Right/Wrong... subjective?

[Seawolf]

Originally Posted by each1teach1

I mention Man's law because you stated that because laws are in place to tell us what is wrong in society, that prevents most people from wronging others.
My argument is that spiritual evolution/growth is what stops most people from wronging others in this day and age. I believe that Nature gives us Humans morality to spiritually evolve into Unity, and not for Survival of the species.

Your original post was about morality not being subjective. I'm not really sure how this ties in with that. There are many different ways of seeing spirituality, so I don't see how spirituality makes morality objective. If there are different ways of understanding and experiencing spirituality, and morality is from spirituality, there would be different ways of understanding morality as well.

[FallingLeaves]

Originally Posted by each1teach1

A good example for this topic..

A president of a powerful country thinks War is right to save innocent people in his country from terrorist invasions. He sends soldiers off to war.

Some might say his idea of right is subjective because what is Right in his mind is saving his people from evil and that may not necessarily be a common idea of what is Right to the average human.

My argument is that his idea of Righteousness is just a primitive understanding of what is Right based on fear.

To me it's about awareness, and I don't see it as subjective standards

most people like to share their idea of right/wrong with other people. Either by trying to push others into what they want to believe or by joining in with an existing path.

For example in the above you say it was a subjective decision for the leader to send the troops to war. I would maintain that because of the frequency which leaders make that decision, they seem to share the propensity to make that decision and thus it is a decision that isn't entirely subjective.

Originally Posted by each1teach1

A common argument is that our morality, or what we call the understanding of "right and wrong" or "good and bad" is governed by the individual's standards instead of a universal truth or common understanding (look up Hundredth Monkey Effect)that we all tap into/realize, which is a product of humanity's spiritual evolution.

The latter is my argument. Right/Wrong is Universal truth.
I think everyone can testify that Love is right and Hate is wrong.
Even people who suffer tremendous emotional and physical pain, I think they are still aware of what is what is universally right and wrong for humanity but they ignore the good inside of them due to fear/confusion. I believe those who make right and wrong out to be subjective ideas are just rationalizing their selfish desires. In my perception, nobody believes that evil is right, but for some people it's just all they're familiar with so they glorify it.

Love is acceptance, understanding, union, peace, community, caring, support etc
Hate is intolerance, unsympathetic ignorance, tension, us against them mentality etc

So do you think this is a common general understanding of Love/Hate? or do you think my understanding is subjective and not universal?

What about positive/negative? I believe we all have a general understanding of what positive/negative energy is..

What is your stance?

Universal Truth? I'm not big on Truth never mind Universal, Truth is relative to one's own agenda.

Do we even have the first clue about what is right and wrong, really? Because if we're 'Spiritual people' and we're being honest with ourselves we'd soon admit that we don't have as much of an idea as we'd like to think, because there's a lot more going on 'behind the scenes'. In the face of it and from an entirely human perspective there are things that we would want written in stone but realistically it's not going to happen that way. I wonder how many law officers or forces people make the decision to kill one person to save more? Going into Spiritual mode as aware and enlightened beings, do we know what Karmic Obligations/Agreements are at work here, are we deninying a fellow Spirit on a human Journey an experience?

Actually I wouldn't testify that Love is right and hate is wrong and it would be so easy to come up with very obvious ways to explain that, not least that if it wasn't for things like hate and what comes from it our Spiritual development would be seriously stunted. Surely enlightenment would show you that. So no, I don't think there is a general understanding of Love/hate, what there seems to be is a misunderstanding due to people wanting to be enlightened, have Spiritual evolution but anything that brings that is bad/negative.

If energy is positive/negative then that is not a general understanding.

Right and wrong is Universal Truth? I think you're trying to create a Universal Truth and not looking any further than that.

Originally Posted by each1teach1

To me it's about awareness, and I don't see it as subjective standards

Awareness is subjective.

it may depend on the culture.....native americans look at it not as 'right or wrong' but as in balance or out of balance.

[lemex]

Originally Posted by Seawolf

Our ideas of right and wrong, good and evil are concepts necessary for our survival.

For example, it's a good idea to consider walking over to your neighbor's house and killing the entire family and taking their possessions as 'wrong.' Without defining that as wrong we wouldn't last very long.

Yes I agree there are universal moral standards within human populations and that it's good. It's good to not have to worry about getting killed all the time.

Have to say many are off track here and sad people don't know. Anyway my friend, the spiritual person is probably more prone not to have the concept because it is necessary for survival, that would be us. But I would also say the spiritual person started out that way or at least willing to go beyond such normalcy.

[Holly]

Originally Posted by each1teach1

A common argument is that our morality, or what we call the understanding of "right and wrong" or "good and bad" is governed by the individual's standards instead of a universal truth or common understanding (look up Hundredth Monkey Effect)that we all tap into/realize, which is a product of humanity's spiritual evolution.

The latter is my argument. Right/Wrong is Universal truth.
I think everyone can testify that Love is right and Hate is wrong.
Even people who suffer tremendous emotional and physical pain, I think they are still aware of what is what is universally right and wrong for humanity but they ignore the good inside of them due to fear/confusion. I believe those who make right and wrong out to be subjective ideas are just rationalizing their selfish desires. In my perception, nobody believes that evil is right, but for some people it's just all they're familiar with so they glorify it.

Love is acceptance, understanding, union, peace, community, caring, support etc
Hate is intolerance, unsympathetic ignorance, tension, us against them mentality etc

So do you think this is a common general understanding of Love/Hate? or do you think my understanding is subjective and not universal?

What about positive/negative? I believe we all have a general understanding of what positive/negative energy is..

What is your stance?

I don't agree that love is right and hate is wrong. I've found that both are just choices you can make. Nobody can have anything but subjective awareness of this.

I see positive and negative as a balance of necessary energies but I don't apply specific meaning to the perpetration of either positive or negative deeds. Life just is what it is. Hate and negativity serve a purpose, albeit they aren't always pleasant, but I can name five other natural occurences in life which are just as unpleasant; migraines, period paid, hypoglycemia, cancer, bereavement. All of those have hit me before in one way or another and they're just as unpleasant as choosing negativity.

I see it as part of the learning curve and I don't endeavour to choose love over hate on principle of one being right and the other wrong. I choose based on how I feel.

If I want to sink into fear and be hateful for a day then I do it and I judge myself as little as possible for it.

What's best for ME is to be hateful for once. What's 'best' by everyone elses opinion is to subvert what I wish to do, what my soul wishes to learn, to please the sensitivities of others. Which to choose? Choose hate. It's actually better for you.

Negativity isn't something you avoid. Negativity is something you grow by. It's like fertiliser. That's why I often advise people not to fall into the new-age hippie trap of 'only think and be and do light and love' because often it results in people just denying their truth and trying to blind themselves to how the world really makes them feel.

Right and wrong, positive and negative are just words. What matters is how we react and what matters even MORE is whether we understand our own reactions and whether we can stand to learn from them.

In my experience the only way to freedom is through the fire of your own fear. People who avoid their fear (fear being synonymous with hate and negativity) never grow. Therefore I have a totally different stance of love and hate to most people ;) I believe in honouring what you feel without feeling the need to punish on principle, because so far that's yielded me the best results.

[running]

Originally Posted by each1teach1

A common argument is that our morality, or what we call the understanding of "right and wrong" or "good and bad" is governed by the individual's standards instead of a universal truth or common understanding (look up Hundredth Monkey Effect)that we all tap into/realize, which is a product of humanity's spiritual evolution.

The latter is my argument. Right/Wrong is Universal truth.
I think everyone can testify that Love is right and Hate is wrong.
Even people who suffer tremendous emotional and physical pain, I think they are still aware of what is what is universally right and wrong for humanity but they ignore the good inside of them due to fear/confusion. I believe those who make right and wrong out to be subjective ideas are just rationalizing their selfish desires. In my perception, nobody believes that evil is right, but for some people it's just all they're familiar with so they glorify it.

Love is acceptance, understanding, union, peace, community, caring, support etc
Hate is intolerance, unsympathetic ignorance, tension, us against them mentality etc

So do you think this is a common general understanding of Love/Hate? or do you think my understanding is subjective and not universal?

What about positive/negative? I believe we all have a general understanding of what positive/negative energy is..

What is your stance?

I think without love and hate, good and evil, good times and bad times, diversity of perspectives and so on there would not be a story going on. I would rather play it out and live than have nothing and be dead already anyways.

Plus in a lot of ways love and hate are the same and equal. A lot of hate derives from trying to sustain love.

The warrior or soldier in the experience of war is a perfect example. In the experience they are fighting with their hearts. For reasons that make sense to them. And often to others. Like being able to have a home,family, and so on. Sustaining it from invaders. Ability to have equal rights. Such as the civil war in america. Or the second world war in trying to keep Nazism from becoming the whole world. Stopping hitlers concentration camps that were going on. Without hating we would live in a world of nothing but dictators ruling over the people. Without enough hate a lot of good things won't happen.

So thats another perspective. Then there are things that are simply beyond my understanding.

Originally Posted by Greenslade

.. Do we even have the first clue about what is right and wrong, really? ...

No

It’s probably a combination of universal and subjective related to cultural maxims.

Whether it’s right or wrong sometimes has little effect on how people act. I’d say that murder is wrong (and is by consensus treated so in most civilian contexts) but it is the duty of a soldier to kill which is considered right and proper.

Theft is wrong – but is the shoplifter stealing food to assuage hunger theft? Could be our distribution of wealth wrong? Do we need to look closer to see if the hungry person has been neglected by a consumerist society that has lost its sense of compassion – or has the person declined to earn a living to support themselves, with the expectation of society keeping them?

Then there’s the very evil of commercial advertising. And it IS evil. It draws the unwary into illusion. It tinkers with people’s minds in ways they don’t understand. It develops a reality around consumerism that ties people to the need to work, to earn, to consume – on which their sense of identity is founded. And to make sure they’re tied to it, get them in debt up to their necks so they can’t escape. Is that right?

As a semioticist I almost fell for a career in “marketing semiotics” where “Meaning production” is a big deal. I would have loved it if all was above board, but it counted on its target not knowing how it was being “engineered”, conned, in fact, into the consumerist life to provide the profits and living for the very wealthy. To me, this is the “work of the devil” in that it ties people to materialism, makes escape very difficult; it embroils them in illusion that their lives are better and happier for having more stuff.

This does suggest that an amount of evil has been normalised as right and good in some cultures.

So though there are “should be’s” of an ideal morality, what IS is conditioned by context and consensus.

[sea-dove]

Originally Posted by each1teach1

Hate is intolerance, unsympathetic ignorance, tension, us against them mentality etc

Hate is a very strong word. I personally dont necessarily see any of those things as hate. If anyone is directing those things towards me, I do not go and think they hate me. (not like to me isnt hate)

What about positive/negative? I believe we all have a general understanding of what positive/negative energy is..

What is your stance?

I think you are being subjective and not universal. Even what is and what isnt negative energy is subjective. eg there are not nice beings out there who feed on negative energy, to them it isnt negative at all! Our love energy one could say is negative to them as it can hurt them.