Life in a nutshell

[thebadkitty]

The original form of 'The Golden Rule' was in the negative:

Do not do unto others that which you would not have done to you.

More about avoiding wrong action it seemed, rather than a prescription for what ought to be done.

 

[atskywalker]

More about avoiding wrong action it seemed, rather than a prescription for what ought to be done.

That assumes that "wrong action" is easily defined. We live in a very fluid/liquid culture in which fixed notions of good and evil are constantly shifting and in my view shifting in relation to market values which is a disastrous, IMHO, in and of itself. I believe that our modern cultures has reached a level of hubris that it no longer values the evolutionary nature of the ethical domain of life (although we worship at the alter of evolutionary biology!).Human societies nowadays destroy long held structure for the sake of of an undefined "new" just for the fun of it ignoring ancestral accumulated wisdom under the false assumption that we are now different.
The human psyche does not seem to evolve as fast as technology and the challenges it begins forth yet we act as if it does.
A very good read about this topic is Zygmunt Bauman's Liquid Modernity.

 

[thebadkitty]

Yes. That's what I said. You saw it.

 

[elbert]

The Golden Rule is formulated subjectively because ethics can never be objective. It's Hume's Guillotine; there's no description of how things are that can tell you how they ought to be.

 

[atskywalker]

The Golden Rule is formulated subjectively because ethics can never be objective.

That begs the question. Is there anything objective at all? Obviously I don't mean to discuss this in this thread but its a question that could be pondered over bowls of your favourite tobaccos for the rest of your life ::
IMHO, our folly as a species is that we think that the only alternative to rational is irrational. I consider the moral/ethical domain to be non-rational (note the subtle difference) in exactly the same way love, beauty, compassion, and art cannot be understood with the rational mind alone.

 

[Chasing Embers]

The last line of the Wiccan Rede says it all for me.
"An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will"

 

[elbert]

I agree with you there. Morality is emotional rather than intellectual.

 

[seacaptain]

Post modern thought is certainly entrenched as an accepted world view.

 

[atskywalker]

@elbert, while we both agree on morality not being of an intellectual nature I would disagree about it being emotional. There's more of you and I behind intellect and emotion; both, IMHO, are symptoms of something lurking behind the shadows of of what we perceive as "self". Some people call it intuition or the sub conscious or whatever (language obscures more than it reveals - I believe thats why we love poets; because they can use words yet reveal more than obscure). Many names to something that defies definition but can only directly be experienced if the mind can be stilled (which is a gigantic task in our ADD over stimulated culture).
Good news is. Pipe smoking does still the mind ::

 

[robwoodall]

I think morality, or ethics, if you prefer, have to be either authority-based, or retrospective.
I can see a thing as "right" because my god, family, philosophy or nation tells me it is, or I can do a thing, and measure the consequences of that thing. If the consequences were mostly "good" I can call the behavior "good," or "bad" if the consequences are mostly bad.
The problem with authority-based morality is when I assume that your god, family, philosophy or nation is the same as mine and that you must do what my god says!
The problem with retrospective morality is that, while I can learn from experience, I can never be truly sure of right action until after the action has happened.
I do think either is superior to most people's way of defining as "bad" anything that they do not personally like.

 

[plugugly]

To me, what's worthwhile in life is the positive difference you make in the lives of those around you by what you think, say and do. Do that, and everything else takes care of itself.
Plugugly

 

[frozenchurchwarden]

-Seacaptain

Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

That has been my favourite verse for about a decade now. A sobering end to a definitive book about the vanity of life.
In general, I think life is like a nutshell, it's full of nuts.

 

[thebadkitty]

atskywalker;

Apologies for making light of your thread. I'm working on degrees in applied ethics and philosophy, and three undeclared minors. Strangely enough, I don't contemplate these things when I'm smoking . I agree about Bauman being a great reference for navigating the world, and did not mean to make fun if it seemed I was, only light. I thought the thread was more lighthearted than I realize it is now.

-Steve

 

[atskywalker]

Steve! What are talking about? I'm enjoying this thoroughly. Where else would one meet someone "working on degrees in applied ethics and philosophy, and three undeclared minors" 8O

Not even a hint of offence taken brother.

 

[aldecaker]

This thread really did grow some legs, didn't it? I had to look up the Ecclesiastes reference; if you're looking at it from a faith-based viewpoint (which, clearly, not all of us are), I think it is spot-on.

 

[robwoodall]

I'm offended!
I saw nothing in the least offensive. I just wanted to be offended.
But only for a while.
I'm better, now.

 

[thebadkitty]

Awesome Years ago John Locke's "The Association of Ideas" and Descartes' six "Meditations" read as point and counterpoint were a large turning point in perspective for me. So, here's my sentence to sum up. However, defeasible knowledge in mind, it could change.
-Things are not always as they seem; defining personal realities in a post-modern world is comforting, but everyone who goes out in the rain naked gets wet.-
Wow...I have to admit that I don't know who's right, I never will, and sociology professors don't like sociology being used on sociology.
Thomas Nagel does provide a compelling argument for an objective basis of morality in an essay titled coincidentally enough "The Objective Basis of Morality". I don't want to do him the disservice of trying to summarize his work with my fumblings, but his argument depends on how much we are willing to admit to ourselves about whether we would feel something. His example uses resentment.
Donald Davidson does not do away with subjectivity in his "The Myth of the Subjectivity" but rather explains how navigating "reality" may be easier by not trying so hard to separate the two. He goes off in other essays to address consciousness and mind, getting in between arguments with John Searle ("Minds, Brains, Programs") and Nagel ("What's it Like to be a Bat?"), connecting their essays to his, and the three of them argue over a modified "Turing's Test" (take the human interviewee out of the test and give the machine mobility and senses, and allow the interviewer the chance to watch the machine interact in the "real world" with the rest of us - by this reasoning Commander Data and the crew of the Enterprise underwent a several years-long "modified Turing's Test").

Sam Harris is good at explaining a lot of those conversations of consciousness in terms most of us can understand, especially the part where mind may be a by product of processes and an illusion. Again I don't know if he's "right", but I liken his explanation to something like motion pictures: separate images flowing rapidly enough to fool us. I think it's Davidson who likens the idea of mind as a by product to a turbo engine with its exhaust being run back through the process. The funny part is, neuroscience and its monitors and sensors can predict a random choice seconds before it's made...weird. Or is it?
A question I've been turning over for months is from John Fowles' "The Magus": did the Mayor save his villagers from becoming accomplices to the madness, or did he condemn them by refusing the order given to him? That I hope I never have to make a decision like that is the only thing I'm sure of.
Wow, there's a stream of consciousness rambling. Sometimes I wish I could turn it off, but not really. The big whammy was realizing that all of this is all connected, and more...so much more.

 

[Perique]

I wonder, should the edifice of the modern West crumble, and we were to actually get our hands dirty in an attempt at feeding ourselves, how dramatically would our views on this subject change?

 

[aldecaker]

I dunno, Perique. I will tell you I'm a first-waver, the antithesis of a doomsday prepper. I hope I'm at ground zero of whatever KO's civilization as we know it. I say no thanks to shooting your neighbor for a can of beans or resorting to eating your young because you suddenly realized you can't grow a damned thing. I only recently got competent at navigating modern, civilized society, let alone any post-apocalypto crap!

 

[jkrug]

Don't wish away all your todays hoping for better tomorrows. ::
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