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lilgrasshoppah

Let’s face it: Morality is a sticky subject. Stand outside an abortion clinic, or bring up hot-button subjects like gays in the military… or nudity and profanity on T.V… and witness the big kafuffle that occurs. Morality is also mighty confusing, as a subject for conversation. What’s moral and what’s not changes from region to region… generation to generation… even person to person.

And, regardless of what mustachioed villains in hundreds of silly movies insist, nobody says, ‘For those of you not paying attention, I’m immoral! I’m the black hat! I’m the bad guy!” Well, maybe some do, for effect. But, those gays on parade believe themselves every bit as moral as the Marines on drill who despise them, and won’t let them join their little club. Those abortion doctors believe themselves to be under a compassionate moral imperative to kill babies to save mothers… not unlike the compassionate moral imperative the antiabortionists believe themselves to be under to do the exact opposite. Faced with this intractable state of affairs, most people will tend to avoid discussing morality. Never mind that erecting and obeying taboos is morality, too.

But that’s not why I chose to be immoral. (Relax! It’s only for effect.) I have a powerful hate for ossified moral codes because the causes of human behavior are internal, but a moral code… ANY moral code… is external. And that makes it ineffective.

Let’s say you’re cold. Let’s say you buy a coat to fix your chilled state. Let’s even say the coat serves you well. It’s a good damn coat: the best. Let’s even say you look hot in your coat. What happens when spring comes? Do you still wear your coat? What happens if, in the dead of winter, you coat gets torn, or stained, or even temporarily of little use (‘I’m going shopping, no point lugging this big coat around the mall all day!’)? The coat gets ditched. Why? Because when the coat is not useful, it is a burden.

“The clothes make the man.” What a cheap lie! I could be crude and give you the recipe for making a man… but I can’t afford an obscenity lawsuit, so no recipes today. Clothes make the covering for the man. Clothes are devices that a man uses to communicate his desire for his peers to view him as a man. The clothes that made the man in Glasgow included a skirt at one time. But forget loincloths and kilts and togas and flowing robes, and other such exceptions to the Western rule. Let’s be real ethnocentric and assume that a businessman’s attire (complete with vestigial vest and tie) is ‘the clothes that make the man.’ How big should the lapels be? How loud, long, or wide the tie? Shall there be a vent on the back of the jacket? One pocket, two… or none… on the front breast? How wild can we be with color: is plum or green okay, or must we confine ourselves to more sedate hues? What about fabric: is a man not a man because he wears silk instead of wool-blend, or what? And if the rules all change tomorrow, what then?

You see? Manhood is internal, clothing is external. The clothes do not make the man; rather the man makes the clothes. And then he sells them for $2000.00 a set. Clothing reflects what we say it reflects; otherwise there would be no fashion industry. Further-more, because fashion rules are so arbitrary and changeable, and because clothing can be easily removed and discarded, the system lends itself to hypocrisy. In other words, we can use clothes to project an image contrary to our true nature or feelings. Richard Nixon, for example, wore a suit his entire professional life; and he was a crook.

Jesus Christ wore a very expensive garment for his entire ministry. (Ha! Tricked ya!) But that isn’t what people noticed. On the morning of Christ’s execution, Pilate brought out the condemned criminal and shouted to the assembled crowd, “Look: the Man!” And not for Jesus’ fine apparel, for that had been taken from him. Jesus was standing there: practically naked, bleeding and in agony from the scourging, his face bruised by the priests and the Pharisees, weak and dehydrated… but, despite the outward appearance, Pilate perceived Jesus to be an innocent man. “Ecce Homo!”

In fact, let us pause here for a sec, and consider Jesus. We are, after all, a “Christian” country. This is, after all, a Christian column. So okay. What sort of man was Jesus? Well, his very first miracle involved turning water into wine, didn’t it? Not only that, but he performed the miracle late in the feast, when, according to the master of ceremonies, most everybody was already intoxicated. And, just to add the cherry on top, it seems that Jesus was a pretty good vintner to boot.

