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Author Topic:   A Skillful Morality
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 16 of 60 (697229)
04-22-2013 3:02 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by Dr Adequate
04-22-2013 12:45 PM


Re: Whoops
Aaah, okay. That makes sense, thanks. Sometimes it takes me a minute, but I catch up.
So morality is being described as being skillful at being alive as a person. Heh, next time someone's being asshole I'll call them a novice
So how does this apply to something like stealing from Wal*Mart?
If it makes me happy and nobody suffers, then should we say that it is moral?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 12 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-22-2013 12:45 PM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 17 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-22-2013 3:25 PM New Cat's Eye has seen this message but not replied
 Message 21 by Sombra, posted 04-22-2013 6:49 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 285 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 17 of 60 (697235)
04-22-2013 3:25 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by New Cat's Eye
04-22-2013 3:02 PM


Re: Whoops
So morality is being described as being skillful at being alive as a person. Heh, next time someone's being asshole I'll call them a novice.
Sombra would agree with you.
So how does this apply to something like stealing from Wal*Mart?
If it makes me happy and nobody suffers, then should we say that it is moral?
But someone pushing this version of morality would say that you will suffer. At the gain of smuggling some gimcrack Chinese novelty out of Wal-Mart, you suffer by feeling cheap and nasty. And if you manage to overcome the cognitive dissonance involved, they would say, then this will lead you to become a bigger thief, which will lead you to feel even cheaper and nastier ...
Now, I am not one of those people, like Sombra or Socrates or Epicurus or the Buddha, who will maintain that this is always and necessarily the case for all people. Indeed, I think this thread exists largely because I argued that it wasn't. But it is what such people think, and so needs to be argued against as an empirical proposition rather than a moral one.
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-22-2013 3:02 PM New Cat's Eye has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
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Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 18 of 60 (697254)
04-22-2013 5:44 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by Stile
04-22-2013 12:03 PM


Re: Morality cannot be pre-determined, because it's subjective
You are very welcome for the explanation, I'm lovin' this.
Stile writes:
My concern is that your system seems to tell other people what their motivation is in life.

I tried to read through your explanation, but I see it as more of a generalization on how you perceive most people to act.

But it's very difficult to ascertain what another person's motivation actually is.
I agree with all of this. I cannot say what other people have for motivation, but I can know my motivation, and I am still human last time I checked.
I have tirelessly looked within my mind, tried to trace the motivation of my actions, all of them, and have been unable to find a flaw in this reasoning, or a case were this reasoning does not apply. Help me find it!
Stile writes:
What if our real goal is not to eliminate suffering?
Nothing wrong with that. If your real goal is not to eliminate suffering, then you are not interested in morality. No problem here.
Stile writes:

