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ColdFusion is offline ColdFusion
2009-07-07 , 20:14
Posts: 397 | Thanked: 227 times | Joined on May 2007
#31
It was Texrat who invoked GW :P
Originally Posted by Texrat View Post
If you could go back and kill Hitler when he was an adult, would you? As a teenager? A toddler? A baby?

Not really. Note the word "core". By this word, I mean really basic stuff - do not kill, do not steal, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, etc. This stuff is pretty much universal for everybody, mainly because it keeps the society together.
Really? Explain slavery. It has always been a part of human society, to a great extent even today, it's only better concealed.

See, even as the moral standards change, there is still a set of taboos that are stable from one society to another. So, this is the bare minimum that you can use for judgement.
No there isn't. I may even go as far as to say that there isn't ANY moral standard that hasn't changed in the past, a lot may even change in the future. Arranged marriages, "gentlemen" duels, pedophilia, privateers, slavery, etc. The list is long.

So yes, it was OK in the past in certain societies, regular people (not the government) to kill, steal from, abuse and take away the freedom of other human beings.
 
KristianW is offline KristianW
2009-07-07 , 20:46
Posts: 263 | Thanked: 77 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Sigtuna, Sweden
#32
Originally Posted by ColdFusion View Post
It's never really about religions or fundamentalism, or racism, or terrorism. It's about constructing a "us - them" mentality. To do that one could use anything really, as history has shown us. And you need that confrontation, not to spread Christianity, civilisation or democracy, it's about acquiring wealth and power.
Right.
Except; religion is a more powerful tool to achieve that, being deeper embedded in people and culture.


Generally:
Unless the state can keep it's monopoly of force, vendettas in some form start to appear.
Everybody (almost?) is capable of any evil, given the right, I mean of course the wrong, circumstances.
In the short run propaganda often spreads easier than truth, which is usually more complicated.
In the long run truth has a fair chance to win, but often to late.
( Think of the song "God bless the grass . . they roll the concrete over it . ." and the grass slowly grows up through the concrete . ."God bless the truth . .".)
In history black and white usually prewails over a greyer truth

So , but it is said that fax machines helped prevent the coup against Gorbatjev from succeeding.
And now it is much easier for most everybody to communicate.
And of course the risks of communicating behind the backs of men in power will always be there, whatever the technology.
Last edited by KristianW; 2009-07-07 at 20:54.
 
attila77 is offline attila77
2009-07-07 , 20:53
Posts: 3,319 | Thanked: 5,610 times | Joined on Aug 2008 @ Finland
#33
Originally Posted by fms View Post
Well, then do not become a soldier. Personally, I do no consider soldiers, police, security guards, and other similar government employees fully human,
Now you're getting at the real fringes of social theories

precisely for the reason that they are not constrained by the same social rules as the rest of us.
They are constrained by the same SOCIAL rules, but not the same LEGAL rules. Are we generally not killing people because there is a law against it or because most of us think it's plain wrong ?
 
ColdFusion is offline ColdFusion
2009-07-07 , 20:58
Posts: 397 | Thanked: 227 times | Joined on May 2007
#34
History has shown many other "tools" that are as powerful or even more than religion. Like racism, class differences, all kinds of political ideologies and so on...
Paint all people green and they'll soon argue which ones are more greener than the others.
 
fms is offline fms
2009-07-07 , 21:00
Posts: 1,418 | Thanked: 1,541 times | Joined on Feb 2008
#35
Originally Posted by attila77 View Post
Now you're getting at the real fringes of social theories
Just trying to apply formal logic. I am pretty sure that once you attempt to formulate your own feelings about the subject, you will come to the same conclusion, however strange it sounds.

They are constrained by the same SOCIAL rules, but not the same LEGAL rules. Are we generally not killing people because there is a law against it or because most of us think it's plain wrong ?
I do believe that most of us are not killing people because we think it is wrong. For those who tend to differ, there is a law against it. But the law is the second line of defense. The first line of defense is still ethics. Both the ethics and the law serve a very simple and ancient goal though: to keep human beings from exterminating themselves. That is what most real social taboos (aka "moral principles", not meaning arbitrary religious crap here) are about, after all.
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KristianW is offline KristianW
2009-07-07 , 21:23
Posts: 263 | Thanked: 77 times | Joined on Jan 2009 @ Sigtuna, Sweden
#36
Originally Posted by ColdFusion View Post
History has shown many other "tools" that are as powerful or even more than religion. Like racism, class differences, all kinds of political ideologies and so on...
Paint all people green and they'll soon argue which ones are more greener than the others.
Well, racism maybe, depending also to some part on our drive to propagate our very own genes.

Political ideologies only so far as they have been "religionized", like e.g. Maoism, or "racified" as e.g. the ideology behind the Ruanda mass murders, that were probably really a class fight. (The race difference having been conveniently created by the colonial power.)

I did not mean that religion per se was more powerful.
I meant that anything really and deeply believed was a more powerful tool.
And historically religion has usually been the tool closest to that.
 
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Texrat is offline Texrat
2009-07-08 , 03:35
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#37
Originally Posted by fms View Post
See, even as the moral standards change, there is still a set of taboos that are stable from one society to another. So, this is the bare minimum that you can use for judgement.
Sorry, fms, but that's only true within short confines of time and space. Give any society long enough and they grow decadent to the point that today's taboos become tomorrow's largely-ignored eccentricities or even accepted behaviors. History is lousy with examples. One could say we're watching it happen now, when a poll can show over 70% of a population seeing nothing wrong with theft (as long as the product isn't tangible).
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fms is offline fms
2009-07-08 , 04:52
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#38
Originally Posted by Texrat View Post
Sorry, fms, but that's only true within short confines of time and space. Give any society long enough and they grow decadent to the point that today's taboos become tomorrow's largely-ignored eccentricities or even accepted behaviors.
Well, why not disregard times directly preceding the death of a society?

One could say we're watching it happen now, when a poll can show over 70% of a population seeing nothing wrong with theft (as long as the product isn't tangible).
If you mean so called "intellectual property theft", it does not fall under the original definition of theft, as the victim is not losing any tangible goods. There is absolutely no reason why it should fall under the "do not steal" taboo, whatever record companies say.
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attila77 is offline attila77
2009-07-08 , 14:16
Posts: 3,319 | Thanked: 5,610 times | Joined on Aug 2008 @ Finland
#39
Originally Posted by fms View Post
If you mean so called "intellectual property theft", it does not fall under the original definition of theft, as the victim is not losing any tangible goods. There is absolutely no reason why it should fall under the "do not steal" taboo, whatever record companies say.
fms, you are on the track of fitting terms to your theory. Slavery was by that criteria also OK, as it was (by the definitions of those times) not depriving people of anything - as slaves were not considered people in the first place. Ditto for crusaders, witch trials, etc. All of them would agree with you about taboos and then happily go on doing stuff you would consider VERY unethical.
 
fms is offline fms
2009-07-08 , 17:26
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#40
Originally Posted by attila77 View Post
Slavery was by that criteria also OK, as it was (by the definitions of those times) not depriving people of anything - as slaves were not considered people in the first place.
While slave holders have not considered slaves people, we do: slaves pretty much abided by social taboos, so there is no reason to not consider them people. Thus, what slave holders did to their slaves violated taboos and made them evil, no matter what slave holders themselves thought.

This is different from the example of soldiers considered early in this thread. Soldiers are required to violate social taboos on orders from the state and given legal absolution for most of their actions. Thus, it makes more sense to treat them as extensions of the state rather than human beings.

But, please, do continue trying to find holes in my logic
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