Sora couldn’t help but feel a mountain drop on her shoulders. “What do you mean: I’m going to help?”
Her aunt chuckled. “Sora, I told you before, I am only an intellectual construct of your aunt; I hold no real power. I can guide you, but you must be the one to act out the instructions.”
She swallowed nervously, shifting to look at each human in her Core. “I—what if I mess up? I could damage their Core or Intelligence—I couldn’t live with myself if I destroyed their entire being!”
Mary’s brow creased. “I don’t want to proceed if you are uncomfortable doing it.” Everyone else nodded.
Inari’s pleasant smile didn’t falter. “You are mistaken, my niece. You will not be manipulating their Cores, Sora. This is a personal experience; they must unlock their own Core. However, you will be facilitating the test and providing the means by which they can accomplish this.”
“I see,” Ashley hummed. “So, we are the determining factor, not Sora. She is providing the stage, but we must perform.”
Sora pressed her hands against her chest, looking down at the bright floor. “I can’t kill them with this then?”
Inari breathed a long sigh before resting her elbows on the armrests. “Bringing them into your Core was a vast degree more dangerous than what you will be providing. Do not dwell on that though. Let’s return to the topic at hand, now that your fear has been quieted. There is something that Nathan desperately wants to know the answer to that is clouding his thoughts, and that is in regards to me.”
“Eh?” Nathan jumped. “I have a question about you?”
“You do … you wonder about Sora’s aunt and just how powerful she is; after all, absolute power, corrupts absolutely, correct?”
“Oh,” Ashley leaned forward. “It’s a popular quote. You were talking about the height of the dominance hierarchy; it does seem relevant.”
Nathan growled lowly, folding his arms. “Okay, yeah, it did cross my mind. I mean—you’re super powerful and could solve all our problems, right? You could solve all the problems in just about all the worlds, right?”
“Hmm,” Inari grinned mischievously. “I very well could solve a great number of issues in regards to humanity, but I don’t and won’t. Let’s first discuss your quote, which is laughable if you gave it any form of empirical thought. It is grossly misunderstood. Power doesn't corrupt; power reveals.”
Mary sucked on her lip for a moment before nodding. “I get it—yeah, that makes a lot more sense.”
“What makes sense?” Nathan shifted uneasily.
“There are many powerful people that do great things,” Inari commented. “Look at your legends and heroes. Are they perfect? No, but they are not corrupt. Power reveals the character hiding underneath. We will discuss a portion of this in the following discussion upon the Yin and the Yang or the persona and the shadow. Let’s discuss what you each will be performing. You’ve each read or watched media that portrayed the dark side of a hero's personality, and they combat that darker self, gaining mastery.”
Sora shifted nervously as she felt the tension rise in each of their Intelligence. “We’ll be fighting our darker self?” Nathan questioned. “I’m a little scared of that aspect—I kind of fear what that might be inside me…”
“That’s a natural reaction,” Mary said with an audible breath. “We each have darkness inside us … everyone is capable of evil, but we are in control of what we choose to release.”
“I wonder about that sometimes…” Ashley muttered.
“Control,” Inari said with a crisp tone. “You mentioned the Yin and the Yang, Ashley. Such a wonderful identification with so much depth. The light and darkness inside us, cycling in balance; not separate, but combined into a whole. Mary, you’ve studied some of Carl Jung, have you not?”
Mary’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes, I most definitely have. He was a deep psychology genius. There were things that I disagreed with, but it’s Jung; he was an intellectual giant.”
“I have seen his Core, and he was indeed awakened to a great many things; he had a deep imaginative Intelligence that allowed him to identify specific phenomena and predict many events in a prophetic manner. There were many such men throughout human history that are seen with contempt because of their intellectual forethought on observing the currents moving through society; people such as Nietzsche and Dostoevsky.”
“Nietzsche?” Ashley’s brow furrowed. “Wasn’t he the one that said, God is dead?”
