--- It has always been possible to trace a mainstream of natural-law thought, flowing from Aristotle's premise that the “nature” of any creature, from which obligations must be derived, is what it will be in its fullest and most perfect development. For man, this means what he is when the powers and qualities distinguishing him from other creatures, namely, his reason and his impulse to social living, are fully developed. Natural law embodies those obligations that will appear if mankind's reason and sociality are fully unfolded. A major difficulty presented by this attempt to develop normative standards appears to be that it is very difficult to demonstrate, let alone create a sense of obligation toward, values that are only immanent. All theories of natural law, moreover, have found it necessary to rely on what are essentially intuitions or preconceptions as to what man's true nature is. All such theories acknowledge, for instance, that the full development or fulfillment of an entity is not the same as its mere continued existence, that there may be a “warping” or “impeding” of the natural tendencies, so that what exists may then “be said to be unsound or incorrect.” Thus, mere factuality is not a sufficient source of obligation. Similarly, St. Thomas Aquinas himself, in identifying the “inclinations” from which men may learn natural law, found it necessary to order these in grades of inclination, so that those inclinations most closely related to reason and sociality take priority over those concerned (for example) with procreation and self-preservation. The criteria by which such a hierarchy is ordered must be drawn from sources other than the factual inclinations themselves. The “lower” grades (such as self-preservation) may well be based on something like instinct; but the question arises at the higher grades whether there is any comparable instinct by which men seek to find moral precepts binding all of them in common. Aquinas here appealed to synderesis, a kind of sympathetic understanding found in men, a disposition (habit) of the practical intellect inclining them to the good and murmuring against evil. To derive from this synderesis a universal natural law, however, it would be necessary to demonstrate some “universal conscience” of all mankind. But natural lawyers faced with the fact that men's consciences do not coincide explain that conscience may err and reason be corrupt. Invocation of synderesis is in fact helpful not as an account of how one may arrive at factually based normative standards but as an illustration of the psychological tendency of men to assert values. --- Well so conscience isn't the same for everyone. An unavoidable fact I told rosa about. Might want to read that post to see how this excerpt ties in with conscience and law. HOWEVER, these differences in values are accounted for by the supression of the conscience in lawlessness. There more you have people arounding you beating their wives, the more your sensitivity is "dulled". This is respression of conscience and explains for the differences in values. After all, all values basically arose from two people, who procreated two people who thought differently.. and so on and so forth until the earth was filled with all sorts of beliefs. But those first two people had consciences nevertheless and so would any and all of their offspring. (Pause for a moment as I realize that I have no idea what I'm talking about) Well scratch that part about two people and just read everything above that.. I'll try to think and bring a better response tomorrow. It's past midnight right now, goodnight.
I thought so. I'll tell you something: One does not think much in those circumstances. I was once attacked by two men (but I had great luck that someone came by and prevented them from doing what they were doing). When they were trying to hold me down, I kicked and fought, and I bit one, so hard that I dislocated two of my upper teeth. It is a matter of course to defend oneself. However, as this was happening, I actually wondered why I defend myself though, or this is how I later on remembered the incident. It felt odd, even wrong. And then, to top it, one of the men said: "Why are you defending yourself, you stupid bitch?" This sentence was haunting me for many years. And yes, indeed, iti s hard to answer why exactly one defends oneself. I keep noticing that people DO NOT defend themselves. Just look at how violence is often portrayed in films: A man, not even carrying a gun or a knife, attacks a woman -- and what does she do? Does she even try to defend herself, does she at least try to scratch him, kick him? No!! She begs him not to do her harm, curls up, and awaits the end. Apparently, she is acting on her "right to live" and thinking that others should respect her right to live. And this is why she feels that if she should defend herself, she would actualy attack the one who is supposed to respect her right to live -- and thereby undermine her own right to be respected. We are taught not to exercise our strength, as this would be a violation of human rights. However, this lesson spreads on all fields of life, even when it comes to self-defence. I think I begin to see your position. But I certainly don't apply this argument exclusively to humans. Life eats life to be alive. That's how it works. *Not* excusing: explaining. I think modern man is a coward, and modern life demands him to be so, if he wants to survive in the modern world. That idea of "everyone has an equal conscience" comes from the ancient belief of all men being equal before God. In the course of modern history, some names were changed, the offical jurisdiction began to work without using God as an authority, but the idea remained. Hence it feels quite confusing. See, SouthStar: exactly: we talk about "holiness of life -- for lack of a better word". ... and this idea of being an *individual* is taken for granted in modern society. Invert, remember what I said about indifference and the not care attitude in the Being Direct thread. How can you look at something *objectively* if you say that all standards are relative?? That is a brave thought. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I think it takes a good theist to understand an atheist or an agnostic, just as it takes a good agnostic or atheist to understand a theist. Yeah, you just call it "guts". I agree with SouthStar. I think that living organisms "have it in them" to not simply do something just because they *can* do it. This "having it in them" comes from being alive, animal or human. Narcissist. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ... yet we are alive -- right now, today, tomorrow. In our life, we act, we must act somehow. We act on the basis of some standard. But the tricky thing is that we can go on living, forever leaving that standard indefined. Humanity has not yet faded away. How come? Indeed. I love this. <3 It puts in words just what I had in mind. If you want a society to thrive, you have to come up with unified standards. If you don't have those standards clear out in words, pursued, exercised and sanctioned, that society won't thrive. And it is so for at least two reasons: 1. great population density, 2. exploration of other cultures and territories. If we were closed to our little territory of one tribe, having little or no notice of others, who were just like us, we would have our clearly defined standards, and follow them. And this our tribe being the whole of humanity is too big to manage. There is a naturally manageable size for a tribe, beyond which social organisation becomes ineffective. We have outsized that size long ago. Oh, and people nowadays aren't brutal? We have words, nowadays, not that many actions. But the content is the bloody same.
Southstar: Aquinas, yet another Mideival coward who painted an image of himself on the wall and pointing to it said "Ecco homo". Why do you listen to them? All of them, including yourself, who believe in universal standards cry "No! man is this way!" pointing to the men your ancients painted on that wall. There are no universal standards- conscience is a fluid entity subject to the laws of supply and demand because its basis, the very fabric from which it is built, is morality. As soon as man moved from hunting to agriculture, his moral code was tamed and changed with him. The code was then changed again in the industrial world where marriage and family were no longer central. Another one of your heros, Mr. Augistine, was appalled by the Hebrews' polygammy. Yet to him they were saints so in his gracioussness excused them. In war, a vice is a virtue since the demand now has changed. People used to hold carnivals at executions. To all who can hear: Consider this conscience a specter imposed upon you- a useful error handed down from above. It keeps us off our neighbor's property and deterrs the most violent among us from putting a hole in his head. Consider too that morals is a word derived from mores, which translated means customs and if you look the word up in your dictionary any mention of more implies mass. You are not part of that mass. Therefore these customs are their's. Webster writes: More: n. 1. A greater quantity, amount, or number; that which exceeds or surpasses in any way what it is compared with. So imagine the world as it once was, crawling with free men until his brothers began to conglomerize into communes forged by their fear; from this mass they gained power over the individual that was once the most powerful being on our Earth. You were him once and their invention of conscience is what was held against you to make you feel ashamed of your powerful limbs and brute force. The emperical vs. intuition argument has always seemed to me an apologetic approach in maintaining a lie. You can never seperate your ideas on 'consceince' from your Christian desires, Southstar.
