yoz niehur,
look at my reply to Mephistopheles as quoted for you below:-
Originally said by Mephistopheles:
Mephistopheles,
if you read my last reply to skyline, you would have read that
morals are relative, but morality is objective in itself. There is
an ideal moral state to which every person and every nation need to
aim for. When we measure a law, we measure its effectiveness
usually, but that doesn't mean that we cannot measure it morality.
we can in fact, measure its effective morality in theory.
Earlier in this thread, I explained something about a Plane of
Harm. Every action and every consequence of the enactment of a law
has its own spot on the Plane, so each has a definite amount of
individual harm and social harm which it causes. Likewise, each
person has a posiiton on the Plane too, accounting for the
relativity of morality, since each person has a different position,
and this point is called the person's Morality Threshold. The four
corners of the Plane are: Suicide/Invisible Harm, World
Annihilation/Invisible Harm, Skin-deep World Annihilation,
Skin-Deep Suicide. None of the extremes are good. In fact, the
ideal morality point is the centre point of the Plane. if an action
or an effect is located between a Threshold and the Edge of World
Annihilation, it is considered moral by the person in question; if
it lies between the Threshold and the Edge of Suicide, it's
immoral. We assume of course that the person fights for his/her own
survival.
The point of course is, how does the law determine what is a crime,
and how does it weigh the strength of punishment? Using the idea I
presented above, U can see why The Death Penalty can be objectively
considered (without emotional overtones) as Vengeance. Clearly,
anything resembling vengeacne would be closer to the Edge of
Annihilation, and logically u can see that that is the position of
the Death Penalty on the Plane of Harm: between the Edge of
Skin-Deep Harm and World Annihilation. And obviously, in the
analysis thus far, I am not using any dictionary, adn certainly not
a linguistic, but a scientific definition of Vengeance.
As for the other issue on satisfaction, The government gets
satisfaction from the execution of any person. In ancient times,
Kings and Emperors were extremely pleased whenever they executed
people in Court. Conisdering the impersonal nature of Government in
modern times, one might be forgiven for assuming that such
satisfaction is absent. However, we must be clear that corporate
satisfaction, like the kind experienced by Durai when he gets an
exceedingly large paycheck + many bonuses, is experienced by ANY
government that enacts the Death Penalty. They gain satisfaction
from the supposed increase in socio-political stablility granted by
the utilization of teh Death Penalty. I mean, if the Death Penalty
provides no satisfaction, why the heck is the govt always boasting
about its effectiveness?
Statistics doesn't always complement ethics. Remember, behind
every number is a person and/or set of persons. The Principle of
yin and Yang says that no matter how much evil there is in a
person, there is always some good; the Bible phrases it another
way: Even the brigand will give his son bread to eat.
So there, here it is.
the tired pikamaster
