Case study in ethics

Or like the US used to be a native american nation until we booted them out and decided to prevent Germans from doing what we did.

George Carlin joked that this country was started by slave owners wanting to be free. Hypocrisy is everywhere!

Well, the US was practicing those same thoughts before the Nazis came about. Maybe they learned it from us? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_ … ted_States

In 1907, Indiana passed the first eugenics-based compulsory sterilization law in the world. Thirty U.S. states would soon follow their lead.[53][54]

So then it’s like our righteous fight against bacteria because they could wipe us out, but because of our efforts, the bacteria are winning and becoming more resistant to our methods of killing them until eventually we run out of ways of killing them without also killing the host. Then what?

Yeah who can judge? We can only judge by the standards of our culture.

The point that you are making is that the decision to fight was based on the erroneous idea that “Germany would take over the world” rather on the correct idea that “Germany would take over Poland and parts of the Soviet Union and enslave and kill the population”.

IOW, you’re arguing about the predictions that were made at the time about the course of future events.

That isolates the ethics to self-interest. Whether it is right or wrong to enslave and kill others is, to you, beside the point.

Why do you need to shift to North Korea?

Why not just stay on topic? Come right out and say that it was okay for Germany to take over Poland and parts of the Soviet Union and to enslave and kill the population.

That’s right. People are alive now because others lost their lives. People are free now because others lost their lives.

I don’t know what that means.

I’m an agent with the ability to judge.

Yeah. I break up dogfights, catfights, kidfights, etc.

So the exact clothing that a woman is wearing determines whether she ought to be helped when she is being assaulted??

I’m not the rapist.

This is the Alan Watts stuff which I do not believe to be correct.

I think that there are distinct entities - I, you, he, she, they.

It was NOT okay for Germany to take over Poland and parts of the Soviet Union and to enslave and kill the population; so in that sense WWII - although it started rather late – 1939 instead of 1927 – was “The Good War.”

If, though, you are against killing [i.e., murdering human beings], then you, if you are going to be morally consistent, have to be against warfare and war.
[I speak here of the conventional meaning of the word “war,” not “war” used in a metaphorical sense as it is in a phrase such as “the war on hunger.”]

War involves killing. War is unethical. Period.

To even consider being violent toward another is highly-immoral.

When I say this I am {excluding using force to rescue someone struggling while drowning; or using force to get someone to where they can be rehabbed …such as a good mental hospital where the front doors may be locked securely. In the latter examples the ‘violence,’ when done in a context of caring about the recipient of the force, is justified.

G. W. Hegel was wrong when he advocated being more deferential to the collective rather than to the individual. ietzsche is often misinterpreted as having an ethical theory in which war is permissible. {He has no (logical) theory to speak of.}

No matter to what true Ethical Theory you may subscribe, war is unethical. I hold that in practice for a “Relativist” in ethics, eventually anything goes !! That may include war. Hence I would argue “ethical relativism” is a mistake.

Killing and murdering are usually distinguished in most ethical systems.

We know this is your morality. It becomes very hard to demonstrate this is the case.

So if someone is being violent, I am not to even consider being violent in response. If African American slaves considered being violent to their slaveholders, was it highly immoral.

You have allowed that one is allowed to wage war if one is invaded and you have tried other means. Of course it would be odd if a blitzkrieg like the German’s used against Western Europe occurred and you started diplomatic calls to Hitler without immediately using force. But in any case you allowed for military responses at some point in those situations. Yet, here you are not even allowed to ever even think of being violent towards another.

So if you have good intentions you can be violent and override the will of another person, in general it seems, as long as it fits with current ideas of mental health.

There is economic violence, where people are given aweful options, working conditions, are cheated by landlords, discriminate against systematically and this affects the lives of their children. It is highly immoral to consider doing violence in these situations? Isn’t it merely human to feel rage when one is treated as less than human and the effects of this treatment are like violence?

Can the women being raped consider poking the eye out of the rapist with something from her purse?

If the reason we fight is that Germany will take over the world, then it’s a fight of self defense. If the reason we fight is to defend Poland, then it’s picking gazelles over lions and is a righteous war.

Slaves have always existed and exist today. You are probably one or have been one. Slaves are those who have their productivity stolen from them.

