Kerghans last thoughts

The thing is, there's no such thing as a universal moral truth since the universe, at it's top objectivity is moral free. There's no way to prove that god end evil actually exist, none that I'm aware of.
People don't like it when other people get killed, because they (sub)consciously think "If I allow people to get killed, sooner or later someone may kill my or someone important for me". Yet we are much more indifferent when it comes to humanity bringing death to any non-human life here and there, because we know that this situation isn't leading to a potential death of ourselves or someone close for us. All in all, people's stance comes from egoism which they like to consider good-nature, and they try to believe it as hard as they can. It doesn't have that much to do with concern for everyones happiness.

The discussion is about an universal truth. If someone would change his opinion about any truth only bacause it would negatively affect him, it would prove that he cares about is his own ass, not truth. Actually having any personal interest in a discussion corrupts it with partiality. Most people however find it hard to take a unbiased stance when talking about big matters, like in this example, the essence of right and wrong.

 

I am not supporting day-to-day murder to be legalized; that would just bring about a lot of pain for: the individuals who suffer painful deaths; the individuals who suffer from painful wounds after surviving attempted murder; and all the individuals who suffer from the loss of those murdered.

However, if every individual were to die instantly, ignorantly (as in they wouldn't be aware that it was going to happen) and painlessly, and all at the same time, then no one would be pained by such an event. Furthermore, all people would then be equal in the state of death, and would experience no pain.

Now my words so far in this post contain two non-universal truth ideals which I haven't derived: fairness; and a concern for human pain. However, I don't require to justify these two ideals if we all agree on them. Do we?

Relative to what? Aliens? Potential human evolutions? Deities?

Whomever possesses power is perfect enough to do what they wish with it, in an objective perspective.

 

I'm going to provide two quotes, and a solution.

I'm sorry, but you're speaking to, what's that? living individuals. Most people, you may find, don't agree with your view. Why's that? Because most people like life, and don't see any ability to relate to the idea that they don't deserve to live. If they do, they commit suicide, and leave a ripple upon the living,* and are done. I am not saying that your ideology is incorrect Garf, I'm saying it's naive and idiotic. This woe is me, nobody deserves to live, and that's a universal truth because the universe doesn't tell us that we deserve it is something I expect out of a fourteen year old boy with dyed black, strangely cut hair. The kind of boy who has one dropped testicle and pants so tight there isn't room for the other to follow suit. if you wish to follow this train of thought, then I recommend finding a place where people of your mentality can congregate. I apologize for my lack of cohesive and solid facts against your ideology, but I cannot be bothered to. I honestly don't feel this is a topic worthy of my finding facts. It's simply something that I know by feel. You're free to argue against me, but please realize, I find a grievous error with the manner in which you think, and the logic you have applied to this situation.

This sounds like an exceedingly extreme variety of communism.

Lastly, on the topic of accepted points:

You cannot be unhappy with us for our stating things without requiring that they be backed up because they're considered normal. If I tell you that the grass is green, you accept it because that's normal. However, if Muro comes to you, and tells you that grass is actually blue, and you're color blind, then suddenly he's stated something other than a societal norm, and we both will be asking him for evidence to back up his claim. Does my point make sense?

* I don't like suicide jokes, thanks to a now-gone friend. Please don't make them here

 

Can Human Rights (Universal Declaration of Rights 1948) legitimately limit cultural diversity?

 

I agree with some of Garf's stances, so allow me to comment some of the arguments adressed towards him from my point of view.

That's pretty much the problem of realisation of any grand-scale plan, no matter how good would it be. Just compare Jesus' teachings (love-'em-all!) and the Crusades (kill-'em-all!).

I don't share your stance, but I understand what are you willing to say. Every system has it's flaws, yet we do not stop continuing them. For example, judiciary is flawed with the possibility of sentencing an innocent man, yet that doesn't mean that we will stop judging criminals at all.
The whole matter is a philosophical debate of an idea, which is pretty much impossible (at least with modern methods) to realise. But even though realisation of the plan is impossible (due to the fact, that every path leads to it's abomination), it doesn't by itself mean that the ideology is wrong. It may just need to stay an ideology.

My mix of non-human life forms was merely to show how biased are the morals, which we consider to call universal.
And humans are propably the only life form on Earth which is fully aware of it's existance, does possess and actual mind, and has the possibility to decide upon himself. All of the oher forms of life, be it eucaryota or procaryota, does everything to survive because it's programmed to do so with it's instincts. We wouldn't epect a programmed machine to do a morally right decision when it's programmed to do the opposite. This doesn't proves that animals/plants/bectaria are right or that hey are wrong, but it proves that their srvival instrincts can't be used as an argument for any of the sides in the discussion.

