Tanni wrote:elemtilas wrote:Tanni wrote: You cannot love all the people. I wonder if someone ever can truely love their enemies. This christian lore just leads into hypocrisy.
![:) [:)]](./images/smilies/icon_smile2.png)
Perhaps you should try it sometime? Before you tell someone it can not be done?
Do you really understand what goes on in the head of people you do not know or why a state does something? You simply can't!
I claim no sure knowledge of either: this can not stop me from striving to engage others lovingly. In other words, your state of mind does not determine someone else's loving approach to you.
“Satan represents undefiled wisdom, instead of hypocritical self-deceit!”
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
“Why should I not hate mine enemies―if I "love" them does that not place me at their mercy?”
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
First, this takes way too much energy. (Been there, done that.) Second, you will drown in your hatred, as you find more and more people that are distasteful to you.
What kind of energy? (Where? What?) Maybe your hatred is more energy-consuming than the hatred of others? Your answer looks like the answer of an ideologist seeking for support in physics.
These kinds of emotions take a toll on one. Hating people, despising people, loathing and fearing people -- all those things become physically detrimental. I am not an ideologist nor do I seek your or anyone else's support. I'm not sure what physics has to do with this.
Satan represents indulgence, instead of abstinence!
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
Satan represents vital existence, instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
Do you think people like him waste their ''energy''?
La Vey invented his own religion and peddled to others who became his followers. He was a cult leader. He had an agenda to sell. In all honesty, it is a very popular worldview! -- total indulgence, freedom to hate what is hateful, no boundaries, no limitations on your own bad behaviour. Plus free sex -- what a deal! These things were certainly a temptation at one time in my life. Is it a waste of time and energy to always take the easy way out? To lower yourself to the lowest common denominator rather than raising yourself above the gutter? I can only answer for myself: total indulgence, absolute hedonism, reckless and boundaryless behaviour is always appealing to the young and immature; I have since found other things of greater appeal -- the harder course, the narrower way, the road less travelled. It is a challenge to follow the way of Jesus (or Buddha); a challenge that the way of Satan can never fulfill. That way fills one with emptiness and steals all substance.
Being bullied means that you were in a long term process.
The time may be long or short. There are several factors at play there.
How long can you ''choose the way of non-violent acceptance'' without getting serious personal damage or your life-chances destroyed?
It is indeed a long term commitment. Personal damage is a risk -- just ask Dr. King. I find it worth the risk to rise above the merely instinctual life La Vey promotes.
Even and especially non-violent acceptance will destroy you sooner or later. Or it will destroy your family. And it will encourage the bully to go on.
He may, yet he will be denied victory. The bully wants only one thing over you, and that is power; and he wants only one thing from you, and that is fear. Refuse to fear him, deny him the power and he has nothing. Ordinary bullies will give up and move on to a target they can get to cry or beg for mercy. A sociopath or a psychopath -- different matters. They may not stop; but of course, you'll never know if he has such a diagnosis.
You have been in such situations, just two times. In school? Sorry, there's a life out of school were things can emerge very quickly and can have tremendous consequences. This can even happen in school.
Did I say "just two times"? That is your misassumption. Did I agree to divulge my life story to you? I do not. You asked a question and you got the answer -- maybe it is you don't like the choices I have made?
Is it moral to pollute the water, the air, or to kill herds of animals like the bisons? To focus morality to just persons made all that environmental pollutions possible. See that the nature has a right to exist, too, without everything related and ruled by humans.
It is a waste of natural resources and, yes, a sin (against God, against Nature, against fellow Man) to grossly mismanage and wantonly destroy these resources.
So ... of course it's immoral to pollute the air -- someone downwind has to breathe your poison! Of course it's immoral to (wantonly) destroy animal herds -- someone across the plains relies on those herds for food and raw materials!
Or were you expecting me to apply morality to the air itself? To the bison themselves? No -- it is not an act of immorality against the air to light a fire; it is not an act of immorality against the bison itself to hunt and kill it.
