Verified User
Please see my previous post:Originally Posted by PostmodernProphet
"I agree that the fact that most people think something is right or wrong doesn't necessarily mean that it is right or wrong. That would be the ad populum fallacy. My arguments do not depend on the opinions of the masses. They would be just as valid in times past when most people approved of slavery."
fully immersed in faith..
irrelevant....the long and short of it is, morality depends on human choice.......anything which depends on human choice cannot be universal.....you tried to prove that morality does NOT depend on human choice by providing an argument based on slavery as the only example........even that extreme falls short of being universal, both historically and currently.......
Verified User
What I am talking about: "What is true for everyone."
What I am not talking about: "What everyone thinks is true."
fully immersed in faith..
so, does your formula work on other issues.......is there a universal morality that abortion is wrong?......
Verified User
I think the foundation has been pretty well established and defended. In my first part I talk about how the basis of ethics is to tell oneself the truth, and to act with regard to the future self and others. In part two, I established the specific right of self ownership, and some of the ramifications of that. In part three, I look at some of the possible consequences of not being ethical--of lying to others, of treating the other as less than a person, and of denying self-ownership. It is by no means exhaustive. It is one look at some extreme cases of the dark side, which should help to clarify why choosing light over dark is so important. As always I welcome your critiques, both of the form and substance.
-Part Three - Virtues-
Rights outline a domain of authority. Virtues answer the question, what should you do with the things you have a right to? How should you live? There are many other virtues besides the ones I have listed, but I hope to contribute something to the discussion.
Honesty vs Deception
To be honest is to be credible. Liars and the honest have two different experiences of life. Those who are honest can go through life together, sharing their human experience. There is a safety with an honest person. There is a connection. There are those things that you may know of their heart that you could not have known any other way but by their admission. There is a sense of home. There is a steadiness that can last decades. Honesty is the means to discover every other form of goodness--what matters in life? Why am I the way I am? How should I live? Honesty acknowledges a person's true self, allowing them to know and direct themselves. In groups, it eases the shackles of oversight that are necessary for the dishonest, and allows the group to run faster towards their goals.
Liars are bewildering to the honest, because we look at the trivial thing that they throw away a lifetime of trust and connection for and cannot understand. Even one lie, and a link in the chain of evidence--credibility--is broken. Everything this person says is in question. We are necessarily no longer communing and sharing experiences. We cannot collaborate with the same ease. We are guarded, defensive, scrutinizing. The burden of oversight and proofs exhausts efforts we are required to make with them. The liar is a marked person who must be segregated in our minds. This is not an easy thing to repair.
Goodwill vs Cruelty
Abuse is any act with the intent to harm. If someone ever acts in any way designed to torment you, to open up to such a person is to risk them using your vulnerabilities against you later down the road. They too, like liars, must be segregated, and this too is a difficult thing to repair. While apologies are appropriate, they do little to prove a change in character. There cannot be the same kind of closeness with such a person as with someone who consistently wants the best for you.
A person with goodwill is always searching for the best possible outcome. They are on the side of the best part of you. When something terrible happens, there is a temptation to dump rage and frustration on someone else rather than to find the solution. The person with goodwill will not use this as an excuse to abuse and destroy, or as a cop out. While they will validate those emotions, they are focused on being constructive. They shoulder responsibility. They work through the issues.
Manipulation vs Collaboration
Manipulation is weaponized deception aimed at creating reactions hostile to the interests of the target. This denies other person their right to self-direction. It hijacks person, treating them as a tool, a means to an end. As this action objectifies the victim, there is a disconnect. The experience is like meeting a person who has a delusion that you are a vending machine. They are very pleased to meet "you." They examine you, find what they want, and then begin to poke. You find their actions bizarre, and want to make some gesture so they understand that there is a person here, but they merely take your words and actions to mean that they pressed the wrong button. They make adjustments and insert what they perceive to be the required input to get their treat. It is like they are looking past you. Talking about you but not to you. Waiting for their treat. Sometimes it is humorous. Sometimes it is horrifying, what they nonchalantly do to their "vending machines." But no matter the case, there is no connection.
