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[Il Palazzo]

Well, you know, to alleviate that, you'd have to invent a meta-plane which holds an idea of "the right thing", or good, to which all the people could adhere.
Wait, didn't somebody already do that? What was it's name... Judaism?

[Lord Dullard]

Ah, yes... because clearly, when Bernard Madoff was busy helping the economy tumble, he was just fulfilling his personal desires and should have been left alone. Good for him.

Judaism?

How you can possibly equate non-existentialism with Judaism is beyond my ken. Believing in a universe that doesn't revolve around you doesn't require you to believe in an all-powerful invisible man - it just requires you not to be a giant dick.

If you're a giant dick, then yes, it probably is hard to accept that your own personal agenda might not be beneficial to all of humanity.

Let me give you an example: let's say that Mother Theresa and Stalin are both existentialists (ignore what you know about their actual religious preferences). Let's assume that they are both true to their own desires and act accordingly. Which one is a better person and has better ideals and values?

Can you, in all honesty, say 'neither'?

To give you another example, have you read 'The Picture of Dorian Gray'? Dorian, clearly, is an existentialist (as well as a hedonist, but the former happens to largely include the latter).

There are good existentialists and there are bad existentialists. I write it off as a philosophy because it's essentially just saying 'I'll do whatever the hell I want as long as it makes me feel good' without taking into account the fact that if everyone did this, the world would probably be a pretty crummy place to live.

[Il Palazzo]

Hold your horses sir, I had a very good reason for saying what I said.
What Judaism, being the, I think, first monotheistic religion, did - which was special and distinguished it from all the previous existing philosopies, god, or no god - was that it created the moral frame of reference, which was held to be the perfect idea of what's good, for everybody to be able to tell if e.g.Mother T. or mr.Stalin were nice or nasty. So this idea was also immeresed in the traditions of Israelitan society, was given a name and a voice and was generally somewhat antropomorphic. So what, those things are superficial to the central idea of finding(or more like founding) an uncontestable and all-encompasing moral system.
When I compared what you were talking about to Judaism, I was pointing at the fact, that to find a moral anchor, to which all the people could adhere, you need to do the same things as the Israelites of yore did, and estabilish a moral system that would bear with it enough gravity to become universally acceptable. In the case of Judais, it had been done by casting the moral system in the form of dogmatically perfect and benevolent God(JHWH).
And the final point was: It's all going in circles. People invented monotheism, to get rid of polytheistic moral ambiguity, then people moved on to nihilism to free themselves from the contrains of such a religious system, then towards existentialism, to find a direction in their lives, and now it seems the next step is to dust off the old ideas of perfect moral frame of reference, to get rid of the ambiguity that existentialism brought about.
It's the circle of life, says Elton John.

[ThreeToe]

We need to watch out and not use bigoted language that insults whole groups of people.  I'm already getting moderator reports, so be careful please.

[DreamThorn]

I guess we should avoid talking about other people's beliefs/philosophies, and only talk about our own.

In the philosophy that I follow, all evil comes from being lacking in love/compassion, intelligence/knowledge or courage/willpower.  (I usually refer to them as Love, Truth and Courage, due to getting the idea from Ultima)

Through love we know what ourselves and others desire, giving us a destination.
Through truth we know the consequences of our actions, giving us a path.
Through courage we have the strength to follow the path to our destination.

We tend to be sorely lacking in these three traits and should strive toward them.

A nice feature of this system is that it doesn't require everybody to just suddenly follow the same idea of good.  Fostering truth and courage leads to power, which includes manipulating others to perform the right actions.

Also, it is friendly towards progress.  We can use technology to empower ourselves to make the world a better place.

[RAM]

I am really not a big fan of love and compassion, they tend to have unpleasant implications...

[Vester]

What are those implications?

[Cyx]

It seems that some of you value happiness / pleasure and are merely talking about the best way to get there. I may have misinterpreted the subject, but to me a "value" is a goal in itself. It's what you live for, not just a principle which will or will not lead you or others to happiness.

And for the record, Nietzsche knew that what you mean when you say "nothing means anything" is true. He actually was a nihilist by this definition. He just made a difference between good and bad nihilism. Essentially, Nietzsche thought that those who are strong can live with this realization and actually are fine with it (this is why thinking the eternal return is a sign of the superhuman, because if you can smile at an eternity of senseless torment you're mentally indestructible), whereas those who are weak are weakened or destroyed by it (lead to belief in God, mindless hedonism, etc).

