Morality

[whatever76]

Thanks for the reply.
BF Skinner's totalitarian behaviorism, is actually one of the reasons I started this thread.
If morals are merely relative, than this Orwellian 1984 kinda thought seems like the only way, to bring peace and order..?

Why do you think BF Skinner's behaviorism is totalitarian?

Regarding your question about bringing peace and order 1984-style, let's use yourself as a microcosm of society. There is a big brother in your head that demands that your body conform to a particular protocol. Whenever you behave outside of that protocol, your inner-big brother hits the offending part of your body with a hammer. Big brother's justification is that the protocol brings peace, order, certainty to your organism. Yet, obviously, big brother brings violence, confusion, and fear. Eventually, absolute peace will be achieved because at some point you'll hit yourself in the head for thinking bad thoughts.

Now let's consider a democratic version. Instead of big brother, you've got a little buddha inside your head. Little buddha doesn't have a protocol, he just observes your behavior, being compassionate to you without any conditions on how you should behave. Sometimes, you still do stupid shit and that's unfortunate (there are still consequences), but your tendency is to be peaceful and compassionate like little buddha because that's an attractive way to be.

"The gap between the ideal and the real person is the cause of most evil in the world on both an individual and group level. As Feuerbach puts it, God is man alienated from himself."

This kind of thought concerns me... without ideals, morality can only mean "doing whater you want"??

Isn't the ideal a representation of what one wants? So, paradoxically, removing the ideal brings one closer to being the ideal. It is in the absence of alienation that one acts morally and it is the ideal that is creating the alienation.

Let's say your ideal is someone who is peaceful and wise. Plenty of people don't act peaceful and wise, which can be disturbing and that disturbance can lead to unwise responses to their behavior. But what if people don't have to be peaceful or wise; how can their behavior disturb you?

I have found it interesting that the best way to condition another person (and to not be conditioned by them) is through unconditional positive regard for that person. They automatically want what you got and what you got isn't eternal submission to an authoritarian deity, it is personal freedom. It has nothing to do with god commanding anyone to do anything.