Oh, there are many words. I just couldn't think of any in particular at the moment. And most of them do tend to lend themselves to a holy attitude. But, this is to be expected, is it not? Our language has been constructed with the idea of this Godhead in the background. Should we be surprised at the ease to which respect of man and his life tends towards divinity? Man has considered himself a god for a good long time. By attempting to raise ourselves above the animals we are, in effect, calling ouselves gods. Interesting. I have raised this issue of indifference both in here and in Gendy's other thread without remembering the original discussion of Being Direct. What was it that we finished with? Independence, indifference, and non-caring? Three stages of indifference? Hmm. Wonder how that could be carried into the types of killers. But, I don't think that Christianity preaches indifference. In fact, it preaches the opposite. But, in a way it does preach indifference, doesn't it? Turning the other cheek and all that. It is a dichotomy that undoubtably confuses the true mind. A wavering of will that we see as god. Interesting thought, but not for this thread. I never said "all standards are relative." I said there is no standard. There's a difference. Is lawlessness required for this supression of conscience? Funny. I'd think that lawlessness would would seek it's own balance which might seem to be suppression of conscience, but the true supression takes place through law. Conscience is a form of law. The germans and the japanese in WWII were very orderly societies. Their laws were very structured. Look at the things they were capable of. Without conscience. Or rather, without our conscience. Their law redefined their conscience. There is no such thing as true lawlessness. For when laws of legislation are not in force, there are more primitive laws that may not be repealed. Life seeks balance. Deny this at your peril. Perhaps. But, I don't think so. Not really. They aren't trying to understand each other. Merely the other's weakness. The was to go for the jugular. Are you saying that animals have a conscience? They have a survival instinct. Do animals feel guilt over slaughtering prey? I call it guts becaue these base emotions are felt in the gut most often. It's a limbic thing. Fight of flight. It's in the gut because you're about to shit your pants to lighten your load. Get me? So, as I said. Personal. Right? And someday those ants will revere me and tell stories to their larvae about the great vengeful god Nexus. They shall bring offerings to me and I shall bless them or damn them as I so desire. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's a personal standard. You do bring up a good point. Undefined. That brings in interpretation errors of what we perceive to be our cultural standard at whatever level we are able to interface with. Always we can only see in part. And always we must continue without pause into the future. Because we have adapted. Very well, in fact. The question is, are we on the proper path? Is there a proper path? Will the end justify the means? What are the means? What are the ends? Will we be able to transition from one to the other. There lies the crux. The test is in your figure 8, Rosa. At the critical juncture. The going under or the going over. And here's the crux. As the world community grows larger and demands to unify grow ever more fierce and tempting, will we be able to come up with this standard? And what will that standard be? It can be no other than this love they neighbor, can it? For conscience would be a form of loving thy neighbor. And the world is our neighbor. We must love all or not fit. Is it possible to love all? Is it desirable? I agree. This conscience is evolutionarily designed for such small scale communities and/or groups. It begins to fray and fall apart when it covers so wide an area. Hypocrisy begins to show. Indifference as a result. Fatalism. Yup. What's the solution? Love thy neighbor? Not as brutal. We don't cheer our warriors for slaughtering babies anymore. Now we spit on them. We don't gather up our families and ride to town with a picnic basket and thoughts of a pleasant day ahead to watch a bloody execution. We have words, yes, and indifference. But, life is sancrosanct. We must limit ourselves to verbal lashings and in the end just cut ourselves.
