TomC
Bless Your Heart!
- Joined
- Oct 1, 2020
- Messages
- 7,322
- Location
- Midwestern USA
- Gender
- Faggot
- Basic Beliefs
- Agnostic deist
A broken arm seems like a good example to explain what I mean by morality.
It's definitely harm. The moral question, to my mind, is "Why did it happen?".
A person might break their arm walking to their car on icy pavement. Nobody made a decision, it's just an an accident.
A person might break their arm playing ball with friends. Playing physical games carries a bit of risk. It's usually a risk considered worth it for the benefits. Exercise. Comradery. Character building. Whatever, it's just part of the risk of getting out of bed in the morning.
It might happen because an abusive spouse fucks you up. Then there's definitely some choices made. The main one is someone choosing to abuse their spouse badly enough to cause a broken arm. There's no real excuses for that choice.
And there are even more immoral choices possible. More murderous. More about inflicting harm for sheer enjoyment of other people's pain.
The moral issues are all about the choices, not the harm. Moral choices are choices that are likely to improve the human situation overall. Immoral choices are choices likely to degrade to human situation overall.
Humans are pitifully bad at figuring that out, so we continue to make terrible, destructive, choices, over and over. That's immorality.
Too bad there's no God who cares enough to make humans smarter than we are...
Tom
It's definitely harm. The moral question, to my mind, is "Why did it happen?".
A person might break their arm walking to their car on icy pavement. Nobody made a decision, it's just an an accident.
A person might break their arm playing ball with friends. Playing physical games carries a bit of risk. It's usually a risk considered worth it for the benefits. Exercise. Comradery. Character building. Whatever, it's just part of the risk of getting out of bed in the morning.
It might happen because an abusive spouse fucks you up. Then there's definitely some choices made. The main one is someone choosing to abuse their spouse badly enough to cause a broken arm. There's no real excuses for that choice.
And there are even more immoral choices possible. More murderous. More about inflicting harm for sheer enjoyment of other people's pain.
The moral issues are all about the choices, not the harm. Moral choices are choices that are likely to improve the human situation overall. Immoral choices are choices likely to degrade to human situation overall.
Humans are pitifully bad at figuring that out, so we continue to make terrible, destructive, choices, over and over. That's immorality.
Too bad there's no God who cares enough to make humans smarter than we are...
Tom