“Yes,” Mary shifted in her chair with a light sigh. “Nietzsche’s statement is often taken on a surface level and without context. Essentially, what Nietzsche meant was: God is dead, and we have killed him, and we will never find enough water to wash away the blood. It’s true; when people quote him, they do it in a triumphant manner, but that wasn’t his intent. If you read his writings, Nietzsche thought all hell was going to break loose because of it; he predicted much of what happened in the twentieth century in the eighteen-seventies.”
Inari tilted her head with a wry smile. “What did Nietzsche propose after that statement, Mary?”
She cleared her throat. “What are we going to do to replace him; Nietzsche believed the morality that structured western society was predicated on the fundamental axiom of divinity. He believed the whole corpus of morality was dependant upon that axiom being true, or at least be accepted as true. When that got knocked out in the conflict between science and religion, it had nothing to stand on … then morality becomes entirely questionable.
“Dostoevsky was writing just about at the same time and concluded that morally, if there’s no god, then basically anything is permitted … morality turns into whatever you can get away with; there’s nothing transcendent about it.
“That’s what motivated the Nazi’s into their religious transformation into a morality that was extremely opposed to Christianity … a rise of the state, an alternative to God. World War Two really didn’t end until nineteen-eighty-nine, the war continued, but it was a war everyone was too scared to fight until that point.”
“Some excellent examples, Mary. I’ll ask this of everyone, what is the purpose behind evil? What is it trying to convince you of? This pernicious element that corrodes human consciousness.”
When no one answered, she continued. “Life is so unbearably cruel, unjust, random, and tragic, that reality itself would be better off if it never existed at all. Everyone will go through moments with this malevolent element that latches onto your Core. It is not easy to rid yourself of this miasma; it takes real purpose, meaning, to accomplish that, and if you cannot find meaning, then you will drown in darkness.
“Humanity has struggled with this subtle presence since the beginning; yes, Mary, humanity didn’t really vote on it as a whole until nineteen-eighty-nine, when nuclear crisis reached its zenith. There were moments during that war that the whole world was ten seconds from destruction.”
Nathan looked down sullenly. “Is it worth the pain?” Sora was a little shocked to hear that from him. Does he really think life is that bad … he does have a lot of turmoil in his Core, now that I look. What’s going on with his thoughts … family?
Inari smiled. “It depends how you live; however, just knowing the answer doesn’t mean you know how to live. It takes a bedrock of ethics to stand upon, and not many people are willing to uproot their inflated ego that they can intellectually navigate the moral sphere alone.
“Ethics is grounded in eons of religious evolution and throwing that out of the window spells disaster, and thus births the Marxists. There’s only evidence of Marxism being a murderous philosophy, nothing else.
“As Mary stated, the death of God produces Nihilism; no foundation under your feet to buttress your moral claims, what is life worth in the face of tragedy; something needs to replace it … the state, opening the way for people like Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong or perhaps even the Vulpes Council. We can discuss more about this Realm in time.
“It’s important to get your ideas right because people die if they are not. Those are the options; worship the state or worship nothing, Nihilism.”
Mary sighed. “Yes, I think we understand. A postmodern response, which is Nihilistic, and the fascist response, which is state worship, and both are terrible.”
“Indeed, we are getting into a state of philosophy that Wendy would start becoming confused about. Jung was trying to bring the primordial imagination back into the world, the understanding of ethics that undergird mythology. Let’s move to some more mythology then; let’s look at the ethical understanding of the Phoenix and unite that to the Jung idea of integrating your shadow. This is important in regards to your Core.”
Mary sat a little straighter. “Those are polar opposite ideas; how can they be brought into harmony?”
“Explain why they are opposites,” Inari instructed.
Hmm,” Mary looked up into the blackness. “The Phoenix … there are times in your life where you have to identify in yourself flaws or insufficiencies that you must have a controlled burn, purging or discarding a part of yourself that doesn’t fit, like the rebirth of the Phoenix. Jung’s idea of incorporating the shadow plays out like … as you get older, you mature by reincorporating things about yourself that you lost when you were younger—integrate your shadow or things that you’ve been rejecting about yourself. One discards the flaws, while the other incorporates them.”
