I recently received a very thought-provoking comment from a reader who had a question about my blog post where I claimed that spanking children was barbaric.
I have a reservation that maybe you could help me understand. In
[your blog post] on spanking children being barbaric … I was confused. If there is no meaning in events [for example, spanking of children], if we can’t know the future result of that [action] “for sure,” then how can it be barbaric? … If my partner yells at me, shall I call it barbaric if statistics show being yelled at has negative consequences? I’m confused about all this in the context of Lefkoe Belief Process, and I want to understand more. [See my post on spanking, https://www.mortylefkoe.com/it-is-barbaric-and-must-be-stopped/.]
When I first saw this question I wasn’t sure how to answer. It looked as if I had made two statements that contradicted each other: events have no inherent meaning and spanking is inherently barbaric. After thinking about it I’m prepared to respond. First, let me give you my answer. Then let me explain it.
Why events can’t possibly have inherent meaning
What I mean when I say events have no inherent meaning is that you don’t know anything, for sure, from any event or series of events. All you know for sure is that the event happened, but you can’t draw any conclusions from the event(s). Moreover, there are almost always many different logically possible meanings for any event; there is not any single inherent meaning. For example, someone not returning your call could mean the person is angry with you and doesn’t want to talk to you. Or, he never got the message. Or, he intends to call back and has been very busy and hasn’t had a chance to call yet. Or, he did call back and when you didn’t answer he decided not to leave a message. Or, …. So whether you like it or not, events just don’t have any inherent meaning. And wanting events to have meaning or feeling uncomfortable because events don’t have meaning doesn’t give them meaning. There is no meaning inherent in events, not because I say so, but because logic demands it. As difficult as it can be to accept this idea when one first hears it, most people do accept it after a little thought. But when I point out the logical consequences of the idea—namely, that meaningless events can’t be good or bad, right or wrong—many people get very resistant. As my wife Shelly said to me when she read an early draft of this post, “I fully buy the idea that events have no inherent meaning, but you are taking that idea to a ridiculous extreme when you say that nothing is right or wrong. Physically punishing a child is always wrong. And what about stoning women to death as they still do in parts of the Middle East? As you really telling me that that isn’t wrong?” To tell you the truth, I sometimes also have a hard time accepting the idea that no event is ever right or wrong when I think about specific situations. But that is still the logical consequence of the fact that events have no inherent meaning. Let me explain why. (See also an earlier post in which I discuss other aspects of this issue, https://www.mortylefkoe.com/viewpoint-the-truth/.)
You have to understand where values come from
Beliefs—what we feel to be true statements about reality—are the meaning we give to meaningless events. We make up the meaning; it is not inherent in events. As a result, no belief is ever “the truth.” Values are a type of belief; they are beliefs about right and wrong, good and bad. In other words, value statements of good and bad, right and wrong, are always the meaning individuals give to meaningless events. And if beliefs are not inherent in events, if they exist only in our minds, then specific values—which are only one type of belief—can never be “the truth” for all people, at all times, under all conditions. It logically follows that if events have no inherent meaning, they can’t possibly be good or bad, right or wrong.
Can you make value judgments?
Although value judgments (such as, this is good; that is bad) are never “the truth,” it is perfectly appropriate to consciously choose your beliefs, including your value beliefs, and live consistently with them … as long as you know you made them up. This will become clearer when we apply the principles I’ve established to specific situations.
Let’s look at spanking
Now let’s apply all these distinctions to spanking children. Let me start by saying, spanking is not inherently barbaric, but it is according to my values. Spanking a defenseless child who cannot defend himself is often physically painful, teaches many spanked children that physical force is an acceptable way of dealing with other people, doesn’t teach the child anything about right and wrong (it only tells the child that the person doing the spanking doesn’t like what the child did), and more often than not leads to negative beliefs that lead to unhappiness and dysfunctional behavior as an adult. According to my values, all of those consequences are bad. Moreover, if changing a child’s behavior is the goal, there are more effective ways to get a child to change his behavior.
What seems “bad” at the moment can seem “good” later on
And yet spanking a child is still not inherently bad. What if being spanked resulted in one child deciding to end violence in the world and actually making some real progress in doing it? Or if one child created a way to get millions of parents better educated in raising children? Was the spanking really “bad” if it led to reducing violence in the world or having parents bring up their children more compassionately and effectively? When police and dogs kept Black children in the South from entering school it seemed like a tragedy at the time, but when those events were seen on television by tens of millions of people they helped get ground-breaking Civil Rights legislation passed. Was keeping the few children from entering school really “bad” if it led to millions more Black children eventually getting a better education? And is even a “better” education really a “good” thing? Slavery made sense to most people at one point in history. Other than the people actually being enslaved, there was a time when very few people challenged the idea that it was okay for some people to “own” other people. Even Thomas Jefferson—who wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”—owned slaves. Despite the racism that still exists today, there are few people in the Western world who would actually try to defend slavery as an institution. In other words, values that seem to be so true and valid at one point in time can change radically over time. We might say that we have evolved and become more moral than people at earlier times. Maybe so, but even if that is true, that only means that some things we argue to be intrinsically good or bad today, might be seen very differently a century from now.
Make up your own mind
Whether we like it or not, there are no such thing as intrinsically good or bad events. You have to decide for yourself what is good and bad, right and wrong. That decision will be largely the result of other beliefs you have formed and the stage of development you are at. Once you have created your value beliefs it is perfectly appropriate to argue for them, to try to convince others of your position, even to fight and die for them. Just don’t ever try to fool yourself into thinking that your values are “right.”
Thanks for reading my blog. Today’s post should engender a lot of controversy. Please post your questions or comments about why moral judgments can never be “the truth.” Your comments will add value for thousands of readers. I love to read them all and I will respond to as many as I can. If you want to help your friends better understand the source of moral judgments, please share this blog post with them by using the buttons located both at the top and the end of this post. If you haven’t yet eliminated at least one of your limiting self-esteem beliefs using the Lefkoe Belief Process, go to http://www.recreateyourlife.com where you can eliminate several limiting beliefs free.
Copyright © 2013 Morty Lefkoe
I’m a fan of Morty’s work, but I don’t believe he was completely correct in this article. In the world of ethics and morality, events can be intrinsically good or bad. For example, our common human reason tells us that the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust was undoubtedly an evil act because no one has the right to deprive innocent people of the natural good of human life, especially through such heinous means like gas chambers. It is true that in the scheme of things, the Holocaust did raise awareness about anti-Semitism; however, that positive consequence can never render the act of killing innocent people a good act.
Three other examples of intrinsic evils are rape, theft, and slavery. Rape is always an intrinsically evil act because it deprives a human person of their right to consent to the personal and sexual use of their body in the way they see fit. Theft is always intrinsically wrong because a thief deprives an owner of some property that rightfully belongs to the owner, such as the owner’s car or wallet. Slavery is intrinsically wrong because it deprives the human person of the universal right we all should enjoy to live as free human beings.
Having said that, when it comes to our psychology, I don’t think that we have to let the existence of inherently or intrinsically evil acts break us down mentally. For example, we can choose to accept that suffering and evil are part of this world where people are able to use their free will to do bad things. We can also take comfort in knowing that while some acts are always evil and wrong, good people can always work to bring good out of evil by making things better in the future.
Hi Jason,
What Morty meant by this is not that there are things that don’t work. Stealing, murder, all of the things you mentioned above do not work. However, you cannot see “right” or “wrong.” Those are value judgments and therefore subjective. From Hitlers point of view, the world would be better off without Jews. Therefore it is right to kill them. If someone is suffering and you kill them, is that right or wrong?
I believe that it is also a more useful distinction because if you ask the question “does this behavior work?” Does it contribute or diminish? Would I want someone to do this to me. How would someone feel if I do this. What might the consequences be? These are more effective questions that is something right or wrong which again is subjective.
Morty would have so loved having this conversation with you.
Love, Shelly
All systems of morality like religions or political correctness to me are like software security programs we have to protect our computers from being corrupted by viruses or malware that can destroy them. As writer Robert Heinlein put it in an address to the US Naval Academy, “Morality is behavior that tends towards survival.” Each of us judges systems of morality much the same way we judge computer software security programs. All systems have their strengths and weaknesses making some better suited in some situations for some people than others but there is a pragmatic utility in asking similar questions comparing them. Has this system been around a long time or is it untested for potential glitches? Does this system have a lot of users recommending it or does it only appeal to a small cult following whose needs and interests may be different from our own?Any widely used long established system of morality like say Catholicism or Hinduism can be safely said not to be a suicide cult like the People’s Temple causing all it’s adherents to be killed off if they didn’t reject it. Spanking may seem barbaric to politically correct European Socialists trying to seduce other people’s children away from the morality of their parents to make up for the massive loss of population European Socialists inflict on themselves by using abortion to cover up their sexual promiscuity during a global AIDS epidemic over 25 million people have died in but objectively being slapped on the rump is medically harmless and the psychological effects of it depend on the individual and the cultural context in which they interpret it. As a retired professional soldier I would be hypocritical to use a system of morality that claimed hurting people was always wrong which I don’t imagine the soldiers who liberated Nazi Death Camps or most survivors of those Camps would agree with. I went to school with a kid named Frank whose sister Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death on her doorstep because her neighbors “didn’t want to get involved” and Frank once jumped in to help me when a bully bigger than me was beating me up on the playground. Frank got involved. It may seem barbaric to you but clearly Frank helped me more than you did. Sometimes violence is objectively the fastest way to stop violence.
