Why is murder wrong?

[Gesundheit]

@28 cm unbuffed No, that's not what I meant. Wrong and right, just like bad and good, are concepts of your own creation. You kill millions of bacteria every time you wash your hands, yet you don't think about karma or view hygiene as stupid. Bias is inherent in life. If you stopped being biased you'd die. Having morality serves you because it creates a relatively safer, or better put a more stable environment than the original 'survival for the fittest' environment. Your survival is enhanced by morality, so it's not a bug but a feature. That's not to make morality a limitation for your potential, you can definitely break it whenever you want. Just understand what morality is. Have a direct consciousness of what it actually is, and you'll understand.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Gesundheit

[28 cm unbuffed]

@Gesundheit Sounds pretty fucking interesting, could you please briefly explain it using murder example?

[Gesundheit]

@28 cm unbuffed What are your thoughts on self-defence? Would you murder an attacker or not?

[28 cm unbuffed]

@Gesundheit I get it, if it was for my survival, then my logic is that it was the right thing to do. Right?

[Gesundheit]

@28 cm unbuffed I don't know what your logic is. Maybe you would let the attacker go, or call the police, or maybe you'd let him kill you. I don't know. You determine what's right and what's wrong.

[Boethius]

@Vagos In killing this person your friend would become a murderer. It's one thing to engage in abstract, intellectual thought experiments on these sorts of topics, but watch some videos made by former US soldiers who took lives in Iraq or Afghanistan to see what murder does to a person.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Boethius

[Opo]

How many times can i press it before inflation kicks in? 

Edit: fck money this is impossible. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Opo

[Apparition of Jack]

@Opo 14

[Carl-Richard]

Murder can be wrong relative to a set of beliefs/constraints, but it's not wrong in an absolute sense. Here she has chosen the belief that needless suffering is wrong, which constrains whether or not she thinks it's ok to murder someone, and it's all relative. Needless suffering is not wrong in an absolute sense. You can keep adding different constraints ad nauseum to justify your actions, but the absolute cannot be constrained. An additional common belief that is relevant in this case is the idea that someone's potential future positive experiences have some value, and to kill them would be to rob them from those experiences. Granted, they won't necessarily experience the suffering associated with acknowledging that fact, but it's still a valid point nonetheless.

Edited July 13, 2020 by Carl-Richard

[Nak Khid]

  On 7/13/2020 at 7:19 AM, Vagos said:

 

Her: So why wouldn't that apply in the future event of them painlessly killing a homeless person with no human connections? Basically isn't that as well an act of Love from their perspective? Why would that be a scenario to be avoided? Isn't destroying the whole Earth really an act of unconditional Love as much as it is to save it? 

At this point I had to admit that she was right since I did not see a mistake in her thought process but for some reason I'm still not convinced that this is the case.

Would love to hear @Leo Gura 's opinion on this. Thanks!

Suppose there was a belligerent homeless person who slept in your yard.  You kick them out but they keep returning night after night,
They smell and the go to the bathroom on your lawn and leave garbage there
And the police are not doing anything about it, or maybe there are just no police around at all. 
The homeless person has told you they have no relatives that care about them. 
So she saying murdering them would be justified and philanthropic 

 

[Display_Name]

  On 7/17/2020 at 4:15 PM, Myioko said:

No. What’s the difference between killing someone directly, and killing someone on purpose indirectly? 

Maybe I just lack a sense of humour but I always answer seriously to these types of questions. I remember when I was in 2nd grade we all asked each other ‘would you rather cut off a limb, or never use the computer again?’ and everyone besides me chose cut off a limb. I was like, seriously you guys?! 

Maybe killing someone without connections isn’t inherently bad, but I feel like it goes against all that is beautiful in the world, like knocking down an ancient historical building. It’s very destructive and chaotic.

So what about all the people dying that you could have saved with 100 million?

Was that one life worth more to you?

Do you think there is an effective difference in your responsibility?

[Nak Khid]

  On 7/17/2020 at 5:28 PM, Moon said:

there's a difference between ACTIVELY killing someone (murder) rather than passively knowing people are dying (not murder) 

But I guess in the absolute sense, it's all "love" 

So is murder love ?

Not "love" . love without the quotes

Edited July 17, 2020 by Nak Khid

[Nak Khid]

Definition of wrong

 wrong

1a: an injurious, unfair, or unjust act : action or conduct inflicting harm without due provocation or just cause

[Roy]

Murder is great if you're the murderer and you benefit from killing someone!

Murder sucks quite a bit if you're the one getting killed.

