BootsnAll Travel Community

hmm i have no idea where to stick this. it was either chit-chat or spiritual; ultimately i decided to go with spiritual since this is a little on the heavy side -

i can't stand it when people pick and choose what they want to do within a belief or a 'code' to live by. er, ok that doesn't make sense. ok for example, someone claims that they're atheist, but yet they pick and choose religious practices/beliefs from other religions to adhere to. i suppose it could be considered 'selective' hypocrisy??

anyway, so utilitarianism, for those of you that don't know, is maximizing the amount of good for the maximum amount of people (kind of). sounds good at first, yeah? kill one to save a hundred. but according to the utilitarian theory, anything at all can be justified as long as it provides the greatest amount of good for the largest amount of people possible. this means that using scapegoats is acceptable and justified. say, for example, if there's a murder and no one's able to find out who did it, they could punish an innocent bystander and say that it's for the greater good (showing to the rest of society that murder is wrong and warrants punishment). that's something that i'm completely against, and i would hope all of you would agree with me on that.

is putting your life in danger (and perhaps even sacrificing it), for hundreds of people worth it? of course. but if you believe that, then does that make it ok for a government to punish a scapegoat? i don't think so. but aren't we now picking and choosing? ugh!!

i understand that a big part of life is about compromise - are there any principles that don't have to be compromised? i can't help but look at this situation the way i do. in time, i'm sure i'll get over it, but bleh. sometimes idealism sucks.

edit: i'm not trying to start a debate. i'm just wondering how you would come to terms with what seems to be a contradiction.

Hmm...lots of stuff going on in your post!!

I'm not certain how to answer your question on contradictions, other than that philosophy can be tricky that way, and when you extend these philosophies onto society as a whole, and then bring government and other institutions into the picture, it's going to get really messy.

As far as the hypocrisy that you brought up...I think everyone hates hypocrisy. And I think everyone will state that the people who most annoy them are hypocrites (to bring up another thread on here!! :-). BUT isn't everyone a hypocrite on some level?? I mean, really...if we were all completely honest with ourselves, and really analyzed every single action we took and word we spoke, there would be things that wouldn't quite line up. I think as far as this goes, it's something to work on as you grow older - just be aware of your motivations, and underlying beliefs, and try to make everything line up so that your deed follows your belief.

Principles that don't have to be compromised?? I'd really have to think a lot about this one to give you a good answer, but I think it's really tough to come up with anything universal, simply because everyone forms their own outlook on life. My immediate thought is that MY beliefs don't have to be compromised, and that every individual (ethics aside) has as much right as any other individual to be alive. I'm an idealist as well, I'd probably say I'm a pacifist, I cannot comprehend human destruction of the planet and each other, and I consider myself highly ethical, but I don't want to get into defining all of that.

As far as your utilitarian philosophy...it's one that I don't look upon very favorably...simply because it tends to make the individual unimportant, and it's the whole masses/majority in favor of the individual personality and spirit, and then you have to ask yourself, how DO we know what's best for the masses?? Because what's best for one mass of people could be very detrimental to another mass, or a small group, and you're basically sacrificing the minority for the majority, which means the individual is unimportant. And then you're putting ethics into the hands of government...which frightens me. Makes me think of robot-world. :-) Of course there are a lot of complexities to all of this.

Just my initial thoughts.

Lynn

Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' takes the utilitarian philosophy to the extreme...at least her vision of what would happen if this philosophy was enacted.

This is a life full of contradictions. We live in such a complex World now, people have ideas and we are going to get people who dont like ideas and those that do. we will never agree totally on anything.
I'd like to think that everyone would try there best at being a good person (WHATEVER THAT IS)but its not always easy. we as humans are weak, temptation awaits.
I would say i'm a pacifist too, though i can stil get angry and have had fights before. sometimes ideals and real world creates condradictions, and you have to go adjust to each situation and do what you think is best. sometimes emotion overcomes reason though. i think religon is there too help us live the best we can and help us. (what am i talking about?/?)
At the end of the day there are billions of us, each with our own problems and dramas, its easy to get very self involved in pursute of happiness. yet we are so frail, as we see from the tsumani, we can be destroyed in a instant.
each individual has there right to life, why not, we are all the same at the end of the day. me, you,them. we all are born and die, yet we make it so difficult inbetween. we do live in a society (counter to what maggie thatcher said) otherwise id have a option not too pay my taxes. some cultures are more socialy orientated than others (i.e china vs usa) and not so individualy minded. im going to stop here because im loosing the point, will be back when something relevant pops into my head

I remember liking Kant a lot.