Very interesting post Morty and comments, lots to digest. I agree with you. We all have values, beliefs, rules we choose to live by, and assign our own meanings to things based on that. Thus there can be no definitive right and wrong, good or bad, only our own meaning we attribute as an individual – thus it’s an inside job. As was mentioned above, “the map is not the territory”, we create our own reality between our own two ears. The work on the 3 Principles of Mind, Thought and Consciousness, or innate thinking as it’s known, makes sense to me and expands on this. For me, it creates freedom and greater respect of others to know a thought is only a thought unless you choose to attach your own meaning to it. Put another way, we’re only ever one thought away from a happier one, and that’s a nice thought to have.
Hi Morty,
I agree with you in everything you say, but it raises a question about applying the occurring process.
Suppose you have Peggy, who is angry with a father who spanks his child. Peggy thinks that is barbaric. If you ask Peggy to make a distinction, she could spell it out like this:
Event: That guy spanks his child
Meaning: That is barbaric
Emotion: Anger
But she wouldn’t be able to dissolve that meaning. She can be aware that the event is barbaric only according to her values, but they are still her values, and so she can justify her anger with that. So she could try to phrase it this way:
Event: That guy spanks his child (which is barbaric according to my values)
Meaning: ??
Emotion: Anger
But I’m can’t come up with the meaning for that. What meaning do you suggest?
And by the way, I personally get that the event has no meaning and it probably wouldn’t take me more than a few seconds to get rid of the emotion if I was in that situation and experienced anger.
My question here is how can I help someone else apply the occurring process to this situation to get rid of the emotion, or any similar situation where values are involved.
This is exactly whats wrong with society today. We are selfish and think we are the authorities when it comes to right and wrong. We are NOT. God makes the rules and if we stopped getting in these stupid pseudo intellectual discussions about morality and went back to the teachings of the Torah, Bible, and Quran, then the world would be a better place. Let’s face it. We are horrible at deciding whats right and wrong for us. If you want evidence, then take a look at our society and all of the disagreements we have amongst each other concerning truth and falsehood. I would rather follow my Creator rather than creation.
Mo,
I agree that a fundamental problem with society is that we think we are the authorities of moral law. I admire your last sentence “I would rather follow my Creator rather than creation”.
In the animal world they do not seem to think of “the Creator”. We do. If there is any one “key stone” species on earth it would have to be humanity. Animals are primarily governed by instinct while humans have the added sense of moral direction. I always look and see how sustainable a system is within its matrix. Well, animals seem very sustainable in their actions. Humans are very unsustainable.
Many would object that the “Creator/God” idea cannot be proven and therefore shouldn’t be a fundamental belief on which to make importance decisions. To me, we know that lower forms of order and orderly systems ALWAYS come from higher forms, never the other way around. We only suppose that it is the other way around after removing the Creator idea. And we only do that because people think that they are right and others are wrong about who or what the Creator could be or is and it leads to all kinds of societal trouble that most of society is sick of and the rest thinks is a joke (thus marginalizing the power of those holding these views).
But none of those views in themselves actually disprove what we know for sure, that we ALWAYS see lower order come from higher order and never the other way around.
The trouble many would say about the Torah, Bible, Quran and other writing is that they are conflicting views/messages about God and related topics engendering much confusion and dangerous beliefs, just like the original issue you mentioned (of choosing our own right and wrong).
I think that cutting back to what we know FOR SURE and then moving forward again slowly would be the best…wherever that leads one. Of course, this is a flexible course and makes us step backward many times to rethink. What I really like about some of Morty’s processes and ideas is the awareness that it gives to what our own paradigms are and how they are adding meanings and are not the absolute “truth” in themselves, no matter how close they come.
Morty’s ideas do work IN THE SHORT TERM. That is very helpful because if you are drowning all you really need is to get some air. Morty’s ideas are much more immediately relieving and long-term sustaining than that. But my point is that they don’t work in the long term. When I think of long term I think of how does this fit in to the big picture. The big picture is what we seem to know pretty solidly as big as we can get. I tend to think that is the age of the visible universe. Within that context we obviously need to consider the orderly earth habitat and our communal existence upon it among the other systems (living and non-living) as more important. So within the last 4 to 6 thousand years (our recorded history of our species) and within the last few hundred million or even billion terrestrial years (live on the planet) and the projected life span of the earth and its supposed ability to continue stably sustaining our environment in among this solar system.
Of course, within THAT large scope, one can take any meaning that we come up with as a species and individually and attempt to measure it’s impact on the society and biosphere of the earth and see whether or not this does two things 1) leads to AT LEAST (or greater) the same amount of harmony, precision and order as we find in a biological system and astronomical ones and 2) leads us to being able to reach the point where we can sustain ourselves beyond the point where it is predicted we will deplete our resources or the environment with naturally expire.
Morty’s systems don’t help in doing this because its too short-sighted. But then, almost no other system does either. The only system that would, in my mind, would have to be a system in which an Almighty God or Creator would be in direct communication with the key stone species to the end of reaching objectives 1 and 2. And that’s it. That seems like way out there crazy talk.
However, if a person REALLY follows the facts of what we know (universe exists with top down complexity) and realizes that because humans exist with moral senses but not moral centerfixedness (viewpoint is highly subjective) and that humans seem to be the highest form of order (brain-thinking) but we admit we didn’t make ourselves and must not have come from lower ordered things (or people) than that leads to a thought that there must be higher beings or being which is infinite in mind and ability and life and sensory/knowing ability. That will lead to attempting to establish and maintain communication.
At the end, its really simple. If a person really comes to believe that there is a Creator 1) they will reach out to the Creator until the Creator reaches back and establishes contact, 2) this contact will create higher orders than can exist without “Creator-centric” moral guidance. And 3) no matter if 1 and 2 are met because humans are empowered to create meanings some will spin or ignore data to reach other conclusions…but the actual results will not be undone by mere meanings in human minds (which though powerful, would not be able to change the meanings created or being created by a dynamic Creator and whoever that Creator is supporting.)
In the above there is a lot of places where a person could take a statement and make an experiment up that would be able to measurably find the Creator and ongoing communication (theoretically). In other words, there is no reason to continue talking philosophically about it. It could be a scientific endeavor.
(I’d also add: sometimes I wonder how much I overthink stuff….if it works. Do it.
Yet, I also like to try as best I can to examine the “truth” as best I can, from a philosophical level, as history has examples of people who felt “good” from a process, yet maybe that process or belief system was helping an individual- making them feel good, while hurting others)
I really like the idea of “I create meaning”. And I’ve already gotten so much out of it. Thank you!
Particularly your process of: can “you see it”, I’ve only in the past few months realized how profound that is for me in terms of feeling better.
What I’m interested lately in, is the idea of overlapping consciousness/meaning creation. BUT! Before I continue, let me caveat.
So I studied physics in college. I also for 20 years have been an off and on yoga guy. I was often amazed at how often folks would use “quantum mechanics” to justify a world view. I’d want to scream “YO you can’t do that! What happens in small spaces, doesn’t translate to the macroscopic.”
After a particularly disturbing and irrational stay at a yoga center in western mass, I left and ran into a guy I knew, a professor at Dartmouth. He was involved in quantum computing. Cutting edge. A wizened older Audobon sort of figure. I told him of my reticence over the hack science in films like “what the BLEEP do we know”, he chuckled and said, most of those PHD guys aren’t seen as much in the world of quantum mechanics.
Who knows, but that was my gut instinct. That these people were looking for, and creating connections that could not be proven by science. Which isn’t wrong, just misquoted and Mis-supported.
So, my question is this:
If my brain is a logic engine, creating meaning, and my brain is connected to sound waves, light waves, and data from the outside world. Are we not creating meaning together?? Is it not fluid? All a dance of data and matter and energy?
And I don’t mean that in any new age way at all. I mean it in the strictest of materialist philosophical models.
I also find the idea that I create “most” meaning to be very powerful.
a context has the power to shape the way a situation occurs for you, and that your way of being and your
actions are naturally correlated with the way in which that situation occurs for you. werner erhard
please could you explain the differences between context and meaning ?
what is the best solution, dissolving meaning or create a new powerful context ?
thank you.
robert
Hi Robert.
The best solution for what?
If you are having negative emotions caused by meaning, dissolving the meaning will eliminate the negative emotion.
I’m not sure how to create a new context in that situation.
What is the exact definition of context as you are using it?
