The scenario of your exercise/example, is not so atypical. By which i mean that history has many examples, and the sifting of values after the incident or experiences take splace adds morality as the residual cream of all human experiences.

The protoganist of your example is in all of us. We all try and get the best out of a situation, we exploit our resources includng resources called as 'parents'...... The intelligent, the cunning, the powerful, ........ three braod classifications of human tendencies - have always playeds to their self interest or selfishness.

Today it is no longer the survival of the fittest, it is survival of the educated, intelligent, cunning and powerful forces or groups.

Now, to the tough love issue. Although i am a bit less experienced or educated in the concept of 'love', i do believe it is a kind of selfishness. I may be able to dwelve on that if you can explain what it means by 'tough love'

edit/

ps:I am glad to inform deepthot that i have read upto 35th page of his treatise on A.U.T.O.E......

Would it be immoral If you are highly intellectual and are able to come up with a scheme that would convince the intellectually challenged to be your work force?

You could hire administrators who would over see all of this, so that you could have more leisure time to come up with other great schemes.
Your administrators would have other people under them analysts, managers and so forth to teach the people that competition and rank are most important.

If you are clever enough the people will demand competition and rank as if it were their divine right, and if you are lucky your philosophy that you teach will seem more important than morality, Which in return would help you to keep the wages of the people low and your personal profits high.

[Meaning that if you could hire the person who is capable of performing a job and is in the most desperate situation caused by his/her environmental or psychological situation that your philosophy helps to create.
he/she may accept a wage 1,000 times less per year than you would, therefore you would be able to reap from his/her misfortunate situation and all the other laborers as well who have agreed with your philosophy.] You could call this your great pyramid.
You at the top and the most intellectually challenged laboring at the bottom. You could find a place for the reader in the middle if he/she would like to go to college and learn old and new technologies.

You could even [tithe] pay the churches to preach your philosophy along with mythology that the people are so desperately wanting to hear:rules:

The priests can be your informants that can let you know of any type of paradigm shift that might be taking place so that you will know how to respond and use it towards your advantage to make even more wealth for yourself.:detective:

Now lets just say that your mother or father or the one who is close to your heart just happens to be intellectually challenged or environmentally challenged. Would you give them a break? or would you say sorry mom and dad it is just tough love.

Frankly R.L'gic, your question is a bit vague. But still i will make an attempt to try and give my opinion.
An highly intellectual person is a leader or a guru.

Both these category of people make others work to acheive their own goals. But if their goal is to see a transformation taking place for a 'good' to happen, then i dont think their is any problem with that. But on the other hand, if one conives and conspires to exploit certain section of the populace to acheive their selfish goals with selfish means, than history does teach such people/persons lessons in a hard way. For e.g Hitler, whom i would fit into a highly intellectual person categorisation.

Now, as per the tough love issue is concerned...... only a tyrant or a fool would make his parents work for him or treat them just like any other servant.

If you were the person in the hypothetical example that I had used, you would be ok with the morals of the person but you would treat your parents better than your servants correct?

Oh oh!........ you got me there, i suppose. This is tricky. Going by your hypothetical situation, i am supposed to be highly intellectual....... than my morals will be dictated by the alleged 'good' that i claim i am doing. If my parents willingly work for that cause, i suppose i would 'allow' that to happen........that is working 'for' me. Am I right or wrong?


edit:

Okay, I have just finished reading deepthots link (is Katz = deepthot ?) and treatise on A Unified Theory Of Ethics. At the outset it is a good compilation of thoughts on Ethics, it has briefly dealt with different definitions, applications and aspects of Ethics. It has chosen a style of presenting a transcript of a group discussion taken place somewhere rather than a narrative style that we often read and see.

The short book does touch upon many different notions related to Ethics. The examples on moral judgements were also very interesting to read.

My first thoughts after reading it is that of a mixed feelings. Like its an admirable effort to acheive some kind of a scientific basis to Ethics is controversial, since i think the social scientists are somehow desperate to bring social science into the realm of scientific philosophy and gain recognition and acceptance as a true empirical science. However, we know that it is very difficult to prove exactly why a man behaves as he behaves. To objectify the reasons for mans action has been a continous process for jurists, judges, social scientists, psychologists, anthropologists etc.......... and i personally think they fail more often to pin point the exact reason for misbehaviour.

Well, i think i may have transgressed the topic, or perhaps condescending but i feel, the meaning of Ethics - is always in a flux. What is an ideal behaviour?..... I think Ethics tries to psychologically bind human mind to a path of action between natural instincts and an ideal state of living. Morals are contextual values created to meet an temporal end or goal.

The book has indeed done well to bring out the realtionships between values, morals and recommended behaviour, and how it helps the individual and society. The Means-Ends chapter was quite enlightening, and explained how one means determines an end, and each enad than becomes a mean to acheive another end. This cyclic movement of morals, in the psycho -social context is the core of the problem of Ethics. Or for Ethics. ............... got to end here to take a break.

You also state that [only a tyrant or a fool would make his parents work for him or treat them just like any other servant]

When you refer to people that work for you are you saying that you would treat them harsh as a tyrant or a fool would treat their workers? The reason I ask is because you seem to have empathy for your parents and would like to see them treated differently than your workers or servants.

I do not mean to come across the wrong way I am only trying to see your point of view.
Would you pay your mother or father 1000 times less than what you would work for, being that you are all working for the same good?

