where have all the morals gone?

[VonDouche]

I blame MTV...

No, seriously I do.  It really seems like whatever they say goes, and it really sickens me that the shows they air showcase the cultural decadence of America in such a positive light.  Every teenage girl who watches that crap takes it way too seriously, and any impresionable youth is just fuel to their fire.

I really, really dislike MTV

[Limbo]

Indeed, MTV (and other teen-targeting (no pun intended...) broadcasters) have more bad influence then they know / claim to know. Over here in Dutchieland, they actually have stuff like "Pimpness Calculaters" running during clips. And although a lot / most  of the responsibility is with the parents, stuff like these music channels do more harm then they claim to do.

Hmm, this makes me think of the Southpark Episode where they totally trash Paris Hilton with the "Do it yourself Sextape Cam Box" or something

Btw, I wish that the "70's show" on MTV had lots of influence, seeing kids walking around with Bebop hair and going all "Groovy Baby" on each other...

[Godder]

Young people are in a condition like permanent intoxication, because youth is sweet and they are growing.

As you can see, you're not the only ones to have been complaining about the youth of today...

Besides, there is no morals, there is only Zuul.

[dandan]

Personally I blame the lack of morality on the taught link between morality and religion. Then if religion is rejected, often morals are too.

So what you're saying is that an immoral person is more likely to be an atheist or agnostic than someone who is devout.  I would like to see some statistics backing up that claim.

If you were to read Kant or Singer or most any philosopher of the modern era, you would find that morality is considered to be quite independent of religion.  In fact, it is not difficult to show that religion has been directly responsible for some of the worst acts in history (i.e., the Crusades, the Inquisition).  Even today, religious fundamentalism is the root cause of most terrorism in the world and other things like the campaign to make gays second-class citizens here in the US.  With such things as common throughout history as they are, I refuse to believe that atheists and agnostics are somehow inherently less moral than the devout.

Despite being a devout atheist, I'd put money on the crime statistics being higher amongst Atheists/Agnostics than in the believers. That wasn't meant to be my point.

My point was that if you teach kids that they shouldn't kill people because a supreme being once wrote that you shouldn't on a couple of tablets of stone, you are failing to educate them properly. Teaching them how crime affects people would have far more effect than 'beacuse God says so'. Note that teaching them in this way also guards against them committing acts of violence 'because God says so' too. As an Atheist none of what I do is to get brownie points for an afterlife, my morality derives from trying to make the world we live in a better place (Dandan's morality - That which increases net happiness is good, that which decreases it is bad)

[Jacob Orlove]

Dandan's morality - That which increases net happiness is good, that which decreases it is bad

That's an extremely fallible philosophy. For example, what if the entire world decided that they would all be happier if a particular person was dead--do they then have the right to murder whoever they want? Protecting the rights of the individual and of minority groups can result in a decrease in net happiness, but that's a price we should be willing to pay.

[BigMac]

Where to start, where to start.

Let me begin with saying i am against violence of any type. I am a big believer that any person should be allowed to choose for themselves. I am opposed to any form of religion or other belief (like communism or the nazis for example) that tells people how to live, who to hate, who to love and what rules to abide. I think people are perfectly capable of making their own choices and being responsible for their choices without being able to use any form of religion or belief as an excuse.

As for gunfights. Without guns no gunfights. I think that everybody that thinks a gun is there to defend oneself, thinks he will be in a bad situation in the future anyways. So he/she is thinking something bad is going to happen sooner or later. Why is that. There just are some bad apples within the human communities. As Jacob showed, it can start as early as with Cain and Abel. Now this is an example of the old testament. A lot of people believe this book, and other religious books to be true. I belief these books hold truths about life, but not about how to live it. These books give guidelines of how you can make the world a better place when you start living this way yourself. The there are people that say their interpretation of the book is the right one and somebody has to live according to their rules. There i think it goes wrong.
Example: You can pray at church as a christian. When you do not attend church, but you pray at home, does this make you a bad christian.  In the christian belief a church is the house of god. I would rather think that any house is the house of god. It is a subtle difference but it is there.

To me people that hide behind another person, a belief or a religion to justify their actions is just a big coward. However, if you use your belief or religion as a means to live by but still take responsibility for your own actions, i think you are living your life.

To me, belief is a means for people to draw hope from, not to dictate life.

About more and more degenerate people showing up and getting a circle of believers. Some people believe anything and will follow any charismatic smart leader.There are more and more people on this earth, living closer together as ever. The bad apples have nowhere to go anymore and so will show up on your doorstep more often nowadays. Due to better communication these kinds of miscreants will show up more and more as most people like some blood and violence. The proof herefor lies in the movies that are the biggest hits. Most are violent to the core. The availability of guns only adds to the risks.

If moor chances were given to all people instead to the wealthy few i think a lot less people would become gangmembers or radical believers. With the sharing of wealth more people will get educated and so the wealth overall would get better and more people would share that wealth, so more would get a good education, so there will be more wealth and so forth.

Has become a bit of a long ramble, probably no head nor tails, so i now will just stop and wait for people to tare it apart.

[Mind_under_Matter]

Defining morals: Arising from conscience or the sense of right and wrong: a moral obligation.

Everybody has their own set of morals, regardless of the terrible actions they might take, largely because they are terrible only from the perspective of another person. While I understand that people might grudgingly do things that they deem amoral because they also deem them necessary, it boils down to their morals placing the necessity above the act.

The problem is that people generally view morals from a democratic nature, the majority wins in judging an act right or wrong. Murder, rape, theft, etc. are all viewed as wrong by the majority of people, but some people who carry out such things find no moral objections to them. Are they evil people? Evil is defined by the beholder, and as such, you come to the arguement over an individuals right to judge others.

