鴉PieFedWhat are you most basic principles for life?
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So, I've been chatting with my buddies lately, and it's turned into a bunch of debates about right and wrong. I think I have a pretty solid moral compass, I'm not bragging haha, but most people I know can't really explain why something's right or wrong without getting all circular or contradicting themselves.
So, how do you figure out what to do? No judgment, just curious. I'll share my thoughts below.
Thanks!
Edit: Oh, all you lil' philosophers have brought me a cornicopia of thoughts and ideas. I'm going to take my time responding, I'm like Treebeard, never wanna be hasty.
I'd recommend reading Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do by Michael Sandell.
Also I haven't read it myself yet but it sounds like The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris would probably be of interest to you as well.
Ill put it on the list
Be the person Captain Picard would want you to be.
Love me some JL. "Tea. Earl grey. Hot."
Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.
Not if youre being a cunt.
I think the basis of morality should be if it helps, it's good, if it hurts, it's bad. I realize there are still a lot of situations without easy answers but that's a good starting point. Better than it's good or bad because the rules say so.
Pee when you have the chance.
When going out into the cold during the winter, especially if you are going on a bit of multi hour journey .... poop first, even if you don't feel like it.
How do you poop when you don't feel like it?
I'm caught in a loop.
Or just
shitpiss on the floor 🎵Hahaha, I know right!
Context is important here. Oftentimes someone is getting hurt, you just don't know who or when. A very fine line on this bullet.
It's worse than that. Situations where something causes no harm to literally anyone are few and far between. Even less often you have a full and clear picture of a situation. Usually it's a choice between who gets hurt to what extent and based on what you know you just try to minimize the damage. You will get it wrong a lot.
Life is complicated and all we can do is to try our best and hope others will too.
Very well put
Leave a better world behind than you entered (to the extent you are able to as an individual).
The cub scouts have a rule: leave the camp better than you found it
It's a great rule to apply to everything in your life. Small improvements add up over time and benefit those who come after
Define better for me
There are lots of different meanings. Pick one. Make people happy. Leave something that will help the next generation, whether it's planting trees or a park bench or curing cancer. Be kind to people along the way to enable them to see the best in humanity. There are lots of ways to make things better. Just pick one and do it.
I'm not asking for general ideas, do you have a definition you ascribe to, or does it just change to suit the situation
Rather, why are you unable to define it for yourself? It's not that hard. Helping things towards balance (like helping any angry, sad, or greedy person to be less so, etc., or trying to heal a physical or emotional wound as appropriate) is a fine start.
How about instead of assuming i'm dumb, you answer th.. no fuck it. I dont think theres any value to be had here. Goodbye.
Pushing 4 decades, and the older I get the more I try to live by a philosophy of: be the person you wish you had when you were in their shoes.
Biggest thing is school right now: I did the college thing a bit a long time ago, struggled academically and financially, joined the military instead, separated, and now I'm back for round 2 using the GI Bill. I try to generate as many resources for my classmates as possible, run study groups, host group chats, send out reminders... The VA gives me a stipend for supplies each semester, which I'll use in it's entirety and give those supplies to the class. At clinicals (on-the-job education - nursing school) I've noticed a few students don't eat cuz weren't able to pack a lunch and hospital cafeteria food is WAY expensive for the average broke-ass college student, so I'll cover the odd meal and tell em to just pay it forward once they get their RN. Shit like that. Kinda feels like I have 50 sons and daughters lol. But I remember my first attempt at college and how overwhelming everything felt... idk if having a 'me' would have made any difference in the outcome of round 1 - can't make the horse drink and all - but if I can hook these kids up with an easier ride, then fuck yeah I'll do what I can!
I try to apply that kind of approach to pretty much any context - be it school, work, or just random encounters with people.
Feels good to be helpful.
This is the best advice I've heard in a long while
This fits very nicely in my belief system as well. For me the reason to life is to make it simpler/easier for the people who come after me. And thinking about what I needed and supplying that to others is a very nice way to achieve this. Although this could sometimes lead to doing something that is not needed (anymore), but even then showing others that helping others is a nice thing to do is worth a lot.
