she could not raise a child in this environment because it would be unfair to you and the child, she goes and gets an abortion. She knows that your views on abortion are somewhat wishy washy so she does so without telling you in order to save you the extra grief. Was this action right or wrong?

Before you answer for each of these, let me explain that neither one is right or wrong. My reasoning may be a bit backwards in most of your minds but I will attempt to explain.
In the first situation, your choice was to walk away in order to end the discussion: you took the action which seemed most correct. The result was that your significant other killed themselves. This would, by most ethics, define your action as incorrect, especially deontology. So your action was right and the results wrong.

In the second scenario, she took the action which she felt was in the best interest of everyone. She knew that the child would not be raised properly and she loved you so much that she wanted only to make you happy. Thus she took a life. Again, by most ethical standards, this is wrong and yet, by standards of the situation, she took the best action that she was aware of.

In the first example, the results were not known because the perverbial "you" did not know everything about the situation so took action according to the knowledge that you had.

In the second, the result were known but were considered the lesser of two evils. Taking a life was better than forcing three to live in misery. So were these right or wrong actions?

These situations may seem ridiculous and extreme but let me simply say that both have happened to me. These types of situations are what have formed my opinion of right and wrong. I have come to the conclusion that, without absolute knowledge of the situation, that is to say without knowing EVERYTHING about the situation, you cannot hope to make the best choice because you do not know all of the options available to you. Without making the best choice, you can never hope to be "right". All you can hope for is a close proximity to something remotely close to correct. In other words, if everything HAS to come down to right and wrong then you shall always be wrong as you do not know everything about a situation. So if there IS a right and wrong then we are never right, but if there is not then all we have is action and consequence (cause and effect).

The English Judge said: There are no imaginary cases... WE see right and wrong out of our sense of self, doing not what we would not have done to any we love... Morality is an emotional state of connectedness... We all make mistakes and we all try to learn from our mistakes; but our mistakes are not exactly applicable to every next situation... If we can feel for people, recognize their humanity, and feel for them then the thought of wronging them is abhorent... Justice springs out of self love and considering others as ourselves...... The notion that ethics can be taught seems clearly wrong....

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