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spike wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:F50C0FAE5DA34D1A8CBEFAE0C65AE863@spike"
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<pre wrap="">...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
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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.</pre>
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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.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:F50C0FAE5DA34D1A8CBEFAE0C65AE863@spike"
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<pre wrap=""> 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,</pre>
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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. <br>
<blockquote cite="mid:F50C0FAE5DA34D1A8CBEFAE0C65AE863@spike"
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<pre wrap=""> the
entire theory behind them, the entire memetic infrastructure in support of
it, is *completely* wrong, no truth there at all.
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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? <br>
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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.
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That is good. Careful of sins of omission though. :)<br>
<br>
- samantha<br>
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