Because if we have to defend Poland from the Germans due to human rights violations, then we also have to defend the Korean people from their own government as well as policing the rest of the world.

I’m not saying it’s ok or not ok, but none of our business.

Free with respect to what? The Poles are living under a Polish government instead of a German one. So what? That’s what everyone died for?

Ethics is about labeling yourself good and others bad. You push others down to raise yourself up in righteousness (rightness).

What is the agent made of?

What about a cat raping another cat? If you stopped all cat rapes, cats would go extinct. It’s how they mate. Geese and ducks do it too. I just watched some ducks gang rape a female a couple days ago. But if cat and duck rape is ok, then is monkey rape wrong? The difference is arbitrary.

Is anyone obligated to help? Should we assault someone for not stopping an assault?

So you believe in spirits? Do cats and bugs and plants have spirits to?

I thought this was strange. 1) it being none of our business, it seems to me, in your system, would be neither ok or not ok. If it is ok, then why mention it. It it is not, then we need to understand when things, in your system are ok or not. 2)

What’s hell? There’s just different experiences that consciousness is having? 3) when is it my/our business? If some woman I do not know is being raped and I intervene, would you say this was neither ok nor not ok, but it was none of my business. What does it add to our knowledge when this is added?
Another way to ask this is to say: it sounds like you know what is each of our businesses, and if we act in reponse to certain things, you categorize it as ‘having to do with us and our business’. But if there is no ‘I’ no real self and toss in determinism, what are you talking about?

  1. When you say something is none of our business you have to no that sounds like a new form of saying that it’s not ok.

WW2 -
We are looking at the morality of going to war in general, but also we have focused on WW2 and the US entering. In the discussion we have looked at it, mostly, as whether the US should have considered Germany’s expansion as justifying US entering war. But as I said earlier, the Axis powers were three countries. The US declared war after Pearl Harbor in which one of the Axis powers attacked Hawaii and the naval base there. IOW one of the three members of that team attacked the US. I think it was reasonable to think Japan might eventually go for the continental US, given its expansion through out Aisa and its willingness to attack US allies there. It was reasonable to think the Axis powers might not stop spreading. They could not know, but I don’t think it was a ridiculous conclusion that it would be a good idea to stop the Axis powers in general.

So it is not just siding with the gazelles against the lions. And, in fact, the English had been lions in most of the world, the French in their own way also. There was a team of countries expanding fast and widely. These countries had particular governments with many shared traits, plus a sense of very specific racial superiority, at least in Germany and Japan, if not as much in Italy. IOW part of their sense of entitlement was specifically racial, and while Hitler respected, for example, the English, and considered them a pretty darn good race, he did not consider them as good as the Germans. Nor would the Americans been seen as as Aryan.

The US certainly had its own racial shit, so did the British, but I think it is fair to say that the specific hypermilitarization of Japan and Germany at that time and the levels to which both were willing to dehumanize other groups were not matched by other countries. These were extreme authoritarian utterly anti-democratic conceptions of society that wanted to spread.

One could obviously not know the future, but calling team A lions and other gazelles just seems like a cutesy oversimplification. And an ironically either Nietschian or Blakean oversimplification. You had a form of governing that was antithetical to what the US wanted for itself. It was expanding rapidly and one member of the team HAD in fact attacked the US. The US had closer relations to England and France than it did to the Axis powers. It had reasons to consider that in the long run it would be threatened by the Axis powers in general and would, after losing or being taken over, come under a kind of rigid, extremely controlling form of government that went against not only the ideals of the constitution, but even the less fair in reality system as it played out in real life. Rights to privacy, rights to assemble, a free press, rights to vote, rights to dissent, rights to a fair trial…lots of things considered fundamental to the American way of life were not shared values of the Axis powers. However poorly the US lived up to its ideals, it certainly did so better than the Axis powers since they did not have these ideals.

We are not just talking about one animal eating another animal, an analogy that bothers me more and more each time because it is so facile and limited.

We are talking about the expansion of cultures that were fundamentally different and seemed intent on spreading anywhere they considered themselves superior.

Alan Watts would have found himself considered a decadent, unmanly problematic figure by either Japan or Germany and he and the very people in the West who became interested in his ideas would have been suppressed or killed. Those regimes are not about it is neither ok or not ok. They damn well weighed in on every fucking things as either one or the other.

