Annie - the law of the jungle is reasonable.

It's ok to kill if it is to save your own life or if it is for food.
To save anothers innocnet life ........ reasonable.

in the real world, to kill someone would probably be a devistating event i'ld imagine.

I do believe that there are no absolutes in morality and that everything is relative, that's why working out what's moral is pretty hard work.  But I do think accepting that morality is relative is more beneficial to humans than holding that morality can be absolute.

Soren wrote on May 30^th, 2010 at 9:36pm:


Soren,

Can you clarify what you mean when you say that morality is absolute?

I suspect that you probably advocate a case by case approach as much as the next person when it comes to determining the morality of a particular action, but that you strongly believe in the concepts of good and evil from some kind  of universal standpoint .

I can see that there are some things that are obviously universally bad or evil, and practically nobody would disagree with them in today's society. Rape is obviously an example, yet in previous millennia it was seen as being a war strategy in some ancient societies.  

NorthOfNorth wrote on May 31^st, 2010 at 12:54pm:


Or in the case of Australian Aborigines living around Botany Bay in the early 19th Century, it was the accepted nuptial practice,  which generally involved a wooden club.

I'll scan the source material for that if you want. It comes from the Edinburgh Encyclopedia of 1805.

NorthOfNorth wrote on Jun 1^st, 2010 at 8:54am:


The accounts were by Englishmen. The Edinburgh Encyclopedia was the precursor for Britannica. There was no equivalent in England. It was only around the 1850's that England caught up to Scotland in terms of universal literacy levels.

I tend to believe a factual observation like that from the time. It makes sense from what we know of many other primitive societies. What's the alternative? There is no recorded Aboriginal history, and there is nobody alive today, Aboriginal or otherwise who would have an inkling of Aboriginal society of the early 19th century.

The only accounts we have are necessarily biased, but we have to look through the bias. It's politically incorrect to say so, but there were many more Europeans killed by Aborigines than the converse, and there are records to bear this out. It was always a violent society.  

Quote:


That links to a google book about william buckley, who spent 32 years living amongst the local aboriginals of the south west coast of victoria.

I have visited a few of the ancient sites they used to use along the coast, and used to have a few, unfortunately long gone now, ancient tools, which may have even been used by buckley or his wives.

So while it is an account by a european, of a europeans time amongst aboriginals, it was a time like no other white man ever had, before, or since.

I don't know how anyone can discern a lot from what you have written in this thread, Soren.
I just assumed you were a bit pissed a few times, raving against relativism, like a hydrophobic beast, raving at the moon.

Raging against relativism is no different to raging against reality, is it?