It's very simple. A child understands this intuitively, but socially engineered conditioning into bullshit like post modernism, subjectivism, relativism and solipsism get people confused and unable to perceive reality as it is.
Objective Reality
Reality is objective. It's there even if you are blind, or are dead. Anything that happens in reality is objectively happening. You're subjective whims, wants, wishes or wants can't control what happened. You can't undo something that happened. You are not the master of the universe. You are not the singular god in control of what happens in existence. Things happen whether you want it to be that way or not. What happens is objective in external reality, not a subjective inner fantasy of your own making.
Universal Grouping Concepts of Reality, Existence and Truth
Reality and existence are universal grouping order concepts to represent everything that is. Truth as a universal is a synonym for reality and existence of all that is in general. Truth as a particular is about singular things that exist specifically, not generally.
Temporal Existence, Reality and Truth
All that 'is' is part of existence/reality/truth as it is now. All that was or will be is reality/existence/truth at that period of time. Specific things that exist now and didn't before, or don't yet exist, are a truth.
I wasn't born before I was born, and didn't exist. At that time, it wasn't true that I existed. The truth of my existence only became true when I was part of existence. After I die, I won't exist anymore. Specific truths can change in time. At various time periods, I was not part of the universal truth of ALL that is in existence/reality, then later I was, then later again I will cease to be.
Objective Actions and Behaviors
Actions and behaviors objectively exist as a manifestation that was generated into external reality/existence. They aren't mere subjective fantasies that don't exist in external reality. The action didn't exist before it was created, generate and manifested by someone. When it was output into existence, it existed. Then after the action is done, it no longer exists, but there can be effects and consequences from action that persist through causality. All of the universe/existence and truth is a long chaining sequence of causality, from one thing to another, effects that influence other causes that produce other effects that influence other causes, on and on.
Actions are Effects in Reality That Affect Reality and Others
Actions and behaviors that objectively exist(ed) in reality are a truth of what happened. They exist at the time they exist. They can't be undone after they are generated. Actions and behaviors can affect others in positive or negative ways. Actions reverberate into the lives of others. Actions are part of "web" of causality.
Know Right From Wrong
The negative needs to be understood first. Right is positive, wrong is negative.
What is wrong? Wrong is what causes harm to other beings. Anything that doesn't cause harm is automatically right because no one is being negatively affected. Right and wrong can be objectively discerned in reality because actions and behaviors exist. That's the basic functioning of morality.
Source
There. It's that simple. Explained logically, and demonstrably. Deny it all you want. I'll go chop your arm off and you can tell me all about how that was not wrong and how there is no right or wrong, good or evil, moral or immoral. Be a fool if you want to be and ignore the reality of morality -- of objective right and wrong actions in the world.
Source
Sure, you can say things, like speak of hard uncomfortable truths, and that is such a shock that someone feels psychological "harm" you can say, but that is not what is being talked about regarding morally doing no harm.
Murder is harm. Rape is harm. Assault is harm. Theft is harm. These are all physical harms. Lying is harm of a lesser degree, but it harms the integrity of being able to trust in each other and cooperate for optimal survival. Lies harm us by tearing us apart with distrust and dividing us from reality/existence/truth. Trying to fracture or disconnect someone from reality/existence/truth with lies is harmful. Speaking truth is not doing harm, but helps align and harmonize us with reality/existence/truth. Truth unites. Lies divide.
Thank you for your time and attention. Peace.
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That is my answer to some of my dear friends who asked me what will I feel after death.
Tangible Vs Intangible Harms
You are right that theft, murder rape etc are harms which can be physically identified and their effect also can be time and resources limited. But Intangible Harms like Integrity, as u discussed, would do harm in a unexplainable manner. Humanity needs to learn that Intangible losses have catastrophic results and our society should eliminate this threat. This could only be achieved by NO HARM principle which is very much highlighted in this post.
I like how you call it intangible harms, thanks! Integrity matters indeed.
I am much honoured for this appreciation by a senior steemian. Yes,Integrity matters because it starts with I.
You are right. It does not take religion to know the difference between right and wrong. Our conscience is programmed to know. Selfishness and society tries to suppress it but deep inside we know. I think the constant repetition of doing what is morally wrong can dull it, but it is still there. Thanks @krnel
I love the line of reasoning . This would trigger so many postmodern neo-Marxists who deny the ability of humanity to even recognize an objective truth. Unfortunately there are countless such individuals populating universities today, especially in the liberal arts. I developed my own tactic of dealing with them, though I rarely bother anymore.