Hi r'logic

Hey don't feel bad, but i think you are a bit fixated by 'money'/'wages'.

I completely disagree with this notion that a 'mother' has to be taken advantage of. Your philosophy is yours, not mine. I have not agrred to any such 'scheme's which you try and project as a philosophy. Sorry mate.

Your notions are not right, and your ideas are completely wrong. Sorry mate!

We can overcome this view of immorality against our love ones by taking advantage of their environmental and intellectual challenges in a indirect way! They are not as smart as us so they will not see this! You can take advantage of my love ones and I can take advantage of yours and we can trade their labors between ourselves. We can rule and be happy!

What do you mean with this statement?....... than i can explain why and how.

I agree with most, or rather almost all what you have said. But I am still not able to get to the crux of your problem. But anyway, since you have now brought in the topic of slavery, i think i know where you are coming from, but not sure where you want to go.

So, i would start from a general under standing.
Ethics is something that evolves. It is wrong to believe that morality exists a priori. Humans indulged in cannibalism at one point of time, and still exists as exceptions. Similarly, the internal sense of having slaves is still strong. In some countries like Pakisthan we still have some kind of system of bonded labours. Feudalism still exists in some countries.

In capitalist societies, workers work or is paid on the basis of availability of requisite skills. The unskilled worker gets the least pay. The system is so made that the unskilled ever gets the least pay packets but also is the first to be kicked out when the need to tighten the belt arises. The irony of free market economy is that the CEO is the last man to have his salary reduced or cut. This is a modern type of feudalism. So on the question of morality, where does the CEO stand, or where is ethics in the system.

Your emphasis on intellectually challenged people ( which in fact means - stupid people) been somehow made to work is in nutshell the natural history of economical man. Each Emperor makes his subject work for him and his goals, Each parents make their child work for them, Each nation makes their citizens work for them..... you may not have realised it, but i am sure you will find the answer.

Therefore, acts of immorality stil occurs......... its just that we sometimes overlook it or are not able to realise the harm we do. For instance, the unskilled worker, who gets peanuts as salary is first to be removed, while the CEO takes home salary which may equal 100 unskilled workers pay continues in office inspite of making losses; like how we enjoy going to the zoo and have a day with our family amusing ourselves watching the terribly sick wild animals caged as slaves of humanity; like we continue to have horse racing inspite of half the world saying animals should not be tortured, or pet keeping for example.

What may be taken for granted today may turn out to be an immoral act tomorrow. Thats fine, Rome was not built in a day, so also is civilisation. It is a dynamic thing. Who knows tomorrow keeping servants make be deemed as immoral. Thats social evolution.

On prosperity, my feeling is that the era of cut-throat competition is over, companies are selling themslves to other competitors, or they are buying out others, some are getting into alliances, therefore it can said that co-operation is back just like it used to be in the barter system.

As far as making use of others is concerned, that may continue, because nature has made us that way. I am not sure why.

No sir, i am not so well educated as you may think, but yes i may be well read. Thats an exception i may give myself.

On calling some people stupid, i may have wronged. When you first added the phrase, i thought it was really nice of you to describe some people as you choosed to. But i just thought that, may be i was not in a good mood, that you were being too politically correct. For the simple reason that we are not discussing or debatiing in an physical environment face to face. Since we are in the nether world or the cyber world, i gave myself the liberty of indulging in simple words..... LOL

ps: And my apologise to those readers who thought i was indiscrete on that count!

... I have just finished reading deepthots link (is Katz = deepthot ?) and treatise on A Unified Theory Of Ethics. At the outset it is a good compilation of thoughts on Ethics, it has briefly dealt with different definitions, applications and aspects of Ethics. It has chosen a style of presenting a transcript of a group discussion taken place somewhere rather than a narrative style that we often read and see.

The short book does touch upon many different notions related to Ethics. The examples on moral judgements were also very interesting to read.

My first thoughts after reading it is that of a mixed feelings. Like its an admirable effort to acheive some kind of a scientific basis to Ethics is controversial, since i think the social scientists are somehow desperate to bring social science into the realm of scientific philosophy and gain recognition and acceptance as a true empirical science. However, we know that it is very difficult to prove exactly why a man behaves as he behaves. To objectify the reasons for mans action has been a continous process for jurists, judges, social scientists, psychologists, anthropologists etc.......... and i personally think they fail more often to pin point the exact reason for misbehaviour.

Well, i think i may have transgressed the topic, or perhaps condescending but i feel, the meaning of Ethics - is always in a flux. What is an ideal behaviour?..... I think Ethics tries to psychologically bind human mind to a path of action between natural instincts and an ideal state of living. Morals are contextual values created to meet an temporal end or goal.

The book has indeed done well to bring out the realtionships between values, morals and recommended behaviour, and how it helps the individual and society. The Means-Ends chapter was quite enlightening, and explained how one means determines an end, and each enad than becomes a mean to acheive another end. This cyclic movement of morals, in the psycho -social context is the core of the problem of Ethics. ...

Do you want to suggest an answer as to the "exact reason" for misbehavior?

Hi deepthot ... The implication of my points was to bring out the 'impossibility of knowing the exact causes of 'misbeviour'? ...
Human behaviour cannot be predicted. The Emperors of Ethics have tried to rule the people and their mind, having devised various means but has admittedly acheived only some limping success. ...