You are in fact self aware a small fraction of your waking life, and you are probably only even awake about 3/4 of your life.
Dethronement looks like going from being a people who see themslves as the apple of god's eye in a small domed universe of which the dirt we walk around on is the exact center, which was the official position of the Catholic church until 1757, to being one of many animals on a microscpoically small speck of dust floating in an unremarkable arm of one of at least 100 billion galaxies, each of which is about 100 thousand light years across, in a universe that has an apparent diameter of 100 billion light years. We think we're special because we are us. As Stephen J Gould put it, tree frogs think other tree frogs are the bee's knees.
Great song! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XFfUt7HQWM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XFfUt7HQWM[/ame]
That would put me ahead of many here who are never self-aware, and who actually avoid such awareness like the plague.
"You're never self-conscious, but I'm self-conscious about 1 second every day. I'm so superior to you!"
But who said that human life is "good"? I thought humans were destroying the world via carbon emissions. In fact, left winged groups like the "Vuluntary Human Extinction Project" might say that if two people murder each other the world would be a better place. I heard of one lady say she had an abortion so that there would be one less carbon footprint on the globe.
So do you eat meat? If so, would you eat human meat? Or are you still deluded in thinking humans are "special"?
I eat meat, by my justification for doing so is not based on our specialness. You could just as well ask if I eat plants, or if I eat anything, as everything humans eat either is or was alive.
If human beings go around murdering at random then social functions will fail. Thus, at its core, murdering is neither good or bad, it is dysfunctional with respect to social behavior. When assessing our own needs - for example, do we have a need for social framewoks to function? - then we use good and bad as measurement.
Gee, who knew malice was morally neutral? So murder is good as long as it contributes to the functioning of the society in question, as it did in Stalinst Russia. Have I got that about right?
Hmm, I'll try once more. Since we are social creatures by nature - i.e. it seems to work out pretty well for us to build and maintain social frameworks - then we measure as good whatever can help to maintain the functions that support such a framework. Murder without just cause is NOT such a help. In fact, it works quite the opposite way. So, the question is not whether or not killing functions. As long as the cause is just, it obviously functions in order to gain and defend territory, among other things (aka. war). Sometimes, although enprisonment has recently moved in as a more ethically acceptable option, murdering WITH just cause also works to get rid of the individuals who actually endanger social functions by murdering WITHOUT just cause. Therefore, the question is not whether or not killing is good or bad but if the cause makes it good or bad. Killing people as it was done in Stalinist Russia is simply not deemed as just cause. That's what makes it not good. Also known as immoral. If those same people somehow (for argument's sake only!) were invading your country then it could be deemed as just cause, - hence good, hence moral.
I'm for it as long as those who sentence the convict to death are held legally culpable if the convict is later found to have been innocent. As opposed to murder WITH just cause? On the contrary, it worked great in Stalinist Russia. Hell, they repelled the German invasion even as Stalin was killing more of his own troops than the Nazis did. So was Stalin's cause just? And why or why not? By whom? Certainly not Stalin or Beria or any of their willing accomplices. So had the Nazis prevailed in WW2, it would have been good and moral for them to exterminate the Jews and other "undesirables". Right?
Well a lot of people see the death penalty as state sanctioned murder. Isn't that pretty much murder that contributes to the functioning of society?
You are speaking about secular law when you speak about such things as the Death Penalty. Those secular laws become the defining difference between "murder" and "punishment"... 'punishment', in the case of the 'functioning of society' is what makes this secular society function. If you abide by the secular laws, society functions, if you disobey or even disregard those secular laws, then society has deemed it necessary to 'punish' you for that disobedience... "death penalty" might well be viewed as an extreme 'punishment' by some, but SOCIETY has deemed such activity as appropriate through the initiation of secular law.
Here's a question for you, then. What is your distinction between the death penalty in the US and the kind of death that Stalin's government meted out?
Stalin had people killed for no other reason than the threat they posed to his personal ambitions. Though that may have happened here on occasion, it has never been legal in the US.
For me, it's living in the here and now, not regretting the past, nor fearing the future. It's a state of being.
Who said social functions were "good"? How can something be neither good nor bad but at the same time be "dysfunctional"? Who says that murdering or destroying social function is not meeting our "needs"?
LIFE- The condition that distinguishes animals and plants from inorganic matter, including the capacity for growth, reproduction, functional activity, and continual change preceding death.
There is no unequivocal definition of life. It can be defined by the whims of science and philosophy...but ultimately it can't be defined unequivocally...
