[ExI] to install
samantha
sjatkins at mac.com
Thu Jun 3 11:21:51 UTC 2010
spike wrote:
>
>
>
>> ...On Behalf Of Anna Taylor
>> Subject: [ExI] to install
>>
>> The conversation went, "Well if you are going to go to
>> church, you might well as be..."
>>
>> I agree. I think churches are a really good place to learn
>> moral and valued skills... Does eveyone agree?
>>
>> Just curious
>> Anna
>>
>
> Hi Anna, goooood question. In my own case in having to instill moral values
> in my own 3 yr old son, I am stuck in a wildly paradoxical position.
At that age the basic lesson, which may not take for a few years, is
that other people are just like him inside and their feelings and needs
matter to them the same way his do to him. I remember very distinctly
the moment in my childhood when I really got that all the way through.
Much of the rest of interpersonal ethics grows out of that. The other
part of morality is learning to not attempt to bullshit reality in any
way whatsoever. It is learning to be rational and seeks to "make it
real", to actually achieve, gain and maintain what you actually value
including the wellbeing of others you value. That honest to reality
thing will not make life easy with respect to so many he will interact
with who are nearly explicitly taught to be dishonest or that their is
something more important than reality. But it is very very important.
> I can
> allow him to go with his mother to church, but I am in a position of having
> to carefully explain that while the ethical and moral values are OK,
I don't think the ethical and moral values taught their are ok. They
are based on a non-reality set of premises and thus are ungrounded
pronouncements. They teach that anything done for yourself, because
you value it (however rationally) is probably problematic and at the
least not nearly so good as doing things for "others" - any old others,
preferably for complete strangers one has no rational interest in
whatsoever. This is a near complete perversion of honest sane ethical
and moral values.
> the
> entire theory behind them, the entire memetic infrastructure in support of
> it, is *completely* wrong, no truth there at all.
>
If they basis is wrong then in effect saying the ethics is ok is saying
that ungrounded ethical commandments that cannot be understood to the
root are "ok". Do you really think so?
> So what would go on in the mind of a child, given such instruction? I
> haven't said anything yet, but I flatly refuse to tell him anything I know
> to be false.
>
That is good. Careful of sins of omission though. :)
- samantha
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