/siberia/ - Off-topic

then nothing changes

>Weakness is evil
This has been the paradigm for the entire course of human thought. Nothing changes OP

i have been pondering the essence of morality recently. what is "it"? i conclude that morality is defined by loyalty - to a tribe, a race, a species, or kin - but a loyalty which excludes an other. i formulated this in pondering "the moral law". the law is universal, yet it must be actionable by an agent beyond the law (what carl schmitt calls "the sovereign"). for example, murder is evil - but you would NEVER tell the police if your best friend murdered somebody. this loyalty then brings a distinction, between those within and without our own "exception" to the moral law - morality then only applies to those with whom we hold disloyalty. we judge the crowd, but if we see a familiar face, we suddenly change our attitude. we see attractive women, but we see our wife and the world becomes enclosed around her. its this exception we make which defines who is exempt from our natural judgement of things. in the animal kingdom it is the same; a species feeds on another, not its own (in most cases). love then, is selfish. kindness to one person is cruelty to another. we may base this in laws of energy conservation; light is a concentration of energy, while darkness is an absence; a cold which absorbs and eliminates light and heat. if we spread ourselves too wide, we lose energy conservation, and so we condense into nothing. if i love "the world" i lose myself to an abstraction; i become dispossessed, and the world that i love rules over me with hatred and abuse. in this world, no universal proposition holds, for the universal depends upon its own contradictory particularity.

a demonstration of this conditional morality can be shown in the hypothetical:
>a house is burning down. in it is a human child and a puppy. you can only save one, which is it?
either way, you have to justify your position. presumed in the universalist position is an equality of value, but in practice, some are "more equal than others". for the stubborn and senseless universalist, ask:
>in this house are 100 dogs and your own mother, which do you save?
in the end, morality is based on conditional preference. both options can be bad, but some are worse than others.

>nature itself is what is informing us about what is good* or bad*
Both materialism and animism concur with if you swap out "good and bad" for ethical, and neither need a god or deity to come to that conclusion.

>>669943
>if you swap out "good and bad" for ethical
whats the difference?

>>669943
What is powerful and succeeds in the world has historically rarely been ethical, so no.

as schopenhauer says, morality must oppose life for it to be truly righteous. this revolt against nature is the source of the greatest suffering. if instead there is no transcendence, but only immanence, denying the world is revealed for what it must be; an excuse for weakness. yet, it is the sign of the priest to be sublimely humble. this radical debasement is a strength of its own; an internal strength. nature then, does not end its movement, but may invert its movement instead. the mind, for example, is an inversion of the world; an inner universe. the priest then is inwardly strong if he holds to his asceticism. this is the purchase of morality, which leads to all further social development.

>>669943
If an atheistic materialism was the correct description of the world then we definitely should aim for moral decisions instead. The difference in involving God to make the point in the OP is that there would then be meaning in the cruelty of this world instead of this massive contradiction to an allegedly moral and loving God putting us here. It also solves the dillema religions had thus far regarding what happens to people who didn't have contact with the right religion. Their ignorance makes it unfair for an allegedly loving God to damn them to hell for not knowing better. With nature being the informant of God's will, however, everyone would figure out what they have to do because you are always bombarded with the message that it's the strong and resilient that survive and attain a good life, while weak or strictly moral people draw the short end of the stick.

>>669929
>I'm sorry to get fake deep here but what if there is a God and nature itself is what is informing us about what is good or bad
Lol I was thinking about this yesterday and was almost going to make a very similar thread. I think a better word than good is intelligence.
>What if humanity was entirely misguided in fabricating moral principles that stand in contradiction with what actually is supposed to make it in this world. What if pain, power and triumph are the kernel of this world that God purposefully selected and as such has been unambiguously communicated through nature and life itself to all people in every epoch?
I agree to some extent but not exactly. It's not just about what is "supposed to make it" like survival of the fittest. With greater intelligence, the scope of what is possible or what should be done for any living being widens and simple questions like survival become trivial and higher order needs come into play. One of these higher order needs is to be "good" you could say, or to act "ethically."

>>669964
I think speculation on what happens after death is pointless, because nobody has been able to provide even an inkling of proof. There is no real logical way for anyone to prove it that we know of. I actually believe in metaphysics or the spirit or something like that, but I'm only interested in investigating it in our current living reality. I think any mumbo jumbo about life after death is not worth anyone's time, even though I believe life after death and reincarnation might be likely.

>>669973
And what we call evil, is just insanity, or a subversion of intelligence. You know just like how someone can be intelligent and OCD or schizophrenic or something, and have a lot of rationality, but then in another moment or situation, act very irrational.

Like take for example lying. It's just better not to lie. It's better for yourself. When you lie, you have to keep a whole second fake reality in your head so you can be consistent with your lie, and even then you always will live with the anxiety that you will be caught in your lie, the anxiety that people will no longer believe you anymore because you're now known as a liar. It's just simpler and better for you to do good.

>>669983
your mistake here is attempting to unify intelligence as a single mode of competent activity. nature is pluralistic, so has entirely relative standards of fitness.

>>669983
liars often succeed in life. doesnt that show their natural fitness?

>>669973
>With greater intelligence, the scope of what is possible or what should be done for any living being widens and simple questions like survival become trivial and higher order needs come into play. One of these higher order needs is to be "good" you could say, or to act "ethically."
People don‘t only behave immoral when it‘s about survival. Plenty of people have their survival guaranteed in this day and age and they still behave immorally. I agree that people then focus on higher order needs that are of a social and psychological quality, but like predators in the wild they sacrifice the well being of another to gain something for themselves. You see it in day to day social politics of any social circle, the ephemeral alliances people form and the intrigues that happen. Additionally, with our intelligence survival has become trivial, yes, but we accomplished that with worldwide exploitation with it being the most cruel in the third world and it happening all around us here. So, no, I don‘t think morality or ethics follows from intelligence. That seems rather optional and many people don‘t care about morality in itself but not experiencing harm. Not even that leads everyone to follow the Golden Rule.

>Like take for example lying. It's just better not to lie. It's better for yourself. When you lie, you have to keep a whole second fake reality in your head so you can be consistent with your lie, and even then you always will live with the anxiety that you will be caught in your lie, the anxiety that people will no longer believe you anymore because you're now known as a liar. It's just simpler and better for you to do good.
Depends on the situation and why the person would be inclined to lie. The benefits of lying can outweigh the costs of lying.

>>669989
I agree but I would rather say people with high social intelligence succeed in life, and that involves being good at deceiving and manipulating people. Appearing like a caring friend until a strategically better option comes along.

>>669992
so the difference between a good liar and a bad liar, then?

>>669946
You can make an ethical framework without starting from unformalized morality, like egoism.
>>669948
What has been unethical led to contradictions that would eventually lead to the downfall of those things.

>>669988
>your mistake here is attempting to unify intelligence as a single mode of competent activity. nature is pluralistic, so has entirely relative standards of fitness.
Humans are obviously orders of more intelligent than the next smartist animal, and that animal is orders of magnitude smarter than other animals and so on until you're on single celled life. I think we can all agree to that statement(if you are the type that would debate that, there is no point in discussion IMO.) So intelligence is rather objectively measurable at least to the extent I outlined.

>>670060
And a person, may act like an animal, off of instinct and hormones if their ability to access their higher order mind is diminished or severed.

>>670048
>you can make an ethical framework without starting from unformalized morality, like egoism.
what is the difference?
>>670060
>Humans are obviously orders of more intelligent than the next smartist animal
>next smartist animal
define "intelligence"