What western civilization critically needs is a new spiritual heart. Cheap substitutes, such as the worship of work, the worship of wealth, the worship of health, the worship of sex, or the worship of your country will not cut it. If western civilization is to survive they’ll need to undergo a pretty radical transformation that involves rejecting all of these inferior forms of modern worship.

athos wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2010 at 12:04pm:

Here's a better one...

A runaway train is hurtling down the track towards 5 men working on the track who are unaware of what is about to happen to them and cannot be contacted. There is a second track just before the 5 men onto which the train can be diverted by you simply by pulling a lever in front of you. However, there is one man working on the second track (equally unaware of the runaway train) who will certainly be killed if you pull the lever....

Do you pull the lever?

athos wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2010 at 12:04pm:



Give me a shortcoming that takes 2500 years to catch up with us any day.

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The only thing that will save western civilisation is if it becomes a version of some phoney eastern civilisation. Brilliant idea!! Your own, I suspect.

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ANy chance for that someone to be called something like 'athos' and the other side of the world be somewhere in 'Italia'?
If so, you could save most, if not all, of that $10 mil.

Helian, your's is not a better thought experiment. Yours is just a different thought experiment.
...

The first thought experiment though speaks to something completely different. Utility is not a factor in this. So the question remains... What prevents a person for pushing that button?

NorthOfNorth wrote on Sep 2^nd, 2010 at 2:11pm:


Another example of parallel lines of thinking and total misunderstanding. My point was that Reason and Aristotelian syllogism (only about 20% of human brain capacity) does not provide answers in aspects of life including spirituality. The western educational system also should start teaching intuition and inspiration that are very important aspects of eastern philosophy and almost totally neglected in the culture of western way of thinking.

Soren I think better for you and the society if you remain just a successful pragmatic Middle eastern merchant and to continue worshiping golden calf in accordance with your great tradition. Believe me that’s only what you can do.

I am shocked with the lack of spirituality of all of you so far. Perhaps this is due to fact that you’ve been trained (I deliberately don’t use word educated) strictly in limited western reason and Aristotle's syllogism, which is something like only 20% of human brain capacity. Maybe this is one of the reasons for so obvious crises of spirituality in western civilization. Fortunately there is eastern philosophy that is primarily based on inspiration and intuition which provides much better connection between our mind and universal spiritual values. Well never is late, maybe this can help you all:
http://www.swami-krishnananda.org/disc/disc_68.html

What western civilization critically needs is a new spiritual heart. Cheap substitutes, such as the worship of work, the worship of wealth, the worship of health, the worship of sex, or the worship of your country will not cut it. If western civilization is to survive they’ll need to undergo a pretty radical transformation that involves rejecting all of these inferior forms of modern worship.

Now to help you to find answer on your question I am going to give you a homework.

Let’s start with the lesson 1 - tutorial:

Everyone has to figure out for himself what the morality is.

Imagine that you have an offer of 10 million dollars to kill someone, who you don’t know and who is on the other side of this planet, by simply pressing the certain button on your computer keyboard.
You have been given 100% guarantees that you will remain anonymous , won’t be discovered during your life time.

What is that possibly can prevent you to commit such act?.

I'd say it was deemed immoral to those exploited groups because they lacked power. To say it is inherently immoral to be subjugated by another class, a king, or an aristocracy refers to an invisible metaphysics. That it was perceived to be immoral to be subjugated by a king, class, or aristocracy is a positing of morality after the fact. The idea of equal rights is only an ideal that has to be enforced, ironically by a ruling class.