Lawful but Immoral

[Naeo]

Note, this is all from an American perspective. Texan, specifically, bur Houston, so not much "real Texan" culture in my veins.

A lot of the uses of freedom of speech can be considered immoral but legal, such as standing in a public forum, or on national television, or what have you and saying "so and so opponent is a dumb *****" or "so and so opponent is a sham/wasn't born in America/is a terrorist" (yeah that mirrored a lot of anti-Obama sentiment, it just happened to be handy), or general shit-talking in public forums. It's not illegal unless you make false claims with intent to cause damage (libel/slander laws), but people still get away with it all the time. Also, the frequent use of free speech to basically campaign against certain groups. Like the Westboro Baptists, to cite an admittedly extreme example, using their first amendment right to try and spread their message that all gay people are going to hell for the worst possible punishment and that America is going with them for tolerating their very existence. And basically everything they do. They are very careful to stay within legal boundaries, which is the worst thing.

So yeah, I guess Westboros would probably be a good place to start an article.

Okay also I'm going to chime in on the debate about drugs here. I'm only gonna contribute one point, though. Again, this is speaking as an American, from an American perspective. The government has every legal and authoritative right to restrict your personal use of drugs. State governments restrict your right to drive a car, the FAA restricts your right to fly a plane, the FDA restricts what can and can't go into your food and therefore has a good deal of control (even if it seldom exercises it effectively) over the very sustenance that keeps you alive. But no one complains about the morality of these things. Yes, the government regulating what you do to yourself seems silly. Yes, it seems overbearing. But it's part of the government's goddamn job. The government exists to provide benefits to the public that would not exist if the market were allowed to do things. That is, where corporations exist to earn a profit, the government exists to further the public good, and so will operate inefficiently--that is, it won't use the economically ideal allocation of funds or labor, because it doesn't have to make a profit and can afford to pump more or less into something that makes the government act at a loss. Part of this entails regulations and laws for the public good. If the government has reason to believe that something will result in a net gain to the public, it will do it if the cost is feasible.

So basically, the government exists to make sure that society--as a whole, not as individual people--functions as smoothly as possible. If the government deems that something like drugs will make the society operate non-smoothly for some reason, it will outlaw them or put some sort of measure in place to reduce usage. And since, in this country, the Rule of Law is perhaps the single most fundamental ideal, if the government has the authority to do that, it can do that. Morality is not taken into consideration of what the government can and can't do. and the government has the legal authority to outlaw substances like marijuana or cocaine or heroin, and does so regularly. And as the Supreme Court--the only body in the land that can immediately overturn a federal law--has not overturned or challenged drug laws to my knowledge, they stand as legally valid. Their reasoning behind the laws ultimately comes down to "outlawing drugs creates a greater public benefit than drugs being legal". And as the government is the one whose job it is to decide those things, it can do that.

Morally is a different question. I personally think that either we should ban tobacco (I would say alcohol, but that's so deeply ingrained in all of human society that it would be absolutely impossible to do) or legalize a host of currently illegal drugs--marijuana, LSD, etc. Not the ones that regularly make someone a danger to those around them, though. Also, either way, I think there needs to be a serious revamp of penalties for drug laws. Selling should still carry a pretty hefty penalty, but it should depend more on how much the person sold. The guy who sells an ounce of weed every other week week shouldn't get as much jail time as the guy who sells an ounce of weed a day. And minimum mandatory sentences need to go away, they're just fucking stupid. I think that the penalties for use/possession should really be scaled back, basically, while keeping selling/peddling penalties relatively high (maybe not as high as they are now) while adjusting them for how big a seller the person was.

 

[Kair]

1) Why do I even bother listing it if you can not immediately understand the point when I say "limiting infinite resources".

2) That it has driven out of hand is a symptom of the disease that is plaguing humans.

3) Humanists like to differentiate between instinctual and sentient. Humans today are half-way between, but they can become sentient.

4) Animalized human is a term I just invented to describe the half-animal state of most humans today. We are all born as animals, and very few today ever rise to become Humans.
There is a need to limit drug use because the animalized humans are not capable of controlling it. Animals like religious right-wing nuts and such oppose gay marriage. Religion is simply instinctual and is a means of controlling instinctual animals.

You are joking aren't you? Had me going there for a while.

Let me guess, first year college or "15 and philosophising"?

1) Intellectual property is there so that people can earn a livelihood from their intellectual and creative endeavours, its not an infinite resource, there's no such thing as an infinite resource.

2) You're not really making much of a statement here beyond 'people are selfish', yes, we know, the free market model suggests that (with market failure exceptions and appropriate regulation to ensure transparency of trade) the invisible hand will guide selfish drivers through the supply & demand curve to generate growth.

