The Impending Death of Modern Capitalism

I think this is spot on. We make a terrible mistake if we confuse our correct imo destruction of religous belief with denying the very real moral need which waas one of the driving forces for religon/god in the first place.

We are moral creatures and we need to offer ways to meet that need in a way that provides some real meaning tand structure that people can be part of if/when they want to. That has to replace the unreasoned belief based systems we have destroyed.

At what moment in history did we become "moral creatures" ?

Are chimpanzees moral creatures ?

You're wired you be a moral creature. It's not your fault or anything to be proud of.

I'm wired to eat. I'm wired for sex. I'm wired to survive and detect threats to survival. I'm wired to share knowledge and learn.

I like people and I wish for their happiness. Not because its moral. But because it just feels good.

I gravitate toward buddhist advice.

Check out Awakening the Buddha Within if you havent yet

It’s fine to consider morality* to not be anything but a result of our preferences/attitudes/desires (that’s definitely the thesis I affirm).

I do think chezlaw is making an important point about how people are generally motivated and how secularism will be self-defeating if it has no alternative to the needs fulfilled by religion for many people (and going unfulfilled by said secularism).

If we strip everything down to the bone .... religion is simply a survival asset.

In order to have an orderly society, we need rules. Religion provides the rules and the boundaries of acceptable behavior for most people.

Some people are above the rules. The people with great power are above the rules and live by the law of the jungle which is "might makes right".

Columbus came to America 500 years ago and murdered millions. Thou shalt not kill obviously did not apply to him and the people under his command.

You make a lousy god, as your reality has no justice.

I'm not a god.

God didn't create a just world. Think about the children who were swept away by the floods in Texas and the parents who lost them. That's not justice for those individuals.

But it is God's way of sending us a warning about how we're changing the planet which is causing more intense flood events.

It's a form of justice for society at large which ignores the boundaries we are racing past.

Edit ... consider the story of the Egyptian's who ignored Moses. God killed their first born.

I agree this is an unjust world. I wasn’t intending to communicate otherwise.

My point: the proper response to an unjust world is not to figure out the best way to make a home out of it (which seems to be your entire project here). The proper response is to make it a just world. Only then, should you make it your home.

This is why I reject your version of reality which says the ruling class operates outside of justice.

Because of the asymmetry of power between myself and the entire ruling class, the only way for this world to become a just world is if a personal + intervening God exists. Therefore, I (subjectively) decided such a God exists.

Now, the injustice of the world no longer falls at the feet of the entire ruling class of humanity. Instead the responsibility ultimately falls on God, who is someone I can interact with personally.

I’ve put my cards on the table. In your proposed vision of environmentalism + economic austerity / socialism, how does it address the problem of the corrupt ruling class? Which seems to be a perennial problem.

The way the corrupt ruling class has been dealt with in the past is via revolution. French Revolution, Russian Revolution, American Revolution, Civil War, etc.

I'm suggesting a democratic revolution .... not a violent one.

You and I ... we agree to join each other and invite other people to do the same. We vote the corrupt ruling class out of power. Trump's supporters are choosing the fascist dictatorial route. America in the Great Depression chose a more enlightened route .... they voted FDR in.

Edit .... note the difference between Trump and FDR. Trump amplifies fear. FDR told us there is nothing to fear except fear itself. FDR was a calming influence ..... he represented an adult who told the people ... "hey, we've got this under control".

This manner of revolution may be able to overthrow a particular version of corrupt ruling class, but I’m concerned with the corrupt ruling class as such, since, as I mentioned, I view it as a repeating, perennial problem.

We agree on the cyclical nature of reality. The major difference is that you seem satisfied with operating within the bounds of the cycles.

I couldn’t do that any longer - aligning myself with a movement knowing whatever is gained won’t last.

Bolded is just stupid.

Of course, given your professed worldview there is nothing morally wrong with killing millions of people anyway.