Morality applies to people and the relationships one person has with other people. Or are you perhaps thinking that I have no sense of ethics, of common sense, or aesthetic sense, of empathy or of a dozen other sensibilities that can and do indeed inform the rightness and wrongness of our actions, quite apart from the morality we are actually discussing?
LaVeyan Satanism is up for a few decades, the church for two millenia. Go through the history and see what desasters the church has caused.
I am very well aware of the history perpetrated by men in power, typically abusing that power, in the name of the Church and in the name of the God they claim to serve. And, just to make clear, the men in charge of the Catholic Church have, historically, indeed been some of the wickedest of men. Does that mean to you that the moral system they were supposed to be upholding is somehow at fault, or is itself somehow faulty? I would disagree with that: we can see in every political system the corrupting influence of power and authority -- and yes, the C.C. is a political system. We can see in the history of our own times very bad men in positions of power, be it in government, be it in academia, be it in religious domains, that have abused their authority and who have complete disregard for the just laws and moral system they are supposed to be upholding.
What is your point? That, just because Satanism is a relatively minor cult that has never been put to trial the way the Church has that it is in some way superior? I think you will find that Satanist men in authority are no more or less likely to be corrupted by that authority -- but at least they can claim that they are following the teachings of their founder!
What are sophontic beings? I sometimes wonder if humans have said capabilities at all. If you give it a name, it is a person! This notion is faught by many people: That animals are considered merely a property, not a being.
Giving a name to a thing confers nothing on that thing other than that a language-using being has given it a name. I chose "sophont" rather than "person" because there is too much tautologically humanocentric baggage to the word "person".
How can you recognize a perverted moral system? For me, a moral system is perverted if priest bless weapons or preach to paritcipate in a war, or perform witch hunts, besides others.
I wouldn't disagree with you about blessing weapons or exhorting war (and we can see the results of such exhortations coming our way, right now in the form of the Islamic State -- but there certainly have been other examples). I have no problem at all with priests blessing the soldiers and praying for their safety --
Grant peace to Your world, to Your churches, to the clergy, to those in public service, to the armed forces, and to all Your people ... And for all those in public service; permit them, Lord, to serve and govern in peace that through the faithful conduct of their duties we may live peaceful and serene lives in all piety and holiness. I have a big problem with a religious organisation that exhorts violence in all its forms (and thus, rather have a problem with Satanism!)
From your notion of morality, I would expect that morality applies to all and everything,
See above as to what morality applies to -- and also other systems that may or may not also apply to things other than just people.
as things and property have extreme influence on people and their lives, too. Do you think it is a moral deed if your brother takes away the house you live in to terminate the ''society of heirs'', so that you're finally homeless?
I will answer, as I have answered every iteration of this question: if the action touches upon another person, then morality is involved. If that action is unloving, wicked, violent, hateful, abusive or damages that person, then it is immoral.
I wouldn't equate ''loving'' with ''moral''. You simply can't love everyone.
Fair enough, though I would come much closer to equating the two: if you behave morally, then you are engaging in love; if your attitude towards others is one of love, then you will naturally behave morally towards them. That Golden Rule thing is a key here.
The Golden rule does not say anything about love! Behaving morally can cause tremedous injustice.
On the contrary! The G.R. is solidly founded in love! The person who practices the G.R. seeks ever to raise up, improve the lot of, enhance and empower the other person, rather than himself; he never seeks to harm, abuse, damage, insult or destroy another person. And more, it is love
in action: notice that the G.R. is not a mere platitude, a tired old bromide that anyone can safely ignore; the very first word of the G.R. is a verb in the
imperative mood. It is an injunction and a command to go out and
do.
Justice is an entirely different matter -- that is a matter of laws, interpretation of laws, custom at law and the whims of juries.
Reminds me on a radio program someone talked about loving your enemies in the way a preacher does, terminating with the statment: ... love your enemies to death!