3 & 4) You're kind of groping blindly towards the Id, Ego and Super-Ego model which is well established and I think is a pretty good model. I think quite a lot of scientific minded humanists would take issue at you claiming that there is a non-animal state of humanity (presumably denying all instinctual animalness such as procreation?), we're all animals, we'll always be animals - denying our animal instincts is foolish.

Your invented term is inherently contradictory. You say all people are born animals, some 'rise to become human' but refer those that don't as animalised humans. That implies a corruption of what is human by animalisation with contradictory to the statement that all humans are born animals. On that basis, using your invented construct, those who are homophobic have gone from an animal state (which must, as shown above be non-homophobic) to a different state which is homophobic. So have they been humanised wrong?

On the gay note, that's probably quite a cultural construction as its been shown that there are examples of other animals who display homosexuality without social disruption within the group. So anti-gay sentiments would have to be either a uniquely human instinct (which would be counter-productive evolutionary as gay males cut competition for herto males for women) or a social construct).

I don't really want to speak to you any more. I told you at the start of the discussion that it would come to no end. You have nothing new to add to my thought process, neither any useful criticism. What you have is bias, and a lot of it. The bias causes you to be hostile to change, ideas for change and people who advocate for change. I have spoken to your kind before and there is rarely any use from it.

Everything you say already crosses my mind as I write in the first place.
Maybe when I was 15 and philosophising, I could have used your biased first-stage criticism. Now I am far beyond that and need no input from angry closet-conservatives.

 

[Lord Kloo]

The death penalty, euthanasia, suicide, the republican party.. there's a tonne of stuff
Also depends on your definition of immoral, because the West Borough Baptists see being homosexual as immoral yet its lawful.. so there's a little twist..

 

[Dense_Electric]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

Every right if said drug can have a negative effect on society, eg..Imagine a country in which everyone took cocaine. Extreme example, but resonates my point well.

No, your example is ridiculous.

If the principle you're basing your justification on is harm prevention, then you're way off.

Prohibition causes much more harm to society because it puts control of the market into the hand of organised criminals. Turf wars, gang violence, all would be reduced drastically.

Legalization leads to acceptance of the practice. Would you want your child to go to a heroin bar when he turns 21?

Would I want it? No of course not, but I will have raised my hypothetical future children well and I doubt that it would happen. In any case I certainly wouldn't want it to be illegal, if my hypothetical future child wants to do heroin once he's old enough to fully understand the issues surrounding it then he'd be well within his rights to do so imo. Libertarianism ftw.

I call bullshit. No one in their right mind would want to have their child do heroin whether they understand what it is going to do or not.

Did you even read his last post? He made his thoughts quite clear. If an adult (we're talking about when the child reaches whatever arbitrary legal age limit) wants to do something of their own free will, they can do that, no matter how self-destructive it might be. He quite clearly said he wouldn't want him to, just that he would support his right to do it.

You could have fooled me..... I thought it was to protect the citizens from the drugs, those who take them, and those who use the profits to fund terrorism attacks on the US.

Based on the supposed logic that a government's responsibility is to protect people from themselves, which backfires almost every time it's implemented into law. The government doesn't need to be trying to regulate what we do to our bodies, that's never worked and it never will. (Also see below about the drugs funding terrorism thing)

Source please.

Source or not, it's pretty damn obvious. What you fail to understand is that the whole concept of drugs and violent crime going together stems from the fact that they're illegal. You make them legal, you remove the whole criminal element from them. Now there's virtually no connotation between your average crack user and the gang from two blocks over.

And in addition to common dealer-related crime, there's the gang aspect as well. Most gangs make the majority of their money from the fact that drugs are illegal. So do terrorist organizations. So do Latin American drug cartels (meaning it would seriously help our illegal immigration problem in the US as well, since they'd be out of power in Mexico). If a major company can produce these drugs in a field or a lab out in the open and in mass quantities, legally, those criminal groups are out of a job.

People who break the law are not deserving of prosecution?

When they broke a totally arbitrary law that exists for no real reason? No, they're really not. It makes sense both morally and economically.

What about the other half? Or would talking about the violent drug related convictions completely destroy the validity of your argument?

Obviously the violent inmates would not be released, just the ones who hadn't actually hurt anyone else. Did he really even need to state that?

I do not use drugs, so I couldn't give less of a shit about the feelings of those who do want to. Approaching the issue with that view, knowing the factual information about the drug trade funding terrorism, and seeing the effects of drugs on people I know makes me informed enough.

Good day.

Very backwards thinking. The whole concept of free will does not extend only to what you personally want to partake in, it extends to the point where someone should have the moral and legal right to do anything that doesn't harm or directly threaten another.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

Plenty when the state is often called upon to keep your antics while under the influence in check. Such prohibition generally does not exist to protect you; rather, it serves to protect the other people in society around you.

laws against prostitution. What right does the goverment have to deny someone of a job when they aren't hurting anybody?

