Evil horde narrative

Fair enough, I will say this though. Despite my belief in objective moral truths, I try not to judge.

“The mind alone knows what is near the heart, each man is his own judge. The worse sickness for a wise man is to crave what he cannot enjoy.” -Havamal

With that being said, I think my moral answer to your scenario is to simply not make the promise to begin with. Tell people your intentions and do it, to Hell with what they will say against you.

“The giant in front of you is never bigger than the gods who live within you.”

Don’t insult without cause. Barbarians are more polite than civilized men. A civilized man can speak rudely without the risk of getting his skull cracked open.

It is evolutionarily ingrained into your genetics.

Apologies to all for having heavily contributed to the thread derailment. I will post no further on the matter.

Please don’t quit on my account. Sorry if I sounded like that was what I was asking for! The thread has gone where it’s gone, and I don’t want anyone to stop talking. Just saying that with the new board setup, threads seem more likely to go on forever.

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I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of that, but personally, when it comes to subjects like morality, I fall heavily on the constructivist side of the debate. Social constructivism in itself doesn’t eliminate the value of social constructs by virtue of them being constructs. It merely states that social constructs are constructed and thus relative to the different groups of people that construct them. So even though I’m aware of the relative nature of morality (or honor), I believe that like many social constructs, they need to be properly defined for the benefit of the culture. I also believe that the more universally accepted the construct is, the better it would be for everyone as well.

Ethics says right and wrong are not universal. Very difficult to accept that what is intrinsically evil to one is an absolute good to another set of ethics. But that’s the cause of a lot of strife in the world.

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Sounds reasonable enough to me on your description. I heard the idea during a discussion. My philosophical diction leaves a lot to be desired, but moral discussion is always quite interesting to me. Boiling things to their roots seems to be better than talking past one another, at the very least.

Ah no worries, I would agree though that the original thread topic was more intersting plus I was posting a bunch of IRL examples of an unpleasant nature which has no place on a WoW forum in the first place, always sure sign you should take a step back :sweat_smile:

This is madness!

Qualities like empathy and compassion (things we generally base our moral codes on) are evolutionary traits afforded to social species, such as canines and apes, including humans. This is because social species are reliant on the support and cooperation of others for survival.

No no no, you were supposed to say, “THIS IS SPARTA!”

Aki you need to remember, that stuff often only applied to the community, generlally, especially during war, that the worst crimes take place often be dehumanizing the enemy, or because of a persons morals.

Japan’s sense of honor lead to them having no idea what to do to prisoners during world war 2, after all, one is supposed to fight to the end in japan (It’s why Kamikaze pilots were even a thing, a last ditch effort of people sacrificing their lives for their nation). This lead to terrible things such as the Nanking Massacre, and the Bataan Death March, and it arose do to Japans notion of honor.

This is also why Class issues are often so extreme, the rich hold the poor to n impossible standard for them to reach.

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Not all ancient norse went viking, but there was nothing dishonorable about the act. It was mainstream, and to suggest that the average norseman disavowed the ones who went viking is absurd when all the evidence suggests that their laws simply recognized outsiders as less of people than they were.

Murder as a response to an insult is the picture of disproportionate retribution, which, especially when you are armed and trained far in excess of the person who insulted you, is dishonorable.

I agree that there’s such a thing as an objective moral good, but I don’t believe that’s synonymous with honor, and I strongly suspect that while we agree that an objective good exists, we will differ on one or more points as to what it entails, particularly when ranking virtues or axioms- that is, what virtues supersede others, where do freedom, obligation, and compassion most rightly intersect, etc.

Furthermore, the fact that our morals evolve suggests that no, we are not born with them. The seed of morality may be intrinsic, but the substance is cultivated, and to say otherwise is ridiculous.

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Actually it is. Because “my honor” is an absolute !@$% justification for murdering anyone. It is an inherently invalid reason 100% of the time and makes no sense whatsoever because your “honor” is your own concern and its caretaking is solely your own responsibility. Of course, as Darethy pointed out honor itself is a !@#$ concept whose sole function is to hoodwinkingg others into assigning moral force to normative frameworks forcing endeavors and behaviors enhancing the comparative advantages held by the so-called “honorable”

Sounds to me like something used by an honor code society to justify their tyranny and oppression of anyone the least bit different.

BULL!@@#. Because “conventional standards of conduct” can and frequently have eschewed all of those things you declared them synomymous with, from the the standards and perspectives of our own societies.

More bull. It has been clearly demonstrated countless times that there is no “nature” in understanding “good and evil” or morality but that it is derived from nurture, from learning your local socialization. What may well be innate is the act of trying to learn and fit into your own local socialization.

Actually, it turns out that it’s someone trying to insist on the primacy of their religion over basic psychology and sociology.

You can label that as empathy if you wish, it is a certain kind of empathy albeit not in the least bit the meaning of it that you’re trying to use. It is completely and utterly divorced from compassion however. Compassion does not dehumanize, quite the opposite it leads us to anthropomorphize that which isn’t human and to find commonality in those who are different, while socialization of this kind has quite often led to dehumanizing others.

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Aki has this problem where they quote a dictionary definition of a word and treat that as if it were a nuanced analysis.

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The study of ethics is a very complex academic subject. There’s many, many different named ethical standards. Some violently at odds with each other.

I was well into my 40s before I finally grasped the significance of ethical differences between people. I’d always assumed that my right and wrong were absolutes, beyond argument. But then why are there so many bad people? How do they have jobs? How do they have friends? The answer was ethical differences.

My “good” and another person’s “good” may be at odds, but academically they’re each “good” in an environment that supports it and “bad” in an environment that doesn’t.

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I think you actually have a gross misunderstanding of honor here.the majority of the codes you laid out were followed by the noble warrior classes in how to behave towards other nobles and in no way extended to the civilian population. A knight For instance could burn a village to the ground and kill women and children as long as he didn’t burn the church or any of it’s land. A samurai could and often would kill a peasant for the slightest display of Disrespect even so far as to not bow deep enough when greeting Them. ThE versions of these codes you’re speaking of Are the romantic writings of authors born hundreds of years after the fact but the reality is these were not good men and due to the society of the time they could get away with just about anything

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Yep. Havamal, while presenting a guide for living proper conduct and wisdom, was a Viking age writing. Vikings had no compunction against slaughtering civilians at all. The writing was attributed to Odin but Odin was a bloody god who encouraged human sacrifice.

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No, Japan used prisoners as human test subject for weapons testing. It is dishonorable to mistreat POWs. Just because people say something is right does not mean it is, the same goes for what is honorable.

LOL. No it isn’t. I was required to study Ethics for my Graduate degree… It’s essentially “Don’t do bad thing” guised as a real Academic study. It’s not.

Yes they did. This is actually a major point of debate among Viking age historians. The Norse had very strong family values, which brings a lot of things into question. The problem is that the only records we have about the Vikings tends to be written by people who hated them.

“Mistreatment” is relative. They executed Marine Corps prisoners samurai style to show that they honored and respected them.

No it isn’t.