What if I actually am interested in "right" and "wrong" or "the truth"?
Then we would be wise to act skillfully going about our investigation, if we want to get the maximum possible pleasure out of it. We can act unskillfully also. It is our choice. For example, unskillfully would be strongly desiring finding out the ‘truth’. Unskillful because if we take too long to find out we get anxious, or if we fail, we endure great suffering (we get dissapointed, for starters).
Stile writes:
But it's one thing to say it's possible because we can think of a pathway.
It's another thing to say that it's what is happening... just because we can think of a pathway.
I totally agree with this. This point of view is only a possibility. Like I have said there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. I am not saying this the correct way to view morality or that I know ‘what is happening’. I do think that if you want to get the most out of life, this is the best way to view it. You can choose to view things this way and get really happy, or you cannot not. It is only a choice, a possibility.
Stile writes:
I personally find it best to leave motivations out of the whole thing.
As I said, it is a choice. I personally find it best to TRY to know all of my motivations, all of the time. I am more than willing to explain how knowing my motivations impacts my happiness.
Stile writes:
Who cares what the motivation for the action was other than the individual anyway? Then, if the individual is concerned about their motivation... then they can do an honest self-evaluation and look into that on their own at any time.
I also agree. Nobody should care what my motivations are, nor should I care about the motivations of other people. It is not my problem, and has a very limited effect on my experience of happiness/suffering.
Stile writes:
Why do you think the blind man is deluded?
Because if he were not using his mind to think in terms of ‘me’ being different from the rest of the universe, he would not get upset.
Stile writes:
But... what if the blind man cursed me because his one joy in life is still to do some things for himself even though he is blind. What if the blind man's favourite thing is to figure out how to open doors for himself and overcome his blindness and assert his independence and boost his self-confidence? What is deluded about that?
He is still thinking in terms of ‘me’ as being different from the rest of the universe, thus he is ‘deluded’.
If the blind man has only one joy in life, he is not using his mind skillfully (there are many enjoyable things in life, you just need to skillfully use your mind as a tool to experience them).
If the blind man’s favourite thing is figuring things out for himself, there might be nothing wrong with that. This does not imply that he will get upset if I open the door for him.
If he does get upset, it is because he has failed to understand that he is part of the physical universe. The physical universe is what it is. His mind would like the power to control me and make me not open the door for him, but our minds don’t have the power to influence physical objects by sheer will yet, so he gets upset.
As long as he has a body, he will have to deal with aging, cold, heat, insects, annoying people such as me, etc. because his body cannot exist apart from the universe, because it needs air, water, food, energy. At the same time the things needed by the body depend on many other factors. Air and water would not be here without atmosphere and gravity. The food needed by the body is a great example, because, maybe I am the farmer that grows the food on which the blind man lives. He would not be at the door if not for me, in this case.
He got upset because he was not skillfull enough to understand that he cannot take me, the annoying person that opened the door for him and separate me from the universe, and keep the rest of the universe for himself. We are all part of the same thing, the universe. We are merely dependent on the physical universe, and cannot control it with the will of the mind. Recently in human history we have aquired a lot of skill and greatly influence the physical world around us, but we need technology and other things. We don’t influence it by just the will of the mind. He in his mind wanted to separate me from his experience of the universe. But we have no power over that. The universe is what it is. He fails to understand this, thus gets upset. Not because I opened a door.
Furthermore, even if I don’t open the door for him, and then he fails at opening it, he still suffers because of his delusion. He may in this case feel low self-colfidence instead of upset, but the reason for his suffering stays the same. He is under the delusion that he needs to open a door to feel self-confident.
Stile writes:
..and, because you say that me opening the door for him is "always skillful"... I then open the door for him all the time. Now he never gets to open a door for himself.
I never said that opening the door for him is always skillful, I said it depends on your intention behind the act. I said:
if you do it because you are thinking it must be hard beeing blind, I want to help him it is skillful.
If you then see the blind man all the time like you say, and you have the same intention everytime you see him - that is, the intention of helping him out because you try to relate to his pain and feel generosity in response to this — then it would be wise of you to ask him how you can help him. Then he might tell you how he feels about the whole thing, and maybe ask you to hold his cane while he tries to open the door by himself.
Stile writes:
...are you sure this is a "skillful" scenario?
Wouldn't it be better to learn that the blind man didn't like me opening doors for him... and then to stop opening the door for this particular blind man?
See the previous two paragraphs.
Stile writes:
Perhaps the morality of a situation cannot be determined by the actions taken... because people are different and can react to the same actions differently for a multitude of various, acceptable reasons.
Yeah, it cannot be determined by the actions, but it can be determined by the intentions behind the actions.
Stile writes:
Perhaps the morality of a situation should be determined by the specific results of the actions on the specific individuals that were affected?
The specific results of actions depend on a multitude of factors, even when you reduce it to a specific individual. In this case, the individual is only one of the factors that affected the result of the action, thus it would be impossible to determine an individual as totally responsible for the result of any action.
Stile writes:
From what I can tell, I would agree that your system is accurate for a lot of people. But people tend to be different. We all have different thoughts and feelings. Some of us even have different thought processes.
Yes this is clearly true, but I think that not only humans, but all beings that suffer have this same common factor of chasing after what we think leads us to happiness and run away from suffering without truly facing it. And I think the same solution applies to all beings. It is like the correct medicine for a specific disease. We all have different thoughts, feelings and thought processes about it, but it holds common that we will feel better by following morality. It is like Newtons’ action-reaction. We hit a wall with our fist. The wall hits us back with the same force, opposite direction. Different people will have different experiences of pain in the fist, different feelings, thoughts, etc., but we all get the same force we gave to the wall, opposite direction.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 9 by Stile, posted 04-22-2013 12:03 PM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 60 by Stile, posted 05-07-2013 10:49 AM Sombra has not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 19 of 60 (697255)
04-22-2013 5:51 PM
Reply to: Message 10 by Stile
04-22-2013 12:08 PM