It isn't a matter of a right at all. Morality is a tricky issue in that it is based entirely on perspective of what is right and what is wrong. Prostitution is generally illegal in places that consider the act of prostitution itself immoral. That such laws simply serve to do little more than increase the risk to any patron who might solicit the services of a prostitute all while ensuring that prostitutes themselves are treated incredibly poorly is largely irrelevant to the question of the morality of the law itself.

Laws that are considered immoral do not often stand for terribly long simply because popular consent is often a key part of enforcing said law.

lawyers.


Making a deal with one member of a gang in order to gain convictions against the other members?
(Go watch Law Abiding Citizen... it might help, and if not its a good alternative to working )

That isn't immoral so much as pragmatic. In an ideal world, all those who are guilty would be punished but, sadly, we do not live in such a place. Sometimes you have to deal with dirtbags in order to put other dirtbags away. It isn't perfect but it is better than would would often be the alternative of no dirtbags getting what's coming to them.

1) Intellectual property - limits the distribution of infinite resource to achieve profit.

What right does someone else have to that resource if it was created through no effort of their own? If you can establish this (and you generally cannot without a very circular argument though I invite you to try), laws protecting said property is not immoral because there is no fundamental violation of right on any side. The consumer is not forced to make a purchase after all.

2) Capitalist ventures - treating currency as a resource of its own, severely limiting the ability for us to use currency as a tool and not only being burdened by it.

Currency is little more than the abstract idea of value. It is also far more readily exchanged than actual items of value. I enjoy being able to work for a wage that provides me with a resource that I can exchange for whatever goods and services I desire without wondering if, for example, the guy who is willing to part with some item I desire wants a pair of chickens in return.

Regardless of what economic system you choose to look at, an economy is fundamentally based on the notion of trading one item of value for another. While the abstraction of this system has pitfalls, in order to demonstrate that it is immoral one would need to demonstrate both a fundamental wrong inherent to the system (as defined by majority opinion in the area in question), as well as offer a reasonable alternative. Demonstration of a right answer certainly goes a long way to demonstrate how the current system is wrong.

3) Crime and punishment - Humans are treated as animals and are trained as such, a symptom of the fact that the vast majority of people exist in a twilight between human and animal.

You would be hard pressed to find a free society that generally believes that the basic tenants of their criminal justice system are fundamentally immoral. Were that the case, said tenets would be changed. In more restricted societies, such changes do eventually occur as well though on a longer time scale.

4) Limited personal freedom - As above, humans are seen as animals and can then not be treated as humans. Sometimes even heavily animalized humans have the ability to control other animalized humans (drug laws, gay marriage restrictions, religion. All these problems are from today's USA, there are many more from the past).

How precisely do you define treating someone as a "human"? Even in the most primitive form societies are based on a social contract that generally mirrors those most basic and universal laws (e.g. murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, etc).

And, while I personally believe that the prohibition against gay marriage in the United States is immoral, my opinion is obviously not the same as the majority. This leads us to the difficulty when arguing that something is immoral as I said above: it is entirely based upon perception of right and wrong. Thus one can easily point to a law that they personally disagree with but it is far more difficult to find one that the majority disagree with in effect for long.

With respect to the larger question at hand, I would look towards recent US treatment of terrorists and suspected terrorists. While there were few legitimate laws passed in this regard, the entire situation can be treated as, generally speaking, at odds with the moral sensibilities of the American people. For example, certain individuals were classified not as prisoners of war on little more than the basis that they were on the, underdog side of an asymmetric fight, a role that naturally precludes making it obvious that they were members. By denying them this classification, the US denied them basic guarantees of humane treatment. Through another series of arguments they were also denied a fair and public trial. Thus we have a (probable) villain who is not classified as a soldier nor a criminal and yet we treat them as such without ever establishing any given point to the public.

The rule of law is one of the fundamental tenets of the US and yet we publicly stood in flagrant violation of a host of laws. That these (probable) villains were a new and unusual treat made this easier to swallow, but I'd wager you'd be hard pressed to find someone who thought that move was right. Even if it seemed like the correct move given the circumstances of the moment, only the most extreme would have called such a thing moral. The discussion was always around the necessity of such action rather than on the morality for good reason; the moral argument wouldn't hold up under any real scrutiny.

 

[Kair]

1) Intellectual property - limits the distribution of infinite resource to achieve profit.

What right does someone else have to that resource if it was created through no effort of their own? If you can establish this (and you generally cannot without a very circular argument though I invite you to try), laws protecting said property is not immoral because there is no fundamental violation of right on any side. The consumer is not forced to make a purchase after all.