Elemtilas, I see that you are moralic and love god and other humans. I don't like to struggle with you on that topic.
I don't mind. But the real struggle here is not between you and me -- it is, and always has been, between ME and ME and between YOU and YOU. We can only agree or disagree on these things we're talking about; and here we have done both. But in the end analysis, we must both of us choose which path we will tread in the real world. Do we choose paths that will lead through light and down to destruction; or paths that will lead us through darkness and into power?
I was very religious, too, as I was a kid, as my grandma was very religious and I loved her very much.
Well, you've got one up on me, then! I was never religious or terribly pious. I could (and still do) sense the fundamental and pervasive awe surrounding the moment of incarnation during the liturgy; but I've never considered myself a "churched" person.
But due to various incidents, due to my situation, especially the bullying against me, and the way others e. g. my parents, teachers, peers, even priests dealed with all that, and due to other factors, I had lots of problems with religion and faith for many years, which took away time and what you call energy to lead a normal life.
You are certainly in no way alone there! Many (young) people feel let down by those who by rights, by honor and by obligation ought to stand up for kids in such situations as you describe of yourself. I don't, and indeed can not, blame you for finding fault with the religion itself. But I would ask you, and you don't have to answer: is it really a problem with the religion itself, or is it really a problem with people who were in authority at the time and failed to protect you a/o make things right?
I don't know what church you grew up in, but to my knowledge, no Christian church teaches that bullying is right, justified, loving Christian behavior. I do know that the Church is an organisation of people -- imperfect people who are prone to make errors in judgement and to fail to take right action.
I don't like to go into details here, but things like that can lead you to the verge of ... and there was a trigger for all that religious induced problems, some detail in the speech of an American president. (Don't ask what detail.)
I can have no idea to what you are referring here...
![:( [:(]](./images/smilies/icon_sad2.png)
But yes, these things can indeed lead one to the verge of... The question then becomes: do I take that leap, or do I work on turning this downward spiral around?
So being too religious and too moral can get you into serious mental and other problems. What you like me to do is some kind of psychological technique. This is something dangerous, especially if you do it without surveillance. You of course can make you feel like you'd love everyone, but this is an illusion. It is one of the spiritual pipe dreams and hypocritical self-deceit Szandor LaVey talkes about.
No doubt. He was unable to overcome that downward spiral and ended up over the verge of... In my experience, love is not a thing that can be forced; neither is it an illusory feeling. LaVey experienced many confusing things early in his life -- a quick perusal of his bio recalls his work in the circus and as a bar musician among people that would for example attend smut shows one day and go to church all spiffed up the next. What a lesson in hypocrisy is that! He fails to comprehend, however, that "going to church" -- i.e., participating in some kind of Christian religious / spiritual life --
is not for perfect people. It is precisely and exactly the smut-show goers, the bar-trolls, the lowlife-nolifes of the world that Jesus explicitly sought out! Remember? He's the one that hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors? Obviously, I am not in the hearts and minds of those people sitting in the church pews -- there were undoubtedly some number of them sitting their hypocritically -- look at me! I go to church every Sunday regular! I have no doubt that many of those people LaVey condemns as hypocrites in fact knew that the life they were leading was a dead-end life (ironically, of complete self-indulgence and hedonism -- the same things he destructively ends up preaching). Maybe they felt powerless against it; maybe they felt the destitution of loneliness -- that no one cared for them. Maybe they were just hoping beyond hope that the minister would get off his pulpit for a moment and touch them, person to person. Who knows?
Certain people, especially those who want to be religious, but don't like to be a member of one of the usual confessions, like to do such kind of techniques, and recommend it to others to help them with their mental or spiritual problems. The problem is, that they recommend doing some inner practice which is very blurred and vague, so that you never knew if you're successful. This opens up the possibility that you (your personality) can get lost in it, making you vulnerable to false prophets.