Jesus started his ministry by talking to a Samaritan woman at a well. To the modern person, unaware of ancient customs and prejudices, maybe that doesn’t seem like a big deal. But it was. First of all, she was a Samaritan woman. Now, to say that Jews and Samaritans didn’t get along then is like saying Jews and Arabs don’t get along now. The Jews hated Samaritans, and the feeling was pretty mutual. No self-respecting Jew would ever dream of chatting with a Samaritan, for any reason, at anytime. But Jesus did. In fact, he did them one better by talking to a Samaritan woman. But at least she was an upstanding, well-respected, well-liked woman by the well… right? Well no. Ancient wells were like modern water-coolers. The community’s women gathered there to gossip, bond, and what have you. But in the account, the woman was there by herself, having, evidently, chosen a time when she could be by herself. Odds are: she’s an outcast. What Jesus says about her could be why. “You spoke rightly when you said ‘a husband I do not have,’ for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband.” That’s a pretty impressive tally, even by modern standards. Yet, Jesus chose to minister to her first, even though there were tons of other Jews he could have talked to. Why?

And it wasn’t a fluke. Jesus closest associates were “tax collectors and sinners”. His friends were usually poor and powerless: the people who failed more often than they succeeded. Why didn’t he court the favor of the wealthy and the powerful? In fact, why did he go out of his way to insult, aggravate and annoy the wealthy and the powerful? Many of those healings he performed on the Sabbath could have kept a day or two. But Jesus chose to break the rabbinic law, right under the very noses of the rabbis.

Jesus’ detractors frequently accused him of gluttony and drunkenness. They derided him for “breaking the Sabbath.” They were horrified by his group of companions. They were doubly horrified by his habit for throwing out the money changers from the temple. In their minds, he was a rabble-rouser, a firebrand, a revolutionary. They were afraid of what the Romans would do. They were concerned with external morality, you see. They never managed to see what lies beneath the barest surface. They never really wanted to.

In fact… what did the Scribes and Pharisees do, exactly, to earn the Christ’s disfavor? What was their crime? I mean… they were sexually chaste, they obeyed the Law religiously (heh, heh), they were pious, I bet a number of them gave to charity. Jesus even told his disciples to copy what the Pharisees said… just never do what they did. So what was it Jesus hated? Hypocrisy! Jesus’ favorite epithet for them was “hypocrites!” You see, it wasn’t so much that the scribes ‘would bind up heavy loads’ on the people, it’s that they refused to help the people with those loads. It wasn’t that they strained out the gnat; it was that they gulped down the camel. It wasn’t that they were so exacting in minor things; it was that they neglected the more important things.

Jesus called the religious leaders of his time “white washed graves”, because they were ‘outwardly beautiful, but inside was filled will all manner of corruption.’ Furthermore, the Christ gave his followers a single, comprehensive law that replaced the whole Torah: that they were commanded to love one another, even their enemies. The Pharisees required unreasoning adherence to a lengthy, Byzantine, and outmoded, moral code. Jesus required only love.

The Golden Rule: what does it mean? “You must do unto others as you would have done to you.” Most people, even devout Christians, get it backwards. They say “Do onto others as they do unto you.” They put the onus on others. They make others earn good treatment. ‘You treat me nicely first, and then I’ll treat you nicely.’ But that’s not what Jesus actually said, is it? He said, figure out what you want most, and give that to everybody else. Is Mavis from your church bugging you because she never invites you for coffee? Invite her for coffee! Maybe she’s intimidated by you! Does James aggravate you because he sings off-key? Well sing louder! Maybe he just needs somebody for him to follow! In fact: you forget what I just said. I don’t know “James” or “Mavis.” And I don’t know you. You have to decide what your friends need. You have to decide what your enemies need. Most importantly, you have to decide what you need. And live it.

Finally, every case of genocide in history has been preceded by [usually spurious] moral outrage. How’s that for irony? The best modern example is what the Nazis did to the Jews. Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels and that bunch accused the Jews of all sorts of heinous crimes, before they began butchering them by the millions. But there are other examples. What the European invaders did to the natives of the Americas. First they maligned them, and then they slaughtered them. Cortez and his cronies were so horrified by the slaughter that the Aztecs made to honor their Sun God, Quetzalcoatl, they immediately slaughtered the Aztecs to honor their Son-God, Jesus Christ! How it works is, most people won’t support bald imperialism. “We’re taking it because we want it, and you can’t stop us,” doesn’t work as a reason for taking another country’s stuff. It’s immoral, see? But if they have some sort of moral defect, well then we have to invade… heck, we’re practically obligated too!

