So, I’ve been chatting with my buddies lately, and it’s turned into a bunch of debates about right and wrong. I think I have a pretty solid moral compass, I’m not bragging haha, but most people I know can’t really explain why something’s right or wrong without getting all circular or contradicting themselves.
So, how do you figure out what to do? No judgment, just curious. I’ll share my thoughts below.
Thanks!
Edit: Oh, all you lil’ philosophers have brought me a cornicopia of thoughts and ideas. I’m going to take my time responding, I’m like Treebeard, never wanna be hasty.
Do no harm but take no shit.
I’m going to die.
That’s it. There’s not much I’m really certain of, but I’m pretty damn certain that I’m going to die.
So I ask myself - how do I want to live my life in light of this fact?
if there is meaning to your choices, except that which you assign to it, you cannot know it. do as you please, do what feels right or don’t. accepting everything may not lead to happiness, but, other than the necessary mental faculties, it is the only requirement for contentment.
Pushing 4 decades, and the older I get the more I try to live by a philosophy of: be the person you wish you had when you were in their shoes.
Biggest thing is school right now: I did the college thing a bit a long time ago, struggled academically and financially, joined the military instead, separated, and now I’m back for round 2 using the GI Bill. I try to generate as many resources for my classmates as possible, run study groups, host group chats, send out reminders… The VA gives me a stipend for supplies each semester, which I’ll use in it’s entirety and give those supplies to the class. At clinicals (on-the-job education - nursing school) I’ve noticed a few students don’t eat cuz weren’t able to pack a lunch and hospital cafeteria food is WAY expensive for the average broke-ass college student, so I’ll cover the odd meal and tell em to just pay it forward once they get their RN. Shit like that. Kinda feels like I have 50 sons and daughters lol. But I remember my first attempt at college and how overwhelming everything felt… idk if having a ‘me’ would have made any difference in the outcome of round 1 - can’t make the horse drink and all - but if I can hook these kids up with an easier ride, then fuck yeah I’ll do what I can!
I try to apply that kind of approach to pretty much any context - be it school, work, or just random encounters with people.
Feels good to be helpful.
This is the best advice I’ve heard in a long while
This fits very nicely in my belief system as well. For me the reason to life is to make it simpler/easier for the people who come after me. And thinking about what I needed and supplying that to others is a very nice way to achieve this. Although this could sometimes lead to doing something that is not needed (anymore), but even then showing others that helping others is a nice thing to do is worth a lot.
I start with my ideal, which is “I want the most amount of people to be as content as possible for as long as possible.”
Then I build a heirarchy of groups in relation to the ideal, and it comes out in stepped groups, starting with me, immediate family, social group (further family, friends, colleagues), local community, government, humanity. This set allows me to target my focus, if Im content and safe, I can focus on helping my family be the same, and each level builds up to and allows for the next.
Now I can identify where to focus i need rules on how to act, i know what my goals is, but i need to make sure my actions arent counter to goal in some way, a set of rules like commandments (that can only be divined through experience) mitigate the possibility. Christianity does a good job of picking out the things that are counter to my ideal as it is, so mine are basically modelled after that.
- No killing
- No stealing
- Dont lie
- Dont covet
- No adultery (though I’d say this covers breaking any agreement/commitment made)
- There’s probably a couple more I’ve missed but I’m short on time
And for it to be fair for me to expect anyone else to follow the rules, i must first, this is the connection between rights and responsibilities If I want to claim a right, it is my responsibility to ensure others receives that right.
So basically I know if I follow that schedule, I really cant consciously do any wrong and can sleep right knowing I mad the best decision.
Let mek now if Im being incoherent anywhere, happy to discuss whatever.
I personally like the Buddhist version, the 5 precepts. There’s quite a bit of overlap, but one interesting difference is that as far as I know they’re not framed as commandments, but rather as guidelines to be voluntarily undertaken if you wish to reduce suffering in the world.
Dont break the weekend safety brief.
- Do not add to the population
- Do not subtract from the population
- Do not end up in the newspaper, hospital or jail. – If you do end up in jail, establish dominance quickly.
Obviosuly this a a comedic response but it covers most of the bases.
Hmm…let’s put this in perspective. We live in a tiny dot flying around a cosmic sized flushing toilet bowl that is it self flying around a larger flushing toilet bowl… Both have centers that either melt everything and or stretch it til the atoms break apart…or both. We are direct descendants of life forms…not animals perhaps but life forms who appeared from random motion and electric volts and radiation in and around a primordial mix of random liquid shit. And we are the 1 second before midnight if the entire earth had been around for an entire day. In short we are nothing. Who cares if some guy wants tariffs on China while raping someone during a celebration for a new pope. However…if you lived here, your entire puny life trapped inside a calcium basket full of your own meat and guts with 8 other billion people in the same conditions, I would much rather it be a happy blip than a blip filled with and torture. And lots and lots of sex. If you’re 21, my recommendation as a working professional who designs and builds really freaking cool gadgets is to go find someone to fuck pronto. And fuck. A lot. Use protection, don’t have kids unless you want to. But just make love day and night. Once you turn 35 make some goals for the rest of your blip. Then spend the rest of your blip. Thru all, make your self happy and make others happy. Just help each other. It serves no one if you live the tiny puny piece of time pissed off and you piss off others.
Be the person Captain Picard would want you to be.
Love me some JL. “Tea. Earl grey. Hot.”
I try to live my life happily while causing the least negative impact for others.
Be kind
Don’t be a dick. Try to stay out of the kinds of trouble that cause extra paperwork.
Be kind to others and let go of attachments. Have lived a very happy and successful life by doing just those two things.