They will watch to see what you react to. There is misdirection, discouragement, ridicule, praise, threats, confusion, etc. Some attempt subliminal messaging, neural linguistic programming, or hypnosis. They treat you like a Pavlovian dog.
Manipulators often draw other people into their web--the most common varieties are cowards, dupes, and sadists. When narcissists do this, the tactic is called triangulation, and the people are called flying monkeys. Lenin called them useful idiots. There are several ways this can be done. One need only understand two well established phenomenon.
The first is the Milgram experiments, which has been repeated many times with consistent results. Subjects are told they are participating in a scientific study, or game show, etc. They are told that as part of this narrative, they are expected to induce pain in a willing participant strapped down to a chair every time they get the question wrong. (The participant is an actor unbeknownst to the subject, and the shocks are fake.) There is always an authority figure with a straight face and a good story. The subject complies and starts to administer shocks. After each wrong answer, the intensity of the shocks increases. The subject continues. At some point, the participant says they no longer want to be shocked and demands to be released. The authority figure instructs the subject to continue. In every case, all, or all but one or a very few continue the shocks, even at lethal levels. Those few who refused to comply with the authority's demands usually cite how the Nazi's followed Hitler, and that they did not want to make the same mistake. But the objector is so rare as to barely exist. The reality is, humans, when given a narrative by an authority figure with a straight face will do unthinkably terrible things to each other. There was a reporter who wanted to test this theory, and told a woman that he was a detective, and that that child over there had been kidnapped, and he needed her help to get the child back. She complied eagerly.
But lets say for some reason that there is someone who is better informed. They are not willing to assist the manipulator. Then there is a second well established dynamic. This is the prisoner's dilemma. In this case, the police are questioning two subjects. The subjects are separated from each other and unable to communicate. The police tell each that if they implicate the other, they will get a lighter sentence. If they do not confess and are not implicated, they will both go free. But if you are implicated but do not "cooperate" and implicate the other, then you will be given the most serious sentence and the other will go free. If the prisoners could communicate and come to an agreement, they could agree to not implicate each other, and would get the best possible outcome. But because they are isolated and under pressure, and not able to communicate to confirm the other can be trusted, then to save themselves from receiving the worst possible sentence, they implicate the other, and each receives the medium sentence. Without private communication, there would be no collaboration outside of the gaze of the predator. Each party is isolated, and when coerced, will almost inevitably fold. The reality is, when faced with a threat, people will look out for themselves and not the other person in almost every case. That's not Jesus, but that is humanity. The result is that it is surprisingly easy to use ordinary people against each other. The more this is done, the greater the coercive force, and this dynamic can grow exponentially.
Collaboration does not deceive. It uses reason and evidence, impartial to intellectually honest minds. They empower and enable agency.
Privacy
Privacy is essential to life, but most people do not realize this. Victims of domestic violence, stalking, and oppressive surveillance states learn the hard way how necessary it is. In these cases, there are controllers, often psychopaths, who crave swallowing up the lives of their victims like those who have not experienced it cannot understand. It is said that one out of three women and one out of four men are stalked, and that doesn't even count government surveillance.
Everything you love and hate is revealed. Predators gain a sense of power by merely creating reactions. They study their targets to learn how to turn them on and off at will. They see the victim as an extension of themselves, like a muscle that they can flex, and that sense of omnipotence is their lifeblood. They use this to lure and to torment. They will often listen first and then transform themselves into the thing you would most desire to draw you in and earn a false trust. That which has your love, admiration, and attention can be pushed to influence you to the manipulators end. Things or people that you love can be threatened or harmed. Things you hate can be enhanced and repeated.
