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A Song of Ice and Fire / Other Topics / Declining Morality?

KAH
User ID: 0541004 Feb 14th 11:40 AM
Alex;

Let me see if I got this straight first.

You're proposing that without 'Thou shall not fornicate', family is gone? And with family gone, one of the 'central institutions of society' is gone?

To take the first - I have yet to see exactly what
you interpret this rule to be. Although I seem to recall tidbits you mentioned - you were not against divorce, for instance(?). How about gay people? Premarital sex?

Furthermore, should this interpretation of yours be taken as the only right one? If there are room for several interpretations, I suppose some of them are more hazardous to family life than others, right?

Before you have clarified what you mean, your statements cannot be taken as anything more than dreadfully trivial - it's like saying 'everybody should be nice and kind, and aside from that can do whatever they want'.

And then there's this bit of 'central institutions
of society' - yeah, I know I'm probably paraphrasing you here, but it sounds like the gist of what you were talking about. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Now, how exactly I should approach this, depends largely on your interpretation of the commandment - it seems you are all for divorce. Well, isn't that breaking up of a family?

Besides, I fail to see the perfect correlation between a family's demise and the dreadful effect the child would suffer (which I assume is the focal point of your statement?).

If the mother and father actually give a shit about their child they would _keep on loving the child_, no? And it follows that they would do their utmost to support their child, whatever their differences between themselves.

If they do not love their child, the most sturdy marriage will not help; the child will not get more love from immediate physical closeness in a cold environment.

Ran
User ID: 0867924 Feb 14th 11:47 AM
Alex wrote:

I could not post in the old thread, so here is my continuation of the pevious dicussion...Don't think I have given up, just because you are all against me (*smiles*)

KAH: "...Besides, murder, theft and corruption creating a somewhat more unhealthy environment for an empire may be possible, but _fornication_???..." I can really picture you
making a weather report during doomsday - "The earthquakes of gicantic proportions, tornados and tidal waves 1 to 2 miles high had somewhat contributed to the mildly unpleasant weather on the continent..." Fornication undermines the
institution of family, which I consider one of the central in any healthy, functionable society. For my reasons, you may revisit some of the earlier posts on the subject, where we talked about
prostitution and fornication/"casual sex".

Swethin, you say "...We *do* have as many moral codes as we have people, or would you say *everyone* acts in *exactly* the same way as someone else..." Yes, and no. You all seem to
be oversimplifying and overcomplicating these moral imperatives at the same time. I do not propose that any one single country should "embrace" 10 commandments (I guess you mean making violating them a felony? It is kind of done,
anyway...) The acceptance must come from within. On the other hand, it already did! Everyone would act depending on his/her circumstances, environment, level of one's own determinations, etc...There are too many variables to generalize, but technically most basic responses by people to
outside agents/conditions are fairly predictable. But I still maintain that most of the modern civilized men have that one common denominator on their internal moral scales, the one mostly expressed by 10 commandments. It is not nessesary to know the nature of every human on earth to define it. Regardless of our inner psychological/sexual/biological drives, we would generally all agree that the person who, say, rapes women is bad, no matter how charming or otherwise attractive that person is. We would all generally agree that taking lifes is bad from the moral persperctive, as well as cheating on our
spouses (in general), which is not morally healthy either, or stealing, etc... Those are "moral imperatives" for us (well,for the majority of us, I hope). I am not saying that we never do that, or never consider, or fantasize about it, whatever, but we all accept it as common moral denominator - that is why I call it empirical thruth. Now, if you hypothetically had asked, say, an ancient Greece citizen a question like "If a person rapes women would he be immoral, in general?..." he would not understand your quesion at all - for societies like Rome, Greece (BC times, I mean) the morality had nothing to do with matters of killing, raping, ritual murders, or pillaging - because they were never exposed to 10 commandments, which defined such attitudes
for the first time, elevating such approach (murder wrong, stealing wrong, etc...) to the global level, such as "Murder is generally a wrong and forbidden thing to do" (thou shall not murder...), etc. You all seem to argue that morality is a relative thing in general, and everyone has personal set of ethics, but in all of my posts above I kept saying that we all agree on those general moral guidelines. Don't we? These guidlines were given in 10 Commandments, and I think they are the reasons why we are not at each other throats all the time, and also, why most of
them are mirrored in ouw legal system in one way or another. I call them empirical thruth, or global thruth, because
a) we all agree and accept then (not meaning always follow them, but mostly - we generally don't kill and steal, do we? and not just because it is felony to do so?)
b) the societies that did not are no longer there (for whatever reasons)