A playful smile curved her lips. “In Jung’s work on Alchemy, what was his explanation of the prime alchemical dictum?”
Ashley’s eyes widened with surprise. “I know this one! I remember a lecture back in my third year at University. I don’t remember the term, but it meant to dissolve and integrate. So, connecting the Phoenix with dissolve and the Shadow with integrate?”
“Hmm,” Inari’s orange irises shifted to Wendy. “Imagine you have an angry drunk as a mother.” Wendy stiffened at her words, Sora reached out and grabbed her hand to try and comfort her. “Your mother is not very controlled in her aggression and verbally abuses you while dictating chores as some arbitrary punishment. Mary, what’s the normal response to that?”
“You build a moral structure that’s a part of your personality; I’ll never drink like my mother, or I’ll never be aggressive like her.”
“Is stripping the possibility of physical or verbal aggression of any ethical utility a good thing, Mary?”
Mary shook her head. “No … it’s not a good thing.”
“No, it is not,” Inari agreed. “So, you burn that negative structure of your mother’s abuse, shedding it like a snake, but you still need to incorporate your aggression, why?”
“Ah,” Mary slapped her fist. “It’s associated in some degree with Nietzsche’s idea that morality is cowardice.”
“Indeed,” Inari praised. “One of Nietzsche’s most trenchant critiques of traditional morality is that most of what passes for morality is not that at all, but cowardice; it’s not that I’m a good person and I don’t want to hurt or steal from you, it’s that I’m afraid to hurt or steal from you because of consequences. Because I don’t want to admit that I’m afraid to hurt or steal from you, I say I’m moral, and I can mask my fear and cowardice as morality.
“Once you can perceive the human Core and the intent of the Intelligence, then it becomes all too apparent that this pervades many human interactions. Being harmless and being moral is by no means the same thing. A good branch from this is to address Sigmund Freud; what was Freud’s expertise, Mary?”
She swallowed, brow furrowed as she tried to puzzle out Inari’s connection, which didn’t take her long. “He was—ah, okay. Freud concentrated on aggression and sexuality. Probably the two most difficult parts of our personality to integrate.”
“Freud was explaining, hyper-simplified morality stops you from tapping into deeper recesses of your psyche; primarily because they are primal forces—it’s not surprising you don’t want anything to do with them, avoid situations where they may manifest. However, by denying the worst in yourself or repressing it, you prevent the possibility of the best. Nobody can be a good person without integrating their potential for aggression. Why is that, Nathan?”
Nathan pressed his hands against his forehead. “Give me a second to think about that—nobody can be a good person without integrating their potential for aggression…” He closed his eyes and leaned forward; Sora could sense his mind working frantically at the problem that Mary had already discovered. She squeezed Wendy’s hand with a concerned smile. She returned the smile, letting her know she was alright.
“Wait,” Nathan sat up, eyes wide. “You can’t say no without aggression, can you?”
“Precisely,” Mary clapped. “You know, it took me reading Freud to actually understand that. I’m impressed you came up with it on your own.”
Inari nodded. “If you really mean no, then what you’re saying is: There isn’t anything you can do to me that will make me change my mind, or conversely, it means, I will play for higher stakes than you will. And unless you have your aggression integrated, there isn’t a chance you can say that, not even a glimmer.
“If you did, without aggression, no one would take you seriously—they’d know it’s just a persona. Jung did excellent work identifying what he termed, the shadow, which is represented in many of the mythologies where the hero must face himself.
“Jung was very interested in the workings and concept of evil; what do you do with the part of you that is aggressive and potentially malevolent? Do you crush it?”
“That’s the superego response!” Mary chimed in.
“Yes, the response to put it behind you. However, is that even a possibility? Or—do you admit its existence and bring it into the game? For Freud, morality was superego clamping down on the Id, and they were fundamentally opposed.” A smile touched her lips. “Both Jung and Jean Piaget had a different idea, Mary?”