Re: The Underlying Faith and Belief
I think that first we have to believe out of faith in this moral system and then figure out with our investigation if what we believed was true or not. But that faith is based on reasoning and not blind faith, so it is more like confidence than faith.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 10 by Stile, posted 04-22-2013 12:08 PM Stile has seen this message but not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 20 of 60 (697256)
04-22-2013 6:03 PM
Reply to: Message 15 by Dr Adequate
04-22-2013 12:58 PM


Re: Whoops
Dr Adequate writes:
But in fact you seem to be suggesting an absolute objective standard, based on happiness.
Not an absolute moral standard. This standard only applies if you are looking for a way out of suffering and want more happiness.
Dr Adequate writes:
I think what you actually mean is that there is no simple set of rules prescribing which actions one should and shouldn't undertake that are guaranteed to attain this standard.
I agree, there are no simple set of rules. But there is an intelligible system, a system we can interpret and understand how it works. We can then use this knowledge to make ourselves happy or miserable. It is up to us.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-22-2013 12:58 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 21 of 60 (697260)
04-22-2013 6:49 PM
Reply to: Message 16 by New Cat's Eye
04-22-2013 3:02 PM


Re: Whoops
Yeah! That's exactly it, call assholes novices!
Catholic Scientist writes:
So how does this apply to something like stealing from Wal*Mart?
If it makes me happy and nobody suffers, then should we say that it is moral?
First, I bet that when you are in the midst of the act of stealing, you are not happy. You are probably anxious, worried, or at least tense looking out for not being caught. Right there you are suffering, thus, inmoral.
Let us assume that you are happy before, during and after the steal.
This stealing is still inmoral, because it leads to your suffering in a subtle way. You are acting in a way that reinforces the self-image or self-concept. Put simply you are thinking in terms of 'me' and the rest of the universe.
I will copy/paste an explanation from a previous post:
Whatever you make your mind pursue with your thinking and pondering, with your actions, that becomes the inclination of your heart.
For example, if we keep pursuing thinking imbued with lust, our mind is bent by that thinking imbued with lust. This in turn has an effect on our body and our awareness. If you spend all day watching porn you, later that day you will have more probability (various factors go into your view of things) to look at things in a sexual way, to get a boner easier and when its time to see your wife, you will have a better probability of having a really good time. The same with other things. If I’m depressed its because my mind is inclined to constantly thinking about things that make me feel remorse, sad, sorrow, etc. This could be due to many things. A chemical imbalance in the brain is what psychiatrists check for. Or it could be due to a traumatizing event (the death of a son), pessimism, or a wrong point of view of the world. These are unskillfull uses of thought, because you are hurting yourself and others.
The same can be done in the other ‘direction’. You can incline the awareness of your mind skillfully toward generosity, compassion, etc. THIS IS NOT DONE BY SHEER WILL THOUGH. What is necessary is wisdom.
If you constantly steal, you will be prone to steal, to get greedy, to stop considering other beings, to think in terms of me!, me!, me! This type of thinking leads to your suffering in many ways. When you are in an egotistical state of mind like this, your mind thinks only in your interests. It will have a harder time considering situations from different points of view. You get upset and angry when you don't get what you expected, you believe you deserve more, have less patience, etc. This anger and impatience then cause even greater suffering for you and others.
If you only stole from Wal-Mart once, and it was a dire situation that lead you to it, the moral consequences of your steal will probably be small. Your mind has gotten little conditioning, or little practice in being greedy.
If you constantly steal (constantly keep your mind in egotistical mind set) the moral consequences of stealing from Wal-Mart, even if hurting nobody, may be great. You will cause yourself great suffering, and in the future, a lot of other people.
The more you steal, the more your mind practices greed. If you pratice greed a lot, you will have an easier time in becoming a greedy person (more suffering for everybody, yay!)
Besides, stealing repeatedly gives more opportunity to being caught, something going wrong, somebody getting hurt.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 16 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-22-2013 3:02 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-23-2013 12:27 PM Sombra has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 22 of 60 (697264)
04-22-2013 7:08 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Dr Adequate
04-22-2013 3:25 PM