There were others that I also had an affinity for...it makes me so frustrated that I spent a good deal of time a few years ago reading a history of philosophy series (4 lengthy books) and I can't remember the details anymore. ARG. What's the point of trying to educate onself when I end up forgetting most of it??
It did make me think differently about many things, so I guess it affected my thought processes, but the only thing I really remember is that I felt all of the philosophers had a different take on reality, and that they were all 'right' in their own way. BUT I know there were a few that I absolutely didn't agree with.

Sigh.

Lynn

wow thansk for all the replies, everyone!

i've read kant and aristotle.. but lately all i've been thinking about is mill and bentham! lol. i have a really good link to kant's info, i'll post it when i get home from class.

anyway. so. no, i'm not a utilitarian, or so i want to say. but yet, i would accept that i would be putting my life in danger if/when i join something like MSF (doctors without borders). i realize the sacrifice and would accept it. isn't that considered utilitarian though? but yet (to go back to my previous example), i would never justify the use of a scapegoat. maybe it's a matter of choice? i mean, choice as in.. i choose to dedicate my life to this, but did that person choose to be a scapegoat?

true, we probably all are hippocrates to some degree, but does that mean we should just ignore it? i try to minimize my hypocrisy. but where do we draw the line? is there ever a time when we say ok, this action is right but it contradicts what i believe. was i wrong in the past, in my beliefs?

sorry i'm babbling. i'll gather my thoughts and post more tonight.

quote:

---

Originally posted by xoom:
ok for example, someone claims that they're atheist, but yet they pick and choose religious practices/beliefs from other religions to adhere to. i suppose it could be considered 'selective' hypocrisy??

---

It's only hypocrisy if the beliefs or practices the atheist chooses from other religions include belief in a god.

There are a lot of beliefs and practices promoted by religions, such as the Golden Rule, meditation, or opposition to killing, which are beneficial yet do not require theistic belief.

bubbha -

i wasn't tryign to spark a religious debate. i was only using that as an example - it was teh first thing that popped into my mind. i could have just as easily said, someone that's sexist/racist/homophobic but 'makes an acception' for a particular person (er it's unfortunate that we do have people that are sexist, racist, and/or homophobic). or someone that claims they're vegan but still eats fish once in a while because 'its good for their health' or something. lol and i just realized the irony of your post.

anyway, here's that kant link i mentioned earlier.

I would ask why you place so much importance in the coherence and correctness of a single system of beliefs. As something of a perfectionist/idealist, it would be a wet dream come true if I discovered a completely reasonable, universal, internally-consistent belief system or code of conduct. But you've pointed out problems in several universal codes, and for good reason--all of them have problems, and that's why people can make a living by studying ethics.

As for dealing with my life as an admitted hypocrite, I like to look at the alternatives, or to quote Emerson on foolish consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds. To take an extremely cheap shot at one of the alternatives, pretty much every adherent to the judeo-christian beliefs looks blatently hypocritical when the more archaic biblical prohibitions (shellfish, fabric of mixed cloth, etc) are invoked. Does this devalue the whole of biblical wisdom? In the case of Mill or Kant or anyone else, does their construction by single men rather than their accumulation over the ages make their coherence any more likely?

To get at your example, you assert that utilitarianism leads to a particular outcome. It doesn't seem at all _necessary_ that killing a scapegoat leads to greater happiness overall. Assume everyone responds to the killing as you do, that is, with shock and horror. Does the killing maximize happiness? Does the fear you feel at the prospect of being randomly killed for the good of the group outweigh the comfort you gain by knowing someone, ostensibly someone bad, has been killed for the crime?

My point in picking that apart is that these philosophies provide a great way to reason about the world and play with ideas, but they almost never work well as steadfast rules--there are always other reasonable ways to consider a situation.

Now, the cow eating vegans or the selectively-tolerant homophobes suffer from a different problem, because they're having problems keeping to a very specific rule rather than an entire belief system. In the former, it sounds like a case of the flesh being weak (and tasty, as it were). In the latter, I'd say it's more incremental change for good than lamentable inconsistency. Either way, we're not machines, and while over a drink I would be right there with you bitching about these people, we must keep in mind that they are both more interesting than the unrelenting homophobe and the unquestioning vegan-from-birth.

