Ha! No one can have a list of those, they’re unlimited, but I can name one of each for you if you like -
Responsibility - The doctor said (that you should listen to, hehehe!) that you should cut down on your caffeine intake and your smoking.
Not a responsibility - I’m low on gas but don’t feel like filling my tank today and if I won’t be having any of my car companions stranded tomorrow, then I get to decide what I want to do. Cheerio!
Very good examples BeenaJain.
It is somewhat confusing my theorem.
Not wanting to work for your food is ok, but not working will lead to starvation, so is one forced to work against his will? Yes, he is, but only because he can’t force someone to do his work for him.
There are things, food, shelter, clothing, CDs, etc, that one must work for if it’s only to manipulate others into doing it for you.
As an individual you must do for yourself. but as a society, each must be free to do, or not do, according to his own compulsions.
Anything less is not enough freedom for me.
A person wants to drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road… into oncoming traffic. He also wants to do this with coma patients strapped to the hood. They are brain dead and therefore have no idea what they “want” and don’t “want”.
A police officer forces this person off of the road after he has caused several fatalities and the authorities put him in prison for fifty years.
He is forced to stay in prison but does not want to be there. Are any of these wrong… or right?
Well im sure thats useing farming techniques, you are indeed forceing him to farm. I was talking about natural liveing. Precivilised egalitarian societies (whos priniciples you are mimicing) worked less than four hours per day. So to force him one way or another to do more than that is stealing his birthright as a human being.
Why do you consider inheritance valid? when it is based on conquest, crimes, and slavery- things you seem very much to be agianst. If you really want a force-free world, then you have to get rid of property. As propery is simply sytematied cohersion. I can hunt here, you can’t, and if you do, my friend Bob will beat the snot out of you. Thats a deed in a nutshell.
I’m just trying to make sure you don’t end up with some distopia where the methods of force are only more hidden and not truly eliminated. That we don’t end up with a smiley face sticker on opression.
You very nearly had me there, LostGuy, but how do we, without property/title/deed/ keep my cattle/car lot/fridge from being raided/hunted? If you want to live in a world with more amenities than caves and self-tanned hides, you are gonna need the ability to exclude leeches/parasites/non-producers from the cattle/corn/tobacco/factory or he will suck it dry. He’ll starve, I’ll starve, it’s just all bad.
If you can explain another way I’m listening.
Inheritence is just how good your genetic stock was. Sorry if your ancestors were improvident, mine were, too. Some folks’ stock was good enough at ‘business’ to amass fortunes long ago, good for them.?
It doesn’t make it right to steal it from them, even if they stole it first. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Got more reasons against inheritance?
GateControlTheory,
A person must be free to do exactly what he/she wants to do.
Doing it does not make it right.
If it’s wrong to do it to you, it’s wrong for you to do it to somebody else.
The criminal should be given to the victims of the crime.
It harms the population to rely on others(police) to solve your problems. Each individual should be self-reliant, and the neighbors should be as interested in a crime free neighborhood as you. Dens of Theives should be exposed, even when they give 100’s of millions to get King George, or Prospective King John, coronated.
Good people choose to do good, bad people choose to do bad. Who do you want to room with?
Without the choice to do wrong, doing right loses value.
When most everybody choses good over evil we’ll have world peace.
Well we are just comeing around to my orginial point. If you want a civilisation, the kind with french pastries, laptops, and over 40 different catagories of Porn, there is going to need to be some sort of force. Maybe it’s implied counter-factual force, but thats almost worse. To paraphrase one of your comercials, if the girl and her teen friends were instead so afraid of the consequences of burning down someone else’s barn, instantanous karma at the hands of the owner, that she never even thinks of lighting a firework than freedom has been lost not gained despite the lack of a police force.
[Well this is not completely true. There is also a possilbilty of a new technological abundance, where we invent fusion or something and the needs of everyone can be met by a dozen scientist who enjoy their work and replace themselves with robots. But this hardly needs to enter the discussion.]
Are you saying that the loss of negative behaviors is bad?
If she is responsible enough to safely handle as large of an explosive as she can create/purchase and isn’t chronically obnoxious to the neighbors, she is free to light the fuze. If she isn’t, and she shatters windows for blocks, she has wronged a number of people and should atone for her deeds. This would have to be negotiated among those involved.
Are you implying that stupid girls losing the impulse to play with things they don’t comprehend is somehow bad?
The only loss of freedom derived from instant karma is the freedom to harm others.
Bear in mind that karma goes both ways, do good, get rewarded with good.
We can live without force being used only when eveybody respects the life, and amassed property, of others. As long as someone wants to take life/property away by force, it will be met by force. As long as the recognized authority stays in power through the use of force, the contest will be in who is willing to use the most force. Until all agree to live and let live, violence is the only possible outcome.
If I honestly work for title to whatever size property, and you squat on it, you steal that value from me. If I don’t exclude the first squatter I’m soon over run with them.
