Originally posted by: BoberFett
Your last statement about your "individual assessment of the morality of the particular issue" is the entire problem. Morality being as subjective as it is the basis for the left/right struggle. Here on this very forum you see the left and right calling each other evil, oblivious to the potential to do evil in their own intentions. You believe the state should stop suicide at some times, but not others. What qualifies you to make that decision for another individual? As you struggle internally yourself, what gives you the right to dismiss another's internal struggle? Under your vision of the state, Christians have every right, nay, the duty to convert everyone to Christianity and make it a state enforced belief. After all, their internal struggle has led them to Christianity and bringing others into the fold is simply for their own good. In their eyes, converting someone to Christianity is the same as preventing them from committing suicide. The same ego-driven decision you make to prevent suicide is no different than the one to make drugs illegal or require teaching the bible in school. I'd think you of all people would recognize that.
As for blanket statements that the state is evil, you're right. The state is not inherently evil. What is undeniable is that the state's capacity for evil is exactly equal to it's capacity for good. And given the type of people that strive to hold positions of power in the state, I'd say it uses the former ability far more than the latter.
Yes I recognize this. It is what I am saying. It is why I said it is the real issue, not the problem of the individual vs the state. The question is whether, because there is a subjective range of opinion on what morality is, is there, then, any such thing as objective morality. Vic seems to imply so in his definition of good and bad. I would tend to agree. I am saying this too:
People are unconsciously motivated by self hate and are, therefore, unconscious of how they feel and how those feelings unconsciously bias their opinions. But they can know that this is in fact the case. To know this is better than not to know it because it immediately introduces a bit of circumspection or distance or suspicion toward whatever ones opinions may be. One can begin to distance oneself from certainty, the fanatical aspect of fundamentalism. One can observe what one thinks, how one reacts, without attachment to it. And it is possible, with a great deal of work, to become conscious of what one feels, say via psychotherapy, real psychotherapy, by feeling it. The more one feels what one really does feel, the sooner one will be reliving and re-experiencing early traumatic experiences where self hate took root. I say there is the occasional person who can dig deep enough to experience transformation, a fundamental or deep shift in awareness, a feeling of real understanding that one, at the deepest layer is OK. Such a person awakens as if from a dream.
There are those also, who via say the love of God, total surrender, deep meditation, etc etc etc. also experience such a transformation.
I believe that such people leave the ego behind and enter into an experience of oceanic love, a loss of self and an awakening into deep consciousness and presence in the now. I think it is possible to enter into perfect being and those who do are sort of perfect beings. They are the living objectification of love, truth, and morality. They are awake and know who they are. They have removed the wall that divided them into a contemptuous self they couldn't stand and pretended not to be and and a fragment of their totality into which they conform, an ego starved of self love but radiating egomaniacal hubris.
I believe, therefore, that at his deepest level, man is good, that his true self is the image out of which he created God, and that, therefore, all that he believes about God is at a fundamental level his deepest reality. There is an absolute truth that arises out of a state of wholeness of being, the actions of a person who has awakened, and that humanity is evolving toward such understanding while also still acting out its self hate.
I guess the difference between me and a Christian then is that I am talking to you, telling you what I believe to be true. I guess I KNOW I'm right and so I don't need to convince you or save you. I trust my case stands on its own merits, that he who will feel will know.
Who said, "Everybody is enlightened, it would be nice to know it."?