Re: Mind's Eye Re: Towards a modern morality

That to understand just what is causing harm is sometimes beyond our
capabilities. Are not some issues so interwoven that to unravel them
and be absolutly sure that a particular stance is doing the least
harm is very difficult. The chinese seem to understand the ideas of
good "bad thought" and bad "good thoughts" which is their way of
handling the dilema.

Having said this, as far is the environment is concerned it seems
pretty clear to most that inorganic shit should not be thrown around
willy nilly. This like many other examples seem to be self evident.
But maybe only in the sense that they are good for our survival.
Nature itself, in some ways, is totally without morallity.

Sometimes I think that the best we can do is to be selfless and try to
act for our perceived good of nature AND hope that our perceptions are
right.

On May 30, 1:33 am, Allan H <allanh1...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The law of do no harm is not impossible but rather a simple guideline that
> is very workable. I know people are always coming up with things like
> killing and animal for food is causing harm. the concept is really use what
> you need and not destroy the enviorment doing it,  the questions should be
> if you are a family  of four do you need a 10,000 sq ft house.
> the other part comes form living a luxurious life style at the expense of
> others especially the poor, or wear the latest fashions that are made by
> slave labor in the USA or else where.. and yes they do exist. or eliminate
> employment so you can have a fatter salary.
>
> The real problem is  understanding just what is causing harm..  the
> solution does not lie in creating laws. just so people can break them. It
> seems most laws today are written  to allow people to get around this very
> law.
> Allan
>  On May 29, 2012 12:03 PM, "Lee Douglas" <leerevdoug...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Do no harm is broad brush, and kind of impossible to live by though innit?
>
> > On Friday, 18 May 2012 05:13:01 UTC+1, archytas wrote:
>
> >> My stance towards most moralising is one of incredulity, yet I'm a
> >> moraliser and believe most of our problems lie in our lack of personal
> >> and collective morality.  Economics as our political and business
> >> class practice it is fundamentally immoral against a scientific world-
> >> view,  My view of science is that it is full of values and the notion
> >> of it as value-free is a total and totalising dud.  Only lay people
> >> with no experience of doing science hold the "value-free" notion of
> >> science.
>
> >> You can explore some of the moral issues arising in modern science in
> >> a lengthy book review at London Review of Books -
> >>http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n10/**malcolm-bull/what-is-the-**
> >> rational-response<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n10/malcolm-bull/what-is-the-rational-response>.
>
> >> The book's topic is climate change.
>
> >> Coming up to 60 I regard the world as a abject failure against the
> >> promises I thought were being made in politics.  I'm a world-weary old
> >> fart now, tending to see the generations coming up as narcissist
> >> wastrels who don't know what hard work is (etc.) though I think the
> >> blame is ours, not theirs.  I think the problem is our attitude
> >> towards morality.  The tendency in history is to focus on religion for
> >> moral advice - this is utterly corrupt and we have forgotten that much
> >> religious morality is actually a reaction against unfairness and the
> >> wicked control of our lives by the rich.  It is this latter factor
> >> that is repeating itself.
>
> >> Much moralising concerns sex.  This all largely based in old fables
> >> for population control we can still find in primitive societies such
> >> as 'sperm control by fellatio' (Sambians) and non-penetrative youth
> >> sex (Kikuyu) etc. - and stuff like 'the silver ring thing'.  The
> >> modern issue is population control and that we can achieve this
> >> without sexual moralising - the moral issues are about quality of
> >> life, women as other than child-bearing vessels and so on.  We have
> >> failed almost entirely except in developed countries - to such an
> >> extent the world population has trebled in my lifetime despite
> >> economic factors driving down birth-rates in developed countries
> >> without the kind of restrictions such as China enforced.
>
> >> We are still at war.
>
> >> Our economics is still based in "growth" and "consumption" and notions
> >> human beings should work hard - when in fact the amount of work we
> >> need to do probably equates to 3 days a week for 6 months of a year.
> >> 75% of GDP is in services and only 6% in really hard work like
> >> agriculture.  We could have a great deal more through doing less and
> >> doing what we do with more regard for conservation and very different
> >> scientific advance.  My view is it's immoral that we won't take
> >> responsibility for this and review our failures.  I believe this
> >> failure inhibits our spiritual growth and renders us simply animal.
>
> >> Human life may be much less than I value it at and just a purposeless
> >> farce.  The first step in a new attitude towards morality is to
> >> consider living with a scientific world-view.  The implications of
> >> this are complex and probably entail shaking ourselves from a false-
> >> consciousness to be able to see what is being done in our name.  We
> >> need a modern morality not based in the creation of fear and demons to
> >> enforce it, or the feeble existential view of the individual.  We are
> >> social animals and need to get back to some basics developed with
> >> modern knowledge, not in past religious and empire disasters.
>
> >> Religion has a role in this in my view - religion we might recapture
> >> from sensible history - I'd recommend David Graeber's 'Debt: the first
> >> 5000 years' as a read here.