If I have more than I need and don’t share, I’m a greedy bastard, but if I’m caring for my limit of folks and you come along and upset my apple cart, you are in the wrong.
It’s taking care of the squatters in my own line that prevent the inheritance from reaching my grandchildren. I’ll remedy that by working smarter, and not harder, and without calling for redistribution.
Did I get off track there? Damn this dream world!
I can understand the live and let live, thats good. What I can’t understand is the live and let people tell you to stay off their property.
I guess its the honest work I have trouble with. I mean when people bought land from America, or before that the colonies. They were paying for the cost inhertent in murdering the natives. And the taxes paid for continued defense. Of course, the natives in turn, got their land by slaughtering a bunch of black people before, whom I think just happend to find empty land. Of course how they divided up that land probably involved a lot of people hitting eachother with sticks. You can’t honestly buy land because there is no one to buy it from. No one made the land.
And this extends to other things, no one made the trees for the wood, no one made the coal, or the gold.
Maybe this plan would work if we did a clean reset. Took all the stuff in the world, split it up equally, and then put the rules of instant Karma into play. Then of course you’d just be in an economic dead lock until someone did something to put things together. Now while their is a theoretical possibility of people decided to coperate for some higher cause; ussualy your going to have someone be subversive.
And yes I do think a complete loss of bad behavior would irrevocrably imporvrish the human experiance.[/i]
I’m pretty sure the Asian Immigrants came over the Bearing land bridge, took North America away from the bears and mastadons, conquered the jungles of Central America, and then ran into the Aboriginees from Austrailia in South America.
They had their own versions of Utopia until the white guy nearly exterminated their race. That has to haunt us Karmicly, however, since nobody is gonna violently reset everything to even,( and if they did, I would still improve my lot and not want you to take it away, while others will be immediately impoverished through improvidence) we have to work with what we have. Personally I want to buy enough land to have my own flag, or just enough to live my life unhindered by outward interference.
I get it that nobody made this stuff, but they did make the machines to refine it. To the victor go the spoils, even when its by default. I’m sure the Natives would have gladly traded the use of ‘their’ land for fair value in return, but that all got lost in the cycle of revenge. Had things gone that way, the Indian would be financially on top.
Take the quiz.
It’s anonymous to me since you don’t sign in, so feel free to express your self.
If you intend to force your ideal on people you are no different than those you decry.
I know I do the same, but I’m not having squatters in living room when I have to work for what I have.
I’d be letting the tick and the mosquito have their way with my person.
World peace.
‘It’s wrong to force a person to do anything that person does not want to do’
Personally I wouldn’t use the word wrong, since I don’t believe that anything is wrong, or right for that matter, but rather, that they just are. I don’t feel that it helps when talking about people’s feelings to judge them as being right or wrong, but instead to assess them as being more or less healthy.
Would I agree with the phrase ‘It is unhealthy to force a person to do anything that person does not want to do’. Not necessarily. Firstly, I believe it is healthiest to prioritise oneself, and if someone is doing something to me then I feel at liberty to stop them, even if they want to do it. Secondly, I believe that some people are not really capable of looking after themselves, whether a baby, or an old person with dementia, and it may be to their benefit to get them to do something they don’t want, such as changing their nappy, or having a wash after being incontinent.
I don’t think that world peace would come by adopting this approach. I’d suggest instead that it might work better to aim never to be aggressive, which would cover a lot of the same ground as ‘never forcing a person to do anything person does not want to do’. If you continually aim not to be aggressive, and aim to resolve situations through the least aggressive means, then I believe it is possible that we will eventually arrive at world peace.
So you are saying it’s wrong/negative/evil to use aggression/force/anger/violence to get your way? (unless it’s self defense)
No. I’m saying that if you want world peace, then the best way to get there is to be peaceful yourself.
I believe anger is a healthy response to being threatened, but that losing control of your actions because of the anger comes from unhealed emotional trauma. I don’t see anger, or even aggression, as being wrong. Anger, for me, can provide part of the motivation to act to improve the enviroment around me.
I’m all for getting my own way, and being as assertive as I want to. I also want everyone one else to be able to have their own way, but without being aggressive to anyone else.
Well there is new eveidence that there were others there before the Indians that they slaughtered utterly. There is no point, its just kinda funny really.
Come on now, don’t turn this around on me. Were disscussing the idea presented at the top of the tread. To be honest I haven’t even given my opinion on what to do about the world. You said you didn’t want any force in the world, but I think I’ve teased this out to mean one of tow things:
The impossible, everyone to automatically agree with maintaining the current distribution of stuff, what I think you called ‘good’, so that no force will be nessisary.
Or perhapse simpley makeing force that holds togehter this society will simple be more subtle.
Now is this analysis wrong?
Karma can be a bitch, and an indicator of who you are dealing with.
Who wouldn’t agree that it is wrong to rob people? Even rich people.
The ’ current distribution of stuff’ is not a concrete concept, you are free to amass stuff, too.
