Ethics & Socialism

Ethics/morality exist to ensure the fluidity of the interaction between individuals of a group. That’s the reason they’re there, not because nobody gains from the absence of the right of the strong, but because that’s generally what is best for the community as a whole, if not necessarily for a given individual. From a ‘natural’ perspective, the invidividual only needs to tend to his own needs; moral egoism is the only form of morals. Murder, loot, rape and any other thing are all allowed so far as individual gain is concerned. The community moral code creates a set of unwritten laws that everybody is expected to abide by, and if they don’t, the fluidity is gone and social friction results.
I want to argue for a socialist system based on the above premise. Although capitalism, the natural state of the economic system, is the way things ‘naturally’ work, by nature man as one entity attempts to separate from nature. I think that a socialist system is the next step in man’s deviation from the natural. A system that is no longer self oriented but community oriented and in being so, ensures the fluidity of the economic system between individuals.
This isn’t a monetary issue, I’m trying to look at the socialism vs capitalism debate from a general perspective, on the basis that group oriented systems (like morality/ethics and financial equality), as opposed to individual orientation, are the natural progression of things in human societies, when permitted.
As such, the reason for the stall in financial equality is due to the power given to the rich individuals/groups by financial superiority which is the means to the end that is forced financial unequality. Likewise, there must’ve been those who held power that would be shunned by morality/ethics before the concepts became universal. Do you think the moral and the financial system can be compared? Or is unselfishness in the form of morality an innate value, whereas unselfishness in materialism is not? Agreeing to that would seem to suggest dualism so the ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ and the brain would have to be separate (the soul is naturally unselfish through moral values, and the body is naturally selfish). Any thoughts?

I dunno, capitalists are inclined to think that capitalism does result in the best thing for each individual, so isn’t egoistic (you know Adam Smith and all that, the best result for all is if we try to do whats best for ourself) as such. Like proper free trade is, some people think, the answer to the massive problems in the 3rd world. So you could say that capitalism is perfectly socially orientated. Its just bad capitalism isn’t, and we largely have bad capitalism. Whats the difference? Well, I’ve often wondered. Possibly the bad stuff can be seen as arising from abuses of the capitalist system itself.

  1. People are naturally predatory if not selfish.

  2. The very things that society shuns and deems “evil” is the very situations it itself has created through scarcity,oppression,servitude,classism or privation.

  3. Morality pretends to be benign even though it is another form of violence against other violent acts. The power of morality cannot exist without violent moral believers pre-empting everything to their views by coercion or violent force.

I do not deny that collective societies utilize morality to retaliate against those who rebel but as I have stated in #2 rebellions happen out of situations that society itself creates. And while society may think itself as benign or innocent it like a hypocrite creates terrible situations for a great many deal of people and then complains when individuals rebel against them.

I think the good capitalism vs bad capitalism argument is more of a “it’s a perfect system, if it works perfectly” thing. The problem with capitalism is that it has no fail-safe measures. Once the balance is tipped, it gains momentum in its tipping. Socialism attempts to keep the balance. It’s not perfect, but I do think it’s a better solution to capitalism. I’m not arguing for socialist systems where government controls everything, but one where the government regulates everything for the capitalist utopia, market equilibirium.

I edited the text to make it a bit smoother.

One can be selfish by refusing to be prey, but doesn’t necessarily have to be the predator. By being the predator, you’re naturally selfish.

I really don’t think individualist virtue in the modern world is possible, unless you changed human nature. Until then, I think socialism minimizes financial ‘evils’.

The whole world is a paradox of ‘intolerant against intolerance’, ‘we keep the law through methods that are unlawful’ , ‘I wage war to keep peace’ etc. I don’t think that voids the original claim. Based on this, I don’t think moralists fighting against the lack of morals are voiding their original claim, they’re preserving it. An amoral world does not exist because it would be detrimental to human society and human society is if anything ‘natural’.

Even in times of peace there is conflict and social wars being fought. Infact whenever has their been global peace?

I would argue that the natural world including society in it is naturally amoral with morality being a mere mask of deception where the moralists can inflict their damage on others more easily by feigning goodness or virtue under their titles all the while they inflict damage on those they call rebels in subjugation.

Who has ever heard of any groups of moralists in history who achieved their ends without violence, the same violence in which they accuse their enemies of that they themselves are so morally against?

