morality

[mugatea]

My sister works in a maximum security prison. They are mostly murderers serving life. She's noted how focused they are on morality. The men who are imprisoned for killing other men despise the women killers adn tend to have nothing to do with them. The women killers despise the child killers etc. Its like there is a moral heirarchy and the male killers are normal. They see themselves are decent average people unlike those others which are beasts. It got me thinking that another group obsessed by morallity are politicians (and their media) and wonder if they are linked thru their psychopathy. Also, think of the evangelicals.

Anyway, its got me thinking that I should be suspicious of those that show alot of concern on morals. What does anyone else think?

JAmie

 

[Beau]

This proves how much of a difference their is between having morality and having a true conscience. I don't care how moral someone says they are, if they can murder, they don't have much of a conscience.

 

[anart]

There are quite a few threads on the forum that discuss Gurdjieff's understanding of morality - they might help you clarify your thoughts on it. If you use the search function for morality and Gurdjieff, you might find what you're looking for.

 

[the_hammer]

In my opinion the murderers pecking order has got nothing to do with morals at all. A murder is a murder. You will find the same pecking order in any prison. Any child molester or killer is always at the bottom. Guess it might have to do with the restistance the victim put up at the time of the attack. A child could be seen as weak, where as an other man could be seen more or less like an equal.
I guess one should not be suspicious of those who show a lot of concern on morals, but instead on those who bend and twist it to their liking.

 

[RflctnOfU]

"Morality", I think, is almost a "perfect" weapon of the psychopaths. Almost nothing will push emotional "buttons" quite like effectively used morality, paramoralisms etc. Also, one thing I've noticed, is generally a very strong sense of self-righteousness side by side with "high morality", which, as we all have seen, leads to bad things. After all, the road to hell is paved with "good" intentions. . .or perhaps it should read, the road to hell is paved with intentions.

My $.02 :)

Kris

 

[mugatea]

thanks for tips anart, I'll check it out.

Morality as we see it today, seems to be just a branch of fascism and is used to justify the imposing of will as well as to seperate the world into black and white.

I'll check out those searches now.

Thanks

Jamie

 

[ScioAgapeOmnis]

Morality as we see it today, seems to be just a branch of fascism and is used to justify the imposing of will as well as to seperate the world into black and white.

I think the issue is not the black/white separation, cuz there are so many variations of what is moral and what is not, it's really a billion "separations". But the issue is the subjectivity of it, that it has nothing to do with real conscience and is just arbitrarily chosen when the mood strikes. Sometimes murder is evil, sometimes it is heroic - depending on whether the state wants you to do it or not. Totally subjective, irrelevant, and contradictory.

But also, I think it's important to note that "black and white" divisions do exist in objective reality. Male and female for example is an objective division, it's not a blurry/subjective line. Similarly, psychopaths and non-psychopaths is a black and white division. Not to say that the latter and former don't act like one another for various reasons unique to each one, but that the division is black and white because it is genetic, it is objective. Also similarly, lies and truth, etc. So I think black and white exists - it's just with morality the separation is subjective aka imaginary, and that's the problem. But anyway I think reading what Gurdjieff had to say about this as Anart suggested is definitely a good idea.

 

[Iconoclast]

my 2 cents:

Morals = artificial construct

Ethics = comes from within you


morals are perfect for psychopaths and ponerized people, because you don't have to feel anything to have them.

 

[Seeker 1313]

Hi Mugatea,

I have worked extensively with criminal offenders of all types over the last 15 years and I'll share an insight I have about these folks. It is not what they say, but what they do that will tell you their thought processes----the talk about morals is just that and nothing more. If a person thinks that it is o.k to kill someone under certain circumstances rather than it is never o.k. to kill another, then when the circumstances arise they will do so. Anti-social/psychopathic individuals do not ever think of anyone else, but themselves and are more likely to carry out all kinds of henious acts and then spend lots of time justifying their behaviors----this is why you get the talk about morals.
Politicians run on a platform to get into office and then they do what they were really thinking, ie... Bush and company. Im also suspect of an offender or anyone else I meet who tries to tell me how good they are. I can figure them out by their behaviors, because they reveal the thought processes. Like Iconclast said, ethics are your own personal limits for behaviors and they will determine if your a thief, murderer, child abuser ect...or a person just trying to live civily.

 

[Barbara]

How is the need to define oneself as superior to some group related to this?

People who feel a suppressed sense of shame about themselves use the existance of their inferiors as a prop.

I think of the poor Whites in America who belong to the Klu Klux Klan. They were not at the bottom so long as they could identify the 'Niggers'

I wonder about the need for bigotry as it relates to this topic. The biggot always feels superior.

Is biggotry a pathological form of morality?

 

[Azur]

How is the need to define oneself as superior to some group related to this?

People who feel a suppressed sense of shame about themselves use the existance of their inferiors as a prop.

I think of the poor Whites in America who belong to the Klu Klux Klan. They were not at the bottom so long as they could identify the 'Niggers'

I wonder about the need for bigotry as it relates to this topic. The biggot always feels superior.

Is biggotry a pathological form of morality?

Barbara,

There are a lot of "loaded" things here in what you say. I don't know if they are intentional or not, but here's a few things to look at.

People who feel a suppressed sense of shame about themselves use the existance of their inferiors as a prop.

Suppressed shame is a phenomenon of an accepted perception of how one will be perceived, when one feels that there is a difference between how they feel versus how they are supposed to feel (as per the perception of what is acceptable). The other part of that sentence is somewhat more alarming: "existance of their inferiors".

This speaks of someone who perceives that there are others around them who are "inferior" via some kind of artificial social metric. This is someone who has been mind poisoned, or has no capability for seeing beyond simple, SIMPLE self-delusion for self-satisfying wants. (Notice I do not say NEED here.)

I think of the poor Whites in America who belong to the Klu Klux Klan.

Poor? You mean monetarily? Or is this a "moral" high ground judgment of yours? If you feel bad for these people, you have an issue to confront. "Pity those who pity". Have you adopted the fake "moral" high ground? Does it make you feel good? Is this why you might be doing so without knowing it?

What if you are projecting your automatically learned social "values" onto these guys? Maybe they know exactly why they are KKK? What would that do to your perception of the situation?

The biggot always feels superior.

Which is the BIGGEST clue as to the very nature of so-called "morality".

Is biggotry a pathological form of morality?

And here is a perfect example (intentional or not) of a paramoralism. Saying that bigotry is a pathology of "something" in order to make it look like the "something" is a gold standard of sorts, or a truth. In this case, the "something" used is morality. Morality is one of many personality disorders.


Barbara, if I've misunderstood your point, would you be willing to expand on it?

Cheers.

 

[Laura]

Ummm... it wasn't really so much the "poor whites" who were KKK... that's more of a conservative, upper-class, look down on everybody except WASPs type of group.