Love, Morty
Hi Morty,
I want to thank you for the brain-wrecking ideas you’ve been introducing. When I first read your posts and listened to your videos, it all seem to have perfect sense, and I tried to use it in my daily life. Yet, a few weeks ago, an event happened at work that made me rather doubtful about this approach. I have just started a new job and was at the beginning of my second week, when my supervisor started scolding me, for something very minor I didn’t do correctly, being quite angry and very unprofessional. Since I wasn’t in a positions to respond (I just started the job), I tried to use your system about the event not having any inherited meaning and so on. Yet, I felt really upset and hurt and thought it was unjust to treat me this way and couldn’t find any reasonable explanation for it not having a negative meaning. How could it be considered a neutral event if someone is threatening you and addressing you in high tone of voice? How could there be many different explanations when a person addresses you directly and in non uncertain terms?
You see, in examples you often give, like a friend not returning a call or some similar ones, I agree, that there might be many explanations and it’s easier to find no inherent meaning in the event. Yet, in some other examples, like the one I gave you and I am sure many other readers are having, it’s not so easy to find that neutrality.
Thanks again for the wonderful and important work you do in the world. Esther.
Hi Esther,
What do you know for sure from the event in which your supervisor yelled at you for no reason? Do you know that you will be fired? Do you know that he will do it again? Do you know why he did it? Do you know anything other than he did it?
To find out more about dissolving meaning take a look at my TEDx talk that includes walking you through the process to dissolve meaning. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMdVM-t5kFs
Love, Morty
The reason that a person-centric universe might seem so untenable is that people tend to believe that they ARE the person at the center of the universe in that what they believe is the absolute truth.
When we really look at how our brain works and how the universe works we have to logically conclude that no one can know absolute truth. However, that doesn’t mean that we cannot tune into a high fidelity version of it, which can be tuned up continuously with help from an outside source.
We should realize all after that is what so many entities are TRYING to do to us all of the time, they are trying to tune us to their idea of what is right and wrong for us in certain situations. Guns-no guns. Abortion-no abortion. Gay marriage? No gay marriage? But even more subtly obey your government officials? Protest your government officials? This is how the universe and human beings really work. The problem is that the true moral center of the universe need to be identified and tuned in to. Our choice really resides in choosing for ourselves which source we will tune into and let shape our meanings and values. To choose wisely we have to choose only those who behave naturally. Natural behavior is parental behavior. True parents want the best for their children and they provide them with the facts. The entities and officials that don’t do this shouldn’t be allowed to influence your beliefs. Entertainment idols shouldn’t be allowed to influence what is right and wrong in personal comportment and dignity or family life because they are trained to sell through overstimulating our senses in a way that leads to addiction. That is never based on truth. Governments communicate with their people in a way that will keep themselves in power and take the will to fight their policy out of people, instead of laying down the facts. Who knows what facts there are about candidates during elections. Where can people find these facts? How can they be sure of these facts? So we can cut out over 90% of all government, commerce and religion based solely on the fact that they habitually lie and have no inherent reason to tell truth. They are unnatural and thus corruptible to the human moral compass. Still, going it alone and feeling that bad and good is only something inside us is not better. It IS what the leaders in the above entities tell themselves when they lie to influence others for their purposes.
The idea that morality is something that arises from within us as individuals is actually based on a presupposition that we exist in a thing-centric universe. If human beings come from mindless inanimate (things) by chance then there is no inherent meaning. If there is no inherent meaning, only meaning that we create, then there is no absolute good or evil. What seems to be good or evil and which most will not disagree about, such as the example given above of Hilter’s activities, this is due also too many people’s meanings actually agreeing with one another and not some universal moral constant that comes from outside us.
However, if we live in a person-centric universe in which all things come from people then all things and all events have a measure of meaning inherent in them. Events happen or are allowed to happen for a reason, based on the values and beliefs and thoughts and morals of the person or people who are powerful enough to observe and act or not act upon the events, people and things.
No matter how much we want to prove or disprove one paradigm or the other both persist. For myself, though, a person centric universe works in real life and a thing centric universe does not.
The thing-centric relies upon blind force of evolution for creating behaviors that move a species toward greater adaptive survival abilities. Yet, the very sense of morality itself arising as it does within the minds of individuals in a very individual way seems to be the opposite of adaptive survival abilities. Whereas the entire biosphere and all the organisms in it are surviving in perfect balance without a highly developed sense of right and wrong, human beings, which concern themselves with such constantly, are the most out of balance creature on earth. They are tearing apart the earth and all of the organisms on it are threatened by their constant moral struggling both within themselves as a group and within themselves as individuals.
In fact, human beings are doing so horribly because they behave without centralized moral standards. And when those standards have been centralized to a certain extent it has brought only a measure of order when weighed against the suffering to humans and the creatures around us.
The problem is that humans have no centralizing moral force. Whereas animals centralizing force is mainly instinct ours is free moral agency. Instinct seems mostly programmed whereas free moral agency means that we decide what is right to believe and wrong to believe with much more frequency and latitude then animals. Then, because of our mastery of language and higher thought along with our upright bodies and opposable thumbs we can change the earth with it’s soil, air, water and all creatures into whatever we wish, only we cannot agree on what is right and wrong to those ends.
It is as if humanity is a child without a parent who could and would teach it right from wrong.
The conscience is not a sense of what is actually right and wrong. It is like a compass. With the right calibration it can be sensitized to the actual moral universe around us, with it’s immutable moral principles. These don’t come from inside us, rather we sense that which is outside us. This is both in the way that gravity acts upon us AND in the way that the acknowledgement and approval or the disapproval of a father or mother comes not from within us but from outside of us.
Society around us drives the training of our moral compass. However, in a person-centric universe there was a person who created or designed everyone and thing. In that way, the universe was designed in a moral way inasmuch as it was designed by a moral being so that physical things happen in reaction to moral decisions and in that the moral being at the center of things is well aware of moral decisions being made by all creatures.
This line of thought does not necessitate that one start jumping to conclusions about what the viewpoint or will of God is. It just leads to the conclusion that in a person-centered universe there must be a central designer with a moral sense which would be the first and last touchstone of moral standards, the magnetic field and sun and north star by which we can locate ourselves and our actions in the moral universe. But in a thing-centered universe there is no absolute good or bad at all. It would have to be all subjective so that governing oneself relies solely upon the social networks and human thought. The GROWING problem with the thing-centric universe is that human morality has been thus allowed to unhinged itself in the past hundred years and society is coming unglued. It’s spinning so fast that it is flying apart. Change is being driven in religion, government, commerce and every other sector of society as if there is a hidden goal to keep the species out of ecological balance long enough to destroy all life on earth.
You say that events have no inherent meaning. Well, if my parents spanked me, I can’t (as a child) know what was in their mind–whether they did it because I was “bad”, or because THEY were bad people, or because they thought it would keep me safe (whether their assessment about that was right or wrong). So, that event didn’t absolutely have to mean any one of those things (i.e., didn’t have an inherent or inevitable meaning).
That is FAR different than saying that their action didn’t have ANY meaning. Their action DID have a meaning about THEM and their beliefs, which could have been good or bad. I simply was not in a position to know what it was (although as an adult I may have enough clues to guess with some reliability).
Better yet is the story of the man’s son’s leg being broken by their donkey, which is a ‘bad’ thing–except that it kept the son from being conscripted into the military, which (for that family) was a ‘good’ thing.
Events not having an INHERENT (absolute, inevitable) meaning does NOT mean, however, that those events don’t HAVE any meaning, nor that the actors didn’t have a meaning/reason/belief for their action, for that their actions can’t be right or wrong.
We as finite human beings cannot always know others’ motives, so our assignment of motives and meanings is always to some extent subjective and therefore possible to be in error. That does not mean that there is not an infinite definition of right and wrong which is beyond our full understanding, but which we can often ascertain.
Hitler killing the Jews is WRONG, no matter what his (real) reason for doing it. School shooters’ actions are WRONG, no matter their motivation. Jihadists killing ‘non-believers’ is WRONG. Any taking of another person’s life is WRONG, except when that person has taken other peoples’ lives or cause grievous harm, and taking their life is the only way to prevent them from doing more of the same in the future.
Events may not have INHERENT meaning, but they DO have meaning, and they CAN be definitively right or wrong.
Another way to look at it is that all meaning comes from inside your mind. It exists nowhere else. Right and wrong are ideas from inside your mind. They do not exist out in the world. Anywhere. You will never see them, hear them, touch them, measure them, smell or taste them. We each decide what’s right and wrong. It’s a product of our minds. We don’t discover it somewhere, that is an illusion, no matter how appealing it may be.
Hi CM,
I disagree with your comment. I think you are failing to grasp the point Morty is making. The taking of human life seems to be for you the ultimate no-no, the event which is clearly WRONG, right? However, I would suggest that this reaction is the result of your sense of morality. Morality in humans is a system that evolved as a means of asserting the parameters for behaviour that are conducive to the ongoing survival of our species. This system is flexible and changes over time to suit our needs.
Now before anyone freaks out and has a cow here I want to be clear: I DO NOT believe in or endorse the killing of any human being. I am as driven by my instilled sense of morality as anyone else is, the only difference is I am aware that the system which we use to control undesirable behaviour that may be of detriment to the progress of our species is NOT the absolute truth of the universe we live in, but rather a distillation of meaning from events that, as Morty accurately describes, have NO inherent meaning.
