From: "Warren Ockrassa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Recognition of the present as the only observable reality. I don't
torture nuns because I would not like it if someone were to torture me.
That's a reflection of "do onto others as you would have them do unto you"
and "love your neighbor as yourself." It's a sound ethical principal that
I see based in the value of every other human.
That's the basic idea, yeah. If I don't want to have my stuff stolen, I shouldn't steal others' -- at the very least I would have no room to complain if I've got my neighbor's lawnmower when I notice my stereo sitting in his living room...
But it's also a value statement, sure, value of others I mean.
It's a mature perspective called empathy, which I don't have to be drubbed into by fear of a wrathful deity.
I agree it is a good, ethical perspective, and no one does not have to be a
deist to belive in the rights of other humans...that those rights are just
as important as one's own. But, there are tremendous problems in deducing
human rights from principals of biology, for example.
I'm not so sure about that. There are plenty of animal-kingdom examples of the merits of altruism within a population. It's clearly a viable survival strategy, one practiced by several "higher" mammal species.
Of course the facts of biology, like the facts of physics or mathematics, don't tell us how anyone or anything should behave in any abstract sense. To the extent that you want to argue that scientific pursuit really is more about figuring out mechanics than anything else, I'm likely to agree. At the same time, study of behavior in other animals can tell us a *lot* about our own.
And, there are other perspectives that exist. Objectivism, for example,
touts that caring for others is misguided; the only true virtue is
selfishness.
Yeah, but the problem there is that there are plenty of examples of strategy that works in opposition to that argument. Cetaceans have been doing rather well on this planet for many more years than Ayn Rand's progenitors, and their behavior is rife with examples of altruistic actions.
A less objectivist angle is that ultimately all actions are self-serving, in one way or another, but that might be a sophistry to justify apparent altruism.
Post Modernism argues that ideas like human rights are simply
political tools to get other people to do what you want...as can be seen in
Disciplne and Punish by Foucault.
A compelling way of looking at it, but I wouldn't take it as literally true any more than I would Lovelock's "Gaia" model. That is, it's one form of model for social discourse, and an intriguing way to look at things, but I believe it might be a grave mistake (and rather cynical) to take it as a literal fact. Or at least one that's applicable 100% of the time.
Marxist analysis indicates that individual rights are a bourgeois construct.
Which is an interesting phenomenon. The only way that could be a valid assessment would be if the bourgeoisie were withholding rights from the proletariat. So the clear response (it seems to me) is not to impose a collectivism of equality (tyranny of the mediocre), but rather a meritocracy based in something *other than* a strictly capitalist idiom. (And this would really piss off the objectivists, so there's another bonus.) One that recognizes that accomplishments have merit that can't or won't necessarily be valued strictly in terms of dollars. Pablo Picasso or Vincent van Gogh, anyone?
It appears that, although we disagree on many things, we agree that human
beings have inherent rights. I would make a further statement. It is
wrong for young skinheads to go on wildings and beat up gay men. Even if
they can get away with it; it is wrong...it is immoral.
Yes, but I'd stop just before immoral. The term "moral" implies to me absolute measures, and some creature or other that has imposed those measures. Actually the world seems much more a balance of trades and compromises.
Since this life is the only one any of us gets (solid assumption; there
is zero evidence to the contrary), it would be pretty shabby of me to
set out to make others' lives miserable, or bring them to premature
ends, wouldn't it?
But, if it was to one's advantage, why not?
Because one is not always in a position to be the dominant. Roles can reverse, quickly. It would be a very bad idea for me to suppress or oppress and count on permanence in my supremacy -- one mistake and those whom I've oppressed will very definitely rise up and strike me down.
People with fewer enemies sleep better at night. (Back to all actions being self-serving. If I don't make enemies it's good for my non-enemies ... *and* good for me. ;)
What other reason besides the
understanding that it is the wrong thing to do? Because the people stepped
upon on to gain an advantage are just as important as the person who
contemplates the stepping.
They're potentially as valid, sure. I think I'm one of those people who believes that one has to earn the right to call oneself human, and that that right can be forfeit depending on one's actions. A kind of nontheistic fall from grace, with possibility of repentance, and definitely with a liberal dose of "original sin" in the idea that at some point or another one really does have to produce *something* of merit. (Could be anything, can't be hatemongery.)
Rand and Foucault disagree with this.
I frankly don't care what Ayn Rand would think about anything. She wasn't half as bright as her cadre of cultists like to think, and most of what she had to say in her interminable, poorly-written scrawlings is piffle. Any thinker would concede that great ideas tend to come from singular minds, and yes, The Masses™ do tend to hold one back. But that does not mean, by extension, that all societies are inherently evil, that altruism is worthless, or that genius will always be quashed or bled dry by the lesser-thans.
(Surely you saw the _Simpsons_ episode with the Ayn Rand School for Tots. By the reference in that ep to _The Great Escape_, we saw a core tenet of Rand's blitherings utterly overturned. Were it not for the teamwork, some of it quite altruistic, performed by WWII POWs, there never would have been a Great Escape to romanticize or lampoon. Rand is as full of horseapples as ... well, as a horse's backside.)
And I thought it was fashionable in the US not to care about what the French think about anything. ;) More seriously I'd have to probe Foucalt's POV in greater depth before I could offer any response to any of it.
A Marxist analysis would only
consider this valid if it is part of class warfare. The very idea of the
rights of individual members of the other classes would be at odds with the
reality of the historical dielectic.
Again, Marx's peculiar and rather singleminded interpretation of history. His writings, and Rand's, are somewhat reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology (or, for that matter, chiropractic). Start with an intriguing idea (engrams, class warfare, muddy-headed altruistic mediocres, subluxations) and then declare that every evil extant in a person or a society -- or, in some cases, both -- can be traced to that one principle. On a darker note, the Nazi party used a similar scapegoating method.
Nietchiez calls it "a slave's moralty" and considers it a source of weakness.
His arguments were used to shore up others' attacks on others as well.
So, this is not a viewpoint that has universal acceptance.
Since we're on the subject of philosophers, Dogen, Siddhartha Gautama and Iasus would probably side with us, so we're in goodish company. I'm fairly sanguine about my point of view.
That's the short-form answer to the question of why atheists aren't all
thieving psychotic murderous drooling perverts.
That's not my point. It was that the lack of fear of damnation for born
again Christians, or the belief in forgiveness by other Christians does not
create thieving psychotic murderous drooling perverts any more than atheism
does.
Ah, I misunderstood that part, yeah. I'd say your assessment's fair.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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