This is rather deep and to be honest I didn't fully understand everything despite reading the article twice, probably because English is not my native language and philosophy is not my forte. Despite that though I do agree that reality of morality exist and people should know right from wrong with just a bit of commonsense. Those who don't are either fools or just pretending for convenience sake. After all some people tends to ignore things like morality and truth if it is not convenient for them. Thanks for the deep but informative article @krnel.
You're welcome. Thanks for the feedback :) Many ignore morality because they can't understand how it works, so they declare it's not part of life... especially if its not convenient for them lol.
Great post which consists the aspects like, reality, action, behaviour and most importantly the message which says that don't harm anybody and we don't need an Religion to understand the basics of right and wrong. You and and what you see, everything is reality and your own vision is truth so always remember one thing that we all human beings are great technology itself and we produce energy and that is positive or negative energy and both affects others in one or other way so in my opinion everyone should learn the art of forgiveness and let's not harm anybody in both physical and mental aspect. Thanks for sharing and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Yup, forgive if they ask for it by making reparations.
True. 🙂
It is that simple. Then why do we have such a problem when it comes to not harming others?
@tobedata asks: "Is there a possibility of changing violence - not by becomeing non-violent, that is merely the opposite of 'what is'?"
And goes on: "...can envy, with all its implications, be changed without time being involved at all, knowing that the word change itself implies time - not even transformed, for the very word transform means to move from one form to another form - but to radically end envy without time?"
"We are always afraid of something that we have never seen, perceived - something not experienced."
So, are we so afraid of what others will do to us that we preempt this by acting first?
The two @tobedata's posts I've quoted from are:
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@tobetada/to-change-the-world-you-must-change-within-11
https://steemit.com/philosophy/@tobetada/to-change-the-world-you-must-change-within-12
Because even if a principle is simple to understand, it doesn't mean that people understand it, or want to, or have tried. It takes wanting to learn. This isn't taught in schools...
"What is wrong? Wrong is what causes harm to other beings. Anything that doesn't cause harm is automatically right because no one is being negatively affected." - but how can you possibly know that your 'right' actions do not cause harm to other beings? You can't. The best intentions are only what they are: intentions. What's good to one being is bad for another being. Yin and Yang as Chinese would say. From perspective there are no right or wrong actions. These are just actions, flows inside some environment restricted by boundaries.
Intentions aren't what this is about. Actions happen, that's what this is about. Intentions with no action doesn't do anything. The action is what matters.
Thanks for bringing this interesting topic up for discussion. How boring would the wold be if everyone had the same opinion.
Morality and conscience are not identical (nor is ethics the same as morality). If that were the case, then your conclusion would be fair. But as that is not so, your notion of morality is easy to dispute. For it is a simple fact morality is the product of religion, whereas conscience is inborn to a self-aware creature. The distinction is important because one would not be capable of moral action without conscience. But without a god to which you're answerable beyond yourself, the 'morality' you enact would simply be your will and backed by your power to force your will on others - which wouldn't be universal, divine or good - so not a morality by any standard. #kierkegaard #neitzsche #arendt #heidegger
Moral is of Latin origin, the Latin for the Greek ethikos. Morality about what is actually right and wrong. Ethics are the conditioned impositions from society, super-ego, that can be right or wrong in actuality. Conscience is the moral judgment of the past to morally engage in actions in the future, to learn from our mistakes or the mistakes of others. It's a word to describe inner compass that can discern how to live rightly over wrong.
I respectfully disagree with your definitions. I do not believe we are misunderstanding each other. It may be rather we are, so to speak, speaking different languages. But, as we do belong to the same community and there is a sort of kinship in our definitions, I suspect our understandings are just slightly different (and in difference is all the significance!). In reply I'll explain my disagreement.
As was so common in the Renaissance, the Scholastic translators inadvertently warped understanding of Greek philosophy which the Romans had done well in preserving (e.g. the concepts of political animal and polis). When translated, {moralis} (custom) and {ethikos} (habit) elided into a sense familiar to us today (convention or code), which the Scholastics then employed in their theology in the sense of "universal convention" or "universal code." However, in the Academy today philosophers observe the distinction whereby ethics regards individual behavior and morality is a set of values that obtain independently of the individual. Though, indeed in our modern understanding of morality and ethics, the two are inseparable even if not totally synonymous.
Conscience cannot be a kind of judgment. One may have conscience as one may have judgment; but judgment fundamentally is an act that verges on the worldly domain, whereas conscience acts solely within the intellect for it fundamentally acts in opposition to the intellect, hence the construction of the term con-science. Conscience is our "inner voice," that critical self with whom the Self speaks when we think, that which, telling us not to do something, restrains our impulses. Thus it watches our actions and evaluates our judgment. For this reason we do call it, as you say, our "inner compass"; however, what we connote by this is, not judgment, but the {daimon} who watches over each of us criticizing our past and present conduct and guiding future conduct through criticism.