A person that kills another human being(s) is committing an act that we as humans consider wrong. However, a hypothetical alien observer with a completely different set of values may view the event as one of many acts of violence/death that occur in nature. The observer may ascribe the cause of the event to a complex emotional dysfunction present in the murderer, however they may not see the event as right or wrong but rather as a natural occurrence and they would not be wrong in viewing the occurrence this way based on their differing set of values. The only truth to be drawn from this event is that a human life was taken by another human.
I think the trouble with accepting that events have no inherent meaning is that it triggers a feeling of unease and doubt in the meanings that we attach to these events, which can be a scary thing to face. I think it is wise to separate the events and the meaning that we give them and learn to appreciate them both for what they are without letting them get rolled into one, ambiguous and confusing occurrence.
I hope this made sense to someone. It is a very tricky subject to write on for sure!
Gus
Hi,
Great replies.
Some of my thoughts are:
Intelligent design to me, may be something that helps people feel comfortable that everything is mapped out- can satisfy a parental need existentially. Someone else is in control. To me it is mostly irrational, but hey, I’ve changed my mind in life many times :)
There is data inherent in events. But that is different than I think morty means by meaning. SO:
If when a mothers face turns red, and she smells of alcohol, and she raises her hand above a child….that is all data.
The “meaning” In the child of “she’s most certainly about to hit me” is generated in the child’s mind, from the data.
The data is inherent in the event- moms face flushed with blood etc.
The meaning is a probability established by the child about the past and patterns that have occured.
So I’d say it’s very important to notice data and patterns in people, and then use that data to generate meaning.
In the above example I might generate any number of meanings:
– I need to duck
– I want to strike back
– I must beg
– I am bad
– my parent needs help
-etc, etc…
I wasn’t abused physically as a child but this example feels like it helps me understand and explain my current understanding of LBP
As a small child I had a caregiver who put a knife to my throat if I didn’t behave. If she hadn’t, I never would’ve formed the beliefs that led me to the anxieties that led me to the Lefkoe belief process. I think I’m freer now than if I’d had a “normal” upbringing. Her behavior was wrong, but it had a positive result.
Yeah, I agree with Morty on this. To say events have inherent meaning, means that for every event out there, there is one absolute truth/meaning in them. But if you consider this, then how do you decide what that inherent meaning is? Is it a gut feeling? Or just something that “feels” right?
And even so why is it that your opinion of the event is the absolute truth? You feel that the event has an inherent meaning. But what about other people who feel differently about a situation and give it a different meaning that’s not congruent with the inhernent meaning that you discovered. They felt it must be right for them, so what’s wrong with that?
I guess what I’m asking is (for people like Dan & Lucio) is how do you know that the meaning you are giving an event is the absolute inherent meaning? So far, the only answer that I’ve been able to come up with is that you don’t. I would be interested to learn more.
Also Morty, what types of beliefs determine whether a person is an optimist or a pessimist. The other day I was using the occuring process about a specific event and having good success with it. The emotion disappeared, but then when I’d think about it again, I’d give it the same meaning (not on purpose of course) and the emotion would come right back. This repeated itself about 4-5 times, until I eventually got tired of using the occuring process.
Keep in mind that I’m a more kenesthic than visual person. Is it possible that the reasons beliefs sometimes come back for kenesthic people is that they unconciously give the same meanings to the same core events that caused the belief in the first place (perhaps caused by their beliefs/attitude). Because even though I did the occuring process to dissolve the emotion, I was still convinced that the meaning I gave the event would probably be the most likely. I’d love to chat about this with you sometime because it would be great if you could find a way to make beliefs for kenethistic people go away for good. I’ve used your process many times and it’s worked really well. But sometimes the beliefs do come back, lol.
Well, have a good one.
Ted
Hi Ted,
Originally Morty brought out that an event such as a spanking could end up with results that are favorable. But then, how could it be bad? However, it could have an unfavorable result. So does THAT make it bad?
I believe that we exist not in a thing-centric universe but a person-centric one. If things are from and for people instead of people are from things and for nothing except what they then decide they are for then everything has a basic meaning. I should say, a meaning is already there or relevant.
We can build from there. But we shouldn’t start at there is no inherent meaning. If we don’t know what that meaning is and don’t want to spend our lives finding out…well, we don’t have to. It is simple enough to say that we don’t know what the inherent meaning is and reduce our own to nothing or as near nothing as possible. In other words, why close the door on the possibility that meaning is inherent just because we don’t know what it is?
This leads closely back to where Morty ends up. If someone slaps me can I really know why…for sure? It’s enough to say “yes, I really can know why” but to “for sure” meaning absolutely with a qualified “no”. No, because the answer can be yes, but from another angle it can hold more meaning at another angle. The wording of the meaning cannot possibly hold the entire “truth” of the event just as a map cannot possibly hold all of the details of the world it reflects.
The point is to recognize that our meanings are not reality and to do so quickly and efficiently. The Lefkoe processes are excellent tools for becoming aware of the creation of meanings as opposed to the actual. As they say in NLP, the map is not the world.
Again, my point is the that wording that there is no meaning inherent in an event is misleading and just doesn’t feel right. If I had some other wording to suggest I would, but I don’t. I do know, though, that Morty’s processes work and I use them. Just remember that any system can improve and Morty is all about innovation and hence does improve when he comes up with something more or better. That is a great reason to keep reading his blog.
I totally agree with you, Dan. See my comment above. I think Morty is limiting in his own way, and I just don’t think it is necessary or helpful. My take is this: just because we mortals don’t know the meaning of something for certain does not mean that meaning doesn’t exist. But his program works for those of us who tend to attach meaning to every little thing through false assumptions, and for those who become emotionally unstable because of the importance they attach to their assumptions. I wouldn’t follow his philosophy, but I think he has some very good and useful points to make.
Dan you’re an Intelligent Design advocate right? (I am as well)
I agree that if the Universe is Designed in full, and determinism is true, then things DO have inherent meaning (given by the Designer), because they have inherent purpose since every event is part of the Design (even if specific events don’t have an immediate purpose or apparent meaning, they surely have a purpose as they affect the outcome of the entire Universe/Design as a whole, if determinism is true)
However, Morty’s ideas have a useful practical application, and in real life situations they might work. I’m not completely bought into the logic that things have no inherenet meaning, but maybe it’s because Morty is not too clear himself about under which frame of logic or situations his ideas should be used. Superficially it looks like events have no meaning, however Morty tries to give an absolute no-meaning label to every event and disregard the fact that humans are not robots that can just shut-off meaning and move on. In the end Morty’s ideas are very useful in a practical way and have proven to be succesful in many ways, but I don’t believe it’s the end of the road regarding the understanding of how beliefs affect us and how to deal with them.
Hi Lucio,
It isn’t whether I personally want events to have meaning or not, or even if I like the fact that events have no meaning.
When I say events have no meaning I mean that you can’t draw any conclusions for sure from any event or series of events. That has nothing to do with whether or not an event has a purpose.
If you hit me with a reason in your mind, with a purpose, then the event had a purpose. But what do I know for sure as a result of being hit? Do I know that I’m bad, or I did something wrong, or that others will hit me, or that you will hit me next time, etc. I can’t make any predictions or plan any action based merely on the fact of the event.
Tell me an event that has a meaning.
Love, Morty
Morty, I am glad you cleared that up for me, because I think it’s rather naive and foolish to state that events have no meaning. We could go on and on about the meanings behind historical events. What I believe is that there is a universal truth or design, but that we are too limited to know what truth is. I think we humans, especially keenly spiritual or intelligent humans, can touch on those truths, however, and when we do, most other humans connect with them in an “aha” sort of way. We humans are limited, and we are constantly using our limited experiences and cognitive powers to give meaning to events. We assume things all the time that end up not being correct, and often we fail to change our beliefs even after we learn we weren’t correct. I think that is what trips us up, and I think your advice about minimizing our beliefs is helpful.
But when you change from being a pragmatic coach to one who is trying to preach your own philosophy, you are actually limiting your own ability to help other people. Because people don’t need to stop believing in a higher power, a designer, or a universal truth in order to get help from you about limiting their beliefs about the events in their own lives.
Hi Sally,
Thanks for taking the time to comment and join the conversation.
I am not asking you or anyone else to stop believing in a higher power or universal truth. I am only asking: What do you (or anyone else) know for sure as a result of any event or series of events? I don’t think we know anything for sure, so I write how I see things. You obviously do not have to accept what I say and I encourage different points of view. What I do every week is describe how I see things and provide my reasons why. You are free to agree that what I write makes sense or disagree and explain why what I say does NOT make sense.
But no one yet has described an event that has an inherent meaning and told me what that meaning is.
Love, Morty
Hi Morty, let me see if I got it straight. For you, the meaning of an event is translated into “what information about the present and future can I infer from that event”? So when you’re saying that “events have no meaning”, you’re basically saying: “There’s no reliable information I can draw from this event so I shouldn’t draw any conclusions”. Or to put it in another way, for you “event’s having no meaning” is the same as “events not containing any information I can realiably use”? Is that so?