It’s all relative. It’s not about global peace, but simply a situation where resources are unmobilized in comparison with wartime and direct violence is a relatively rare occurence.
If amorality were natural, we wouldn’t be able to remain moral. But we do, regardless of the exceptions we are generally tormented by our morals so that we may prevent excessive harm to society. I don’t think ‘feigning goodness’ is what it’s about, it’s about necessity and stability in society. Again, if you’re a single individual alone and ‘free’, go ahead and be as amoral as you want but I don’t think you’ll want to kill the first person you see. People can’t kill children not because they’re trying to ‘feign goodness’, but because it’s just against their innate morals. Why? Because it is naturally necessary for the continuation of society. As for violence, I still stand by my defense of ‘intolerant of intolerance’ and ‘war for peace’. Ex: I am tolerant of all those who are tolerant of me, until someone is intolerant of me and my beliefs and then I must be intolerant of theirs, to preserve the mutual tolerance of mine and others’ beliefs.

Alot of people aren’t able to remain moral. Hence why we have prisons.

Where is your relativity for prisoners?

Thousands of years of prisons and public executions should only tell you that large segments of the world population have a inability to remain moral through pressure like conditioning.

It is all about feigning goodness on the part of moralists who then intact violence in order to safeguard their moral perceptions on life.

Necessity isn’t the same for all individuals. Neither is idealistic stability either.

Killing everyone one sees is not practical. But killing for survival out of necessity is.

Innate morals doesn’t exist. Guilt and remorse are social constructions by conditioning individuals at birth.

People are not born moral.

There exists many stories of police officers who have to shoot children aiming loaded guns at them. Explain that.

Even prisoners have morality. Again, morality is relative, and it’s only logic that a number of prisoners should be tormented by the acts that landed them in prison, not because they’re in prison but because of morality. If you were amoral, and you raped a 6year old because pussy’s pussy in the amoral world, you could very well get beat up or even killed in prison. Morality exists, but as with all things, remains relative.

There’s no reason to feign goodness. If some religious people use religion as the means to power, then they’re not moralists. A ‘moralist’ wouldn’t be able to ‘feign goodness’ or ‘intact violence’. Again, ‘I fight for peace’ and ‘Intolerant of intolerance’. Morality/ethics is a societal necessity, it has nothing to do with what the individual wants.

Exactly, it’s about practicality. Amorality is not practical. It leads to destability of society and regardless of your contempt for society, you still live in it, and as long as you do, society will require you to abide by its laws to preserve its stability.
Killing out of survival, the statement is applied too broadly even though it only applies in very specific situations, seeing as how we’re not in the wild anymore, and even so morality prevents the lone soldier or wild man from skinning his prisoner alive and torturing him in any number of ways. Amorality is not rationality, and it’s not practicality, it’s the lack of restraints.

Like what? It always amazes me when moralists talk about prisoners or the lowly working classes.

It is morally wrong or evil to attack society in rebellion and defiance but it is morally acceptable to hold prisoners against their will and to create whole classes of slaves for the minimum/ low wage in society.

It seems morality doesn’t follow any patternized higher order or forms of natural biology. What is certain is that morality does however practice the understanding of preference by choosing what is beneficial or unbeneficial to their selfish wants and desires for their own personal gains.

Where is your morality in all of that? And let us not forget all the national wars where millions are slaughtered and killed but I guess it is alright when the beacon of these wars are called morally “just” causes. :sunglasses:

What a bunch of absurdity and foolish nonsense. Your morality is synonymous with hypocrisy.

There is nothing great about morality.

Do you mean the ones with the broken down minds that in the small confines of their isolation in cells the manipulating power of morality finally makes themselves believe they are indeed heretics?

What a load.

Just because morality has a infinite amount of power by those who blindly buy into it where individuals in a prison system become broken down by psychological warfare or institutional conditioning within the guarded confines of “correctional” facilities doesn’t mean anything.

What a ridiculous defence. Now your justifying violence with violence. That’s not very moral. :sunglasses:

Feigning goodness isn’t just a religious phenomena. It is a governmental one too.

You say you fight for peace. Well I fight for myself.

If you kill and use violence for your notions of peace while I kill or use violence for my notions of living for myself, what exactly is the difference? There is none!

Killing is killing. War is war. Violence is violence. There is no thing-in-themselves! Do you get it?

Murder is murder no matter how you feel about it whether you have morals or if you don’t have them.