You would probably all argue that we have one model, and ancients had a different one, and we may well develop yet another one. Well, I hope not, because, honestly, after 5 or 6 thousand years our part of civilization has finnally come to accepting (albeit imperfectly, but definitely not just paying a "lip service") this morality, which was delivered to us in such dramatic way (you know, Moses, mount Sinay, etc.)- I mean
through the Canon, which is probably the greatest book ever written, as a quintessense of humankind experience (be it of the divine origin or not). And all the deviations that we seem to propose are actually not new moral guidlines, but some lessening and undermining of old ones (10 commandments)
You know, not following a moral rule does not mean having another one instead, it just means being less moral. And frankly, I see nothing new offered.

KAH
User ID: 0541004 Feb 14th 1:20 PM
Since Ran put Alex last post up, I see another thing I will focus on;

Alex, you were asked to provide us facts about societies where the Ten Commandments (or rather, the gist of them) were to a much greater degree kept than in those empires you talk about.

As far as I can tell, you have not done so yet, and I'm not really surprised. Killing, raping, ritual murders, pillaging - which 'Ten Commandment' society has not been wracked by these scourges up through the years?

Yeah, there were killing, raping, ritual murders and pillaging in Ancient Greece and Rome and Egypt - especially in wartimes. How is that different from medieval (Christianized) Europe? About the only thing were they differ there, might be on ritual murder, and even there it could be argued - the witchburnings could well qualify as ritual murder, IMHO.

Point is, I'm doubting that murder, rape, etc. were so immensely more widespread in ancient societies compared to medieval societies, or even modern societies. If murder was the _norm_, they would hardly have any structural integrity at all, and they could not have risen to be empires in the first place, IMNSHO.

Yeah, there were gladiators in Rome -
letting some people be defined as 'fit to be killed out of hand' is nothing new, even in _modern_ society - it is only 50 years since the 'civilised' world was scourged by genocide, because a 'race' was made fair game.

But in general, there had to be _some_ respect for human lives - _some_ rules that held people from engaging in wanton murder and the like, else there would be no society at all - just warring clans endlessly decimating eachother in one bloody vendetta after the other.

Alex
User ID: 9892733 Feb 14th 1:23 PM
OK, KAH, you said clarification is needed first, but I need to know, what did you make from the rest of my response: do you agree with my "common denominator"/empirical truth theory, or is it "dreadfully trivial" too? I need to know, in order to structure my counter-argument approprietly.

Gosh, you all hate that fornication restriction! Is any one of you married, yet?

KAH
User ID: 0541004 Feb 14th 1:54 PM
A common denominator is of little use, as long as it can be interpreted away.

Did Nazi-Germany not follow the Ten Commandments at all?

Could any man kill, rape, or commit ritual murders wantonly? Certainly not. If they did, 'Der Dritte Reich' would have been cast on the garbage heap of history much faster than it was. _Some_ rules of conduct had to be followed.
In essence, all they did, was to make certain parts of the population defined as less than human, and an enemy to society (political and sexual deviators, jews, etc.), and make them fair game.

Does this in any way make Nazi-Germany _moral_?

Absolutely not.

Hence it should be obvious that we have to delve a bit deeper than the Ten Commandments, in order to see what makes up a moral society. Just to give some sympathetic sounds of 'generally being nice' _is_ pretty trivial, I'm afraid.

Swithin
User ID: 0289604 Feb 15th 4:21 AM
Alex, you contradict yourself. You say the principle of the ten commandments is a common denominator, but if I asked an ancient Greek if rape were wrong he wouldn't understand. Is he not human? No, he is not twentieth century Western, and that is his right.

And I have said that I agree to the following: generally, people have much the same ideas about morality. But generally doesn't cut it. If I had 99 forks and a hamster in a cabinet, could I not say that 'generally' the items in the cabinet were forks? Would I not be a fool to try using a hamster as an eating utensil? Point being: societies form due to common ends, and they expand beyond the founders to include different people with different ends. To subject them to living with your ends is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. The society will last as long as it's useful, and there remains a significant amount of people who have the same ends as the founders did and statesmen do. To say that your family will be betrayed by people who believe differently, is quite frankly, silly. Your family is your family's business. If other people wish to live differently, let them. The world and society belong as much to them as it does to you.

Swithin
User ID: 0289604 Feb 15th 4:23 AM
That last sentence were absolutely incorrects.