Now one can get all post-Watts, new agey fluffy and say that it doesn’t matter if one lives in a rigid extremely controlled society like the ones the Axis powers had. Just the universe breathing in and out.

But then, that’s true regardless, regardless of what anyone believes. One could be out experiencing the oneness of nature or having fun with your whole body. Rather than arguing that WW 2 was not the US’s business. I mean, how is that your business? How is it your business what we are thinking? Why intervene in that? It’s also OK.

None of our business = we’re not entitled to hold an opinion about it. Don’t judge.

Hell is just a metaphor for a bad outcome in spite of good intentions. I’m assuming the outcome was bad. How many people died in that war? I’d hate to think that was the best scenario.

When the enemy lands on our shores?

Whether or not you intervene is none of my business lol. I’m not saying I wouldn’t intervene because I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t, but I’m saying we can’t judge if intervening is good or bad.

I was debating a guy about selfless acts and how there are no such things. After thinking for a while he told a story of rescuing someone in a traffic accident and it must be a selfless act because it happened so fast that he didn’t have a chance to think about it first; it was a thoughtless act and therefore selfless. I pointed out that if it was mechanic and reflexive, then “you” didn’t do it and therefore it’s not an act you did. Anyway, that’s how you rescue the woman. If you have to think about it, then you’re already messed up because then you’ll do the righteous thing.

If there is no “I” then there are no ethics.

The western view is that the nature of man is perverse while the eastern view is the nature of man is wise and it’s your thinking that is perverse. The determinism (instinct) that’s doing its own thing is ok, but the thought illusions are screwed up according to that way of thinking.

It’s saying I don’t know. There is either no me to have an opinion, or else there is no one who is not me to have an opinion about, so how can I judge?

I’ll reply to your other message tomorrow.

I wanted to drop this off somewhere so I have hope of finding it again. It’s that part about the disagreement between Hitler and Rommel about the panzers and calais. It’s not as detailed as the story I remember, but it’s a start. What they don’t say is that Hitler was asleep. Control freak who couldn’t trust (give the power away).

Fwd to 24:50

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa4VMvIMfLg[/youtube]

Entitled? Sounds like just a shifting to other terms that have morality in them. And if there are no selves, the dichotomy entitled/unentitled, is meaningless. I have no more entitlement to this body, ‘my’ wife, the air in my lungs, than I have to a sparrow in Indonesia.

I knew you weren’t referring to Lucifers residence. What are bad outcomes and good intentions in a universe without selves and without morals?

‘Our’? You don’t have a self, but you do identify with the US (or whatever is your country?) That seems like an enormous ego. And the Axis powers did attack Pearl Harbor. But mainly, why do you identify with Californians? (if you are not one and even then)

But you’re intervening in people thinking that this or that was is this or that person’s business.

But you could say it was none of my business. Why bother saying that? Why not bake a cake, go for a walk? Why intervene in certain kinds of thinking? Is our thinking your business?

Messed up? There are so many value judgments. I don’t see any advantage in saying we cannot judge good and bad/evil, but then make a lot of judgments with words that will function in the say way in the phyche. Obviously there is nothing bad about being righteous or there would be bad.

And there is certianly nothing messed up, not my business or my business…etc.

Which is bizarre since it would put thoughts outside of determinism. And leading to the negative value judgment of righteous, since this came in part from thought and not instinct.

Well, if you don’t know, then why say what something is.
If someone points at a bird, I don’t say that’s a blue jay, when I don’t know.

But you keep judging. Messed up, not your business, roads to hell, thinking is perverse, entitled, and even righteous while now negative has a moral quality…

It’s like when I worked in an alternative daycare. They didn’t like words with morals in them. So they called behavior they didn’t like not harmonious (lol). The kids had exactly the same experience of being judged as good and bad, but just with words with many more syllables.

I’ll give this train a rest here. You’ll notice this or you won’t.

It seems that way, but it’s not a shift of morality, but recognition that there is no way to judge a situation since there is either no situation to judge or no one to judge it. Alternatively, we could say the situation is infinitely complex as a valid reason for being unable to judge, but it’s really saying the same thing since infinity results from the circularity of self-inspection (camera aimed at its own monitor).

