Where does your sense of morality come from? - Page 5 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15064851
Tainari88 wrote:SolarCross cops here get abysmally low salaries. Pretty much everyone gets bad salaries though. I think they get the equivalent of about 1.3 British pounds per hour of work. Or something like that. It is bad.

You know my wife is from Iran, well we did live there together for a bit after we married. The cops there pretty much spend their whole day randomly pulling people over and begging them for money. I am not even joking. It isn't even like they pretend it is a fine or whatever. They just go straight into talking about how hungry they are, how ashamed they are they cannot look after their family and asking for help. It is really sad.
#15064852
I'm with Glaucon.

Glaucon in the The Republic wrote:They say that to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice; --it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and honoured by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. Such is the received account, Socrates, of the nature and origin of justice.

Now that those who practise justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian. According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended. Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom. Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other;,no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice.


Nah just kidding :D
#15064875
@Rancid

Rancid wrote:On a more serious note, I think this should be the basis for all moral and ethical codes. For one BIG BIG BIG reason.

It's easy to understand.

You don't have to be smart to understand this basic idea.


I agree. Simple works! Simple is powerful. OK, back to school work for me dammit!
#15064882
The Book of Job and all four accounts of The Life Of Jesus.

My dad loved Job, because it's the story of a Man that never gives up no matter what that bastard Satan did to him.

The Life Of Jesus is pretty much the same, except Satan attacks him even worse because he's Elohim's direct son.
#15064935
@Potemkin

Potemkin wrote:No, actually it's called "most people's idea of right and wrong". Am I wrong, PO? Lol. ;)


I guess you got a point there. Right and wrong seems to be decided by a group of people. I shall offer you my "thoughts and prayers" for you Potemkin as most people here in the southern United States seemed to be fond of offering to others :lol: . They seem to think it works or does some sort of good. But then again, just because most people have an idea that something is "right" is it really right?
#15064941
Politics_Observer wrote:The Golden Rule is where my sense of morality comes from. Do unto others as you would like for other to do unto you.

This rule isn't as golden as some would like, it tarnishes because:

1) Masochism is not an unusual feature in humans and also there are milder degrees of masochism which disguise themselves as things such as pathological altruism.

2) Many 'comfortable' people abstract the nature of what could be done to them, so they assume it's not so bad and that it's 'character building' or some such thing.

You will never understand
How it feels to live your life
With no meaning or control
And with nowhere left to go
You are amazed that they exist
And they burn so bright
Whilst you can only wonder why
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your Dad he could stop it all, yeah
#15064953
Rugoz wrote:I'm with Glaucon.
Nah just kidding :D

I guess Tolkein read that and lifted it for his Lord of the Rings. I often wondered where he got the idea for the One Ring or what it was supposed to signify exactly. Now I know, it means "impunity", the one all corrupting power which can only be safely given to the care of the most powerless people, Hobbits, yet it will still corrupt even them, it just takes longer.
#15064966
SolarCross wrote:I guess Tolkein read that and lifted it for his Lord of the Rings. I often wondered where he got the idea for the One Ring or what it was supposed to signify exactly. Now I know, it means "impunity", the one all corrupting power which can only be safely given to the care of the most powerless people, Hobbits, yet it will still corrupt even them, it just takes longer.

Indeed. Contrary to what Lord Acton asserted, it is not power which corrupts people - it is impunity which corrupts them. This is especially the case in childhood, hence the saying "spare the rod and spoil the child." If bad behaviour is habitually left unpunished, then that person will grow up believing they can do whatever the fuck they want with no consequences.
#15064979
Potemkin wrote:Indeed. Contrary to what Lord Acton asserted, it is not power which corrupts people - it is impunity which corrupts them. This is especially the case in childhood, hence the saying "spare the rod and spoil the child." If bad behaviour is habitually left unpunished, then that person will grow up believing they can do whatever the fuck they want with no consequences.

It happens to be true in politics also. You can see why everyone was terrified that the dark lord Sauron should get it. What could be worse than someone with both great power and malevolence also having impunity..

Pity you commies did not realise that when you made your own dark lords into gods on earth while you tortured the fuck out of hobbits for wrongthink. Who knows but your utopias might have had a better chance of working? :O
#15069340
It comes from a way of living as opposed to moralizing sermon. And that way of living is first found within the family unit which is determined by the greater society they’re embedded in. You don’t become honest by being told to be honest but it being actually valued in your day to day living. And those who abstract morals from a way of life simply confuse the nature of morality as rules independent of humanity which makes it seem mere superstition. But where we collaborate in some activity, we are able to impose an ought upon one another to some degree compared to a stranger in public (beyond minimal legal limits).

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