Friday, September 28, 2007

Right and Wrong

while the social butterflies were out hankypankying around orchard road or watching dumbass movies like balls of fury

while the social misfits are listening to stupid songs playing football manager and tinkering with facebook
i was surfing porn. and
i was thinking about what makes something right or wrong.
about whats morally right or morally wrong. i wonder about this very often because everytime i doos things or dont doos things, people says i is immoral. and i is dunno why.

morality is a very difficult issue for me to grasp. thats why i didnt take KI, apart from the fact that the tutors are unfit. what makes doing something right and what makes something wrong?

theres no one yardstick u can compare morals with. but some people are moral, so people are amoral and some people are immoral, or so they say. but where do these moral values come from? who determines what morals we should stick by?

religion.
many people base their morals upon religious teachings. stho shalt not kill, stho shalt not gay, stho shalt not be racist, yadda yadda yadda. well and good, if everyone in society has the same religion and if that very religion is what the world is all about.
sadly this is not the case. many religions in the world exist. and they all have their own set of values. and they exist on the whole spectrum of a sadder masochistic definition of the world and what it means. well u should wear this u shouldnt wear that and all.
then the crap would arise and some clowns will come out and say my god is greater than ur god. he is lvl infinity, he pwnz ur god. of course u had better believe in the god u think is most powerful, but until now i cant decide which one is the most powerful, or wether the supreme being is one and all the same.
so morality like this clearly doesnt suit me.

utilitarianism
greatest happiness seems to always appeal to everyone. maybe because everyone benefits. theres a net social benefit if utilitarianism was set in motion, but clearly utilitarianism is stupid.
yes, maybe letting an innocent man die to save 200 idiotic rioters and whoever they affect live seem like a fantastic idea. but look at it this way. what if u were that innocent man?
then people among us, like myself would quantify my utils exponentially. clearly this whole system wont work. net benefit. its like a system in dynamic equilibrium, where at a macro level everything seems good, but scrutinize and everything is like shit.
and utilitarianism doesnt solve the problem of why we shouldnt surf porn eat meat or steal from our neighbor if we quantify our utils.

deontology
i despise this school the most. everything about it is pathetic. people should not just be means to an end. it muddles morality even more and totally smashes any institution of logic. its feeble, its pretty useless.

maybe society decides whats right and wrong.
when they decided not to repeal 377, thats what they said. because heterosexuals should set the tone of society. the majority of society doesnt want it, so it should be suppressed.
fuck, this is the stupidest thing ive heard.
clearly, many members of society are racist. and most members of society in sgp are chinese. so if they get to decide whats right and whats wrong, maybe racist laws would be ok. maybe in nazi germany it would be moral to kill jews and all.

personally i favor the argument that society decides morals the most, because morals should serve people. im not a humanist or anything close, but clearly this makes the most sense. except for this loophole that it is prone to abuse. clearly we cant draw a line. we wont know where. this brings society as a moral arbiter into the dust.

universal judge. do unto others as u would want others to do unto urself. this seems good. if u want to be loved, then love others. if u want to be respected, then respect others. but again this is pretty screwed because it surmounts to a principal agent problem and machiavelli's means to an end. and this is prone to abuse. what if a masochist enjoys getting whipped and goes around whipping people. then people would come back and say, hey, this is not right, it doesnt follow, because a masochist is doing what he enjoys, and if he want to get what he enjoys, then he should not make others suffer. but where to draw the line, behind the mens rea? its complicated.

morality always troubles me. but until i can think of something better, i guess id have to be comfortable with being immoral.

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