Mindmap - Good and Evil

[RichardY]

@Emerald

There is a part of me that sees that moral relativism makes perfect sense from a collectivist human point of view. I see it however as base enslavement, and not divine.  The fact other intelligent life forms would not be subject also dissuades me, I view humanity as corrupt and increasingly more so, in which case Nietzsche appeals far more to me, than moral relativism can. Ultimately someone has to come up with the idea of what is good and Evil, that is impossible in a morally relativist system. Although a notion may prevail, through a collective unconscious.

To answer morality in the affirmative in a concise way, not because I want to be righteous, but because I want to live. That would be something. I'd imagine that moral relativism would feel pretty good, but for some reason the sense of profound loss comes to mind, not from missing out, but that things should be better.

Duality. Yes I see better how I fall prey to such a thing and the various dichotomies you mentioned. Instead of Healthy and Unhealthy, or Sane and insane, perhaps there is only Health? Instead of weakness and strength only strength?

[Emerald]

17 minutes ago, RichardY said:

@Emerald

There is a part of me that sees that moral relativism makes perfect sense from a collectivist human point of view. I see it however as base enslavement, and not divine.  The fact other intelligent life forms would not be subject also dissuades me, I view humanity as corrupt and increasingly more so, in which case Nietzsche appeals far more to me, than moral relativism can. Ultimately someone has to come up with the idea of what is good and Evil, that is impossible in a morally relativist system. Although a notion may prevail, through a collective unconscious.

To answer morality in the affirmative in a concise way, not because I want to be righteous, but because I want to live. That would be something. I'd imagine that moral relativism would feel pretty good, but for some reason the sense of profound loss comes to mind, not from missing out, but that things should be better.

Duality. Yes I see better how I fall prey to such a thing and the various dichotomies you mentioned. Instead of Healthy and Unhealthy, or Sane and insane, perhaps there is only Health? Instead of weakness and strength only strength?

The reason why morality is relativistic is that it only exists on the level of relative truth. And relative truth is still valid from the paradigm of relative truth. In fact, on the level of relative truth it would be very unwise to base our social norms for behavior on the level of absolute truth. 

On the absolute level, there is no set morality. And on the absolute level, there is no good and evil. But this doesn't mean that a society should buck cultural norms around what is desirable and undesirable behavior. It's important that we discourage unhealthy, destructive, and suffering-inducing behavior and encourage behaviors that produce more social harmony. 

So, this realization of the inherent emptiness of good and evil within reality, isn't a conscription for behavior that's acceptable or unacceptable. All of that occurs on the paradigm level of relative truths.

So, to think that the realization of there being no good and evil is a conscription for what constitutes permissible behavior within a society is to mix paradigms. And since all paradigms are mutually exclusive, mixing paradigms lead to all sorts of folly.

There is a quote that refers to this folly of mixing paradigms and invalidating practical/relative truths in the realization of higher/absolute truths. The quote is, "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."

The quote means that practical and relative things within the illusion of duality still need to happen in order for life and society to continue working in a functional and healthy way. 

So, even if one realizes that all is an illusion and all is perfect and divine, there still needs to be practical work being done and the emotional and physical labor of it. 

The same is true for ethics and behaviors. Certainly, on the absolute level, there is no inherent value to anything. So, there is no good and evil from that level. But on the practical level, there are certainly behaviors that lead to dysfunction and suffering within individuals and society at large.

So, understanding what produces social harmony and encouraging it, while discouraging what gets in the way of social harmony and produces dysfunction is key to living the type of life that a human being most thrives in. And we need structures on the individual and social level to enforce and encourage a more harmonious social arrangement. 

We can't just have murderers running around in the street because on the absolute level, "There is no evil." Murderers running around in the street is inherently bad for human beings and our societies, if our primary goal is to live happily and healthfully. That is to take that truth out of its paradigm and use it foolishly in another paradigm where it is not true. 