From an old Irish friend I've known for many years
Whatever you do in life, no matter the situation or circumstances ..... always be kind
Great philosophy, gotta make sure people dont take advantage of that though.
And if we err, let it be toward kindness.
Maybe it's kind to not let people take advantage, force them to rely on themselves, thats a kindness.
It also acts as a filter in life .... whenever you meet unkind people, you stay away from them
Whenever you meet people who would take advantage of your kindness ... you kindly stay away from them
When you meet other kind people, you do your best to stay with them, live with them, work with them or encourage them
Everyone always remember a few key things in life ... people remember others who were unkind to them ... people also remember people who were kind to them.
Life is short and it gets shorter every moment ... whatever you do in life ... just be kind ... because most of the people you will ever meet you will only ever know for that one moment or just for a very short time.
Being kind to yourself counts as well.
A good starting place is considering what society would look like if everyone did whatever thing.
Everyone steals - doesn't work
Everyone murders - dosen't work
etc.
Another approach is the Terry Pratchett argument that everything boils down to just not treating people like things.
So, like the Kantian categorical imperative?
well yeah but I was trying to make the language less obtuse
Don't be a dick.
Shut up, Wesley
Never drink alcohol alone.
That doesn’t save me from bad environment, but it prevents a Huge otherwise potential risk
I recently have added a don't eat/drink sugar alone for me 😊
Logic is the wrong tool for ethics. In formal logic, you can only assign values like true or false to something called "descriptive statements". These are statements of fact, that can be observed.
Morality deals with "prescriptive" statements. Unobservable and unstable statements about how the world ought to be.
Logic breaks down because it's impossible to argue for something that should be using only facts about how thing are.
The prescriptive statement "it's wrong to harm" relies on the prescriptive statement "harm is bad". Their is no bottom to it.
Well if we follow that to its conclusion I may as well delete the thread and try not to think about it.
Honesty, fairness, integrity.
I don’t lie - ever. Not even white lies. I might not always say what I think, but I never say something I know to be untrue.
I treat others the way I’d want to be treated myself. Even when it comes to decisions where no one else is directly involved, I ask myself: Would the world be better or worse if everyone acted like this? If the answer is worse, I don’t do it.
Don't be a hypocrite. I won’t criticize others for something I’m guilty of myself - which is probably why you rarely hear me criticizing anyone at all.
Also, I don't believe in free will - as in the ability to have done otherwise. That's the other reason I don't blame people for their actions. This is something that just overall plays a huge factor in how I approach life. There are many things I see completely differently than most other people - including myself.
A related quote: “It’s not a principle if it’s not costing you anything.”
That can be dangerous advice in some contexts. Like if you're an immigrant being confronted by an ICE agent, say whatever you need to say to get the fuck out of there.
Basically if a Nazi asks if you're a Jew, the answer is ALWAYS 'no' regardless of whether or not that's true.
Often it takes seeing other people engaging in a habit that you share to realize or accept it's a bad one: criticism can still be warranted and constructive, but in that case I'd own the complicity openly and direct the criticism to 'we'. Introspection is good!
There are exceptions. I don't kill ever either, except when my life is in danger. If I can avoid physical violence by lying then it's the lesser of two evils.
I'd say it's also justified when refusing to answer would reveal the truth. If you're asked about homosexuality in a country that prohobits it for example.
My ethos boils down to…
I try to live my life happily while causing the least negative impact for others.
Be kind.
This is one of the biggest problems going on right now. That people don't have a knowledge of their own morality, not in any tangible, processed way. People resort to following a person who they believe has the morality they seek, but their own decisions are actually based on a combo of feelings and whatever dogma they may have with no real analysis or improvement being done with any consistency. It would fix a hell of a lot of problems if your average person was breaking down the implications of their own morality and developing a defensible philosophical position. For most I observe that is farther than the average person is willing to parse. It seems that this has led many to base essentially their entire philosophy of right vs wrong (as far as they can actually explain it without just saying "God") on a series of impactful sounding, but ultimately hollow, sound bites or snappy retorts that don't have any actual substance.
I wholeheartedly agree, and as funny as this sounds, I just started writing a manifesto about this yesterday lmao.