[Klep]

Teaching them how crime affects people would have far more effect than 'beacuse God says so'. Note that teaching them in this way also guards against them committing acts of violence 'because God says so' too.

And it is for this reason that morality and religion are not tied together.  I still refuse to believe that atheists are more likely to be criminals without actual evidence to back that up.

The problem is that people generally view morals from a democratic nature, the majority wins in judging an act right or wrong. Murder, rape, theft, etc. are all viewed as wrong by the majority of people, but some people who carry out such things find no moral objections to them. Are they evil people? Evil is defined by the beholder, and as such, you come to the arguement over an individuals right to judge others.

Actually, though some philosophers have no problems with moral relativity such as this, that is not the feeling of the vast majority.  There is an objective morality, and I encourage you to read some Kant to learn more about it.  I am unfortunately no longer as qualified to lecture about it as I would have been a year ago.

[Saucemaster]

I am unfortunately no longer as qualified to lecture about it as I would have been a year ago.

Is this because of that hooker whose kid you tortured before you dismembered her and donated her trick money to the GOP?  Because I told you before, man, they'll never be able to prove anything.

[Klep]

Is this because of that hooker whose kid you tortured before you dismembered her and donated her trick money to the GOP?  Because I told you before, man, they'll never be able to prove anything.

No, although that incident (the donation) haunts me to this day, and that goddamn kid won't leave me alone.

Unfortunately, graduate school has required that I push the once reasonably abundant knowledge of philosophy out of my head so I could pass my exams.  I can no longer authoritatively talk about objective morality because I can no longer remember a convincing argument in its favor, other than to point people to works of those like Kant who can. 

[dandan]

Dandan's morality - That which increases net happiness is good, that which decreases it is bad

That's an extremely fallible philosophy. For example, what if the entire world decided that they would all be happier if a particular person was dead--do they then have the right to murder whoever they want? Protecting the rights of the individual and of minority groups can result in a decrease in net happiness, but that's a price we should be willing to pay.

My philosphy does not depend on what people think they want but on the actual effect. Most of those people won't be happier at all, a few would be slightly happier, a few would feel guilty about it and so fel sadder and at least one person would feel very bad about it (although not for long, although death has a high unhappiness rating to an Atheist like me - high wastage of potential happiness).

I'd look at it differently -say a number of people decide Saddam is bad. Dandan's philosophy is that a single bullet through his brain is better than bombing non-Saddam people. Whether or not the assissination was a good or bad thing depends on the result, are people sufficiently 'more happy' to offset the loss of life?

Note that the system is really only useful for looking at shades of Grey rather than Black and White as life is like that. It does excuse stuff like hungry people stealing and executing murderers who are likely to kill again rather than sentence them to 'life' and then release them after 7 years, things that I don't support but can't logically denounce.

[Jacob Orlove]

Okay, then here's a different counterexample: suppose a bunch of people are injured in a car crash, and each one needs a separate organ replaced or they'll die. Do the doctors get to just kill someone to get all the organs they need to save the injured group?

[dandan]

That would be daft. They have a ready supply of donors who fortunately are about to die anyway. If the doctor has scruples/no balls they should wait for someone to die then grab the spare parts and do repairs. If they have no scruples/dubious Dandan ethics, they'd assess the situation then probably decide the guy who needs the brain transplant is out of luck and use those nice fresh organs (they just did this in France for a face transplant, the donor was brain-dead but still technically alive (think shop assistants)).

If the doctor is in a hospital it should be viable to stabilise all of them until suitable donors are found. Killing someone would only be considered if it saved the lives or more people. Even it that case killing someone/letting someone die who was going to die anyone would be 'better' than killing a healthy person.

I view it as pragmatic. Imagine 100 starving kids dying in Africa (actually you don't need to make them up, there are enough real starving kids there). Some are more likely to survive than others. Most people would feed the weakest ones, I'd be more likely to write a few off as lost causes and use my limited supply of food to keep some of the stronger ones alive.

[orgcandman]

You can't successfully create a society based on pragmatic morals that ignore the parts for the whole. That shit is called utilitarianism, and has a major fundamental flaw in that a persuasive person can use their influence to basically steer everyone to follow anything. The basic fundamental tennet is something like, "In a dispute between members of a cohesive group of reasoning beings, the demand for a reason is a demand for a justification that can be accepted by the group as a whole."

So basically, if there's a group of people who want to eat meat, and can't find any non-human animals, it's ok for them to consume a member of the group.

For more information, see the writings of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Parmenides.

I'm of the "lets-not-be-fucksticks" viewpoint: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

[dandan]

That is basically my viewpoint too.

That group killing a person to eat them would not increase net happiness. The same group may or may not increase net happiness if they ate a dead person .

As we are playing the nit-picking of one-line summary of life philosophy game, I should point out that your viewpoint has some major flaws concerning interaction between the sexes a far more real problem that hypothetical cannibals.

[Godder]

Neither total individualism nor total utilitarianism are practical by themselves. Using them as factors in creating a moral code is a much more practical idea, and I would encourage actually thinking about it.

[dandan]

I would argue that my philosophy does not ignore the individual as anything that affects an individual could generate a high happiness change in that person whereas society in general will continue to not give a damn.

Looking at shades of grey, I was surprised last week to hear that the Slovak government was planning to collect funds from dormant bank accounts. If I did this I would view it as a net happiness effect (particularly if I could easily refund any money if the rightful owner claimed it). However I don't like the government doing it. I guess the government will generate less happiness from the money than I would.