Philosophy Now Forum

these side issues of drag queens and the torture of Job,
and violence are a single issue that have no connection until
we give them a overall, universal basis... one applicable
to all people, at all times....and applicable to every instance...
what is a universal moral/ethical position to take?
do we go from this universal take on what is moral/ethical or
do we go from the particular instance and derive what is
moral/ethical? from universal to the particular instance or
the particular to the universal?

what does this question of drag queens tells us about morals/ethical
questions, or do we understand drag queens from a universal understanding
of ethics/morals?

in a very real way, this is the path of science... going from the particular
instance to the overall understanding or going from the overall understanding
to the particular?

now science just wants to know stuff, what is the sun made of, what is
the speed of light, what is the connection between volcanoes and
and our planets weather? Ice ages have come and gone based on
the activity of volcanoes...but that isn't what drives us
morally or ethically or socially....we can spend our entire life without
wondering how black holes work/operate.... and it won't, in one iota,
change who we are or what we do, knowing or not knowing...

but philosophy asks, what does it mean to be moral? do we go from
the small to the large or do we go from the large to the small....
to eat a baby is morally wrong, but can we derive a universal
law from that act? and how do we know, know that eating a baby
is actually morally wrong? on what grounds can we base this judgement on?
in the donner party, people who were starving ate other people,
is that morally wrong given, they had no other choice, to eat or to die..
is that morally wrong and more importantly, under what rule or
law is that wrong? given we are no living in a no-god world,
what is acting moral or immoral? what does being moral actually
mean? on what basis do we understand ethics/morals?
what are the rules for being moral/ethical?

I think questions like this, force us to think up, to wonder
about the big picture, the universal and not the particular...
for we can, pretty easily offer up excuses for virtually
every single action we can take as human beings.....
eating children, I was starving and I was going to die.. hence
I am justified to eat children....for virtually every single action
we take, we can justified it by using small, personal reasons..
but to understand an action via a large, universal action,
we can't as easily justify our actions...
to say, I ate the children because otherwise I was going to die,
is to make the universal rule be, I can act this way if my life
is being threatened...the self defense rule...can be used to
justified virtually every single "morally" wrong action we can take...

this was the justification of the nazi's... kill the Jews before the
killed us or took us over...the entire Holocaust can be excused as
self-defense...and that can't be right, can it?

So, every single step we take, leads us to another dead end....

so what rule/law can we make that makes being ethical/moral the right
action? How do we justify morals/ethics, by small actions or by
understanding the big, general rule governing actions?

Kropotkin

Peter Kropotkin wrote: ↑Tue Mar 28, 2023 6:05 pm these side issues of drag queens and the torture of Job,
and violence are a single issue that have no connection until
we give them a overall, universal basis... one applicable
to all people, at all times....and applicable to every instance...
what is a universal moral/ethical position to take?
do we go from this universal take on what is moral/ethical or
do we go from the particular instance and derive what is
moral/ethical? from universal to the particular instance or
the particular to the universal?

what does this question of drag queens tells us about morals/ethical
questions, or do we understand drag queens from a universal understanding
of ethics/morals?

in a very real way, this is the path of science... going from the particular
instance to the overall understanding or going from the overall understanding
to the particular?

now science just wants to know stuff, what is the sun made of, what is
the speed of light, what is the connection between volcanoes and
and our planets weather? Ice ages have come and gone based on
the activity of volcanoes...but that isn't what drives us
morally or ethically or socially....we can spend our entire life without
wondering how black holes work/operate.... and it won't, in one iota,
change who we are or what we do, knowing or not knowing...

but philosophy asks, what does it mean to be moral? do we go from
the small to the large or do we go from the large to the small....
to eat a baby is morally wrong, but can we derive a universal
law from that act? and how do we know, know that eating a baby
is actually morally wrong? on what grounds can we base this judgement on?
in the donner party, people who were starving ate other people,
is that morally wrong given, they had no other choice, to eat or to die..
is that morally wrong and more importantly, under what rule or
law is that wrong? given we are no living in a no-god world,
what is acting moral or immoral? what does being moral actually
mean? on what basis do we understand ethics/morals?
what are the rules for being moral/ethical?