Re: Whoops
Dr Adequate writes:
At the gain of smuggling some gimcrack Chinese novelty out of Wal-Mart, you suffer by feeling cheap and nasty. And if you manage to overcome the cognitive dissonance involved, they would say, then this will lead you to become a bigger thief, which will lead you to feel even cheaper and nastier ...
I disagree. I can steal something and not feel cheap and nasty. I can also steal something and not become a bigger thief.
I tried to explain in message 21 how you generate future suffering from this particular action. It is a matter of conditioning your mind. If you steal once, you probably won't notice the suffering you are causing for yourself. Because its effect is really small, negligible almost, happens at a later time in your life, and many other factors go into it.
The suffering involved here is difficult to see. It requires you to have a certain understanding of how your mind works. I have tried my best to explain how the mind works in this particular scenario, as I said, in Message 21. I would like your opinion on it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-22-2013 3:25 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 23 of 60 (697269)
04-22-2013 9:09 PM
Reply to: Message 17 by Dr Adequate
04-22-2013 3:25 PM


Re: Whoops
Dr Adequate writes:
needs to be argued against as an empirical proposition rather than a moral one.
The only relation between the skillful/unskillful thing and the dictionary definition of morality stems from the fact that the actions I call skillful are generally percieved as 'good' and the 'unskillful' generally perceived as 'evil'. So I could agree with this.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 17 by Dr Adequate, posted 04-22-2013 3:25 PM Dr Adequate has not replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 24 of 60 (697311)
04-23-2013 12:27 PM
Reply to: Message 21 by Sombra
04-22-2013 6:49 PM


Re: Whoops
It seems to me that you're just challenging my conditional.
The question was: if it does make me happy, and nobody does suffer, then should we call it {stealing from Wal*Mart} moral?
I saw you replying with "well, you really wouldn't be happy" and "others really will suffer", but that doesn't answer the question.
Let us assume that you are happy before, during and after the steal.
This stealing is still inmoral, because it leads to your suffering in a subtle way. You are acting in a way that reinforces the self-image or self-concept. Put simply you are thinking in terms of 'me' and the rest of the universe.
But if reinforcing my self-image doesn't make me unhappy, or if its too subtle for me to notice, then how does this Skillful Morality system of your's get around to actually determining that it is immoral?
It looks like this system of your's could very easily determine that stealing from Wal*Mart can be a moral thing.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by Sombra, posted 04-22-2013 6:49 PM Sombra has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by Sombra, posted 04-23-2013 1:25 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 25 of 60 (697315)
04-23-2013 1:25 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by New Cat's Eye
04-23-2013 12:27 PM


The workings of the mind
Catholic Scientist writes:
But if reinforcing my self-image doesn't make me unhappy, or if its too subtle for me to notice, then how does this Skillful Morality system of your's get around to actually determining that it is immoral?
It is possible to not feel bad about the stealing. In fact some people don't even feel bad about killing. We call them psycopaths.
But psycopath or not, the action is still inmoral. Reinforcing your self-image might not make you unhappy directly. It is too subtle for you to notice, because you have not developed mental awareness. But if you notice it or not, it still has a negative effect on your mind ('negative' if you are aiming for happiness). This effect is hard to see and requieres a certain understanding of how your mind works. It requires you to develop mental awareness.
Using your mind to think in terms of a self-image is the cause of all your suffering. This is hard to see, but not impossible. If you look closely, develop skill in using the right tools to investigate your own mind, you can see it for yourself. No blind belief necessary.
The self-concept is a tool we use to interact with the world. It is a frame of reference. You define 'me' and 'the world', and based on these concepts fabricate the rest of your mental experience. This means all emotions (pleasure and suffering and all complex human emotions), ideas, opinions, almost everything in the mental part of experience, is fabricated by your mind. This fabrication is based on the self-concept. We have little control over the fabrication process. The self-concept is a really useful way of using our mind. It has led us to all the human knowledge we have aquired. But is has the drawback of involving certain types of suffering. This way of using our mind is based on conceptual thought.
This is not the only way we can use our mind. The mind functions in many other ways. One of them happens always before the conceptual thought process. It happens so fast, we are not able to see it with our normal everyday awareness. Our thinking is a process. There is mental activity before conceptual thought. There are techniques that allow you develop certain skill in using or prolonging this part of our thought process. We can then use this ability to interpret experience without the concept of 'me' and 'the rest of the world'. We then use both (conceptual and pre-conceptual thought) to function in our lives. We 'choose' which type of thinking to use, depending on the situation at hand. We can then choose to experience the suffering involved with self-concept, or not. Integrating this non-conceptual thought into your everyday life is really hard, because throughout our entire lives our mind has been conditioned to function only in 'concept mode'. It takes a lot of practice to integrate this pre-conceptual mental function into your everyday life, and is what advanced monks dedicate themselves to, and we have stereotyped these people as living in caves and moving at a snails pace, etc.
By the way, I live a 'normal' life, probably much like yours, and still practice these techniques. Abandoning all your possesions and becoming a monk are not necessary to this practice, those are just training conditions to speed up progress.
In terms of buddhism and the Eightfold Path, this function of the mind is the 'Right Mindfulness' path factor.
Before you counter with: 'all minds are different and you can't know how mine works', consider this analogy:
Your muscles are different from mine. They are a different size, shape, color, texture, taste, they probably smell different and make different sounds if you strike them. But I can tell you that if you exercise with the right technique, rest plenty, and feed yourself appropriately your muscles will get stronger.
And so it is with the mind. You can train it this way, and obtain greater happiness for yourself. The problem is people are lazy and don't like to train. They prefer to make up excuses, or get distracted with things that will not make them nearly as happy as training the mind...
Edited by Sombra, : Changed 'funtion' to 'funtion'
Edited by Sombra, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-23-2013 12:27 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 26 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-23-2013 3:58 PM Sombra has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 26 of 60 (697323)
04-23-2013 3:58 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by Sombra
04-23-2013 1:25 PM