The imagination of 'right' to anything is only the mistake of holding the basic 'I made this, it is mine' notion as a universal law. Approach with another perspective, which is to maximize all utility to all individuals, and you get a much more efficient society (where efficient is making everyone happy). This is not possible with half-animals.

2) Capitalist ventures - treating currency as a resource of its own, severely limiting the ability for us to use currency as a tool and not only being burdened by it.

Currency is little more than the abstract idea of value. It is also far more readily exchanged than actual items of value. I enjoy being able to work for a wage that provides me with a resource that I can exchange for whatever goods and services I desire without wondering if, for example, the guy who is willing to part with some item I desire wants a pair of chickens in return.

Regardless of what economic system you choose to look at, an economy is fundamentally based on the notion of trading one item of value for another. While the abstraction of this system has pitfalls, in order to demonstrate that it is immoral one would need to demonstrate both a fundamental wrong inherent to the system (as defined by majority opinion in the area in question), as well as offer a reasonable alternative. Demonstration of a right answer certainly goes a long way to demonstrate how the current system is wrong.

I was not speaking of the basic trade system, though this could be abolished with a gift economy, but the capitalist ventures like stock broking and interest and capital banking. In these cases money has its own value, and the real output value is near zero or zero.

3) Crime and punishment - Humans are treated as animals and are trained as such, a symptom of the fact that the vast majority of people exist in a twilight between human and animal.

You would be hard pressed to find a free society that generally believes that the basic tenants of their criminal justice system are fundamentally immoral. Were that the case, said tenets would be changed. In more restricted societies, such changes do eventually occur as well though on a longer time scale.

Again, crime and punishment is being treated as a universal law instead of being seen objectively. Crime is a symptom of mental illness (that actually affects nearly everyone, not only criminals). Because of this, in true justice we must treat criminals, not punish them.

To use a scare tactic of jail time and death sentence is little different from the scare tactics that held slaves in place before abolishment only 200 years ago in the centuries long history of humanity.

4) Limited personal freedom - As above, humans are seen as animals and can then not be treated as humans. Sometimes even heavily animalized humans have the ability to control other animalized humans (drug laws, gay marriage restrictions, religion. All these problems are from today's USA, there are many more from the past).

How precisely do you define treating someone as a "human"? Even in the most primitive form societies are based on a social contract that generally mirrors those most basic and universal laws (e.g. murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, etc).

And, while I personally believe that the prohibition against gay marriage in the United States is immoral, my opinion is obviously not the same as the majority. This leads us to the difficulty when arguing that something is immoral as I said above: it is entirely based upon perception of right and wrong. Thus one can easily point to a law that they personally disagree with but it is far more difficult to find one that the majority disagree with in effect for long.

I try to differentiate between human and Human. A human is half-instinctual, half-sentient. It is a product of its surroundings, a simple print. Most of the population on Earth is like this today.
A Human is nearly fully-sentient, uses reasoning, is aware of its existence and biology and therefore also refuses to let instincts cloud its mind and only uses its instincts intentionally. It is ironically also a product of its surroundings, but a much more advanced print, capable of being much more independent from its surroundings through inner reflection.

To be a Human, I believe it is enough to truly try to be Human. This awareness is most of the time enough to cause a split between the individual's reasoning mind and clouded instincts, and the results are the ones above and possibly more that I can not think of now.

It is not a completely abrupt change from human to Human, it is gradient. We all must try to become more Human than animal.

 

[flamingjimmy]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

Every right if said drug can have a negative effect on society, eg..Imagine a country in which everyone took cocaine. Extreme example, but resonates my point well.

No, your example is ridiculous.

If the principle you're basing your justification on is harm prevention, then you're way off.

Prohibition causes much more harm to society because it puts control of the market into the hand of organised criminals. Turf wars, gang violence, all would be reduced drastically.

Legalization leads to acceptance of the practice. Would you want your child to go to a heroin bar when he turns 21?

Would I want it? No of course not, but I will have raised my hypothetical future children well and I doubt that it would happen. In any case I certainly wouldn't want it to be illegal, if my hypothetical future child wants to do heroin once he's old enough to fully understand the issues surrounding it then he'd be well within his rights to do so imo. Libertarianism ftw.

I call bullshit. No one in their right mind would want to have their child do heroin whether they understand what it is going to do or not.

What was the point in asking me the question if you're just going to refuse to believe my answer? And in any case, I didn't say I'd want it, just that I would have no moral right to stop it.

 

[flamingjimmy]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

Anything that'll make you dangerous to those around you.

Ah, so it's harm prevention that you're after.

In which case, the solution is: legalise drugs.

