Good and Evil and Moral Dilemmas

I am reading a dissertation about Moralism and Morality. The premise is that world conflicts will not be solved through political or government solutions. The only solution is the moral one. This is where definitions about morality and the moral is important. The problem in his analysis is moral realism. Everyone assumes that his "morality is Truth" and that another's is "False". Religions further inflate and enlarge the ante in such conversations, I think. I am still reading and thinking through his premises. One quote he ends with is Solzhenitsyn's. I added some from Nietzsche because he understood also, this point, I think.

“If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere


insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate

them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and

evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to

destroy a piece of his own heart?”54

—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ( (1974).
The Gulag Archipelago


Nietzsche quotes;

 A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.




In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.


Man is the cruelest animal.


The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.


The overman...Who has organized the chaos of his passions, given style to his character, and become creative. Aware of life's terrors, he affirms life without resentment.


To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence.

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.


But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!


What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do…?
 
 
Nations have different ways of approaching situations and understandings that make for conflict. Is there a way of compromise where both parties are co-operating, instead of battling to the "end"? Does there have to be a "winner and loser", or can we "all win" something that makes for a 'better place"?

The Distinctions MUST Remain Clear

I was doing some reading on inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. This is what I found under my Google search and Answers.com:

Some philosophers and political scientists make a distinction between natural rights and legal rights.
Legal rights (sometimes also called civil rights or statutory rights) are rights conveyed by a particular polity, codified into legal statutes by some form of legislature (or unenumerated but implied from enumerated rights), and as such are contingent upon local laws, customs, or beliefs.
In contrast, natural rights (also called moral rights or inalienable rights) are rights which are not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of a particular society or polity. Natural rights are thus necessarily universal, whereas legal rights are culturally and politically relative.
Blurring the lines between natural and legal rights, U.S. statesman James Madison believed that some rights, such as trial by jury, are social rights, arising neither from natural law nor from positive law but from the social contract from which a government derives its authority.[1]

The social contract is where the government over a particular person derives it power or authority. Americans understand that government is granted power by the person's consent. We are a nation that is ruled by laws that protect individual liberties, which are defined by our Bill of Rights.

Some have thought that this does disservice to international concerns, such as human rights. This is not necessarily so, as specified laws protect a particular nation-state, providing its definitions of custom, norms and "morals".

America has protected itself by understanding the dangers of uniting political and religious agenda. Jefferson's separation of Church and State was to prevent such authoritarial ideology. Jefferson believed in inalienable rights, that were based on natural rights, while Madision understood that the social contract was to be upheld by the rights of citizens within a particular nation state.

Distinctions about these two issues must remain clear, otherwise, we dissolve boundaries of civil rights, and social norm and custom which help to create identification to the people who live within a country's borders.