And again, because external morality can change like that <finger snap>, an invader with his mind set on genocide, and a gift for spin can make up any reason he likes, and people will support him. That’s morality’s job, see: to create us versus them situations. Us: the innately superior adherents to the moral code, and them: the poor saps who are deficient, in some way. Ethics, on the other hand, presupposes everybody to be equal, because we have to treat others as we want to be treated. Would we like it if somebody took all our stuff because they didn’t like some quirk of our culture? Okay then. That means we can’t take theirs. Ethical people see no “Them,” for there is only ever “Us”.

This is it. I don’t care what you call the thing that modifies your behavior: morals, ethics, or Allbran® cereal. The point is: you can’t expect it to have a lasting effect if you wear it like a coat… if it is external to your experience. If it’s not inside you, if it’s not motivated by love, then it will turn you into a hypocrite. And I’ve always said, “It’s better to be thought of as immoral, than to be a hypocrite.”

ADDENDUM:

Whenever you talk about atrocities like the Holocaust, people are quick to disavow all responsibility. “We had nothing to do with that!” They even say it over glasses of schnapps, “Maybe iz zee uzzur unitz zere was zee occasional how you zay, ‘bad happeninkz’, bot in mien unitz, Vee had nussing to du wiz zat keelink of zee Jooz! In fact, I knitted zocks for zee Resistance fighterz!” This is essential to a moral code: somebody else does the bad thing. If you don’t speak German, then those “Ehffing Krauts” killed the Jews; if you do speak German, then the “other Germans” did. Either way, unless your name is Adolf Eichmann, or Reinhardt Heydrich or Joseph Mengele, or Heinrich Himmler, you personally had nothing to do with the actual Holocaust. Somebody else lacks the moral fibre and courage and strength, etc… somebody other than you.

I’m gonna tell you something real interesting about the human genome. There are few differences between any two. In fact, to us, The Untrained, there are no differences. Now to a fierce individualist such as myself, that’s a little depressing maybe… but what does it mean? Where am I going with this? Simply this: we have more in common than not. More of me went into making the Holocaust than not. Because 99.999999 etc % of my genes belonged to Reinhardt Heydrick, you see. 99.999999 etc % of my genes also belonged to Adolf Hitler. Hence, almost all of what makes me human conceived and implemented the horror of the Holocaust. When I understood this, I understood that it’s not even a case of, “There but for the Grace of God goeth I”… rather it is “There but for the Grace of God I went.”

We have to take responsibility for ourselves. But what is this word ‘responsibility’… what does it mean? Lots of people, even myself for a time, take it to mean “accept blame,” with the intent of punishing the offender (ie: “you didn’t clean your room; you’re grounded, mister!”). That’s not the way I intend to mean responsibility. “This is your mess. You made it, you have to clean it”… that’s what I’m talking about. Everybody is human, and human is everybody. You have to take responsibility for yourself. That means never dismissing “other people’s atrocities” as an anomaly of their culture. Every human will behave according to certain behavioral patterns if you apply the correct stimulus. This is unavoidable. You can’t wish this fact away. Given the right push, everybody will kill their neighbors for appalling reasons. You have to clean that mess up in yourself before you hope to help people clean up that mess in themselves. This is what Jesus meant when he talked about removing the rafter from your own eye before attempting to remove the straw from your brother’s. This is what ethics is all about.

 

Buzzby

The problem with your analysis is all this differentiation between the internal and the external. Human beings are not monads. They don't exist in a vacuum. They're much more like a bunch of networked computers, each having influence on the other. If you put a glass of water on the bottom of the ocean, what is "internal" to that glass and what is "external"? It's pretty arbitrary. So is the differentiation between what's internal or external to human beings.

Physically we're a kind of great ape, not much different from chimpanzees. After all, a female human is more closely related, genetically, to a female chimp than to a male human. (Same for male humans and male chimps, of course. ) What makes humans different (quantitatively) from their brothers in the animal kingdom is that so much of our lives are spent in the realm of ideas. In the short term (three dimensions) ideas are patterns of energy and interconnections in an individual brain. We live in a universe of four dimensions (at least), and, looked at from that perspective, ideas are memes. They might originate in one brain but if they stay that way they have little effect on humans in the aggregate. Human beings swim in a sea of memes.