I don't think its so much that conscience is an artificial invention foisted upon us. It evolved naturally and had its uses in early man. It was a small scale thing. A thing by which small groups were unified and kept whole. Man has always been a social animal. Even in days before agriculture, man was social. Conscience was necessary to imbue the group with a group spirit. To instill a defensiveness towards the children of the group. Towards any of the group. Should something harm your group then there would be hell to pay. But, as the group grew ever and ever larger, conscience became more and more constrained and constraining. Who will pay for the death of your groups children when the whole damn world is part of your group? How can you even conceive of a group that large and keep the fragile band of conscience from slipping from your mind. The indifference of today. Is it from hypocrisy or this too large of a group phenomenon? So, in this case to imagine the world as it once was, imagine it crawling with free groups of men. Competing with each other viciously for whatever life had to offer. Occasionally, this competition would undoubtably take the form of trade and apparent cooperation, but make no mistakes, it's all competition. It was the birth of nations that did this to us. It was the nation that gave us our greatest triumph and defeat. For through the power that nations possessed, feats were done which were unimaginable to the beast man of ages past, and yet these nations took from man his freedom. It enlarged the group unnaturally. And we are paying the consequence of that enlargement. Domestication. We are domesticated animals. Do not doubt this. It is always phrases like these that remind me of the last public execution in the French Revolution. Damnit. Just went looking for it and couldn't find a good reference. It's late, I'll look later. Anyway, the majority of tose executed went to the block nobly. Giving high and mighty last words. Acting like their shit didn't stink right up to the end. However, the last public execution was a woman who didn't want to die. Who didn't want to act nobly. And didn't want to cooperate. They dragged her kicking and screaming and begging for her life the whole way. The crowd was a bit turned off by this and began booing the executioners. It's an interesting little note about Rosa's observation on those who don't defend themselves. Above? Or the past? Stuck in a loop with no way out. We must continue just as we've been doing. And doomed to failure if we do so. Change must come. But how do we exit the loop? I get your play of words with more now. More implies something which we don't have. Something more. From without. Very clever, Gendy. Wery clever, indeed. Funny thing is that before I got it, I went off looking for a definition of more in line with the taboo meaning of the word and didn't find one at dictionary.com. It only used the more or less definition. Weird. I got distracted and never went back to finish the search.
One thing is to point at the problem, to elaborate it, to present it -- something completely different is to offer a solution to it. And a problem, if dire, demands a solution. Do you not think that the founding fathers of Christianity and other religions saw that problem? That there may be no universal standard for humans living together in a society? But they were thinking *practically*, and offered a solution. Fact is that people were living together, and to organize that life, some rules and regulations were needed. So they answered that need. *** Although I am sure that some Christians will disagree with me, my position on "turning the other cheek" is this: It doesn't mean to willingly put up with all the shit others throw at you. It is seeing that it is shit they are throwing at you, and that this really isn't something one should be proud of doing. If you call me bad names, then these words come out of *your* mouth -- what does this say about *you*?! Also, "to trun the other cheek" says no to narcissism, among other things. Remember what Gendanken said about tit for tat and narcissism? Say you have 3 persons: A, B, C, and two communication situations: 1. A: You are a jerk! B: You too! 2. A: You are a jerk! C: (gives a susprised look, a slight frown and goes his way) A is a narcissist, B too, C is not. Only the one who hasn't given it much thought. If there would be no standard, we would not make any judgements. But we do make judgements. Which indicates that some standard is there. Have you ever been wronged in any way? Has your car been stolen, have you been attacked, have you suffered as a child? This is lawlessness, for these are acts done against laws -- for you feel that it is *wrong* if someone steals your car or harms you, and if you feel wronged, this means that a law has been transgressed. It is mean to think this way. It will get back at you. I don't know. I suppose their thinking is conceptualized in ways we cannot think in (anymore). Respect suffices. However, as we have seen elsewhere, respecting others can begin to mean denying oneself. And nothing is proof, everything can be abused -- so is respect. See the movie production. Not bloody? Not killing? It is thrilling to watch Jean-Calude van Damme knock down 20 opponents, it is thrilling to watch action movies with deads by the dozens? Yes, it is. People love it.
