No Absolutes
21 04 2008For all intents and purposes, I’ve come to the conclusion that one should never (or at the very least, extremely exclusively) use absolutes. It just drives me nuts to look around at the world and see how many people think issues are so black and white, right and wrong. They aren’t. Absolute or universal truths will always have flaws, making them, well, not absolutes at all. Truth is the conformity to fact or reality, but there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t agree. Does that make the idea or the person flawed? If you think I have an answer, I don’t. Just sayin’.
Murder is wrong. Theft is wrong. Abortion is wrong. Picking your nose is wrong. Some people agree, some don’t. I’m not going to get into the legal/religious specifications of the above – I’m just using them as examples. Murder is wrong if it is senseless, correct? So, for example, if John Smith murders Jane Smith, that’s a crime. But then again, senseless implies that short of psychopathic tendencies, murder would be acceptable. But if John murders Jane out of passion, is that still a crime? I’d say so. What if John kills Jane in self defense? That’s when we get into grey area. That’s years worth of legal battles and millions of dollars in press coverage. But I digress…
What is John was suffering from depression? Still a crime? Or just plausible deniability? What if John was just acting based on a stimulant he ingested? Does it matter if it was legal? If he was using cocaine, he’d be in jail. But what about caffeine? Still a stimulant…it’s just socially accepted. Yet, alcohol is socially accepted too, but much less so than caffeine. If you don’t see the logic in the above, I’m either doing a very poor job of articulating my point, or things are worse than I thought.
Speaking of which, as a brief interjection, I hate the argument that things are “wrong” because they are illegal. Or that the Koran says so. Or because you were “raised” a certain way. Murder is wrong – why? Because the Bible says “thou shall not kill”? No. It’s wrong because deep in your psyche, you know it isn’t acceptable. You know that stealing is wrong because you shouldn’t take what rightfully belongs to others. Yet, would you really tell an Ethiopian child with a swollen belly not to take food when it was in front of them, regardless of ownership? You steal on a day to day basis, too. You steal the ozone layer away from the earth because you need to drive to work, you shop at Wal-mart because prices are cheaper than the local mall. But is it still wrong to knowingly harm the environment? Some may same it isn’t, because soil isn’t the same thing as flesh and blood. But then what becomes of the animal kingdom? (For the record, the Vatican just issued a new list of sins here in which pollution makes an appearance, among other things). I’m not chastising anyone for anything specific here – in fact, if I was, I’d be refuting my entire argument. I’m just saying that we need to consider all sides of a story before we start crucifying others for their beliefs.
Don’t worry, I’m not sociopathic…I think murder is wrong just like everyone else, and I’m almost second guessing posting this as I’m typing because rest assured, someone will get the wrong idea. I’m just saying that nothing is easy anymore. The ideas that we’re all striving for are incredibly complex. We can’t just assume that we’re going to get everything right all the time, whether it’s relations with foreign nations or the sub-prime mortgage crisis. It’s just not realistic, but that doesn’t mean we can stop striving for perfection. To quote a friend, “Though we live at the pinnacle, we yet strive for greater things.” I’m coming upon a more relativist way of thinking lately, and I haven’t decided how I feel about that yet, since I’m struggling with the whole “argument” thing. I love the battle of ideas, and while relativists claim that thoughts are boundless and shouldn’t be controlled – so what is the point in arguing? Can one be a relativist if they defend their beliefs? There we go again…grouping ourselves until there’s no room for individuality. I’d just be happy if I could get a few more of the closed minded to think every once in a while. I hope my thoughts are cogent – like I said, it’s incredibly difficult to articulate and fathom the ideas and issues we’re faced with at this time in history. I’m just not ready to give up that easily…
It also comes down to responsibility, I wasn’t at fault because my mind is wired improperly, demons tempted me, I was blinded by rage/love/hatred etc. When you really get into the subjective nature of most ideas, nothing is wrong or right except in what we wish to grant as such. Eye for an eye is rather the mirror of the golden rule. Kill them because they killed someone else; don’t kill me because I wouldn’t kill someone else. Its a social contract certainly, but justification comes from the same psyche that dwells in the pool of good and evil. Abandoning the ideas of good and evil makes loving all plenty easier.
http://www.QuestioCunctus.com
Ultimately, it comes down to your conception of justice, and where you drawn the line between yourself and others. The Golden Rule works on principle because it applies an egocentric twist to morality, but what if you like to be tickled and nobody else does? Would you then treat everyone how you would like to be treated? I much prefer the Hippocratic idea, “Do no harm.”
But I have a serious question: how do you think our psyche develops? Are we inherently granted the same ideals, same basic conceptions of the world? You say deep down in our psyches, we know that stealing is wrong, but that implies a conception of property that may or may not exist in the mind of an individual. The same goes for death, and even religion. So what does assuming that we as humans have a universal “psyche” format lead towards? That everyone should think the same, and those that don’t or somehow wrong or inferior?
Abandoning the ideas of universality makes justice possible.
Of course we aren’t born with some innate conception of congruent ideals - but at the same time, I believe it’s all relative (which is probably becoming the overused term of the day…). I do think that the generic sense of right and wrong is there, and that we can’t ignore it - it’s in everyone. When you strip outlying factors away, we are all the same - just how we all differ in physical features yet are still part of a human race. Still, my view of the word will differ from yours, and someone who is born into a specific religion, or social status, etc. Once again though, it comes down to a universal morality. Stealing to steal is wrong, as is murder for murder, etc. That’s universal - even the “exceptions” aren’t really exceptions - they’re completely different situations.
I guess my answer to the question (in my oh-so unprofessional analysis) is that the psyche develops through events and our perceptions of them. I’m a big believer in the strength of the mind, and I think an incompressible amount can be accomplished through (wait for it) conscious endeavor. Should everyone think the same? Of course not. But we all have similar notions, and when it comes down to it, we all agree.
I’ll try and make a quick example - I love my dog. I’d go as far to say that she’s the best dog in the world. Many dog lovers would disagree with me, saying that I am wrong, and that their dog is the best. While we disagree between each other, what we fail to realize is that our love and devotion to our respective pups is what binds us together.
I don’t agree at all with the “Abandoning the ideas of universality makes justice possible”. Without a basic understanding of a universal humanity, justice is not possible - for then what can our actions be compared to?