So, don't use absolute truths to invalidate relative truths. Be able to hold space for the many perspectives, paradigms, and paradoxes that are key to the human perspective of interacting with reality. Then, you can receive truths from any paradigm and be wise enough to know which paradigm is most appropriate for the situation at hand.

 

Edited November 23, 2018 by Emerald

[RichardY]

17 hours ago, Emerald said:

The reason why morality is relativistic is that it only exists on the level of relative truth. And relative truth is still valid from the paradigm of relative truth. In fact, on the level of relative truth it would be very unwise to base our social norms for behavior on the level of absolute truth. 

On the absolute level, there is no set morality. And on the absolute level, there is no good and evil. But this doesn't mean that a society should buck cultural norms around what is desirable and undesirable behavior. It's important that we discourage unhealthy, destructive, and suffering-inducing behavior and encourage behaviors that produce more social harmony.

Islam supposedly is based on Absolute Truth & Morality, according to your logic followers of Islam are very unwise.

 

17 hours ago, Emerald said:

So, this realization of the inherent emptiness of good and evil within reality, isn't a conscription for behavior that's acceptable or unacceptable. All of that occurs on the paradigm level of relative truths.

So, to think that the realization of there being no good and evil is a conscription for what constitutes permissible behavior within a society is to mix paradigms. And since all paradigms are mutually exclusive, mixing paradigms lead to all sorts of folly.

 

I'd like to avoid chopping reality into multiple levels. It's having your cake and eating it to. Moral Relativism can't be defined in words. Good, Evil are labels or accusations and must come from something not morally relativistic to have meaning.

 

17 hours ago, Emerald said:

There is a quote that refers to this folly of mixing paradigms and invalidating practical/relative truths in the realization of higher/absolute truths. The quote is, "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water."

The quote means that practical and relative things within the illusion of duality still need to happen in order for life and society to continue working in a functional and healthy way. 

So, even if one realizes that all is an illusion and all is perfect and divine, there still needs to be practical work being done and the emotional and physical labor of it.

As a zen saying,  zen in general an Eastern conception of the unconscious.( I got the idea from listening to "The Genius of Being.") I think the Zen quote means quite the opposite.

If everything is one, how can the unconscious be a valid concept, my answer is, it can't. I did notice some similarities, with the beginning section of Jung's Aion and Leibniz's a discourse on Metaphysics.

If God is perfect, then to be a part of God, as an imperfect being that can experience, would invalidate it's existence.

17 hours ago, Emerald said:

The same is true for ethics and behaviors. Certainly, on the absolute level, there is no inherent value to anything. So, there is no good and evil from that level. But on the practical level, there are certainly behaviors that lead to dysfunction and suffering within individuals and society at large.

So, understanding what produces social harmony and encouraging it, while discouraging what gets in the way of social harmony and produces dysfunction is key to living the type of life that a human being most thrives in. And we need structures on the individual and social level to enforce and encourage a more harmonious social arrangement. 

We can't just have murderers running around in the street because on the absolute level, "There is no evil." Murderers running around in the street is inherently bad for human beings and our societies, if our primary goal is to live happily and healthfully. That is to take that truth out of its paradigm and use it foolishly in another paradigm where it is not true. 

So, don't use absolute truths to invalidate relative truths. Be able to hold space for the many perspectives, paradigms, and paradoxes that are key to the human perspective of interacting with reality. Then, you can receive truths from any paradigm and be wise enough to know which paradigm is most appropriate for the situation at hand.

 

Isn't it bad for the friends and families of those they murdered, and not inherently in society. Lot of people murder in War intentionally and unintentionally, should all soldiers be detained?

What if God is Good on the absolute level? So there is Absolute Good?

I more interested in Absolute or Transcendental truth morality, something like that. Not so much in appropriateness, personality wise, my agreeableness is Very Low. Morality only having value in a social situation.

I think true morality comes from not knowing, which would exclude Absolute morality because it knows, and moral relativism because it is meaningless in words, and presumes to know. Torn between amorality, and Transcendental Morality.

[Sockrattes]

@RichardY @Emerald

I honestly don't think moral is inherently relativistic. That's what Kant is denying.

