The Trouble With Our West Today

I feel that this entire thread is dealing in generalities, as many of the posts, including the OP , do not cite examples to back up their assertions. But, though I'll probally be lambasted by a number of people here, just let me make a few general points. 1. There needs to be an ethical culture for a society to be able to function properly. Otherwise everyone might live to satisfy there own immediate interests, apart from the common good. 2. If morals are to be regarded as being relative, and irrational, then I fear that there will not be any basis for stating that anything in life is sacred, including life itself. Then someone might find that something like Aktion T4 makes logical sense. Ethicly wrong, and unjust, but still not irrational, if one does not value human life for it's own sake. This is why I believe that there must be reverence for life. These principles are all a part of what makes up natural law. And I also feel that one need not be religious per se to accept this. 3. The word psyche is simply another word for the soul, whether it outlasts death or not. Without such concepts as psyche, not only is theology rendered meaningless, but so is psycholgy.

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If morals are to be regarded as being relative, and irrational, then I fear that there will not be any basis for stating that anything in life is sacred, including life itself. Then someone might find that something like Aktion T4 makes logical sense. Ethicly wrong, and unjust, but still not irrational, if one does not value human life for it's own sake. This is why I believe that there must be reverence for life. These principles are all a part of what makes up natural law. And I also feel that one need not be religious per se to accept this.

This is an appeal to consequences fallacy. You're not actually demonstrating that morals are not relative. You're just saying "If morals are relative, then there's no cosmic principle making the nazis evil!". You are disregarding that argument because you dislike it's logical conclusion, not because it's incorrect.

And by the way, I don't think your conclusion is correct, either. Even if morals are relative and there isn't a cosmic principle, it doesn't follow that we have to accept any moral code whatsoever. I find the nazis extermination programmes abhorrent, not because god, or nature, or whatever moral authority you fancy, says it, but because it's my own opinion on the subject, based on my reason, my experiences, and my own moral compass.

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The word psyche is simply another word for the soul, whether it outlasts death or not. Without such concepts as psyche, not only is theology rendered meaningless, but so is psycholgy.

You're wrangling words. Psychologists don't mean the same thing as theologians do when the former talk about the mind and the latter about the soul. Psychology is a soft science, but it IS a science. Theology is just specialized philosophy, which is not inherently a bad thing, but is clearly NOT science.

Mabool wrote:

I strongly disagree with every single word.



Yes. Exactly. And this is a good thing. We disregard oppressive "conventions" and "traditions" such as homophobia, sexism and religion. Marx writes in the Manifesto that the bourgeoisie has destroyed everything that was once "sacred" wherever it has come to power, and this is what makes bourgeois society so incredibly awesome compared to everything that has existed before. Marriage? Screw it! Monarchy? Screw it! In the imperialist bourgeois countries, people have, for the first time ever since we've started to exist as a species, begun to think for themselves and they have thereby emancipated themselves from the brainwashing that the notions of absolute morality and religion forced upon them before. Rationality is becoming our core value...

I was with you until this last line. Rationality is so far removed from the majority of people it's sad. Sensationalism, Emotional indulgence, and Narcissism are the core-values of modern culture.

Krasniy_Volk wrote:

This is an appeal to consequences fallacy. You're not actually demonstrating that morals are not relative. You're just saying "If morals are relative, then there's no cosmic principle making the nazis evil!". You are disregarding that argument because you dislike it's logical conclusion, not because it's incorrect.

And by the way, I don't think your conclusion is correct, either. Even if morals are relative and there isn't a cosmic principle, it doesn't follow that we have to accept any moral code whatsoever. I find the nazis extermination programmes abhorrent, not because god, or nature, or whatever moral authority you fancy, says it, but because it's my own opinion on the subject, based on my reason, my experiences, and my own moral compass.

The point that I was trying to make was simply that something can be logical, in a twisted sense anyway, yet still be unethical. For example, the Nazis logical formula would be this. A. The disabled are useless bread eaters. B. Useless bread eaters are life unworthy of life C. Ergo, there lives may be terminated for the good of the strength of the Reich. Also your moral compass is what I would regard as forming the basis of natural law. But to claim that all persons should have inherent personal rights is a philosophical position, not an incontrovertible logical position. The Nazis were logical, but not conventionally ethical.

Jason24 wrote:

I feel that this entire thread is dealing in generalities, as many of the posts, including the OP , do not cite examples to back up their assertions. But, though I'll probally be lambasted by a number of people here, just let me make a few general points. 1. There needs to be an ethical culture for a society to be able to function properly. Otherwise everyone might live to satisfy there own immediate interests, apart from the common good. 2. If morals are to be regarded as being relative, and irrational, then I fear that there will not be any basis for stating that anything in life is sacred, including life itself. Then someone might find that something like Aktion T4 makes logical sense. Ethicly wrong, and unjust, but still not irrational, if one does not value human life for it's own sake. This is why I believe that there must be reverence for life. These principles are all a part of what makes up natural law. And I also feel that one need not be religious per se to accept this. 3. The word psyche is simply another word for the soul, whether it outlasts death or not. Without such concepts as psyche, not only is theology rendered meaningless, but so is psycholgy.

Morals and ethics the product of hundreds of thousands of years of social evolution, collective and individual behaviours that ensure the survival of a society, and give it an advantage over other societies in the competition for limited resources, would be codified and passed down.

For example, random killings, a society in which random killing is tolerated would disintegrate very quickly, and only those societies in which random killing is forbidden would have survived, as a result of that, you are now not allowed to randomly kill people regardless of which country you are in.

Virtually all customs and morals and ethics and basis for legal systems arose this way, and they are not static, as the environment changes, the set of behaviours that would optimise survival and growth would also change. In the old days, societies that failed to change in time would be annihilated, but nowadays, with modern means of communication and transportation, societies can emulate the success stories more easily, and there is charity for those who failed to change in time.

Shigalyov wrote:

I'm not really wanting to quarrel with the rest of your point, but I just wanted to pull you up on this last statement.
I was under the impression that it was largely known that the Nazis ending up casting aside such "logical considerations" as their war effort in the zeal to exterminate "undesirables". Arms manufacturers were short of workers yet to the Nazis killing Jews was a higher priority than defending themselves.

I was specificly refering to there Aktion T4 program. Meaning, if one does not inherently value human life for it's own sake, it might make some sick sense to put some people to death. The Nazis, under Hitler's leadership, accepted the concept of the "untermensch" . So following from this, not all persons were regarded as being as worthwhile as others. Plus if I were to have meant that the Nazis were logical in a more general sense, such as that Nazism made sense, I'd be liable to be carded, if not outright banned, on this site. So for the record, as far as regimes go, Stalin's Communism was better in principle, than Hitler's Fascism.

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I remember once I was going to start a thread on some on their constructive policies, but I decided it was just asking for trouble and may well encourage people to state more general support for Nazism... so I shelved the idea.

At worst it might have summoned the nazbols back to the forum

I think that, apart from their platform , it would be difficult to define just what Nazis stand for exactly. I remember, on another forum I frequent, one in which Communists, and others, can interact with National Socialists, discussing the topic of eugenics. This one Nazi replied back by posting "sterilise yes, euthanise no". So I've noticed that neo-fascists don't agree with each other any more than we do. There's even a left opposition to Hitler, somewhat comparable to the Trotskyist opposition to Stalin, called Strasserism. So while Nazis are all in some way racist, and anti-semitic, they are not all exactly the same in all of there views on things.