I agree that emotions affect the meaning we give to events, however, if we remove ALL of the “emotional” influence out of our minds, does that mean that we still can’t draw any reliable conclusion about the event? If we can’t make predictions or plans around events, then that’s impossible to consider.
I think that what you mean is that “all events have SUBJECTIVE meaning, and never an OBJECTIVE meaning”. You should make that clearer because it’s easy to forget you are talking about “objective meaning”. For most people “meaning” is inherently subjective I think.
“Events have no meaning” doesn’t say aything about the type of meaning (subjective or objective). It can be confusing.
“Events have no objective meaning”. This is the phrase you should use. That’s what I think.
Hi Lucio,
The phrase I use is: events have no inherent meaning. In other words, we can and do add meaning all the time, but that meaning is subjective, it has been added. It is not part of, intrinsic to, the event.
To say events do not have a meaning does not mean we can’t add a meaning.
Thanks for joining the conversation.
Love, Morty
Hi Morty, While it’s true that ‘events have no meaning’, it’s also true that ‘nothing’ has any meaning. As in… Nothing means anything and anything means nothing’. There are no meanings for any thing at all. Therefore, we, through our belief systems, come along and give anything and everything, all the meaning ‘it’ has for us. And then ignore that those are our mind mechanics. Yet the meaning we give to anything and everything, still has no “validness” to it either. It’s just our mind, again through our belief systems, giving us the experience of what we’re believing ABOUT ‘this’, ‘that’ or anything at all. These are all appropriately called, “our own defining (or interpreting) mind contexts, ABOUT”, ‘this’, ‘that’ or anything at all. So what we think of as our ‘life experience’, is one story after another story, after another one, intertwined and interwoven… made up from what we’re believing ABOUT anything and everything. “Morals” are nothing more or less than any other way we’re experiencing “our own defining (or interpreting) mind contexts, ABOUT’ anything and everything. Thus, nothing that ever happens in the world is able to matter (inherently), when the basic care and keeping of bodies is not the issue. Nobody can “be” ‘a victim’, and nobody can “be” ‘rewarded’. Even though bodies are often victimized and sometimes rewarded… according to a healthy body… a useful and workable healthy body. Thus we’re ‘trapped’, ‘contained’ and more like ‘imprisoned’, within the false mind contexts of… “I am my body. And since the conditions often affect bodies, then the conditions and the events must be affecting me as well” And that’s our “mind prison”… on and on and on and on, shedding one body to take up another body, and believing falsely that what happens in the world is affecting me… with the word extension… “Therefore……”… And we go off to manipulate the conditions for the sake of “better feelings, better experiences and better lives”, when it’s all, just a horrible pile of crap we’re stuck in and with. So much more to say about all this. Sincerely, Jerry
Hi Morty,
For an event that has an inherent meaning, does death fit your definition? When someone dies, you do know one thing objectively: that person is permanently gone from this earth.
Tess,
Death is a fact, not a meaning. To say death is good or death is bad is meaning. Neither are inherently true of every death in every situation. In others words, death is an event that has no meaning.
Thanks for joining the conversation.
Love, Morty
Morty, you wrote:
“When I say events have no meaning I mean that you can’t draw any conclusions for sure from any event or series of events.”
This has always been my biggest issue with your material. You make an illicit slide from epistemology (what we can have knowledge about) to metaphysics (what is real). But why think that something can’t exist unless we have knowledge of it? The two concepts, after all, are not logically related. It’s a substantive, philosophical assumption. Which you could, for all I know, be right about. You just haven’t given any reason for us to accept the view.
That being said, I’ve used your Natural Confidence program, and even though I couldn’t honestly tell myself that *events* have no inherent meaning, I found it wasn’t necessary. It was enough to just note that *I* have no *certain knowledge* about the meanings of those events. I got a lot of benefit out of your method (for which I thank you very deeply). I don’t think I would have gotten anything more out of it for accepting an anti-realist metaphysics, rather than just confining myself to thinking about my own state of knowledge.
In other words, I think your anti-realism is misguided, but ultimately not as essential to your method as you think.
I want to end on a positive note, though, by thanking you again for everything you’ve done. The process really is amazing.
Hi,
If you contend there is inherent meaning in events but human beings don’t know what it is and can’t ever figure it out, fine. I guess that’s possible. But practically all the meaning we think is in events is really in our minds. That keeps us from dealing with what is really out there (the event); we are dealing with a meaning that exists only in our minds. It also results in having to live with a lot of stress and suffering that results from the meanings we make up.
It is possible to realize we make up those meanings and dissolve them, which enables us to live a happier and effective life.
If there is a real meaning that only “God” knows, fine. But practically speaking, so what? All the meaning we are ever aware of exists only in our minds and can be dissolved.
You can eliminate a belief without accepting the idea that events have no meaning, but that would make it more difficult for most people. As long as there is a “real” meaning for mom and dad’s behavior, people will assume it is the meaning they gave it and will have a hard time eliminating their beliefs. And some people can and I guess you are one of them.
Thanks for your comments. I love the conversation this post has engendered.
Love, Morty
Hi Lucio,
I don’t believe in determinism if you mean that things are fated. If there is a Designer, and I believe that there is, it doesn’t automatically follow that determinism is the basis of every event.
It is now obvious that the universe has been designed with certain functions as has everything in it. Within those functions a certain amount of probability exists. Within what is possible in our universe we largely influence the probable through our thought and action. As part of that thought our perceptions and beliefs have a lot to do with the outcome or the actual. And the actual is also open to framing through our meanings.
Where people go off track is believing that God has a master plan. That idea started a very long time ago, much longer than when we understood that the universe cannot be known in total and still have the quantum mechanical functions that it does. It’s impossible to know everything presently. We can only know some things about things and that makes the other parts of it “imaginary” or relative or a wave state. Again, the universe seems to have been created for maximum flexibility. Without this flexibility decision would not exist, therefore thought and time would be meaningless. Everything about the design of the universe shows the great lengths of design that the Designer went to so that decisions matter and that we could create meanings as intelligent creatures. Meanings that matter.
Morty doesn’t say one should shut off meaning but become aware of the meanings we are creating. My point is simply that some meaning is already there. Not that we aren’t making more meaning on top of that and causing ourselves unnecessary pain from them but just the fact that a master observer/creator is watching and because of having the power to control the event either causing the event or allowing it to happen. In order to do either the person has a perception/meaning for their action/non-action. Also, since the event exists in the universe that the Designer caused the Designer can be said to have caused it whether or not the Designer actually caused it. There is a root meaning in the event for the Designer to do so. Any meanings that I create I seek to have them line up with the Designer’s meanings. This saves time and energy. Creating meanings which have no basis in the Designer’s meanings leads to unnecessary suffering.
On the other hand, saying that there is no meaning inherent in events presupposes that there is simply no designer and that you are the sole creator of your life (another process by Lefkoe). There is a quantum mechanical basis for that statement. However, it is like saying that I cloud bursting (which I or anyone who is open to learning if they have about 30 minutes can do) means that humans literally create their own self and are an invincible incorporeal immortal being who builds not only their own physical bodies but all reality. It just goes too far and in going too far begins to go down a path closed off to truth.
Ted, I think you believe in free will then.
I don’t think the existence of a Designer implies a master plan, I think determinism is inferred independently. I don’t agree with you that “human decisions” are important in any way either. I do believe in determinism because I think that science shows a pervasive deterministic nature. The fact that such thing as human behaviourial patterns exist is proof in my opinion that human choices are determined just like any other thing in the natural world. Quantum mechanics doesn’t nullify determinism either, since being free agents would imply what? Changing the spins of particles with our minds? Moving ions through different neural channels than others?
Anyway, I don’t want to start a debate on free will. People don’t like the implications of determinism, I get it, so let’s leave it at that.
Hi Dan,
thank you for bringing up an aspect I was not conscious about. Your comment helped me in better understanding the rapport between hazard and conscious intention and the distinction between order and determinism.
The first important question to be answered is: is our universe in order or in disorder ?
Looking at the precision with which natural phenomenon happen ( like the succession of day and night, of seasons, rotation of planets … ) is is very unlikely to think that all these are based on hazard ( hazard = disorder = opposite to order= lack of any intention ).
The second question to be answered is: if the universe is following a specific order/design, what is the root of it ?
As far as I am concerned, the only possible answer is a conscious intention. Because only intention/reason has the potential to create order.
And order implies meaning.
Therefore there are two levels of meaning: universe/God and man.
And we both have the possibility to create/choose them, being present to the consequences resulting from it.
I have never agreed with the belief that there is no inherent meaning in events. In fact, all events have inherent meaning. Events have specific inherent meanings that it is good to accept and focus on at a particular time and other inherent meaning(s) at later times that it is good to understand and accept at later periods.
