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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (30142)	9/28/2001 9:38:49 PM
From: Mac Con Ulaidh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

>>And I try very athletically not to think they are nuts. I'm picturing you in sweats, straddling a dilemma? But, seriously, or not... Relativism... no big deal to me. I can understand where they are coming from... I think. And I dismiss it. It's not okay with me. And the view of many people in this country is not okay with me. In my own view, their view can not fit in this world, as can not the view of some in this country. It's not isolated, or in a particular realm, that lives the view I see, but a view that is universal, spanning nations and lines. The jihad will not triumph. Armageden will not triumph. The ones who see beauty here within us, and here on earth, will triumph. Bin Laden means nothing. Falwell means nothing. They are bound and powerless. Death will have no dominion. And hate will have no place. Not that I like everyone. Nope. That's a whole other realm... beyond hate and distruction. Is that relative? I think I've lost understanding of it.

To: epicure who wrote (30142)	9/28/2001 10:45:13 PM
From: coug	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Hi X, "You discount the work it takes to be a relativist. It takes a certain amount of work to see the point of view of the World Trade Center terrorists, for example. But seeing their position and being a relativist doesn't make you some sort of lazy relativist unless that is what you choose to be. After all, relativism allows you to be as athletic and muscular in your choice of actions and morals as you want to be. Relativism only really means that you recognize- even while making your choice -lazy or not- that your choice is relative to who you are, and possibly to the group to which you belong."" That is a very good point, because relativism, IMO takes MORE energy and MORE thought to project yourself AWAY from your own POINT of REFERENCE.. For Example, IMO, the point of reference (POR) for the general public in the US, is the terror of the bombing and the threat towards our lifestyle. And that is very true.. First time here, compared to EUROPE, ASIA and AFRICA.. Very bad for us relatively speaking.. On the other side, cheering, because the tragedy was a "victory" over,in their sense, relatively speaking, because their POR was a Western blatant and consumptive life style.. And there are numerous subsets to the above in the last week, from "Wall street, where, I gathered they thought, the most important thing in the world was to get on with trading.. Relativism is VERY true but VERY bad.. But to understand it, IMO, is VERY GOOD... I don't know.. It is just my thoughts from a relativist POV.. m

To: epicure who wrote (30142)	9/28/2001 11:33:56 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Reality is changing as we speak. Every time someone makes a pocket laser pointer they are increasing the probability that coherent light is appearing in the universe spontaneously. The National Ignition Facility is increasing the probability that nuclei are sticking together in places where the current temperature is 85 degF. Physics doesn't address this apparent change in the odds over time very well (the self-organizing nature of the universe) because the 'game' these hardware-handicapped guys (physicists) ignore involves the theory of information states (which is central to the act of "observation"). Information, the logic of the "is" and "ain't" state, can be expressed a quantum bits - refer to any quantum computing article. That state is bound by the rules of the medium in which it exists (space-time). You don't need to make things unnecessarily complex, dude (pardon the pun). Current diffractive optics experiments says that our physical space is provably spectrally continuous (based upon optical wave mechanics) from at any resolution over which you can get phase-lock. It is down to femtosecond level(10e-15 seconds)...

To: epicure who wrote (30142)	9/29/2001 4:41:26 PM
From: St_Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

But is there some point at which you are forced to say, these people are nuts, wrong, immoral -- no matter who they are or where they're from? It may be that we have no disagreement. I just don't think that relativism admits of degrees, I guess. See what you think of this: People often confuse tolerance with relativism. As a tolerant person, you would naturally think that intolerance is wrong. But a true relativist would say that intolerance is just as dandy a moral point of view as tolerance. So if you want to argue that the intolerant are wrong, that requires an explanation of morality that is somehow independent of individual or cultural points of view. Another path to this same conclusion: I'm sure that you can think of an example of some behavior, based upon some belief system that is abhorent. Killing female infants because you need sons. Ethnic cleansing. There are other examples. If you're willng to say that such beliefs and actions are morally wrong, no matter who you are, that judgment requires and explanation of what there is about us all that we share, despite our more and less tolerable differences. This is why I say that tolerance takes a tremendous amount of work sometimes and why I say that a belief in tolerance isn't a belief in ethical relativism because, by definition, a true relativist would put up with anything, no matter what. This leads us to moral absolutism. I'm an absolutist. What does that mean? What it doesn't mean is that I've got this list of rules -- ten let's say, that I hold inviolable. The absolutist is looking for the one rule -- the summum bonum -- that explains morality. There have been a number of candidates. One fairly recent one is that morality is all about acting in such a way the generates the greatest amount of happiness/well-being/eudaimonia and/or the least amount of suffering in the long run. Hold that one rule as absolute and the rest follows. Sometimes we should lie and kill. Sometimes we shouldn't. It all depends on the predicted consequences of our actions. So if it's reasonable to argue that driving a plane into an office building isn't going to generate more well-being than suffering in the long wrong, then those people behaved immorally, absolutely.