Sphinx
User ID: 8882983 Feb 15th 4:52 PM
Wow - take a few days out and you get really behind. As I've been away for a few days, I may be going back to points in this argument that seem awhile back.

Alex (who else?), going back to your examples of civilisations that have made it and not made it simply on the basis of whether they had the ten commandments or not:

The societies you mentioned didn't die out for the reasons you give, they died out because they didn't change enough. They became stagnant. So in fact, thos examples go _against_ your argument, because you are arguing for a lack of change. I'm not saying that we'll die out unless we all accept casual sex, but if we stick to all our ways and codes which are outdated, we will. Neither am I saying chuck everything out because its old - we just need to recognise that we're not living 2000 years ago. 2000 years ago it may well have been expedient to society to keep the family unit together by means of an imperative such as thou shalt not fornicate. Now, it is IMHO more important to recognise that people are increasingly becoming aware of the fact that they are free individuals, who aside from following laws, only have to do things if they feel that it is right, not because their parents, teachers or priests told them so.

Going back to Ran's example of Sweden's attitudes and statistics, a more liberal attitude to sex DOES NOT cause the kind of degradation Alex is talking about, in fact, just the opposite. Tell any person, especially an adolescent, that he or she shouldn't do something that he or she wants to do, and it'll be the first thing they go out and do (as I previously gave as an example, Eden, anyone?). Give them all the information to be able to make their own decision, and quite often, they'll make the 'right' one.

Also, Alex, by mentioning that 'the Orient' is too alien to discuss, you conveniently dismiss the huge clutch of examples of civilisation that HAVE survived the test of time WITHOUT the ten commandments. Ok, none of us are (as far as i know) expert enough to discuss eastern culture in depth, but i know enough to say that they are a) human beings, b) have no ten commandments, and c) have survived with no more, if not less 'moral degradation and corruption' than the West. In fact, most of that kind of influence on their society has come FROM the West! The only reason the rest of the world is roughly judeo-christian is because Britain, Spain, France, etc CONQUERED everywhere except the East. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the Amerindians, Zulus, Aztecs, Eskimos, Aborigines, Babylonians, etc. would have collapsed morally had we not intervened?

The ten commandments are merely a codification of a sert of moral standards which yes, have worked well to a large degree in some times and places, but no, are not the only things that have held the western world together. To say that they are the unassailable foundation for human morality I could accept (though not agree with) as an argument from someone who's basis was faith, but you claim that yours is _reason_...

?

