Posted on 03/19/2010 1:04:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Too much of the current crop requires not only the willing suspension of disbelief, but also the willing suspension of intellectual and moral judgement.
Boothe and Voight being notable exceptions.
Powers Boothe has stated in several interviews that he is proud to live in this country and that he wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.That does my heart good,especially since I absolutely adore him!If he turned out to be another buffoon I’d be heartbroken.
It fascinates me, too! Thank you so very much for your encouragements!
Morality and fairness:
In the current study, Drs. Brosnan and de Waal made food-related exchanges with chimpanzees from groups that had lived together either their entire lives or a relatively short time (less than eight years). Animals were paired to determine how they would react when their partners received a superior reward (grapes) instead of a less-valued reward (cucumbers) for the same amount of work, considered an unfair situation. The researchers observed the chimpanzees in the close, long-term social groups were less likely to react negatively to the unfair situation than were the chimpanzees in the short-term social groups, who refused to work when their partners received a superior reward. Such a reaction is seen in humans who might react negatively to unfair situations with a stranger or enemy but not with a family member or friend.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/02/050212191635.htm
more here
Monkey cooperation and fairness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAFQ5kUHPkY
and
Chimpanzee Cooperation: Limitations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mL8OaCW1X5c
Morality is flimflam. Does this mean that you can just go out and rape and pillage, behave like an ancient Roman grabbing Sabine women? Not at all. I said that there are no grounds for being good. It doesn't follow that you should be bad."Morality is flimflam" is another way of saying, "I want to be in charge." ;') Thanks AdmSmith.
Cheers!
The twit forgot Easter. As usual.
More on this later, it's a "honey-do" day today after a 20-mile bike ride into the teeth of 25 mph winds.
My God, how I adore Minnesota weather!
Cheers!
First shot goes in his crotch.
Then aim for his head, while demanding why you shouldn't kill him.
"Existence is its own justification."
cf. Professor Frost's climatic speech to Mark Studdock in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength:
Mark...saw clearly that th emotives on which most men act, and which they dignify by the names of patriotism or duty to humanity, were mere products of the animal organism, varying according to the behaviour pattern of different communities. But he did not yet see what was to be substituted for these irrational motives. On what ground henceforward were actions to be justified or condemned?
"If one insists on putting the question in those terms," said Frost, "I think Waddington has given the best answer. Existence is its own justification. The tendency to developmental change which we call Evolution is justified by the fact that it is a general characteristic of biological entities. The present establishment of contact between the highest biological entities and the Macrobes is justified by the fact that it is occurring, and it ought to be increased because an increase is taking place."
"You think, then," said Mark, "that there would be no sense in asking whether the general tendency of the universe might be in the direction we should call Bad?"
"There could be no sense at all," said Frost. "The judgment you are trying to make turns out on inspection to be simply an expression of emotion. Huxley himself, could only express it by using emotive terms such as "gladiatorial" or "ruthless." I am referring to the famous Romanes lecture. When the so-called struggle for existence is seen simply as an actuarial theorem, we have, in Waddington's words, "a concept as unemotional as a definite integral" and the emotion disappears. With it disappears that preposterous idea of an external standard of value which the emotion produced."
"And the actual tendency of events," said Mark, would still be self-justified and in that sense 'good' when it was working for the extinction of all organic life, as it presently will?"
"Of course," replied Frost, "if you insist on formulating the problem in those terms. In reality the question is meaningless. It presupposes a means-and-end pattern of thought which descends from Aristotle, who in his turn was merely hypostatisizing elements in the experience of an iron-age agricultural community. Motives are not the causes of action but its by-products. You are merely wasting your time by considering them. When you have attained real objectivity you will recognize, not some motives, but all motives, as merely animal, subjective epiphenomena. You will then have no motives and you will find that you do not need them. Their place will be supplied by something else which you will presently understand better than you do now. So far from being impoverished your action will become much more efficient."
Cheers!
This says that there is no morality in a world without God. In short, it becomes a matter of whatever any person or group has the power to enforce for that moment in time.
Thank you so very much for that excerpt, dear grey_whiskers!
Never forget Ivan Karamazov’s observation: If there is no God, then all things are permissible. No God, no good or evil. The very idea of morality becomes senseless....
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