It is indeed a vèry dangerous thing I am recommending! After all, it is a thing fundamentally transformative! You risk leaving behind the life of mere animal pleasure and simple instinctual reaction. It is a thing that will require you to become aware of your worst self and to thwart your own actions at every moment of every day of your life. I can not claim I accomplished the goal in my own life -- I know and admit to regular failure. This will not stop me from the attempt. With a little grace, perhaps I'll get up a rung or two. I am not recommending you become religious or join a "usual confession".
“Love is one of the most intense feelings felt by man; another is hate. Forcing yourself to feel indiscriminate love is very unnatural. If you try to love everyone you only lessen your feelings for those who deserve your love. Repressed hatred can lead to many physical and emotional aliments. By learning to release your hatred towards those who deserve it, you cleanse yourself of these malignant emotions and need not take your pent-up hatred out on your loved ones.”
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
He is correct on this point: both love and hate are powerful emotions in the human person. The one liberates and unites; the other enslaves and divides. One raises you up; the other drags you down with chains of iron. Take your pick: love your neighbour / hate your neighbour. They both require effort of will; they are both emptying in nature. More, the former renews your will while the latter wears it down; the former fulfills and satisfies when you empty yourself the most while the latter never fills you with anything but emptiness.
Here's the example: You tell me to free myself from hatred first, then work on allowing love to flow through me. But you don't say HOW this is done. If I would know how, I wouldn't need you or any other help in doing so. Hatred, as well as love, cannot be controled. And you presuppose that I feel hatred. What when I don't?
I apologise if I sounded like I was accusing you of feeling something you don't! Blame English for not having a proper fourth person pronoun!
Start out small: examine yourself and find someone at school or work that really ticks you off. Or if you engage in a little road rage after being ticked off by idiot drivers... First, know that about yourself. Next, observe yourself. Come to know your own reactions -- maybe when someone cuts you off you immediately lay on the horn and liberally flip them the bird? -- maybe you can't abide the way your boss manages staff at work and you work yourself into a lather over each and every failing? Next, whenever you find yourself being triggered -- LET YOURSELF BE TRIGGERED. Don't try to stop yourself yet. Yell at that idiot driver, flip him ten thousand birds! Know the emotions, feel the anger, the tightness in the chest, the rage, examine the wish-dreams of what you might do to all idiot drivers if only you were driving a tank and no cop would ever stop you... Next, bring yourself up from that and take a deep breath. Realise in your mind that this is not a good way of behaving -- it causes you undue stress, it causes you to waste energy thinking and feeling negatively, you can't even do anything about except rage impotently! Then, do that exercise every time: repeat, repeat, repeat! Now that you have evaluated your triggers and responses to those triggers, and now that you have decided to change something, you need a plan: what trigger do you want to work on and how?
Idiot drivers is an easy one: now that you know how you react, and you can pinpoint and conceptualise when it happens, next time, in stead of hollering and flipping the bird, do something different - - ease off the accelerator, back yourself out of the negative situation. Make a break with the negative feeling. Honk the horn, if that'll make you feel better, but don't go in for the other craziness that leads you to hateful & negative thoughts. Do this over and over again for a while. Then, next time, when someone cuts you off, ease back, don't honk your horn at all. Then, say to that person (even though, obviously, he will never hear you) "you're welcome!"
At this point, you have turned away from plunging over the verge of... and have moved away from hateful, negative emotion into the realm of love. We say "you're welcome" to someone who is asking us a favor and is thankful for the kind deed we have done them. Obviously, this person is an idiot driver and is in no way thankful for your kindness. However, in your own heart and your own mind -- the whole point of this struggle! -- you are now taking that road rage power away from the idiot driver and are giving it to yourself. You are taking your negative emotion -- a weapon that you can only aim at yourself -- and are reforging it into power that will touch and affect every person you come in contact with.
