At 1:12 PM -0500 12/4/99, RISKYBIZ9@aol.com wrote:
>ROGER FRAMES 6 REAL MORAL
>QUESTIONS TO THE SQUAD
>The MOQ provides a process, not a solution.
What's the difference?
My assertion is simply that it is a tool that works by answering each moral
question according to its appropriate level. You can call that a "process"
and I'd certainly agree. You can call it a solution and I'd agree to that
as well.
I believe there is an underlying assumption to all this discussion that
pertains to "ultimate morality". But I think I'll address that later on...
on to the questions:
>****************************
First, all the above will assume certain intellectual frameworks - that is,
we won't be considering the social aspects of a question from European or
Eskimo society because I'm Common American and I'm answering the questions
apropos.
I don't think any of these are "dilemma's", in the classical sense of the
word. Let's just look at them as "moral questions" and see how the MoQ
slaps 'em into shape.
Onward->)
>Historical questions:
>
>1) How does the MOQ judge the morality of the Union in the American Civil
>War?
Intellect has deep seated problems with slavery. On a social level, it was
a viable system and seemed to be fairly successful. But nobody who didn't
have their livelihood at stake could stomach the thought of human beings
being owned. That was the intellectual stake in the war.
The necessity of unity for this country was vital socially. I doubt we'd
have survived as a nation if we'd remained divided. Just imagine Hitler's
delight if he could have made an ally _within_ the continent of the US.
And the Nazis and the KKK aren't so far apart in world view as to make the
idea unthinkable ...
Socially, it was vital to success and intellectually it was vital. It was
a completely moral and proper war.
>2) How does the MOQ judge the morality of Congress in the Impeachment Process
>of President Clinton?
On a social level of political success, it did and didn't work. The
republicans failed in their attempt but the process of impeachment had the
desired effect of smearing the Prez and the enemy Democrats - a social
victory for the Republican Party. The American Public Opinion was
definitely impregnated with the vision of their president with his pants
around his ankles. Count coup.
If you want to understand the issue on a larger social level, then you'll
have to bring in the intellect. For the social level, intellect IS dynamic
quality.
So if we want to know what is the ultimate best concerning the American
Political Scene - which ties in to what is best for society as a whole -
then we start looking at the "big" picture we see a lot of problems. The
current social paradigms are headed for disaster. The Social forces of
competition are ruthless. If you magnify their powers with the
intellectual tools of Technology, you'd better be sure that the social
power is moral or you're going to have deep problems magnified by
intellectually generated technology. Atom bombs shouldn't belong to a
tribe.
In other words, putting our fate into the hands of leaders who express no
real quality in any form, is a bad, bad idea.
So... there is a lot more to think about on this topic. But since we must
make a decision in this culture and society, we have to take all sorts of
factors into account and make our best judgement. In this particular
instance, I feel Al Gore is the politician that appeals most to my
intellect. So since that whole impeachment process degraded Al Gore's
chance to be president, My intellectual view is it was "bad".
>3) How does the MOQ judge the morality of Truman's decision to drop nuclear
>bombs on Japan?
The total victory of intellect. An genius jew comes up with an elegant
theory that there is enough energy in a thimble to wipe out all the armies
of the world and is proven correct. German and Japanese societies were
perfect examples of rabid tribalism holding the tools of intellect and
using them for domination. It was completely moral to oppose those
systems. The nerds and the social rejects scribble a bunch of figures on
paper and overthrows an entire world view forever. E=mc2 became the
rallying cry of a new intellectual and spiritual rebirth. Society
integrates the intellectual tools provided to it and fashions an era of
peace, prosperity and power the likes of which have never been seen.
Men like Truman made a leap of faith in letting the nuclear cat out of the
bag - a faith that man's moral intellect would keep pace with his social
capacities. So far we've kept from blasting the world to pieces.
It is an open question. If the new millinium sees the begining of a
nuclear winter that wipes out humanity... I'd have to say that all the
decisions that led up to this great failure were horridly immoral.
>Hypothetical situations:
>
>4) Your wife is eight months pregnant, but is starting to become emotionally
>unstable due to some horrible events. She wants a partial birth abortion.
>What is the moral course you should take?
>
Biologically, the most fragile and delicate condition of any lactating
mammal is just before and just after birth. Most social life of any animal
group is organized around this fact of biology. So you're talking to a
woman who is at her peak of vulnerability and hormonal hysteria. What she
needs right now most of all is reassurance and calm protection of herself
and reassurance that she will have a safe place to bring forth her baby.
