some thoughts about Ethics and morality....

[Peter Kropotkin]

a couple of things, one, I note that you did not say anything to UR or Observe
about their dehumanization of the left with their language such as "communist shill"
or "traitors" or other dehumanizing language.....

it is typical to demand, yes, demand that the left be kind and loving
and not be "mean" to the right whereas the right is allowed to belittle
and demean and dehumanize the left... this is typical of the double standard
that the right uses...we can can slander and lie and dehumanize but
you can't because it might "hurt" my feelings...
the sheer hypocrisy of this is apparently lost on you...ok snowflake

secondly, IQ45 is the lowest form of life that exists and isn't deserving of
anything but derision and hated.. the world would have been far better off
if he hadn't been born and I can only say this about a very few people......

don't talk to me about reforming my house when your house is a shit show
of failure, dehumanization and hatred..... I have no intention of backing down
because I am a liberal.... I am your worst nightmare because I am a liberal who
hits back and I hit back harder then you have ever been hit....
I don't take prisoners and I don't apologize for it...
I have no guilt and I don't take shit from anybody.....

Kropotkin

[Mad Man P]

a couple of things, one, I note that you did not say anything to UR or Observe
about their dehumanization of the left with their language such as "communist shill"
or "traitors" or other dehumanizing language.....

----

don't talk to me about reforming my house when your house is a shit show
of failure, dehumanization and hatred..... I have no intention of backing down
because I am a liberal.... I am your worst nightmare because I am a liberal who
hits back and I hit back harder then you have ever been hit....

What I'm about to say shouldn't matter... but clearly does...

I'm not part of your tribal war.
I live in denmark and I vote left of OUR center, which is itself far left of yours... I'm not your enemy and my house is in very good order.
I'm doing what I advised YOU to do... I speak to "them" with whom I disagree as though we were on the same team... even when they do not return the favor.
And while we might disagree on some things, we might yet find agreement on others when speaking as friends...

If you're not the one to extend the olive branch, who will?
If the people who traditionally champion solidarity have stopped... where might it come from?

If not through diplomacy... what then?
What's the plan here?
Rounds up "the others" and put them somewhere where they can't spread their evil corruption, so you and yours can fix the country "they" ruined?
We still remember on my side of the pond what that looks like...

Look at what happened in this conversation. You assumed the malicious intent and read my words through that lense...
Was I an american, was I a republican... I might have said the same and I might have had the same intention.. but you would have never heard me, you still might not.

What good does this do you?
No one punched you... they said dehumanizing shit... you don't have to "defend yourself" by succumbing to the same madness.
Maybe try making "them" look worse, by being better... maybe lead by example rather than follow "their" lead...

Just some thoughts...

[Peter Kropotkin]

so the question facing us is the creation of a universal ethical/moral theory....

if you believe in exceptions for actions, then you are believe situational ethics/morals....

and I suspect that almost everyone will hold to exceptions to actions taken and thus
virtually everyone holds to situational ethics as a moral theory... which is fine, but
that certainly isn't a universal ethical/moral theory...actions must have the possibility
of exceptions.. if that is true, then a universal ethically/ moral theory isn't possible...

how are we to understand this?

perhaps one possible recourse is to add to the Kantian questions......

"What am I to do?" What am ought I hope for?" "what can I know?" are
the original Kantian questions to which I have added, "what should my energy
be spent on?" "What values should I hold?" and now this,
"how should I act toward my fellow human beings?" and as always, every single
questions can be converted into a collective question, "What values should we hold?"
or "What are we to do?"

so, how should we act toward our fellow human being? what can be a possible
universal ethical/moral theory?

if as we recall that Nietzsche declared that "god is dead and we have killed him"....

so we cannot hold to any sort of religious answer to a universal ethical/moral theory....

much thought is needed....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

upon further reflection, while eating my dinner of buffalo wings,
I think we can work this down a bit....

what we call "modern" and "postmodern"
is really something else... the real action in the modern world is this,
that we have no more universal values or beliefs that hold us together.....

the modern world is a world without the possibility of any type of universal
ideals...I pointed out one aspect, the loss of any universal ethics/morality....