KAH User ID: 0541004	Feb 14th 11:40 AM Alex; Let me see if I got this straight first. You're proposing that without 'Thou shall not fornicate', family is gone? And with family gone, one of the 'central institutions of society' is gone? To take the first - I have yet to see exactly what you interpret this rule to be. Although I seem to recall tidbits you mentioned - you were not against divorce, for instance(?). How about gay people? Premarital sex? Furthermore, should this interpretation of yours be taken as the only right one? If there are room for several interpretations, I suppose some of them are more hazardous to family life than others, right? Before you have clarified what you mean, your statements cannot be taken as anything more than dreadfully trivial - it's like saying 'everybody should be nice and kind, and aside from that can do whatever they want'. And then there's this bit of 'central institutions of society' - yeah, I know I'm probably paraphrasing you here, but it sounds like the gist of what you were talking about. Correct me if I'm wrong. Now, how exactly I should approach this, depends largely on your interpretation of the commandment - it seems you are all for divorce. Well, isn't that breaking up of a family? Besides, I fail to see the perfect correlation between a family's demise and the dreadful effect the child would suffer (which I assume is the focal point of your statement?). If the mother and father actually give a shit about their child they would _keep on loving the child_, no? And it follows that they would do their utmost to support their child, whatever their differences between themselves. If they do not love their child, the most sturdy marriage will not help; the child will not get more love from immediate physical closeness in a cold environment.
Ran User ID: 0867924	Feb 14th 11:47 AM Alex wrote: I could not post in the old thread, so here is my continuation of the pevious dicussion...Don't think I have given up, just because you are all against me (smiles) KAH: "...Besides, murder, theft and corruption creating a somewhat more unhealthy environment for an empire may be possible, but _fornication_???..." I can really picture you making a weather report during doomsday - "The earthquakes of gicantic proportions, tornados and tidal waves 1 to 2 miles high had somewhat contributed to the mildly unpleasant weather on the continent..." Fornication undermines the institution of family, which I consider one of the central in any healthy, functionable society. For my reasons, you may revisit some of the earlier posts on the subject, where we talked about prostitution and fornication/"casual sex". Swethin, you say "...We do have as many moral codes as we have people, or would you say everyone acts in exactly the same way as someone else..." Yes, and no. You all seem to be oversimplifying and overcomplicating these moral imperatives at the same time. I do not propose that any one single country should "embrace" 10 commandments (I guess you mean making violating them a felony? It is kind of done, anyway...) The acceptance must come from within. On the other hand, it already did! Everyone would act depending on his/her circumstances, environment, level of one's own determinations, etc...There are too many variables to generalize, but technically most basic responses by people to outside agents/conditions are fairly predictable. But I still maintain that most of the modern civilized men have that one common denominator on their internal moral scales, the one mostly expressed by 10 commandments. It is not nessesary to know the nature of every human on earth to define it. Regardless of our inner psychological/sexual/biological drives, we would generally all agree that the person who, say, rapes women is bad, no matter how charming or otherwise attractive that person is. We would all generally agree that taking lifes is bad from the moral persperctive, as well as cheating on our spouses (in general), which is not morally healthy either, or stealing, etc... Those are "moral imperatives" for us (well,for the majority of us, I hope). I am not saying that we never do that, or never consider, or fantasize about it, whatever, but we all accept it as common moral denominator - that is why I call it empirical thruth. Now, if you hypothetically had asked, say, an ancient Greece citizen a question like "If a person rapes women would he be immoral, in general?..." he would not understand your quesion at all - for societies like Rome, Greece (BC times, I mean) the morality had nothing to do with matters of killing, raping, ritual murders, or pillaging - because they were never exposed to 10 commandments, which defined such attitudes for the first time, elevating such approach (murder wrong, stealing wrong, etc...) to the global level, such as "Murder is generally a wrong and forbidden thing to do" (thou shall not murder...), etc. You all seem to argue that morality is a relative thing in general, and everyone has personal set of ethics, but in all of my posts above I kept saying that we all agree on those general moral guidelines. Don't we? These guidlines were given in 10 Commandments, and I think they are the reasons why we are not at each other throats all the time, and also, why most of them are mirrored in ouw legal system in one way or another. I call them empirical thruth, or global thruth, because a) we all agree and accept then (not meaning always follow them, but mostly - we generally don't kill and steal, do we? and not just because it is felony to do so?) b) the societies that did not are no longer there (for whatever reasons) You would probably all argue that we have one model, and ancients had a different one, and we may well develop yet another one. Well, I hope not, because, honestly, after 5 or 6 thousand years our part of civilization has finnally come to accepting (albeit imperfectly, but definitely not just paying a "lip service") this morality, which was delivered to us in such dramatic way (you know, Moses, mount Sinay, etc.)- I mean through the Canon, which is probably the greatest book ever written, as a quintessense of humankind experience (be it of the divine origin or not). And all the deviations that we seem to propose are actually not new moral guidlines, but some lessening and undermining of old ones (10 commandments) You know, not following a moral rule does not mean having another one instead, it just means being less moral. And frankly, I see nothing new offered.