Wrong, IMO, is defined by the violation of the will of another.
That’s the common element to all things that are broadly considered wrong.
For instance, if somebody chooses to give you something, that’s a gift and it’s fine. But if you take that same something from them against their will, that’s stealing, and wrong. In both cases, the exact same thing happened - a thing went from being their possession to being yours. The difference - the thing that separates the right act from the wrong one - is that one was done according to the will of the other person, while the other was done contrary to their will.
And the same holds true consistently - assault, kidnapping, rape, even murder - none of them are characterized by what happens, but by the fact that it happens contrary to the will of the “victim.” And in fact, that’s what defines a “victim” - whatever has been done to them was done against their will.
And it should be noted that there’s an odd sort of relative aspect to this, since the exception to the rule is the violation of the rule.
What I mean by that is that if one decides to violate the will of another, one is instantly wrong, which essentially negates the requirement that ones will not be violated. Your will to violate the will of another not only can be but should be itself violated.
I also have an idea for reconciling the need for an effectively absolute set of moral standards with the fact that morality is necessarily subjective and relative, but that’d require another, and likely even longer, essay.
There’s a lot of nuance not mentioned. Coercion, duress, extortion. Nevertheless, as I read your reply, I’m reminded of Kiterunner, in which the anti hero’s dad explains that sin boils down to stealing: murder steals a life, adultery a spouse, etc.
So let’s start with a hypothetical scenario. (I know strawman, but we’re talking about meta levels of philosophy here and experiments like these usually serve very well to prove a point or contradiction in someone’s logic)
If there is a serial killer who can never be satisfied and can escape any sort of containment given enough time. Is it wrong to execute them?
That actially gets into the second thing I mentioned.
My view is that morality is best seen to function in a sort of math-like way - individual acts have a fixed moral value, and the moral value of an entire course of action is the “sum” of all of the relevant “integers” that make it up.
So, for instance taking the life of another contrary to their will has a negative moral value always. There are no exceptions - the value of that individual act is always negative.
However, protecting people from a known predator has a positive moral value, and similarly always has that value.
And depending on the severity of the threat and the severity of the response, it’s possible for the “sum” of those two acts to be positive, which is to say right, and even as the value of the individual act “taking the life of another contrary to their will” remains negative.
That’s not to say or imply that I believe that acts can be assigned actual numerical values - rather it’s just a way to conceptualize the matter - to hopefully provide the absolutism that morality needs to be even-handed while still allowing for the flexibility it needs to be useful.
So to your question - in and of itself, taking the life of another contrary to their will - even if that other is a serial killer - is wrong. However, protecting people from a known predator is in and of itself right. So the two need to be weighed against each other, and I would say that if the risk the killer poses is sufficiently great (certain or near enough to it to make no meaningful difference) and if there are no other at least equally certain methods to prevent future killing, then execution would be justifiable. Which is to say, executing him would have a positive moral vaue, in spite of the fact that taking the life of another contrary to their will always has a negative valie in and of itself.
There’s much more nuance to all of this - issues with the necessary unreliability and potential deliberate misrepresentation inherent in predicting the future, differences of opinion regarding the relative values of various acts and thus potentially the final value of the course of action as a whole, different methods for resolving disagreements on those things, and so on and on. But that’s grist for other mills.
I really like this response. This is how I approach it as well on a higher level.
However here we seemed to have glossed over “what is right and wrong” which is a very complex issue and might be biased by the observer.
Hobbes has touched on this subject and the whole construct of society as we know it in his book “The Leviathan”
What we might see as wrong in the case of the killer and their victims, on his end is just an expression of his free will. In his mind he might not be doing anything wrong, given different guidelines for moral or empathy. In fact he may not even consider his victims alive.
So we judge them based on our morals and views of good and evil. Are we correct or are they correct? Hobbes states that the morals of the majority are what we follow in a society. But it’s just something that we’ve constructed.
Edit: once again I’m using a case in where the situation is very obvious and clear cut. But think about when there is more nuance. A society views a certain race or species as a food source or livestock (think us and cows, or us and farmed fish) Are we correct or are we wrong to do what we do?
I think that the focus on the violation of the will of one by another defeats relativism.
The killer’s expression of his will is not simply something he is doing, but something he is doing to another, and the will of that other must have priority.
If the will of the person upon whom the act is committed isn’t held to be paramount, then the entire concept of interpersonal morality collapses. So an act that brings harm to another contrary to the will of that other must be seen to be wrong entirely regardless of one’s personal views on the matter
Note though that that’s subject to the essentially “mathematical” concept of morality I addressed elsewhere. That an act that brings harrm to another contrary to the will of that other is necessarily and without exception wrong does not preclude the possibility that it might be justified, if it serves to prevent a greater wrong or bring about a greater right - if it’s such that the negative value of the act in question is offset by a greater positive value, such that the “sum” of the specific “integers” that make up the entire course of action is positive.
Don’t be a dick.
Some of my moral principles
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Treat others how you think they would want to be treated, but not at all costs.
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You don’t have to like everyone, and not everyone has to like you. Although, being liked by others generally leads to having a better life.
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Avoid lying or “distorting the truth”. But, sometimes lying is necessary, like to keep a friend’s secret.
Some of my existential thoughts
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There are no permanent consequences other than death (I do not believe in an afterlife, although I find the concept interesting). There are no rules to follow, just temporary consequences you may have to deal with. You can make up your own rules and follow them, or not follow them.
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Perception is just a tool used by your brain (a small part of the universe) to process the chaos that is the universe. A similar universe could be described by a very complex particle simulation. That’s really cool.
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