I think that Garf's stace is different form the one's you provided, since Garf doesn't want everyones death because his own life is unhappy, it's not a selfish "If I'm going to suffer, I'm taking everyone with me!", but a objective view on life and death not involving his own life in the discussion. At least that's what I undestood from what of his words have I seen so far.

Excuse me, what? "Emo-corner"? Well I'll be damned...

Feel is not a good argument, since what people feel to be right is very varied. A man can feel that it would be good to help an old women get on the other side of the street, but another man may feel that it is right to fly a plane into a high building. These examples suck, but you propably get the picture. I may be called overly idealistic, but I believe that while feel may be extremely biased and corrupted, logic is an universal tool of problem solving. If there is an matter to discuss, logic is the best way to figure out who is right, and when both sides are using logic leading to contradictory conclusions, then propably (at least) one side's logic is corrupted as well, which may be eventually proven.

If I understand it correctly, it does, because every statement needs proof, and thet proof may be in both phisical evidence or logical proof of the fact, that discussed isue is possible.

I fail to realise how that has to do with anything.

 

Yeah about this emo-stuff: I am not "emo". First of all my particular life is fine; I have a lot of things going for me, I live in a first world country and I am pretty fortunate.

Secondly the modern view of what "emo" means is a distorted view of the original "emotive hardcore" musical movement. No way in hell would I join such a fake misled association as it is today.

DarkFool, we can clearly see that you are fuelled by impulse and emotion rather than logic or argument. "Feeling" is not good enough in a debate; feelings alone aren't valid as arguments. This is simply because anyone could feel anything they wish (for example, one could hate people of a particular race just because they possess a different coloured skin) without justifying anything.

Feelings are used in debates behind-the-scenes, yes, as they fuel what stances individuals will take, but in the actual visible debate itself it is a bit of a joke to use feelings alone.

I've already covered that in this thread. What you are speaking of is the concept of agreement, not normality.

 

Nevermind, when I thought I was posting that it would of been relevant but the topic took a different turn in the time it took for the post to appear.

 

The majority of us live in a debate culture, in which the 'I'm right and i'll prove you're wrong' state of mind is subtly woven into us from near our beginning. How do you suppose things would be different if we spent less time on debate (which hardens conflict) and more on dialogue (which softens it)?

Aside -- If i may quote Dr. Johan Galtung:

Also, The_Bob, i agree with you that resolutions should be reversible. Death is too permanent and thus in most cases unacceptable.

Regards,
Sky

 

Perhaps you two would be willing to provide support for my quotes of GarmGarf's, rather than emphasizing on my use of the word feel as a way of describing (simplistically) something that comes to me instinctively? Does my impulsiveness and emotions make my arguments invalid? I stated in there that I cannot support them by any other means than by the instinctual knowledge I possess. Also, whilst I might be impulsive and emotional, what makes that wrong? How many debates have you seen which are fueled and supported by facts? I don't know about you, but the American media is filled with "Specialists" whom are nothing more than stage actors, paid to read a script.

 

Well your previous post is less worthy of a argumentative response than my post which you stated was so. In your post you stated what you felt, and then you attempted to justify why you didn't require any argument and why you couldn't give one.

You state that my ideals are "naive and idiotic" yet you didn't justify why. It is the individuals who conform to their ancestor's ideals without reflection who are naive, and it is those who can't justify their thoughts who are idiotic.

Getting to my two quotes:

One of the reasons why I have figured out what I have is because I am open minded. If I weren't open minded, then I would have never challenged the "sacredness of life" mentality which my society follows.

No, that's not quite true. Even if someone doesn't deserve life, that doesn't mean that have to relinquish theirs. The Christian religion is always preaching that individuals don't deserve God's forgiveness, yet they take it anyway if it is offered, because not deserving something doesn't mean that it is forbidden.

Anyway, even some individuals who want to die don't kill themselves because of social burdens or fears placed on them (e.g: people telling them that they are selfish if they kill themselves; the idea of hell; etc).

Then your belief contains no argument. You are entitled to your belief, but good luck convincing anyone who doesn't already agree with your belief.

 

I'm going to avoid some of this, admittedly, because as my previous stance remains.* However, I've to ask. What's wrong with the mentality that life is sacred? Is it the fact that most of us** apply it solely to our species, or because life truly isn't sacred?


*I'm too lazy, and will probably always be too lazy, to get highly involved in an internet debate. This is a main reason for my lack of evidence.

