Before European explorers first landed in South America, the Aztecs had a thriving civilization. They had their own culture. they had their own language. they had a style of art and a structured civilization. They had a complicated mythology.Archaeologists are still discovering more about them. they also obviously practiced human sacrifice and, apparently, on a large scale.
Then there were the Spanish. Another civilization flourishing. Of course we all know what happened;put them together, begin the Spanish invasion and only came out on top. Not helped that Aztecs had never been exposed to smallpox and so on. Net loss: an Aztec Empire.
Don't worry, I'm not really here to discuss the story. actually, I really don't know much more about the whole incident than what I have casual reading.In fact, most interests me the shock of morality here. on the one hand, we have a group of people who sincerely believe that if they do not participate in rituals involving human sacrifice, the gods will withdraw his favor and everyone will die (or, less apocalyptically, will destabilize their society and chaos will descend). On the other side, we have a group of people with an equally sincere belief in their own superiority and his own right to take the land they wanted. Both sides essentially believed what they were doing the right thing when they took human lives.
Looking back on it, I doubt anyone would want to relive the human sacrifice or type of destructive conquest that leaves the entire Nations scattered or killed but there are many people who would say: "well, that was good for them, at that time. they believed that were doing the right thing. and it's really the intention that counts. For them, was the right thing to do. "
So, here we have the idea that society and the society itself, determines what is right and wrong.
But that's defective reasoning. Firstly, give society responsibility to determine the morality, you arbitrarily stated that societies are infallible, and that when a society and an individual within it differ, the individual must be wrong. Looking back to the story of my own country, my country of birth and my adopted country (Germany and United States, respectively), I can see a huge amount of evil that was socially accepted and a lot of people who disagreed. A particularly striking example is the u.s. justified slavery during the time that was cool; they actually had people preach sermons about how it was better for black people to be slaves because they would be happier, because they were unable to make their own decisions or take care of themselves. Slavery was wrong and now is evil.That we do not recognize that time doesn't make it less true now.
But still we can say that good and evil are defined by the society.in 1800, America defined slavery as "law" and in 2010, we can define it as "wrong". Fine so that society is correct? 19th century America or 2010 in America? If your answer is "both", which barely changes depending on your perspective, so there is no need for a concept of "evil" the term "evil" can be completely replaced by the words "socially unacceptable", or in any way a special case of the term that involves only the society mores (rather than simple customs that arouse moral judgment of most people — for example, is not common to hold more than 5 cats in the same House, but most people in our society could not judge it as wrong to keep six).
But if "evil" is the same thing as "socially unacceptable", then you can't argue about morality;You can never say that something is right or wrong categorically.You can only say, "I don't prefer this" or "my" don't prefer this society.
The only way for good or bad to have meaning at all is that they have a meaning that is not determined by society.For this meaning independent exist, both good and Evil must exist as separate entities, outside people's minds.Their being intangible concepts does not prevent its being real; numbers are independent concepts with reality, for example, and so are ideas like sequence, cause and effect and logic in General.(If logic had no independent reality, we would be able to apply it trusted to science.)
Now, if you mean that good and evil have no meaning independent of sentient minds, then you can say that but you must debug the moral debate entirely, because with that premise, morality is meaningless. the only thing left is, "what can I do that I will benefit more without causing society to retaliate against me?"And this is a species very poor moral code for living.
By the way: I who would have party of Aztecs? Nor. as is the case in much of history, both sides were terribly wrong, and both sides suffered for it.
This entry was posted on November 17, 2009 at 8: 10 pm and is filed under health. follow any responses to this post through the RSS 2.0. you can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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