According to him all morals and ethics can be summed up as a way to answer this question: "What should i do?"

This question can be answered in many ways:

Teleological philosophers like utilitarians are trying to answer this question by saying "i should do what is good", and then they go on and try to find out what "good" actually means. This is absolutely relativistic and therefore debatable.

But Kant or deontological philosophers in general have a totally different approach. He says "i should do what is RIGHT!" and then he establishes his categorical imperative. In this context it doesn't matter wether something is good or bad. Both can be right.

Edited November 24, 2018 by Sockrattes

[Emerald]

4 hours ago, RichardY said:

Islam supposedly is based on Absolute Truth & Morality, according to your logic followers of Islam are very unwise.

All human frameworks are by their very nature based in relative truth. The second things go through the human intellectual lens, they automatically become relativistic. This is true, even if the truths allude to the level of absolute truth. Absolute truth can be experienced in an absolute way, but can only be described and interpreted through the lens of relative truth.

4 hours ago, RichardY said:

I'd like to avoid chopping reality into multiple levels. It's having your cake and eating it to. Moral Relativism can't be defined in words. Good, Evil are labels or accusations and must come from something not morally relativistic to have meaning.

As a zen saying,  zen in general an Eastern conception of the unconscious.( I got the idea from listening to "The Genius of Being.") I think the Zen quote means quite the opposite.

If everything is one, how can the unconscious be a valid concept, my answer is, it can't. I did notice some similarities, with the beginning section of Jung's Aion and Leibniz's a discourse on Metaphysics.

If God is perfect, then to be a part of God, as an imperfect being that can experience, would invalidate it's existence.

Isn't it bad for the friends and families of those they murdered, and not inherently in society. Lot of people murder in War intentionally and unintentionally, should all soldiers be detained?

What if God is Good on the absolute level? So there is Absolute Good?

I more interested in Absolute or Transcendental truth morality, something like that. Not so much in appropriateness, personality wise, my agreeableness is Very Low. Morality only having value in a social situation.

I think true morality comes from not knowing, which would exclude Absolute morality because it knows, and moral relativism because it is meaningless in words, and presumes to know. Torn between amorality, and Transcendental Morality.

God is infinite. Therefore it is perfect... but within the absolute perfection exists the inherent imperfection of the relative. 

If you avoid viewing things from different frameworks, you will be blind to certain relative truths and awareness of the absolute. 

Good and evil are human concepts based in both universal and individual human preferences. So, it is based in the needs and wants of human beings. But it doesn't have anything to do with an absolute value, as human preference and absolute value are not the same thing. Human beings don't want to die, and may consider causes of death to be in the realm of evil. But from the absolute perspective, death is just another aspect of reality no better or worse than anything else. It is only human preference for living that makes death seem negative or "evil."

God is not just good. God is infinite. So, it is everything, good, bad, and ugly. But that's only to speak relativistically and from the human understanding of the world. On the ultimate level, God is perfect and is pure divine love. It abhors none... even if human beings don't like those things or they aversely affect our health.

But if you're looking for an absolute truth morality, you won't find it. But in finding the absolute truth and recognizing that all is one, there will be a natural compassion that springs forth and you will resonate at the level of perfect unconditional love. This is how realization of the absolute and resonating at perfect divine love tends to affect human emotions and behaviors.

When I had my experiences of ego transcendence and observed these things, I had an overwhelming amount of love for all things and my abilities for empathy and compassion were through the roof in a way that I was never capable when I was leaving it to my conscious mind to formulate ideas about morality.

Morality begets judgement and gets in the way of perfect unconditional love because it invalidates certain aspects of reality. And it creates distortions and blindspots that keep us from coming into resonance with that perfect love. So, counterintuitively, the way to more ethical actions is through letting go of the need to cling to particular morals or ideas of good and evil as meaning valid and invalid.

So, I think the main point to drive across here is to stop philosophizing and creating ideas and frameworks and seek to discover for yourselves @Sockrattes what good and evil is and isn't. And try to find something about reality that is actually invalid to exist. Can you empirically find something that "shouldn't" exist? 