Everything and everyone you depend on is revealed. This can be emotional, financial, physical, spiritual, or anything you need to fulfill your needs and goals. A hallmark of toxic people is to cut off support from their victims. They separate them from friends and family, and carefully watch if they make any new connections. They may drain your finances and sabotage your career. They may do this by gossip, threats, or other means. Alternatively, they may seek to control those sources of support. You are controlled by what you are dependent on.
You can be shamed, smeared, or blackmailed. The very act of violating someone's privacy is to demean and objectify, like a toy or an animal at the zoo. Something you have said or done can be used against you. Trying to navigate life without an angel on one shoulder and a lawyer on the other can leave crippling vulnerabilities. And this is still not enough. No matter how perfect and moral you are, there are private things (in the bathroom for example) you may not want published. This is a delight to the sadism and superiority complex of the narcissist.
Security is compromised. Passwords, identity, home security, routines, all up for grabs.
There are no real relationships. Predators intrude into every one of them that they can, and those relationship dynamics change. You are no longer relating to this person, but also to the predators. Communication is complicated and sensitive, but psychopaths can go scorched earth on a hair trigger. Imagine every movie you have ever watched with some creep standing in the corner. It would kind of ruin the movies. Stalkers attempt to soak up as much mental space as they possibly can. Sharing space even in benign settings is distracting. With this backdrop, authenticity would be stifled in all of your most important relationships, and even with yourself. Given that we are in an era where privacy is and could potentially be removed more than humanity has ever experienced, these questions ought to be studied very seriously. Perhaps privacy is the most underrated right. It is, in fact, essential to being human.
Unorthodox movements can be snuffed out. Political dissidents and ideological revolutionaries are typically targets of surveillance states. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Junior, and many other voices of conscience were targets. Even if it seems like just a few are targeted, the activist or ideologue is the primary force for change in the political process that benefits the whole. If a corrupt government is able to silence a political movement before it matures, the whole public will suffer from system that no longer takes correction.
Courage vs Cowardliness
Let us imagine that someone has a gun placed to their head, and is told to do something wrong. Do they have a choice? Now let us imaging that the person holding the gun also has a gun placed to his head, and he is being ordered to threaten the first person with the gun. Does he have a choice? Is he a bad person? Now let us imagine a series of people holding guns to the next person's head going back for some time. But first person to initiate this chain of threats had a very bad childhood. He is not in control of himself, and is quite insane. Here we are, having trapped ourselves, committing vile acts, and no one to blame. This is a sad and absurd picture for everyone to cooperate in.
The coward is someone who has a seed of the love of truth, but it has not sufficiently matured, and so it can be overcome. He would rather not, but perhaps he values his own immediate comfort disproportionately to others or the future. He may rationalize his behavior by claiming he is not responsible because he is under pressure. The coward tends to blend in, and is usually harmless, unless in an environment where malevolence has gained power. Now he has become dangerous. The hope is that this is rare. But predators have always existed, and by definition they seek power. They are a fact of life. It is an element of human nature contrary to the universal ethic. It is our disease, and some express it more clearly and brutally than others. Given this reality, if people cannot be trusted in the face of that, then what good is it? Whether they blame themselves or not, it doesn't make much difference to those around them. Evil is still damaging, and it still has to be prevented and guarded against, fought and punished. The tool of the psychopath is the functional equivalent of a psychopath. Ask yourself, what are you here on this earth for? 1 Kings 18:21 “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.”
I remember a picture of a Nazi soldier pointing his machine gun at a crouching woman holding a child. People often look at that picture and say to themselves they are better than the Nazi. They look down on that place in history as the morally superior and the civilized. They may even find it comforting that they have "evolved." But they ask the wrong question. The question is not would you prefer to gun down an innocent woman rather than not. The question is, if you had to become one of those people in the picture--the murderer or the murdered--which would you choose to be? Are you given a choice? Yes. One way is to reduce suffering to yourself regardless of what it does to the other. Another is is to act to cause suffering, but justify it by suggesting the alternative could be worse. But their life is not yours to decide what to do with at all. And this is why this picture and this question defines who a person really is. The choice to be the murderer is unjust, but the coward demands the pity of victims while creating them. It is not your place. Never allow yourself to become the instrument of injustice.