Here's the thing: You cannot stop people taking drugs, even if you make them illegal. People have always and will always take drugs, there is literally nothing you can do. Making drugs illegal doesn't stop people using them, it just means that they're more expensive and that that the market is controlled by organised criminals.

If you disagree, then I take it you also disagree with alcohol being legal, which fuels far more violence than any illegal drug I have ever heard of.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

1) Intellectual property - limits the distribution of infinite resource to achieve profit.

What right does someone else have to that resource if it was created through no effort of their own? If you can establish this (and you generally cannot without a very circular argument though I invite you to try), laws protecting said property is not immoral because there is no fundamental violation of right on any side. The consumer is not forced to make a purchase after all.

The imagination of 'right' to anything is only the mistake of holding the basic 'I made this, it is mine' notion as a universal law. Approach with another perspective, which is to maximize all utility to all individuals, and you get a much more efficient society (where efficient is making everyone happy). This is not possible with half-animals.

In order to demonstrate that this is immoral, you must, by the basic definition of the word immoral, demonstrate that it is wrong using an argument that the majority of people subject to the situation would agree with. What right does the collective have to my efforts? What obligation do I have to these people to give them free and ready access to a resource that I, myself, produce?

2) Capitalist ventures - treating currency as a resource of its own, severely limiting the ability for us to use currency as a tool and not only being burdened by it.

Currency is little more than the abstract idea of value. It is also far more readily exchanged than actual items of value. I enjoy being able to work for a wage that provides me with a resource that I can exchange for whatever goods and services I desire without wondering if, for example, the guy who is willing to part with some item I desire wants a pair of chickens in return.

Regardless of what economic system you choose to look at, an economy is fundamentally based on the notion of trading one item of value for another. While the abstraction of this system has pitfalls, in order to demonstrate that it is immoral one would need to demonstrate both a fundamental wrong inherent to the system (as defined by majority opinion in the area in question), as well as offer a reasonable alternative. Demonstration of a right answer certainly goes a long way to demonstrate how the current system is wrong.

I was not speaking of the basic trade system, though this could be abolished with a gift economy, but the capitalist ventures like stock broking and interest and capital banking. In these cases money has its own value, and the real output value is near zero or zero.

Currency, as an abstraction of value, is subject to the whims of popular perception to a degree. This is not unique to currency. For example, a piece of meat (say a 10 ounce prime ribeye), has intrinsic value. It is a physical object that I can possess for a time and I can easily convert this resource into various things I require for survival (e.g. I can eat it). If I take a similar cut of meat of identical nutritional value that is not prime (not aged), I will find it has the same intrinsic value and yet it costs less. The difference in cost is based not upon the intrinsic value of the item in question but rather on my perception that one item is better than the other (the aged steak is more tender and has a better flavor).

When this is abstracted to the point of currency, then problems can arise as the concept of value alone has no value save what we perceive it to have at the moment. Perceptions can, of course, be skewed with relative ease which can lead to situations where one party or another makes an absurd amount of money in an series of exchanges that produced next to nothing of actual value. This is not, itself, an immoral act in general though there are plenty of specific instances where sufficient harm was done to call it immoral (the housing market collapse for example).

3) Crime and punishment - Humans are treated as animals and are trained as such, a symptom of the fact that the vast majority of people exist in a twilight between human and animal.

You would be hard pressed to find a free society that generally believes that the basic tenants of their criminal justice system are fundamentally immoral. Were that the case, said tenets would be changed. In more restricted societies, such changes do eventually occur as well though on a longer time scale.

Again, crime and punishment is being treated as a universal law instead of being seen objectively. Crime is a symptom of mental illness (that actually affects nearly everyone, not only criminals). Because of this, in true justice we must treat criminals, not punish them.

Crime is less often a symptom of mental illness than it is of social illness. Regardless, crime has a detrimental impact upon society and, in spite of the best efforts of civilizations around the world across 5,000 years of recorded history we have never managed to abolish it entirely. Thus the decision to punish rather than treat is both a moral one as well as a pragmatic one. A great many people see crime as something to be punished rather than a problem to be solved, and the cost of solving the underlying social issues behind a great deal of crime is simply far to great for most people to consider. As such, the choice to punish rather than rehabilitate is a moral one (depending upon the group you question of course), while the choice to deal with the obvious symptom of the social problem rather than the root cause is a pragmatic choice.

4) Limited personal freedom - As above, humans are seen as animals and can then not be treated as humans. Sometimes even heavily animalized humans have the ability to control other animalized humans (drug laws, gay marriage restrictions, religion. All these problems are from today's USA, there are many more from the past).

How precisely do you define treating someone as a "human"? Even in the most primitive form societies are based on a social contract that generally mirrors those most basic and universal laws (e.g. murder is wrong, stealing is wrong, etc).