but we have other losses of universal values such as in the fracturing of
philosophy into smaller schools of thought... whereas for over 200 years
philosophy was engaged in one particular aspect of philosophy, epistemology...
the search for knowledge, what it is, the scope of it, the limits of it.....
and we cannot decide upon even the basics..... what political system should
we have or what economic system should we have... ask 10 people and you might
get 10 different answers....the modern age is defined by the fracturing of
universal idea's that at one time was considered the basis of society.....

the Enlightenment motto was "Sapere aude" or dare to know or even more
loosely "dare to be wise"....... it was a call to find one's own truths or values...
not just to accept the current superstitions that pass for political and economic
understanding.....

we have legal "superstitions" that pass for the current truth that the justice system
abides by (when it is convenient) and we have ethical/moral (whatever that means)
and we have justice.. which is another word for equality....

we have what seems to be be, three distinct aspect of this, the legal, the moral,
and justice.....justice seems to have something to do with motive or perhaps that
is legal?

if there is no universal ethics/morality, then we have, right now anyway, situational ethics....
the situation dictates the ethics......there is no moral/ universal rule we can follow in
any given situation..... our entire ethical understanding, as of right now, is situational
ethics.... in other words, our ethical understanding is "ad hoc" made up to fit
the situation....

but that is also true of our political, economic and social situations in
this modern world.... what universal rule can we, do we, follow in
political, economic and social situations?

there doesn't seem to be any type of universal ethical, political, social
and economic rules that seem to be applicable to everyone... our entire world
is done "ad hoc" moment to moment, situation to situation, as the need arises....

can we put the genie back into the bottle and create some sort of
universal ethical, political, economic, and social rules/laws that is
applicable to everyone? Frankly, at this point, I would say no......

if the path into the future is situational ethics along with situational politics,
and with situational economics and situational social, then we must adapt
to this new state of affairs with all our heart....... you cannot be half ass with
situational ethics... the situation dictates the ethics, the situation dictates
the politics, the situation dictates the social and the situation dictates the
economic..... situational behavior is the path into the future.....until it isn't.....

but there are other possibilities here...... instead of going from the situation to
the actions, situational ethics as it were, perhaps another route can be found.....

we find our universal in values... hence we find our course of action by the
use of and understanding of values.... like love, hope, peace, justice......

so we have an action, and how do we face this action?
so let us get specific, I have a situation... instead of situational ethics,
I face this situation with values as my guide to action or inaction as the case may be.....

is this an universal ethics that held mankind enthralled for several millennium?
no, but as we cannot find or create a universal ethics/morals, holding on
to values may be the path into the future.....

so in the future, we might have the love party, in which the people in that party
hold to the value of love and that is their guide for actions... and another party
may hold to justice as their guide for actions, and another party might hold to
peace as their guide into the future....the TFH party already does this
by holding onto anger, hate and fear, but why not use these values in
a positive sense, not a negative sense as the TFH party does.....

that is one possibility...and that there are many other possibilities available to us....
as possibilities to us in terms of values which we can hold onto as guides for us into
the future.....

if what I hold to be true, then the current ethical, political, economic
and social actions are just "ad hoc", temporary, of the moment...
and soon we shall have another set of "ad hoc" idea's of the political,
social, economic and ethical ideals which people follow.. and soon after
that another set and then another set and then another set of "ad hoc" of the
moment understanding of the law, the political, the social and the
economic...

for in a "ad hoc" world, the situation dictates the ethics, the moral, the
social and the political... and as the environment changes, so does the
situation and with every changing situation, comes the different "ad hoc" laws/rules
in ethics, morality, political and the social of our existence....

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

I was going to write that we face "life long"
seeking the mysteries that are "what is evil"
but in reality, these questions are "species long" for we
have faced these questions every day of our species existence,
"what is evil?" "what is the right thing to do?" What does it mean to be moral?"
"what is the difference between good and evil?" "what is my relationship with
my fellow human being?"

and we seek answers in our political structure, tribes to cities to nations
and we seek answers in our religious structures like Catholicism to Buddhism
to Jainism and we seek answers in our economic structures like capitalism
and communism and monarchies....

if only we can find the right political structure or the right religious
structure or the right economic structure, we can find, well in fact we
don't even know what we are looking for... is it peace or is it harmony
or is it happiness, not individually, but collectively...... what are we looking for?

and that seems to be different then what I am looking for... our individual needs
are different then our social/political/religious/ economic overall, collective needs...