It's relative! Right and wrong are simply from whatever perspective you currently occupy.

Edited July 17, 2020 by Roy

[Nak Khid]

 

 

  On 7/13/2020 at 7:19 AM, Vagos said:

 

 

Her: Since death seen from a non-dual perspective can not be regarded as something wrong or bad and that since for something to be wrong or bad it has to produce and be connected with suffering and pain, usual death is only bad for the people left behind that lose their loved one and not for the victim itself. Therefore in the hypothetical scenario that the individual does not have any friends/family left behind there is nothing wrong with killing them.

 

It is also wrong to kill somebody and deprive them from living the rest of their life,
even if you kill them by a painless method 
the obvious answer to this 

Edited July 17, 2020 by Nak Khid

[Display_Name]

  On 7/17/2020 at 5:28 PM, Moon said:

there's a difference between ACTIVELY killing someone (murder) rather than passively knowing people are dying (not murder) 

But I guess in the absolute sense, it's all "love" 

Of course that’s our automatic response to absolve responsibility and retain self image. But I wouldn’t be quite so sure about it. In both cases you have power of someone’s continued life or death. 

In the end, life is a game of sacrifice. Other things die for us to live, whether we’re conscious of it or not.

[seriousman24]

Let me start of by mentioning that I'm a lower form of life aka stage orange so I can't be responsible for what I'm typing

You can just ignore all concepts and all patterns of physical reality and replace them with the inner abstraction of pleasure and pain; just make being murdered pleasurable in all it's complex dimensional detail(physical/mental/emotional) and murdering pleasurable.

I will leave the feasibility/stability/logic of it for you to figure out, one of the questions I always asked myself was if it was possible for sentience to act the exact same way if all pain was replaced with different shades of pleasure since it sounds like a nice design but yeah I guess it really is all a spiral, it's scary how it goes on for infinity anything can be broken at any level

Murder and being murdered should be fun but I guess it isn't because there really are reasons if you wanna call it that; it might not be possible to have this much diversity of "others" if it was majorly just shades of pleasure driving our actions instead of pain which seems more "defined";

what would sentience be like in a dimension with only pleasure versus one with only pain is that even possible; it seems like a sentience submerged in a pleasure realm might instantly lose consciousness and therefore be forced to awake in a less pleasurable one while the pain one wouldn't be even able to exist physically for a single moment; anyway I'm really sorry for the disjointed thoughts I'll stop here

[Jacobsrw]

  On 7/13/2020 at 7:19 AM, Vagos said:

I was having a discussion on Saturday with a smart, caring, otherwise philanthropist friend that is also on the path to enlightenment and self actualization that believed murder is not inherently wrong provided that the individual being killed does not have any relatives/friends and is killed instantly.

The dialog went somewhat like this:

 

Her: Since death seen from a non-dual perspective can not be regarded as something wrong or bad and that since for something to be wrong or bad it has to produce and be connected with suffering and pain, usual death is only bad for the people left behind that lose their loved one and not for the victim itself. Therefore in the hypothetical scenario that the individual does not have any friends/family left behind there is nothing wrong with killing them.

Me: This action is coming from a problematic consciousness of Egoic perspective, not from an enlightened human being. An enlightened human being does not have any interest in specific future outcomes and constantly surrenders to every present moment whatever that might be. So they do not have any reason to kill someone, there is no interest for them in that.

Her: Nevertheless them/their body performs actions like eating, walking and so on, doesn't that have a purpose? 

Me: Yes, although from their perspective every purpose is game-like and not a serious rigid purpose like other people have. They/their body will still choose a narrative to live in, through making decisions like walking etc (brought up Jung's jokester archetype also) but they would gladly take every future event as happily as the next one.

Her: So why wouldn't that apply in the future event of them painlessly killing a homeless person with no human connections? Basically isn't that as well an act of Love from their perspective? Why would that be a scenario to be avoided? Isn't destroying the whole Earth really an act of unconditional Love as much as it is to save it? 

At this point I had to admit that she was right since I did not see a mistake in her thought process but for some reason I'm still not convinced that this is the case.

Would love to hear @Leo Gura 's opinion on this. Thanks!

Your friends argument is flawed. It assumes wrong and right is predicated on the suffering of others. Suffering does not amount to a law of morality. Suffering is a self created superimposition of the mind. If the mind maintains no position from which to refer itself suffering cannot exists. Since suffering is the preference of one position over another it is just an arbitrary line drawn which self aggrandises ego. Therefore, the morality of right and wrong does not exist. It is created by the mind, for the purposes of mind and is justified using logic of the mind.

