Those who stand for nothing fall for anything

certain experiences consistently result in psychological trauma, or, in the case of children, stymie the natural maturation process

the string of decisions which results in carrying out certain acts also -i believe- has a deleterious effect on the psychology of the perpetrator
because, if one were not already overtly anti social he/she would have to become so in order to achieve the aim

certain activities require deceit, manipulation, exploitation

any choice which hurts me for making it or which damages you for my achieving it is by its nature approaching or crossing into the realm of the immoral

of course, people get clever and come up with moral justifications to seemingly immoral acts - such as execution or genital mutilation

it may be that it is not uncommon for cultures to err in certain peculiar instances, (i assume because of how complicated it is for us to all get along lol) but the heart of morality is the effort to protect ourselves and each other from harm, specifically, the harmful consequences of selfish or just foolish decisions

and to instill mental and behavioral patterns which are believed to enable us to interact with our societies in a mutually beneficial fashion

i think, lol

Manu wrote: For the sake of the argument, let's assume that when I say pedophilia I do not include statuatory rape. Let's narrow it down to an adult male sexually penetrating a toddler against his will. I don't care if you tell me it's a rite of passage in xyz society. I believe it harms the child, and thus, is evil.

So what if group X thinks that action Y (which we think is evil) does them good?
The temple's standing of morality as an evolving social construct really seems a bit trite in the face of us standing around while Y is happening "because it's ok for X to do it"
At the same time, if you think that morality is a social construct, that doesn't give it power to control our actions. You either end up mindlessly serving an arbitrary decision or going full Stirner and ignoring the "spooks" unless they have utility.

instill mental and behavioral patterns which are believed to enable us to interact with our societies in a mutually beneficial fashion

This is something I believe (most people in organisations do - the Jedi as much as any I expect)

This is why organisations like to get their members young - If you can get those mental and behavioral patterns in everyone, you essentially have peace.

Now some will cry that it is a form of brainwashing, and it illiminates freedom - and that it is, and that it does - but it gets peace (Anyone who works with kids should more or less get what this means. There are plenty of "humane" ways to do it - but the result is - creating people who find pulling the wings off live birds* abhorrent.
In a free-er society, pulling the wings off live birds would not necessarily be abhorrent, there are things to learn from the act - The birds' reaction, the pain, how tendons and muscles work - there are things to learn in then maybe healing the bird, watching how it is now accepted or not accepted-wingless back to its family, how it learns to hunt for food.

This knowledge would be valuable and the person seeking it would be lauded in such a society.)

This is where many modern religions (including this temple) become "greyer" in order to be more accessible to new memberships in societies that increasingly demand personal liberty and with communication that spans many cultures whom no one wants to offend.

The Jedi of myth, and many other institutions would find this place far too open in these respects.

(In condemnation of many institutions - I think over time they forgot the "teaching" or "instilling" methods of giving people mental and behavioral "habits" and went for a "Do this or Punished" type method, which is why they are failing as people decided they didn't want to be punished, and search for gentler masters to serve)





*if at any point you feel that "birds" as an example isn't cutting it, feel free to exchange it mentally for "dogs" "people" "children" or something dearer to your heart.

1 - is reality real?

the way i understood it was always that we believe the legitimacy of dreams when we dream, but when we wake we realize that the dream reality is less real than this waking reality (some argue the dream reality is also real, at least, "from a certain point of view," and there is merit to this imo, but its maybe a different conversation)

from the dream/wake contrast, we can hypothesize that there may be yet another state of consciousness from where we understand that this, waking state, is also in some comparable way, less real

therefore, we might make the claim that reality cannot be proven to be real, because we cannot prove that we are not in some way "dreaming"

2 - the guy who pulls wings off of birds is probably doing it because he enjoys making things suffer

it can be argued that such a one is useful in limited contexts, such as war, or that we can learn useful things as a result of his actions, but even so, he is not a moral person because the patterns of behavior he expresses are socially destructive (pretty much regardless of what society you might place him into), and because he cannot be personally trusted

it is unsafe to be vulnerable with him around; he is the type who would chum the waters and as soon as the sharks arrive he'd hamstring you and push you overboard, simply for the enjoyment of watching

which is why i believe motives to be more important than consequences when determining the morality of an act; we can never foresee all of the consequences of any choice that we make, but we can evaluate our own motives to understand what principles and impulses we are acting upon when we choose

i think consequentialism has some utility after we have chosen to act - like if we hit a ball and break a window, it doesnt matter that we didnt intend to do it, we have to take responsibility for our actions even when they have unintended consequences

but it doesnt tell us how to choose except to say "choose based on the consequences that you want to achieve" which is arguably what we do anyway

4 - people who know how to think for themselves arent going to accept "you will be punished"

all "you will be punished" means is that you have to be clever enough to not get caught

understanding the positive benefits of moral behavior on one's long term quality of life is, imo, a much more compelling argument for morality

Manu wrote:

JamesSand wrote:

Or would you postulate that in some events pedophilia is not evil?

Given that the "age of consent" is largely arbitrary...

For the sake of the argument, let's assume that when I say pedophilia I do not include statuatory rape. Let's narrow it down to an adult male sexually penetrating a toddler against his will. I don't care if you tell me it's a rite of passage in xyz society. I believe it harms the child, and thus, is evil.