First of all, I don't think that universal standard has anything to do with the average standard of specific society. There is no universal standard that is unchanging, unalterable. Man is not, as Gendanken so eloquontly put it, a picture on a wall. Man is a shifting amorphous thing. And this is how it should be. If this were not so then curtains. And as to the founding fathers of Christianity looking to solve the problems of the world... HA! Seriously, you believe that? First of all, the original cult of christianity was a doomsday cult. They had no interest in saving mankind only themselves. They went to the desert to await the apocalypse. This is the reason why there are no writings of Jesus (possibly) because it didn't matter. Everyone who was alive at the time of christ was going to live to see the end of the world. They didn't need to save his words for posterity, there was to be no posterity. As to Paul... Heh. If you think he's such a noble sort... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Anyway, that's for other threads than this, don't you think? Why couldn't we make any judgements? Because man of today is not the same as man of 1000 years ago? 2000 years ago? 3000 years ago? Why does that mean we can't make decisions? You've lost me there. I think we're bogged down in semantics. I think you're saying a universal standard as in everybody today has the same moral code (a claim which I'd also dispute), but what I'm saying is that this moral code changes over time and location. No, it's a form of lawlessness, but even in the absence of legislative laws there are still laws in effect. Laws that may not be repealed. Survival of the fittest for example. Someone hurts you because they can. That is a form of law. It is a form of imposing order. In this case it would order imposed on you by someone else. Not nice to you, but still law. It is human nature. And unavoidable in two entities of such disparate personalities as a theist and an atheist. One cannot accept the other. It is a fight to the death. This, too, is a the heart of this thread. I offer a tentative respect at first meeting. A respect that can be rescinded at any time should the judgement occur that it would be in my interests to do so. My interests generally (in this instance) being a healthy, rational discussion. One vital difference here. Movies aren't real. Games aren't real. The people taking their picnic baskets to watch Marie Antoinette get her head chopped off and watch the blood fountain from her neck and to maybe even get some of that blood on you. That was real. And in older times, the executions were even more personal. More bloody. Perhaps the right brain has a hard time understanding the fiction of a movie or a game, but the left brain is in complete understanding that it is illusion. Perhaps we feed our right brain's lust for violence with fiction while feeding our left brain's lust for logic and rationality with the knowledge that it is mere fiction? Interesting. But, in the end. Movies are not real.
Any time is a good time for propaganda.. Of course man of today is not the same man of King Tut's time. But the standard still applies. You may probably be thinking that the great theatres of Rome (since you're on Christianity..) where all the lion maulings took place is a *good* defense for your argument. Then again, a closer look at history reveals that there even was a time when a Christian jumped into the ring because he did not approve! The reason I say this is because I was watching a documentary on the History Channel about forms of torture... and when it came to Rome, there was a comment made something to this effect: "They didn't care because those people weren't considered human". Now you might say that this statement does not apply to man, or at least America, in the 21st century. But the point to be seen here is that these people had their sensitivities dulled by the spectacle. The same way a little girl who watches Cinderella type movies in her childhood is going to cringe when she sees violence on TV. It is NOT at all that these people had a different standard, but that their conscience was dulled. For example, in war, one's conscience may become so dulled that what they would normally wince at, they don't even give a second thought to. This is what I meant by the supression of conscience by lawlessness. Now lawlessness in this case indicates unruliness. There are reports of Roman centurions for example, who were battle hardened but upon having come to Christianity shed their tough outer shell and bawled. There is one report of Christians being left out in the middle of a frozen pond as centurions watched and to make the story short, the captain of the centurions and his men eventually took their clothes off as well and joined the Christians in the middle of the pond upon having seen the confident and joyous manner in which they sang hymns and conducted themselves. (Hope you liked the story Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) This sort of emotional/spiritual conversion (of which there are reports till this day) is evidence of a standard conscience. Meaning some people aren't born worse