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

To: epicure who wrote (30209)	9/29/2001 12:01:37 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

Our cultural morality, for example, has meaning for us- because we understand it, as we do a language. Do we understand the cultural morality of "strange" cultures, e.g. cultures we did not grow up in, and have never had contact with? No we do not. Does that "foreign" cultural morality not have meaning for the people of that cultural? Well, yes, it probably does. I found the following clip in an article on the libertarian thread. I'd be interested in your reaction to it and what do we do about the gap between us and this "strange" cultural morality. <<The terrorists [on Tuesday] . . . issued no demands, no ultimatums. They did it solely out of grievance and hatred—hatred for the values cherished in the West as freedom, tolerance, prosperity, religious pluralism and universal suffrage, but abhorred by religious fundamentalists (and not only Muslim fundamentalists) as licentiousness, corruption, greed and apostasy.">> Message 16431380

To: epicure who wrote (30209)	9/29/2001 12:11:17 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"If there are no absolute standards the terms good and evil will be meaningless outside the mind of man (which I have always argued they are" Now you see, that's something that I appreciate about you X. It seems to me that you are an honest and sincere person, you hold your views up to the light, and do not Try to hide behind smoke screens. Of course I believe that you are wrong and that you have so far, failed to take your ideas to their logical conclusion, but I do respect you for sticking to your guns. It is obviously true that people use language in different ways and still there is enough commonality that it remains meaningful. The point that I would disagree with you comes in how you are using the term "outside the mind of man". Are you using "mind of man" in a collective sense or an individual sense? If you are using "mind of man" in a collective sense, how do you account for this universal mind? If as I suppose, you are using it an individual sense then two people with different minds must both use a standard that is outside of themselves in order to make meaningful communication possible. I just asked for clarification from you about your use of a particular term. Presumably you will tell me the sense in which you are using it, we will agree or not, and communication will have taken place. The problem with applying that model to Morality, (notice the capital) is that unlike words, that can be arbitrarily assigned different meanings, certain actions carried out by humans seem to carry a set moral currency, or value. In other words certain actions are wrong, even if we agree that they are not. As Humans this sense of outrage at evil, seems to just well up in us, regardless of our political, philosophical or religious background, as it did in the case of Gould's reaction to the WTC attack. I don't find any good explanation for this universal reaction by people from INSIDE "the mind of man", therefore I believe that, at the very least, it points to something, (call it what you want), but something that is OUTSIDE the mind of man.

To: epicure who wrote (30209)	9/29/2001 12:44:12 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 82486

Well put. The reality (or truth) is simply that we have had to make up words to describe the experience of our senses. People missing certain senses, experience reality in distinctively different ways than others; but, of course, ALL people experience reality necessarily in different ways. Words have no intrinsic foundation for meaning. They are not carvings from stone, but rather they are vapors of interpretation--muttered, moaned, and mumbled from out the mists of the mind. Memory allows us to develop a conceptual arena where meaning can be tweaked and standardized to some degree. But words only reflect our desire to turn sense into meaning and to share our impressions with others in the form of ideas. Granted, over millions of years, we have taken it a long ways. We have also invented words and stories to describe what we imagine is beyond the natual horizons which limit our senses--the so-called supernatural. However, we do not subject these stories to investigation and judgment. For instance, "heaven" and "hell" can not be investigated. So far as we can ever know, they have only imaginary existence. And yet, people are asked to believe without evidence, in the imagination of madmen, and worse, they are asked to believe in order to experience a reward or to avoid being tortured. This is the disgusting legacy of our species-that we have been extorted and bribed, and have shamed our minds to follow those with the most vicious imaginations--the mafia of the Priesthood. Morality is simple. Happiness, to a large degree, depends upon conduct. Our chances for joy as opposed to suffering, derive from our actions, and from the formalized and unformalized premises we have learned through experience as being pragmatic and utile dulci--recognizing that we live in relationship, and that we further our opportunity for life, and for contented and rewarding life, when those relationships are regulated in certain ways. The greatest threat to the realization of mutual self interest, is when groups or individuals choose not to recognize the commonality that informs humankind (indeed, life itself). These people lack the empathy to live in this community of mutuality. Thus, they occupy a private world of their own imagination, and they base their behaviour on something alien to the natural world. Thus are they unconcerned with the happiness or lives of real people in the actual world, because no sense of identity or empathy connects them to these lives. These lives mean nothing to a Manson; they mean nothing to a fanatic.