Re: Mind's Eye Re: Towards a modern morality

Or try not to make matters worse- whether physician or not. There's an
old line about surgeons burying their mistakes.

On May 29, 5:52 am, Molly <mollyb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> or the eternal promise, love.
>
> On May 29, 6:37 am, gabbydott <gabbyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I understand "do no harm" to serve as a friendly response/reminder or added
> > value to the real original law which is "survive".
>
> > On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 12:03 PM, Lee Douglas <leerevdoug...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > > Do no harm is broad brush, and kind of impossible to live by though innit?
>
> > > On Friday, 18 May 2012 05:13:01 UTC+1, archytas wrote:
>
> > >> My stance towards most moralising is one of incredulity, yet I'm a
> > >> moraliser and believe most of our problems lie in our lack of personal
> > >> and collective morality.  Economics as our political and business
> > >> class practice it is fundamentally immoral against a scientific world-
> > >> view,  My view of science is that it is full of values and the notion
> > >> of it as value-free is a total and totalising dud.  Only lay people
> > >> with no experience of doing science hold the "value-free" notion of
> > >> science.
>
> > >> You can explore some of the moral issues arising in modern science in
> > >> a lengthy book review at London Review of Books -
> > >>http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n10/**malcolm-bull/what-is-the-**
> > >> rational-response<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n10/malcolm-bull/what-is-the-rational-response>.
>
> > >> The book's topic is climate change.
>
> > >> Coming up to 60 I regard the world as a abject failure against the
> > >> promises I thought were being made in politics.  I'm a world-weary old
> > >> fart now, tending to see the generations coming up as narcissist
> > >> wastrels who don't know what hard work is (etc.) though I think the
> > >> blame is ours, not theirs.  I think the problem is our attitude
> > >> towards morality.  The tendency in history is to focus on religion for
> > >> moral advice - this is utterly corrupt and we have forgotten that much
> > >> religious morality is actually a reaction against unfairness and the
> > >> wicked control of our lives by the rich.  It is this latter factor
> > >> that is repeating itself.
>
> > >> Much moralising concerns sex.  This all largely based in old fables
> > >> for population control we can still find in primitive societies such
> > >> as 'sperm control by fellatio' (Sambians) and non-penetrative youth
> > >> sex (Kikuyu) etc. - and stuff like 'the silver ring thing'.  The
> > >> modern issue is population control and that we can achieve this
> > >> without sexual moralising - the moral issues are about quality of
> > >> life, women as other than child-bearing vessels and so on.  We have
> > >> failed almost entirely except in developed countries - to such an
> > >> extent the world population has trebled in my lifetime despite
> > >> economic factors driving down birth-rates in developed countries
> > >> without the kind of restrictions such as China enforced.
>
> > >> We are still at war.
>
> > >> Our economics is still based in "growth" and "consumption" and notions
> > >> human beings should work hard - when in fact the amount of work we
> > >> need to do probably equates to 3 days a week for 6 months of a year.
> > >> 75% of GDP is in services and only 6% in really hard work like
> > >> agriculture.  We could have a great deal more through doing less and
> > >> doing what we do with more regard for conservation and very different
> > >> scientific advance.  My view is it's immoral that we won't take
> > >> responsibility for this and review our failures.  I believe this
> > >> failure inhibits our spiritual growth and renders us simply animal.
>
> > >> Human life may be much less than I value it at and just a purposeless
> > >> farce.  The first step in a new attitude towards morality is to
> > >> consider living with a scientific world-view.  The implications of
> > >> this are complex and probably entail shaking ourselves from a false-
> > >> consciousness to be able to see what is being done in our name.  We
> > >> need a modern morality not based in the creation of fear and demons to
> > >> enforce it, or the feeble existential view of the individual.  We are
> > >> social animals and need to get back to some basics developed with
> > >> modern knowledge, not in past religious and empire disasters.
>
> > >> Religion has a role in this in my view - religion we might recapture
> > >> from sensible history - I'd recommend David Graeber's 'Debt: the first
> > >> 5000 years' as a read here.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -