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Old 09-20-2006, 11:37 AM   #3 (permalink)
Willravel
... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.
 
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Morality is a tricky thing, becuase not all morals are universal. Part of living with other people is the ability to pick and choose what morals to share. I am friends with a lot of people who support abortion, espically considering how liberal I am. I am able to simply look past this and allow their other morals and traits to make up for what I personally consider an immoral belief. Other morals I will make a stand for, though. I had a friend in HS who was a slave to the wangster lifestyle. He thought himself to be a thug, and acted accordingly. He treated women with a great deal of disrespect, and quite often was needlessly confrontational. It was always something that bothered me until one day when it came to a head and he attacked another friend of mine without provocation. I am unwilling to compromise my moral belief that attacking someone without provocation is wrong. That moral expands to situations like Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and soon Iran.

Moral judgment of others is also tricky. Yes, I can say that man who raped a child is wrong...but only because I have not done something equally immoral. I do commit immoral acts every once in a while. I have a really beautiful wife, but every once in a while I do sneak a peak at another woman. Is that wrong? I think so. What that means is that if I were to catch my wife checking out another man and were to call her on it, I would be hypocritical. That is why we often seeing people trying to take the moral high ground in an argument. It makes them more justifiable in passing judgment.

Aside from morality, there is legality, or universal rules based on morals that one must follow in order to live in a given society. While there is a connection betwen law and morality in that laws are based on morality, laws are enforcable by the state. There isn't the same wiggleroom and freedom with the law that you see in morality. Because of this, it's necessary to seperate the two in your mind.
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