I think questions like this, force us to think up, to wonder
about the big picture, the universal and not the particular...
for we can, pretty easily offer up excuses for virtually
every single action we can take as human beings.....
eating children, I was starving and I was going to die.. hence
I am justified to eat children....for virtually every single action
we take, we can justified it by using small, personal reasons..
but to understand an action via a large, universal action,
we can't as easily justify our actions...
to say, I ate the children because otherwise I was going to die,
is to make the universal rule be, I can act this way if my life
is being threatened...the self defense rule...can be used to
justified virtually every single "morally" wrong action we can take...

this was the justification of the nazi's... kill the Jews before the
killed us or took us over...the entire Holocaust can be excused as
self-defense...and that can't be right, can it?

So, every single step we take, leads us to another dead end....

so what rule/law can we make that makes being ethical/moral the right
action? How do we justify morals/ethics, by small actions or by
understanding the big, general rule governing actions?

Kropotkin

The One Truly Lore in Life is just 'DO NOT ABUSE ANY 'thing' AT ALL.

If this is followed, VOLUNTARILY, then this is JUST, and Right, by ALL, and what IS Truly Right, in Life.

"Are we there yet?"

"No, I've recalculated our course, there seems to be an anomaly."

"What do you mean by anomaly? All I want to know is when we'll be arriving at our destination?"

"Well, my calculations show that ... that ... we'll ... koff ... koff .. never reach our destination."

"What??!! Can't we correct for the anomaly? We surely can, right, Rick?"

"I haven't been just sitting around doing nothing you know. I ran multiple simulations and it looks like we can't. Every possible option we have gives the same result, in plain English we won't be celebrating Xmas on Dyet as planned! Truth is, cap, we'll never arrive!"

"Wanna smoke Rick? I have the best cigarettes Obidine Co. could buy and we all know Obidine can buy anything."

"Thanks but no thanks cap. Good night. See you in the morning."

Age:
The One Truly Lore in Life is just 'DO NOT ABUSE ANY 'thing' AT ALL.

If this is followed, VOLUNTARILY, then this is JUST, and Right, by ALL, and what IS Truly Right, in Life.


K: I am about to violate one of my rules and engage with Age..
(as I believe Age to be an internet troll)

anyway, what is one person "abuse" is another person teaching moment,
or as football coaches say, " I was just toughing him up" and how do
we define "abuse?"... there is no clear cut definition of abuse....
what may be abuse to one is a teaching moment for another...
I played sports at an early age and I ran cross country and track...
I ran 10 to 15 miles a day during cross country season, is that abuse?
the only way an athlete can improve is to push the boundaries of
working out.... and not all athletes get that.... so is that abuse?

the word abuse can mean many things to many people....
and thus it has no meaning at all....

try again...

Kropotkin

the problem seems to be that morals/ethics seems to be
a series of "ad hoc" choices... with no overarching/overall
principle to guide it....where is the universal principle/value that
seems to cover all morals/ethics?

"thou shall not kill"

and fine ethical/moral principle and yet, and yet, it has
enough escape clauses to be rendered useless.....one can kill
in self-defense, one can kill in war, one can kill in the idiotic
Florida law, "Stand your ground" and one can kill if you are a
policeman.. apparently and especially if you kill people of color....
you get a free pass out of jail for killing a black person....

the entire idea of "thou shall not kill" is riddled with exceptions
and those exceptions render the idea of "thou shall not kill"
useless.......

if a moral/ethical law has enough exceptions, it renders that
law useless..... now what? on what grounds are we to base our
ethical/moral principles on?

we have a problem until we think about this question,
what is the point of existence? what are we here for?
if we think that existence is as Nietzsche said, a road
that we are travelling from animal to animal/human to
becoming fully human, then, perhaps, the ethical/moral
problem becomes a bit less of a problem...

So, let us think about one such moral/ethical law,
the moral law that says, ''An eye for an eye"
that justice is best served by equal and justified
vengeance... the primitive value that demands justice
to be equal on all concerned... but we know, know that
the powerful, the wealthy, the entitled will not be
judge in that way... the moral law, an ''eye for an eye''
does not apply to those who are powerful enough to
escape justice.. from the ancient past to today, think
of IQ45 escaping justice because he is thought to be
"above the law"...... and if one person is considered to be
above the law, above the moral code of a country, than
that country doesn't have justice... for the very word
''justice'' mean equality before the law.... and if one person
can escape justice/equality, then it stands for nothing....

so, part of the moral/ethical question has something to do
with how justice is delivered....if people can escape justice due
to their wealth, their position, their power or their titles,
then we don't have justice in this country.... and justice is
the equal application of ethics/morals.... or do you believe
that justice and ethics/morals are two distinct and separate ideas?

that will be the next question....

