That's True. After all, the sensation of being a distinct individual experiencing a physical world separate from yourself is just an illusion. Right?

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yes, i agree. and if they agree to interact or care for one another it is only because they want to out of their own selfish desire. see? rational self interest, or mans life as the standard, doesn't mean no one else matters.

What about the man who drowns in an attempt to rescue a stranger? Or the soldier who jumps on a grenade to save strangers in a foreign country? What self-interest are they acting on?

A desire to commit that unselfish act (self-sacrifice for a total stranger) wouldn't come out of selfish desire. Some people believe that their own life, consciousness, and self are inherently less important than those of other people, simply because one's self is experienced only by... one's self, who can choose to use it as they see fit, to extend their responsibility out to other people.

now we're getting to the point.

i would have to pity those two men. there was no moral obligation to the drowning man or the foreigners.

the problem is philosophical. from seed up we have been brainwashed to think the only moral way to live is to be our brother's keeper. but, you have to ask: why should a stranger's life, or the collective, take precedence over the Individual's?

now, if one chooses to sacrifice their life to a stranger it's entirely their choice. but, i would not consider it noble. i would call it stupid. they are simply the victim of a poor, deadly philosophy.

I i were to standardize morality, i would put Free Will at the center.

WE ALL have free will, therefore we are all on a common ground.
How do i know if what i am doing is right or wrong?

I DONT! NO ONE does. "Right" and "wrong" in the world of morality, are nothing more than opinions.
Right and wrong are largely nothing more than opinions, however in a few physical circumstances, there can be a right way to do something and a wrong way, but this is in no way a matter of morality and a completely seperate topic.

Free will should be the center of morality because we all possess it.
If we are respecting the free will of others, we are morally right.
if we disregard other people's wills to act, to feel, to think, then we are morally wrong.

Weather any of this is true or not is impossible to discern, for morality and right and wrong are all arbitrarily man made concepts.
Man made concepts are usually arbitrary. and the more arbitrary, the fewer absolutes.

__________________
And now for something completely different:
www.myspace.com/hippystonersob
go on go look, that is me! n_n

The earth is my bible, the harvest, my Christ. God is the life within me and all things outside me.

Maybe some people may think that being isn't born and it doesn't die. It can't be killed. Those who have disciplined minds understand to preform action because it is their duty. The undisciplined person preforms action for the sake of the fruits of their action. A person with discipline is indifferent to success and defeat because it is not the outcome of an action that matters, but action itself. Some people may feel it is their duty to sacrifice themselves. What is the worst that could happen in the end if you know that consciousness or being will never die?

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I would like to thank everyone involved in this discussion. I have been reading it for a while, and I am still waiting a bit to give my outlook.
The only reason I am responding at all yet, is because I can't figure out how to subscribe to a thread that I haven't posted in....lol
I have yet to have a thread hit my head so hard that I had to actually....wait for it...THINK like I did here. Truely have to dig deep to answer this question...Or I am truely too stoned right now to try...
whiskeytango

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Your style will eventually match your grow area and the amount of time and money you like to put into initial setup vs. long term maintenance.-stinkyattic

LED growing- An instructional grow log
Episode 3...Revenge of the LED
Episode 4: The Clone Colonies

it's a deep dig, indeed, but i dont know if there is an end to the digging...


Humans are self proclaimed intelligent creatures.


That said, we DONT KNOW if the rocks or the trees, or the sky can think, or is self aware.
EVERYTHING we hold in value has human-proclaimed value, not necessarily true value.

For we are human, we do not possess knowledge outside ourselves, only awareness and perceptions. our knowledge stops where our perceptions begin.

To assume we percieve the truth is, again, a self proclaimed assumption.

So when it comes to the topic of morlity, there are no absolutes, only opinions. so what is the standard of morlity? whatever the individual chooses it to be.

The social standard of morality is different from social group to social group, but how many of us stick to our own guns and learn for ourselves, first hand, what morality truly is?

__________________
And now for something completely different:
www.myspace.com/hippystonersob
go on go look, that is me! n_n

The earth is my bible, the harvest, my Christ. God is the life within me and all things outside me.

mmmm... free will. I love it, it's so chaotic. and limitless.

Free will reserved only for the humans? Or free will for all forms of "life" and inanimate objects?

Free will to kill a plant or animal and consume it for sustenance.... or let IT consume you.

Free will to control everything.

Free will to resist control.


Free opinions.

Free chaos.

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"There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion." - 12 Monkeys.
The hemp plant is our perfect symbiote! Down with capitalism, materialism, fascism, war, and superficialness! Long live the biosphere! *Proud offspring of a draft dodger*

Pictures of my first grown buds!