Good and bad are only relative to a goal which is an abstraction. There are no inherent goals and so no inherent good or bad. Bad outcomes are: loving something to death, holding on so tightly you strangle the thing you love. It’s not objectively bad, but it hurts you, or your illusion of yourself.

Is defense of the US and the collective preferable to having it overcome with enemies? Which seems like more fun? Alternatively, does sending our kids to defend Poland seem like fun? This is not a matter of thought, but completely reflexive. It’s not a matter of right and wrong, as if defending the border is the right thing to do, but it’s the outcome that is most enjoyable because people see survival as fun rather than dying, which is not fun. It’s probably the same reason ants defend the colony. Surely no one would argue the ants decided, after careful consideration, to defend the colony. But ants won’t defend other ants from yet other ants, not to my knowledge. The only reason to do so would be for some kind of bragging rights.

Because intervening is fun; it’s what makes you feel good (or better than the alternative of living with yourself if you did nothing). That is another thing that precludes ethics since it’s impossible to perform an unselfish act; it’s always about you. If it’s always about you, how can you be ethical? This would be true even for the bible god. Try to think of an unselfish act. I can’t think of anything and I’ve been trying for years. Whatever you do is always about you.

Righteousness is only bad because you’re condemning yourself. For instance if you say “Lying is objectively wrong”, then you’ve just condemned yourself for telling a lie because lying is not objectively wrong.

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Right, it’s not my business and it’s not not my business because there is either no business or no one to consider the business. It’s like your parents having sex… not only is it not your business, but you don’t even want to consider it lol

Thoughts are abstractions, illusions, hallucinations, holograms. When you think about something, you’re reflecting.

I can’t know because knowing isn’t possible. A blue jay is an abstraction from everything else in the universe and it’s not a thing to have knowledge about.

The universe doesn’t care if countries are invaded or not; it doesn’t care if women are raped, but people live under the illusion that it does and that we are agents of the universe charged with enforcing the moral code and insist others believe their illusion is reality, but the universe doesn’t care that they do; only the people care.

That’s how I’d put it: disharmonious. I suppose it’s ok to be disharmonious if it’s fun, but it doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like noise.

I think judgement is ultimately hypocritical and that’s probably why Jesus said the one without sin should cast the first stone. He didn’t say “Those of you who have never cheated on your spouse, cast the first stone.” He said the one who has never broken their own code of ethics should cast the first stone.

Arrogance/ignorance, judgement/hypocrisy… these are bad things, but it’s not like you’re going to die and go to hell for being righteous. But if there were a god, we’d have to wonder if he’d be impressed by righteousness because the only reason we’re righteous is in trying to save our ass and nothing can be more egotistical than true repentance. The only innocent thing to do is to do the thing which has no goal or purpose (ie fun). That’s as close to an unselfish act as we can get.

I don’t know what this means.

There is some speculation that FDR allowed the Pearl Harbor attack specifically to get the US into the war as a promise to Churchill. The Japanese may have even been enticed to attack as part of the plan. There are some parallels between Pearl Harbor and 9/11.

Hard to imagine little bitty Japan could take over the world. They thought that in the 1980s too, then their economy blew up and now it’s just an island full of old people who would rather buy plastic dolls than have sex with real women. Meanwhile tsunamis, earthquakes, and nuclear power disasters ravish what little land they have.

Well, I think you moved the goal posts for what defines the gazelle. Instead of just Poland being the gazelle, the whole world becomes the gazelle being threatened by the Hitler lion. This would be the point of view of space aliens watching.

Those lions got old and were overthrown by new lions.

This is paralleled to the banning of people today at the hands of social media. If these ideologies are so bad, then why fight them? Won’t they peter out? And if they don’t peter out, maybe they’re not bad. How long could a country stay hypermilitarized if there is no one to fight? Look at Germany and Japan now… both feminized embarrassments relative to what they once were.

That’s the purpose of it.

The gazelle wants to live and the lion wants to eat. It all boils down to wants. Who wins?

These seem like an artifact of prosperity.

One want vs another want.

And why is that wrong? Weeds seem intent on spreading into my garden where they think they are superior… and they are which is why I hate them.

Yet the Buddhists beat the Brigands evidenced by the fact that the temples are Buddhist. The meek shall inherit the earth.