[RichardY]

@Sockrattes

Without God, or with a Pantheistic God, morality is inherently relativistic, in the most primitive sense.

Talking packs of dogs or chimpanzees as an example, "Planet of the Apes" or the "Island of Dr Moreau", where animals are made into people and then regress. In this sense to articulate Good and Evil behaviour is pointless and meaningless, unless we are talking manipulation(a form of slavery), as I think Nietzsche was getting at in Beyond Good and Evil, and Genealogy of Morals.

I do however think a more developed form of morality, maybe preferable, such as Kant's Transcendental Morality.

Although I take note of your point that the focus is on being right, as opposed to "Good". The later would seem to suggest more about character. Hence Kant's warning about philosophy potentially making a person very Evil without a Goodwill.

I think Good can be a broad category, some might consider consciousness Good, another what they personally value, some the avoidance of pain, some the pursuit of suffering or perhaps some kind of universal Good.

[RichardY]

@Emerald

Evil is not a concept, idea or subjective interpretation. I believe it exists, perhaps as perception or notion for lack of a better word. I don't see something like death as negative or Evil.

Evil is not necessarily uniquely human. I think Good might be beyond conception to God, although parts of creation maybe conceptualised as Good by people.

Morality does not beget judgement at all, Morality is ultimately about not knowing, one thing Carl Jung said in his "Answer to Job" is that God is not moral if he is all knowing.

[Emerald]

11 minutes ago, RichardY said:

@Emerald

Evil is not a concept, idea or subjective interpretation. I believe it exists, perhaps as perception or notion for lack of a better word. I don't see something like death as negative or Evil.

Believe is the key word here. Don't believe anything. Go look for it and see what you find. I have personally found that reality is empty of good and evil as empirically observable phenomena. And I have found that everything is perfect. There is no combination of words that will talk me into trusting those words more than my own experiences.

You can tell me that the color blue is a figment of my imagination all you want. If I see blue all around me, then it's wisest for me to realize that blue is a phenomenological reality that I'm currently experiencing and not believe a person that is telling me that blue doesn't exist and all of their rationalization as to why they believe that it does not.

Also, what is a perception? What is a notion? Where do these things exist?

I am not interested in debating this in the philosophical sense or getting you to believe what I'm saying is true. Go out and observe beyond the fodder of the mind what "evil" actually is. You will never find out by making postulations about the nature of reality. It must be observed. 

[RichardY]

9 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Believe is the key word here. Don't believe anything. Go look for it and see what you find. I have personally found that reality is empty of good and evil as empirically observable phenomena. And I have found that everything is perfect. There is no combination of words that will talk me into trusting those words more than my own experiences.

You can tell me that the color blue is a figment of my imagination all you want. If I see blue all around me, then it's wisest for me to realize that blue is a phenomenological reality that I'm currently experiencing and not believe a person that is telling me that blue doesn't exist and all of their rationalization as to why they believe that it does not

You're telling me not to believe, but if everything is perfect my believe is fine.

There are recorded phenomena of some sort of concept of a void, or conception of absolute, Spinoza and John Stuart Mill, probably many many more.

Colour I think maybe in someway related to other factors such as the sensation of hot and cold, read something about it in Goethe Theory of Colours. Also if you shift your perception colours may appear redder or bluer as they move further away or closer towards, Red and Blue shift, perhaps like various holographic images.

I think believe, also relates to choice.
 

15 minutes ago, Emerald said:

Also, what is a perception? What is a notion? Where do these things exist?

Well a notion exists, such as a musical note, for example. Its not an idea or concept, you may not be able to perceive, or loss the perception of various notes however.

 

10 minutes ago, Emerald said:

I am not interested in debating this in the philosophical sense or getting you to believe what I'm saying is true. Go out and observe beyond the fodder of the mind what "evil" actually is. You will never find out by making postulations about the nature of reality. It must be observed. 

Well as you say it does not exist, your suggestion of observation is pointless.