The Limits of our Society

[Fido]

I'll have to go with X ris on this...Our physical existence presents us with few actual problems that our failures of morality do not make manifest... We would not have to over run our environment, or turn our technology on ourselves... But the moral world with its ethical questions is one that defies even the most general definitions...We know it is there...People die without virtue...People die without justice, or freedom, so what is presumed to exist exists by presumption... If two people are disputing over justice, the peace betwen them rests upon the willingness to have enough, against the desire to have all...When each has enough they have justice; but the definition will always be situational...There could be no better recepe for human conflict...

Personally, I look at law, the one size fits all approach to justice as an impediment to problem resolution...People are losing the ability to make agreements of honor with a hand shake...If they have a conflict they have to call a cop and an attorney... Where is the horse trading... Literally, if people cannot meet a price at a yard sale they do not have the sense to ask for a lower price... If you are unwilling to ask people what they need from an agreement, what is their idea of justice, what they will accept, you never know... In many senses we have discovered the ability of language to abuse others, to cause pain, injury, or lie, but we can no longer bend language to our common purpose...

---------- Post added 01-07-2010 at 12:24 PM ----------

Originally Posted by Jebediah

What makes you think that? Are we not less sexist, racist, xenophobic and homophobic than we were 100 years ago?

We are more constrained by law... Just see us hard pressed by disaster or war, and there could be round ups of a protective nature all over the country...The failure of our society leaves all minorities vulnerable to violence...We are in a position where we can hate the law, and yet fear to see it suddenly fall, because it is all that is keeping many from the throat of their neighbors...

[biscuithead175]

Originally Posted by Jebediah

What makes you think that? Are we not less sexist, racist, xenophobic and homophobic than we were 100 years ago?

The only thing that has gotten better is that we have been able to tolerate it more, but acceptance is a different story.

[xris]

Originally Posted by Jebediah

What makes you think that? Are we not less sexist, racist, xenophobic and homophobic than we were 100 years ago?

I was actually referring to the ethical problems technology gives us. As for those obics or ists you talk of, they are less damaging, but far from resolved.

[pantheras]

Originally Posted by Fido

People are losing the ability to make agreements of honor with a hand shake...If they have a conflict they have to call a cop and an attorney...

And isnt that just about using any tool, which they have at disposal? There will be always a willingness to take easiest and most effective way no matter how it will look like. People will always make up any argument which approve that behaviour. Until they will face an consequences.

[dharma_bum]

Originally Posted by Pyrrho

It could be that the person has been perverted by reading Leibniz, and imagines that these evils are necessary for the greater good. This being "the best possible world" means that this world is better than one in which such things do not happen. (I personally prefer Voltaire's take on this, but we are not talking about my position.)

Well I haven't read Leibniz, but I did read Candide a few months back.

My take on it would be that this might not be the "best possible world," but we can't always wish for the "best" of everything. This is the only world that we are meant to inhabit, therefore why grope and complain that it's not as perfect as it could be?

Absolutely we should try to end injustice, war, disease, etc, but this world is still pretty good, and we should be grateful of that. We should all try to make the world a better place, but we also have to accept that we're stuck here and we can't change the way things, or other humans, work.

Therefore... all's for the best

[biscuithead175]

Originally Posted by xris

I was actually referring to the ethical problems technology gives us. As for those obics or ists you talk of, they are less damaging, but far from resolved.

I don't think that technology itself is what causes problems with one's ethics, but our reliance of these contraptions that create the problems. Its definitely a correlation that can be justified, but not a direct cause to the problem.

[xris]

Originally Posted by biscuithead175

I don't think that technology itself is what causes problems with one's ethics, but our reliance of these contraptions that create the problems. Its definitely a correlation that can be justified, but not a direct cause to the problem.

I have never had a contraption that has caused me an ethical problem. Splitting the atom, genetics,chemical engineering, now they cause problems for society but not me. Ive tried very hard to think of a contraption that has caused me sleepless nights, contemplating my moral reaction. I have opinions on genetic engineering but I had no problem formulating my ethical response, it was built on my moral back ground.

[biscuithead175]

Originally Posted by xris

I have never had a contraption that has caused me an ethical problem. Splitting the atom, genetics,chemical engineering, now they cause problems for society but not me. Ive tried very hard to think of a contraption that has caused me sleepless nights, contemplating my moral reaction. I have opinions on genetic engineering but I had no problem formulating my ethical response, it was built on my moral back ground.

Well if you put it along those lines, then your absolutely right. Maybe 'ethics' isnt the term to put the concept into retrospect. Surely you can see how modern technology has caused us to not be as self-reliant.

[xris]

Originally Posted by biscuithead175

Well if you put it along those lines, then your absolutely right. Maybe 'ethics' isnt the term to put the concept into retrospect. Surely you can see how modern technology has caused us to not be as self-reliant.

Now your talking,we would, could never survive without the simplest of ologies. I have survived the most horrendous of army exercises but not without my ration pack..we could never return to our old ways, our knowledge is strangely lacking in the simplest of survival tactics. The more society learns to survive the less we learn as individuals.

[Amperage]

The way I see it is that technology hasn't changed morality in any way. Only changed the way in which we employ it. For example, before guns if someone wanted to kill someone they used blades, before blades they used blunt objects, and seemingly before that they used their hands. The point is that technology has not made us less moral or more moral it's only changed the means in which we express it.

If you look at is as 2 weights on a balance beam, then we realize that technology is only one of the weights with morality being the other. Perhaps the problem is that too much focus has been placed on technology and the balance has been lost. We should, for all intensive purposes be advancing in terms of morality too one would hope.