And those who base their morality on free will would understand that "chaos" enough to permit others to do whatever the fuck they wanted, so long as your actions did not interfere with their free will, you would then know you were walking a morally sound path.

We are NOT our brothers' keepers, we are our OWN keepers, we are responsible for our OWN actions.

We ALL have free will from the lowly dust mite to the massive Whales of the ocean. we must learn to respect each other's boundaries.


WHY, do you suppose, the Native Americans cherished their hunt so emotionally to reenact the murder of a FRIEND for food?!?

they knew in their hearts that their source of meat, let's say the buffalo for now, had thoughts, emotions, families, friends, and loved ones. they KNEW the buffalo was ALIVE and AWARE. could YOU kill your own friend for food without mourning for him, without missing him?

Free will is not so chaotic when it is being respected. in fact, it is a most beautiful and natural thing. Humanity, in it's natural, pristine state of being, is nothing more than another animal walking the earth in search of food, water, shelter, and company.

__________________
And now for something completely different:
www.myspace.com/hippystonersob
go on go look, that is me! n_n

The earth is my bible, the harvest, my Christ. God is the life within me and all things outside me.

It's not that we must be our brother's keeper, it is simply that our brother is OUR keeper, and we're obligated to perpetuate that relationship. Each individual owes a debt to the collective, which he can choose to pay or to spurn. It's called social responsibility, and it requires willingness to make personal sacrifice for the common interest. Why do you think personal freedom is so common nowadays? It was fought for, tooth and nail, by people who knew that their sacrifice was for an end they would never personally see.

For another angle, the man who throws himself on a grenade to save strangers has great perspective upon the human condition.

Imagine a situation where there are two choices for you (like the movie SAW).

Either you undergo great suffering, or a stranger in the next room undergoes great suffering. The choice is yours, never mind the problem of whatever put you in this situation, pretend it's a non-issue. What do you choose?

As for a guy that jumps on a grenade to save his mates, he could be doing it to quickly escape his own harsh reality and go out with an honorable bang. A patriotic death wish. To die a hero.
Glorification of self-sacrifice. Justifiable suicide. However you wanna look at it, you can't verify what was goin on in their mind as they did it.


That's your free opinion, and it sounds good to me too. But to add boundaries/rules/laws/censorship to keep us from interfering with another's free will is limiting our own free will. I despise anything that limits my free will other than my own judgement. Trying to be your own "keeper" and not fuck with anyone else is harder than it sounds. I hold personal responsibility higher than I do social responsibility. but I think maybe I should really try to balance the two a bit more.

liberalism vs. conservatism... or something like that. the good old balance of things. A close balance of symbiosis and shit with everything is ideal for me I suppose; as long as I'm the one determining it for myself and everyone else can do the same for themselves.


Unless we live as a total hermit, we're gonna interact with people and those interactions can't always be perfect. Some disputes are hard to settle privately. A system of common morals seems inevitable.

__________________
"There's no right, there's no wrong, there's only popular opinion." - 12 Monkeys.
The hemp plant is our perfect symbiote! Down with capitalism, materialism, fascism, war, and superficialness! Long live the biosphere! *Proud offspring of a draft dodger*

Pictures of my first grown buds!

First let me start off by saying that, in my opinion, there are two areas of morality. These being individual and general morality. General morality is the morals that are accepted by society, which should only be a vague outline for an individual's morals. Morality in itself is a difficult and somewhat paradoxical concept. Which is why the general populous tend to accept the morals that are handed down to them by society in the way that they are raised. For an individual to be morally good, they must come to terms with any issue of good or bad, and they must know, not think, that they're actions are of good. Morality is a state of mind more than anything. It isn't something that is to be shared between individuals. In this respect, for an individual to know that what they do is morally good, they must abandon the morals that have been instilled in them by society, and from their own experience and knowledge, create morals of their own. This is why morality cannot be shared. It can only consist of personal opinion. The essential problem with individual morality is that in some individuals, the good morality that they develop for themselves can be completely unlike that of anyone else, and in that, it can be what most others would not consider morally good. This is the reason that society has the responsibility of passing on general morality. Often times, people are not the slightest bit concerned with morality, in which case the idea of good and bad is pointless. These are the people whom society fails. They are not given the chance to make their own morals. They are not ever taught the concept of morality or general morality that they would do well to follow. They are not compelled by what is good or bad to themselves or anyone. This is also another issue that poses a problem to general morality. To be morally good, an individual's mind must come to terms with it's own morality, that is formed initially from the general morality and remade into that own individual's personal opinions of what is good and bad. The individual's opinions are only then truly their morals.