Events don’t just “happen” blindly. Look around you. Nearly everything in the modern world is designed and has a range of purpose for which it was designed. Therefore, most of what happens to you and I has built in intent and meaning. We got hit with a car when we were walking across a street. The street was designed. The car was designed. The person walking and the person driving have intent in doing what they were doing. Moreover, there is a way to both prevent what happened and to improve the situation so that this event doesn’t happen again. Inherent meanings are everywhere.
The problem is that a universe filled with things that have no meaning just doesn’t FEEL right, doesn’t feel like the truth. Because it isn’t. Things are designed.
That leads us to another thought. Are people designed? Ut oh, the God question.
However, if humans themselves are starting to design rudimentary organisms why couldn’t human beings have been designed themselves? The fact is that no one can prove otherwise. They simply choose to believe that people come from things. The fact is that we have only ever seen people coming from other people. And there was always meaning in it. We’ve never ever seen people coming from things. And yet, every accepted science is built on this fuzzy thought that people come from things and therefore that there is no inherent meaning but that which we create, design and accept.
A step further: one of the simplest life forms, a bacteria has very little dna. However, it still has rna and proteins and these still need to work together in order for its life to go on. Each protein, rna, dna even as “simple” as they each are are still orders beyond being mathematically arising by blind chance in what is considered “possible”. However, even if the impossible happened, how did rna, dna and protein all arise by chance together and in a protected area and begin the intelligent dance of cellular life?
Our solar system, we are finding out, is atypical. It has atypical geometry just right for life. Our moon is too big for all the models we have for a moon that is likely to have happened by chance. The Earth is in the right orbit, the orbit is the correct one, the outer plants are good sizes to protect the terrestrial planets. On Earth, the atmosphere is unlikely. It is transparent allowing us to see as deep into the universe as is actually physically possible and yet able to block out lethal radiation and protect again most meteorite strikes. We are far enough above the galactic plane to be able to see a lot of stars instead of the blackness of dust yet we are not blinded by local stars so that we cannot detect the rest of the universe. I could go on and on about how things that we didn’t design appear to be designed and timed perfectly (including us) for maximum safe observation (thus learning) and interactivity (developing/doing) with the universe as a whole.
Living a life on the basis of the belief that there is no inherent meaning in events is effective in reducing the pain which comes from having little to no awareness of our individual power to detect and create our own meaning. However, it doesn’t create further awareness that YOUR meaning can sometimes over power my meaning and that MY meaning can overshadow yours. The more influential the person the more the meaning they create tends to matter.
In my life, it matters for me to find God and understand his values, beliefs, intent, meanings, those which he has created and those that he has left up to us and to me as an individual. It saves a lot of time and grief. The grief always comes from creating meaning that 1) isn’t true from in the context of the physical universe and 2) that is not true in terms of the most powerful people around you and 3) God. Whether that grief should be avoided or not something else to consider.
“The problem is that a universe filled with things that have no meaning just doesn’t FEEL right, doesn’t feel like the truth.”
It feels fine to me. Why doesn’t it feel right to you? What’s different about you?
Hi Morty,
You are so on track with the thinking of A Course in Miracles. Much wisdom, as well as the keys to peace and freedom are available there. The issues of “truth”and what we value are clearly communicated in those writings. Good for you for bringing it into the mainstream.
Good morning everyone. I am sorry to disagree however I believe any action is appropriate in some context including taking another persons life. My dad (born 1904 8th grade education) only whipped me 2 times in my life (born 1954). My dad was my buddy. And in both cases when he took off his belt and flogged me it is because I had been extremely disrespectful and continued to push his buttons over and over until enough was enough. I learned to show him respect. In his case he was the eldest of 8 children and his dad beat him daily when he came home from school. Now in the case of my mom (born 1909, phd in microbiology) she spanked me at irrigular times with a hair brush and I learned to disrespect her. So in my view the topic should be when and how to spank a child, not never spank a child. In my view when they are disrespectful and push your buttons over and over and over to get attention, there may become a time when a hard spanking is appropriate (in my view)
Beliefs are irrational. There is no foundation, no truth in beliefs.
I totally agree with this Morty, thank you for your post and for your work in this area.
I wonder, in 200 years time, what humans will think of our current ‘values’ when they look back.
Love
Laura
But you are assuming that the values will always change for the better (there, already a distinction between good and bad). Suppose no one knew about spanking or practiced it. Then one day, a parent, in some urgent situation whacks a child and discovers that it makes the child obey instantly. If the parent knows that there is no inherent meaning in events, and since all meaning is arbitrarily chosen, she allows it to mean ‘whacking is an effective technique’ and starts using it more often. Others observe and the practice spreads. Values change, in this instance they would have changed for the ‘worse’. If you have a governing value like ‘do not cause suffering’ and accept it as inherent and unchanging, it would help in weeding out those meanings that cause suffering. “Events are meaningless” is a very good perspective to have, for a person who feels victimized. It allows them to drop the baggage and live. But in my actions towards others, I need to know that it is bad to be an agent of suffering. Of course, in my example, it is possible that after the practice spreads and settles, someone comes around who gives the meaning’spanking is bad’ and gets rid of it, with a lot effort and struggle, and the cycle keeps repeating…..Is this all we can expect?
I like the way you think. I want to be all logical like that.
Dear Morty,
this post couldn’t have come in a better time for me, thank you!
Lately I’ve been reflecting on this particular issue, in the area of religious beliefs.
Why is it so difficult for us to accept that our religion is not the truth, it’s only a truth? As long as there is at least one different view from ours of who God is, what he wants from us or if he even exists we have no right to say our religion is the right one. If it was there would be only one religion in the world!
No one argues over the existence of Oxygen or Gravity. Why do we have the need to defend our religious beliefs as if we were talking about Oxygen or Gravity?
We should stop and think “hey, someone else believes in a completely different God from the one I believe, it must be that this God thing is a view of reality we CHOOSE , it’s not a fact.”
Love,
Fidelma
Hi Morty,
with this post I feel you started a whole ” ball game ” rolling over.
Looking also to Fidelma’s comment, I would like to bring into consideration a basic question ( for me at least :) ): ” Is it morals/ethics created by men or by “someoneelse ” ?
If the answer is that the morals ( the principles/theory about good and bad ) was/is created by men, then logically results that any behavior may be considered good or bad according to the morals people choosed.
If the answer is that it was created by “someoneelse ” , by a superior authority = God, than logically the anwer is at follows: as long as the behaviors of any people are in accordance with it, they are good. If they are contrary, they are bad.
Now people may have any kind of beliefs, including the one related to God existence or not. The problem that arises is that if the morals adopted by one group is against the one adopted by another group, than conflict/war appear as a “natural” consequence easily.
The real issue I see is ” what are the consequences of your beliefs in your life ? What is the quality of your life based on that ?”
In his book ” The language of God “, the author, Francis Collins , makes the following statement: ” By denying any existence of a superior authority, the atheism has the potential ( now fulfilled ) of freeing people of any responsibility for not opressing each other “.
I just lauch an invitation to reflect on how this world may look like if the 10 commandments of Moses would be observed by all people ?
Costel,
Thanks for that post. I want to comment on ‘what the world might look like if the 10 commandments of Moses were observed by all people. :)
The interesting thing to note is that these commandments are part of a total Law Code or Torah. These total about 600 laws and deal with commerce, various types of morality, environment, shelter, clothing, laws for warfare and more. The Law Code was given to a specific people (Israelites) who vowed that they and their descendants would obey it (about 603,505 men in attendance not counting the Levitical Tribe and women and children). The Law came into effect as a binding legal covenant at Mount Sinai where Israel was gathered about a year (more or less) from their departure from Egypt. That was 1513 B.C.E. It continued in force until it the death of Jesus validated a covenant he made privately with his 11 disciples a day before in the year 33. So technically Law was only ever binding on Israelites who lived between 1513 and 33 not those before or those after and any proselytes who voluntarily joined with the nation during that period.
The national Law made sense for them and was fitting for the time. It isn’t relevant for people today. As Jesus brought out, though, there are timeless principles upon which the Law was based. They were based on an agape love and what was accepted up to that time as the entire written revelation of God (the Scriptures of Genesis-Malachi) could be summed up in two of the Law’s commandments 1) love of God and 2) love of neighbor.
Those laws as part of the Law Code are also not binding upon the world population. However, the directive to all Christians of ‘do to your neighbor what you would want your neighbor to do to you’ underscores a universal and immutable moral PRINCIPLES that can be scientifically measured in such things as game theory (“tit-for-tat”, for instance).