I think the main issue is the way morality is framed in neoliberalism, many religions etc.—as something prescriptive. We follow laws not because of some internal moral principles, because we conform to authority and fear punishment. This isn't rational but deeply instinctual, and it leads to immoral action. Similarly, I think tribalism is a consequence of instinctual action and probably one of the main causes of evil in the world. Racism, nationalism, xenophobia, homophobia, etc. can all be explained in this framework. We need to educate people to recognize instinct and transcend it. A political system, however perfect, cannot be forced on people who aren't ready for it.
Most other animals develop rapidly from birth to self sufficiency, while humans are born so very unfinished - totally dependent on others for our most basic needs, for years and years. If any values can be said to resonate with "human nature", it's prosocial and community-building values.
Just about every major religion glorifies some version of The Golden Rule - do unto others as ye would be done by.
Yep, that all tracks for me, is there anything underneath the golden rule, a more base rule, if you will.
Like what about people who have different lines over what would trigger a physical response to hostility? One guy might only respond to direct physical attacks, and another will respond to verbal threats of physical attacks. Who's right?
I don't think you can boil it down further, and that's why Western law is an evolving patchwork of codes and penalties that vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Too many nuances, situational factors, edge cases and value priorities that vary from persn to person (and culture to culture) to decide every imaginable scenario consistently.
If you're not familiar, you might gain some perspective from a summary read about Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems. Goedel's Proof deals with systems of logic, where logic is something we hope for in systems of law. Goedel's Proof shows that a "sufficiently powerful" system of logic is necessarily incomplete - that is, we can pose problems in mathematical-systemic terms that have no solutions under that system.
In mathematical logic we have "axioms" like "1+1=2" or "a triangle is a plane figure defined by exactly 3 lines". In law, axiom-like propositions are called "maxims", often stated in Latin, and convey foundational legal principles like "contracts must be honored", or "people can own things". In a hypothetical properly Communist society, and by "proper" I mean to exclude failed would-be Communisms like the USSR or PRC, "people can own things" isn't necessarily a maxim; they might instead have a maxim that codifies "things belong to the State" and exclude any notion of individual ownership.
The implication for legal systems is that there are inevitably legal disputes that can't be decided strictly by the letter of the law, so we have to fall back on fiat of judicial opinion.
I think you might be approaching this in the wrong way. There is no objective right or wrong when it comes to ethics. Life and humans are simply too complex to create simple, objective rules that would be interpreted in exactly the same way by a decent number of humans for a reasonably complex situation. And you don't even have to include ethical dilemmas for that, like deciding whether to shoot down a plane hijacked by terrorists or interrogating a kidnapper via torture.
Nonetheless, many homogeneous groups get to a decent degree of ethical alignment, and asking people for their ethical rules or guidelines is an interesting question to get inspiration and to find out how others try to navigate the complexity of the world. Just don't expect these rules to be objective.
To paraphrase Dr. Who, this has always stuck with me: Never be cruel, never be cowardly. Remember – hate is always foolish…and love, is always wise. Always try to be nice, and never fail to be kind.
Reminds me of the Stephen Moffat poem, they used it heavily in Dr who at one point.
"Demons run when a good man goes to war,
Night will fall and drown the sun,
When a good man goes to war.
Friendship dies and true love lies,
Night will fall and the dark will rise,
When a good man goes to war.
Demons run, but count the cost;
The battle's won, but the child is lost."
Try to make life better for yourself and for everyone else. Try to have compassion for everyone. You don't have to agree with them or support what they do, but treat them as having worth.
It's right if it brings happiness to yourself and the world, it's wrong if it brings pain to yourself and the world.
It is also right to follow rules if you don't have a clear understanding of the situation, because (hopefully) those rules were made with an expertise that you don't posses.
Nice, very good, I'm gonna poke some holes for arguments sake, I like a good discussion.
What's right?
And what if bringing pain is better long term, like a needle with medicine, whats a statement that draws that line?
That's easy enough. As humans, we have the ability to look ahead and estimate the impact of our actions - which is something you've implicitly acknowledged in your question. Therefore, we can choose the best course of action.
The really difficult part is knowing what is best for other people. They often don't share my opinions on what's good and what's bad -.-
Don't be a dick.
Be kind
If you want to judge the character of a person:
Observe how they treat those they have power over, usually in terms of social hirarchy or economic position.