Yep -- I don't deny this at all: this whole love thing is the world's biggest Jedi mind trick -- and it's the trick the Jedi works on his own mind! The whole point is to readjust our own attitude to everything else that happens in the world and everyone in it. Start out with that building block, that first corner stone, and keep building up, legowise, until you are, metaphorically, saying "thank you" in every situation where you have discovered hatred, dissatisfaction, ill-intent, or whatever negative feeling you may be having towards other people. This is (one way only!) how to let go of your hatred.
Next stop -- engaging in love. From here on out, things get very much easier! In my experience, it much harder to be rid of hatred than it is to admit love. Nurturing animosity, wallowing in hate -- those things are so easy to do and they consume so many people.
So, what's so easy about loving other people -- you say it's impossible to love everyone, right? What you must understand is that, apart from yourself, there is really only one person in the whole world you actually have to love in this way I'm talking about -- and that is the person right in front of you! The person you are presently engaged with at this moment. It could be a friend, it could be a stranger visiting your town, it could be a homeless guy in a bus shelter, it could be the idiot driver or even your idiot boss at work! Whoever it is, in that moment, is your time to engage in love. Now, this love I'm talking about, this love Jesus demonstrated, is nothing earth shattering, it's nothing any of us can't handle. It's not just holding the door open for an old man -- it's your attitude -- it's knowing and resting your heart in the fact that you are doing this for this man at this present time -- right now, you and he are in a sense connected, united in this moment. It's not throwing a dollar into the bum's can -- it is nothing more than engaging him, saying hi, talking to him a little, listening to his story, even if he rambles, it's seeing if he's got a hat on a cold day, it's reminding him -- and equally importantly you -- that he is a person, a human being and worthy of the dignity of love.
You're probably reading this thinking, golly, this guy is the biggest Christian nut-job I've ever come across! LaVey would probably call that the biggest pile of bull shit he ever had to put shovel to. So, I'll leave it at that. You can at least get a glimpse of one possible process one can use to turn hatred on its head.
Your problem is that you see everything from the end, from the perfected deed itself, disregarding the various processes going on before, the ancillary factors as you call it, barring the fact if it was planned or not. This is the position of someone who seeks to punish someone else or who wants to wield power, but not an aspect of a real loving person who seeks to understand to prevent things going wrong.
End? Beginning? Before the before or after the after? Makes no difference, really. The "processes" are really irrelevant. I neither desire nor hold power: I can only describe to you how I understand the basic morality of different kinds of killing.
Revenge is the negative feedback necessary to keep things within borders.
Revenge leads nowhere but to further acts of vengeance. This is what "honor killings" are all about. Hatfields and McCoys. Sooner or later either everything ends up destroyed or the two sides must come together and end the cycle of vengeance.
The repetitive nature of bullying is due to the lack of a (legal) negative feedback. If governments are that bad, why wouldn't you call that secret service operations murder?
Because it's
legal! (Note that "legal" does not equate with "moral".)
The drunk still puts himself in a place where this is (more) likely to happen, and must bear culpability because he performed actions that directly led to the death of another person.
Yes, iff the drunk put himself in a place where this is more likely to happen. What when the drunk just defends himself because of the attacks of another?
In any event, it's not really an "accident" -- the two drunks deliberately put themselves in positions where such an incident is highly likely to occur. They both willingly entered the establishment; they both ordered drink after drink in full knowledge of what will happen when too much alcohol is imbibed. They both drank to excess, knowing that this will mess with their thought processes and modes of response. Certainly it is chance that brought the two pugilists together
just at that most unfortunate of times, but it was no mere "accident" that one ends up dead. A tragedy? Possibly. The scenario didn't involve a drunk "defending himself" against some random attack; as I recall, the scenario was a bar brawl.
If a person is constantly abused by another over the course of years and finds an opportunity to end the abuse by use of a weapon -- that one is a killer, but no murderer.
This is a defense action in a bullying-process, where the action aimes at the termination of that process.
Being bullied does not give the victim the right to kill his bully. That's still murder. Now, as I said, perfectly understandable!