KAH User ID: 0541004	Feb 14th 1:20 PM Since Ran put Alex last post up, I see another thing I will focus on; Alex, you were asked to provide us facts about societies where the Ten Commandments (or rather, the gist of them) were to a much greater degree kept than in those empires you talk about. As far as I can tell, you have not done so yet, and I'm not really surprised. Killing, raping, ritual murders, pillaging - which 'Ten Commandment' society has not been wracked by these scourges up through the years? Yeah, there were killing, raping, ritual murders and pillaging in Ancient Greece and Rome and Egypt - especially in wartimes. How is that different from medieval (Christianized) Europe? About the only thing were they differ there, might be on ritual murder, and even there it could be argued - the witchburnings could well qualify as ritual murder, IMHO. Point is, I'm doubting that murder, rape, etc. were so immensely more widespread in ancient societies compared to medieval societies, or even modern societies. If murder was the _norm_, they would hardly have any structural integrity at all, and they could not have risen to be empires in the first place, IMNSHO. Yeah, there were gladiators in Rome - letting some people be defined as 'fit to be killed out of hand' is nothing new, even in _modern_ society - it is only 50 years since the 'civilised' world was scourged by genocide, because a 'race' was made fair game. But in general, there had to be _some_ respect for human lives - _some_ rules that held people from engaging in wanton murder and the like, else there would be no society at all - just warring clans endlessly decimating eachother in one bloody vendetta after the other.
Alex User ID: 9892733	Feb 14th 1:23 PM OK, KAH, you said clarification is needed first, but I need to know, what did you make from the rest of my response: do you agree with my "common denominator"/empirical truth theory, or is it "dreadfully trivial" too? I need to know, in order to structure my counter-argument approprietly. Gosh, you all hate that fornication restriction! Is any one of you married, yet?
KAH User ID: 0541004	Feb 14th 1:54 PM A common denominator is of little use, as long as it can be interpreted away. Did Nazi-Germany not follow the Ten Commandments at all? Could any man kill, rape, or commit ritual murders wantonly? Certainly not. If they did, 'Der Dritte Reich' would have been cast on the garbage heap of history much faster than it was. _Some_ rules of conduct had to be followed. In essence, all they did, was to make certain parts of the population defined as less than human, and an enemy to society (political and sexual deviators, jews, etc.), and make them fair game. Does this in any way make Nazi-Germany _moral_? Absolutely not. Hence it should be obvious that we have to delve a bit deeper than the Ten Commandments, in order to see what makes up a moral society. Just to give some sympathetic sounds of 'generally being nice' _is_ pretty trivial, I'm afraid.
Swithin User ID: 0289604	Feb 15th 4:21 AM Alex, you contradict yourself. You say the principle of the ten commandments is a common denominator, but if I asked an ancient Greek if rape were wrong he wouldn't understand. Is he not human? No, he is not twentieth century Western, and that is his right. And I have said that I agree to the following: generally, people have much the same ideas about morality. But generally doesn't cut it. If I had 99 forks and a hamster in a cabinet, could I not say that 'generally' the items in the cabinet were forks? Would I not be a fool to try using a hamster as an eating utensil? Point being: societies form due to common ends, and they expand beyond the founders to include different people with different ends. To subject them to living with your ends is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984. The society will last as long as it's useful, and there remains a significant amount of people who have the same ends as the founders did and statesmen do. To say that your family will be betrayed by people who believe differently, is quite frankly, silly. Your family is your family's business. If other people wish to live differently, let them. The world and society belong as much to them as it does to you.
Swithin User ID: 0289604	Feb 15th 4:23 AM That last sentence were absolutely incorrects.
Sphinx User ID: 8882983	Feb 15th 4:52 PM Wow - take a few days out and you get really behind. As I've been away for a few days, I may be going back to points in this argument that seem awhile back. Alex (who else?), going back to your examples of civilisations that have made it and not made it simply on the basis of whether they had the ten commandments or not: The societies you mentioned didn't die out for the reasons you give, they died out because they didn't change enough. They became stagnant. So in fact, thos examples go _against_ your argument, because you are arguing for a lack of change. I'm not saying that we'll die out unless we all accept casual sex, but if we stick to all our ways and codes which are outdated, we will. Neither am I saying chuck everything out because its old - we just need to recognise that we're not living 2000 years ago. 2000 years ago it may well have been expedient to society to keep the family unit together by means of an imperative such as thou shalt not fornicate. Now, it is IMHO more important to recognise that people are increasingly becoming aware of the fact that they are free individuals, who aside from following laws, only have to do things if they feel that it is right, not because their parents, teachers or priests told them so. Going back to Ran's example of Sweden's attitudes and statistics, a more liberal attitude to sex DOES NOT cause the kind of degradation Alex is talking about, in fact, just the opposite. Tell any person, especially an adolescent, that he or she shouldn't do something that he or she wants to do, and it'll be the first thing they go out and do (as I previously gave as an example, Eden, anyone?). Give them all the information to be able to make their own decision, and quite often, they'll make the 'right' one. Also, Alex, by mentioning that 'the Orient' is too alien to discuss, you conveniently dismiss the huge clutch of examples of civilisation that HAVE survived the test of time WITHOUT the ten commandments. Ok, none of us are (as far as i know) expert enough to discuss eastern culture in depth, but i know enough to say that they are a) human beings, b) have no ten commandments, and c) have survived with no more, if not less 'moral degradation and corruption' than the West. In fact, most of that kind of influence on their society has come FROM the West! The only reason the rest of the world is roughly judeo-christian is because Britain, Spain, France, etc CONQUERED everywhere except the East. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the Amerindians, Zulus, Aztecs, Eskimos, Aborigines, Babylonians, etc. would have collapsed morally had we not intervened? The ten commandments are merely a codification of a sert of moral standards which yes, have worked well to a large degree in some times and places, but no, are not the only things that have held the western world together. To say that they are the unassailable foundation for human morality I could accept (though not agree with) as an argument from someone who's basis was faith, but you claim that yours is _reason_... ?