Morality and Subjectivity

I'm having trouble getting a handle on what you mean by subjective also.I see the prohibition against murder as an emergent social value. Because humans are social animals and value their family and group members murder leads to vendettas. These vendettas are socially unproductive to the point of serious disruption and distruction.Societies that are able to reduce murder and vendettas by law, policing, enforcement etc. have an advantage over societies where killing and blood feuds go uncontrolled.I know this isn't what you have termed objective but I don't think it's subjective either. It's a system property that can emerge from evolutionary competition.Question that might help us understand. Did the German generals that attempted to assassinate Hitler violate an objective moral injunction?*lfen*ABE: This is not a Godwinism, I swear. It just popped into my head as an example.This message has been edited by lfen, 04-13-2006 12:30 PM

Do you accept gravity as objective?lfen

I'm going to guess that you accept the phenomena of gravity studied by phyics as objective.Does it have an absolute meaning? If so what is it?lfen

Well I can cite examples when it doesn't, not that that disproves the theory.Let me approach this from the other end. Can you give me an example of something objective that also has meaning or is meaning?I readily identify meaning as subjective. What I don't know is if there is even the possibility of objective meaning.lfen

Can you give me examples of things you can prove that you think are meaningful?I have a suspicion that what can be proved are tautologies. What could be the meaning of the square root of 2 being irrational? Or what could be the meaning of the DNA molecule having a double helix structure?lfen

Okay it's not a tautology. Do you have an answer for my question about what it means? Actually, I would simply like to have an example of what you consider logically objective and meaningful. At this point I can't think of something that is both. As far as I can see at this point meaning is subjective. Useful as objective knowledge is it doesn't give meaning. But I'm tired and could easily be missing the obvious.lfen

I don't have a copy of the book handy and I could only find this abbreviated quote on the web. He went on to say that the only reason he found for remaining embodied on earth was the knowledge that so many beings were suffering and his wish to share the state he had found with them. I don't recall him using the term Bodhisattva's Vow but it's the same thing. This of course is not a societal morality and as the state Franklin realized was without object or subject so it's catagorically different from the focus of the thread and yet in a way this comes closer to satisfying the notion of objective morality in a paradoxial sense that it is neither objective nor morality and yet is the hightest priority on the border of leaving behind subjective/objective duality.lfen

You appear to be considering only two possibilities.1) That the Judeo Christian creator God exists and the books compiled into the Bible are an accurate account of how that creator works.or2) A nihilism that is based from the Theory of Evolution and that says morality is entirely subjective therefore life is meaningless.I've been trying to suggest since I first encountered your arguments about nilhilism that there are a range of other possibilities to consider. These two possibilities seem to stem largely from the tension in Western culture between Judeo Christian reliance on revealed religion and the Greek development of rationality that later has flowered into science including ToE and the political struggle occuring in the US schools and legal systems over secular vs. religous society.If you limit yourself to the two choices as you appear to be doing then those are the only choices you have. Neither choice makes a lot of sense to me.lfen

What if God has no purpose? What if God simply is?Look how complex and difficult physics especially quantum mechanics is.
Popular religion offers simple formulations, stories that people can easily grasp. I'm suggesting that you need to look further than that.

Expanations there are quite a few. Let's say you reached into a hat a drew forth a sheet of paper on which was written the best explanation. You read it. Has your life changed? In what ways?lfen

Sages and for this example I'll take one I have the deepest respect for, Shri Ramana Maharshi, see value in approaching God in whatever way fits best with any given individual. The point being that it gives the mind something to focus on and quiet the restless seeking and thinking.Some individuals need a human image to relate to whether that be Jesus, Krishna, Siva, or their living guru. Other people take a more mathmatical approach as did Franklin Merrell-Wolff.Jesus Christ is a fine choice until individuals create an ego based religious exclusivity around their dogma and limit their developement to conventianal ego views.In my view what is useful is moving beyond the ego based view of one's life and realizing that one is part of something much larger. The universe at all scales is amazing and that it exists at all is miracle enough for me.But there are many ways of approaching that that is beyond and is the source of the mystery. European history has largely ignored any but Christian and Judeo Christian approaches which attempt to claim a monopoly on truth. If it works for you fine, but if the rather glaring logical problems are a barrier I think one can check out the approaches of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc. to see if there lies a path that fits and works.What I am strongly critical of is the fundamentalist claim that my path, which ever one that is, is the ONLY path and all others are wrong. I can state that I hate that approach. Some Christians on this board have claimed I hate Christians because of this passionate feeling on my part, though I've quite good relationships in real life with Christians some of whom are family and really I don't hate Christians or Christianity though I am reflectively intolerant of intolerance and I'll admit this is immature and irrational on my part but then nothing manifest is a finished product.lfen

There is ample material for that view in Christianity. In writing that I was largely thinking of the themes in Iano's latest posts and it seems to me his appeal is that through belief in God the ego will be saved and allowed to go to heaven. And I think that characterizes the bulk of popular Christianity. I don't find the penetrating insight into the ego that is the substance of Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta but rather I see an appeal to the ego's fear of survival. Christianity is as much if not more of a syncretic system as Buddhism or Advaita. As to soothing I don't know why you suddenly are claiming Christianity's "all you have to do is believe and you'll go to heaven while everybody else goes to hell" is not a soothing point of view for Christians who feel that they now have it made and are justified in their self righteous condemnation of any who disagree with them, and I'm specifically addressing you in this current post of yours.lfen

The 'I' (Ramana speaks of it as the 'I-I' to distinguish it from the 'I' identified as I am ...) always IS (remains) as it is intended to be, that is in speaking of God 'intention' and 'being' are words for the same thing.I would say that "I" experienced as enslaved by ego appears different from the I that IS. The ego illusion remains to some extent as long as God is experienced as an object of the self. This is not a criticism just a noting of a passage in a process.lfen

Yes that is quite understandable. It can't be forced. It happens when the time is ripe. I'm not trying to force this on anyone. What I seek to do is present the possibility as something to note as a possibility that may occur. It's a teaching that some may find useful.When it happened to Franklin Merrell-Wolff he said that the earth and all it's pleasures became meaningless to him compared to the depths of Nirvana. He felt a keen desire to just release from the body and merge and in surveying the world could find no reason to be here except for one and that was to relieve the suffering he saw and share what he had found. I can't locate my copy of Pathways Through to Space which tells of his experience but that is a fairly accurate paraphrase.lfen

No one has to my recall ever commented on my avatar. I chose it with a purpose. It's a significant metaphor to me, a moebius strip.Pick a point on the strip. That point is on one side of the strip. Let's call that point "myself". There is a point on the other side of the strip we could relate that point to and call that point "God". It would appear that we are here on this side and God on that side, but following the strip around it turns out there are not two sides to it. It has only one side. Two sideness is a local illusion.Now a moebius strip is only an imperfect model but it has an elegance that pleases me as a demonstration. To extend the metaphor a bit I would say that using points called "myself", "you", "God" etc. is a model of language, a way of referrence and direction. The strip itself is not a point on the strip but the entire strip. It appears to have two sides but that appearance is a function of using language to refering to small locations. Taken as a whole the strip has only one side.lfen