Is there such a thing as an absolute moral standard? If there is, who gets to say what that moral standard is? Who gets to make it up, and where are they getting their information from? If there isn’t one, does that mean that one can do anything, or that one is never held accountable for one’s actions? If not, than by what measurement do we judge a person’s actions and set up the rules necessary for social functioning and living together?
Do we even need to set one up, aside from the arbitrary one of not killing each other for just as long as it takes for us to use each other to survive, or is their something a little bit deeper than that? Is it just hormonal/emotional? If it exists, is it universal? Does being from a different culture give you the right to kill another human being? Are there acts that absolutely everyone must always refrain from all of the time, or is there a time and place for everything?
These musings, some might say are fruitless, are what take up a large amount of my headspace. It is important that you answer all of these questions for yourself, by yourself, with as little outside influence as possible.
The next topic I wanna deal with is genocide. Not just in an abstract way, but concretely about "the" holocaust.
The Jews, after having suffered the fate they did in the hands of Europeans for hundreds of years, and even before that for millennia, finally got a homeland. The final reason was the killing and deporting of millions of them in Europe, in what is known as the Holocaust. That homeland is on a site where at the time very few Jews lived, but many believed was assigned dot them by God, the God of the Bible, Yahweh, the jealous God. To get there, Britain gave them the land, which they did not rightfully own. Many other people, considered even today subhuman by the powers backing the now formed Israeli government, live there, have proof of having lived there for thousands of years, and not religious proof, “God told us about it” sort of proof. After having gotten there, they are now submitting the people of that land to a Holocaust.
I do not believe in the legitimacy of the Israeli government. There are three main reasons for that, all of them having to do with the questions posted above.
1) If you are saying that these people deserve a homeland, and it must be protected at all costs, even if it is causing other people a genocide, then you immediately fall into the category of being a) a racist or b) someone who believes that suffering is measured in scales, like wheat or barley. Both of these things are dumb, unless you can say that the price of the starvation and death of one Jewish child is the equivalent to x amount of Palestinian children, or one for one. In which case Israel should have been abolished, because more then 6 million have died as a result of Israeli occupation since the 50’s.
2) The piece of land in question is sought to be the holy land by a certain understanding of the Bible, which talks about place names that we are not sure where to put on our lands, and in increments that we do not understand, such as the cubit. We know that the Bible is not a legitimate source of geography. We know that it is not a legitimate source for history. We know that basing your claim to a piece of land based on the Bible should not hold ANY weight in ANY international court.
3) Theocracies, including Muslim, Christian, Jainist, or any other sort should be abolished, or at least their existence voted upon. If you do not believe that Israel is a theocracy, than you are an idiot. It is not a democracy, it is not a dictatorship, it is not any sort of state, except one that is made by fundamentalist, Jewish right wing extremists.
To separate the racism and nationalism of any nation because of historical events is near sighted, to claim that Jews cannot behave like Nazis because of the holocaust is just blind. The fact that these people are being protected, and are being given money by the most powerful nation on earth, the USA, and are supported and helped by all the European nations, whom they guilt into helping because of despicable acts commited in the past is absolutely insane. Also, Palestine was a country that was easy to take over, their people, disenfranchised, so their land could be sold. The land the Jews of the Bible are talking about is actually located in Ethiopia. The mountains they are mentioning, most likely are in Ethiopia, or somewhere nearby that land. Some people know this, but are not being taken seriously, also, real Jews, the Jews of the Bible are what we today would consider black people. Jacob, Joseph, and a host of other people are specifically mentioned as being black skinned, and Samson has three strands of hair that cover his entire head, which to me sound like dreadlocks. It is true that anyone can have dreads (I got ‘em), but we only see it being ritually used in African cultures, also, in some nomadic nations who have probably seen it during their travels.
I know, this is a lot of info, and I did not present any evidence for it really, but if you are interested in it, we can discuss. Also, some of these are my personal opinion, and must be evaluated as such, I just hope you can come to conclusions that will make sense for you.
As for me, to answer the first few questions, I do believe that albeit there is no objective moral code, there is something universal and visceral and bestial about ethics. Certain things we have a gut feeling of ‘bad’, or ‘wrong’, and it is present in any culture, such things are murder, rape, genocide, taking more than what one needs, leaving people to starve, etc, etc. That these things happen in every culture is unimportant, because we as humans want bad things to happen, and precisely our gut feelings and visceral reactions are the sort of thing that make us want to do them, to experience ‘bad’ and ‘wrong’. That there are eicts about these things in every culture is all the proof I need. We must reach the lowest common denominator, something we all can agree upon, and make a universal law, a simple one, that applies top everyone. Writing it down and specifying it is of no use, because we need to iinternalize it, and indeed, we already have. I believe all of us work off of the same principles. I believe we all know wrong when we see it. So I guess I do have beliefs.
The next post will contain the grind.