Re: The workings of the mind
That's all fine and dandy, but I still don't feel like I understand how this Skillful Morality system would identify my scenario as immoral.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by Sombra, posted 04-23-2013 1:25 PM Sombra has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 27 by Sombra, posted 04-24-2013 2:21 AM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 27 of 60 (697348)
04-24-2013 2:21 AM
Reply to: Message 26 by New Cat's Eye
04-23-2013 3:58 PM


Re: The workings of the mind
I finally understood where our confusion comes from! Your question is not how the suffering is created by the theft, or why you can't feel it, or how to solve it. Your question is:
If I can't feel the suffering I create with this specific steal, why should I care?
The answer is:
As said previously, this moral system is not an absolute standard, it only applies if you want to eliminate suffering from your life. If that is not your goal, then you are right, you shouldn't care about the suffering created with the pilfer.
I use morality in this sense because it is fruitless to define it in terms of right and wrong. The reason for this is given in the explanation of how we create our suffering I had already written before I realized where our confusion came from. And I think it will be useful for future arguments to keep it part of this message so here it is anyways:
Catholic Scientist writes:
That's all fine and dandy, but I still don't feel like I understand how this Skillful Morality system would identify my scenario as immoral.
Ok, I'll try to make it clearer.
Definition: Any action that leads to suffering is inmoral.
In order to steal, you must create a 'me'. If you create a 'me', you necessarily create suffering.
=> Stealing is inmoral.
Why does stealing imply the creation of a 'me'? When I steal, I necessarily use the 'me' concept. 'I' am going to take something from 'the world' {Wal-Mart} and make it a part of 'me'. Without these concepts you can't steal.
Why does creating a 'me' imply the creation of suffering? I will try to explain in a different manner than last time:
Almost everything we experience in this life is a fabrication of our mind. Our mind simultaneously creates and perceives our experience in this life. This fabrication occurs in an instant, and our mind does it constantly, thousands of times per second. Not everything in the world is mind created obviously. For example, we did not create the physical objects (stars, planets, other beings and their actions, etc.). But almost everything else is fabricated by the mind. This means all your emotions are fabricated. All your suffering is fabricated by you. I will try to explain how everything is fabricated, including suffering. It goes something like this:
Your mind receives a stimulus from one of the five sensory organs. Let's say the eye perceives a form. Lets say this form in question is what we, using conceptual thought, call a dog. Parting from this your mind then uses conceptual thought, it defines 'me', 'the world', 'the dog' and determines if the percieved 'dog' is part of 'me' or 'the world'. If it classifies it as 'my dog,' then the mind creates specific set of feelings, thoughts, and many other things (creates an experience) around this percieved form. If the mind classifies the 'dog' as not mine, it creates a different set of feelings, thoughts, etc.
The eye not only the perceives the 'dog' obviously, it perceives many other things, like what the dog is standing on and everything around. The mind goes into this process of defining me, mine and the world with every form that you percieve and proceed to conceptualize. And it does it simultaneously.
The mind, also simultaneously, is receiving numerous stimuli from the ear, the nose, the body, the tongue. Not only that, it is also simultaneously perceiving things with the mind, like all the concepts and thoughts it has fabricated, memories and future plans, any mental item you make the object of your attention with conscious, willed thought, and any other thing. And it goes into this 'me, mine, world' process with each and everyone of those things. And on goes the cycle. All of these fabrication processes are conditioned. They depend and are affected by the factors that go into it. That is why everything in our mental realm is very unstable and constantly changing. This is analogous to our experience of the physical world around us, which is also composed of processes that are affected by many factors, and is constantly changing.
This is what makes up your experience of life. Suffering is just created as a byproduct of this. All types of mental suffering depend on you creating a 'me' and 'the world'. For example, if somebody hurts the dog we were talking about, and the mind had classified it as my dog, I probably feel certain suffering, and if it didn't perceive it as my dog, there may be no suffering, or there is less of it. If you do not create the concepts of 'me', 'mine' & 'the world' then it is impossible for mental suffering to arise.
In summary, in order to steal, you must create a 'me'. If you create a 'me', you necessarily create suffering.
=>Stealing is inmoral
P.S. The concepts of "right" and "wrong" we are accustomed to are also fabricated based on the 'me' concept. This implies that morality is conditioned by the 'me' concept. Like I said the 'me' process occurs many times each second. We are constantly doing it and is itself dependent on many factors, and therefore constantly changing. Since morality is dependent on the 'me' process, and this is always changing, our vision of morality is also always changing. Because of this same reason, every person has a different vision of morality, unless we use the proposed objective standard.
P.P.S.You are already suffering before you steal, because desire is a form of suffering.
Edited by Sombra, : See first paragraph!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 26 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-23-2013 3:58 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 28 by Dogmafood, posted 04-24-2013 8:09 AM Sombra has replied
 Message 29 by New Cat's Eye, posted 04-24-2013 10:33 AM Sombra has replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 349 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