Mary breathed out a heavy sigh. “Man, going between Jung, Freud, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and now Piaget … you’re making my head spin, Inari. Okay, both Jung and Piaget … they’d say to Freud—no, no, you don’t shut the bad guys down, you invite them out to play...”
Inari picked up where she left off. “It will come in a moment; imagine you are an aggressive hockey player … that’s disciplined aggression. That gives you access to a source of energy you wouldn’t otherwise have. In regards to sexuality; unbridled promiscuity does not constitute a virtue, but neither does unavoidable virginity—in fact, personally, I think that’s worse.”
She chuckled. “Because that masks itself with virtue. The definition of a genuinely moral person: You should be able to do things you wouldn’t do; they could do it, but they don’t, and that’s not cowardice. The Phoenix, you burn off the things that get in the way of that integration.”
Wendy groaned. “Do you have an example that I can follow this with?”
“I second that!” Ashley sighed.
“Of course,” Inari chuckled. “This was a bit for Nathan, but mostly to help condense a few ideas for Mary. Let’s connect this to another Disney film that you’re all aware of, Pinocchio. Geppetto, the father figure of Pinocchio, similar to how we discussed Osiris and Horus—Geppetto is stuck in the belly of the whale.
“He’s so caught in his assumptions that he can’t escape, sound familiar? Trapped in the underworld, chaos, willfully blind. Pinocchio, Horus, represents the new force. Wendy, what does Geppetto confuse Pinocchio with when he tries to rescue him?”
“Umm, he thinks Pinocchio is a … I forgot,” Sora felt Inari’s Intelligence reach through her and touch Wendy’s Core. “No, a fish! It was a fish! He wants something to eat because he’s starving!” Wait, she doesn’t have any power, but she can use me as a conduit … oh, I see what she’s getting at. Maybe…
“Yes, but Pinocchio is better than something to eat, right?”
“Rescue,” Ashley muttered.
“Indeed. And what does Pinocchio, this new force, come up with to save them?”
Sora felt Inari’s influence touch Nathan through her. “Oh—man, I can’t believe how long ago I saw it,” Nathan said, eyes lighting up. “Pinocchio wanted to start a fire to smoke themselves out, but Geppetto freaked out because he didn’t want to burn up the furniture.”
“I see,” Mary muttered. “They don’t need the furniture if they’re getting out of the whale … Geppetto and Osiris, they’re old, that’s the rigid structure of our ethical walls.”
Ashley hummed. “The old year that has to die off before the new year can be born—a forest fire that allows for new growth.”
Inari took on a pleasant smile. “You might think, if I burn it up there’d be nothing left, but that isn’t true, is it?”
“You’re right,” Ashley jumped in. “If it’s deadwood then you have room for new growth.”
“Yes, that’s the snake that sheds its skin and transforms itself—the death and resurrection from a psychological perspective. Many people accomplish this to a lesser degree, the low hanging fruit or foolish things that if you stopped doing, would improve your life.
“I’m talking about something much, much deeper, but also requires the burning of those low hanging fruit as well. This has to do with pride; people tend to be prideful of who they are, which is a bad idea because that puts you in a sense of comfort.
“The idea that you’ve reached a state of perfection is a terrible idea because it stops you from becoming who you could be; if you are proud of what you are, then you cannot let that burn in the Phoenix’s flames and integrate the unknown and dangerous elements of your shadow.
“You become your own parody; you don’t want this, you want to be continually progressing away from your previous self. Here we get to the conclusion. Are you the yin or the yang; the order or the chaos; the persona or the shadow—or, are you the process that mediates between them.”
“Wow,” Mary breathed out slowly. “That all connects.”
Inari’s patient expression didn’t falter as she finished. “Unlocking your Core; you are the thing that transforms, and that is the right attitude for a human being. That is what you are; you are the thing that voluntarily confronts chaos and transforms—you could say, your deepest biological essence. So, you can let things go, if you know more things are to come.”
Oh good. Someone combined my philosophy and psych classes.
^_^7 Cheers!