I like to think of it this way. Ultimately, on a societal level, power is what controls the way people act. We create institutions of power to control what we want to control using the force of the state, which is the final arbiter of what happens in society, for the most part.

However on an individual level, might makes right is rarely a proposition we would affirm because it implies that if you have the power to do something, you are justified in doing it. Obviously (to most people) there are many ways that we think that just because you have power over another individual doesn’t mean that however you decide to exercise that power is justified. We have various ways of motivating that belief, but most people don’t want to accept that, and there are instrumental reasons for not accepting that.

How’s this going?

Like I said .... I am not God who has been given the power to change the cycles. I prefer the that the cycles keep going as opposed to our going extinct.

I am a surfer who has to try and ride the waves which are presented to me. We have a tsunami incoming that we've never had to surf before just as Abe Lincoln had to surf the wave which ended slavery. There was no precedent for him to follow .... but he was the man built for that moment. It was not a fun job for him if you look at the pictures of how he aged during his presidency. Imagine the weight of the decisions and a war that killed 600,000 and wounded a few million.

No sane person wants the job of the triage that will be necessary to salvage something of human civilization. But someone has to do it and someone will do it. Nature abhors a vacuum.

If we survive the present cycle, it might require that we break the pattern of cycles in the process. I don't know .... that's above my pay grade.

Do you believe in the saying "God helps those who help themselves" ?

First of all .... please watch the accusatory nature of your language which is unnecessarily prosecutorial.

I have made the statement that I don't believe in ANY notions of morality whatsoever. I am not, as you imply, specifically excluding the mass murder of millions as being amoral while holding other actions to be amoral.

When lions and hyenas occupy similar hunting territory, they will kill each other to establish their claim and drive competition away. Does that mean that lions and hyenas are immoral ? No .... they are just acting according to their primitive nature.

Humans are animals, just like lions and hyenas and those mass murders 500 years ago were an example of our primitive, competitive and brutal nature. A similar event is taking place in Gaza here in the year 2025. Do I want this kind of behavior to stop ? Yes .... desperately !!! I prefer to belong to a species that can transcend it's brutal primitive nature. Buddhists try to teach this .... but the larger and killer tribe seems to Christian. No religious tribe has a record of killing and conquest that can compare with them.

Personally, I would never kill someone with the potential exception of self defense and I susbcribe to the buddhist guidance to defend myself with the minimum force necessary. Fortunately, my conduct doesn't get me into any physical altercations with others so I never have to defend myself physically.

Sorry, I don't know what you're talking about. That said, I shall endeavor to not employ accusatory language.

I implied no such thing. You mistakenly inferred what I meant. I apologize for being unclear. I know that as an amoralist you find all human actions to be amoral.

I agree.

I disagree that 'humans' are animals. I believe that people are categorically different than animals. But that's probably a topic best left for the RGT Forum.

As a follower of the Prince of Peace, I denounce any Christian promoting and/or performing violence against others without cause, as they would be disobeying our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

I heartily endorse this message.

I’m finding nut nut’s understanding of metaethics and normative ethics to be quite lacking.

Despite all the evidence that God has provided us that we are animals ... you refuse to believe.

God gave us the brains to unravel the mystery of DNA and evolution. God is revealed through scientific investigation. God speaks, but you refuse to listen and cling to fairy tales which effectively claim that God is deceptively planting false evidence like DNA.

Normative ethics is a branch of moral philosophy that focuses on establishing criteria for what is considered right and wrong. It involves the formulation of moral rules that guide human actions, institutions, and ways of life. Normative ethics seeks to define what should be considered morally acceptable and unacceptable, distinguishing it from other areas of ethics such as metaethics and applied ethics.

Metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values.

For the first 4 billion years of life on this planet, there was no such thing as ethics. Only human animals are known to concern themselves with the concept of ethics.

We didn't have ethics when we were hunter gatherers prior to the agricultural revolution. We survived via brute force, cunning and an ability to organize cohesive teams for hunting, foraging and territorial protection.

