Samael wrote:
> In other words, I'd tell you that the police would get you, and you didn't
Ha, thats funny. Say I'm a criminal holding you up. Since I have
> want to kill me.
> If I thought you were the sort of person who bwelieved in morality as an
> absolute and that that morality would be against you killing me (ie, you
> were a christian), I'd tell you that you were wrong to do it (and that you
> were going straight to Hell for doing it).
If I were trying to kill you, I obviously don't regard killing as a morally unacceptable act, so what are you gonna do now?
> My main defense would be to live in a country where it is difficult to get
> away with kiling people (like Scotland - where I am living now) and try not
> to piss off those people to whom the police are no threat (gangland bosses,
> psychopaths, secret service agents, etc)
Ha ha ha ha ha. You are SO funny. The only reason things are so peaceful around Scotland is that all of the troublemakers got shipped off the the US and Nova Scotia 100-200 years ago. The culling is long over with. It is very easy to get away with killing someone who you have no significant prior contact with, have no aversion to completely destroying all evidence, and prepare ahead of time, and I sincerely doubt that the Scottish authorities are any more technologically advanced in forensics than the FBI is.
>
Please stop contradicting yourself, in concurrent sentences, no less.
>
> >If it's all subjective, surely you grant that I have as good a claim to
> >kill you as you have not to be killed. No?
>
> Claim?
>
> >The point is that the only alternative to objectivity is arbitrariness,
> >which appears to culminate in den Otter's regime of might-makes-right. Is
> >this really your vision of human society?
>
> Might doesn't make right. Might gets its own way unless its stopped by
> other might.
> Or otherwsie persuaded not go around smighting things
> (economic sanctions, long term gains, etc.) Nowadays the government tends
> to be the mightiest things around - more soldiers than any provate citizen
> has, nmore nukes, etc. But the government has to pretend to be acting in
> the best interests of democracy (and occasionaly might be, you never know),
> so if enough citizens get upset enough, it has to change it's mind. It's
> still dead handy for providing police forces as the biggest smiter around,
> to stop smaller smighters smighting the smallest of them. <althogether too
> much smighting in that paragraph, methinks>
>
> >Terms such as "valid" (in an ethical context) and "rightful" are simply
> >shorthand ways of expressing the idea that social conduct is not an
> >arbitrary matter, like aesthetic tastes. They don't necessarily imply a
> >code imposed "from above" as in traditional moral codes.
>
> Social conduct isn't arbitrary. Certain actions are sociable and certain
> aren't. But some actions are anti-social and this is perfectly reasonable
> (some libertarians/anarchists don't even believe in society, so they can
> hardly be expected to follow social conventions, can they?).
Who decides?
> Social rules are usually fairly simple - don't lie, don't attack each other,
Of course. Its extremely rude of me to carry a concealed firearm which
> etc. But they are no use when the person you are dealing with is antisocial
> and ignores the conventions you expect them to.
Subjectivism is the antithesis of civilized behavior and a free society.
Mike Lorrey