I know some people might not like these past few chapters, as they're kinda like filler, but I have to say that I LOVE the whole thing of integrating/connecting fantasy with the modern world, and with normal people taking on fantasy elements themselves.
Thanks, ^_^7 a lot of philosophies ... the next chapter consolidates a lot of it, and then we get to the next stage.
i'm pretty sure i said it before but i truly do love the way you combine modern with fantasy/the mythological. everything flows so naturally and feels believable.
Thank you ^_^7 I try to make everything work out.
With your philosophical chapters I never know if it's the characters or you trying to pass these values. Though this chapter was actually very light on values after considering... More of a study of consciousness and free will it seems. Argh I'm so torn if I should start abusing your comments as grounds for drawn-out philosophical debate like that wall of text below me
Oh well just to see if someone bites:
I like nihilism. Change my mind.
(as a foundation)
Hehe, I try to detach myself from my characters; they each have different values for different reasons. People that tend to have very strict beliefs tend to find these chapters some of the hardest. It’s understandable.
In my opinion, bringing these philosophical, psychological and ethical chapters to the scene, I love them!
Explain, analyze, integrate and develop each of the points, myths, references to great philosophical thinkers and social icons. Not only shows great knowledge of the writer, if not creativity to include in the development of the story.
Regarding the "totalitarian" point, the issue of Marxism, the lack of social ethics and lack of "purpose." I agree with that kind of critical reasoning.
Only these few chapters give great value, hopefully those points were known or read by more people, since everything that is happening today is the consequence of those points described.
Also human stupid in society in Spain (yes, I live in Spain). We could see the problems we had coming a mile away, but people continued to refer to the left party (the Spanish Socialist Workers Party) and the "center-left" party (although the current representative openly claims to be communist and his ideal is the Marxist left. , quite the opposite of what it says "support") they called themselves, but since its founding it was a corrupt party [it's called "Podemos"].
But those came to power for simple reasons, propaganda, sectarian social groups, ignorant people and people who I cannot otherwise classify as "married to a political party" without thinking of better or alternative options.
The cryptic analysis of society seemed very interesting to me.
I'm lost. The nothingness of nietzsche and the death of god are very familiar. I just cannot integrate the idea that nothing matters and i can find purpose myself into my core being. Maybe im too young, but i dont know. I experienced nothing and i dont think its that easy for me to change. Someone once told me i lack motivation that comes from within and i only recently understood that she was totally right.
If I could just integrate all of the virtues into my core being and live through them ... but would it change anything? I would have a new view of life i guess. Would i be content with mortality. Would i be able to transcend all that holds me back? Well what holds me back is myself most of the time.
@IHadSoManyNames It's these questions that keep humans pondering, and it's the reflective nature we humans have that grants us the IQ to stand above all things. Reflection, planning, pondering, experimenting, and retesting. The ability to think critically and evolve our understanding. Action and Planning are opposites, like Chaos and Order; we must have both in harmony to accomplish something grand.
That being said, it's easier said than done. Each of us has about a five-second window to go from planning mode to action mode. If you let that window pass, then your brain sabotages the plan and you have to start at ground zero again. That could be a good thing and not a bad thing, btw, but it can also be a bad thing. It's complicated and depends on each circumstance.
@AuthorSME Thank you :).
I feel like I'm back in my high school years discussing things with my friends after we skipped school and hung out with the Psychology and Philosophy professors at the nearby university. We had some long discussions (they didn't know we were high school kids, we looked older than we were). There's so much I disagree with, and so much more I agree with, in regards to the philosophy and psych breakdown here. What I disagree with is the religious morality aspect, I think morality is innate within a community of living things to an extent. What I agree with are all those connections to Disney and boy-howdy did that throw a sharp right hook at me. I stopped to think about it and was just like, 'Damn'. I feel like those professors would have loved hearing/reading about those comparisons.