Unless you are the originator of an idea, and few people are, the idea is a social phenomenon. It might start with one person but as soon as it begins to spread through the network of associated humans it becomes a statistical phenomenon. How important it becomes depends on how many people accept it and adopt it as their own. How it becomes accepted depends on how appealing it is intellectually and, more importantly, emotionally. That in turn is determined, to a large extent, by the preparation of the population by earlier disseminated memes.

Morals are a kind of meme. So are ethics, which I see as being fundamentally the same thing. The difference is, for each individual, is that "I" have ethics - "you" have morals. "Mine" are rooted in the nature of the universe - "yours" are merely historical artifacts. "Mine" are universal truths. "Yours" are arbitrary, temporal creations.


We most certainly are not a Christian country, although elements calling themselves "Christian" are doing their damnedest to make us believe so. We were originated by men who were mostly Deists, believing in a Supreme Being but not trying to limit that being to a particular religious ideology. That is, specifically, why they included the First Amendment in the nascent Constitution. I see little connection between the hateful, exclusionist policies of the Religious Right, which now has a stranglehold on American politics, and the teachings of the Christ.

This is not a "Christian column". This is a post on the philosophy forum of a pro-Marijuana board with no particular religious affiliation. Speaking for all non-Christians who used to have religious freedom under a secular government, I find it very annoying when members of a religious sect claim dominion over things which are not theirs. The policies which come out of Christian "morality" have so little to do with the teachings of the Christ that, were I one of his followers, I would be embarrassed to be associated with them.

Christ taught that we should love one another, even our enemies. This is in no way different from the ancient Jewish teaching "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", assuming that people love themselves and desire to be loved. This teaching predates Jesus by at least 1500 years. The historical Buddha taught it 500 years before Christ. The fundamentalist Religious Right, adhering to the text of a bible translation only a few hundred years old rather than Christ's intent, teaches that they should love fellow members of their narrow-minded sects and that the lives of others are irrelevant except as potential converts. The gods help us if we should ever become a "Christian country" within their interpretation of what "Christian" means! They're all about the rule of hate and fear, not a love for all of our fellow humans. Can you imagine Christ promoting preemptive war or the removal of support for the poor?

I fail to see any essential difference between what you call "morals" and "ethics". They are both forms of memes, concepts that have spread through human populations. While I, as well, prefer the egalitarian meme "Do unto others..." it is not because I accept Christ's command to love one another.

As a systems analyst I find it to be the most effective of the memes I have studied if the desired outcome is balance, continuity, survival, and conflict reduction. As a Buddhist I find the idea of individual consciousness to be one of the many illusions humans have adopted because they focus on the ego in three dimensions rather than the continuing saga of life over time, involving all life forms, their genetics, and their social (meme-based) development. My experiences in meditation tell me that what we call individual consciousness is just a node in the network of what might be called universal consciousness.

People tend to see what they are looking for and be blind to that which doesn't fit within their preconceptions. Seeing your own node and ignoring the web of being of which it is part is the root cause of all selfish, ego-oriented behavior. You cannot help but to love your brothers when you realize you are your brothers.

Perhaps the real difference between the "morality" memes and what you call the memes of "ethics" is that the latter form of morality is inclusive rather than exclusive, making to tame conflict rather than cause it, to encourage unity rather than alienation.


That's only after the fact when they've lost and are liable to suffer the consequences of their actions. Imagine the history that would have been written had the Nazis succeeded in world domination. They would have written proudly of the extermination and subjugation of "lower sub-species" of man. Modern day fascists certainly write gleefully when they talk about completing Hitler's work. They aren't ashamed of their morals because, as with everyone else, they consider their narrow purview to be the whole of reality.


This is very true and therefore completely irrelevant in any analysis of the differences between social groups. All this says is that genetics is not the basis for differences between social groups and their actions. The differences are due to the memes the groups have adopted as their own. The reason different groups adopt different memes are many, usually having to do with older memes, which new memes are available, local history, and the means of persuasion used.


