SPLIT TOPIC: Churches and Morality in Crown Heights

Yeah, I'll rise up on the the high road and you can take the low road.

He has 'a' point. That's right; one of many points to have. I'm not telling CP what to do. In fact, I said in an earlier post, do what works for you.

I believe it is important that one's moral code extend beyond legal obligations. We have duties to one another which are not prescribed in statutes or the Constitution.

Malcolm X was clearly not a big fan of religion and god, yet got lots done as well

I think its fairer to say he wasn't a big fan of Christianity as it is taught to blacks in this country. He was a deeply religous man, especially after his break from Elijah Mohammad and his movement towards more mainstream Islamic teachings.

While I love the idea of having a forum to discuss morality (even if this forum is supposed to be about Steve Maynard), I am disappointed in the above squabbling. If ad hominem is fallacious, and rational discourse the apex of logic and reason, few here have demonstrated this to be so.

That said, CP is nuts.
But I swear to god I'm kidding!

Subject: Self Interest and Morality

Captain Planet, you write as if there is some necessary conflict between self-interest and morality. I respectfully disagree. At one point in my life, I was a huge fan of Ayn Rand. I read everything she wrote, including the newsletter that she started, the Intellectual Activist. She coined a phrase that I think says it all: 'Rational Self Interest'. She also compiled some of her essays, and speeches on the subject, as well as excerpted one of her novels (I believe it was Atlas Shrugged) into a thin reader-friendly book titled 'The Virtue of Selfishness'.

Simply put CP, it's in my SELF INTEREST to say 'good morning' to you and to treat you and your property with respect, because I want MY PROPERTY and myself to treated with respect as well; that behavior, is RATIONAL (ergo, rational self interest).

I think Rand was one of the last century's most interesting people. She had major flaws, but I appreciate how she linked interest with morality, and came up with a philosophical theory as to why one's morality can flow from one's (selfish) interests.

Take an owner of a piece of property; let's say a house, or a small restaurant. It is in that person's interest to keep her house/restaurant clean because the cleaner it is, the more it would likely attract people to come inside who appreciate the fact that the house/restaurant is clean, and likely the food cooked there is cooked with care. Now, IDEALLY, the owner might appreciate things that look clean over things that don't look clean. But INDEPENDENT of what the owner appreciates, there is a DIRECT CORRELATION between cleanliness and the likelihood of guests/customers patronizing her home/business. So here, morality can be seen as an act of RATIONAL (self interested) THOUGHT.

Rationality is the act of deducing EFFECT from cause, and inducing the correct CAUSE from effect. There is no need of church, or god here. Our proprietor doesn't need Jesus to tell her that if she keeps her house/business clean, and respects her guests/customers, that they will have high regard for her home/business and give her respect. HER BRAIN CAN DO THAT. The guests/customers themselves don't need a god to tell them to do the same thing either. Likewise any property owner -- of any SORT of property -- does not need to treat other property with respect because IDEALLY, that is what they want to do. They need to respect another's property because they want their property respected as well. 'Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you'. Again, this is rational self interest. This rational self interest principle is applicable to everything. To how we treat ourselves, and how we treat our fellow man.

In my opinion where there has been a break down in morality (and civility) it has a great deal to do with the fact that there is a breakdown in a sense of propriety for the world that we live in. I could go on about this, but I have so far written much...

But PittieCity, would you buy it? It's not worth writing if there is no gain from it, and why ought it to be written just because I want to? I need to write it in presumption that there is a willing market for it.

The problem with those whom we call liberals is that there is a separation of ideals from propriety. Propriety is a concept that can have as its base property, or a 'sense of property', or both. It has been my experience as a resident of this community that concern of it is based upon ownership primarily. That being said, the primary cause of Brooklyn's woes is that many of those who own property have little sense of propriety. They are, for the most part, absentee landlords and landladies, and they have no sentiment for that which they have title, so of course, the serfs on their land follow suit...

Just imagine if they took a vested interest in the property - and when they do -- i.e. when the market dictates that they do -- then things begin to change. What if they were impelled to? What if there was a constant vigilance that the law obligated, whether the market was lucrative or not? Then, like every aspect of the social contract we make with our fellow man, the prospect of ownership would take own Uncle Ben-like proportions: "With great power comes great responsibilities..." -- NOT only when the market dictates...

There are laws against HOW property is managed. There are laws that govern the TYPE of property and businesses which exist in proximity to schools, and churches. I contend that there ought to be laws which govern HOW commercial property is owned in close proximity to residential property. If your commercial property is fallow for too long a time, then something besides market forces ought to dictate whether it remains that way. There are collateral effects that result because of a closed shutter... Ought we not to govern that?

Listen to the rhetoric of the free marketeers that will follow... I ask you, where doth there meat come from? There corn and their grain, their fowl and their beef? The same sheep that bleat about the sanctity of the free market no doubt ate meat procured at bargain basement prices as a result of government subsidy and artificial prices. There rhetoric is as specious as can possibly be imagined. They have no argument. We all live in a government-subsidized yellow submarine, and that is just the way it is. CTK is correct: It is all economic, but the economic dictates are arbitrary, and they function to serve the interests of a specific class of people.

Capt. Planet wrote: Would that also include talking about Albert Einstein and the Wachowski brothers? Just trying to get the guidelines clear here.

There's no need to be deliberately obtuse.

MHA wrote: non sequitur.

Succinct and accurate.

Maybe you ought to start a new thread CP. Seriously. As our discourse about religion has no bearing on the tree branch breaker thread.

MOD NOTE: This discussion has now been split off to its own thread. For more tree branch breaker discussion, that thread continues here.