I wasn't worried. I figured, it was Memorial Day, and you were probably a keynote speaker. (ba-DUM-BUM, *dingg*)
The consensus view is that most people agree with me in not wishing to be harmed. Therefore, we define causing pain to others as being off-limits, by defining the causing of pain to others to be "wrong".
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
If you accept, a priori, that life and human existence has some grand meaning, then your argument makes sense. But if it is not the case that we are particularly special, the rationale for morality in this sense falls by the wayside.
Our existence may not be for any "grand"er purpose than to give us an opportunity to experience existence. But either way, this gets us back into the "Where did morality come from?" routine. Not that that isn't a worthy question, but it's not necessary to answer that question in order to know that it exists.
And it's interesting you should say that my argument would make sense if there was some deliberate purpose to our existence beyond ourselves - that Univ* wants us to live. Why would you say that that would validate my argument? Put another way, why would we be morally obliged to conduct ourselves in the way that Univ* demands? And if you can accept that we would be so obliged, why couldn't we be obliged to simply treat each other right, without worrying about all that other dazzling stuff?
Saying that if not for people's unwillingness it would have worked just fine may be true, but it doesn't mean much in the world as exists.
It means plenty. It means that if there were such a society that could rationalize itself into accepting that, you would then seem to be bereft of basis for saying that it's wrong. Well, I would still say that it's the wrong thing to do to those targeted for liquidation, regardless of how much their surviving neighbors would approve.
Somethng like that ;)
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
How so? I read your post as not seeing how one could construct a pragmatic case to define causing pain to others as wrong, which I then attempted to do. Did I misread you?
And it's interesting you should say that my argument would make sense if there was some deliberate purpose to our existence beyond ourselves - that Univ* wants us to live. Why would you say that that would validate my argument?
Because when you cast life and existence as sacred and an end unto itself, the immediate questions I have are "sacred to whom? An "end" to whom?" If it's strictly sacred to us, then it's a purely subjective judgment. If our existence is only an end as a matter of perception by us, then there is no existence of such a concept independent of us.
IOW, when you say sacred, then if it is strictly sacred to us, either we just decided it arbitrarily, or we constructed some rational case for our sacredness, built on other axioms, or, "sacredness" came to us from somewhere else. And only the last option admits of the possibility that "sacredness" is a universal concept. What it seems to me that you've done here is derived the concept of "wrong" from notions of universal rightness. But that's just a one-off - calling the sacredness of our lives a universal truth suffers from the same limitations that calling infliction of pain a universal wrong does - you're still left with the choice that either we made it up, and therefore it's not universal at all, or it came from somewhere else, in which case it requires an originator to be true. In the absence of an originator external to ourselves, how else can we know that it is universal?
I'm trying to get this across, and I hope it's clearer now - I think that any notion of universal morality is inextricably bound up with some conception of a creator. But from that flows the other problems I've discussed - which creator? Who's got the inside scoop? Why is life sacred?
Put another way, why would we be morally obliged to conduct ourselves in the way that Univ* demands?
Well, fortunately, if we take a look at this conception of Univ*, it doesn't make proscriptive pronouncements about human behavior the way other concepts do. It doesn't tell you whether or not you should do something, it only insures that certain rules apply to determine what the consequences of your actions will be. In that sense, there are no laws of Univ* that you are morally obliged to follow - there are only certain rules that describe what happens in a given circumstance. You have no particular moral obligation to obey the laws of gravitation, but on the other hand, good luck violating them ;)
It means plenty. It means that if there were such a society that could rationalize itself into accepting that, you would then seem to be bereft of basis for saying that it's wrong.
How many societies based upon genocide have lasted and prospered? I'm having trouble thinking of one. It's because people have, at least, some sense of self-preservation that such societies are probably doomed from the beginning.
And for me to call it wrong, that's why it is critical to define base principles and "rights" from the start. Once we have those in place, we have some basis for saying it's wrong to slaughter Jews, because we recognize their desire to live as overriding someone else's desire to kill them.
Look at it this way - if the Jews have their way, nothing happens. The status quo is preserved and life continues on with no change. But if the Nazis have their way, the Jews die and are exterminated, and the status quo has changed. But because we have these rights in place, it becomes incumbent upon those who desire to change the status quo to demonstrate that this change is proper and necessary. And I have a sneaky suspicion that the Nazis couldn't have done that.
Do I get a lifeline?
Take as much time as you need ;)