There is no causes more “justified” over opposite conflicting causes. There is only selfish greed and gain of two opposing causes going after each other.

There is no sacred universal “justifications” and “rights” floating in the sky telling us whether if one has done a good or wrong action. Without a god this isn’t possible.

Amorality is practical. I said killing everyone one sees isn’t practical because its non-sensical.

I also said killing by necessity is practical for survival. In necessity you only kill those who are a immediate threat to your self.

It is impossible that everyone around a individual is a immediate threat to his person. Hence why killing everyone one sees is nonsensical versus the necessity of killing where murder takes place only when another is a immediate threat to one’s lively hood.

And yet whole societies kill and enslave individuals to preserve its stability. What a contradiction.

How does morality confront this contradiction? It doesn’t! Hence why morality is another form of violent control feigning “goodness” used against other types of violent behavior.

You haven’t solved one of the largest dillemmas against morality Rouzbeh! What are you going to do with this contradiction?

I am going to bet you are just going to ignore them so that you can have your fantasy that this world is indeed moral and that some universal power ( a God maybe) protects you with a infinite amount of universal “justifications” or “rights”.

:unamused:

What a load.

You quoted an error, sorry I was reading your text and accidentally put conditioning instead of morality. I edited my text, as I often do after I see how it looks, and I didn’t expect you to respond so fast.
As for prisoners, I find myself repeating ‘intolerant against intolerance’ once more. Society requires laws to preserve stability, I don’t see how you can argue for prisoners being free. They are being held against their will for violating someone else’s will. I don’t know of any philosophy that doesn’t punish wrongdoing. Even anarchy believes in idealistic peaceful free societies. What you’re arguing for is just man indulging every instinct simply because he can. In that case, I think you should turn off your computer and instead embrace nature and all the hardships of the lonely nomad.

I mean the father who kills his son by jumping off a roof and would’ve end up in prison a tormented soul. Why do you think every man is violent, feels no regret, and only becomes moral through some higher power enforcing its law through ‘manipulation’ and the ‘isolation of confined cells’?

Let me get this straight. :laughing:

Society thrives on scarcity, privation, oppression, intimidation, violence, predation, and economical exploitation thus creating intolerance all throughout the air which makes civilization possible. Society can’t thrive without all these violent amoral gestures.

From society’s own actions intolerant individuals emerge as a consequence. So next society then uses intolerant prejudice against intolerant defiant rebels who just so happened to emerge from society’s own enacting intolerance.

So what? All that shows is that people are just a bunch of intolerant creatures. That right there proves man’s natural amorality somthing in which I have worked very hard to explain on this website for some time.

Why does that make society’s “Moral” reaction special? Oh this is rich! :laughing: #-o

So what? :stuck_out_tongue:

Nomadic cultures aren’t solitary. Beside the point.

Only if he was conditioned to believe that he has a moral “duty” towards others.

I can think of many historical instances where fathers have killed their sons without regret.

I can think of many biological species who commit infanticide to survive or just to reproduce.

This proves nothing.

Woot! This is fun. Hell I can do this all day. :slight_smile:

What does having prisoners have to do with “scarcity, privation, oppression, intimidation, violence, predation, and economical exploitation thus creating intolerance all throughout the air which makes civilization possible. Society can’t thrive without all these violent amoral gestures.”, I don’t see how ‘intolerant of intolerance’ has anything to do with that. I’ve already explained what I think of the statement in previous posts. It seems to me that you’re displaying your beliefs of the evils of society, which you take to be the whole of society, rather than interpreting the things I’ve been arguing for.

The entire point of this thread was to say that man can’t and won’t.

Read again.

