Victimless crime

With homosexuality being an issue in the spotlight i feel compelled to chime in. For me it is a non-issue. But it touches upon a much broader category that needs illumination; victimless crime. But homosexuality isnt a crime you may say, well in many countries and religions... it is. And to judge their culture based on our values is unfair.

Norms and mores are fundamentally completely and totally fictional constructs. But through that fiction, that shared delusion, we construct rules with which society as a whole functions cohesively as a single unit: and thus more fit for our environment. Our current norms and mores are the results of millennium of haphazard collective meme replication, and there's no reason to believe that they will not change in the future.

Personally i believe we could engineer a set of mores that is much better than what we have in our current society. By better i mean:
more suited to optimize health, power, and happiness for all individuals
equally fair to all individuals
explicitly formalized in a manner that all can refer to as the defacto verdict.
The maximization of the future freedom of action for all individuals capable of mutual cooperation.

Being stoned to death for a victimless crime may seem to us to be barbaric. I have to agree, but it's not so different from incarceration from which individuals are deprived of all freedom and power for often decades of their life. A fate worse than death to some. Even after release, ex-cons are relegated to the very bottom of the social hierarchy, forever condemned to be deprived of some freedom.
In 2008, according to the Department of Justice, there were 7,308,200 persons in the US corrections system. Of which only 7.9% were guilty of violent crime, and 5.8% were guilty of property crime. To one sidedly condemn other cultures for their stance on victimless crimes without acknowledging our own issues is extraordinarily unfair.

In conclusion; if you have a problem with the treatment of homosexuals in foreign cultures, you should have a problem with domestic policies. And you should do what you can to help solve it. Get involved, organize, contact your leaders about it, and spread the word.

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SkyCore wrote:

And to judge their culture based on our values is unfair.

I disagree with this. I've never been a fan of the idea that a person can be defended because "it was a different time" or "things are different where they live." I'm an ethical vegan. Last I checked, less than one percent of the population were ethical vegans, though that number seems to be on the rise. Even though at this time and in this place the vast majority consider it ethically acceptable to do the most horrific things to other sentient beings, I choose not do.

You will see this with anything terrible throughout history. There are always people, even if only very few, who will fight against cruelty and barbarism. Abolitionists in a time of slavery are worthy of defending. Proponents of slavery are not. I stand by those statements regardless of what time it is or what place it is.

What's really important is why you hold your values and why they hold their values. Someone judging me based on what's written in an old book of superstition and myth will always be instantly dismissed. Someone judging me based on conclusions drawn from observations of reality and a desire to reduce harm will not be. I will take their conclusions into consideration and possibly emerge from doing so as a better person.

I judge people who would kill homosexuals for the laughable crime of being homosexual, and I judge them harshly. They should be given no quarter simply because the people around them believe similar ideas for equally terrible reasons.

Social progress happens in the few while the majority lag behind.

Always been that way, just give them time. We're lucky though to live in a time where information is so freely exchanged, social change will happen much quicker than it used to.

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Jennik wrote:

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SkyCore wrote:

And to judge their culture based on our values is unfair.

I disagree with this. I've never been a fan of the idea that a person can be defended because "it was a different time" or "things are different where they live." I'm an ethical vegan. Last I checked, less than one percent of the population were ethical vegans, though that number seems to be on the rise. Even though at this time and in this place the vast majority consider it ethically acceptable to do the most horrific things to other sentient beings, I choose not do.

Horrific to you. But it is only so because of your beliefs and underlying values. There is no rule of the cosmos that says murder, rape, torture, and theft should not be committed. All the things you think are objective truths in morality are not. It is a fiction. A useful fiction, but nonetheless imaginary. Your values are in no way objectively 'better' than anyone elses, not hitlers, not the unibomber, not even trump.

Is valuing cooperation and peace a positive thing?, yes. But that is only an assertion of an imaginary concept. It is not an objective truth.

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Jennik wrote:

You will see this with anything terrible throughout history. There are always people, even if only very few, who will fight against cruelty and barbarism. Abolitionists in a time of slavery are worthy of defending. Proponents of slavery are not. I stand by those statements regardless of what time it is or what place it is.

What's really important is why you hold your values and why they hold their values. Someone judging me based on what's written in an old book of superstition and myth will always be instantly dismissed. Someone judging me based on conclusions drawn from observations of reality and a desire to reduce harm will not be. I will take their conclusions into consideration and possibly emerge from doing so as a better person.

I judge people who would kill homosexuals for the laughable crime of being homosexual, and I judge them harshly. They should be given no quarter simply because the people around them believe similar ideas for equally terrible reasons.

I think its terrible as well. But there are things in your own society that are just as equally, if not more terrible. And collectively we turn a blind eye on it. Millions of lives are ruined every year from our own laws which persecute and convict people of victimless crimes. Millions more than the number whom are stoned for homosexuality.

Where is your vegan ethics when it comes to your own culture, hmm?