I said “not relevant” in the sense that it is not legally binding. However, the unchanging moral standards from which God brought forth the Ten Commandments is still relevant. The first commandment is ‘you must not have any other gods besides me’. As the Creator of the universe and humanity God also claimed the right of Universal Sovereign encompassing the legislative, judicial and executive functions of governance. It went far beyond that. It involved the very inner “heart” of people which God could see. As seen in the other commandments God he commanded that people control not just outward actions but inner thoughts about God and each other upon the principle of love and respect for God and man. No government today commands this nor can enforce it. God, if there is a Supreme Designer who created both the matrix for which human thought can take place and the human organism which can produce it can no doubt sense those thoughts and know what will come out of said thought into the material world. Humans KNOW that we don’t have the ability nor the right to look into each other’s minds and say what is right and wrong about such things or police such. Only the Designer would have that right and might be in a position as the moral center of the universe and as a parent of all sentient life to both see from every angle and the highest vantage point and to care equally for all. Such a law in unacceptable and makes no sense to thing-centric universe thinkers. On the other hand, such a Law doesn’t benefit person-centric universe thinkers who think that they absolutely know the mind of God…because that can never be the case and they end up being their own “God” thus creating dangerous personal beliefs and religious entities which do not behave with the flow of nature.
God also revealed a title as Grand Instructor showing that those who wish to know and be governed by him would need to keep in communication with him for ongoing moral education in learning moral principles and how to apply them (often taught by the laying of specific principle-based laws which would exist for a time and circumstance).
The only way to locate and keep testing for this moral signal of God would be to take a look at what is most naturally evident and go from there. The fact that all people we have ever seen come from OTHER PEOPLE. These other people get taken care of, influenced morally and integrated into the social network of pre-existing people. That is fact. Spontaneous generation of non-living and biological order is not something that anyone has ever observed. It’s just something that is guessed at. You find things upon which your beliefs and perceptions are rooted THAT DON’T HAVE A SOLID FOUNDATION IN WHAT IS ACTUAL and remove this just as the Lefkoe Method locates and can desolve added meanings. That will cause one to be able to locate social structures of humanity that operate closer and closer to the beat of nature. That’s one way to tune into God’s ‘moral signal’ if you will. Another way is to simply ask God to reveal himself and what is right and wrong. (This is logical in a person-centric universe but laughable in a thing-centered one.) Ask for guidance upon your thoughts (perceptions, values, beliefs) through clear evidence based on ever firmer ACTUALITIES.
Yes, but by claiming the existence of a superior authority who creates a moral code, people divulge all responsibility for being moral human beings. If they did not create the code, then they have no responsibility to themselves to enforce it. Their only responsibility is to appear moral in the eyes of others and deal with their transgressions privately (between them and god) which over the millennium manifests as buying forgiveness from the church and casting aspersions on those who do not follow “the way.”
In other words, you have the phenomenon of religious followers blaming the non-religious for the things they themselves do. After all, Francis Collins’ statement is a sweeping generalization that doesn’t acknowledge the fact that in the Dark Ages of Europe, a time of great oppression, the Church was at the height of its power. In today’s age, where the church is at its lowest point in terms of power, there is less oppression. We’re not perfect today, but we’re better.
My point is very simple. If you shoulder the responsibility to choose what it is to be a good person, instead of leaving it up to someone else, you also have the responsibility to answer for it. This, however, is MUCH harder to do than to follow someone else’s morality. Following a divine commandment lends a sense or certainty and authority that you’re doing the right thing. If you’re following your own values that you chose you have to every day face the uncertainty that you may be wrong and stick with it anyway. I believe it requires considerably more courage and integrity.
I would like to counter your invitation with an invitation to reflect on why each of the 10 commandments is or is not good–without using the reasoning that God says it is so. What would you YOURSELF, alone and without the support of God, choose?
And if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, it is actually scary. But it’s better than alternative of being amoral or a hypocrite.
“by claiming the existence of a superior authority who creates a moral code, people divulge all responsibility for being moral human beings. If they did not create the code, then they have no responsibility to themselves to enforce it.”
The navigational systems in a jet airplane rely on data from radar, gps, sight and other. But it still has to gather that information and make sense of it. The system won’t be able to just tell you where it is located in three dimensions without input. That’s not it’s design. However, with properly “perceived” and interpreted data it can navigate well. The radio, gps and sight doesn’t navigate that plane. That is not their function. They allow the jet to find its location and plot a course. In the same way, human beings do not do well when they believe that they can just say what good or bad, that it relies solely on what comes from within. Neither would following the logic of a person-centric universe lead a free moral agent to become a mindless automaton.
What you described as “better” and then “amoral and hypocritical” are moral judgments based on your own values. Those values are shaped by society which currently frames the past’s suffering as having been largely caused by the belief rooted in belief in a Creator.
In actuality, the belief in a Creator, by itself, is not the source of being better, or amoral or hypocritical. It’s largely the result of people going off course because they’re moral navigational computers so to speak are filled with corrupted data (whether they believe in a person or thing-centric universe).
The key is to focus on what actually is and discard the rest. The key is to stop oneself from saying “either or” and simply go ask “what do I actually know FOR SURE” and keep asking that. More and more layers of programming can be peeled back and navigation can get clearer and clearer.
An example in my life time was in 9/11/2001, the attacks. The government presented these as foreign terrorist attacks and encouraged retaliation by force. What was right and what was wrong was driven by the media with full government support. Because people are in the habit of not asking questions, of allowing themselves to follow a crowd and being afraid of ostracism, most of the public supported the war effort in word, deed or failure to act. But if a person habitually refuses to accept the words as truth from sources that don’t habitually tell the truth, not even a time of pain and suffering and shock will upset your moral compass. Because you allow no garbage data in.
A controversy in today’s society happens when one person says one thing but another says something else is true about the same thing. But to a person who searches only for correct data they always always always look to WHO is saying it and WHAT IS THEIR TRACK RECORD in telling the truth. What motive could they have and how often are they themselves fooled by absorbing faulty data and using it?
The controversy here doesn’t need to be God or no God. All a person has to do is ask “what do I know FOR SURE?” refuse to enter a belief that you can’t support for sure.
You make some good points, Dan.
“The key is to focus on what actually is and discard the rest. The key is to stop oneself from saying “either or” and simply go ask “what do I actually know FOR SURE” and keep asking that. More and more layers of programming can be peeled back and navigation can get clearer and clearer.”
I agree with you there 100%!
“But to a person who searches only for correct data they always always always look to WHO is saying it and WHAT IS THEIR TRACK RECORD in telling the truth. What motive could they have and how often are they themselves fooled by absorbing faulty data and using it?”
I really, really disagree with you on this one, unfortunately. In a previous paragraph you mention 9/11 and the government and media promoting war. It seems to me that this is the “they” you’re referring to, and I’m not sure a discussion of politics are really relevant in a discussion about personal vs. divine determination of good and bad. More importantly, however, is the idea that truth is dependent on who is telling it and what their track record is. You can’t know what someone’s track record is, if they’re a person because you can’t know for 100% sure what they really believe compared to what they’ve said, and you can’t know all the situations they have or have not lied in. That’s not possible. Therefore, taking someone’s word on something, even if they seem to have a good track record for telling the truth, is out as a valid means of receiving data on which to make a value judgement.
This is also the mentality that makes it totally okay to take on faith what is good and bad from a seemingly divine source. Unfortunately, the only information we ever receive on that topic is either from other people or our own mind/feelings. And it’s a fact that neither one are 100% accurate all the time. That being the case, you can’t rely on them.
You could, I suppose, look for expertise. I’ve seen problems with this too, however. I knew a guy who refused to listen to someone about something and refused to learn from them unless they were more of an expert on that topic than he was. Interestingly enough, it seemed like the only information or feedback he’d actually accept was the kind he already agreed with. Wanting to learn only from experts, in my experience, stemmed from wanting to BE an expert and never be wrong. If someone can’t be wrong, he or she can’t do what you said in your last statement…
“The controversy here doesn’t need to be God or no God. All a person has to do is ask “what do I know FOR SURE?” refuse to enter a belief that you can’t support for sure.”
Again, I agree 100% with you here. It seems odd, really, that we aren’t actually on the same page. Here’s the defining piece, I think:
“What you described as “better” and then “amoral and hypocritical” are moral judgments based on your own values. Those values are shaped by society which currently frames the past’s suffering as having been largely caused by the belief rooted in belief in a Creator.”
They are moral judgments based on my values. Those values are NOT, however shaped by the society you describe. They are shaped by an observation of people who hypocritically use religious ideology to justify any action that they want:
“Loving your neighbor is good because that’s what Jesus taught.”
“Homosexuals are bad because of the story of Soddom and Gamorrah”
These are just a couple rough examples because I have no skill at quoting Biblical scripture. :) There are people who believe those statements because that’s what they’re taught. Most of us would agree it’s a good thing if they believe the first statement, and many would believe it’s a bad thing if they believed the second. There are other people who already believe those things and use scripture as proof to justify their belief. Either way you look at it, those people are using that belief as a crutch to absolve them of responsibility for choosing their value and instead make them intrinsically “right.”
You compared people’s moral compass to navigational computers. YOU are the navigational computer. It is YOUR responsibility to sort through all the information coming in, even if it can be overwhelming at times. Choosing to not choose is a choice to give over the ability to choose to something else (in this case, a higher power.) Choosing to choose but justifying it by claiming something else (again, in this case a higher power) is a choice to give up the responsibility for choice. Either way, you have to make the choice yourself, so why not stop passing the buck?