Sartre once wrote that "hell is other people" perhaps but the fact is I cannot survive
on my own... I need other people just to survive, just to have my needs met....
for I cannot meet my needs by myself, none of us can.....either my physical
needs or my psychological needs cannot be met by myself and you cannot reach
your physical or psychological needs by yourself......we must be loved by others,
we must be esteemed by others, we must have our safety/security needs met
by others, and we must have our physical needs of food, water, shelter, education,
health care are also met by others...

so how do we solve this problem or really this series of problems?

"what is good, and what is evil?" and after thousands of years, we still cannot answer this
fundamental question?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

indeed, we might ask, "what is the truth?"
and that answer has eluded us since the beginning of time......

"What is good?" "what is evil?" "what is the truth?"...
I have no idea and neither do you and that should bother you,
it bothers me, but no, we are engaged in tribal battles over
political matters that won't matter in 6 months....

it no longer matters to me that the corporate tax rate is
20%.. who gives a fuck? I want to know what the principle
behind the tax rate is, not how much it is....

for me, the question is not how, but why......

the why of life.... why should we be good instead of being bad/evil
and what does that even mean? these eternal questions of existence
have bother humans since the beginning, as they should....

but few, if any seem to care around here about these eternal questions,
that we should be focused on, not stupid ass videos about IQ45...
he may as well be U.S. Grant in term of relevance to us.......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

it has been said that "science is an attempt to explain our experiences"

we see a tree and science try's to explain what that experience means....
we can trace the connection that the tree has to the earth, the air, the animals
and the other tree's... that is science.. seeing the relationships that the tree has
to its environment....and to us...... science is an attempt to understand experience....

philosophy is an attempt to give the meaning behind that experience...

hence we might think about morals/ethics as experience explained philosophically....
what does it mean ethically/morally for me to act immoral/unethically?

what if I stole your life savings? is that good? evil? just plain bad?
it might diminish your life, but it will do wonders for my life.......
stealing your life saving is an experience, but what does it mean?
can science give us an answer?... no, that much is clear.... there is
no why in science.... it may be said that our reliance on science may be
an attempt to escape any responsibility for our actions.... because there
is no why in science, we can escape meaning in our dependence on science..

is that morally right or wrong doesn't play a role in science, only explaining
the experience counts in science....now one might argue that science has
become aware of the moral/ethics of its actions, and we can debate that....
but was morality/ethics a debate during the construction of the Atomic bomb?
I doubt it...... the goal was to end the war, not discuss the relative merit's of
the ethical or moral value of the bomb....but the question is, should science
place a far greater emphasis on the role of ethics and morality within it
framework?

and the answer is, we all should place a far greater emphasis on ethics and morality
in our actions and in our politics and in our words....... the question of this
modern age is simple, what does it mean to be ethical/moral?
the goal of the modern age should be the creation of a universal moral/ethical
theory.....and what does it mean if we cannot do that?

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

and how should we then approach Ethics/morality?

perhaps a clue might be in the question of ART.....
what is ART? Is ART an attempt to recreate nature?
or an attempt to see "reality" for what it is? Is ART really
a creative act or is ART just a report what the ARTISTS see's?

As we have noted earlier, it is tough to go from a singular event to
an comprehensive understanding... again, try to go from Newton's falling
apple to the creation of the entire system of Gravity and the ensuing laws
of motion, the three laws of Thermodynamics....

can you create an entire universal ethical and moral theory from one action,
say, murder? I don't think so....we can however create a universal ethical/moral
theory and then apply it to one single action, again, murder.....
but once again, we have the problem of having no basis for a universal ethical/moral
theory... there are no fact or evidence that will lead us to a specific universal
ethical or moral theory....

so, what is left? we can use imagination, as Newton use imagination to go from
the single event of an apple falling to the creation of modern physics, Gravity
and the laws of thermodynamics.....

the book "Les Miserables" points out in very graphic terms the failure of
putting the law ahead of ethics/morality......
we can see point blank what the failure of ethics/morality can mean to just
one person, Jean Valjean.... pursuit of the law as a theory of ethics and morality
fails because we can quite often see the failure of the law... recall that slavery was
legal, that the Holocaust was legal, that making human beings, slaves, count as
3/5 of a human being was legal, that making women property of men, first their
fathers, then their brothers and then their husbands.... and that was legal...
but does being legal mean it is ethical or moral? we see the problem now.....

