Preference morality

[ronburgundy]

People having the free choice to serve others and choosing whom to serve and when is what makes for a better society. People being forced to serve others who selfishly do nothing to help themselves or anyone else makes for a terrible society and contributes to all the problems you mention.

And even this positive type of service is only a tiny fraction of morality, not all of it as you stated. It fails to cover the majority of situations where the wrong is that someone is being harmed and not that someone is being served by others.

Morality is just for people who want a better world. For people who want to improve present conditions.

Not for people who for some reason are keeping score on their fellow man and grading the contributions of others continually.

You mean like you who continually keep score on how much people serve others and how much each person benefits from a system?

You keep more score than anyone, it is just that you don't do it in any rational or consistent manner, or in any way the humans instinctively perceive as fair and just. That is why the type of system you are proposing has never existed on a large scale without the use of fascistic violence to enforce it.

And you do it because it is right even if other people are not doing it.

Taking what people have worked hard for because you are too selfish and greedy to contribute your own efforts is not "the right thing to do". Enabling and encouraging such behavior is not "the right thing to do."
A person that takes advantage of a system to get what they don't work for is immoral, whether they are doing that as a capitalist owner taking advantage of desperate workers by taking almost all the fruits of their labor, or if they are just someone who'd rather sit and watch TV and depend upon people like you to use force to take other people's stuff and give it them. Also, assuming that every human wants the exact same things is both objectively and morally wrong. Some people want the latest I-Phone, while others want the best food and beer the world has to offer, while others prefer as much relaxation time as they can get. Trying to create either a moral or political system that assumes all humans should get equal amounts of all of those things is immoral.

Giving temporary aid to those specific people making an honest effort to contribute to their own needs (whether on their own or via a collaborative endeavor) is a right thing to do. But that requires selective choice on who to aid, when, and why, and has nothing to do with ensuring that all people have an equal amount of all the fruits of all combined labor, no matter how much labor they choose to contribute.

BTW, here is something you said in a few posts ago:

A life of service would mean shared irrigation plans. Plans that serve all equally.

"Shared" also means that all the effort to plan and create it is shared equally. But your propsed system means that someone do all the work planning and creating the irrigation system. He asks the other if he wants to help and be a part of the collaboration, but the other says, "Nah, I care more about X, than getting the benefits of that system." Then after all the work is done, you come along and say, "It is immoral if the other guy doesn't get half that water." Even most 5 year olds (and Chimps) would innately recognize you system as unfair.

 

[untermensche]

Morality is just for people who want a better world. For people who want to improve present conditions.

Not for people who for some reason are keeping score on their fellow man and grading the contributions of others continually.

You mean like you who continually keep score on how much people serve others and how much each person benefits from a system?

You keep more score than anyone, it is just that you don't do it in any rational or consistent manner, or in any way the humans instinctively perceive as fair and just. That is why the type of system you are proposing has never existed on a large scale without the use of fascistic violence to enforce it.

I look at structures of power, not people.

I condemn dictatorships and power structures where humans become tools of other humans.

You seem to be looking for any excuse to just behave as you want to behave, and not even think about morality.

And you do it because it is right even if other people are not doing it.

Taking what people have worked hard for because you are too selfish and greedy to contribute your own efforts is not "the right thing to do".

Calling helping your fellow man a "taking" is just to pretend that which is most moral is not.

You either work to make your society better, by serving the whole, not yourself, or you do not.

It has nothing to do with these dubious cloud-like "people" continually taking. That exist in the numbers they exist because of an immoral society, where people only think about serving themselves.

A life of service would mean shared irrigation plans. Plans that serve all equally.

"Shared" also means that all the effort to plan and create it is shared equally....

No, shared means everybody shares the water equally.

But the fact that you have to strain so hard to find an example, since most people simply pay a utility for water, shows the weakness of your position.

 

[PyramidHead]

Way to hijack my thread, guys.

 

[untermensche]

Way to hijack my thread, guys.

Fine. Goodby.

Your thread is nice and sterile again.

 

[PyramidHead]

Way to hijack my thread, guys.

Fine. Goodby.

Your thread is nice and sterile again.

Such a ray of sunshine all the time. I'm just asking for basic forum etiquette. You could just start your own thread about collective vs. individual morality at a societal level. But I forgot: you don't start threads, because that would put you at risk of adding to your knowledge on a given subject, which is impossible since you already know everything (including what others can and cannot know).