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People feel the urge to label some one, group, or idea, as bad. I get around this by accepting that I am bad. It helps me see the best in everyone else, and ma
by briefcomment 5y ago
People feel the urge to label some one, group, or idea, as bad. I get around this by accepting that I am bad. It helps me see the best in everyone else, and makes me hold myself to really high standards. It is sometimes unpleasant though.
It's probably some sort of natural calibration process.
- rogerkirkness 5y agoI've come to terms with this by denouncing morals and focusing on ethics.
- briefcomment 5y agoI agree about morals. They're always relative, and can sometimes be fluid. Holding someone to a set of morals is usually pretty shortsighted. What do you mean by ethics here? The one thing I try to hold myself to is to maximize individual choice, even if I don't currently agree with some of the choices.
- fighterpilot 5y agoI don't go so far as denouncing morals, I'm glad they exist, but I'm very skeptical of them. Morality works well for its evolved purpose, which is to bind together small tribes and push someone into action in response to visual and audio cues that someone is suffering. Beyond that, it's highly flawed. It doesn't get switched on for out-groups. Arguably it contributes to tribal conflict. It can be co-opted so easily by nefarious charismatic leaders, motivating morally outraged people towards atrocity. It can be co-opted easily by a victim-playing psychopath in an interpersonal setting for personal gain. It's used as a mask for policies and ideologies that are really a byproduct of jealousy, envy, self-interest, among other motivations. It's not rational, we become less altruistic as the scale of the problem grows, and we respond more to emotional stimuli than actual information about what's going on.
- skissane 5y agoThe problem with talking about "morals"-vs-"ethics" is that it isn't very clear what is the actual difference between them. One point of view–to which I subscribe–is that the terms are synonyms. One comes from Latin, the other comes from Greek. English does that sometimes. Others insist they differ in meaning. But there doesn't seem to be any consensus on what the actual difference is. I've heard many proposals, and the only thing I've found they have in common is that they disagree with each other. Some people say "morals" is about principles and "ethics" is about their application. Others say "morals" are religious and "ethics" are secular. Yet others say "morals" are personal and "ethics" are professional and/or political. I'll just stick with using the two words as interchangeable synonyms myself.
- Swizec 5y agoIsn’t this what Catholicism is all about? We are all sinners and terrible people. Therefore we should see the best in fellow human and give money to the church so it can offset our tab with god I realize most people stick to the “everyone is bad” part and forget that they too are an everyone and gloss over the whole forgiveness and acceptance part.
- baby 5y agoIs it though, don’t religious people think everyone else not part of their religion is going to hell?
- snypox 5y agoI asked this from a Christian friend of mine. He said that the "uninitiated", like indigenous people will be judged by their conscience. I told him that people in Iraq are 99% muslims and they definitely know about the existence of Christianity so they aren't really uninitiated. If I remember correctly, he said that if a culture poisons your mind to not believe in the Christian God, then you're still considered "uninitiated".
- briefcomment 5y ago> "culture poisons your mind" That seems like quite the cop out lol. Pretty sure any decision to not practice Christianity would meet this criteria.