And, while I personally believe that the prohibition against gay marriage in the United States is immoral, my opinion is obviously not the same as the majority. This leads us to the difficulty when arguing that something is immoral as I said above: it is entirely based upon perception of right and wrong. Thus one can easily point to a law that they personally disagree with but it is far more difficult to find one that the majority disagree with in effect for long.

I try to differentiate between human and Human. A human is half-instinctual, half-sentient. It is a product of its surroundings, a simple print. Most of the population on Earth is like this today.
A Human is nearly fully-sentient, uses reasoning, is aware of its existence and biology and therefore also refuses to let instincts cloud its mind and only uses its instincts intentionally. It is ironically also a product of its surroundings, but a much more advanced print, capable of being much more independent from its surroundings through inner reflection.

To be a Human, I believe it is enough to truly try to be Human. This awareness is most of the time enough to cause a split between the individual's reasoning mind and clouded instincts, and the results are the ones above and possibly more that I can not think of now.

It is not a completely abrupt change from human to Human, it is gradient. We all must try to become more Human than animal.

Freedom as an abstract concept is a tricky thing to define. The reality is that the only power anyone ever holds over another is physical in nature. A person can torture you, they can threaten you, and they can kill you. Yet even the threat of such extreme measures does not reduce one's capacity to choose. The difference between a "free" society and an oppressive one is simply that there are more actions that come with some consequence in an oppressive place. Freedom is ultimately only limited by a few things: those fundamental laws of nature (e.g. I cannot choose to fly using only my body), my willingness to accept the consequences for a given choice and my capacity to perceive the existence of a choice.

Thus, in a certain sense, it is impossible to curtail my freedom as doing so ultimately requires my consent. Applying a penalty simply serves as little more than a way to test if I really believe in a particular choice or not.

 

[Ambi]

Spoiler: Factory farms; legal in many places, arguably immoral and cruel

ha! morals. i personally don't care about morals, i care about logic.

and when it comes to threads about morals there's always someone who has other morals and instead of politely disagreeing will tell you that your a monster.

Do you believe in using logic to figure out methods of making the world a less painful place?

 

[Manji187]

Recently, I've been assigned to write an article on what is lawful but immoral by today's standards. Problem is, I've got squat; I just don't know where to start.

So, my fellow Escapists, would you be kind enough to help a fellow, and post the laws that you think aren't moral by your standards?

How about the U.S. military's (primarily Air Force) use of drones (Predator/ Reaper) in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is legal (according to International Humanitarian Law/ the Law of Armed Conflict: Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols), but is it moral? It's not that IHL/ LOAC is immoral as such...it's that its application (the clash of battlefield reality and the relevant legal technicalities and their interpretation) produces highly questionable results (morally). More and more the use of drones gives the impression of being one-sided slaughter. Is any victory acceptable...even one where you have stooped to the level of a beast?

Mind you, the CIA's use of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia is something else entirely...the legality of that activity is highly debated/ contested (often called targeted killing).

 

[Sov.reign]

1st cousin sex...

 

[rossatdi]

I don't really want to speak to you any more. I told you at the start of the discussion that it would come to no end. You have nothing new to add to my thought process, neither any useful criticism. What you have is bias, and a lot of it. The bias causes you to be hostile to change, ideas for change and people who advocate for change. I have spoken to your kind before and there is rarely any use from it.

Everything you say already crosses my mind as I write in the first place.
Maybe when I was 15 and philosophising, I could have used your biased first-stage criticism. Now I am far beyond that and need no input from angry closet-conservatives.

Aw falling back ad hominem so soon? Nothing screams a valid concept than a lack of will to defend it.

'Angry closet conservative'? Based on? Quite a large insult with nothing to back it up.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

what about dictatorships where the leader of the country can order genocides or whatever horrible things they feel like doing. And since they make the laws its legal. unless you count international laws.

 

[Jakub324]

Euthanasia. If I was suffering, dying of a painful, terminal illness, why not just let me die?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Euthanasia. If I was suffering, dying of a painful, terminal illness, why not just let me die?

I wonder how often there really is no chance of survival. I wouldnt know.

 

[Biodeamon]

Spoiler: Factory farms; legal in many places, arguably immoral and cruel

ha! morals. i personally don't care about morals, i care about logic.

and when it comes to threads about morals there's always someone who has other morals and instead of politely disagreeing will tell you that your a monster.

Do you believe in using logic to figure out methods of making the world a less painful place?

no. call me a monster if you like but i`m not one usually swayed by emotions or pictures of the brutality of the world. you can`t ignore that this stuff happens and act shocked every time you see something bad in the world. I plan on using logic to make the world better not less painful.

