BS: The difference between right and wrong..

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 10:35 PM

From a reading of the New Testament, Rapaire, I find it hard to believe that Jesus would hate anyone... ;-) That's just not his approach at all. Some of his followers might hate you, though, if you do something they don't agree with.

Bill - ARGH! Maybe next week.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 10:28 PM

The answers are all right in here.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Rapparee
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 09:51 PM

No. If you turn left to get someplace then right is left because left was right.

Are you looking for the absolutes, the basics, which transcend every culture and every set of mores and morals? In short, ethics? The things like "Don't kill anyone unnecessarily" and "Help the other guy"? Or things like "Jesus will hate you if you eat that"?

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: olddude
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 09:43 PM

Interesting take LH ..... good food for thought and research

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 08:49 PM

Another take:

Left is right. Right is wrong.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Bobert
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 08:23 PM

What Kendall said...

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 07:45 PM

Yes, when a society fails morally to a really drastic extent, then its general collapse is definitely on the way.

Governments as we now know them inevitably arose as human societies moved beyond a band or tribal stage, got much larger and more complicated, and started dealing in money, the printed word, property, trade, commerce, the creation of trained armies, and so on. You simply can't regulate and manage all that stuff without a modern government, so for us to pursue our present way of life government is not merely a choice...it's a necessity.

The breakdown of morality in society has, I think, occurred primarily due to people's constant quest to make more money...and they sacrifice normal morality in pursuit of that objective. Find almost any vice that is festering in a society, follow the trail back to how it got started, and you'll discover that someone stood to make a lot of money from starting it.

I don't believe, Oldude, that government is set up primarily "for (to secure and protect) individual freedoms". It would be really nice if it was, but I don't think it is. That's one of the things that a government concerns itself with, yes...because the public demands it...but it's not the essential or primary concern of a government.   It's a much secondary issue. The primary concern of government is to organize and manage a nation's commerce, its jurisdictional concerns, its hierarchical authority structures, its military concerns, its territorial concerns, and its body of law.

After they get all that in place...yeah...they'll give some thought to individual freedoms... ;-)

I don't believe, for example, that your American Revolution was fought primarily to secure individual rights. Uh-uh. That's the popular myth, but it wasn't the reality. The American Revolution was fought primarily over financial and jurisdictional issues between the Yankee traders and businessmen in New England and the British Crown. They fought that war over MONEY! The British crown could have avoided the whole mess had they had the sense to make the financial concessions that the New England traders wanted and not put a tax on various imported goods to the USA, but the Crown was too arrogant and set in its ways to realize how serious the situation was until matters got quite out of hand. They blew it.

I think you'd find that when it came to "individual rights", people in England and in Canada had just the same kind of individual rights on a day to day basis as Americans did in the years both before and following the American Revolution....and that has remained so to this day. Americans aren't any freer than Canadians or Englishmen, and they never have been in my opinion. When it comes to individual rights, we're pretty much dealing with the same basic situation.

The Revolutionaries, however, had a new government to found, and they had to strongly motivate the people who were being recruited to fight for them. They couldn't just say it was just about money and jurisictional issues...although "no taxation without representation" was a major slogan nonetheless. They had to put it in more dramatic terms. They had to say it was about "freedom", "liberty", and grand stuff like that. So they did. And it's been believed ever since.

Well, if you'd grown up in Canadian or English schools, you'd be perhaps surprised to find that the British are just as proud of their "individual freedoms" and their "liberty" as Americans are...and they figure it all began with the Magna Carta! ;-D

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: gnu
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 07:31 PM

The difference comes when people, as individuals, decide they will prosper for their their own benefit and for the benefit of their offspring at any cost.

It's simple... it's survival. And it's bolstered and justified by the crime and slime that pervades the very institutions that we look to for justice. The courts, the political systems, the politicians, the corporations, the banks, the religions... it's every wo/man for her/himself and screw everyone else.

It's pathetic, but it's simple... from the slums to the mansions. Been at it since human time began and it's gonna take a while yet to fix it. But, we always have hope.... I hope.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: olddude
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 07:25 PM

Captain says in 3 words what take me a paragraph ... LOL

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: kendall
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 07:18 PM

Simple. The Golden Rule.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: olddude
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 07:16 PM

Can't remember which one of the great philosophers said. It is a code of conduct that for a society to succeed must follow and those that don't will fail ...

Here is my take on US history, people ask me all the time what is government getting bigger what happened yada yada ... Well the government is set up for individual freedoms. In the past we had a code of moral conduct, I am not talking about Christian only, people of any faith followed something like the 10 commandments which were universal to a successful society ... If you have a moral code of conduct to follow, not based in law but based in either religion or humanity in general, you don't need new laws everyday ... if the code was followed ... you would not need a law to keep kids out of the factory because people won't do it. Why because it is wrong. But as the morality, the general code of conduct across all men of good will, christian or otherwise broke down, the hole created needed to be replaced by law.. hence more and more and more laws ... Right and wrong can be attributed to a code of conduct that is universal to a society of man that succeeds ... don't steal, don't kill ... if it doesn't exist or cultures that don't follow a guide of conduct as such., the society collapses and history has shown that

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Lox
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 07:00 PM

I'm right, you're wrong.

QED

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 06:45 PM

Right is when you limit your personal desires such that you do no harm, physical, material, or psychological, to others, while respecting also their right to satisfy their desires on the same basis.

Wrong then is self explanatory.

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Little Hawk
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 06:43 PM

We all have a strong basic instinct about it, Gs. We base it on concepts such as fairness, justice, honesty, the rule of law (though some laws are arguably unjust), helpful vs harmful intent, that sort of thing. We also base it on the concept of the Golden Rule...which is to treat others as you would honestly wish to be treated, were you put in their place.

People don't always know what's right and what's wrong, however. Sometimes they get confused by conflicting loyalties, politics, law, religion, family, financial pressures and considerations, command structure, patriotism, racial ideas, class consciousness, fear, and selfish concerns of all kinds.

So it's not as simple as it might seem at first glance.

I think that most people usually feel they are doing "the right thing" in the moment they do it, even when they do great harm. They may feel quite differently afterward, however, when they have seen the results of their actions.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Paul Burke
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 06:32 PM

Terry Pratchett had a good description of evil: when you treat a person as a thing.

Subject: RE: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: MarkS
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 06:01 PM

How about - right is when everybody does whatever they want, but without:

Violence
Coercion
Deception

Mark

Subject: BS: The difference between right and wrong..
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 09 Jun 10 - 05:58 PM

OK so people say we all know the difference between right and wrong... so what is the difference and how do we know?????