I can respect that, but humans and animals negotiate 'conflict' by fundamentally different means. Morality, as far as we've been able to trace and research, has always accompanied religion. Might it have come up from the division in higher functionality within our primal ancestors? Possibly, but we can't know for sure, but what we do know is that ethical values have always accompanied deities and that's how they viewed them. In the story, I must attribute that to deities as there are real gods. We don't have a time machine to go back and find out where that diverted or where that sprung up from in the first place, but I used what evidence we currently have to write this.
I'm not trying to promote religion but giving a fundamentally ethical equivalent within a logical breakdown. I don't see how you could argue with Jung and Nietzsche's logic though on moral stances in regards to a situation without divinity as we have ample evidence within the twentieth century to showcase the doctrines. If divinity is not at play then morality becomes wherever you can get away with, which you can believe, but the origins, sure, it could have sprung up from nowhere, but that's all theoretical. I wasn't trying to make an argument for religion or against it; I was just trying to identify with what is currently understood and in connection with the story rather than what if's. Does that make sense?
I like the way you explained that it's very logical and appealing to grasp that kind of thinking. The only reason I say that religious morality is not the path that we should take is that there are many cases where it does not, or can't explain the behaviours of living things that cannot, or will not, worship/fear a deity figure show acts of compassion (morality) that are unbefitting for their kind/species/personal history. A lioness saved a young and weak antelope from death. Dogs befriending and sharing food with cats, rodents, and all manner of traditionally prey animals. Wild wolves protecting young humans from their own kind and raising them. These community animals have no god to worship, just survival. Why the compassionate acts towards species not their own, things that their kind would traditionally kill and eat? My theory is that some of these animals had suffered in their pasts and had become more empathetic towards even those not of their kind. The lioness had lost her young and so protected the young that she could at that moment. The dog had known hunger and so empathized with those who were hungry. The wolf had not originally been raised by the pack, or maybe like the lioness had lost her pups, and so she raised the human youngling and taught them a way to survive. They gained knowledge of the pain and suffering that comes with certain actions. Almost as if they developed an emotional preconception of what a certain consequence would produce. I feel that is where morality truly comes from, emotion. Empathy, our ability to feel what others feel, this brings about moral rules that try to prevent pain. Sympathy, our ability to understand what others feel, these bring about moral rules that try to prevent loss. Apathy, the inability or unwillingness to understand what others feel, these keep Empathy and Sympathy in check and produce moral rules that help prevent overbearing and unproductive behaviors. These three things control and mold our morality. Not everyone has all three, and even those who do don't have them at the same levels as everyone else, thus they make rules and consequences for breaking those rules. There is no real equality in moral relativity, only a bar that is set by the majority (of those in power) to be applied to a living standard. Even religious morals are applied in the same way, it is through the emotional understanding of those in power that rules are implemented and punishments set so that even those who don't share the same emotional understanding realize that they shouldn't do something. At least this is my personal theory. I always felt this is why psychopaths/sociopaths tend to stray from morality. They just don't have all three of these traits, usually, they have apathy and maybe one other trait. Or they have all three but apathy dwarfs the other traits. Those with all three traits in a healthy balance will naturally try not to cause pain and loss when possible, but will cause pain and loss when they have no choice. Those who are missing Empathy will try not to cause pain to others but will tolerate the losses that they themselves or others around them will go through for them to reach their goals. Those without Sympathy will try to cause as few ripples as possible to others while not caring about the suffering they cause to attain their goals. Those without Apathy... they are the extremes in the emotional world and have my pity. Without apathy they give too much of themselves, suffering pain and losses to try to better those around them at the detriment of the self. They cannot ignore the suffering and losses of others because without apathy they feel others pain and suffering as if it was their own. They become those who die early, the ones who go crazy, the ones seeking revenge. Without a healthy balance of the three to control personal morality, people would never truly be moral. The problem I saw with modern morality is that Apathy has grown to be the dominant trait, followed closely by only one of the other two depending on the community in which one is raised. Having only two is good enough to follow rules, but not enough to be a moral foundation. At least this is how I feel about it. xD
I'm going to have to paste your response in a document and pick it apart because the block text is extremely distracting to the ideas expressed. xD Just reading over it, I'd have to caution with taking the exceptional case as a shining model as well as warn between correlation and causation when trying to determine an empirical ground for the deterministic cause ... it's not so simple. There are a vast number of facets that get left unaddressed. You're talking about morality ... the topic runs much deeper than you or I have thought, but we try to grasp the smallest straws with our limited intellect.