Edit: Read the question wrong. Be nice to the service workers you rely on to get things done, like janitors, servers, cleaners, basically the bottom ranks of the totem pole.
If you have to ask why and need a selfish reason:
These people often are in positions where they can sabotage you, make your life difficult or slow you down. You really dont want to scream at the people who handle your importent paperwork, which can easily "get lost in the administration"...
I would take it a step further with indigineous teachings that those with great power use it for the greater good, do not dismiss the central role of women in communities and respects the sanctity of all that is living, human and non-human.
To me, that is a good person and I believe that every person has the potential to be good.
I start with my ideal, which is "I want the most amount of people to be as content as possible for as long as possible."
Then I build a heirarchy of groups in relation to the ideal, and it comes out in stepped groups, starting with me, immediate family, social group (further family, friends, colleagues), local community, government, humanity. This set allows me to target my focus, if Im content and safe, I can focus on helping my family be the same, and each level builds up to and allows for the next.
Now I can identify where to focus i need rules on how to act, i know what my goals is, but i need to make sure my actions arent counter to goal in some way, a set of rules like commandments (that can only be divined through experience) mitigate the possibility. Christianity does a good job of picking out the things that are counter to my ideal as it is, so mine are basically modelled after that. 1. No killing 2. No stealing 3. Dont lie 4. Dont covet 5. No adultery (though I'd say this covers breaking any agreement/commitment made) 6. There's probably a couple more I've missed but I'm short on time
And for it to be fair for me to expect anyone else to follow the rules, i must first, this is the connection between rights and responsibilities If I want to claim a right, it is my responsibility to ensure others receives that right.
So basically I know if I follow that schedule, I really cant consciously do any wrong and can sleep right knowing I mad the best decision.
Let mek now if Im being incoherent anywhere, happy to discuss whatever.
I personally like the Buddhist version, the 5 precepts. There's quite a bit of overlap, but one interesting difference is that as far as I know they're not framed as commandments, but rather as guidelines to be voluntarily undertaken if you wish to reduce suffering in the world.
Stoic and Buddhist philosophy. No religious metaphysical stuff like gods, spirits or reincarnation.
On a basic level be kind and accept impermanence.
Drink enough coffee to shit before leaving the house.
Always shit on company time
And use 1 ply with no bidet?
Savages.
Im sure you've got some other principles you could share. Theres more to life than caffiene and deffication, surely.
Before enlightenment, caffeinate and defecate.
After enlightenment, caffeinate and defecate.
That's a historic meme right thare
Learn the difference between a necessary risk and an unnecessary one, and whenever possible, decide with intent when to deploy the latter.
Other than that, leave things better than you found them. That goes a long way.
Spell check
Ugh.
Love deeply
I think this is one of my strongest (and favorite) qualities, but brutal waves of depression make it really hard sometimes because I don't feel much beyond a whole mess of negative feelings.
I'm going through one of those spells right now, so thank you for reminding me of this.
Pay your taxes, use your blinker, and don't preach at people. As long as you follow those guidelines have a fucking field day with your life.
Or alternatively, if your country became fascist, don't pay the taxes
I think we can extrapolate that out to do unto others as youd have done to you. Great way to be.
Any morale principle must to be able to be universally applied to be valid. This translate in not asking for others what I won't do myself. And judging hardly those who ask for rules that don't apply to themselves.
That simple principle can construct a lot if you develop it.
Everyone here is saying "don't be a dick". That is not sufficient. That just makes you middling, not good. To be good, you must also stop people who ARE being dicks.
There is no such thing as objective morality. Being moral is a matter of will and character—consciously choosing what kind of person you want to be. I want to be the kind of person that brings pleasure into the world, and so I am a utilitarian.
Edit: And I'm not saying that I am fulfilling that adequately at all. Any coherent moral stance usually has implications which are "undesirable". If I were truly utilitarian, I should probably be donating money to the global south, and so should anyone else who claims to be moral.
For the last year or so I've just been trying not to kill myself
The Parable of the Teacup
"Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"
"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
The Parable of the Strawberry
"A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him.
Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!"
My standard for "good" practise is: if everyone adapt said practice, then the world would be better off.
