Right or Wrong - who determines that? - Page 9

Originally posted by: lighthouse

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Re cannibalism scenario mentioned for survival- I know I can't do it and I can see you won't do it either but some people may be able to in order to survive when there is nothing , absolutely no other way for survival and after 30-40 days without food and water our thinking is affected , not rational so who knows what would happen to anyone then..Charity and magnanimity does not have a place when one is in the midst of a blood battle or survival of self. Fear of our own death causes us to believe killing under any circumstances is wrong when nature demands survival of the fittest.

I am adressing the bold line above about grey areas - it happens all the time as I mentioned before. A fetus is killed if mothers life is in danger, a mother will not think twice for harming or killing anyone who attempts to hurt her child. To me it is clear as B/W even though killing is not allowed or done under normal circumstances.

once you resort to using that "even though", u contradict ur own point about it being b/w. if it was b/w then it wld have been absolute...no ifs and buts.....only the absolute right. there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong. ur post above ends up supporting what i have been saying all along...even if u didn't mean it to.

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

once you resort to using that "even though", u contradict ur own point about it being b/w. if it was b/w then it wld have been absolute...no ifs and buts.....only the absolute right. there is no such thing as absolute right or wrong. ur post above ends up supporting what i have been saying all along...even if u didn't mean it to.

the statement I made was in rebuttal to the one you made earlier " anything that can't be done under normal circumstances but is okay to do under extreme circumstances falls under that grey area" Killing is illegal but we don't see mothers going to jail for aborting a fetus was the point I was trying to make with "even though".. so to me it is B/W not grey. We take our stand and rationalize it by quoting it from one post or the other.

Originally posted by: Gauri_3

first thing first...lets not truncate what's put up in the original post while going after someone. especially, if it changes the entire meaning of their post!!! this is what i had up there:

look, i started with the post u had before u got busy editing it and didnt notice ur edit. happens all the time, to my posts as well. one doesnt need to go around truncating stuff to make rebuttals, so no point getting so het up.😊

Originally posted by: lighthouse

the statement I made was in rebuttal to the one you made earlier " anything that can't be done under normal circumstances but is okay to do under extreme circumstances falls under that grey area" Killing is illegal but we don't see mothers going to jail for aborting a fetus was the point I was trying to make with "even though".. so to me it is B/W not grey. We take our stand and rationalize it by quoting it from one post or the other.

lighty, what's extreme and what's normal is again subjective. different people have different thresholds and judge their extremes accordingly.

coming to ur example of mothers killing fetuses when their life/health is in danger...well, i have personally known women who still chose to go ahead with the pregnancy and not kill their fetus. does their decision makes all those who chose to kill the fetus guilty of killing their own baby??? naheen na. that's why i'm saying that there r no absolute rights or wrongs....and how could they be when even the extreme situations are subjective to interpretations???

Originally posted by: lighthouse

the statement I made was in rebuttal to the one you made earlier " anything that can't be done under normal circumstances but is okay to do under extreme circumstances falls under that grey area" Killing is illegal but we don't see mothers going to jail for aborting a fetus was the point I was trying to make with "even though".. so to me it is B/W not grey. We take our stand and rationalize it by quoting it from one post or the other.

so wat are we going to do? start enumerating all the things we find clearcut according to us?😆and ignore the rest of the stuff that's so divisive? let's see the kind of choices presented so far: milk vs rum. great- i am sure folks face those choices everyday of their lives, no?😛 mother aborting a fetus to save her own life. great.. Wonder why folks cant things as clearly when it comes to abortions in general. There's an entire lot of people who also consider it wrong to eat meat. But no, that's fine because seemingly the greatest dharma is survival. that's somehow wired into our DNAs. great. i mean, arent we applying our personal take here and coming up with new religion as we go along?😆

actually the other "ultimate reality" is that there's a lifespan between birth and death. along the way, people mess up at times. and more often than not it's not because they didnt read up on the ten commandments or are bad people. more likely, it's because things are never so clearcut. except perhaps in hindsight. if things were so clear, no one wld mess up and we wldnt be having all the problems we've been having.

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

IMHO trying to define life and its intricacies is futile. Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway.Arrrr!

I come back to my first question - who makes these guidelines and what in our mind makes us follow them and adopt them? It is said many a times that a child's mind and heart are as pure as they can be and there arent any preconcieved notions. Hence there is something that 'feeds' all of the rules, rights, wrongs in it. Why? Doesnt this infringe upon our right to freedom and choice? Because technically we havent been given a choice! If someone comes and says that you have the choice to choose later in life I'd have one more question, when we make the choice later we have it in our mind that some things are right or wrong and our choices are mde on the pretext that what we are doing is right or wrong.

Originally posted by: shrutichopra

I come back to my first question - who makes these guidelines and what in our mind makes us follow them and adopt them? It is said many a times that a child's mind and heart are as pure as they can be and there arent any preconcieved notions. Hence there is something that 'feeds' all of the rules, rights, wrongs in it. Why? Doesnt this infringe upon our right to freedom and choice? Because technically we havent been given a choice! If someone comes and says that you have the choice to choose later in life I'd have one more question, when we make the choice later we have it in our mind that some things are right or wrong and our choices are mde on the pretext that what we are doing is right or wrong.

Originally posted by: shrutichopra

I come back to my first question - who makes these guidelines and what in our mind makes us follow them and adopt them? It is said many a times that a child's mind and heart are as pure as they can be and there arent any preconcieved notions.

not exactly imo. we are wired differently right from birth i think. so even if we might start out as empty heads without any pre-conceived notions, our ability to develop additional notions and insights differ right from the start. so if not in terms of content, then at least in terms of ability to make distinctions later on, we differ. the bias and the pre-conceptions perhaps starts right there in that sense.

Hence there is something that 'feeds' all of the rules, rights, wrongs in it.

the environment, our folks, teachers, elders do shape our thinking of what's right or wrong. but we ourselves are part of that environment and to the extent we have some free-will, we probably have some ability to re-program ourselves.

Why? Doesnt this infringe upon our right to freedom and choice? Because technically we havent been given a choice!

but that's where i differ. if we havent been given a choice, at least some choice, then there's no need to construct all our marvellous ethics. after all, then we cld always say the cat made us do it. no question of right or wrong if we are not responsible for our actions.

If someone comes and says that you have the choice to choose later in life I'd have one more question, when we make the choice later we have it in our mind that some things are right or wrong and our choices are mde on the pretext that what we are doing is right or wrong.

i think whether we have any choice/ free-will in any matter could be the subject of another debate. that might take us to other questions of pre-determination/ fate, ethics etc. Personally i'd hate to think we are simply operating without any free-will. Would make life seem pretty senseless/ robotic/ unexciting.

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

Taking a human life is wrong, which brings us to the question is abortion right? Depends on if you consider a fetus to be human life. If fetus is not human life than adoption is wrong. That brings us to how do we define a fetus. If it is a human life then you are taking a life and it is wrong. That brings us to the question can we make exceptions to the norm that taking a human life.
A or B, but if C then not A or B but D & E, but if F then G, if C & F then G we keep going on and on and on and on making those black and white lines and refining and defining them.

Life is circumstantial, each situation is unique to the people involved, the life and times surrounding them. We may sympathize with a rape victim aborting a child, but we may frown on some spoiled teenager who screwed up, someone else may look on both as equally sinful for abortion, yet someone else will sympathize with even the spoiled child for never knowing a parents love support and guidance.

IMHO trying to define life and its intricacies is futile. Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway.Arrrr

wat, no rules? just when one had started expecting to see do-it-right manuals hitting the local stores.😆

good post Rth.