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edwest211
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Exactly right.
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OneSheep
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The proposal does not address “moral relativism”. Are you seeing something in the OP that proposes relativism?
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WileyC1949
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Absolutely… that is the more obvious function of the conscience.
But what drove those desires? It seems to me that would be looking for something “better” than what we have. On the subconscious level even something as mundane as walking across the street is a function of the conscience. It is “good” if I wait until that car passes… it is “bad” if I walk out in front of it. Every single step we take is done on the basis of “Is it better for me to go on, or better for me to wait?” Ultimately I think subconsciously the conscience gives us the drive for the “greatest good” which is God. This may be why a scientific study has already found that human beings are PRE-disposed to believe in God and in an afterlife. Perhaps this is because we all have an innate knowledge the the greatest good must exist. Perhaps in all our steps to find something better than what we have is subconsciously simply our feeble attempts at finding God?
I hadn’t thought of that but I would agree. That even adds more depth to the story than I had previously considered, although I am not quite sure I know what you mean in your last sentence when you talk of condemnation.
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fhansen
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yes? That’s the point
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STT
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They were thinking relative about the act if they were thinking that they were right.
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PetraG
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No, I think it is the actual choice to eat the apple that represents the rejection of reality. Seeing the fruit is appetizing isn’t wrong. Desiring the wisdom to know good from evil isn’t wrong. It is choosing to form a moral code and act on a code that puts aside the law of God under the pretense that God is not to be trusted that is the rejection.
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OneSheep
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Well, it is harmful to walk out in front of it, and we are naturally fearful about doing so, but I don’t find the normal conscience-related emotions involved. It seems to me that the focus of the conscience’ activity is that which involves the interpersonal. For example, I might feel just annoyed with myself about spending too much time on the CAF, but since I am supposed to be getting work done, and my wife works, I feel guilty also. The conscience is involved in the latter, but not so much the former. Guilt, condemnation (resentment, etc), gut-level negative reactions, and the positive ones too, the feelings of “goodness” when we do what our conscience demands, these are what I see as part of its functioning. Fear - not so much.
Robert Wright proposes that we must remain in a fairly constant state of dissatisfaction, otherwise we would not work to improve our own condition, and therefore be less likely to pass on genes. It makes sense to me.OneSheep said:
That sentence was a bit of a mess. What scientists have discovered is that we do get the “happy” neurotransmitters when we do “good”, and the angry-type when we do “bad”, and we also have the same going on when we witness others doing helpful and harmful acts. I look at guilt as a kinda self-condemning emotional/cognitive process, a rejection of the self. And, of course, when others exhibit the same behaviors, we naturally feel the same rejection or elation towards others.
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OneSheep
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Hmm, that is a good point, but I’m not sure that the choice to reject can be separated from the symbolic meaning (rejection). Because the purpose of the proposal was a “more charitable” reading, the choice and the fruit are all tied together as part of rejection. Does that seem to contradict the standard teaching? If so, please explain how, and maybe we can come up with a way of making it work. It is a rather enticing proposal.
For example, rejection is a sort of automatic reaction, but when we realize we have rejected, we do have a choice to either hang onto it or let it go and then accept. If we hang onto it, we suffer. If we let go and accept instead, we avert such suffering.
If we did say that they were wrong, we would be rejecting such seeing and desiring.
I think that what is being “tweaked” a little is that the tree doesn’t represent the “knowledge” but more of the “rejection”, which does result in a seeing/perception of evil. I wish someone could shed more light on this proposal! I think it is meant to make God’s action more understandable and man’s actions more “consequential” (vs outright “bad”). Note: if we look at what Adam did as “bad”, then we are eating of the tree of rejection, separating ourselves from Adam in some way. I hope I am elaborating in a way that makes the proposal pretty much fall in line with the catechism, and not contradict Church teachings.
Yes, that could be what he was talking about.
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PetraG
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First of all, I don’t know what you mean by “a more charitable reading.” You don’t have a problem with Church teaching, so in what way is it being suggested that the typical reading of the biblical account of the Fall lacks charity?