Even though the effort of a single person can be futile; if I cannot chance my behavior for a cause I believe in, how can I expect the rest of the world to do the same?
A lot of it is just Kant's categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
Also leave the camp better than you found it, because small improvements add up.
Do what you think is right, but spend some time considering if it's right or not first.
Recognizing when you're not considering and just going by intuition or emotional response would probably already put you ahead of most of us.
Empathy seems to be necessary (but I'm not sure if sufficient) for logical moral consideration because you cannot justify your position if you purposefully ignore another's, and considering someone else's perspective without prejudice is empathy.
In the immortal words of J.
"Don't start nothin', won't be nothin'."
Amen.
Accept the things you can't change, and improve the things you can change. I disagree with the classical stoics on their emphasis on individual action and think that these principles can and should be applied on a societal level.
Mind your own business. If someone is doing something that doesn't have any real impact on your life or the lives of people you care about, ignore it. If someone is gay or trans that doesn't impact you at all. If someone has weird religious beliefs, let them believe them as long as they're not hurting anyone.
The supernatural should be ignored for society level decisions because it cannot be proven and hasn't been demonstrated. If someone wants to go to a psychic or astrologer for personal decisions I disagree with that but that's on them.
Everyone has a god they worship. It may not be Jesus or Allah, but it may be money, a sport team, or maybe a musical band. Ritual and community are things that make us feel good. Coming together with a group of people for a common cause to enjoy something together is built into our psychology. The problem of replacing religion with bands and sports teams is that it comes with the fun parts of religion without the discussion of morality or urging to do good that religion can bring. You don't see Kansas City Chiefs fans giving 10% of their income to the poor, for example. My ideal world would have secular temples to Reason where people come together to sing and discuss philosophy and work together for a common good. This one is weirder than the others and I won't be mad if anyone thinks this is absurd. I just think that we have rejected religion without having a satisfactory replacement for the good things it provides.
You might want to check out Unitarian Universalists
Their whole thing is a long the lines "No body knows for sure, so let's respect each other's beliefs and celebrate what we have And do some good for folks where we can"
Dont break the weekend safety brief.
Obviosuly this a a comedic response but it covers most of the bases.
I'm going to die.
That's it. There's not much I'm really certain of, but I'm pretty damn certain that I'm going to die.
So I ask myself - how do I want to live my life in light of this fact?
Golden Mean - a famous philosphy by Aristotle has been really been big part of my adult life. It's just incredibly handy and applicable to any situation.
We even see this idea expressed in contemporary sciences and sociology concepts like economic diminishing returns etc. and it really applies to everything. The best parts of life are trully in the middle and if you believe in only one life focusing on extremes is unlikely to get you anywhere interesting unless you're very lucky/unlucky.
I really recommend "How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question" by Michael Schur who is one of the creators of The Good Place and he evaluates many popular ethics and world model views from a contemporary point of view and its really well done if you're interested in practical ethics.
Can you elaborate? The “Golden Mean Fallacy” is literally the name of a logical fallacy, though I don’t you meant it that way. Maybe a “things are more complicated than just black or white” kind of thing?
The golden mean fallacy is about factual truth not experiences which is just hijacked term by people who didn't understand what Golden Mean means.
Its also not a useful fallacy and contradicts with legitimate truth seeking techniques like baysian thought which is by far the most popular and de facto default way people think about truth.
Some of my moral principles - Treat others how you think they would want to be treated, but not at all costs.
You don't have to like everyone, and not everyone has to like you. Although, being liked by others generally leads to having a better life.
Avoid lying or "distorting the truth". But, sometimes lying is necessary, like to keep a friend's secret.
Some of my existential thoughts
There are no permanent consequences other than death (I do not believe in an afterlife, although I find the concept interesting). There are no rules to follow, just temporary consequences you may have to deal with. You can make up your own rules and follow them, or not follow them.
Perception is just a tool used by your brain (a small part of the universe) to process the chaos that is the universe. A similar universe could be described by a very complex particle simulation. That's really cool.
Do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't harm others.
your*
Don't attract too much attention to yourself and you can get way with a lot of shit.
I have a set of values:
And so on...