**I remain a pacifist and a believer that all life is sacred.

 

Think about the creation of life on a purely scientific level. I am not going to write the 3 pages of how each atom joined and collided to create certain elements which in turn did such and such, but from my studies at uni, the very process in which the Earth was created and on it the slim chance of it being viable to spark life is astronomically small, yet it happened. Taking that into account one could very well argue the sacredness of all life not on a religious scale but on a purely scientific one.

 

I would say that there's nothing wrong with the mentality (since if every one had that mentality, it would benefit everyones life), but nothing proves that it is actually correct in a universal level. As long as we want to keep the world alive it's propably the best mentality, but there's still the discussion if willing to keep the world alive is the best option.

On the scientific level life is even less valuable. it proves that life is just a process, a handful of chemistry and physics. It may be rare in the scale of the universe, yet so are diamonds in the scale of earth, yet there is no good or evil involved in destroying diamonds, creating new ones or a;tering the ones already existing. Respectively, life may be rare, but that alone doesn't make it valuable.

 

Interesting. Given the big K's long and drawn out exposistion, it always seemed to me that he not only wanted to wipe out all life on Arcanum, but also to wipe out all after-life as well (given his extensive lecture on venturing into the afterlife and seeing nothing but suffering, and traveling unto places that even gods hadn't, etc, etc and traveling beyond the veil and sinking into oblivion and finding utter peace or something along those lines). Seems to me that he wanted to achieve non-existence, entropy, nothingness, whatever similar nutcases/geniuses may call it. So in short, I disagree with the idea that he thought death was peaceful, since that itself is what he claimed to be trying to end. You erase life, you also erase death. He wanted to bless existence with oblivion.

 

I think it's not so much that as Kerghan has seen the many afterlives and wants to take everyone to the grey sea, the final afterlife. No pain, no suffering, nothing but quiet grey...

I give him credit for having a point, after a shitty life the sea would be nice, but damn it, shouldn't he at the very least offer people a choice? Let them live out their lives and send them to the sea when they are reaching the end? Wouldn't that be better than just storming in and killing everyone and everything?

 

Archmange Orintil, I believe that what you're talking about is not the strict afterlife but more of a transitional stage. Souls are chained to Arcanum even after their death and it takes them a lot of time and suffering to become fully free from life, and then they wander to the endless sea of grey mirrored glass, which is the actual aftelife, the final resting place.

Xiao, do you mean something like this?

 

Well, he was a complete mental case. Maybe because he was once part of the elven council, he suffered from the same mentality that most politicians in the real world suffer from in which the peon, ie: the common person, is simply believed incapable of making the "correct" choice, thus there shouldn't be an option to have a choice. Have you noticed that both Nasrudin and Arronax also had a similar "I know what's best for all" syndrome?

Ah, yes, thanks. It's been so long since I've been at that stage in the game I couldn't remember what it was. However, I thought the suffering of souls were due to their attachment to their former life? Also, doesn't K say that the grey sea is the place where souls go to die? To me that doesn't sound like an afterlife, but rather the point at which the soul ceases to exist any longer. I don't know. I can't remember the entire thing all too well and the situation is as metaphorical as it can get. However, that picture of Khergan floating above the grey sea would make an asskick background for my desktop.

 

Most of Kerghans decisions, plans and goals were based upon what he has experianced and learned, not just what he thought. And he wanted to use that wisdom to actually help everybody, not just for some selfish motives which guide some of the real life politicians. And it this case he knew that the common person is incapable of making the correct decision because he lacks the whole knowledge about life and death, as opposed to Kerghan.

Nasrudin - yes, to a point. But he was competent enough to have the right to think like that. He believed that he knows what's best for everyone for 1000 years and it was known to be a golden age for Arcanum. He made one mistake, which was sharing power with Arronax. After that he gained a lot of humility and didn't believe his decisions were the best ones anymore. Wrongly, if you would ask me.
As for Arronax, he never claimed he knows what's best for all. He despised both "lesser races" and technologists and believed their place is to be subordinate - not because it's the best for them, but because they don't deserve any better.

That is correct. Souls still suffer after death because it takes time to reattach from their life. Their are being hold by "jagged shards of life" such as memories, unfulfilled dreams - "a prison of their own making".

Kerghan knows that the normally interpreted death doesn't equal non-existance, but freedom from life. The second death - death of the soul, is propably an equivalent of the first death - the death of the body. In the first one, a person loses all of the material bounds attaching him to life, and in the second one - all of the incorporeal ones.
There is one important statement proving, that the death of the soul doesn't mean non-existance. Turning into non-existance would be a irreversable event, while in his speach, Kerghan says how even after achieving peace in the endless sea of mirrored gray glass, souls are being pulled from it and thrown back into life.

I always thought the same, but never could find a moment to make it into a wallpaper.