(October 23, 2009 at 2:35 pm)Ephrium Wrote: Why? Okay, I tell you one good reason why.
Just a few centuries ago, it was acceptable for a country (or rather, any group of people) to conquer any other weaker country. The stronger country will deem it acceptable . So this is 'good'?
In 90% or perhaps even 99% of the things you do , perhaps a portion of the population will deem it good another bad, so how do you decide?
The point being, when you discuss morality, everything is such an arbitrary construct. The more you analyse it, the more convinced you are it does not exist. It is opposite of what you had said about it being blatantly obvious. The only yardstick mentioned till now is approved laws. Laws change, and further, as I mentioned not long ago it was okay to take others' belongings as long as it is not from your group, showing once again how arbitrary law or morality is. Further more , even if you do break it successfully nothing happens, other than a label placed on you.
Morals are subjective - they differ from people to places to periods of time. Historically it was acceptable, even honorable, to conquer other nations. Now we see that sort of conquest, or war in general, to be rather barbaric. This only means morals re subjective, not that they don't exist.
Morals in society are decided by society as a whole, there is no objective right or wrong, only what is appropriate for those people at that time and in that place. There are some things that have never been right, for example murder, in the structure of a society. As social animals we have an innate understanding that we need to work together in order to survive, murder is directly counter-survival for example, so it is fairly rudimentary to declare against it. All laws and all sense of morality happens in a similar way, the society decides what it's collective values are (or what the majority value is) and this value is held as the standard.
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