[Osborn F Enready]

Epistimologist said: According to my premises, those who can prevent bad (I'll try to stop using the word "we," as I suppose some of us cannot give) should prevent bad, and as suffering is bad, they should prevent suffering.

So what of those who choose to "suffer", because they think they deserve nothing better, or are to lazy, unmotivated or disintrested in seeking better?

Are you saying we have no free-will choice to suffer, if we so choose?

Who would you be to rob that choice of men, and under what auspice of authority?

Also, is it not obvious that one mans suffering is another mans pleasure. Many would not think a crowded ballroom made up of laughing, intellgent people was a threat to anyone, but, not all people have issues with anxiety, social interplay and conversation, do they? The man with anxiety and social lack of fluency, regards that ballroom of people as a policeman may view an order to kick down the door of an armed gang known for mass murder single-handedly..... A situation that seems to reflect fight or flight, massive urgency and utter peril.

The only good is life, the only bad, that which robs it without just causation.

Epistimologist said: If that entails protecting people from bad choices, then it is so.

That is where we differ. People have no right to protect people from themselves, if that help is unwelcome, unwanted, or unsolicited.

"Protect" is a word that implies force, or a "force" that one must be protected from, or protect others from, or a tool that is used to protect.

At the same time, people can't be forced to help others, regardless of how justifiable that need is. Its simply unethical, and I would like to see it explained if you see differently.

Epistimologist said: However, we might make the case that what people do to themselves does not qualify as suffering, but rather fits in a different category, so that those who can prevent bad do not necessarily have to give to help them. Then we would have to adopt a paramount ideal like self-responsibility.

Some of us already adopted that paramount ideal, which is self-responsibility.... in fact, some of us founded a nation on that ideal, and created laws around the concept of the right to liberty, which entails the right to succeed, or fail, the right to prosper or wallow in loss, the right to dream and look-up, or the right to pity and look down. Almost all who have succeeded have known failure, yet the bulk of those who fail haven't learned how to achieve success. If success were easy, wouldn't we all be happy? No, because there would be no challenge, no "point" of where good is seperated from bad, rich from poor, talented from untalented, strong from unfit, clean from slovenly, intelligent from stupid.

Epistimologist said: There may still be a lot of people to help though, because a lot of people suffer due to factors out of their hands, such as tsunamis and generations of poverty.

We all deal with nature, and the turbulence of living, regardless of what strain of life we discuss. Plants and animals deal with natural catastrophe just as man does.... to the best of their individual ability.

Helping another can be called two things, honorable or despicable, depending on the "welcome", or rejecting of that aid by those who need it, or the way in which that aid is provided, through theft or its opposite, benevolence, kindness and a SELFISH intent to please ones inner views of what is good or evil, kind or callous.

I have never seen an act of selflessness.

As much as one mans terrorist is another mands freedom fighter, one mans charity is another mans burden.

Charity and burden can only be interpreted and defined by the individual, as it is they who must bear the result of the act, both of giving, and of taking.

Epistimologist said: That kind of thinking endangers ethics. When each does only what they think is right, we have something called egoism, which is a threat to ethics and civilized behavior.

Sometimes, and in many cases often, society is far more damaging, cruel and deadly to humans than individuals could ever be. Ethics are an individual issue, regardless of what collectives call themselves or presuppose themselves to be, they are still just that.... an amalgamation of individuals attempting to remain stable and anonymous in a world of natural instability. They have no more, and no less stake in life than any individual, and no more or less right to it either. "society" takes many shapes of injustice, and few of justice. Rarely is society anything people would recognize as "moral or ethical" when viewing its workings, its bylaws and operating standards.

Some societies have started under noble cause, with noble intent, but few if any have ever proven to justify respect over time as government, which society depends on, is fire, and an all consuming fire if left unchecked, as it usually is, since stable society breeds complacency and apathy.

Its the struggle of life that brings out the best in man, and the worst in man, but neither compare to that of the best of society, or the worst of societies acts. Societies have brought more death and destruction to this earth than any individual ever has, so you tell me which is more "ethical", society or the individual perspective?

Those that seek to exist to fulfill their own selfish goals and agendas pale in comparison to the greed and corruption of any society which has yet to be born, or has been born.

Power corrupts, and the more that power is concentrated, the more corruption you will see. The wider the scope of power, the wider the scope of abuse of it. The more death that needs to be dealt in defence of a proclaimed moral or ethical cause, the more lies that must be told to make men accept those claims of one being more righteous to that claim of life than others.

What makes a hero different than war hero, and are either worthy of celebrating, to you? Why?

I see a hero as a person who takes on great personal risk of nature or created enviroment to save life. Saving life for lifes sake, not due to a belief of one life being more valuable than another, as a war hero would be forced to "rationalize". War doesn't make heros, it destroys them by putting them on a cross of rationalization for their actions.

Epistimologist said: True, most of them may conform to making only certain choices in order to fit in with a cultural trend or something like that, but egoism permits deviants who do what would otherwise be classified as a wrong to not do wrong, and thus not be justifiably punished. When people make up their own moral obligations, we have egoism.

Humans have egos, therefore we have egoism. You seem to be railing against a trait of humans which is inherant, unalienable.

Show me a man who claims to be self-less, and I will show you a lying, selfish man.

We are born imperfect, and will remain imperfect individually, always. It is through evolution and natural selection, that we improve our species, but through education and empathy that we improve ourselves.

To credit ethics to any one group, to be defined, held as moral "judges" is unethical in itself. We all have our own measure of ethics, of life, of happniess and of survival, and we all have our own "bar" to which we measure whether life is valuable or not.

What does it mean to say "liberty or death"? Its says to live by ones own measure, ones own means, or to choose risking death as a more valuable choice than servitude, complacency and apathy.

I choose liberty or death, and that is a constant, regardless of what moral or ethical "definition" is set tomorrow, the next day, or any day while I live, regardless of who says it, how its said, or what force those words are intended to carry. Man can't "live" in a prison, but he can exist. Those that value that existence over living, have never known living, or deserved it. They traded security for defense, they traded thinking for being told, they traded their tastes for an opinion, and they traded their chance for living for a chance at existence.

Without the individual, society could not exist, much like ethics and morality. No matter what claim is made on ethics by society, it is the individual who is the final gatekeeper on what is ethical, and what is not, by tolerance or intolerance of that which is thrust upon them. Those who allow that choice to be shaped by others, refuse to take a chance at living, in exchange for a dull, prisoned existence living at the feet of their moral masters, not as a servant, but as peon, a footstool, a stepping stone for those he believes are better than he himself.