Socrates said some amazing things:
"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think."
^_^7 Think we shall!
Yeah, I know that the case study is not representative of the whole, nor anywhere close to the facts of the matter. I still feel that they should be taken into account, not as some wild card, but as a point of interest in the view of the whole. What caused those cases to happen? There are too many variable to take into account, and it has already been proven in the case of social studies that any experiments that are run as clinically as possible are still affected by so many other variables outside of the control of the experiment that the data provided is almost always going to be skewed unless it is an experiment into something as fundamental as reaction to very base stimuli. The sciences as far as the human condition are very vague and not understood as you have indicated, and as stated earlier, it is best to know that we know nothing, which allows us to learn from what we don't know. My argument for emotion as the relative moral base is only based on observational studies in small academic circles and personal experience. I'm definitely missing something to make it cohesive, and most likely morals are a mixture of many different elements as most things are. I only feel that the religious moral argument is weak because it comes from a place of authority and punishment. The religious moral position is the same as an authority/government moral position in that there is a consequence of the breaking of moral rules. There are threats given to people that if they don't follow the said rule they will suffer a consequence. Don't follow our rule? After you die, you will go to hell. Don't follow our rule? After you commit this act, you will go to jail. Same difference, different scales associated with different rules. There are morals that vary between individuals, while there are communities that share morals because they drew together for a common cause. Initially, survival was the biggest of these motivations. So, killing each other was one of the biggest taboos. After survival, health, so harming others was taboo. After health, comfort, so stealing was considered taboo. But, each of these has a scale to them. Killing is obviously worse since survival is the main objective of the group. So if someone was to say, just harm someone but not kill, then the punishment should not be as severe as it would have been if they had killed someone within the community, and so on and so forth. There is an argument for religions being the base of moral structure because that is where the majority of people turn to for it. Religion has always been crusading against other religions, destroying them and/or merging them into themselves. Religion is constantly changing the way they are taught because they have to stay relevant to their followers or they will be abandoned. Only a few follow a religion with blind faith when compared to the whole. Those few usually have an extreme fanaticism in regards to their faith, that was usually triggered by some event in their lives or through their upbringing, so they become the case studies in regards to religion and faith (aside from the point but an interesting study none-the-less). A vast majority of people follow a religion because that is what the community does, thus they get their moral foundation as a mix of community and religion due to the influence of community. Then what of those whole leave a religion to seek another faith? They have personal morals that do not match with the community or religion, allowing them to find something else or maybe even accept none of the others. What then of their moral base? Are they no longer good people? Are they no longer capable of morals outside of religion and authority? They are no longer part of that community nor religion, so how is it that they still are able to perform acts of kindness? I postulate that it is because they have an emotionally founded moral base. What wouldn't feel good is probably wrong, what feels good is probably right. Though I admit, with modern conveniences and support structures it is easy to mix what feels good with what feels wrong. Still, there is something that usually keeps each individual in check. Something that draws them to certain communities. A shared emotional moral structure in which they can feel that they are doing what is right.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's a rather shallow study of religion. I don't expect everyone to dig down into Hebrew, Greek, and root languages when such teachings were posed. Many of what is taught today in regards to what was proposed back then has been corrupted by many people's interpretations of translations that are fundamentally not correct.
If you did a deep study into the Hebrew and Greek base literature of say ... the Bible is an easy example, but I've studied many other literatures, then you'd see the ethical basis. What you are talking about is LAW, which is exactly what Christ, for instance, was preaching against. You had the Torah or Written Law and the Talmud or Oral Law; Christ struck down the Talmud everywhere he went but explained the ethical standard of the Torah and what it represented (it had been corrupted). There are many amazing lessons to be learned from the Bible if you go back to the roots, separate your bias, and identify what ethical foundation each teaching represents (and there are many in a single lesson). What he taught was the Spirit of the Law and not the Letter of the Law; which basically means, you must have more respect for the ethics than the law, because laws conflict and clash and don't always work.
