Altrusim vs. Individualism Free Dating, Singles and Personals

Altrusim vs. Individualism Posted: 8/11/2009 1:51:50 AM
RE Msg: 46 by JustDukky: A beautifully put, beautifully logical argument...Nice going Scorp! (Where've you been anyway?) Thanks. Been busy. I only skipped posting from 20th July to the 7th. Sheesh! 17 days and 5 people ask me where I went. Nice to know I'm missed. I did want to comment on a couple of things you said (because it intrigues me to think of self-serving behaviour as altruism): Since altruism is that which benefits both us AND others, and lions and cheetahs killing gazelles do benefit the gazelles by this action, then surely this is altruism. How can doing the job you are "destined" to do, without regard to the "greater good" be a moral action? You've asked some good questions: 1) Is doing what you are designed for, moral? 2) What makes our definitions of good and evil, any more right than any other definition? 3) How can being self-serving, be altruistic? 1) What is "good", and what is "evil"? I don't really like the words moral, immoral, and amoral, because they imply that being moral is the natural state, and that being a-moral is unnatural. Surely, acting without good or evil is the natural state, and only acting good or acting evil is going against nature. In that vein, let us consider what is the natural state. If a computer system acts as if it was intended, then it's fantastic. Everything works correctly. If it does something MORE helpful than intended, then it's a bonus. But it's still undesirable, because it will almost certainly result in something else happening as a result, which makes the system LESS helpful than we want, in some other, non-obvious way. As a result, when something is fulfilling its intended role, it is "good", for it is making the system work properly. When things go against the system, then the system becomes less effective as a result, and the system overall is less helpful to all. That's what makes it "bad", or "evil". Lions are "good", because they work as intended. It's not a moral choice. But it is a "good" action. When lions start acting against their intent, they are working against their place in the system, and that weakens the system, making those actions "bad". When we too fulfil our roles in nature, then we work to benefit the system, and overall everyone benefits. When we work against the system, then the system stops working as well, and overall everyone suffers. We see this most of all, not when someone is selfish, but when someone is "trying to do good, such as when someone is trying to help us to resolve a conflict with our boss, by interfering in that conflict, and telling our boss off, but not considering all the ramifications of that action, that all that will happen is that our boss will get annoyed, and will dig his heels in and become even more difficult than before. One can "kill with kindness". 2) What does "good", and what does "evil" mean to us? Really, good is just doing the sensible thing, the thing that makes most sense. When lions do as intended, everyone benefits. It makes sense. Evil, is just when we put our needs ahead of what makes sense. We pervert our logic by following a fleeting emotion, one that is only intended as a general warning system, to keep us alert. Take hunger and obesity. Hunger is a natural feeling in the body that occurs to ensure that we have enough food stored in our bodies for daily life. We aren't born hungry. It's just that we come to recognise when our stomachs are growling, and we call that feeling hunger. It's generally a good thing to eat when our bodies tell us we need to. If we didn't, then we'd get run down, and make mistakes that cost lives, like when people on a long drive don't eat, lose energy, get tired, lose concentration as a result, and then cause a massive pile-up. But hunger is still a learned behaviour and an imperfect one at that. If our bodies need bread, they don't tell us that we need bread. They simply tell us that we need to eat. The same goes for when our bodies need meat, or essential oils from fish, or vitamins and minerals from fruits and vegetables. So, if we eat a diet that is high in carbs, but very low in vitamins and minerals, our bodies will need those vitamins and minerals, but the way it speaks to us is by telling us that we are hungry. If we take control of our desires, realise that these are just messages from our bodies that need interpreting, then we can try a bit of each type of food, and that one that seems to make our hunger satisfied in part, is what our bodies need, and then we give the system what it needs. Then it becomes incredibly efficient and really helpful. But if we simply keep shovelling in more of what we were eating, as if our bodies just want "food", and have no need for specific types of nutrients, then we'll keep eating carbs, but our bodies will not be getting the vitamins and minerals that it craves. So it will keep being hungry. So we'll keep shovelling in carbs. We'll get tons of carbs in our system. But we won't have the vitamins and minerals that would allow the body to use those carbs efficiently. So the body won't be able to work as hard. Moreover, because the body is now feeling starved of nutrients, it will store what it can. So it will store those carbs as fat. So, by not listening to our bodies, we'll get fatter, and we'll find it harder and harder to do things, because we don't have the vitamins and minerals are bodies need to work properly. Continue in that manner for several years and you become obese. When 30% of the people in our country don't listen to their body, and just keep shovelling in more and more carbs, and you get an obesity crises of gigantic proportions. But all this doesn't even happen in people who have a healthy diet. The whole process only starts to occur in people who are only eating an extremely unbalanced diet in the first place, because if you were eating a balanced