Having said all this, I understand actions speak louder than words, the doing matters more than the philosophical understanding underpinning it; and I would believe based on your post you are an upstanding person, which is what really matters. But when you cannot move a finger in the face of a fate to which you or your world is doomed, the only terrain you have is ideas (if you cannot speak or have no one to listen, there is yet your own thought). Then it matters that you think rightly and powerfully. I think it probably is the supreme moral act because it can, meaning-wise, overturn mountains, remake the world: God made the world, not only in a day, but with a word.
I would like to add that I'm still trying, myself, to work out the power of language.
I have considered two examples. Firstly, a person defeated and at the feet of his vanquisher, who, granted his last words, manages to persuade hearts and minds and thereby to win the war, though he has lost the battle. Or say, not granted any last words, instead he accepts his deathblow nobly and through his demeanor his death acquires a symbolism that persuades the hearts and minds needed to win the war. That is a power that will not be sheathed and cannot be killed even in death.
Secondly, how if on your deathbed you look back and see you had a miserable life or that you were a horrible person and you would rather not have lived, what can you do? Find God? We scoff at the idea of it. And yet there is this truth wrapped up in the religion: that by the power of a word your life may be meaningful, if only you will it. (Alas most who repent are probably just hoping in the myth of a merciful god or in the spirit of Pascal thinks to better error on caution.)
I do agree that morality is simple and universal, unlike ethics, or culture.
However, everything simple is complicated by inconvenient truths.
I know it is not necessarily evil to chop off arms, for example. Many years ago in Alaska, a Japanese tourist enjoying some snowmobiling in the interior (I can only imagine the joy he felt at the wide open untrammeled wilderness he screamed through on the rented conveyance) got in an accident.
His arm was crushed, and trapped in the treads of the snowmobile. The temperature was well below freezing, and he would soon freeze to death without help.
He chewed his arm off, and lived.
Not an easy thing, nor something everyone could do, or even realize was necessary.
But it was a good thing, and the right thing to do.
Thanks!
Semantic confusion and obfuscation to argue that. Obviously a doctor an save your life by doing some harm, like cutting off a limb to save your life. That was obviously not what I was saying.
Well, yes and no. It's simple and easy to have a standard. It's not always easy to apply that standard.
That's really the only point I was trying to make.
A single potential bad, and a single potential good are fairly obvious usually. When there's a shooter hiding in a crowd of people, is it a good idea to shoot the shooter, or is it too risky?
RL makes even simple ideas less simple in practice.
Barking up the wrong tree -- Broken bot.
Hi bud... Again, I like your way of viewing things :)
Guess I'll have to support you as a witness
Sweet, thanks!
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What if someone had killed Hitler?
Wouldn't that have been the right thing despite it obviously harmed him?
I think you should consider something like this :)
Was Hitler someone who didn't harm anyone first? You need to understand the non aggression principle first... and the difference between force and violence: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@krnel/force-vs-violence-is-force-the-same-as-violence
Thank's for the link, a very interesting article.
Sure he did harm other people first, and one obviously would have the moral obligation to forcefully stop him, but you say yourself that that would harm him: "[...]and this may also result in "damaging" effects to stop them forcefully, to "harm" the violator who is engaging in violence."
Now this makes perfect sense of course, but it's in contrast with the fundamental "inflict no harm whatsoever" - idea of THIS post. Or did I miss a point?
I'm not criticizing your work, it's great, i just thought that there might be a small sidenote missing :)
Rule, thank you very much for posting this post, sir
What if doing no harm to one means deadly harm to another? Should I choose harm of lower level? Can I be a judge? Can I harm someone or something who is intending to do harm to someone?
There are no easy answers as there are no such thing as objective good.
For example should one kill a terrorist, who's aiming to bomb a plane? Should one kill innocent brother of killed terrorist, because innocent brother aims to take revenge by undertaking his late brother's plan?
If one has single free hand to grab one of two childs from a sinking boat, which child should be harmed?
Can I kill an animal in Antartics to feed myself, because no plants grow here?
This post was very good for you, boss
Wow nice post my friend.@krnel
the best people who trust each other and nobody else is always wrong also do not judge them too right and if we consider others really do not like them can not or not intentional what normal human
I like a post
Fantastic thank you for sharing your well though out thoughts. RSTMD
"You are not the master of the universe."
Speak for yourself.