__________________
"I smoke a lot of pot"

It seems more like the people have failed society. There is no way an entire society can pass on morals to individuals, as the society is composed of individuals. It is the responsibility of each individual in society to agree with several other individuals upon key moral values, which is well facilitated by our language capabilities and ability to recognize patterns. If a new behavior or change in mindset chaotically evolves in an individual, it either propagates and spreads like an infection through the populace, or is quashed promptly by the "homeostatic thought-immunity system of the human collective," otherwise known as random emotional human whims and massive communication capabilities.

BASICALLY, we are trying to be ROBOTS, in our legal and moral systems. if x = true then y etc. bullcrap.

we cannot just simply write out a code of lawns and stick to it any more than we can morals. we are LIVING AND CHANGING ENTITIES, therefore EVERYTHING about our society must match our life and change rate.


nothing is set in stone so much that a single set of rules will adequately address all the issues. and while any set code of conduct can only encompas a small fraction of what human beings are, it must CONSTANTLY change, fluxuating with us, expanding as we expand, contracting as we contract.

Law cannot be some sort of set of rules that is more important than the individuals that it is supposed to police.


"Man, the living, creating, individual is more important than any set style or system."
~ Bruce Lee


Humankind, being a living, changing, entity is very much like a gas; the more you try to compress it to shape it to your will, the more erratic and explosive it becomes.

We cannot be molded into a set style or system, rather a style or system must be molded after us, to move with us, to change as we change.


I believe "anarchy" is what they call it these days, but a system where no person has more authority over anyone but themselves is a system that works WITH humanity.

__________________
And now for something completely different:
www.myspace.com/hippystonersob
go on go look, that is me! n_n

The earth is my bible, the harvest, my Christ. God is the life within me and all things outside me.

My own idea on the way I should treat others is the way I want to be treated, pretty simple but it's just a value I was raised upon. Along with being honest and not to steal. Of course everyone might take a pack of gum or lie about some petty things but overall I am an honest person, and in my eyes very trustworthy. That's just me, apart of me believes that peoples morals are different based on the environment that they are exposed to from birth until death. Things like social norms and ancient cultural history might have a huge impact on day to day life standards in certain parts of the globe. I think some morals might be present with us today because of religion, or maybe even genetics. Overall life should be one of the most respected things in this world for it is the greatest.

YouTube - Jonathan Haidt: The real difference between liberals and con

great video, figured I'd share

Well... i think i arrived at the basic principles of the morality.

For many people, morality is to do not some thing for someone if you wouldnt like it were done for you (or treat people like you would like to be treated, etc). And i think it is the fundamental principle of morality, from what everything else is based or deduced.

This principle comes from the assumption that other people feels the same way that us. So, as i know that being treaded on the toe hurts, i wont tread on other persons toes, cause i will assume that it will hurt them, and as im assuming that they feel the same way i do, if i tread on someones toe, it will increase the "total pain" felt by the mankind, this "total pain" being the sum of all the pain felt by all human beings. (It can be also extended by all living beings). The "total pain" would be increased by the same amount, regardless the toe traded on were mine or not, so i should avoid tread on others toes the same way i would try to avoid be treaded on, cause both would increase the "total pain".
(Of course the amount of pain caused by someone treading on anothers toe depends on the weight of the treader... but im not discussing this )

And the same goes for everything else, so we could talk about the "total happiness", "total well-being", etc...

BUT, the central assumption of the morality, that people feels the same way that us, cannot be proven rationally. There is no rational way to prove this. We can only infer this. If im treaded on the toe, it hurts and i yell. If i witness someone being treaded on the toe and this someone yells, i infer, i assume that this person felt the same pain i felt. But it just CANT be rigorously proven, but only assumed, inferred. We cant (rationally) enter into someone elses mind to feel the way they feel. So we cant know for sure if they actually feels the same way we do. (In fact, we cant be sure, using exclusively the means of the reason and logic, that other persons even exist. For all i know, everybody else could be only a product of my own mind, an illusion or hallucination.)

So, the conclusion is that morality is not a rational thing. In fact, morality cant be justified by pure reason.
Note that im NOT saying that morality doesnt exist, or its false, illusory, or whatever. Im only pointing that morality is not a reason-based thing.




PS. Of course there are the people who had "mystical experiences" and this ones says that we all are one, so maybe they percieved that the "total pain", "total happiness", etc, are the only real feelings, and that "personal pain", "personal happiness", are illusions created by the illusion of a self. But im not one of them, so i cant talk about what i dont know.
Also, i dont know if the logic and reason still are valid during this experiences, as both logic and reason are a product of the humans min