than others, even regardless of the era in which they lived, but rather through their lawlessness, dull their sensitivity and supress their conscience. That is no form of law. If you were in the middle of the desert and you were going to slap your young son, you probably (I would hope) would hesitate before hitting him, or at least be remorseful after you do so. This is evidence of conscience at work. This conscience obviously does not differ from parent to parent. However, as I have admitted, it is possible to dull the conscience and repress it through repetition of lawless deeds. This doesn't mean however that the person no longer has a conscience, as is evident in the story of the Roman centurions and modern criminals who turn to Christianity. Here, it seems as if you are excusing watching a gory movie because it's not "real". That doesn't make it any less outrageous that a person should snicker at a baby being shot. This is evident in Orwell's 1984, where the people were laughing in the movie theatre at the deaths of the mother and baby. This is also great evidence of the dulling of one's sensitivity and supression of conscience. Even the children in '1984' had to be subjected to constant brainwashing and the adults to the 'two minutes hate', to dull their sensitivity. Why then do you suppose that because they were living in a 'modern' world, they couldn't simply be left to their own accord but rather subjected to constant bombardment of negativity to render them indifferent? Hope you don't mind me butting in, but I saw the word 'Christianity' in your post and couldn't resist.. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Alas, it's not 'shame' but respect. I am then not ignorant of my own strength, but acknowledge it and know that it can do unnecessary harm. Conscience is intrinsic to every and all humans from the beginning to the end. The Roman philosopher Seneca declared: “We have all sinned, some more, some less.” The Roman poet Ovid wrote: “We all strive for what is forbidden.” Goethe, a German poet and philosopher, confessed: “I see no fault in others which I myself might not have committed.” And a Chinese proverb goes like this: “There are two good men: one is dead and the other is not yet born.” The conscience of man tells him that there is a “right” and a “wrong.” The conscience, of course, does not define what is right or wrong, but it certainly points to the existence of such. In a study on crime and personality, psychologist H. J. Eysenck noted that criminal activity is restricted to a relatively small segment of society. He points out that most people lead law-abiding lives. Dr. Eysenck observes, for example, that “the reason we do not steal under conditions when it is almost certain that we would never be caught must be that there is something in us which restrains us from doing so. This is far more powerful in controlling behavior than the rather abstract fear of the policeman and the magistrate” (Family Weekly, June 11, 1972). From http://www.christiancourier.com/archives/realSin.htm
Vert: Then you are a worldling. And I've been speaking with manikins. Freud says it much better: "Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than the seperate individual and which remains united against all seperate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as 'right' in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as brute force (gend: ha! Condemned...they dare...). This replacement of the power of the individual by the power of the community consitutes the decisive step for a civilization" Translated, this means "Brute" and "Evil" were born once men came together to hold these words against the individual for the first time, beating a conscinece into him. You bring up the small scale- man was once loyal to his tribemembers, a kind of loyalty carried over from his savagery. A kind of loyalty not born from guilt nor shame but pride and a carnal will to survive and this is not conscience. On this small level he was still an analogue of One Man and each member in his tribe still owed nothing to the outsider for this was not conscience. Its the readjusting of these healthy relations between beings that froze guilt, to use your own phrase, and from it the magistrates made conscience once the world got bigger. Rosa: So you think they solved something with their nose in the sky? All the Christian does is dream of paradise. Him in paradise. He's lost hope with the world and replaced it with a lust for individual salvation. And I quote:
Southstar: What of the ferrral child, the autistic or the schizophrenic? Conscience is a state that requires man to be aware enough to be enslaved. The infant has no conscience until one is beaten into it, softly with dogma or brusquely with the righteous vulgarity of its parents. I've already pulled on this Greek today so I might well do it again: "By use there is good and bad, by use there are sweet and sour; but in reality there is only atoms and the void", Democritus. Ever read Cassirer's "Substance and Function"? In a whole page and a half he wonders how it is we can have truth in a world where blue looks red to me while to you it looks yellow.