“A moral duty towards others”? Who are these ‘others’? It’s his son, you think the parents of a child have been TAUGHT to love their kids? It’s an innate value and as I’ve mentioned, a product of naturality for the stability of human society. Fathers killing their sons without regret, I can think of more fathers who haven’t killed their sons because they simply wouldn’t be able to. Exceptions are not the norm. We are not a biological species to commit infanticide. An example is the male lion may kill its cubs because it wants to mate with the female again as the female won’t mate as long as her cubs are around. I don’t know of any women that don’t have sex because they have children.
You’re being selective in your arguments, making me think that either you’re not reading the whole post or you don’t want to. From what I’ve seen you post, you simply want an unstructured chaotic world where societies don’t exist and people are anti social. I don’t think you’ll find people as a group to be antisocial. Individuals, yes, but the group itself is disproof of an antisocial nature. If you wanted to enforce your opinions on everybody else, you’d have to gain power. How would you do that? Through the structure of a combat force regulated by a government and funded by routine pillaging or governance of a people for crops. Your beliefs are possible for the individual as long as you keep away from human society, but I don’t see them holding more value than that.
Regardless, this has gone way off topic. Instead of an attempt at comparing social progression with the political, it’s gone to being about how evil society is. If you would like, I can discuss society and morality with you in another thread but I don’t see the point of discussing anything if all you have to say is ‘what a load’, ‘oh this is rich :laughing:’ and then end up projecting your own beliefs. I have no reason to change your beliefs, and I don’t know you enough to know why you claim to hate society but in the end, I don’t have the time nor do I want to “do this all day”, ‘this’ being inconclusive emotionally charged arguments that do nothing but use colloquialism to force a point.

For starters prisoners are in effect described as deviant rebels who emerge out of a oppressive society that thrives on violent and exploitive behaviors as consequence of society’s own violent proned actions.

Explain to me why it doesn’t. You still haven’t made a valid case for me to be convinced of anything that you have so far articulated.

Which in reality hasn’t explained much to me. Try another go at it and maybe we shall see if we can go anywhere with it.

If you have been listening to what I have been saying you would know that I have explained society as a collection of individuals that survive on the exploitation and enslavement of other individuals as one whole collective therefore what society constitutes as “morality” is irrelevant or redundant since most of the deviants that are deemed needing “moral” intervention by violence and brute force is nothing more than a reaction of society’s own amoral violent proned behavior which created the circumstances for people to rebel deviantly in the first place.

It is a case of society putting its hands over a water inhabiting alligators complaining of being bitten when it stretches its arm out.

If society doesn’t want to get bitten it shouldn’t stick its arm out yet society can’t thrive consequently without putting its arm out therefore society itself as a whole has noone to blame but itself for its own misdeeds by stretching its arm.

It really is that simple. If society wants to get rid of violence it needs to stop viciously exploiting and enslaving people in leaving only a few individuals of the leisure class to enjoy life.

If society can’t stop exploiting and enslaving people for its own motion of preservation then consequently violent behavior will never stop where society itself has nothing to complain about beyond its ridiculous biasness or preference of operating people’s lives.

It truely is a vicious cycle and why moralists can’t understand this is beyond me.

Tell that to the first hominoids in ancient times. I’m sure they would have a say or two in brute force about how they view your morality.

People still can act this way today but most choose not too out of fear and the few who do act this way go to the slammer.

No. I am merely saying that outside of the family home there really is no reason why a neighbor should respect them or the kid…

There is no objective moral “duty” for a stranger to respect or be kind to a family outside of his own especially if the family members are the ones who take delight in his exploitation through society.

But this is all semantical anyhow.

Debatable. I would say it is relative and it all revolves around preference.

I can think of many ancient Greeks,Romans and Spartans who practiced infanticide as a contraceptive of not having children by their own selfish desires.

If you actually read a book on the subject infanticide was practiced in the millions in ancient times. Besides the point of course as I just see this as another weak defence of morality which holds no water in the pot.

That is because all the females you witness today have been effectively moralized.

Once in a while you will get a mother who drowns her children from time to time in a tub on the news.

( Still happens. Less Frequently however.)

Your problem like many moralists I have met is that you are not acquainted with ancient or pre-history.

Your entire understanding of group dynamics, cooperation and morality is essentially a modern one.

:sunglasses:

Yes I admire the wonders of chaos. No doubt there.

Actually in natural chaos federations of people still existed only they were much smaller and were constantly at war with each other.

( Besides the point.)

Or I could just pluck people off one by one stealth like into isolation…

Besides the point. This is more semantical argumentation but I am willing to humor you.

Value is relative and redundant. You still haven’t listend to what I have had to offer in this conversation.

( No surprise.)

Actually I would describe all societies historically unto our present as being violent.

Societies today are still violent and yes that does include Western civilization too.

I can’t describe societies as being evil because that would be a contradiction with my amorality.

Do what you must. :sunglasses:

Fair enough.

I live a lonely bitter life of desensitizing isolation and I have lived a completely “oppressed” life of suffering which gives me individual insights as to how absurd morality is.

Well my only reply would be. Bye-Bye and Farewell.