diet, you'd get a little of everything, and then you'd quickly recognise that it's the fruit and veg that make you feel contented, and so you'd eat enough to correct the dietary imbalance naturally. The evil in obesity, is not in the eating. It is in not recognising the ways our bodies work, and going against what our bodies need to work. 3) Why do we consider nature to be full of injustice? Why do we hate the lion for killing the gazelle? How many people hate the water, for killing tens of thousands of people in the Boxing Day Tsunami? How many people hate the land for killing so many in earthquakes in San Francisco? Why don't we hate the ants for killing termites? It occurred to me, that we hate the lion, because some lions kill some of US. But lions are not known for killing that many humans. Hippos kill far more humans than lions. But most commonly, hippos only kill because we enter their territory. Lions probably do the same. So is it justified to hate the lion, because it kills us, simply for wandering accidentally into its territory, merely for an accidental step? Well, let's look at what happens when we DON'T get killed for venturing onto a species' territory. New species are being driven extinct, all the time these days. What is the major cause of extinction nowadays? Destruction of habitat. The species' habitat is destroyed, and they have nowhere to live, nowhere to sleep, nowhere to shelter themselves from the rain, nowhere to camouflage themselves from predators, now nowhere to camouflage themselves to catch prey, nowhere to even find their food or to raise their babies. Who causes most of this destruction of habitat? Humans. We're killing off the species in the world, simply because we wander onto some species' territory, don't get killed, and then turn it into farmland, destroying the existing environment that these species rely on. When they adapt, like pigeons, we call them "sky-rats", and try to wipe them out anyway. So, let's be honest. Given that, don't you think that the most sensible thing to do, is to NOT let humans take over the environment? Don't you think the safest thing to do, is to kill off any humans that venture into territory that isn't theirs, in order to scare off all the other humans from even entering and screwing it up? Surely, the hippo, and the lion, are doing the SENSIBLE thing. But, we don't like that. Why not? Could it be because we are doing the NON-SENSIBLE thing? Could it be that WE are ignoring the lessons of nature, and trying to pervert nature, only to harm other species, and ourselves into the bargain? Could it be that WE are the "evil" ones for trying to impose OUR notions of morality on animals, when really OUR notion of morality that conflicts with the law of the jungle, amounts to: "Killing anything other than humans, for food, to take their territory for ourselves, even for personal amusement to relieve boredom and to feel a sense of achievement, is good, and any time ANYTHING other than human kills a human is bad". That's basically one rule for animals and another for us. It's alright to kill an animal any time we want. But it's NEVER OK for an animal to kill a human. That's complete double-standard, one that is bound to destroy the usefulness of any system. Is it any wonder the entire planet looks like it's going to pot? We're screwing up the system. Nature is only "AMORAL", because nature is doing as intended. That's worked for nature for many, many years. That makes it good for animals, and good for us. Good for everyone. But, when we are doing what is NOT good for us, just following our emotions, and ignoring good sense, then we hate nature. Then we see our friend being told off by his boss for doing a lousy job. We feel compassion for our friend. But when we let our emotions rule us, when we don't stop to think, we wade in there, and tell our friend's boss to lay off, not stopping to ask if our friend had almost cost a child's life by turning up to work while drunk. Even when the telling off is unjustified, all we do is anger the boss, and that makes him lay into our friend 10 times as much, as soon as we are out of sight. All we do most times is make things WORSE. Our emotions are there as a warning system. They warn us when we should think about getting some more food via hunger. They warn us when we should think about getting some sleep via getting tired. They warn us to be alert for danger when we feel fear. But they're just a warning system. They are no guarantee to follow them blindly, and when we do follow our emotions blindly, eventually they get some things wrong, and we follow them into our self-destruction. 4) Summary: Yes, nature is amoral. That's because it's doing what was intended. It's doing the sensible thing, the right thing, the things that make everything and everyone work better. That's a good thing. That's good. Yes, nature is heartless. It's heartless because your heart is not always right. Nature acts with the head, not the heart. Yes, nature makes us feel scared, and feel bad for animals. It makes us feel scared, because we are afraid of that happening to us, not because we feel some kinship with those animals. We feel bad when a lion eats a gazelle. But a gazelle is much like a deer. But we eat deer, don't we? We don't care about the gazelle. We are afraid that one day the lion might eat us. Because it has before. Yes, we don't like emotions like being scared and feeling empathy and pain for others. But they are just warning systems. They are the brake lights of the system. You don't pull an emergency stop just because the car in front has his brake lights on. You'll kill the people in the car behind if you do that. You take note, use your brain, and act accordingly. You do the sensible thing. You DON'T act on your emotions blindly. You simply take note of them. Life is like driving a car. Reacting to your emotions while driving will get you killed, and everyone else around you killed. Same for life.