The Universal Moral Code

[Minimalist]

We do seem to get them here, don't we?

[BlindedWantsToSee]

In what way does the moral code afford protection to those that adhere to it from those who are evil?
What if you do something evil to someone accidentally?
I think if you dilute true righteousness and justice down to four major premises, you might be throwing your high degree of accuracy out the window.
And how does this tie in with 'The Source'.

The moral code instructs everybody to defend themselves. Every living being must find a way to stop any wrong that is being perpetrated against him or her, without violating rules #2 and #3 of the code, and thus not hurting the perpetrators.

Accidental wrongs can should be willingly reversed. Full restitution, apology, etc should be given willingly.

It's really concentrating, not diluting, righteousness and justice to their most basic principles, out of which all individual moral questions can be answered.

The Source is everything and everybody, really. This is the same as saying Energy is everything and everybody. This moral code is like the rules of a rather sick game IT plays.

[Cyberman]

You may want to think this through again.

'Again'?

[BlindedWantsToSee]

2. All life has equal rights. Each living being is equal in value or importance to every other living being. No living being or group of beings has any rights, including the rights to exploit, or abuse, or force their own will, upon any other living being or group of beings, unless all beings involved are willing participants.

Malignant cancerous tumors are 'alive' by any meaningful definition of the word.  Is such a tumor  'equal in value or importance to every other living being'?  If so, then any attempt to destroy the tumor (radiation, chemotherapy, excision surgery, etc) in order to save the patient is evil, according to your definition.  Antibiotics used to treat life-threating bacterial infections would be evil, as would eradicating insect or rodent pests that pose a threat to human populations.


Do you object to medical experimentation performed on rabbits, pigs, non-human primates, etc?  Bearing in mind that such research has saved untold millions of human beings from death and misery, would you consider these experiments 'evil'?



Did you eat anything today?  If so, did you eat living beings?  Even if you are an uber-vegan, you might want to reflect that soy beans and celery stalks are living beings.


You may want to think this through again.


Boru

Yes to all your questions, really good ones, by the way. I consider everything you said to be wrong. I ate grains which did not give their consent for me to eat them. I do not believe it is possible for us to live an absolutely righteous life for very long.

---

I like the general idea of the first 4 principles except for the obvious problem that all living beings can only exist by feeding off other life. Considering unconscious plants living beings for the purpose of morality really complicates things unnecessarily. There is no getting around that lions are conscious and zebras are conscious though and that lions don't do too well on a diet of eucalyptus leaves.

The second part - dealing with those who fail to adhere to the code is actually where I have my biggest problem. It sounds like revenge-think. Sinking to same level as evil is definitely not the way to deal with evil. Not if we are to think of ourselves as good.

You are totally right, but we have no choice, as long as we are alive. I'm not saying we should take revenge. This is the way karma, life, works.

[Whateverist]

Malignant cancerous tumors are 'alive' by any meaningful definition of the word.  Is such a tumor  'equal in value or importance to every other living being'?  If so, then any attempt to destroy the tumor (radiation, chemotherapy, excision surgery, etc) in order to save the patient is evil, according to your definition.  Antibiotics used to treat life-threating bacterial infections would be evil, as would eradicating insect or rodent pests that pose a threat to human populations.


Do you object to medical experimentation performed on rabbits, pigs, non-human primates, etc?  Bearing in mind that such research has saved untold millions of human beings from death and misery, would you consider these experiments 'evil'?



Did you eat anything today?  If so, did you eat living beings?  Even if you are an uber-vegan, you might want to reflect that soy beans and celery stalks are living beings.


You may want to think this through again.


Boru

Yes to all your questions, really good ones, by the way. I consider everything you said to be wrong. I ate grains which did not give their consent for me to eat them. I do not believe it is possible for us to live an absolutely righteous life for very long.

On this much (my bolded) you probably will find much agreement.  Where we disagree will be exactly the same places we already disagree: the lengths we will go to preserve ourselves and what we value.

You can't turn morality into a decision tree which everyone would accept.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

 I do not believe it is possible for us to live an absolutely righteous life for very long.

Then your so called 'Universe Moral Code' is a fraud, or at best a farce.  What is the point of a moral code that cannot be adhered to?


Boru

[Anomalocaris]

2. All life has equal rights.

If any of your ancestors, ever, followed this morality, you wouldn’t even exist.


May I ask how a moral code that puts those who would attempt to observe itself on swift path to extinction could possibly make the universe more moral even by its own standards in the long run?

[brewer]

I don't believe I'm a victim of others. If a victim, I am a victim of myself, for not observing the part of the Code that indicates that an injustice should not be accepted or put up with by anybody.

Would you like to tell us what injustices you committed, who claimed injustice and what, if any, retribution you received?

[BlindedWantsToSee]

Does the wheat consent?  Is it going to karmicly enslave you for eating it?  What's the moral significance of bread?

The wheat doesn’t chose to participate, and thereby becomes exempt. All beings that cannot understand the OP moral code fall into the second category, so it is no less ne’er morally wrong to harm them.

I guess? I wondered exactly the same when I read the op. Life feeds on life. No getting around it.

It’s a nice idea, but utterly impossible. Tigers eat meat. Even if we wish not to impose ourselves on the tiger, it must impose itself on the water buffaloes. Circle of love from and all that.

You are absolutely right. It is utterly impossible to live in a perfectly righteous way, respecting all forms of life equally, not inflicting suffering on any sentient being, etc, in the environment where we live, and having the needs we have: to eat, to kill foreign enemies, lab rats, insects, pests, bacteria, etc to protect ourselves. For that reason, I say that LIFE (the very nature of our lives) is evil, wrong, hurtful, violent, not good. As living beings that have the nature we have, which we did not choose but which was imposed to us arbitrarily, we have no choice but to do to other living beings things that we would not like others to do to us (evil). But, for every action we take there is an equivalent reaction that comes back and is done to us. This is called karma. What we sow, we reap. We sow evil, and so we reap evil. This is the cause of all human suffering.

[The Grand Nudger]

Half baked mysticism, and in the process.... a reduction of the terms evil and morality to meaningless. I doubt you know the cause of your own proximate suffering, let alone all human suffering.