America politicians are the best experts available for evaluating the judgmental ability of American citizens. Watching election campaigns offer us an opportunity to quickly gauge the level of intellectual sophistication of US citizens as judged by politicians; the politicians’ expertise in all such matters determines their success or failure as a politician.
The father looking over the shoulder of his daughter working on her homework says. “Perhaps I can helpâ€. She says “I’m looking for the lowest common denominatorâ€. He, looking rather shocked, replied “Whoo! Are they still looking for that?â€
Is democracy merely the process of seeking the lowest common denominator?
The two primary concepts of ethics are right and good. In the United States we give priority to right by ensconcing detailed rights in the Constitution. Good can be freely determined by each individual as long as our good does not trounce another’s rights.
Our government, like Lincoln’s government in the Civil War and FDR’s government in WWII, has decided to reprioritize our Constitutional rights in favor of the good that our government has determined to be in synchronization with the will of the majority.
The majority seems to, in periods of great stress, give priority to the good instead of the right that was determined in ‘cold blood’. I consider such action to be a weakness of democracy. What do you think about it?
If you are correct, the ads that I’ve been watching indicate that the average America, or ad man, has not progressed beyond the teenage years. The idea of spreading rumors and dirty about a person is not the activity of a gentleman, but that of a child.
Looking on the bright side, maybe a goal of government is to keep the people in a child-like state, so that they can enjoy their lives more. I think of stories that I’ve read about African children forced to be soldiers, stuffed with cocaine, and encouraged to murder for the sake of doing it. Not much fun there.
It seems to me that rights and good have a sort of feedback relationship. The rights given to us by the constitution are decided by some latent sense of what is right. Those rights then set up parameters in which people are free to decide their own right and wrong. But since we have the power to revise to rights, and to change the parameters, the idea of good that developes within our current constraints will shape the constraints that will exist in the future, thereby shaping the future concepts of good and so on ad infinitum.
This seems, however, to be a problem specific to constitutional democracies, and not with democracies in general. But it is also an asset to those democracies. It still allows for changing opinions, and for changing understandings of basic human rights, but (in theory at least) it ensures that the change will be slow, tempering the often erratic changes in public opinion and smoothing the transition from one time period to the next.
Our present administration errs by usurping power from the established rights, and changing their application too quickly, thereby depriving of its usefulness a system that has been successful as long as it has been followed.
(This topic might fit better in the politics section. I hope I didn’t stray too far from its intent by tying it to specific governments and specific times.)
The limitations of the campain experiance make rummors a distraction and esier to avoid.
Yet we must elect officials baced on intergrety so that they may get educated on the issues for us. It’s just to bad democracy be definition is playing on the wills of the uneducated public.
I hope this is not shuffled into the political section. In the political section one can receive only partisan rant, I hope we can discuss this on an intellectual level.
Captain Dave will under no circumstance torture a prisoner (open morality). Captain Jim will torture a prisoner when he considers such action will save the lives of his platoon (closed morality).
“The two main concepts of ethics are those of the right and the good; the concept of a morally worthy person is, I believe, derived from them.†This quote and any others are from “A Theory of Justice†by John Rawls.
In teleological (explaining phenomena by final causes) theories of ethics the good is defined independently from the right.
The attitude of the individual is to seek the satisfaction of desire, more appropriately it is “the satisfaction of rational desireâ€. Many people find that society should be just an extension of this attitude. The good, for society, is the satisfaction of rational desire. The right is that which maximizes the good.
Others in society reject this utilitarian view and find that the right comes before the good and embodies a boundary for the good. The right becomes a principle that has priority over the good. In the United States the right is placed in the Constitution and each individual determines the good.
Captain Dave rejects the utilitarian view of morality (open morality). Captain Jim embraces the utilitarian view of morality (closed morality).
Morality/ethics is a matter pertaining only to the relationship between subjects and thus there is nothing objective about it. All such matters are subjective and thus relative. Religion interjects God into the matter and thus makes it a matter of absolutes for believers.
Many individuals think of the individual as constituted by the community to which s/he belongs—their value is dependent to a large extent upon the community. It is this interdependence upon the community that makes ideology so very potent. For the individual who embraces closed morality the ideological association is more important than to the person with an open morality.
“Religion interjects God into the matter and thus makes it a matter of absolutes for believers.”
what is the difference between right and wrong? The bible says, “thou shalt not steal.” The law book says three paragraphs about taking the value away from an individual or institution. Thus the lawyered mind becomes a word game. It’s not theft if they don’t notice the value missing right??? So con artistery is deception. Manipulation is psychological advertisement. And third party analisis is an extra buck to find out the truth. Yet the world would be perfect if we got rid of all of the lawyers and replaced them with preachers.
When is wrong right? It depends on beliefs.
When is wrong right? When killing sadamn free’s an entire nation. I don’t think theft is ever right unless it protects others from something. But then religious intervention can help, as to why stabbing someone out of rage is wrong. And ignorring the problem just lets is festor in the back of their mind. Wrong is wrong because they never figured out how to make right work. They gave up and did what was easy. Time restraints and lives on the line does take priorety over death. Yet all else can be done with rising above the situation. So every time we see a child molester we’d like to kill. We just have to realize that their sexual section of the brain has been filled with an imaginative image, faking reality. Thus every time they have a sexual urge, they only remember what they have done. It takes redefinning sex from something they love to someone they love. And not the hue hephner love them for their body, that’s what went wrong. The spiritual love.
All you are is what you do in life. I’m not a user, or manipulator, or theif, or polotician. I am a realist of mind body and soul. I am a lover and a fighter for love. I am a man of compasion and passion. I am not an enabler.
So self examination is right. And pushing the bounderies of beliefs is right. And questioning to further understanding is work. Work people don’t want to take when they are stuck in a rut of stressfull job with the only reward of money,… compensated with instant gratifications spent with money. And impulsiveness to what is easy and not right, is what I see. Then compound that with you become the nature of what you do.
what alternative to what? “liberal” democRAT totalitarian socialism or a constitutional republic? I’d take the constitutional republic- and that’s what we have now.