 

[Korolev]

I know a lot of stuff that's moral yet unlawful (euthanasia for one). But Lawful yet immoral? Hm - if you're talking about Western nations, I'd go with recreational hunting. Don't get me wrong, I eat meat. And I respect hunters who kill animals to eat, or use the body parts of said animals. If a hunter teaches his son to hunt deer for self-sufficiency, that's fine. I've got no problems with that - hunting a deer in the woods for food is no different than buying meat at the supermarket.

It's a problem when you get people who just hunt for the sake of saying "Hey! I shot this defenceless animal and now I'm gonna put its corpse on my truck and do a pose while putting my foot on it's head! I shot a deer that couldn't possibly fight back! What a man I am!" It's when people kill things merely to "prove" their "manhood" or "toughness", that I begin to have a problem.

You know what WOULD prove how tough you are? Fight a grizzly bear with a pocket knife. Or a Great White Shark with an hammer. If you could pull that off, I'd respect your strength immensely (although I would question your sanity).

However, going into the woods and using a gun to shoot a deer that poses no threat and can't fight back is not a sign of "strength". It doesn't make you "tough". It might prove you're a quiet person who can sneak up on a deer, but it doesn't prove you're a "man". Anyone who would kill a defenceless or nearly defenceless animal for kicks or for "pride" is a shallow, SHALLOW human being.

Once again, I'm not insulting genuine hunters who hunt to eat or gather useful materials. I've got nothing against those guys. I only hate the "trophy" hunters who think that mounting the head of an antelope or buck who couldn't possibly fight back proves them to be a "tough man"! Oooooh, so tough, shooting that animal like that! What a big strong man you are! If you hadn't shot that deer, who KNOWS what it might have done! What a hero!

EDIT: I suppose what I'm saying is that I find hunters who REVEL in the fact that they've killed another creature for the sake of killing it, immoral. Hunters who hunt but don't gloat are hunters I respect. Hunters who say "YEEEEEHAAAAWWWW! Didya see that! Ah don' shot that deer so hard he don' flew backwards in that there forest! Awesome! I'm such a man, gunning that deer down like that!" are hunters I DON'T respect. Killing might be necessary, but never glorious.

 

[Kair]

I don't really want to speak to you any more. I told you at the start of the discussion that it would come to no end. You have nothing new to add to my thought process, neither any useful criticism. What you have is bias, and a lot of it. The bias causes you to be hostile to change, ideas for change and people who advocate for change. I have spoken to your kind before and there is rarely any use from it.

Everything you say already crosses my mind as I write in the first place.
Maybe when I was 15 and philosophising, I could have used your biased first-stage criticism. Now I am far beyond that and need no input from angry closet-conservatives.

Aw falling back ad hominem so soon? Nothing screams a valid concept than a lack of will to defend it.

'Angry closet conservative'? Based on? Quite a large insult with nothing to back it up.

I am continuing the discussion with someone with a little less aggressive behaviour. That is, a little less aggressive and a little less biased. It makes a difference.


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In order to demonstrate that this is immoral, you must, by the basic definition of the word immoral, demonstrate that it is wrong using an argument that the majority of people subject to the situation would agree with. What right does the collective have to my efforts? What obligation do I have to these people to give them free and ready access to a resource that I, myself, produce?

The right they have to tap into an infinite resource is the right they get by benefiting from it, while not doing any harm at all. Happiness and utility for all Humans is right in itself, it is what we base right and wrong on. Compensation for making this resource can be provided in many ways, but in an enlightened utilitarian society it is irrelevant.

Currency, as an abstraction of value, is subject to the whims of popular perception to a degree. This is not unique to currency. For example, a piece of meat (say a 10 ounce prime ribeye), has intrinsic value. It is a physical object that I can possess for a time and I can easily convert this resource into various things I require for survival (e.g. I can eat it). If I take a similar cut of meat of identical nutritional value that is not prime (not aged), I will find it has the same intrinsic value and yet it costs less. The difference in cost is based not upon the intrinsic value of the item in question but rather on my perception that one item is better than the other (the aged steak is more tender and has a better flavor).

When this is abstracted to the point of currency, then problems can arise as the concept of value alone has no value save what we perceive it to have at the moment. Perceptions can, of course, be skewed with relative ease which can lead to situations where one party or another makes an absurd amount of money in an series of exchanges that produced next to nothing of actual value. This is not, itself, an immoral act in general though there are plenty of specific instances where sufficient harm was done to call it immoral (the housing market collapse for example).

Yes.

Crime is less often a symptom of mental illness than it is of social illness. Regardless, crime has a detrimental impact upon society and, in spite of the best efforts of civilizations around the world across 5,000 years of recorded history we have never managed to abolish it entirely. Thus the decision to punish rather than treat is both a moral one as well as a pragmatic one. A great many people see crime as something to be punished rather than a problem to be solved, and the cost of solving the underlying social issues behind a great deal of crime is simply far to great for most people to consider. As such, the choice to punish rather than rehabilitate is a moral one (depending upon the group you question of course), while the choice to deal with the obvious symptom of the social problem rather than the root cause is a pragmatic choice.

