Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

Walker wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:One's creation is not supposed to benefit anyone else.
Sure it is. One’s birth is for the purpose of benefit of the species. Do you assume to declare what is beneficial to the species?
I didn't say it wasn't beneficial to the species, now did I? I said it's not beneficial to the created. And thus skews the ethic of doing no harm, which you introduced, and now are tossing aside as so much rubbish when it doesn't suit you. Why not just say ethics are unimportant to you? And back in your court: do you assume to declare what is beneficial for the individual? Clearly you do, if they are but benefit units to the species, at their expense.
Walker
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Walker »

I didn't say it wasn't beneficial to the species, now did I? I said it's not beneficial to the created.
Attach enough qualifiers and you’ll never be wrong with your word games, will you.

Anything that was not and now is has been created, whether or not one has the capacity to know how or why.

A species is and if before it is, it is not, then it has been created, though if you don’t know for sure that the species ever was not, then you can’t say for sure that it was created.

Do you know for sure that folks ever were not, or is that an inference based on some Theory such as evolution?
Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

Walker wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:One's creation is not supposed to benefit anyone else.
Sure it is. One’s birth is for the purpose of benefit to the species. Do you assume to declare what is beneficial to the species? You one of them social engineers?
Dalek Prime wrote:And just to mention, your steroid comparison is incorrect. Not creating is not akin to taking steroids and doing nothing with it, (as, in a sense, bodybuilders do). It's more akin to having children, and neglecting them.
Really. Then allow me to clarify the phrasing. To do nothing on steroids means to do nothing in the extreme, which is the result of non-existence.
You haven't justified your deviance from your ethical statement, I note. How do you justify the exception? Either you accept the ethic of doing no harm, or you don't. Which is it, and why the exception? Let's stay on topic here, and not deviate from it please. This thread is about ethics.

If you won't stay on topic, there is no discussion. I'm trying to find a reason for unblocking you. Show me that reason.
Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

The base unit of life in the universe is individual consciousness. It's the consciousness that creates and discusses ethics. The species cannot be harmed, because it does not, nay, cannot feel harm. Only it's individual consciousnesses can. And anything that cannot experience directly the lack of ethics, does not require them to be applied. They are for those who can experience the lack of them. And that's why ethics is not for a species, but for the benefit of it's members that are directly impacted by their ommision.

You are convoluting evolution with ethics. Evolution is an unthinking process. Ethics is for those who think. You are discussing ethics as if it was an economic formula. You are doing human accounting, essentially.
Walker
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Walker »

Well, you have a little slot for most everything in that wacky world.

:lol:

Once again the truth remains unsullied by feeble protests.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bQnxlHZsjY
Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

Why are you even on a philosophy forum, Walker? Don't waste my time again.
Walker
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Walker »

Dalek Prime wrote:Why are you even on a philosophy forum, Walker? Don't waste my time again.
Last I heard you had me blocked.

Why write such things and ask such questions if you don't like the answers and comments?

Always storming off in a huff and calling people names. Goodness gracious.
Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

Walker wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:Why are you even on a philosophy forum, Walker? Don't waste my time again.
Last I heard you had me blocked.

Why write such things and ask such questions if you don't like the answers and comments?

Always storming off in a huff and calling people names. Goodness gracious.
I'd like it better if you actually had answers.
Walker
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Walker »

Dalek Prime wrote:
Walker wrote:
Dalek Prime wrote:Why are you even on a philosophy forum, Walker? Don't waste my time again.
Last I heard you had me blocked.

Why write such things and ask such questions if you don't like the answers and comments?

Always storming off in a huff and calling people names. Goodness gracious.
I'd like it better if you actually had answers.
Ask your question. You'll get your answer if it is worth answering, one way or another.
prof
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by prof »

Why do I have the feeling that my thread is being hijacked?

I've been thinking about the concept "corruption" and how to define it.

At first I noticed that dictionaries just use synonyms, such as moral turpitude, depravity, baseness.
Then I felt I would just say with regard to it: "It's like pornography: you know it when you see it. You will recognize it when you encounter it." :twisted:

Finally, my latest attempt to define it is this:

Corruption
= being unethical and consciously knowing that you are.

Even if if you care that this applies to you, that this is the case - and you'd rather it wasn't - you still have a corrupt character if this definition applies to you.

Is the concept useful to those who care about Ethical Theory?


Your views, Readers?
Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

prof wrote:Why do I have the feeling that my thread is being hijacked?
Piss off. Not only did you seem to abandon your thread, but I've been talking ethics all along, despite the poor sod who doesn't understand them at all. So fine, I'll give it back to you, with bugger all thanks. Now stop whining.
Walker
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Walker »

prof wrote:Your views, Readers?
Depending on the situation, consciously corrupting corruption may be an ethical act, e.g., Oskar Schindler.

Frustration is a self-generated facet of samsara, like blaming the world.
prof
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by prof »

Walker wrote:...consciously corrupting corruption may be an ethical act, e.g., Oskar Schindler.
Yes. Corrupting corruption is not the same as corruption. {And in arithmetic, multiplying two minus quantities together yields a plus.} Negating a negative can make a positive. Wise persons advise us to:
Overcome evil with Good.

One way to do this is to "corrupt corruption" the way Herr Schindler did it. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindlerjuden

Here was a man who had Moral Courage in generous supply !!!!

Comments?
Dalek Prime
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by Dalek Prime »

Yes, here's a comment. Comparing morality to math is just idiotic. It's not a god damn corollary, and adds no weight to your assumptions.

As to Schindler, he wasn't the saint you or Spielberg make him out to be. Neither of you knew him.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/ ... rmany.film
tbieter
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Re: Reflections on Greed, Corruption, and Immorality

Post by tbieter »

Thoughts the other day after Obama, Comey, and Attorney General Lynch declined to indict H Clinton:
Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Will a President Hillary sell state secrets through Bill and their foundation?
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