Having courage is about valuing people as much as they should be valued, and knowing what is worth fighting for. It is also about knowing what is within your right and power to change, neither frustrating yourself with responsibilities beyond your control, nor neglecting those that are.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Faithfulness vs Betrayal
People are meant to be noble creatures. They are meant to be deep, strong, wise and kind supports to each other. The betrayer takes this picture of divinity and turns it into a circus. The more sincere the love, trust, and devotion given makes the victim into an even more pitiful puppet. As the charade continues, their life is slowly stolen from them.
At the realization, the first instinct is heart break, a pleading with the person you imagine can still hear you to come back to themselves. Those calls go unanswered. There is no one to answer them. Each expression of love taken by fraud becomes an assault. They say it is better to love and lose rather than to not love at all, but I have thought that the worst thing would be to love, and to come to find that the person you loved never existed at all. Their soul never graced this earth. And the murderer of that dream still wears their skin.
It is not just the loss of that person, but of your ability to know such a person. How can you know what else in your past you were wrong about? When will you be able to trust yourself again, and see the path in front of you clearly enough to take a step? When you have found someone truly worthy, to be able to know it? Even if such a person does exist, they may not exist for you.
The betrayer has lost their market value. The more skillfully an offer of friendship was made and then exploited, the more impossible it is to be sure of a future offer. Because they have lost their ability to make deals, they also have lost the ability to make threats. A threat, after all, is a deal. The possibility of hidden motives or future betrayals make it impossible to judge if it really is advantageous to go along. The betrayer is a seed of chaos. Their words are poison.
Coercion vs Cooperation
"Why should I think you are a nice person?" "I'll give you five reasons. One." She curls her pinkie. "Two" Her ring finger. "Three, Four, Five." There are actually people like that. Rationally speaking, she has just proven that she is not a nice person. But she expects you to not be so rational. There was a saying in the book Uncle Tom's Cabin that stood out to me. "Body and soul." The slaves are enslaved body and soul. It is something people often do not realize, but those who demand you present an action may also presume to force you to present an emotion. This leaves you with a choice: corrupt your soul, hand it over to a thing such as that, and hope nothing worse comes from such a deal, or tell yourself the truth. Tell yourself that the girl isn't a nice girl, that the "Massa" has threatened the life of an innocent and has blood dripping down his lips. Tell yourself that you are not cattle. You are not a possession. You are a person bearing the Divine image. As brilliant as the stars may be, you can comprehend the stars, but the stars comprehend nothing. This is your station in life. And the person who dismisses this degrades himself. Threats are not fitting for a man. The animal threatens. The man reasons. The man faces a world of pain and sees beyond to the truth. He erects order despite mindless devastation. The whip of the coercer seeks to silence the will. "To always live at the direction of another is to be something of a dead thing." It is to be carved out and reduced to something less than human, an echo chamber for the will of others.
Every intentional act first requires that an individual has preferences, or a value scale. Each choice moves a person closer to their highest values in the way they believe to be most effective. Individual values may be wrong, and the strategies taken to see them realized may be in error, but as we have established, it is the individual's right to make choices concerning their own property. When they see the results of their choices in this natural scientific process, they may learn and make corrections. When multiple people make a free and joint choice, everyone in that equation is both moving towards their own goals, and helping the other move towards theirs, in the most effective way possible. Society and economy are complex machines that when running under this principle are constantly rearranging matter and energy into the most useful states. Lifespans increase. Billions are lifted from abject poverty. Choices expand. No longer are people forced to spend their days scraping together the means to go on surviving. Art, music, philosophy, and other expressions of man's higher nature can be explored more deeply and by more people. This is founded on the principle of voluntary exchange. It is not exploitation or self-sacrifice. Rather, the person who best succeeds in this economy is the one who is able to serve the most people in the best way. "But Jesus called them to Himself and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant." (Mt 20:25-26)
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