And why is it a ‘distribution’, nobody distributed anything to me, I earned the money for this computer, and the modem it’s on.
I think the impossibility is to maintain that starting over is the only answer.
It would require more force to be used than already is used to maintain the status quo.
The only forces needed to hold together ‘society’ are the common will to choose good over evil,create over destroy,help over hurt,work over theft,God over Satan,light over dark,…You know, one must be ‘good’.
Let the individuals look out for themselves and society will do just fine.
I’m looking to solve the problems of the world, not create more. The quickest, easiest path maintains most of the status quo, with more freedoms.
Michael, I think my position all along has been that peacefulness is what it’s all about.
How did you score on The Quiz? Were you Free Born or Tyranical? It took me a long time to see the light. It is taking even longer to overcome the training.
As for using anger as a motivation, I prefer to use a positive motivator, such as, money, sex, air conditioning, internet,…It’s more postive.
I really really want to force you to do something you do not want to do. By your standard it would be wrong for me to do this, and yet, it is what I want to do…
another hypothetical…
I create a device that will end all life in the universe, excluding myself. I really want to use it. You could force me to NOT use it, but that would be wrong…Convince me why I am wrong, or admit that I should be free to use it it. You cannot argue that I will be dealt with after the act, because I will be the only creature still living in the universe.
My point is this… the only rational answer you can give (and still be rational) would be that, in at least this instance, it would be right to force me to do something that I do not want to do. And if it is right in this instance, it could be right in other instances as well. What decides it is the self interest that all rational beings share.
I submit that any act that would violate that interest is wrong. This sounds similar to your original proposition, but note I am not speaking of individual desires, just that a vast majority of folks would like the ability to live free from harm. Recogniozing that some people will want to harm others, we, as human beings, have a manifested right, via our self interest, to protect ourselves… this includes forcing others to sometimes do that which they do not want to do (go to jail, etc).
Well it wouldn’t be robbing per se. One could start with something like slavery reperations- I think I can get a few people to say that thats not wrong.
Now really. Did you pay for your own education? How about food and medicine for the first two decades of your life? The road you drive on to get to the Job where you earned the money? No, most of the stuff you own was most likely handed to you. And realy just compare for a moment the effort you put in, compared to the effort the women and children who sow your clothes put in for pennies. Your life’s a gift, feel free to enjoy it but don’t pretend you earned it.
True, it would be fairly impossible. Kinda one of those best of all possible worlds senarios.
While its true that the will to do good by ones fellow man does a lot to keep the world rolling. The sticking point is theft. If I take your puppy, is it theft for you to take it back the next day, after a week, after a year, how long is this statue of limitations that we have to forget what’s ours and what isn’t?
I guess thats reasonable. If you need someone to sign a petition to get rid of a blue law or something, I’ll be around. But personally, I hope peace doesn’t come before justice.
Damn power surges, I lost my post.
GTC, the urge to hurt people is exactly the thing that will be eliminated in the population.
The tranquility of each person is the highest priority, if you disturb that, you forfeit control of your life. When you take control of another by interupting their life, you are responsible for their response. If you cause another to be interupted by accident, criminal act, or anything else, you have forfeited control of your self.
Lost Guy.
When ever my money(whatever) is taken against my will, it is robbery. It doesn’t matter if you take it or if Uncle george takes it. You can call it whatever you want, tax, payback, it doesn’t change the fact that I have been robbed.
Taking what I worked for is wrong, especially when I didn’t commit the wrong you want to take it for. How does that make you any different than those you seek retribution from? You would have me slave for you long enough to ‘payback’ what even my ancestors had nothing to do with. My family got here in the early 1900’s. So when you call for slave reparations call it what it really is, rob everybody with an income.
My dad paid property taxes to finance my education. He had a JOB with insurance that paid my doctor bills. The 40 cents a gallon federal, and 23 cents a gallon in state I pay in gasoline taxes paid for the road many times over. Half of OK’s gas tax pays into the general fund anyway.
You need to know me far better before you assume I was given a silver spoon. I’ve worked for all but some hand me downs.
Restarting would not be the best of all scenarios to them that have more than average, mostly because they worked to have it.
It is not theft to take back my own property. No matter how long it takes me to find it.
It’s quite late and I’m pressing the wrong buttons.
Right your Dad. If you didn’t win the existential lottery and end up the son of your Dad, but instead a woman on some little island you may well be working in a sweat shop. Maybe there is some special aspect of your charater and you could have made it all the way to line supervisor in the sweat shop- the pay is the same, but its less dangerous.
And is it possible you have no moral opposition to extending this lottery indefinately? Well, let’s just hope there isn’t reincarnation.
Work, where is the moral highgrond in work? Really people should be paid for their contribuition. That is to say that if you work very hard at the opressors tank makeing factory, or running the books for an unsrupolus company- well then you deserve nothing no matter how much you sweated in the process. Thats the problem with this capitalism, it demands effort but does not direct it.
P.S. I wouldn’t call you a Silver Spoon, just a Spoon. 