The choice i make is the one that aligns best with my values. If i have time to think that is. Otherwise my subconscious picks it's own weights.
There's a hierarchy to the values but they change in substance and position over time. That's by design. Humans grow and change.
Circularity and contradiction? That's fine. As long as it's aligned with my values I know I'm unlikely to regret it.
If it makes me feel virtuous, I want to do it. If it makes me feel guilty, I don't want to do it. 'Right' or 'wrong' seem to be objective morality-ly loaded terms, though.
How do you feel about the trolley problem?
Flip the switch
Wrong, IMO, is defined by the violation of the will of another.
That's the common element to all things that are broadly considered wrong.
For instance, if somebody chooses to give you something, that's a gift and it's fine. But if you take that same something from them against their will, that's stealing, and wrong. In both cases, the exact same thing happened - a thing went from being their possession to being yours. The difference - the thing that separates the right act from the wrong one - is that one was done according to the will of the other person, while the other was done contrary to their will.
And the same holds true consistently - assault, kidnapping, rape, even murder - none of them are characterized by what happens, but by the fact that it happens contrary to the will of the "victim." And in fact, that's what defines a "victim" - whatever has been done to them was done against their will.
And it should be noted that there's an odd sort of relative aspect to this, since the exception to the rule is the violation of the rule.
What I mean by that is that if one decides to violate the will of another, one is instantly wrong, which essentially negates the requirement that ones will not be violated. Your will to violate the will of another not only can be but should be itself violated.
I also have an idea for reconciling the need for an effectively absolute set of moral standards with the fact that morality is necessarily subjective and relative, but that'd require another, and likely even longer, essay.
There's a lot of nuance not mentioned. Coercion, duress, extortion. Nevertheless, as I read your reply, I'm reminded of Kiterunner, in which the anti hero's dad explains that sin boils down to stealing: murder steals a life, adultery a spouse, etc.
So let's start with a hypothetical scenario. (I know strawman, but we're talking about meta levels of philosophy here and experiments like these usually serve very well to prove a point or contradiction in someone's logic)
If there is a serial killer who can never be satisfied and can escape any sort of containment given enough time. Is it wrong to execute them?
That actially gets into the second thing I mentioned.
My view is that morality is best seen to function in a sort of math-like way - individual acts have a fixed moral value, and the moral value of an entire course of action is the "sum" of all of the relevant "integers" that make it up.
So, for instance taking the life of another contrary to their will has a negative moral value always. There are no exceptions - the value of that individual act is always negative.
However, protecting people from a known predator has a positive moral value, and similarly always has that value.
And depending on the severity of the threat and the severity of the response, it's possible for the "sum" of those two acts to be positive, which is to say right, and even as the value of the individual act "taking the life of another contrary to their will" remains negative.
That's not to say or imply that I believe that acts can be assigned actual numerical values - rather it's just a way to conceptualize the matter - to hopefully provide the absolutism that morality needs to be even-handed while still allowing for the flexibility it needs to be useful.
So to your question - in and of itself, taking the life of another contrary to their will - even if that other is a serial killer - is wrong. However, protecting people from a known predator is in and of itself right. So the two need to be weighed against each other, and I would say that if the risk the killer poses is sufficiently great (certain or near enough to it to make no meaningful difference) and if there are no other at least equally certain methods to prevent future killing, then execution would be justifiable. Which is to say, executing him would have a positive moral vaue, in spite of the fact that taking the life of another contrary to their will always has a negative valie in and of itself.
There's much more nuance to all of this - issues with the necessary unreliability and potential deliberate misrepresentation inherent in predicting the future, differences of opinion regarding the relative values of various acts and thus potentially the final value of the course of action as a whole, different methods for resolving disagreements on those things, and so on and on. But that's grist for other mills.
I really like this response. This is how I approach it as well on a higher level.
However here we seemed to have glossed over "what is right and wrong" which is a very complex issue and might be biased by the observer.
Hobbes has touched on this subject and the whole construct of society as we know it in his book "The Leviathan"
What we might see as wrong in the case of the killer and their victims, on his end is just an expression of his free will. In his mind he might not be doing anything wrong, given different guidelines for moral or empathy. In fact he may not even consider his victims alive.