[Jreengus]

I personally don't have any real values I've sat down and thought about. In general I do what seems like a good idea at the time. I tend to be quite selfish but I'm also unable to say no to people so if someone actually asks me to do somehing I'll probably end up doing it.

[mendonca]

What are those implications?

Good question? I can't think of too much with a higher potential moral score than 'Love and Compassion' ...


Soon as the OP asked ... (cue meaningless ramble)

We are human, and this should be celebrated. And the Earth gives us a home. We should probably look after it (albeit I’m not sure that civilisation in its current iteration is ready to do this properly at the expense of personal comfort etc.).

What makes us human are the important points that we should seek to reinforce and encourage. Without these we are animals, or even worse, machines, grazing on the life-force of the planet for no purpose.

This could lead to celebrating things that are very dominant in Human culture which are potentially quite destructive, such as selfishness, overbearing egos, power-hungriness etc.

It’s only really context that moves a lot of these things from acceptable levels to unacceptable levels, so I think they need to be encouraged where they can be used positively. Otherwise you are acting against god-knows-how-many years of natural selection and saying ‘The current version of the human is flawed’.

Laugh at these flaws, for there absurdity, but accept them.

Our friends are the people we know whose flaws we are willing to accept.

Our loved ones are the people we know whose flaws we take joy in.

Never tell someone else how they should love.

Art, music, nature, friends, food, walks in the country, cooking (or whatever) all the things that give us some level of unexplainable enjoyment are probably a little bit more important than ensuring your organisations profit levels are meeting targets.

But in real terms you can’t do these things all the time, and we do have a responsibility to society to be productive (many years ago this would have been directly making food, nowadays we indirectly do it within the industry framework we sit on).

[Muz]

Me, I follow the concept that our true purpose in life is to prove that we can believe in God, despite having only minimum evidence. Whether or not that's true is up for another discussion, as stuff like that starts huge flame wars.

Anyway, based on that, I believe that we can do whatever in life as long as it doesn't go against God's commands. And that the ideal is anything that increases faith in God. Long story short, I feel that the ideal is anything that relates to knowledge of the universe, as you're not forced to rely on other people's made-up lies, just the facts you learn yourself. You have some very religious people who are at the top of their field in chemistry, geology, astronomy, because they seek the truth. I think that's pretty much where I'd want to be.. to get smart enough to calculate the facts for myself, rather than believing what people tell me about it.

From that, I believe that everyone should work hard to learn by themselves. I think everyone has the responsibility to help others where they are helpless, but not so much that they become helpless without help. I'm against material gain purely for the sake of material gain, but I support material gain being used for further knowledge. Luxury is fine. It's a good way to de-stress, and I support luxury just as long as it makes people work harder.

I bet there's some long words out there that describe my ideals. I'd like to know them

[Lord Dullard]

We need to watch out and not use bigoted language that insults whole groups of people.  I'm already getting moderator reports, so be careful please.

Ah... my apologies if I insulted anyone. I post frequently to political/philosophical forums, so it's easy for me to forget sometimes that this forum isn't really the place for debate as people get offended here way more easily than I'm used to.

[Vester]

I'm pretty sure it was

Well, you know, to alleviate that, you'd have to invent a meta-plane which holds an idea of "the right thing", or good, to which all the people could adhere.
Wait, didn't somebody already do that? What was it's name... Judaism?

that drew ThreeToe's attention, not your post.


Anyway. To expand on the whole "love humanity" thing.

I like to believe that people are essentially good (I went through a ridiculous "all people are bastards" phase a few years ago, but I outgrew it, and also that's a universal positive and impossible to prove  ). All humans have the essential dignity that makes 'em people.

[Lord Dullard]

Could be - in retrospect, though, my posts could probably be taken as insulting to existentialists (even though that's a philosophy more than a religion). Either way, even if that's not what the reports were over, I'll still let my apology stand since I can be a somewhat insensitive person sometimes (especially in matters I don't fully understand, like religion/the need to be religious).

[Il Palazzo]

I'm pretty sure it was

Well, you know, to alleviate that, you'd have to invent a meta-plane which holds an idea of "the right thing", or good, to which all the people could adhere.
Wait, didn't somebody already do that? What was it's name... Judaism?

That drew ThreeToe's attention, not your post.

How did that manage to earn the "bigotry" label is beyond me. But, sure, for the sake of pleasant atmosphere, I apologize if I have unknowingly offended somebody.