Message 28 of 60 (697357)
04-24-2013 8:09 AM
Reply to: Message 27 by Sombra
04-24-2013 2:21 AM


Re: The workings of the mind
Hi Sombra
If you create a 'me', you necessarily create suffering.
I like your position here and I think that it has some merit, however, I did not create the me that is me. It began with my need for air, food and water. Quite difficult to ignore those selfish requirements. Every time I satisfy those needs I am reinforcing the concept of the 'me'. I appreciate that we can reduce our desires but I don't see how we can eliminate them. The 'me' is necessary in order for there to be a will to survive.
The benefits of this state of mind are also evident. That is that the 'me' can also lead to great happiness and achievement. It is the competition between individuals for scarce resources that has led directly to the robustness of all those creatures that have managed to survive. You can't have competition without a sense of 'me'. This does not negate cooperation but cooperation is also driven by a sense of personal benefit.
So our relentless curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge and wealth have brought mankind to our current state. Sure there is lots of suffering but there are also hospitals and libraries and air conditioning. All of these achievements were driven by of our sense of me.
I can attest to the fact that reducing your desires is an effective way to increase your happiness but there is a limit to how far you can reduce them.
Edit; In other words it is sort of the way of things and you can not have a sense of happiness if you do not also have a sense of suffering.
Edited by Prototypical, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Sombra, posted 04-24-2013 2:21 AM Sombra has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 30 by Sombra, posted 04-24-2013 11:46 AM Dogmafood has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 29 of 60 (697359)
04-24-2013 10:33 AM
Reply to: Message 27 by Sombra
04-24-2013 2:21 AM