As I said, this kind of killing, of an abuser or bully, is understandable. Me, I don't think I could really bring myself to convict such a person of a crime, were I on a jury. But the focus here is not on the circumstances -- and we can wallow in circumstances for years and never get anywhere! -- but rather on the action itself, which is the intentional taking of another's life.
What when the victim commits suicide? When he's that desperate and that moralic and that loving to others, that, instead of killing the bully, he kills himself and does a sinful deed, too?
I do not view suicide as a sin. For me, it is a true tragedy and a symptom of a very sickened, very worn down heart and soul. It is the last most agonised cry for help that will now not come in this world. It is possibly the worst choice of all because the victim has deprived himself of the possibility of healing. It is a very great sadness, even beyond the sadness of a pure accidental death.
Intention to kill, disregarding the circumstances, because that'll never get us anywhere -- barring to the graveyard! Moralic system crash! The focus must be on the circumstances, because circumstances have an extreme influence on how things go on and on how they could have avoided.
I think we're talking at cross purposes here: for the purpose of this discussion, I am focussing on the nature of the act of killing -- not on justifications, not on extraneous circumstances that may or may not lead up to a/o follow from. I think you're losing focus here by now dwelling on "intent" and "circumstance" and how to prevent bad things from happening. I don't necessarily disagree with you regarding these things! The fact remains: killing the bully, regardless of the killer's intentions or state of mind or any other factor, is an immoral act. It brings to an otherwise unnatural & untimely end to a human life. You may not like that human, you may hate him (and therein may well lie some justification for the act); and thus feel that these external emotions change the nature of the act. The murder of a bully or the execution of a murderer or killing in war -- none of these things are moral acts, all of these things are acts of evil.
If you really would be engaged in loving, you would like to find a way to prevent things, to keep your loved ones -- that means everyone -- alive, instead of morally judge -- and maybe punish -- them according to a very simple moralic system.
Naturally so! The person who acts with love never seeks to destroy the life of another person, neither by plot, nor by war, nor "legally" via the justice system.
If a person is driving along a street and passes a parked truck and another person runs out from behind the truck and is struck and killed -- the driver is neither killer nor murderer. The driver was not the cause of the death.
If there would have been no driver, there would have been no death.
Quite. And, therefore, no contrary example against which to compare the intentional killings outlined earlier!
But the driver will most likely suffer from self-reproach for the rest of his life. And that's unfair!
Quite. It is most unfair indeed! Life in this world, the chanciness and whims of fortune, random events and acts of nature -- none of this is, and has never been, "fair".
It simply falls to that person to face that unfairness with what grace and fortitude of heart, mind and soul she may possess. For the rest of us, who are as yet untouched by such stinging unfairnesses, it falls to us to pray for those who are! Pray, send out your good thoughts, whatever you want to call it. Express empathy towards & engage with love those you meet who are so suffering. No power we possess, no technology, no wish, no raging to the uncaring stars will change that death or bring that person back among us. We can only accept the reality.
So the driver caused the death by driving the car. If the driver -- for physical and physiological reasons -- never had a chance to avoid the death, how can he be a murderer or a killer?
As I said before, and just now, the driver is neither killer nor murderer. In this case, death was caused more by the running man's inattention than by anything the driver did.
Ok, when you can't avoid it, you're neither a killer nor a murder.
The death here was entirely accidental: the person did not plan, did not execute plan, was not the agent and did not cause the death.
Transfer that to the bullying situation, or any other situation where people are forced to do something negative and have no chance to avoid it.
The situation is untransferable -- the victim of bullying always has choices! Choices may be difficult, may be odious, may be detrimental to self and others, but there are always choices.
Why did the other person runs out without looking?
Don't know; and as far as the nature of the death goes, not really relevant. There is no evil action here on the part of the driver.
Have you ever asked yourself about the reason/cause of ''the running man's inattention''?
