At 6:31 PM +0200 3/4/02, Holger Hellmuth wrote:
>For now. While I see a necessity for banishing murder, I can easily imagine
>societies that work without marriage. So either if we could leave that
>conditioning behind or another species (descendent from a more promiscuous
>animal species, most insects for example) achieves (or achieved on another
>planet) intelligence, they could have a different set of basic morals. Which
>would show that even under your strong definition morals are not
>eternal values.
>IMHO.
Definitely not eternal values, but as mortal as we are. Which is
maybe just as well, or I would have been burned at a stake by now,
for daring to write at all... morality is after all a result of
culture, they're not mutually exclusive subsets of human behaviour.
But then, I have real problems believing in God, except perhaps as
something as abstract as the First Sefiroth in the Kabbalah, which is
something the most atheist physicist might not have problems with.
If you do believe in God, built as ever in Man's image, then that
belief projects one's own morality over the whole universe and across
all time most conveniently.
As for adultery and so on, Australian Aboriginal kinship traditions,
which although they have of course their own complex tabus and so on,
put paid to any idea of sexual exclusivity as an eternal verity of
human behaviour. A woman could have a lover as well as a husband,
for instance, with no objection from her husband, though he did have
to be consulted. Marriage traditions seem to me rules designed in
each tribe to facilitate social cohesion rather than anything else.
And most of the traditional rules - dating from Hammurabi - label a
woman as a chattel of her husband/father/dominant man.
I really like the idea of a peace movement as defining all of
humanity as "us". The problem is that "we" seem to need a "them" to
define ourselves against. Throw in some testosterone-driven
aggression and technological ingenuity and, hell, no wonder people
are pessimistic about the Future...
Best
Alison
--
"The only real revolt is the revolt against war."
Albert Camus
Alison Croggon
Home page
http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
Masthead Online
http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
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