So we judge them based on our morals and views of good and evil. Are we correct or are they correct? Hobbes states that the morals of the majority are what we follow in a society. But it's just something that we've constructed.
Edit: once again I'm using a case in where the situation is very obvious and clear cut. But think about when there is more nuance. A society views a certain race or species as a food source or livestock (think us and cows, or us and farmed fish) Are we correct or are we wrong to do what we do?
I think that the focus on the violation of the will of one by another defeats relativism.
The killer's expression of his will is not simply something he is doing, but something he is doing to another, and the will of that other must have priority.
If the will of the person upon whom the act is committed isn't held to be paramount, then the entire concept of interpersonal morality collapses. So an act that brings harm to another contrary to the will of that other must be seen to be wrong entirely regardless of one's personal views on the matter
Note though that that's subject to the essentially "mathematical" concept of morality I addressed elsewhere. That an act that brings harrm to another contrary to the will of that other is necessarily and without exception wrong does not preclude the possibility that it might be justified, if it serves to prevent a greater wrong or bring about a greater right - if it's such that the negative value of the act in question is offset by a greater positive value, such that the "sum" of the specific "integers" that make up the entire course of action is positive.
Hmm...let's put this in perspective. We live in a tiny dot flying around a cosmic sized flushing toilet bowl that is it self flying around a larger flushing toilet bowl... Both have centers that either melt everything and or stretch it til the atoms break apart...or both. We are direct descendants of life forms...not animals perhaps but life forms who appeared from random motion and electric volts and radiation in and around a primordial mix of random liquid shit. And we are the 1 second before midnight if the entire earth had been around for an entire day. In short we are nothing. Who cares if some guy wants tariffs on China while raping someone during a celebration for a new pope. However...if you lived here, your entire puny life trapped inside a calcium basket full of your own meat and guts with 8 other billion people in the same conditions, I would much rather it be a happy blip than a blip filled with and torture. And lots and lots of sex. If you're 21, my recommendation as a working professional who designs and builds really freaking cool gadgets is to go find someone to fuck pronto. And fuck. A lot. Use protection, don't have kids unless you want to. But just make love day and night. Once you turn 35 make some goals for the rest of your blip. Then spend the rest of your blip. Thru all, make your self happy and make others happy. Just help each other. It serves no one if you live the tiny puny piece of time pissed off and you piss off others.
Don't be a dick. Try to stay out of the kinds of trouble that cause extra paperwork.
Try to be as unlike the cuurent US administration as possible?
• Don’t be an asshole
• everyone just wants to be happy
• don’t be a burden to anyone
• look before crossing the streets
• always assume a bad driver has a reason for this behavior
• wipe front to back
• if you can do it right now, do it
• always assume everyone around you is smearier than you yourself
• don’t take the blame for everything, but offer to help fixing it
• if you’re serving anything, always take the different thing or the worst looking thing for yourself
Don't be a burden to anyone I feel like could be difficult sometimes. I get not continuously being a burden but if I need help I should get that help, no? I am talking about e.g. emotional support with people that have decided to be there for me, not me talking to people that don't want to hear.
Don't be a cunt to...
... Yourself ... Others ... people in need
But...
... Not bring yourself in danger ... Not Bring Others in danger ... Not let people bully, use, hurt etc. you.
if there is meaning to your choices, except that which you assign to it, you cannot know it. do as you please, do what feels right or don't. accepting everything may not lead to happiness, but, other than the necessary mental faculties, it is the only requirement for contentment.
Don't be a dick.
Number one rule I have.
The problem with it is, everyone defines "dicky" behavior differently.
Beat me to it.
Don’t be a dick, don’t make anyone’s life worse out of indifference or even temporary malice, don’t make your own life harder because of the aforementioned, and the greatest accomplishment would be to make someone else’s life measurably, permanently better and have no need of credit or compensation for the act.
Do no harm but take no shit.
Conquer the things stopping you from what you want to do. This can be poverty, people, or circumstance. See those things that you have beaten lie at your feet, and revel in the outcries of the things that you now have bested.
Be kind to others and let go of attachments. Have lived a very happy and successful life by doing just those two things.
Don't
I feel like this is what angry old irish catholic nuns think all the time.