Eland51298

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That works of you accept a perverted concept of what
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is. Everyone knows what right and wrong is, the moral justification is just an excuse to do wrong when you know the action is wrong.
Well, thousands of years ago, “everyone knew” that burning redheads or left-handed people at the stake was a good thing, xD.

What is considered good or bad varies depending on time, culture, place of residence, and entirely depends on an individual's perception and values they believe in, and as well of the values upheld by their immediate surroundings.
 
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Ciaran8023

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That works of you accept a perverted concept of what
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is. Everyone knows what right and wrong is, the moral justification is just an excuse to do wrong when you know the action is wrong.
I mean that's the thing though, there are plenty of people out there that have such a distorted understanding of right or wrong to the point where they're capable of doing immense amounts of evil because they don't see it as anything wrong or bad.
 

armond

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All im seeing is examples of the perverted concept of morality. Everyone has a different idea so there must be no consensus, which is wrong, there is a common idea of good and evil that exist.
 
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Eland51298

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Well, yes, everyone agrees that there is good and evil, righteous deeds and wicked deeds, but no culture will agree on what exactly these actions are. There will always be situations where one group of people considers an act to be good and morally correct, while another considers it to be the opposite, and funnily enough, both sides will be right.
 
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Pixillin'

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Well, yes, everyone agrees that there is good and evil, righteous deeds and wicked deeds, but no culture will agree on what exactly these actions are. There will always be situations where one group of people considers an act to be good and morally correct, while another considers it to be the opposite, and funnily enough, both sides will be right.
But we're kinda skimming over the point of the discussion as it relates to FiN - no culture, that I know of or have ever read about considers rape "good and morally correct". Granted what is considered rape has shifted (until recently, even in Western developed countries you couldn't rape your wife) and penalties have gotten more severe but I don't think any society or culture ever encouraged it.
 

ffive

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no culture, that I know of or have ever read about considers rape "good and morally correct".
Have you ever heard of "right of the first night"?

None of people involved was under delusion that sex in those scenarios was anything but non-consensual. At the same time, it was not considered morally wrong, but rightful.
 

prpa

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Have you ever heard of "right of the first night"?
To be honest, it's debatable whether the right ever existed, and even if it did, it's unclear how widespread the practice truly was.

But there are many other examples throughout history, countless cities were razed, their populations raped, killed, or taken as slaves and concubines. Take Genghis Khan, for example: he had numerous concubines, many of whom were the wives and daughters of his defeated enemies. It's reasonable to assume that most did not consent.
 
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ffive

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To be honest, it's debatable whether the right ever existed, and even if it did, it's unclear how widespread the practice truly was.
Yeah i know there's controversies around it, but at the same time there's also plenty of material which notes it (or some form of it) as being practiced in some areas. And that's really all needed to refute the idea that no culture ever accepted rape etc.
 
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Wall Of Text

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All im seeing is examples of the perverted concept of morality. Everyone has a different idea so there must be no consensus, which is wrong, there is a common idea of good and evil that exist.
Your idea that "everyone knows what right and wrong is" is so flawed that I can't even begin to figure out how to explain it except to say that, No. Not everyone knows right from wrong. They truly don't. Making the assumption that "Everyone knows" is just crazy. Heck, in life black and white good and evil right and wrong... it ain't that easy. Most stuff falls in the grey.

Let's do an example from real life. There's this village, and this village produces resources that the distant villages around them also need, but don't produce enough of. So those other villages start raiding this village for its resources. They come, they kill, they take what they need. Now the village that is producing these goods faces all manner of issues, not enough food to feed everyone, not enough people to work the fields because many workers were killed, the list goes on. So that village decides to do some raiding and pillaging of their own. They go out and raid the villages that raided them, they take back what they can. Some years go by, and that first village is once again raided. It seems the other villages didn't learn their lesson. So this time when that resourceful village decides to raid the others and take back what was theirs, they are utterly brutal and unstoppable. They kill indiscriminately, they make examples of people, they rape, and burn until nothing is left. They go out of their way to make sure that these people will never think of harming them again.

On the one hand the argument can be made... they went too far, what they did was evil. It was wrong.
On the other hand the argument can be made that they did what they had to do to prevent further harm from coming to themselves.

But what happens when we go a step further? That village has now conquered the villages that were initially raiding them. They're holding that land and that territory. But because they're holding that land they now have new neighbors. Neighbors that haven't seen what they do to people who raid them. So, in an effort to preemptively defend themselves they go out and conquer more villages and cities. And everywhere they go they're brutal. They make it known that you will surrender to them or the worst thing you can imagine won't even come close to what they do.

So, evil right? But is it? How many times would you watch your home and your friends be killed before you decided that a little preemptive justice is called for? What's more evil, to allow your friends and family to be killed, or to stop harm from coming to them before there's a chance for it to happen?

The point is... there really really is no common idea of good and evil. There's an idea of good and evil that many people agree with, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way, or believes that. It's just silly to think that your idea of good and evil is what everyone believes.

(Bonus points to anyone who knows what the above example of real life morality is about)

Edit: tldr; No, there's no universal concept of what is right and wrong.
 
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Nerv_rr

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Jul 21, 2021
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Your idea that "everyone knows what right and wrong is" is so flawed that I can't even begin to figure out how to explain it except to say that, No. Not everyone knows right from wrong. They truly don't. Making the assumption that "Everyone knows" is just crazy. Heck, in life black and white good and evil right and wrong... it ain't that easy. Most stuff falls in the grey.

Let's do an example from real life. There's this village, and this village produces resources that the distant villages around them also need, but don't produce enough of. So those other villages start raiding this village for its resources. They come, they kill, they take what they need. Now the village that is producing these goods faces all manner of issues, not enough food to feed everyone, not enough people to work the fields because many workers were killed, the list goes on. So that village decides to do some raiding and pillaging of their own. They go out and raid the villages that raided them, they take back what they can. Some years go by, and that first village is once again raided. It seems the other villages didn't learn their lesson. So this time when that resourceful village decides to raid the others and take back what was theirs, they are utterly brutal and unstoppable. They kill indiscriminately, they make examples of people, they rape, and burn until nothing is left. They go out of their way to make sure that these people will never think of harming them again.

On the one hand the argument can be made... they went too far, what they did was evil. It was wrong.
On the other hand the argument can be made that they did what they had to do to prevent further harm from coming to themselves.

But what happens when we go a step further? That village has now conquered the villages that were initially raiding them. They're holding that land and that territory. But because they're holding that land they now have new neighbors. Neighbors that haven't seen what they do to people who raid them. So, in an effort to preemptively defend themselves they go out and conquer more villages and cities. And everywhere they go they're brutal. They make it known that you will surrender to them or the worst thing you can imagine won't even come close to what they do.

So, evil right? But is it? How many times would you watch your home and your friends be killed before you decided that a little preemptive justice is called for? What's more evil, to allow your friends and family to be killed, or to stop harm from coming to them before there's a chance for it to happen?

The point is... there really really is no common idea of good and evil. There's an idea of good and evil that many people agree with, but that doesn't mean everyone feels that way, or believes that. It's just silly to think that your idea of good and evil is what everyone believes.

(Bonus points to anyone who knows what the above example of real life morality is about)

Edit: tldr; No, there's no universal concept of what is right and wrong.
im a history nerd too , i know you're talking about the roman empire :)
 

Stonethrower

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May 14, 2019
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Morals evolve just like we do and our tech level does.

So right vs wrong is totally dependent upon which time you live(d) and which culture you come from.
 
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Wall Of Text

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Morals evolve just like we do and our tech level does.

So right vs wrong is totally dependent upon which time you live(d) and which culture you come from.
To a degree, that's true. But someone was trying to say that everyone knows good from evil and right from wrong, which is just silly. Using a historical example I pose a question, is preemptive self-defense right or wrong? Moral or immoral? That's a question that defies time, and shows that morality is not a simple binary answer.
 

NewTricks

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We need an off-topic thread for all these a priori assumptions and moral relativism debates. I'm eager to see what happens when we begin debating deontology versus consequentialism. They are fascinating to read, and it would be a shame to see them all deleted the next time the mod goes on a cleanup spree.
 
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