That's what atrocities are: features of a particular culture. If you are part of a culture, chances are you will behave as do others in that culture. Culture is a pattern of memes and the memes I've acquired as a result of being part of my culture and from what I've learned from studying other cultures wouldn't allow me to commit atrocities.


I don't understand. First you say that living out the reactions to a certain set of stimuli is inevitable. In the next sentence you say that you can avoid it if you "clean up that mess". These are mutually exclusive conditions, both of which you claim are true. Are you saying that if you internalize the ethical meme it trumps all the moral memes that might derive from your environment? How can this be, as ethics and morals are both learned belief systems?

__________________

lilgrasshoppah

I am grateful for your thoughtful response. If I may reply...?

First of all, I had originally pitched this article for a local paper. I live in conservative central... and it's easier to lie a little bit to tickle their ego so that I can discuss issues with people than insist that Canada and/or the United States are supposed to be governed by secular institutions. The Attorney General used to annoint himself with crisco for pete's sake! I believe in the division of church and state. Anybody who considers the question believes thus. That's a given. But lot's of people WANT to have a religious leader. To reach those people, I have appeal to their vanity for a bit until their brain gets engaged. Sigh. Were I not so lazy I would have fixed the slant.

Exactly so. I stated this thought near the end: "I don't care what you call what governs your behavior, be it morals or ethics or Allbran cereal" etc... the point is, society is the product of many people making social decisions. And if certain people make decisions that harm others... that are purposefully malicious... that's wrong. It doesn't matter what moral justification they spout, really, if they harm a person, or a group of persons for any other reason than primary self defense that is immoral/unethical/not in keeping with Allbran Cereal .

Depends on the person. Lots of people won't admit today that White Europeans, with malice and forethought, completely destroyed the many different American nations over the course of five centuries (1492-present). To my knowledge, nobody has ever said, "Manifest Destiny was wrong. And we were wrong to believe in it." Maybe it was "regrettable" or a "tragedy" but this is said with a level of chilly detachment. Not our tragedy, oh no. Not our responsibility.
Example two: who's responsible for the ungoldy mess in the Middle East? Good luck getting Ariel Sharon to fess up... or whoever they get to replace Arafat for that matter.
Example three: the pope only recently apologized for the Catholic Church's long history of antisemitism. Good luck getting him to say they were wrong about all the women they murdered as witches.

Until a child is potty trained, he'll **** his pants and stew in it. He has no awareness. Once you make him aware of the necessity to keep the **** in the toilet, he will eventually learn to behave accordingly. Potty training is learned behavior. Neccessary, yes... for reasons of hygiene and sociability etc... but learned. A kid is never born and discovers potty on his own. The urge to exterminate that which makes you afraid is inborn, like ****ting. The only way you avoid that is by training. You have to be aware that an irrational fear of other people is irrational before you can defeat it. You can never smugly assert that only Tutsis or Serbs or Germans or Cambodians are capable of genocide. If you lived in Cambodia, you could just as easily have murdered people for the government. I could have too. The only reason we don't is because we are aware of that danger and take steps to avoid that happening. The policies of the last three US administration have murdered well over 500,000 Iraqi civilians. In the name of freedom and justice we (ALL OF US, MYSELF INCLUDED) have participated in the killing of innocent people at weddings... of imprisoning innocent citizens without trial or access to counsel... of poisoning innocent people with radioactive and toxic war materiel... of maiming and killing children with mines designed as toys. We are all responsible because we are all human. The only way we can mitigate responsibility is by becoming aware, and by spreading awareness.

That's what I am getting at.

SevenLeafs

Clothes are only the artificial fur of man (who has lost his hair through the millennia)

Pretty impressive tally? What do you mean by this:


This last paragraph gives me the idea that everyone (or almost everyone, I am myself included in the list) today is a hypocrite. We use to tell "white lies" to people we "love" (I believe we don't really know what love is, or how to do it, how to love, willingly) so that we don't "hurt" them. But to me, telling those lies creates a very complex situation, were at the end, things can turn out to be even more "dangerous" than if we had just honestly said the truth (in a constructive way).

I believe this to be one of the best lessons you can learn. Every time you are going to interact with someone in some way, think about this, then you will begin to understand what the other person will go through thanks to your actions, and only then will you be able to act properly.