Right and wrong are illusions. All that exists is survival. Whether something impinges on your survival or not is completely irrelevant to wether it is right or wrong. Right and wrong are arbitrary notions.

Edited July 18, 2020 by Jacobsrw

[Nak Khid]

  On 7/18/2020 at 3:45 PM, Jacobsrw said:

 

Right and wrong are illusions. All that exists is survival. Whether something impinges on your survival or not is completely irrelevant to weather it is right or wrong. Right and wrong are arbitrary notions.

Right and wrong are not arbitrary they are related to survival.  

To say survival exists is not a precise statement. It would be more accurate to say animals exist and have a survival instinct . 
Since survival is not a thing although the word is a noun.   
That things exist, survival instincts etc,  would exclude those people who claim nothing exists all is illusion. or imaginary. 

  Quote

If the mind maintains no position from which to refer itself suffering cannot exists. Since suffering is the preference of one position over another 

If one gets pain in the stomach it is not a matter of preference. Chemical signals are delivered to the brain and  the discomfort produced suffering which is a physical survival mechanism.  The signal indicates to the person something is physically wrong internally and needs to be addressed. If you don't this uncomfortable suffering continues like an alarm bell. 

Prohibition on murder is not an arbitrary notion.  "Wrongs" are considered to be something that puts a person's life or well being at stake. 
So if murder was made legal people would not feel safe and they would have good reason not to.  So it's not an arbitrary notion. 

[Jacobsrw]

  On 7/18/2020 at 5:12 PM, Nak Khid said:

To say survival exists is not a precise statement. It would be more accurate to say animals exist and have a survival instinct . 
Since survival is not a thing although the word is a noun.   
That things exist, survival instincts etc,  would exclude those people who claim nothing exists all is illusion. or imaginary. Right and wrong are not arbitrary they are related to survival.  

If one gets pain in the stomach it is not a matter of preference. Chemical signals are delivered to the brain and  the discomfort produced suffering which is a physical survival mechanism.  The signal indicates to the person something is physically wrong internally and needs to be addressed. If you don't this uncomfortable suffering continues like an alarm bell. 

Prohibition on murder is not an arbitrary notion.  "Wrongs" are considered to be something that puts a person's life or well being at stake. 
So if murder was made legal people would not feel safe and they would have good reason not to.  So it's not an arbitrary notion. 

Right and wrong are arbitrary by the very fact that survival is relative. If you change the desire in which way you wish to live then so too do you change notion of right wrong. Thus, it is arbitrary and not absolute. You are privileging conventional evolution as a means to justify morality. This is a groundless thing to do.

Each being is equipped with survival presets that are conditioned. Had you not been equipped with them and the ideals that they are important, you would not yearn to up hold them. One can at any time change their survival desire by changing their identity. Eg. Monks can train them self to survive with little food and eat irregularly compared to the the ordinary preset. Some can desire death over living and this overrides their instinct to live, ie. suicide bombers. People with DID or personality complexities can detach the conditioned impulse to survive as a conventional human. Just because many of us do not do this, does not mean survival is an absolute. It means we have assumed a best way to live according to our identity.

Survival is relative to what you have identified with and does not measure right wrong. You mind is what creates this distinction and that too is arbitrary.

  On 7/18/2020 at 5:12 PM, Nak Khid said:

If one gets pain in the stomach it is not a matter of preference. Chemical signals are delivered to the brain and  the discomfort produced suffering which is a physical survival mechanism.  The signal indicates to the person something is physically wrong internally and needs to be addressed. If you don't this uncomfortable suffering continues like an alarm bell. 

Prohibition on murder is not an arbitrary notion.  "Wrongs" are considered to be something that puts a person's life or well being at stake. 
So if murder was made legal people would not feel safe and they would have good reason not to.  So it's not an arbitrary notion. 

The idea of ‘instinct’ is it’s self relative. The meanings you apply to them, “chemical signals” , is also arbitrary created by the mind. They do not exist in reality as an absolute but in the mind which self created them. No mind, no distinctions.

People would only feel unsafe because they have been programmed to fear being hurt. The idea of pain is attached to the idea of ones physical safety being impinged on, “the body will be hurt”, again you identified with the body. Safety is relative to the position the mind has made in what is safe and what is not. Again arbitrary. Ask someone from a third world country if walking barefoot or hearing shooting nearby is safe; they are so normalised by it that safety has a a completely different meaning to them. Survival = relative = morality = arbitrary.

Edited July 18, 2020 by Jacobsrw