I had a rather lengthy discussion with my dad about this one...
I hold that the ability to control others and the ability to govern derives from power. You obey the law not because it is the "right" thing to do, but because the government has the ability to shoot you. You obey social customs not because it is the "right" thing to do, but because if you do, for example, take a dump on someone else's lawn, the collective, which is more powerful than you, will exact retribution.
My dad thinks this is totally crazy.
What do you think?
| PatTheGreat42 wrote: |
| I hold that the ability to control others and the ability to govern derives from power |
So power is derived from power? Great.
| Quote: |
| You obey the law not because it is the "right" thing to do, but because the government has the ability to shoot you |
Fascism? Yeah, not a popular form of government, though ironically prevalent.
I think you'd like John Lockei agree. everyone makes decisions according to consequence, and nothing more.
some people may think that they do something purely for good, but the fact is, even if one goes and helps at a retirement home for community service, one would feel good afterward for doing something good, making it selfish.
I guess thats not really what you were talking about.
but whatever.
I guess i'm just trying to say that i think the true nature of humans is to be selfish, regardless of whether the outcome is positive or negitive. Nothing is really selfless.
(NOT nessesarilly the right thing to do) I believe it should be ^L*
You have hereby earned the right to a space on the Planets,,,, hehe
I agree with you, when the aforementioned paragraph is added, however you do not seem to take into consideration the ramifications of normal human feelings such as love and caring which in my opinion are very powerfull incentives.
Taking a dump on somebody elses lawn is simply inconvenient when a perfectly good toilet is there... thats why i dont use other peoples lawns 
I think that mindset works on animal-level intelligence, but humans are aware of their surroundings in a different way.
We realize that there are other people outside of ourselves and our family, and we don't go out of our way to hurt them.
If the only incentive to not be evil were governmental reprocussions, how would the human race have survived this far? What would have happened when there were no governments? Why don't the apes just kill each other for bananas?
There will always be social deviants, murderers, insanity, but that will always make up a small subset of society. The vast majority of people are empathetic and intelligent enough to not intentionally hurt others.
what is power? If we have power,we can get more chance.If we have power,we have more courage.;
This is the website to read about power: http://www.realultimatepower.net/
"I hold that the ability to control others and the ability to govern derives from power."
I would say that the ability to control others is the definition of power. The ability to govern follows pretty well obviously from this. Why people allow others to have power over them is a complicated matter. Some people are afraid of the repercussions, others don't want power for themselves. Generally it appears that the people with most power are those who want even more, it's like a drug.
| PatTheGreat42 wrote: |
I had a rather lengthy discussion with my dad about this one...
I hold that the ability to control others and the ability to govern derives from power. You obey the law not because it is the "right" thing to do, but because the government has the ability to shoot you. You obey social customs not because it is the "right" thing to do, but because if you do, for example, take a dump on someone else's lawn, the collective, which is more powerful than you, will exact retribution.
My dad thinks this is totally crazy.
What do you think? |
i agree with your father. It's not TOTALLY crazy, but to certain degree.
if what you said is correct, then the order of the world is dependent on Power. The nature of human beings becomes a devil side. How to say, if we have greater power, then we can control the whole world. That means human's nature is competitive and we wanna win (that means someone must be lose) We wanna kick down others in order to survive.
But can we think of ourselves, as a human, in a better way ? i.e. we were born to be obeyed orders, and we can judge what's right, what's wrong. We, of course, can break the rules but we know that it's not proper to do so. There is a pure soul inside our body telling us what should i do as a human.