the creativity of ART can point out the failure of the law, the failure of
the legal system....what is moral when we can lock up starving people for
stealing a loaf of bread? I would say that starving people is a moral and ethical
problem for a society which is far greater then a person stealing a loaf of bread to
feed his family....but starving people have no legal basis to overcome their
basic human right to the necessities of existence, food, water, shelter,
education, health care.... legally they can starve and the problem becomes
how is that ethical or moral for a society to allow such starvation? is it just to
allow people to starve to death? I don't see justice being served when people are
starving to death.... we can see the failure of the judicial system when it allows
members of its own society to starve to death because it is legal, but no one
cares about it being moral or ethical....

so I see Aesthetics as being one possible solution for us to see what is
ethical/moral.... not necessarily legal, but isn't the ethical/moral of
a higher ground then the legal? If not, then we can allow people to starve
to death with no hesitation or unease because it is an LEGAL act, not a moral/
ethical act we are dealing with.... and because we have decided that the legal
has been wrong, seriously wrong in the past, it can be wrong now when we can
legally allow people to starve to death...

ART or Aesthetics can point out what is truly moral or ethical far more then
what the law or justice might be able to point out....I hold that the act of creation
can be more meaningful as to what is ethical/moral far more then the legal might be
able to........so in deciding what might be ethical or moral, we can be justified in
using ART or the Aesthetics values in determining what is the right course of action,
either the legal or the moral/ethical.... what is the right thing to do? we might
be better served by ART or the Aesthetical then what is legal......

Kropotkin

[Peter Kropotkin]

what is the English root word of virtue?

go back far enough and we reach the word "Arete"
which is the Greek word for excellence...and if you think about it,
isn't virtue really about achieving excellence?

who among you strive to be virtuous or excellent?

that is not what drives the Modern world today.... the baubles
of existence drives the world... the world teaches the false
idols of money, fame, power, titles... who cares about that which
you can carry to one's grave?... and that is virtue or excellence...

you can lose your money, and you can lose your job/title and you can lose
fame and you can lose power... but you can never lose virtue or excellence....
you can even lose your faith in god and no longer believe... but excellence/virtue
are there for life....to strive for virtue/excellence can easily be the goal of one's
lifetime....

I try to achieve virtue/excellence in the small acts of existence....
when someone hands me too much money, I give the extra back,
I aim for honesty... I take blame when blame is mine... Kropotkin,
you were wrong about this... and I take immediate responsibility for
being wrong....it isn't in the big acts of virtue, but in the everyday,
when no one is looking acts of virtue/excellence I try to achieve....
to do the "right" thing even if no one is looking.... that is how I
try to achieve virtue/excellence every single day.....do I always succeed?
no, but the work comes in trying every single day to achieve excellence/virtue....

my goal isn't to become wealthy or famous or have a title or weald power,
my goal is to achieve virtue/excellence.... the hardest goal of all.....

and we might consider that it is in the small acts of virtue/excellence that we might
find out what is ethics/morality.....isn't ethics/morality simply the act of excellence
in action? To attempt to become better then we were yesterday.. not as accidental
actions but as a conscious decision to achieve excellence/virtue...to achieve
what is possible for me in my relationship with others... to lift up instead of
bringing down others...to help them achieve what is possible for them, the higher
possibilities, not the lower ones....ethics/moral isn't just about a abstract theory,
but about our day to day dealings with each other and, and with ourselves....
for we can engage in dishonest dealings with ourselves.... I can lie to myself
about what I am really about.... perhaps I steal from people but I convince myself
that I am an honest person.. but I find some justification to steal from people,
oh, they deserved it or they got what is coming to them or they started it...
justifications that allow me to be dishonest with myself.. when I am dishonest with
myself, as the existentialists held, then I am not being "authentic" with myself....
I am playacting that I am a good person, I am pretending that I am trying to achieve
excellence/virtue.. when I am just feeding some lower need that I have to steal or lie
or cheat....

to achieve virtue/excellence means to do the right thing even if no one is watching....
the goal and that is the point, it is a goal, is to become a better version of who we are....

excellence/virtue is to reach to become something better then we are today.....
and I can achieve that in the small acts of existence... by helping the old lady
cross the street, by helping the mom who has 5 kids bring her groceries to her car....

it is in the little acts of existence that define who we are.....

Kropotkin