People are deterministic machines. Our environment determines our behavior. Does the mass media broadcast love and cooperation? Understanding and enlightenment? Exactly the opposite from what ive seen. Im not saying there is a conspiracy or anything, im just saying 'freedom of the press/mass media' is not acceptable in a world in which the technology exists to manipulate what you believe. Organized effort needs to be undertaken to control the populace. To lead them into frame of reality in which villainization is not a thing, and cooperation/peace is the primary virtue.

Rather than target individuals to be hated for their hate, we need to specifically target the beliefs that lead to that hate. Otherwise we perpetuate the cycle of hate and are no better than they. We need to suffocate the fear and the hate with love and reason. With acceptance rather than exclusion.

dude, you're so deep and meaningful.

wow.

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SkyCore wrote:

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Jennik wrote:

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SkyCore wrote:

And to judge their culture based on our values is unfair.

I disagree with this. I've never been a fan of the idea that a person can be defended because "it was a different time" or "things are different where they live." I'm an ethical vegan. Last I checked, less than one percent of the population were ethical vegans, though that number seems to be on the rise. Even though at this time and in this place the vast majority consider it ethically acceptable to do the most horrific things to other sentient beings, I choose not do.

Horrific to you. But it is only so because of your beliefs and underlying values. There is no rule of the cosmos that says murder, rape, torture, and theft should not be committed. All the things you think are objective truths in morality are not. It is a fiction. A useful fiction, but nonetheless imaginary. Your values are in no way objectively 'better' than anyone elses, not hitlers, not the unibomber, not even trump.

I'll take this. Lets establish a baseline for objectivity.

Happiness
Freedom
Prosperity

If you can agree that those three things can be used as a metric for measuring the "success" of a civilizations ethics, then by any measurement, western secular democracy (pick whatever flavor you wish) is objectively better than any other system on earth. Past, or present. I'd love to see any argument to the contrary.

And if you disagree with my baseline, you're probably a nihilist. No point in arguing that.

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SkyCore wrote:

People are deterministic machines.

Little nitpick, nothing is deterministic in the universe, specially at the microscale (and that includes what we call consciousness, you know, that electrical thing in the brain).

While values are meaningless in the big scheme of things, they are still valuable to us as species. A good outcome (whatever is that) is the biggest way to judge our values.

...

On topic, yes, injustice is everywhere.

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SkyCore wrote:

Horrific to you. But it is only so because of your beliefs and underlying values. There is no rule of the cosmos that says murder, rape, torture, and theft should not be committed. All the things you think are objective truths in morality are not. It is a fiction. A useful fiction, but nonetheless imaginary. Your values are in no way objectively 'better' than anyone elses, not hitlers, not the unibomber, not even trump.

Is valuing cooperation and peace a positive thing?, yes. But that is only an assertion of an imaginary concept. It is not an objective truth.

You are beating the hell out of some straw men right now. If you want to take a shot at responding to the words I actually said, go for it. You have utterly failed to do that here, though. Nothing you said is relevant to what I said.

Here's a helpful hint for the future: if someone doesn't say morality is objective, don't respond as if they're saying morality is objective. This goes for anything. If they don't say they believe it, don't reply as if they believe it.

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SkyCore wrote:

I think its terrible as well. But there are things in your own society that are just as equally, if not more terrible. And collectively we turn a blind eye on it. Millions of lives are ruined every year from our own laws which persecute and convict people of victimless crimes. Millions more than the number whom are stoned for homosexuality.

Where is your vegan ethics when it comes to your own culture, hmm?

Oh dang, I forgot to reply to the bit of nonsense that came next. My vegan values are exactly the same when it comes to my own culture. Again, you are presuming to know a hell of a lot more about me than you actually do.

I am not a fan of unnecessary suffering regardless of the species. I am not a fan of unnecessary suffering regardless of where it happens. Why are you attacking me as if I don't care about suffering that's local to me? Why would you even believe I don't care about this? Can you quote a single thing I've said that would lead you to reasonably conclude this?

Please be better at drawing conclusions. What you are instead doing is fabricating your own false reality, which is very obviously not the same thing.

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Jennik wrote:

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SkyCore wrote:

Horrific to you. But it is only so because of your beliefs and underlying values. There is no rule of the cosmos that says murder, rape, torture, and theft should not be committed. All the things you think are objective truths in morality are not. It is a fiction. A useful fiction, but nonetheless imaginary. Your values are in no way objectively 'better' than anyone elses, not hitlers, not the unibomber, not even trump.

Is valuing cooperation and peace a positive thing?, yes. But that is only an assertion of an imaginary concept. It is not an objective truth.

You are beating the hell out of some straw men right now. If you want to take a shot at responding to the words I actually said, go for it. You have utterly failed to do that here, though. Nothing you said is relevant to what I said.

Here's a helpful hint for the future: if someone doesn't say morality is objective, don't respond as if they're saying morality is objective. This goes for anything. If they don't say they believe it, don't reply as if they believe it.

Calm down man. I wasnt launching personal attacks nor attempting to refute everything youve said. I merely thought it was highly relevant to the discussion that i reiterate that morality is not objective.