Section 8 Clan Forums

Hello, everyone!!

How r u Guys and girls? It's an week with an new topic, and we r getting an little bit more serious, but don't sweat it!!! It's not some Brainwrecking or life questioning challenge

Bad or Good, is it Important?

Do u believe in bad or good? Does superman excist? Or is good/bad something u feel?
This is an tricky one i know but do like this:
1) Sit down and make sure no one disturbs u the next 5minutes
2) read the sentence "bad or good, is it important?"
3) Now lean back and close ur eyes and let the thoughts flows about it
4) when u feel ready push "reply" and start writing and if nothing else than ( . Y . ) comes up then just write that
5) This is my first guide so pls give notice what u like about it!!

The One and Only,
Yours,
MC

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Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life not to deny my humanity but embrace it

Of course good and bad, or evil, exist. The difference between the two sometimes seems blurred because people seem to believe that an act or thought is inherently good or evil. Sometimes people try to define these actions, words or thoughts in the context of a given scenario.

I believe that the ultimate definitions of good and evil are related, in much the same way that the theoretical quantities of infinity and nothing, widely regarded as opposites, share many of the same mathematical traits: neither can be added to or subtracted from in such a way as to yield a difference calculable to a percentage, anything multiplied by either one results in either infinity or nothing respectively, and neither one can have any number divided into them. Likewise good and evil both have similar characteristics, most notably that the depths of either one cannot be fathomed. The value of people like Mother Theresa can never be fully explored. The perverse ideas of mankind can't either. Every time we think we've found the most extreme example of something, someone has instantly found a way to top it. Two Girls One Cup is tame compared to some of the stuff coming out now. In fifty years, a video like that might be prime time television and God only knows what kind of crap will be out on the internet.

Have you ever looked at the Yin-Yang? Or water and oil? What separates them? The line in the Yin-Yang is black...or maybe it is white. Actually the line doesn't even exist. The two are mutually exclusive of each other by their own nature. And as both are so vast and complex it really does fall to the individual to define these for himself. Yet at the same time it is defined for us logically.

The individual is the answer. If each of us is to seek what is right and wrong according to the circumstances of our own lives then this means that, by default, no one individual has the power to diminish the value of another. And when you step back to look at all the laws and codes that have been written, the ones that stand the test of time and are regarded as truly just are those that preserve the individual's worth. The Ten Commandments, for example, most of them are centered around the preservation of individuality. If you steal from someone, you are diminishing the value of that person's work. If you covet their possessions (which doesn't simply mean wanting what they have, it means you seek to deny them what they have), you are ignoring their value as an individual. If you kill them, I would hope this one would be self-explanatory.

Ultimately, good is what builds up the individual and evil is what tears down the individual.

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That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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Wow, Nilrem, someone read their Nietzsche.

Like Nilrem indicates, what makes something "good" or "bad/evil" is very hard to establish. It is still a very hot topic in ethical theories, and in meta-ethics, perhaps the only persistent problem.
Some theories hold that some traits and actions are inherently good or bad (Aristotle's virtues, Immanuel Kant's pre-deontological system); whereas others hold that the value of an action or trait is entirely context-dependent (Utilitarianism, for instance), and something is morally defensible so long as it ensure the good of the majority of those implicated - for instance, killing 1 person in order to save 2 others is justified within this framework.

The general dichotomy here is that between anti-consequentialism and consequentialism, respectively. The core issue that arises from this dichotomy is exactly the claim of "objectively" good or bad things - because consequentialist approaches are plausible, this questions the steadfastness of virtues and the Good with a capital C.
So if the Good is not some "entity" in itself, but merely a subjective ascription, how do we ensure the functionality of society? If it is entirely up to the individual to determine what is the right thing to do, then no-one would essentially be safe from the harm of others, and everyone would be justified in harming others, because the formulation of their ethical guidelines were entirely up to them.

This is why social contracts are important for a given society - even if there is no objectively true Good, humans still need some sense of order and control to feel safe, and to know that someone who violates them cannot do so without consequences.
So, even if it is unclear what exactly makes something "morally just", if there is such a thing in the first place, we still have good reason to claim that there is indeed such a thing, and to set forth some boundaries for what is acceptable behaviour.

I actually haven't read his works. I know that Hitler used Nietzsche's conclusions to justify many things. After all if God is dead, as Nietzsche claimed, then man is set to make their own standards of right and wrong.

However if you read my original post again, I concluded that good & evil / right & wrong are both individually sought AND absolute standards. It is not a dichotomy, it's a duality.

If every individual is free to determine what is right and wrong, then that means that each individual's worth must be respected. Things that harm or devalue an individual therefore become absolutely wrong. That includes the sin of pride. It is not possible for you to unilaterally increase your own value. Taking a dollar from your right pocket and placing it in your left, while the IRS might try to count that as income, actually profits you nothing. Many people try this but end up devaluing the person next to them. We see this in liberalism/socialism. Where a poor conservative looks at a rich man and says, "I want to be like him." a poor liberal looks at that same rich man and says, "I want to make him be like me."

And people like to quote that saying from Star Trek, possibly elsewhere, that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. That has a limit as well. It cannot be used to justify things like Dr. Mengele's experiments. The first axiom of mathematics is that the whole is equal to the sum of the parts. And the only number with any value whatsoever is the number one.

Each of these ones in the sequence below has the same value. Added up they make 10, the whole of society.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 = 10

But let's say we need to treat someone different so that the group can be improved. We're going to make one of them have less value to benefit the others by increasing their worth by 0.1 at the expense of his worth.

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 = 9.9

And what do you know? Society became damaged by trying to fix its own problem at the expense of one of its own. That is the danger of disregarding individuals.

_________________
That which doesn't kill you, disappoints me.

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You are incorrect that each individual's worth must be respected if everyone is free to determine what is right an wrong.

Your argument seems to reflect Kant's categorical imperatives:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."
"Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end."
"[T]he third practical principle follows [from the first two] as the ultimate condition of their harmony with practical reason: the idea of the will of every rational being as a universally legislating will."

(Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals)

But each individual need not find it right to act in accordance with rationality in Kant's sense - they may just want to achieve extreme wealth at the expense of everyone else, or whatever their maxims may be.
Your argument takes as a premise that every individual acts in accordance with Kant's framework, which does not automatically follow from the radical sort of freedom in question - it is rather a sort of pure state of nature as defined by Thomas Hobbes.

And the Nazi interpretations of Nietzsche are horribly misguided - his term "Übermensch" has nothing to do with one "race" within the human species being better than others, genetically or otherwise, but refers simply to a person who has transcended the limited or blinded intellectual capacities of humans in general.

Wow, this went way deeper than what I posted on Discord of which I will repost here. Please, it is only my opinion. When given this topic, this is what flows out.

Oh MC, what a deep question. I have my opinion formed over my 63 years of life experiences, of which I’ve been on both sides of the issue. I’ve been bad. Loved it then, doing actions without guilt and rebelling against all the authorities over me, knowing I was right and they were wrong. I hurt people and smiled when I got over on them.
Then I knew what was Good. Not to get on a religious discussion, but I understood the “bad” and felt all the guilt of my actions. While I’ll never be “good” I know what it is like now, and it now guides my actions.
Yes guys, good and bad are definable. I’ve lived both. I struggle with both each day, wrestling to do good against the temptation to do bad. Bad is an addiction that I wish I’d never mainlined. Good is a target which I fall so short in hitting.
R/Jim

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Why so serious, let me put a smile on that face.