This has a lot to do with what we now know as "respect". If we respect each other, many wrongs can be righted, from the smallest aspect, to the greatest cataclysm.

Wow.... This is, as you say Lilgrasshopah, the exact opposite of what the true phrase represents. When I read this last "quote" what comes to mind is revenge. "Do onto others as they do unto you" is basically saying "wait until the other acts, so you can then act accordingly". It goes hand in hand with Hamurabi's code: "Eye for an eye".

Some people might even defend this, stating that if you are wronged, you have the right to "defend" yourself. This would be completely invalidated once you take into consideration one of the most famous (but forgotten) teachings: "turn the other cheek".

My interpretation of this is that Jesus was trying to make everyone see that "violence does not solve violence", and that reason is the way you should go. Even Dante tries to say this in his Divine Comedy.

In his work, Dante depicts himself very afraid as he goes through the inferno (hell), but as he ventures forth and understands what he sees, as he passes from the inferno, to the purgatory, and finally arriving at heaven, he becomes less afraid and more understanding, he becomes more reasonable (off course, he has an excellent teacher, Virgil). He even arrives at the conclusion that reason is God's immense power. That, through reason, God teaches and guides us.

In my opinion, this is the essence behind "do unto others as you would have done to you". In other words, think about how you would respond to your own actions so that you can begin to understand how the other person(s) is going to react.

Sadly, this is how many people today behave, and I do not think it is their fault. It is their fault to stay like that, to keep acting that way over and over again, until one day (hopefully) they understand that that course of action will not take them anywhere.

We seem to be defensive creatures, now-a-days. We are always with our guard up, waiting to be attacked from any, and every, angle because today we do not love each other, we simply doubt (almost) everyone (I hope that it really isn't everyone, but I sometimes feel that way), even close ones.

So, considering this, can we be expected to act like Jesus said, turning the other cheek? "I think not" would be the most expected answer.

I will not dwell on this any more, because I fear the ramifications would be limitless (so on with the discussion!)

This is very true indeed, but I would state this thought differently: "You have to understand what your friends and enemies need. Equally, you need to understand what it is you need, so that you can share it with the rest".

Good observation Lilgrasshopah

Very intelligent of you to say that, good metaphor.


I congratulate you LilGH, it is a most excellent post, written in a most excellent fashion.

Thank you for that.

7L

__________________

"A soul in tension that's learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earth-bound misfit"
- Pink Floyd -

Just say KNOW!

lilgrasshoppah

I'm blushing from the praise. Much appreciated.

My point was even today, in our so called permissive society (conflicted, guilt-ridden, schizoprhenic as it is), moralists would be offended by a woman who had been married five times, and was living common law with a fifth man... Imagine what jews would have thought of that Samaritan woman in that day! My point is, that Jesus hadn't the slightest hesitation treating the woman as an equal, even though he had plenty of excuses to treat her badly.

Truth is very slippery. And most people don't want it, not really. Like when smebody askes you, "how are you today?" They generally want one answer "good". On the many times I have visitors in the hospital, and they ask that question, they don't want the truth... namely, "I feel like a bag of cooked ****e, thanks fer askin'". So I'd say, "fine, how 'er you?" and leave it at that.
And those social niceties are fairly harmless.

True hypocrisy, like when abortion opponents murder doctors, or when homophobes bash gays... that's what must be stopped. And not because I think abortion doctors should practice abortion, or that gays should be in the military. These issues are completely separate from personal taste. If it's wrong to kill fetuses because murder is wrong... then it's wrong to kill doctors who perform abortions. If it's wrong for a guy to HIT ON you because your sexual preference is different from his, then it is at least equally wrong for you to HIT him for the same reason. Would we be killing Iraqis and appropriating their stuff were it not for hypocrisy? I think not!

 

SevenLeafs

Point well taken. Follow-up:

That is another thing society has horribly wrong today. We almost always, if not always, tend to "figure out" something about somebody we don't know, before we know the person. We let ourselves be guided by prejudice.

We judge the mask that the other person is wearing, not the true self that lies beneath.

Noted.

Yes, you make a very good point there Lilgh, but I don't consider that answer (or question) to even skim a white lie. Those "how are you doing? -> Fine, thank you" "apertures" are only a substitute for "Hello" and are directed towards the same objective the single word has, starting a conversation, or being polite, or "making contact", to put it in other words. But let me just mention one case where that "how are you?" would be hypocritical, or a lie.

