wilbjammin

Well, you're obviously missing the main point. I can't choose for other people, and I don't want to. I am not morally apathetic because I always do what I consider to be right from my view within any circumstance.

I said "generally", not always. If there is an exception to the rule, that means that the rule isn't universal.

I don't need to call murder "immoral" for it to be a choice that I wouldn't make. Yes, I don't like it (as I said before), but I think there is a reason that people commit murder. I know that it is the ultimate negation. Personally I understand for myself that since I cannot commit suicide, and as such, committing murder is also wrong for me for the same reason. I am under the assumption that when people kill they do it either because they think it is the right thing to do, or they are mentally unable of processing right and wrong or self-control. Which brings me to my next thing:

When one cannot make choices that match with their morals because of mental illness, then I would say that they need mental help. That has to feel terribly like Bad Faith, and every instance I've seen of people that do horrible things from their own perspective that they don't want to do feel really guilty and don't want to do it again. Have you ever listened to a panel of convicted child molesters talk about their crimes, they hate themselves for what they've done, and they fear themselves for what they might do. Mental help sometimes is the only want to stop one's self from acting against one's morals.

For the individual - yes. Since most cultures have good reasons that they don't want people killing each other randomly and stealing from each other, most people tend to follow the Social Contract out of self-interest (this should sound familiar if you've read Hobbes). Almost everyone follows self-interest as a rule, and the outliers who choose to break-out of the Social Contract significantly are going to be far and few between because of the basic reasoning behind self-interest. If a Social Contract violates self-interest, then acting against it by any means is absolutely healthy from the individuals perspective. I suggest you read "Woman at Point Zero" by Nawal El Saadawi for my perfect example of someone who violates the Social Contract and for purely personal reasons (not structural change) and I admire her.

I think everyone should choose for themselves. Obviously I think that I am right, or else I wouldn't be saying any of this.

Couldn't tell you, I don't have a standard for describing what a "better place" is. I think that if everyone followed their own morals, our world wouldn't look all that much different than it does now. People break the Social Contract on a daily basis, I watch the news. Some of them get caught, some don't. Either way they pay some consequences. Here's a sort of Machiavellian scenario to consider:

A man runs an orphanage in a culture where it is ok for adults to beat children, and orphans have no value in the eyes of practically everyone. The man visciously beats all of the children for little to no reason (i.e. looking at him wrong). Two of the children died from being beaten to death, and the macro-system doesn't care. One day a man walks in on him doing this, and he's struck with a passion: this isn't right, I need to do something about it. So he tells the guy to stop, and he says "why? they're just worthless orphans..." After an argument that gets nowhere, he leaves. He appeals to all of the higher class citizens in his society for help to stopping this - no luck. The police don't care. There's no legislative process here. He tries absolutely everything he can within a system to stop this, and nothing works. He <i>gives up</i> on the idea of changing the cultures feelings because he thinks it is a lost cause, but he sees that he can make a difference in the children's lives. One day, he wants into the orphanage, takes out a gun, shoots the man in the chest killing him, and walks out. He leaves an anonymous phone message to the police from a pay phone saying that "I heard a gun shot at the orphanage, you should check it out." He feels that he fulfilled his moral obligation. Most everyone in the macro-culture when reading about this story is horrified. How could someone do this?

From my view, this action, though not a route I would take, is also not immoral. Another example: John Brown. I could not do what he did, but a big part of me admires him. He alienated a large percentage of the people both in the north and the south with his terrorist actions. People were not ready cognitively for the jump he made towards violence, and if he wasn't made into a martyr I doubt it would have changed many attitudes. This is an example of violating the Social Contract to affect change. Both examples here are examples of violating the Social Contract out of personal morals that conflict with macro-culture. The first example you would call morally deficient, because by the time he went in to kill the man he wasn't doing it for affecting a change in the macro-culture. I don't know where you would stand with John Brown.

The world is too complicated for me to feel as though I'm justified in calling acts immoral if there is a reason behind them, even if it results in murder. A murder from someone who didn't actively choose to murder, but did it out of mental illness - this would be an amoral action with serious consequences, from my standpoint.

Probably, since most people value safety and self-interest, just like I do. I don't see anything wrong with creating a Social Contract. Structural consequences do wonders for order. You don't need everyone to agree to the same things for a society to work, just a significant majority.

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