It’s just fun to think about.

It does not become so hard for those willing to learn: they will have read some of the selections offered in the signature below.

They will start by reading this brief one:
myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/The%20 … ncepts.pdf

Then they will study in depth this one:
myqol.com/wadeharvey/PDFs/HOW%20 … SFULLY.pdf
…and they learn BASIC ETHICS. [size=88] (Click safely on the third selection in the signature.)[/size]

Then they find it was easy to demonstrate the immorality of the organized mass-murder that is ]war[/u].

Accidental manslaughter in the course of self-defense is different; that is permissible. A so-called “Just War” is immoral also. If invaded, devising “Catch 22”-type situations is recommended. Sabotage is permissible. Resistance is essential.

With regard to living in a more-peaceful world, see:
worldwithoutwar.com/

What is your morality?

This comes off as: if you do not agree with me you are not willing to learn. On some level we may all believe that is the case, but it might be better left unsaid.

Even what you are calling brief here is more than I want to read as part of online discussions such as this one. I have a few books I am working through IRL, physical books, that is. 1) I don’t like to read longer texts online 2) I think it is more interesting and fits the medium to see how people interact with ideas, live, as it were. I can find all sorts of wonderful books in libraries or order them. There’s nothing wrong with suggesting I read you texts or others you have, but for me it is not what I come here for.

I don’t have a system. It’s more ad hoc. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

What are Catch 22 type situations?

You’re invaded and so you use your army to defend yourself. If you have allies, they come to help you. That was the situation for Poland in 1939. Should Britain and France have reneged on their agreements?

From your worldwithoutwar.com/ website :

That’s what happened in Munich in 1938, when Britain and France gave away a part of Czechoslovakia to get “peace for our time”.

Less than a year later, Germany took the rest. And then on to Poland.

It shows the failure of negotiations.

It means taking advantage in a creative way of the stupidity of the rules that the opposing forces must follow to be “good soldiers.” [size=80] (Joseph Heller wrote a book with that title about his adventures in the U.S. Army.q.v.)[/size]

No, this shows the failure of negotiating with people whose headman {Fuehrer} is a madman: psychotic since he was a teenager, namely,Adolf Hitler. The time for us to nip his movement in the bud was much earlier, once Mein Kampf came out, and when thee Brown Shirts, his followers, first appeared.

And yes, allies can help - if they are trained in nonviolent resistance …or if they donate money to support those who are.
That is a good site you went to. Study up further on its recommendations.

I still don’t know what it means in practical terms. What could the Poles, French or Soviets have done when they were invaded?

He is in charge of the country whether you like it or not.

Okay, but you failed to act effectively at an earlier date and now it is 1938 and you have a particular situation. Then 1939 and a new situation. Then 1941 …

At each point you need to make a decision.

Recently a note came to my attention written by a Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. It read, in part,

What did you philosophers and students of Philosophy think of “The Breakthrough”?

Sometimes you interact with us, other times it seems the promotion of your writings is more important.

In the post of Aug. 25, 2018 at 3:04 p.m. I asked this question about your alternative theory to my synthesis of theories, and you never did respond, Karpel.

I am trying to figure out why my morality is different from your morality. So I ask you again: How do you define the term “morality”? What is your Ethical Theory? How do you justify it?

Yes, it is immoral for a slave to murder his slaveholder although I would not judge him if he did. More moral would be for that slave to escape and join the “Underground Railway” if he or she possibly could find a way to do so.

I wrote in an early post that in emergency situations ethics is suspended; survival is utmost. Of course poking the eye of one raping you is highly moral if it is wise to do so. If it only brings on more violence toward yourself it is not a wise course of action, and thus is less moral.
It was nice of you, Karpel, to put yourself in the situation of a woman being raped.

I’d be glad to discuss your question, “What if Capitalism itself is immoral?”

In my ethical system it is mainly an individual (or group of them) that can be “immoral,” as I have defined it. But if we stretch the meaning, and generalize it, an “ism” may be immoral in the sense that if you hold on to it, it will make you conduct yourself immorally.
Define for us, please, exactly what you mean when you say “Capitalism,” and by “immoral.” Then we can discuss it.

You’re confounding morality with results. It’s moral to defend yourself even if it results in your death. Of course, you may choose not to take that path.