You know, I thought I was starting a thread about philosophy. I wish we could move away from religion from time to time, but I suppose that's not going to happen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by recluse
If I may:
I think I understand this. It is part of what I am trying to figure out for myself.
It seems that a certain dangerous school of thought has gained popularity of late. One I believe is summed up by Aleister Crowley "Do what thou wilt is the extent of the Law" ( close enough ).
To me, it is antiphilosophy, base impulse, not thought.
To be blunt: sociopathic thinking.
I am a little shocked that there is no real attention paid to this, I see the race to "tear down" religious institutions and moral codes as a symptom of this thinking and a harbinger of worse to come.
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This is most emphatically not what I was talking about, but let me try to answer it.
I agree with Kenny, we don't need religion to have ethics. Religious institutions (like all human institutions I suppose) have had their share of horrors, and some of them continue to encourage criminal acts. Maybe part of the problem we have now, is that we cannot clearly separate ethics from religion, and as one becomes more fragmented and less powerful (in the sense that not one Church has the monopoly on salvation), we feel we have nothing to turn to to rule our social behavior.
But we do. For millenniums, we have been slowly building set of rules. They are called laws. They are no longer supposedly of divine origin, but they are what our democratically elected representatives agree should rule our lives. I can live with that. And I wish that we (in France at least) had a little more respect for them, even if we sometimes don't agree with them.
Have to go to work now. More about desire later I hope...