Do you think I didn't consider a dozen different scenarios? Again: you're letting the ephemeral details overshadow the fundamental concept. Does it really matter if the man was dashing across the street to get back to his car before the parking enforcement officer gets to his expired meter? Does it really matter if the man was running across the street to get a fresh batch of donuts? Does it really matter if the man had just stolen a purse from a little old lady and is running to avoid being caught? Does it really matter if the man was running from his screeching wife who just caught him in bed with her sister?
No. None of these things affect the accidental nature of the death; none of these things really change the self-reproach of the driver (although I can understand why some folks might rest easier having run over a criminal in the act!)
Maybe because he flew a bullying situation? What do you think is the bully, then?
What about him? He's no more or less a bully now. The only thing that changes now is that we now no longer have an accidental death -- you've changed the nature of the scenario. We now have someone who is culpable in the death of the running man. In this case, the bully. Surely the bully did not intend to kill the man -- that is not the bully's game. A dead victim and a stonewallingly non-responsive victim are no fun for a bully! So, the bully is not, strictly speaking, a murderer: he did not plan for the man to die; yet his actions directly led to the death of the man. His action in causing the death of the man is evil.
If you want to be a loving, fair and just person, the reason why he flew is relevant. Especially to the driver of the car, as he gets an explanation why things happened.
The reason for the flight is irrelevant -- the agency of the death (the bully) and the proximate cause (the chase) áre most relevant! The choice to run was perhaps ill-advised, given the proximity to traffic in the road; but is understandable, and perhaps laudible on the part of the victim because he is prevented from committing an evil act (killing the bully).
The driver of the car is no more guilty of the death now than before. He does get an understandable, if lamentable explanation for the incident, yes.
“There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy!”
― Anton Szandor LaVey, The Satanic Bible
This is of course true. We, as a society, have the power and ability to tomorrow allow as moral or disallow as immoral any action we deem changeworthy. This doesn't really alter the fundamental rightness or wrongness of those actions so redefined. All we shall have done is exchange one set of words on a piece of paper for another set.
There is no fundamental rightness or wrongness, everything is in the eye of the beholder.
Ah, yes, the morality of the terminally immoral! I find it perfectly moral for bullies to beat up and chase weak quislings like you. If you are being bullied and decide to run and get yourself hit by a car, well, that's your own damn fault! Good on him, he was doing an admirable job of hating his enemy and quite morally trouncing a weak-chinned, slack-jawed, wuss such as yourself. You're better off dead; and what's more, it's all your fault that the driver of the car now must bear not only the self-reproach that comes from running your silly self over, but also must bear the cost of repairing the body damage your stupid self caused to his car! Frankly, what this country needs is less weak people like you and more strong people like the bully that was chasing you!
Okay: now tell me all about moral relativism and the nonexistence of fundamental right and wrong!
Semantic because, as above, whether a person plans & carries out the death of another or whether a person falls into a horrible incident that results in another's death, that person was the proximate cause in both instances of a sinful act.
Consider a language where there is no affix for denominating the doer or actor or perpetrator of an action. Would we have a discussion like that?
Answer me this: do the speakers of this language have means other than affixes to describe the agent role, or is there simply no concept of agency whatsoever (and therefore obviously no means to discuss those roles in the language)?
A language entirely without agency marking would be very cumbersome, I think. What I meant was a language without marking the doer or actor or perpetrator on word level. I don't use agens here, because there are some trivial cases of agency, e. g. the breather as someone who breathes.
Okay, so a language where the concepts of agency exist, but where no morphology (or I guess syntax?) exists to describe it? I'm not sure such a thing is plausible in a language. I mean, we don't have in English any morphological way to distinguish a verb of the future time from a verb of the present time -- yet we have no trouble at all talking about future events!
I suspect that if we had a language where agency is not marked -- no -er / -or / -ator endings, we'd still have no difficulty talking about who does what and to whom. In stead of saying "John Smith is a murderer"; we might simply say "John Smith killed someone". If that's still too agenty for you, then perhaps "Someone was killed by John Smith" would do better.
It's arguable whether "breather" is a trivial example of agency or not...