Wordling? Manikin? Lost me here, I'm afraid. Is it because I am using conscience in an odd manner? I feel that I've explained my usage of it in my past writings. Perhaps you've missed this explanation? I explain it later in this post as well. Freud is not god. But, I agree with the quote that you have made. The only thing is that it says individual implying man the solitary beast. We are social animals. We evolved as social animals. In the wild, man does not fare well alone. Errr. Uh. THat's exactly what I've been saying... I never did. You must be confusing me with Southstar or Rosa. The feral child has a conscience towards his packmates. The schizophrenic undoubtably has a conscience towards his inner choir. Let me make myself clear here (I hope.) Conscience is not universal. Every man does not have some standard moral code from which to draw from. Each must interpret cues from his environment to determine what is moral and what isn't moral. What is and isn't moral changes over time. I feel that conscience in it's simplest sense is a for of maternal instinct. It is a 'caring' for those who are of immediate importance to ones life. The tribe, the pack, the family, the group, whatever. It did it's job well for such things. It did not need, for the most part, to be codified. It was a personal interpretation of social structure. As the groups became larger and larger, laws and such were needed to impose this conscience upon people. And we became more and more distanced from the inherent 'truth' of conscience. Hence this thread. Capische? Damn. I was about to be pissed cuz you misunderstood me thinking that I'm pushing this universal standard of conscience and then I see you quoting me to back up your argument. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! *blush* Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
V: Never thought him God. I do my own fucking thinking. Lost? Here's an encore: "A kind of loyalty not born from guilt nor shame but pride and a carnal will to survive and this is not conscience. On this small level he was still an analogue of One Man and each member in his tribe still owed nothing to the outsider for this was not conscience." This is why I do my own thinking. ...and if the man would only scoot his chair the fuck up to squint at the screen and read closer, he would notice I cut this reference out from the first post, realizing my mistake, and addressed it to the Christian. Southstar. Inanity. The ferral child and schizo knows not the 'good' nor 'evil'. Seeing how you are ill-skilled with the word: Conscience: The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong. EDIT: Fucker quipped: No. Becuase you use it in the usual way, as all manakins do. They can't hear. Nor see. "Cafuckingpische?
An analogue. Yes, I saw that. But chose not to comment as it doesn't really change the fact that it's dealing with a group. "...and each member in his tribe still owed nothing to the outsider for this was not conscience." As I said, the conscience was not codified, it was personal and interpreted. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ok, so you did. My bad. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Good and evil are not the same as right and wrong. The feral child does know a form of right and wrong, if he is living with some form of social group. If he didn't, then he'd be driven from the group. Social dynamics. The schizo was stretching the analogy, I'll admit that.
Thinking so small.... "What's that?", asked the group. "An Oompa Loompa", said Wonka. Their's is a world of boolean values. Pleasurable or not pleasurable. Yes or no. All they do is motived by their need to remain within that pack, limited by negetive values- ethics only comes into play when one factors in the mind of Other. Which the ferral child does not do. To an outsider, like yourself, this resembles right and wrong.
You must be thinking of a different movie? Or perhaps the book? I've never read the book. Hmm. While looking up that quote, I found this one. OOMPA LOOMPA DOOMPADEE DAH GIVEN GOOD MANNERS YOU WILL GO FAR YOU WILL LIVE IN HAPPINESS TOO LIKE THE OOMPA LOOMPA DOOMPADEE DO It seems that the Oompah Loompah's are Willie's conscience, eh? Was this your intent? But, as to the topic at hand. Of course, I'm looking small. I'm looking at beginnings. Beginnings are small. Small and manageable. It is the later stages after the obfuscation occurs that things begin to be difficult to understand. Such as where does conscience come from. I say there's little difference. The means or the ends? Which is important? Remember, thinking small (which isn't always a bad thing.)
JAMES YOU DON'T NEED TO DELETE HER REMARK. I'M NOT REALLY OFFENDED. LEAVE IT BE! Ouch. She offends me. (Damn it. It loses it's humor after the fucking disclaimer. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!) It's interesting that it's "the group" that is speaking to Wonka. Isn't it? Funny little coincidences. And, you didn't need to edit your post. I had no problem with it. In fact, I LOVE it that you like this movie. This is the second or third time I've seen you reference it. It's a fucking classic movie. A children's movie and an adult movie. Funny and twisted. So many levels of things happening. It is a play on morality at it's heart, isn't it? The voice of conscience? Wonka betrayed by the Sluggworth's of the world retreating to his reclusive pasttimes. Charlie having to pass the final test. The giving up of the gobstopper. I submit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as our new holy book. Bleh. Probably needs more words, doesn't it?
BLAGHH! Not fair, Vert. The bollocks on thy person to make a genius connection where genius saw none. You're putting rosy cheeks on one who's cheek is alien to blush. No matter. Would have beat him to it anway, said the spite. Beware the ides of headnoise... Now leave me alone.