[“But to a person who searches only for correct data they always always always look to WHO is saying it and WHAT IS THEIR TRACK RECORD in telling the truth. What motive could they have and how often are they themselves fooled by absorbing faulty data and using it?”
I really, really disagree with you on this one, unfortunately. In a previous paragraph you mention 9/11 and the government and media promoting war. It seems to me that this is the “they” you’re referring to, and I’m not sure a discussion of politics are really relevant in a discussion about personal vs. divine determination of good and bad.]
The “they” in the context of the aforementioned paragraph is whatever source of moral influence that is exerting itself upon us as an individual’s given any situation. That might be a single person, a church community, an entire religion, the media, entertainment or government. Politics is relevant because politics is about influencing personal values and beliefs of a population. But I’m not speaking about personal vs. divine moral determination of good and bad. I’m talking about their actually being a single unchanging person with unchanging ideas about morality to which all people answer to as opposed to humanity alone decided societally and individually what good and bad is. It you compare this to an economy you could say going by a gold standard instead of a 100% fiat currency. One is obviously easier to fudge than the other. One is much more stable in comparison to the other. It isn’t personal vs. divine because divine doesn’t remove free moral agency. It divine determination stabilizes personal determination giving it direction.
Here is another example. God as government (if he as the central Person/Creator) set up the water, carbon, tectonic, atmospheric chemical and weather cycles a certain way that also included moral decision making. He designed the human being to replicate so as to pass on the same “health care system” to all but never all of the same exact physical traits thereby providing access to health care but also providing diversity. These are things in which the Creator as a free moral agent had to made moral determinations about. These would create a matrix in which terrestrial free moral agents would be able to exist with a wide range of choices of good and bad and a wide range within good (sustainable behavior) itself. None of these “government” choices do we really have to give a lot of thought to personally. They’ve already been thought out and decided. Those choices have created a stable enough environment for humanity to make moral decisions/actions on Earth for over 4,000 years of recorded history without destroying ourselves. Contrast that with the Apollo 13 mission just as an example. There was very little room to make any mistakes (whether moral or not) because of the design. Earth is set up by divine government to allow for a wide range of really bad and good decisions over time without total destruction/discontinuance of the environment. We are bending the resilience to the limit but the point is that I do not see a “personal VS. divine determination of good or bad”. The two work together.
Dave,
You proposed that because one can’t know for 100% sure what a person really believes compared to what is said/done and therefore they can’t be relied upon. Also you argue that information we receive on the topic of God’s standards are either from/through other people or our own mind/feelings which cannot be 100% accurate all the time and so also cannot be relied upon.
A problem with this is that we do rely on what we think and feel and we do rely on what others say and do and the motives that they present. There is no other option. There is only variation on the sorting and processes in there. And really, things can work out successfully when we get good enough “intel” and process and act upon it within a margin of error. Think of building a house. You’ll have to find flush, level and square many times. You’ll never actually find 100% flush, level and square even once but you can be accurate enough to build a sturdy house that can serve its purpose for many years. Do your first proposals actually hold true? No. We all rely on our paradigms and to a certain extent they allow us varying measures of success.
You introduced the concept of “personal VS. divine determination of right and wrong”.
I propose that the two are not necessarily opposing but rather cooperative. I explained God’s moral guidance as a sort of north star by which we then have to work from to determine out right and wrong. To go further I’ll explain the concept in terms of economics. Gold is a sturdy, hard to destroy, fairly rare element, extremely difficult to fake or create more of and has real use and value in the real world. If a currency is based on gold then it that money has a standard which stabilizes its worth and gives it a more fixed meaning. A fiat currency based on nothing of real world value is perishable, printable, changeable, fakable, and having no real world value. It’s very unstable and thus not as safe or reliable. God’s thoughts on morality is akin to gold whereas human moral thinking might be more comparable to the currency. If it is tied to the gold then it is more stable. If it isn’t tied to the gold then it is unstable and less reliable.
Another way in which God’s thoughts on right and wrong cooperate but do not necessarily and naturally compete with ours as humans is as follows. God created the environment and our bodies themselves. In doing so he would have to have made many decisions which had moral factors. He created the carbon, atmospheric chemical, water, plate tectonic and other cycles on the earth in a way that would give our environment great stability and resilience so that humanity could make many decisions – even bad ones – and it would hold up. As a thinking species we’ve been making a series of bad decisions for 4,000 years and we’ve finally stretched the resilience to the breaking point. But the point is that God made moral decisions having to do with our water, air and food supply and this had nothing to do with our moral decision making as humans. They didn’t compete in any way. In fact, God’s decisions allows for us to make moral decisions. Think of our habitat design in comparison. Think of well known Apollo 13 mission as an example. That crew couldn’t make many bad decisions. Not a lot of leeway way. We have much more. Think of the health care that God built into our bodies. He made it so that we pass on pretty much the same immunity powers when we reproduce but we never replicate exact copies of ourselves. There is enormous diversity. These were all moral decisions which set the stage for our ability to make moral decisions without competing.
So, God’s exercise of right/wrong decisions has predated ours and set the stage so that we could even make ours. We have a learning system (as opposed to a mostly instinct driven system) which allows for us to learn his morals and thus gain his wisdom in making moral decisions. As a parent he offers guidance. But also, as a Creator, he can simply explain to us the functions of the universe so that we don’t have to make bad decisions and learn through trial and error. Some of this we can learn through observing the created works while other moral lessons can only be learnt through actual communication with God for us to be sure of the what is meant.
Here again this association doesn’t have to be a God’s morality VS. my morality. It can be a parent teaching and guiding their child to develop moral wisdom and thinking ability. To do so the parent shouldn’t make the decisions for the child.
Of course, God is not only in the role of parent. As a designer in a universe that is continuously unfolding and developing (or degrading) one does have the grounds to conclude that his intention is to continue developing in cooperation with the sentient life he created. Also, because he likely can perceive all of his creation and is a moral being he is either doing or allowing all things to happen which in itself are moral decisions which we need to understand. In fact, the Bible indicates that God claims Universal Sovereignty, meaning he reserves the final say of what is right and wrong. He would then have to teach universal moral principles and even lay down some law. Dave, here is where there is a problem with the proposal that people can never really know if what we are being told are God’s moral standards and principles and law are actually so, whether at all or 100%.
Again, we already know that just because we cannot know something 100% accurately that we can know it to the extent that it is functional.
If there is a Creator who we expect to be the source and standard of moral thought in a person-centric universe we can follow this expectation and conclude that there would be a real “human-to-God” communication going on somewhere at some time since humans have a cognitive system for developing beliefs and values instead of a guidance system mostly instinctual like animals. So we just have to look for a level of order in a person or people which reflects the order we see in natural systems mostly untouched by human thinking and actions such as a single organism or the solar system. Since God is a person who should be able to perceive human thought we should be able to actually ask for contact, ask for guidance on the basis of the thinking that God seems to have created humanity with the intention of ongoing communication. We can set up experiments that can test this hypothesis.
There is no reason to try to prove or disprove the God idea with your understanding of current religious thought because already nearly all religious thought is disqualified based on the above criteria. The idea that their is a Creator is solid, whereas most religious ideas do not create the order we see in the natural world when applied in the group that it creates and/or motivates
One needs to continue to clean out notions about God and other beliefs as one finds that they don’t actually know a thing for sure. As they do this they’ll be able to work off of fact instead of fallacy.
Your thought about God’s idea of right and wrong in terms of human sexuality and loving neighbors as examples here. Studying and thinking upon these things with beliefs that are based on faulty data means that we cannot reach any effective conclusions. The presuppositions that we cannot rely on what others say at all has been removed. Since that is the case we have to think about what others say on this as possibly the thoughts of God. Then, we can sort through this on the criteria that the belief creates or be a part of a body of belief that creates order in among those who believe it on the level of some system we’d find in the natural world. We would be using what we know for sure (universe has natural orderly systems which maintain themselves with high fidelity and humans didn’t design them) and the temporary conclusion that we are drawing from it (someone might have designed all systems and that person(s) has the ability to perceive and communicate with those designed things and people) to test beliefs instead of comparing what we are hearing to our feelings and what we think we know about the subject.
Thanks for the great (in my opinion brave and thoughtful) post.
So i wrote that question you quoted…and it’s a process for me in absorbing, practicing, and feeling/thinking around this stuff.
I gotta say, I kinda agree with you, logically. And for me it’s an interesting challenge on how to integrate this in my life. To what measure or balance.
Over some years this has been a struggle at times, a great joy and relief at others.
That’s where I actually really appreciate the discussion and the candor…and your years of experience with this.
“Values” is something I want to spend more time thinking about.
One of my favorite books is “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance – An Inquiry into Values”. I can’t say that it will conclusively answer any questions for you but it’s very thought provoking. In the end, the author rationally concludes something about the source of our values that Morty is either ignoring or is unaware of.
That’s a very bold claim, Alan. Could you share with us what that conclusion is? I read that book in college, but that was a while ago, so I don’t remember how it ended. I do remember it was a little thought provoking for a book of fiction, but not exactly amazing if you’ve read anything about Zen already. What’d I miss?