Don't get me wrong, you need laws, but you also need to respect the ethics more than the laws and that was what Christ was teaching. Ethics has been a battleground for religion for eons and taking away that evolutionary blueprint is like starting from scratch with little to no practical exemplification. I'm not trying to convert you to Christianity by giving this example, but pointing to the moral exemplifications that can be examined and extracted; you can look at it from an Egyptian Mythos for all I care, but it is foolish to throw out all that data simply because you have some beef with religion. It's ironic how many people don't understand what religion is ... the big bang, macro-evolution, elemental evolution, etc. is a religion ... understand the roots of the words and how they are applied. Faith ... a very powerful word that a vast majority of people don't really understand. Hope, Charity ... the list goes on. Getting down to the roots and digging as far down as possible without applying your belief bias is hard, but possible ... question everything!
That is a very good point, and I'm definitely not very well versed in most religions outside of Christianity/Catholicism, Buddhism, and Hinduism (honestly, it's because I've been too lazy T_T). I'd definitely say that my view is biased because I haven't done enough research nor reflection upon the materials I have studied, but I also definitely wouldn't mind changing my views when presented with logical arguments like yours. It's difficult to take your preconceptions and alter them on such fundamental things. Still, I'll hold onto what I have, and alter it little by little. This is why I loved debates, I learn something new from them, how other people think, and am able to combine it into who I am as well. Debates always take the fundamental and strip it down to bite-size portions. Thanks for the conversation xD
Oh, ABSOLUTELY!! Debate is a fundamental reason why we can sit here today and discuss this! Free speech and expression where two parties can discuss something and leave, both satisfied. We honestly shouldn't radically alter our systems of belief within a short amount of time but take our time to ponder it out and evaluate our own system. Thank you for the discussion! ^_^7
If people are innately moral why is the first reaction to a disaster looting whenever we think we can get a way with something we often do it
@AuthorSME
I don't see how you could argue with Jung and Nietzsche's logic though on moral stances in regards to a situation without divinity as we have ample evidence within the twentieth century to showcase the doctrines. If divinity is not at play then morality becomes wherever you can get away with, which you can believe, but the origins, sure, it could have sprung up from nowhere, but that's all theoretical. I wasn't trying to make an argument for religion or against it; I was just trying to identify with what is currently understood and in connection with the story rather than what if's.
You are cherry picking specific instances of immorality by secular people and then trying to use that as "proof" that without religion, society falls apart into anarchy. There are just as many instances of religious people being immoral at a societal level, and many many more instances of both secular and religion people being firm in their morality.
Over a third of the western world is openly Athiest. More are agnostic or only paying lip service to a religious affiliation. Almost all western governments are secular, with laws forbidding the state to put backing behind any religion.
Morality and society is still chugging along just fine. By your own logic, over half the people of the Western World should be immoral anarchists who do whatever they want without remorse. Unsurprisingly, that is not reality.
You quite literally are making an argument for religion. You're even making an argument for enforced theocracy.
@AuraMaster The stance isn't that there can't be a moral society but that there is no 'reason' to be moral other than what you can gain out of any given situation. Divinity gives people a reason to be 'good' as fear is the general rule as to why people generally don't give into their baser instincts or the fear of retribution by some power.
Anything you can get away with then becomes the standard by which people will then generally live their lives. Have you stolen before, lied, cheated, hurt someone for some cause? Why did you not do it other times and feed into that desire otherwise? It's because you could get away with it and you didn't care or mind the implications.
I'm not saying you HAVE to have a god or religion to have a 'moral' society, and I totally agree with the fact we won't see a moral society at all. Not from a religious perspective at all. It really is a world where you just get away with what you can and that's how we live. Nothing more nothing less. God acts as a belief system that keeps some people in check. That's that.
@AuthorSME Exactly