I know that when you finish reading this you'll be thinking "but come on, that's really very general", or something along those lines, but bear with me, I'll try to make my point very clear.

I ask you one day "how are you Lilgh?", just as we are entering a room (or whatever you want to imagine), but what I really mean is "Hi". You are correct (somewhat correct, in my opinion) in stating that that "lie" is "harmless", because, apparently, no one gets hurt by it. But what about myself? Aren't I hurting myself?

Well, I can't think of any harm that can come to me directly with that, but I can say that I am being a hypocrite in that moment, and that affects me. What if you did feel "truthful" that day/moment/time and decide to answer me truthfully?

Let's just say that you were having a bad day, and when I asked you how you are doing, you decided to tell me, to vent out (not angrily, just getting "some things off your chest") what is making you feel miserable (or just a little bad). In that moment, all "my world" crumbles down. Now I have this situation I have to deal with, because I was the one who started it, and I don't want anything to do with it. I may decide to act (telling you something like "I'm sorry, I was just making 'small talk' ", and who knows, maybe you'll take it badly, feel worse, and who know what else, or what else not) or don't act (sit there, acting like I'm listening to you, while you take shelter in me, in my opinion, and then I'll leave, making up some excuse, and you will now have also emptiness to deal with), but this is all too complicated, and complex, to discuss right now.

You see, when we don't think about our actions before we perform them; when we don't use reason before action, our situations can worsen in an instant. But if we were to think, to reason before acting, maybe our lives would never be so miserable in the first place (and I say this knowingly, because it is my personal experience).

This is the part where you might be thinking "yeah, but all of this because of a hello, how are you?", and the answer would be: YES.

Yes, because if we don't change something as little as some words that don't express what we really mean, then how are we going to solve our bigger problems?

I understand what you mean here, but I fail to see the link between Homophobes and Hypocrites (don't consider homophobes to be hypocrites, all the contrary, I think they are quite honest).

The "abortion opponents" murdering doctors, I do find hypocritical, because (and correct me if I'm wrong), like you manifest, they kill, while they are protesting that very thing, murder. But that is another thing that has many, MANY ramifications, explanations (simple mental disorder, for instance), and suggestions that will lead us off topic (so I won't dwell into them for the time being).

Sorry for this Lilgh, but I didn't get this last part. So you can understand me better, I am not an American (well, yes I am, as in the continent, but not as in the country), so I would really appreciate it if you explained to me what you mean in this last part.

Are you saying that hypocrisy is (somewhat) to blame for "killing Iraqis and appropriating their stuff"?, if so, why?, if not, why not?


Peace.7L

PS: The Seven Deadly sins would give you a better idea of what I usually try to say. Not because I am Christian, not because I am very religious, but because I think that the explanation of the sins, and the virtues that go with them, are a valuable lesson that everyone should know and that few do. I also link the sins with the emotions we feel... oh man, how I love talking about these things

SevenLeafs

Buzzby:

What are these "memes" you keep talking about?, I didn't quite understand their definition.

Hey, while I was reading this I felt like I was reading something written by myself. I have come to believe that we are all one, that our physical self is just the manifestation of our greater, spiritual self, which is the same for everyone.

We might behave in a different manner than others; we might look different, react differently and think differently, but this is only because everything mentioned is subject to our physical self, to our brain (mind) and our body. These would be the physical "masks", if you will, that our true self wears.

So we are the same "being" represented in different forms.

I love that notion

You have summed it all up for me with that last quote

---------------

Lilgrasshopah:

Also known as conditional behavior (Pavlov).

Indeed, awareness is a valuable thing that should be present in anything and everything we do. Most of the time we are not entirely aware of what is going on, and I don't mean listening, seeing or feeling everything (that can be listened, seen or felt, respectively), I mean being "present" at the present time.

Again, this is a very complex subject that I could write about for days, but I will just put an example of "not being aware":

Sitting at your favorite couch, watching your favorite TV program, eating popcorn. In this case, you are only watching the TV, most of the time not even being aware of what is being displayed (like some commercials). In that moment, you are not aware that you are wasting your time, and for that matter, you, most probably, don't even care. In that moment you are not aware that you could be doing something else, something that could be more productive (or productive at all) than just sitting there.