Social illness is the mental illness. I was not talking about abnormal mental illness, I was talking about the mental illness nearly all humans share.

Quote:I try to differentiate between human and Human. A human is half-instinctual, half-sentient. It is a product of its surroundings, a simple print. Most of the population on Earth is like this today.
A Human is nearly fully-sentient, uses reasoning, is aware of its existence and biology and therefore also refuses to let instincts cloud its mind and only uses its instincts intentionally. It is ironically also a product of its surroundings, but a much more advanced print, capable of being much more independent from its surroundings through inner reflection.

The above is the mental illness.

Freedom as an abstract concept is a tricky thing to define. The reality is that the only power anyone ever holds over another is physical in nature. A person can torture you, they can threaten you, and they can kill you. Yet even the threat of such extreme measures does not reduce one's capacity to choose. The difference between a "free" society and an oppressive one is simply that there are more actions that come with some consequence in an oppressive place. Freedom is ultimately only limited by a few things: those fundamental laws of nature (e.g. I cannot choose to fly using only my body), my willingness to accept the consequences for a given choice and my capacity to perceive the existence of a choice.

Thus, in a certain sense, it is impossible to curtail my freedom as doing so ultimately requires my consent. Applying a penalty simply serves as little more than a way to test if I really believe in a particular choice or not.

I don't believe this was the subject I was entering. I was talking about the need to restrict the half-animals because the consequences of not restricting them would be negative.

 

[ExileNZ]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

Anything that'll make you dangerous to those around you.

Ah, so it's harm prevention that you're after.

In which case, the solution is: legalise drugs.

Here's the thing: You cannot stop people taking drugs, even if you make them illegal. People have always and will always take drugs, there is literally nothing you can do. Making drugs illegal doesn't stop people using them, it just means that they're more expensive and that that the market is controlled by organised criminals.

If you disagree, then I take it you also disagree with alcohol being legal, which fuels far more violence than any illegal drug I have ever heard of.

I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth or railroad my opinion based on your own logic.

On the contrary, Prohibition only proved that people will get their hands on drugs whether you want them to or not. However, you'll note that there are tens of thousands of legal drugs out there, but only a few of them are used recreationally. I'll assume for argument's sake that you're talking about illegal and/or mind-altering drugs, such as opiates, methamphetamines and marajuana, as opposed to all those other, legal drugs, which are just as easily mis-used but are quickly overshadowed by those first three.

Now, formalities out of the way, here's the thing. There IS something you can do about people taking drugs. Prohibition of anything may not stop the people who really want to use it (in the case of alcohol in the 30s, that meant pretty much everyone) but it quickly puts up a first barrier of entry: people have to ask themselves whether they want it bad enough to break the law, knowing full-well they can be punished for it. This reduces the number of potential clients right off the bat. It also means that the number of channels that people can acquire it through are limited and of course limits the number of people ultimately using - it's easier to police a few people than everyone.

More importantly it stops large, morally bankrupt multinationals from growing their own dope and forcing it down our throats like they do every day with, say, cigarettes.
(http://www.artofsmoking.com/jcamel1.html - note that Joe was designed to sell smokes to kids and it still took 10 years to put a stop to it)

Also note that making drugs more expensive puts in a second barrier of entry - price. I don't smoke and I never have, but almost everyone I know who does keeps telling me they need to quit and it's too damned expensive. Likewise, I may have been vaguely tempted by tales of joints, but never enough to pay the $20 required for a decent high (and before you ask, yes, that's what it cost where I come from).

Ultimately of course, you can never stop everyone from taking drugs, but you can limit the number of people taking them and thereby limit the collateral damage they cause.

Which brings us to alcohol. Alcohol is legal, but is very restricted in it's use. You can't drive on it, business owners can have you thrown out because of it and in some places you can't even drink it in public. You can get shitfaced at home and beat your friends family, but that's a social problem and we have laws against that too (again, more strongly reinforced in some countries than others).

So no, I'm not against alcohol being legal because it's controlled and because by and large people know how to use it responsibly (I'm currently living in France, where my family is weird because we don't open a bottle at every meal). Of course there are more alcohol-related crimes, alcohol is the single most proliferate drug in the world. You give 100 people a bottle of whiskey and 100 people an ounce of coke and I guarantee you'll see a far higher percentage of violent crime in the latter group.

All that to say, in spite of certain abuses and double standards, there's a reason drug-use is controlled. Legalising drugs isn't magically going to make the world less dangerous.