The agricultural revolution paved the way for larger tribal populations which provided a competitive survival advantage in competition with other tribes.

But how do you keep a large tribe cohesive when tribe expands into the thousands ? How do you keep people from become chaotic and disobedient ?

You do it with fear. You tell them a story that they will be in hell for eternity if they step out of line. And in order for this story to make sense .... there has to somewhere be a power with the willingness to judge whether or not you go to heaven or hell. And so, the legend of the "God who judges us" came to be.

Ethics are simply a tool to maintain an orderly tribe for the purpose of maintaining its competitive survival advantage.

I was born into the Jewish tribe and brainwashed to believe that my tribe was "the chosen people" just like other tribes do the same with their members. I once dated an ex-LDS woman .... same deal.

The Jewish tribe reached out to the world for sympathy for the way they had been genuinely unethically dehumanized and exterminated. But now they are participating in a similar situation where they are dehumanizing and extermination their Arab neighbors in their pursuit of territorial expansion. Which just goes to show that they don't really give a damn about ethics .... it's all about tribal loyalty and survival advantage.

I hate to break it you .... God is everything .... not just the things you want to attribute to your fairy tale versions. God is simultaneously compassion and the brutal and vicious competition to survive. We are part of God, not separate entities.

If we want to survive as a species, we have to let go of tribal division and learn to cooperate as a cohesive global tribe.

Normative ethics is a branch of moral philosophy that focuses on establishing criteria for what is considered right and wrong. It involves the formulation of moral rules that guide human actions, institutions, and ways of life. Normative ethics seeks to define what should be considered morally acceptable and unacceptable, distinguishing it from other areas of ethics such as metaethics and applied ethics.

Metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values.

For the first 4 billion years of life on this planet, there was no such thing as ethics. Only human animals are known to concern themselves with the concept of ethics.

We didn't have ethics when we were hunter gatherers prior to the agricultural revolution. We survived via brute force, cunning and an ability to organize cohesive teams for hunting, foraging and territorial protection.

The agricultural revolution paved the way for larger tribal populations which provided a competitive survival advantage in competition with other tribes.

But how do you keep a large tribe cohesive when tribe expands into the thousands ? How do you keep people from become chaotic and disobedient ?

You do it with fear. You tell them a story that they will be in hell for eternity if they step out of line. And in order for this story to make sense .... there has to somewhere be a power with the willingness to judge whether or not you go to heaven or hell. And so, the legend of the "God who judges us" came to be.

Ethics are simply a tool to maintain an orderly tribe for the purpose of maintaining its competitive survival advantage.

I was born into the Jewish tribe and brainwashed to believe that my tribe was "the chosen people" just like other tribes do the same with their members. I once dated an ex-LDS woman .... same deal.

The Jewish tribe reached out to the world for sympathy for the way they had been genuinely unethically dehumanized and exterminated. But now they are participating in a similar situation where they are dehumanizing and extermination their Arab neighbors in their pursuit of territorial expansion. Which just goes to show that they don't really give a damn about ethics .... it's all about tribal loyalty and survival advantage.

I hate to break it you .... God is everything .... not just the things you want to attribute to your fairy tale versions. God is simultaneously compassion and the brutal and vicious competition to survive. We are part of God, not separate entities.

If we want to survive as a species, we have to let go of tribal division and learn to cooperate as a cohesive global tribe.

It's very interesting.

I have come to this place in an effort to try to get people to participate in an effort to make the long-term survival of our species the top priority of our social policy. To the extent that they are unaware of the threats we face, I have provided a willingness to hold hands and walk people through the rabbit hole of ecological destruction. To build that wall of understanding brick by brick.

Those are my actions.

In response ... do people take me up on the offer to try and build something ?

No .... they accuse me of being on the wrong side of ethical understanding.

Please forgive if I don't find some irony in the people claiming themselves to be authorities on ethics.