Re: The workings of the mind
As said previously, this moral system is not an absolute standard, it only applies if you want to eliminate suffering from your life. If that is not your goal, then you are right, you shouldn't care about the suffering created with the pilfer.
Oh, okay. i thought it was a method for identifying what would be moral and immoral.
If its just a path to happiness, or whatever, then so be it.
I use morality in this sense because it is fruitless to define it in terms of right and wrong.
I wouldn't say its fruitless, and in fact, and think it can work just fine. All you have to do is get society to come to a consensus on which behaviors they want to label as wrong, and then enforce those with some sort of punishment.
You just define stealing as wrong and punish those who still do it. It doesn't matter if it really is truely and objectively wrong or not. At least not in a practical sense.
Definition: Any action that leads to suffering is inmoral.
In order to steal, you must create a 'me'. If you create a 'me', you necessarily create suffering.
=> Stealing is inmoral.
Why does stealing imply the creation of a 'me'? When I steal, I necessarily use the 'me' concept. 'I' am going to take something from 'the world' {Wal-Mart} and make it a part of 'me'. Without these concepts you can't steal.
Okay, but by that definition, if I go and take an orange from my tree and eat it, then that would be an immoral behavior. (by the way, its immoral, not inmoral)
Also, masturbation would be immoral as one of the ultimate creations of 'me'. Do you agree?
Almost everything we experience in this life is a fabrication of our mind.
**punches you in the nose**
Did you just fabricate that blood with your mind?
Suffering is just created as a byproduct of this. All types of mental suffering depend on you creating a 'me' and 'the world'.
You're now suffering from a broken nose. How does this "'me' and 'the world'" apply to that? Don't forget: "All your suffering is fabricated by you."
This is what makes up your experience of life. Suffering is just created as a byproduct of this.
But how is suffering a byproduct?
I'm not trying to be difficult, but I see a whole lot of explaining of stuff and yet you seem to just be assuming the main point rather than deriving it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 27 by Sombra, posted 04-24-2013 2:21 AM Sombra has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 31 by Sombra, posted 04-24-2013 12:57 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Sombra
Member (Idle past 3773 days)
Posts: 38
From: Costa Rica
Joined: 04-02-2013


Message 30 of 60 (697362)
04-24-2013 11:46 AM
Reply to: Message 28 by Dogmafood
04-24-2013 8:09 AM


Re: The workings of the mind
Hi Prototypical
Prototypical writes:
I did not create the me that is me. It began with my need for air, food and water. Quite difficult to ignore those selfish requirements. Every time I satisfy those needs I am reinforcing the concept of the 'me'. I appreciate that we can reduce our desires but I don't see how we can eliminate them. The 'me' is necessary in order for there to be a will to survive.
Yes I understand this. I described a way to end mental suffering, not the physical pain of hunger, thirst, etc.
I obviously have not proven the following, but sort of understand how it could be possible:
Buddhism claims to know how we can end all suffering, including the physical one. It says that we are human and have a human body because of our actions. This means that we are responsible for putting ourselves in a position to receive physical pain, so it did begin with you, and you can end it.
I can maybe agree with this claim if I view it like this:
Like I said before what we call a 'me' is a process we are constantly doing, and it requires a body (a physical part) and mind (a 'mental' part).
If I die, the mind loses its body. The mind is capable of perceiving many things, some we don't even know yet. Even without a body the mind still exists and perceives, etc. (just as the body still exists without the mind, while we are unconscious). And as I have said, our mind is conditioned. If all my life I have used my mind to think in terms of 'me', then the mind will have lost its frame of reference with which it interprets everything it perceives, and is therefore now lost. It is in a 'limbo', because it no longer has a body, and to solve this problem will desperately look for a way to interpret the world. Since my mind only knows how to interpret the world using a 'me' concept, it will desperately look for a new body. Once it finds one, a new life experience begins for me. So I have effectively created more physical suffering for myself.
On the other hand, if I have trained my mind to function in this life and world without the 'me' concept, when my mind loses its body, it will know how to interpret the things it percieves without a body, and will not be lost. It will not have to desperately look for a body to find its way. If your mind knows how to interpret all the stimuli it receives without a body, then it has no need for a body. Therefore 'you' will no longer have a body, and experiencing physical pain becomes impossible.
Prototypical writes:
The benefits of this state of mind are also evident. That is that the 'me' can also lead to great happiness and achievement. It is the competition between individuals for scarce resources that has led directly to the robustness of all those creatures that have managed to survive. You can't have competition without a sense of 'me'. This does not negate cooperation but cooperation is also driven by a sense of personal benefit.
So our relentless curiosity and the pursuit of knowledge and wealth have brought mankind to our current state. Sure there is lots of suffering but there are also hospitals and libraries and air conditioning. All of these achievements were driven by of our sense of me.
Yes I agree. The 'me' concept is a really useful tool. It has led us to incredible material progress. It has also led us to many nice things like all the nice human emotions created from it like love, etc.
I have not said in any moment that we should completely abandon this way of thinking, I just said we have overemphasized it.
Edited by Sombra, : Added the analogy of the body existing without the mind while unconscious

This message is a reply to:
 Message 28 by Dogmafood, posted 04-24-2013 8:09 AM Dogmafood has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 37 by Dogmafood, posted 04-25-2013 9:10 AM Sombra has replied

  
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