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Quote by: Logjam No, I did dealt with your question earlier in this thread. The "absolutes" are the rules that we live by. Some are heaped upon us by government, these are indeed suspect rules. (such as the stop sign at a cross road in the middle of the desert; do you stop or not? I do.) Others come from our culture; lessons learned from ions of the experiences of life. The cultural rules are the rules that you learned from your folks, things like: It's wrong to marry your sister, or don't eat food that's fallen on the ground, or don't touch the stove burner, flush after use, don't throw cigarette butts in the urinal (it makes the soggy and hard to light),  etc, etc..
Can the rules be changed? Sure they can; but it's hard to do. First you've got to prove that the old rule is wrong (so now you ARE going to put your hand on the stove burner?) and then make a better one that is generally accepted as better than the first.
In summery, the rules that we live by are a part of our culture created by our forefathers who gleened them from their forefathers, etc.. |
Like Prohibition?
As far as the past....I will let Thomas Jefferson answer.
"The Gothic idea that we were to look backwards instead of forwards for the improvement of the human mind, and to recur to the annals of our ancestors for what is most perfect in government, in religion and in learning, is worthy of those bigots in religion and government by whom it has been recommended, and whose purposes it would answer. But it is not an idea which this country will endure." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 1800. ME 10:148
"I am for encouraging the progress of science in all its branches, and not for raising a hue and cry against the sacred name of philosophy; for awing the human mind by stories of raw-head and bloody bones to a distrust of its own vision, and to repose implicitly on that of others; to go backwards instead of forwards to look for improvement; to believe that government, religion, morality and every other science were in the highest perfection in the ages of the darkest ignorance, and that nothing can ever be decided more perfect than what was established by our forefathers." --Thomas Jefferson to Elbridge Gerry, 1799. ME 10:78