Humans have devised a social institution of marriage as the best possible
means to providing the social stability needed on the biological level.
Many different breeding arrangements have been tried, but there is a
general consensus that monogamous pair mating for life works best in the
majority.
This pair bonding guarantees that the woman will have a source of strength
in her despair and helpless condition. That is good. A husband in such a
case would have to make the decision with his intellect, taking all factors
into consideration. You didn't provide the matrix so I can't break down
the levels, but its hard to imagine any circumstances where an 8 month
abortion would be necessary or moral.
It's sort of a silly question, actually. I don't think you could get a
doctor to perform an eigth month abortion anywhere in the world. Eight
months is basically a ceaserian, which is the same experience to the woman
at a "birth" as at an "abortion". The only difference being that the woman
would have a deep need to have her baby be dead.
Is that impossible? No! It is indeed programmed into mammals to be able
under extreme duress to kill their newborn. Population pressures, severe
starvation, whatever. The indians used to wait two weeks before the baby
was named and became part of the tribe. That is, there wasn't the social
assumption that just because a baby was born, it was human. Society had a
place in deciding that question. Because no human can exist outside of his
tribe and what is good for the tribe is more important than an unformed
human.
If I was a kind doctor in Germany in 1938 and I had a young jewish woman
who was about to have a baby and needed to be rid of it so she could join
her family overseas, I'd say the most moral thing in that case would be to
free her from the biological imperative.
>5) Who is moral, the lion, or the lamb?
There is only one place this question makes sense, and that's in
intellectual evaluation of the whole environment. Right now the native
species of Mountain Goat is about to be wiped out. While it seems lions
are doing very, very well. I'd shoot the lion about to devour any of those
lambs.
Also, I'd destroy the lion that preyed upon those animals with whom I'd
established a covenant of protection. If I'm a shepard, I have a moral
duty to the lambs from which I derive my existence.
On a deeper level, as the only animal that thinks conceptually, we humans
have a moral duty to examine the relationship between lions and lambs and
think about such questions most seriously.
There is a valid question about imposing our values upon nature.
Everything we are comes from the value patterns that evolved out of nature
in response to DQ. Those patterns contain our genesis. Our being. If we
twist those basic non-human patterns into service to human social impulses,
then we are committing a deeply immoral act since we are doing damage to
the base source of all human intellect - the direct experience of Nature -
in fact, the only intellectual ground source for our very being and
conception of ourselves. For we only know what a human is because we have
all of nature to examine and compare. The delusion is that the self
arises and confirms the ten thousand, Enlightenment is when it's understood
that the ten thousand arise and confirm the self. - Our matrix for being is
Nature - That is why intellect values the environment for itself and
especially in its non-human-disturbed quality.
Now when we look at the question of lion vs. lamb, we see that the
intellectual quality depends upon the context of environmental factors.
Thus the question can't be answered without providing a wider context.
>Real question:
>
>6) Going into the new millenium, what does the MOQ say we should embrace as
>an economic model?
Well I'm experimenting with poverty and so far it seems to be working ok.
>Is it unbridled free enterprise, or intellectually
>planned, socially-conscious socialism, or somewhere in-between? What is most
>moral?
Those questions are pretty much all narrowly social. Money and economics
have a simple morality. Profit. Greed which drives individuals to seek
profit perform the role of keeping economy humming along. Bureacratic
control slows down the process immeasurably. The factors balance out.
But that's all on the social level. My intellectual analysis is that there
are big problems looming. Corporate power has gotten to the point where
it controls bigger economies than most countries. Even scarier, the
control of image technology means that most of the basic concepts of life -
how to interact socially - are generated by exposure to media that has no
values but profit. It's a problem of deep immorality and the gradual
erosion of all intellect while society spins and whirls a thousand silly
fables that distract and please the masses. My intellectual analysis of
the country is that it's in a deep mess. Whatever form of socio-polical
economic plan is adopted, I think we see a clear cry for the following
features:
Intellectual Quality in high places. We need our leaders to show
they can think about questions deeper than political success.
Cohesive dialogue with other countries regarding to limitations on
sucking resources out of the planet.
More intelligent dialogue with and about the world community.
**************************
Whew. I've been thinking and working on these for a few days. I said it
was always *possible* I didn't say it was quick and easy! But I'm content
with these answers.
I'll answer some of the questions and responses later. Tomorrow perhaps.
If it seems called for. A lot of reading to catch up on still!
jc
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