Peace.7L

lilgrasshoppah

Sevenleafs... hypocrisy....

The Pharisees were extremely sincere. Yet they were hypocrites.
The Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan is also extremely sincere... and a hypocrite.

Sincerity and hypocrisy are not always mutually exclusive.

Tons of prohibitionists are sincerely hypocritical. Hypocrisy is the making of two laws... one for you, and one for the people you don't personally like.

Klan members hate negroes. At one time, they said it was perfectly acceptable to hang a black man for simply looking at a white woman! But what if the situation were reversed? Does the Klan have grudging respect for the Black Panthers... who have a similar, if inverted, belief system regarding race? To my knowledge, the Klan hates the 'Pathers worst of all.

Regarding drugs (kind of funny, that on Marijuana.com, this is the first time I mentioned them)... most of the time the hypocrisy is easy to spot: rotund, chain smoking gambler Bill Bennett pontificates on moral values and principled behavior, to the effect that pot smokers and smack shooters and coke sniffers are inherently evil simply because they use a substance to cope with problems/have a good time. Again, this is a guy who is (a) grossly over weight, and who (b) smokes cigarettes and (c) compulsively gambled more money than most people can afford to put as a down payment on a house. Does Bill Bennett think that gamblers, nicotine addicts, and or even pudgy bastards should be thrown in jail? Of course not! Even though he actively supported, and still supports doing the exact same thing to pot smokers. Scientology founder L Ron Hubbard used EVERY drug in the pharmacopia. And yet his "religion" now strongly prohibits drugs use (except, of course, for cigarettes) for it's members. HYPOCRITE!

But, let's assume that there are teetotalin' prohibitionists out there. They don't consume any drugs whatsover, not even (heaven forfend) tea. They are still hypocritical. Because... if it is ethical to tell somebody else what they MUST NOT put in their bodies, then it is ethical to tell people what they MUST! Can you imgaine what would happen if in some alternate universe, weed was not only legal but mandated? Every day, the government would deliver two joints to every citizen to smoke in the presence of a government agent, or face jail, asset forfeiture or even worse punishments... what would these same prohibitionists shout? "IT'S MY BODY! YOU DNOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH MY BODY!" Oh really? In this universe, you killed Johnathan Magbie... So suck on that joint, *****. You asked for it!

SevenLeafs

Your post left me very confused Lilgh, I don't know if you were directly addressing me, or if you were speaking in a general manner. The quote I put above is really the last drop for my confusion. I don't, again, know if you are referring to me or what. Anyways, I wanted to add something to your post.

You seem to make no real point, you give examples and examples, but no real point. It seems to me that you also try to refute what I say in a previous post, where you apparently thought I was talking about "sincerity" (I think this is relevant to the "Hello how are you" explanation).

In a way, I was talking about sincerity, but not directly. You see, it is very improbable (I think it is impossible, but...) that you are sincere and hypocrite at the same time. Why do I say this? Well, according to the New Webster's Dictionary:

Sincere: Being in inward reality or intent the same as in outward appearance.

Hypocrisy: The act or practice of stimulating or feigning feelings or beliefs, especially the false appearance of piety and virtue; insincerity.

Then, I started to look up hypocrisy on the internet, and I found a very good website that has many definitions (it is a Catholic Web Site that has, among other things, a Catholic Encyclopedia) and it says:

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is the pretension to qualities which one does not possess, or, more cognately to the scope of this article, the putting forward of a false appearance of virtue or religion.

Essentially its malice is identical with that of lying; in both cases there is discordance between what a man has in his mind and the simultaneous manifestation of himself. So far as the morality of the act goes, it is unimportant that this difference between the interior and the exterior be set out in words, as happens in formal lies, or be acted out in one's demeanour, as is true of simulation.

So you see? You are, in a way, being hypocrite when your answer is not the one you have in mind

Peace.7L

PS: By the way, who is this Jonathan Magbie???

PPS(edit): Here is the link to the web site mentioned: http://www.newadvent.org/

PPPS(2nd edit): I was reading one of the earlier posts when I realized that you said what I explain here in your first post!: