moralist Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 Yes, it most certainly does! Moral is also practical. (wink)Moral is indeed practical but moral is not everything. For example you have the money to buy an ice cream cone. Choosing which flavor is not a moral issue at all. It is an aesthetic matter and a matter of taste. Ba'al Chatzaf I'm so glad you emphasized this excellent point again, because it's well worth a response. The only true happiness is found in doing what's right. So genuinely enjoying the choice of an ice cream flavor is a natural consequence of the honest work it took to earn the money to buy it. Morality is at the root of every human endeavor. This is what defines us as being human. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 Morality is at the root of every human endeavor. This is what defines us as being human.No it isn't. You have a fixation on morality. Is it an obsession yet?Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 Morality is at the root of every human endeavor. This is what defines us as being human.No it isn't. You have a fixation on morality. Is it an obsession yet? Ba'al Chatzaf Oh, it's ~far~ beyond just a mere obsession, Baal. It is a love of my life. (smile) Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love.Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted August 9, 2013 Author Share Posted August 9, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love.Ba'al Chatzaf Or they want to love--or be loved by.--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love. Ba'al Chatzaf That isn't love. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 "for each man kills the thing he loves..."Wilde Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 9, 2013 Share Posted August 9, 2013 "for each man kills the thing he loves..." Wilde Oscar was also ~clueless~ as to what love is. You people are starting to creep me out. (wink) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 If you do not want to be creeped out, don't hang around here. The most innocuous reference will set us off.There was briefly a maniacally prolific poster here, Mr Benjamatic, who once mentioned that his father had told him he was "wilder than Oscar"That father was also a dictator and slave-owner, according to Mr B, a creature of unimaginable evil who wantonly destroyed his own son's creativity.This popped into my mind with the recent news about Amanda Bynes. Some here will conclude that she just did not eat properly.Be warned. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted August 10, 2013 Author Share Posted August 10, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love.Ba'al ChatzafThat isn't love.What is love?--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Again with the rhetorical questions, Brant.You know the answer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love. Ba'al Chatzaf That isn't love. What is love? --Brant Love is doing what is morally right. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 If you do not want to be creeped out, don't hang around here. The most innocuous reference will set us off. I noticed the fuses. It's odd to see insanity and murder being regarded as being so closely related to love. However, the popular egalitarian notion of equating immoral ugliness with moral beauty does go a long way in explaining why people are what they are. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 ugliness and beauty are cultural, not moral. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted August 10, 2013 Author Share Posted August 10, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love.Ba'al ChatzafThat isn't love. What is love?--BrantLove is doing what is morally right.Sounds good, but why?--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love. Ba'al Chatzaf That isn't love. What is love? --Brant Love is doing what is morally right. Sounds good, but why? --Brant Because it ~is~ good. And what ~is~ good ~is~ real. When you love someone you do what's right by them. Anything less isn't love... even if people call it love. And just to be clear. That definition of love excludes insanity and murder. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted August 10, 2013 Author Share Posted August 10, 2013 Men are often driven mad by the thing they love.Ba'al ChatzafThat isn't love. What is love?--BrantLove is doing what is morally right. Sounds good, but why?--BrantBecause it ~is~ good.And what ~is~ good ~is~ real.When you love someone you do what's right by them. Anything less isn't love... even if people call it love.And just to be clear. That definition of love excludes insanity and murder.Damn! Tautological land!--Brant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Giving up being a predator is not passivity, but an active choice to act contrary to human nature. Moving to a completely different set of cues puts you outside of the predator/prey drama altogether because you're responding to something else besides the world. You've spotted and explained well avoiding the false dichotomy of prey/predator. Fully agreed that it is an active choice. But, you sure have a downer on human nature! Our human nature is to do evil... and doing good is acting contrary to our nature. But over time as we continue to act contrary to our nature, doing good finds a home in us and gradually becomes our nature as we grow to love goodness, and whenever we genuinely love goodness of our own free choice... Heaven literally manifests Itself upon this Earth. It's at this basic metaphysical level where you'll constantly come up against objections. Well, that's half the fun of it. Here's a little mind experiment: Begin by accepting just for now 'man's nature' as rational, volitional and autonomous being (and nothing more) I'm tracking right with you... with the difference being that I accept goodness as being God's nature and not mine. However, by learning how to act contrary to my nature, God's goodness comes to live in me. and head in the opposite direction - away from "something else besides the world" - to 'everything that is in existence' (and no more). I hear you. I see it as there being two worlds, and they are like water and oil... all swirled around together but without actually combining. And I get to choose in which world I live as a consequence of my own actions. You see the point. Rather than contrary to, one is acting synonymously with, human nature and all nature. I live in a place that is on the border of "civilization" and raw open land, so I get to observe nature up close and personal... and man, I tell you, beautiful as it may be, it's animals killing and eating other animals. Everything alive is sucked into the food chain. We are meant for something of a higher order than nature... ...and it is possible for us to enjoy living ~in~ nature... without being ~of~ nature. Well. You're clear and candid, and that I appreciate. Nicely poetic turns of phrase, too. ;) But you portray an 'outside-in' aspect (i.e. goodness and God), a separational aspect (the man divorced from his wrongful intellect and his harmful emotions, roughly as you stated, elsewhere) and a hint of Original Sin ("human nature is to do evil"). Objectivism (atheistic, as you know) advances the individual and his consciousness as born 'tabula rasa' - and as a complete, self-sufficient 'package deal': a "rational animal". From his concept-forming mind - volitionally directing itself - his self-succouring morality, his emotional state contiguous with his mind, his sub-conscious containing no more than what was once conscious to him - all inclusive of his instinctual, physical and animal nature.* In other words, there aren't any breaches and ambivalences (or at the least, only of an impermanent nature). Whereas, what you describe is a being rife with conflicts and self-negations: dependent, but independent; corporeal, but mystical; of nature, but above nature; evil, but good. "Goodness" to O'ists isn't intrinsic (good: for whom, or what?) or a single, one-off choice (receiving God into one's life). *(I should add as disclaimer that I'm speaking -as ever- as an Objectivist thinker, not for Objectivism, per se. Any errors of interpretation are mine.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anthony Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 ugliness and beauty are cultural, not moral. So nobody picks up the tab or takes the credit? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brant Gaede Posted August 10, 2013 Author Share Posted August 10, 2013 ugliness and beauty are cultural, not moral.So nobody picks up the tab or takes the credit?You people are lost in the woods.--Brantor in the woods lost--at least I can't see my own way out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BaalChatzaf Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Love is caring more about the one you love than yourself.Sometimes this is not the most sane thing to do.Ba'al Chatzaf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caroljane Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 If the beloved is a finer, better person than the lover, then it is sane. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 ugliness and beauty are cultural, not moral. Those two are truly in the subjective eye of the beholder, which can either be right or wrong. What is subjectively chosen to be regarded as immorally ugly or morally beautiful by popular collective consensus can either agree or disagree with objective morality. Individuals can also subjectively choose for themselves whether to agree or disagree with the popular collective consensus. And because humans are subjective, they can only subjectively choose whether or not to act in agreement with objective morality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 Love is caring more about the one you love than yourself. Sometimes this is not the most sane thing to do. Ba'al Chatzaf Love is doing what's right by the one you love... ~as if~ they were yourself. Notice how that description removes the factor of self sacrificing martyrdom? Love is selfish because it is treating others ~as if~ they were yourself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moralist Posted August 10, 2013 Share Posted August 10, 2013 If the beloved is a finer, better person than the lover, then it is sane. That's true. Loving what is of a finer moral nature in another than in ourselves is what inspires us become a better people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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