Kropotkin

JUSTICE: Just behavior or treatment. a concern for justice,
peace, and genuine respect for people... is one definition for
justice... another definition Justice: the quality of being fair
and reasonable... the justice of his case......

and here is the definition of ethical...

ETHICAL: relating to moral principles or the branch of
knowledge dealing with these.. ethical issues in nursing
ethical churchgoing men.....another definition is this:
morally go9od or correct can a profitable business be
ethical?

If I am reading this correctly, then justice seems to be the
a larger section of ethical/moral questions and morals/ethics,
seem to be a smaller subsection of justice....
justice seems to be a wide scale application of ethics/morals
and the concern with morals/ethics seem to be a smaller
scale application...justice is applied at the level
of government.. with laws, judges, courts, police,
in the branches of the executive and the legislative level...

whereas morals/ethics seems to be applied at a lower level,
in our day to day lives... is hitting johnny for being bad, ethical/moral?
now the law may intervene, but that question is more locally based
than the question of justice.... how do we act and interact with
our fellow human beings.. is the question of morals/ethics and
that question is rarely ever taken up in a judicial or legal
fashion...but we face that question not only daily, but frankly
every minute of the day... how do I engage with my fellow human beings?...
that local question is ethics/morals question....is it ethical to
steal food from a grocery store? there are laws in this matter, but
rarely if ever enforced... at least in California... you have to steal
over a $1000 dollars of goods from a store before the police even gets
involved...and even then, they rarely get involved... laws are made
but rarely enforced...so justice is not engaged with in these small
matters but the question of morals/ethics is involved... I see it
every single day at work, people stealing from our store...
and it isn't even food, it is mostly alcohol.. and if you are stealing
booze, you aren't going for the ''I must steal to feed my family'' excuse...
I can see stealing to feed ones' family but stealing booze isn't that...
and as the law/justice system doesn't seem to care about small scale
stealing, does that mean that small scale stealing is moral/ethical?

and this question of ethics/morals seems to not only engage
us individually, in our relationship to other people, but to
interactions with corporations, groups, the government,
(in stealing booze from my store, they aren't stealing from me
personally, but they are stealing from a corporate entity)
we have personal ethics/morals, one on one ethics/morals,
we have larger scale ethics/morals involving groups
corporations, churches, social groups, larger than just one on one
ethics/morals.....
now are ethics/morals involving one on one ethics/morals
different than ethics/morals involving groups/corporations?
is one on one ethics/morals different than larger scale
situations?

would I be condemned more if I stole from a corporation than if
I stole from an individual? legally or otherwise? it seems that
people who have no problem stealing from a store/corporation,
would have a greater problem stealing from an individual...
and we must ask ourselves, why? they can justify stealing from
a store/corporation with rationalizations like, they can afford it,
and they are crooked or their prices are outrageous....
any number of rationalizations can be made to justify stealing
from a store/corporation, and those same rationalizations
won't work stealing from an individual....it takes a special
type of a psychopath to look someone in the eye and than
steal from them.....a corporation isn't a person, they are just
workers in a store, not individuals.. and that knowledge does
seem to make it easier to steal from a store....
because you don't have to look an individual in the eye,
like if you steal from someone..... this impersonal
difference, of stealing from one individual to stealing from
a store/corporation... seems to make the all the difference...
but does it make it any less ethical/moral to steal from
an individual as opposed to stealing from a store/corporation?

ethically, it doesn't seem to make a difference, but one can
justify stealing from a store/corporation far easier than
being able to justify stealing from a individual...

so the question of ethics/morals seems, in a sense, to turn on
this question of being able to rationalize it... to look
someone in the eye seems to make a difference in this ethical/moral
dilemma.. but should it? why can we steal with a clear conscience
from a store/corporation or have a guilty conscience
in stealing from an individual?

the event is exactly the same, stealing, but who you steal from does
seem to make a difference... what does this mean to ethics/morals?
is this question of ethics/morals an engagement with the who, what, when,
where, how and why of existence? and not an engagement with
values/principle?

it leaves us many questions and few answers.. just as philosophy
should be... many questions and few answers...

Kropotkin