I think its interesting how some films portray the idea of the innate goodness of humanity.
There is a class of villains in movies who's goal is to create a better world, free of violence or environmental rape etc.
Examples are a couple of Bond villains who wanted to wipe out humanity and start again, and the mainframe robot from 'I, Robot' who wanted to protect humanity from itself.
In these stories, the hero always defeats them and reasserts the rights of the human individual over the generic good of the Earth. We may be going to hell in a handbasket, but where there's freedom there's hope, right?
I always identify with the villain in these situations because I don't think people as a whole are capable of existing responsibly or policing their own actions and urges.

I believe that the majority of people lead 'Do as I say, not as I do' lives in some form or other. There's always shock when a morals crusader ends up having an affair, or a priest has sex with a parishioner, or a stockbroker insider trades, or a leader abuses his power. I think most of those people might even believe that in general, its not a good idea for the majority of people to do what they're doing, but we turn a blind eye to ourselves very easily.

quote:

---

Originally posted by cd21:
I would ask why you place so much importance in the coherence and correctness of a single system of beliefs. As something of a perfectionist/idealist, it would be a wet dream come true if I discovered a completely reasonable, universal, internally-consistent belief system or code of conduct. But you've pointed out problems in several universal codes, and for good reason--all of them have problems, and that's why people can make a living by studying ethics.

---

I think this is a very good point. It's far too easy to get stuck in one philosophy, and then agonize over inconsistencies within it. And I agree --> One can spend a lifetime studying ethics, and trying to develop a universal system. I think this is where growth comes in; I think an evolution of thought and beliefs is in fact healthy!! And more interesting! :-) I don't think it implies inconsistency, I think it implies a yearning to discover the truth.

quote:

---

Originally posted by borderland:
I think most of those people might even believe that in general, its not a good idea for the majority of people to do what they're doing, but we turn a blind eye to ourselves very easily.

---

Also very true. This is one reason I try to bite my tongue before making judgements on people, and it's why I end up feeling a bit guilty when I start bashing someone else or when I get angry at someone for being a hypocrite...because I'm confronted with the awareness that I am also a hypocrite (in ways I'm sure I don't realize!), and that people are bashing me at the same time, for different reasons!

quote:

---

Originally posted by cd21:
I would ask why you place so much importance in the coherence and correctness of a single system of beliefs. As something of a perfectionist/idealist, it would be a wet dream come true if I discovered a completely reasonable, universal, internally-consistent belief system or code of conduct. But you've pointed out problems in several universal codes, and for good reason--all of them have problems, and that's why people can make a living by studying ethics.

---

hm. i've never looked at it that way before. i guess i just don't understand why there can't be the 'perfect' code to live by. is it because we're not perfect or is it because we're just not trying hard enough?

and BL, i agree with you. i actually got into a really 'heated debate' during class with another student that was trying to argue that if you took away ALL laws and punishment right now, that everyone would immediately start treating each other with respect, etc etc. i could see thath appening in an ideal world, but not this world.

quote:

---

One can spend a lifetime studying ethics, and trying to develop a universal system. I think this is where growth comes in; I think an evolution of thought and beliefs is in fact healthy!! And more interesting! :-) I don't think it implies inconsistency, I think it implies a yearning to discover the truth.

---

I think Eowyn is on to something here. I've been thinking a lot about evolution lately, and what I'm starting to conclude is that no matter how hard we try to do good and be honest, caring, non-hypocritical, just, understanding, be consistent, etc... we are really at the mercy of evolution. If you believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, then the human mind is also still evolving. Therefore, as is apparent all over the world, we still have wars, we still lie, cheat, and steal either for selfish reasons or for some perceived goodness, we look at others that have different viewpoints with contempt, and basically we "look out for No. 1". However, I think as we humans become more evolved, and in order to propogate the human race, more and more of us will start to see that our actions as a human race really effect one another and that goodness, understanding, sharing, tolerance, etc... will become the norm.

For now, however, I'm afraid us humans just aren't that evolved (when you think about the whole geological time frame, relatively speaking, we aren't that far removed from cavemen). Yet we should still strive for that "discovery of truth" although we may find that truth is a moving target.

So, Xoom, I guess that is why there can't be a perfect code to live by. Ok, time to go to happy hour.

quote:

---

i guess i just don't understand why there can't be the 'perfect' code to live by. is it because we're not perfect or is it because we're just not trying hard enough?

---

xoom, i don't think we will ever attain perfection as a society because everyone has their different ideas of what perfect is. as far as attaining perfection as an individual, it's never been done by any mortal before, so i wouldn't stress yourself out trying to be the first. just try to be the best person you can be, whatever that means for you.

sue
p.s. i love your new avatar-it cracks me up