I find that to be inaccurate. Men and women both have the ability to molest or rape a child. This definition would result in no female pedophiles, which is obviously untrue as there have been many female pedophiles and child molesters.
But also there is a difference between pedophilia and child molestation. Pedophilia is not any specific action, but is the often unwilling mental condition where a person finds themselves attracted to prepubescent children. Many people recognize that condition as bad and seek treatment for it as a mental health issue. Pedophilia as a mental state has as much moral importance as any other mental state. Surely an unwilling person who suffers from this mental condition is not "bad" unless they have acted on those impulses. Child molesters harm the child, and they have done wrong.

Then what is legitimate justice?

Surely legitimate justice would eliminate the possibility of a future presence of unwanted behavior in the individual being punished and would be focused on reintegrating that person into society. A system which promotes real changes in the behavior of a person rather than generalized punishment. I think prisons and jails should still exist, but should be focused on conditioning the unwanted behaviors out of people while at the same time preparing them to be of service to society upon release.

Sure, tossing the child molestor into prison does not unmolest the child, but it creates a precedent for other pedophiles to resist their urges at least due to fear of punishment.

If this were effective, we wouldn't have any rapists, child molesters, thieves, murderers, etc. I would rather have a system of individual conditioning which effectively prevents subsequent illegal actions in a single person than a fear-based system which doesn't work. Last month was the most violent month in 25 years where I live. Chicago, which is nearby, had nearly 100 homicides in one month. It's obvious that the whole fear of punishment thing doesn't work effectively.
And really, if there were no punishment associated with murdering someone, I don't think most people would go out and kill each other.

Besides, the secondary purpose of incarceration is to prevent that person from continuing to perform the same evil action again and again.

By pushing them into a punishment-based prison system, you're enabling them to still harm others within the prison and you're not doing anything to prevent subsequent crimes from happening. In countries which do have a more reintegration-based approach, I've heard that they have FAR less repeat offenders than in the US. I can only assume, based on the information available to me, that it is a superior system of justice.

As it is, punishment-based justice systems fail to improve the lives of the victims, fail to benefit society through the reintegration of the criminal, fail to prevent repeat offenses, and fail to prevent crimes from happening in the first place.

This is all off topic, new thread on child molesters and justice, maybe ?

This is all off topic, new thread on child molesters and justice, maybe ?

I don't think we've wandered too far yet -

We're working out how Law, and enforcement of Law relates (or doesn't relate) to mottos, maxims, and morality spectrums.

Whether any given local law, or system of enforcement has any relationship to, or benefit toward, creating and maintaining "True" goodness and virtue (although we still are not sure what that is )

We are still in the realms of the subject as I see it.

In fact Silas, there's an opening here for you to entertain ideas that a virtuous society can only be lead by a virtuous and benevolent overseer, who controls all media (music, entertainment etc) to keep the people on the "right path" and preventing any social upheaval.

(I apologise if I'm misunderstanding you, but I believe you have supported the idea we be ruled by Philosopher-Kings in the past?)

People seem to be individual biological systems so it makes sense they should be given agency, and allowed freedom to own that agency of self as an entity within the legal framework of the particular nation, as a person. In recognizing the individual person, the laws of the nation then probably become about what is determined to be acceptable conduct for individuals, so they do not burden their own, or others, agency to the point that it negatively impacts society.

So if the main measure of a person's 'status' as a person was their normal level of health, then any suffering exerted onto a person against their will would be contrary to that, as it would impact the functioning of that person, and demand support from the society which otherwise could have been avoided. The offender thus becomes responsible and so repeat offence or conduct serious enough could be seen as a reason to invite separation from the society.

So to participate in the society you'd need an understanding of the body of laws, and the consequence for braking them.... but there are a lot of laws, so understanding the basic reasoning probably is a good guide to inform decision making in the absence of knowledge about particular laws.

This is sort of built up upon the golden rule, as it tries to view people as equals, and then tries to assess interaction to avoid or minimize the creation of suffering in that person. If people did not believe in that basic belief then it exposes the vulnerable members of society to abuse which then incurs a greater toll on the society to react and deal with it. So its why I define evil as the awareness of suffering the intention to increase it (implied; non-consensual), it clearly defines intention behind action in breach of the fundamental aspects of dignity. That is how I sort of view it.

Adder wrote: People seem to be individual biological systems so it makes sense they should be given agency, and allowed freedom to own that agency of self as an entity within the legal framework of the particular nation, as a person. In recognizing the individual person, the laws of the nation then probably become about what is determined to be acceptable conduct for individuals, so they do not burden their own, or others, agency to the point that it negatively impacts society.

Completely agree with you there Adder. By being born, we signed in to the social contract. That means we relinquish "total liberty" for the benefits of communal living. The social contract isn't something you sign, but rather the basic tort/property laws that are necessary to have any sort of law (this goes back to Manu's point of both Christianity and Wicca having a "don't harm other people" commandment). Some groups (Wicca, Lib/AnCaps, etc.) tend to limit the codified laws there in order to preserve the defining characteristic of humanity: freedom, while others think that since people are inherently evil that other restrictions of both social and economic nature must be in place to guarantee equality (Statist/Monarchists, Authoritarian Communists, National Socialists, etc.)

@ Silas: Pedophilia was but an example out of possible many.

@TheDude: you are correct, I mis-spoke (or would it be mistyped) when I classified pedophilia as evil, I was referring specifically to the act of molesting a child, not the attraction that may or may not turn into action. And the example I posted was to get out of the way statuatory rape. I was not defining pedophilia or child molestation as exclusive to men.

I wonder what your thoughts are on the tradition of older men marrying young girls (anywhere from 5 to 9 years old) in some middle eastern countries. I understand that in the context of the culture it is moral, but is it really? Honestly, I might be biased, but I think it's pretty black or white in this scenario, and to me that specific thing about the culture is absolutely wrong.