I believe I have a solid grasp of what's right and wrong, and feel bad about wrong actions enough to avoid them. I blame this on parents who remain happily married, and sunday school when I was a kid. This brings a real sense of naivety as I expect others to feel the same way about their actions. To feel guilt or "sin." But no, most people commit wrongful actions without remorse, or at least suppressing any remorse. Actions are justified or rationalized, defended, or unquestioned. For all its flaws, at least Christianity gave me a solid concept of what's acceptable and what's not. I don't mean feeling morally superior, I mean being an all around decent person.
Yet there are always people who don't care about how they act. Is it how they were raised, the environment they grew up in, or their lack of a supernatural boogeyman watching them all the time?
What if instead of churches there were moral-philosophical centers, that would discuss varying degrees of acceptability for different actions. Some of it would seem to common sense, but even the common sense doesn't seem to be emphasized anymore.
I mean basic awareness of harmful actions such as theft, rape, child abuse, property destruction, murder, etc.
Name:
Anonymous2006-08-16 15:33
Our tools of collecting and analising data are still to limited, to make any point you think as fact/100%, think of it as in the past when there was no microscope and every one thought we were the center of every thing and god created the earth some 4000 yrs ago, the thing is in 2000 yrs or tools will change and what we think will change, we may find that quarks are made of even smaller particales and those particales made of even smaller ones. we may find a true way of messering light particales and find a way to see anti matter, and black matter. so don't get all bound up in what we think is fact today because in time time we all may be horrificly wrong and may hurt the world be thinking it. and my post of there being no right and wrong only human perseption of morals given though culture, is turning out to be more true every day. read lovecraft and see, the elder ones are Amoral and give a great counter view to human moral perseption.
Name:
Anonymous2006-08-16 15:46
Counter point, the very human idea of morals is given by culture, morals are not part of humans physicly, but rather are learned by exp, this learning process have been going on for so long that you don't even make mental note of it, example, when you were a child and hit you brother you parents yelled at you, you then over time by maybe repeting this more than once coralate hiting your brother with being yelled at, being yelled at you coralate with bad, so hitting your brother is bad and on a even more basic level hitting is bad. over the corse of you life you have seen and reacted to millions of events and those events based on the reactions of others and yourself have built a moral bases, this can be shown by looking at other cultures, tribes is africa thought it was moraly right to kill members of other tribes"head hunting". Aztec offerd human sacrafice to the gods every day to keep the sun rising, they belived it was right to kill these people to keep the sun going. Nazi germany, people belived that by them being german or arian they were in fdact better than other human beings and could could rightfuly strip other of their freedoms, even the freedom of life. Give me a closed group of people and 1000 yrs and i can make a group of people that moraly belive that it is alright to comite rape, murder the old, and eat human flesh, its all a matter of human conditioning over a long period of life starting from birth.
Name:
Anonymous2006-08-16 15:49
yha becasue if you create tradition based on these things people will see it as OK, i get it. this is totaly on fact. it must be culture that makes morals.