Do you mean no one ought to condemn Adam and Eve personally? Do you mean the action that lead to the Fall was not worthy of condemnation? Are you perhaps referring to the idea that before the Fall, human kind was innocent–that is, in a state in which they knew neither good nor bad, but knew only one way, which was the way of God? After the Fall, then, we wouldn’t have found Adam and Eve spawned dualism. We have a state of fragmentation, in which each human being is born believing himself or herself to be the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong. This state cannot be reconciled with the unity of mind and love that is the Trinity, is it? This state doesn’t just lead to personal unhappiness. This brings suffering into the world.
Again turning to the example of Our Lord and Our Lady, we know that suffering touches even the entirely innocent and the entirely obedient. Our Lord did not suffer because he rejected God. He suffered and died because there is sin in the world. By his Death and Resurrection, he established a beachhead, so to speak, by which humankind can be ransomed from the situation that has existed for everyone since the Fall.
I heard a homily recently in which a priest said the original Hebrew of the Ten Commandments doesn’t have a simple connotation of “Thou Shalt Not.” He said it means something more like “we don’t do this, this is not who we are.” In other words, to follow these commandments is to be yourself.
"If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you..” John 14:15-21
Our Lord is talking about being in a state of grace. He never says, however, that those who follow the will of God will not suffer. To the contrary, he describes it as a way of suffering, a way of persecution, but a way in which suffering leads by the transformative grace of God to beatitude: “Blessed are they…”
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WileyC1949
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That is part of my point. A dog who attacks a bear does not reason before hand that this may be harmful and bad for him. Harm is a form of “bad” or “evil”.
I would disagree. I see BOTH as functions of the conscience. It gives you the ability to judge between what would be the “proper” (good) amount of time to spend on the forum and what is the “improper” (bad) amount of time. Every time you put one foot in front of another it is done with subconscious deliberation and weighing whether or not it is proper to proceed.
The fear reaction is a product mainly of instinct. Even animals display that. The typical response to fear is “flight or fight”, and that too I would see as instinctual. But for a man to run toward something of which he is afraid, that I see as a function of the conscience weighing the best possible outcome.
ABSOLUTELY!!! The conscience is our guide to finding the “greatest good” which is God. The is why Paul said that those who follow the dictates of their conscience will have nothing to fear before God.
I would agree with that, but I would add is that what creates the dissatisfaction in us is the conscience.
Again, I agree. Guilt or judgement of others for their actions, is a clear function of the conscience. Non-obsessive guilt I would place on the positive side as is an awareness that you could be better. Judging the deeds of others as wrong is most definitely on the negative side.
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PetraG
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The moral conscience and emotional (or any physically-based) feelings of guilt at doing wrong or the pleasure of doing good are NOT the same thing.
An analogy would be that guilt is like a smoke alarm but your moral conscience is what tells you whether you have a fire to put out or not. You would be in a great deal of danger if you waited to fight or prevent fires until you heard the smoke alarm going off. Guilt is merely an emotional tool to help you identify what might be a morally dangerous situation.
I think we all know that our feelings are very bad moral compasses…right? They are really good smoke detectors, though…unless we decide to take the batteries out, as we sometimes do.
A sociopath often does not have the same kind of emotional conscience that other people do. They are thrilled by different things, afraid of different things (although less fearful generally) and upset by different things. That doesn’t mean they have no capacity for moral decision-making. It does mean that they may be more meritorious when they do choose to follow a correctly-formed moral conscience, since the moral life takes more and greater acts of faith for them than for others. They just don’t feel the “down side” of wronging other people; questions
like"how would you feel if someone did that to you?" can seem nonsensical to them.
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OneSheep
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Good Morning
I think I may have to go back to “square one” because you brought up so many good points and challenges. I am going to have to go back to my friend again, and he finally answered my call this morning and said he could get back to me by this weekend. So stay tuned, and thank you so much for your feedback!
Which ever choice I make, it really has no bearing on whether I make a change in my life or the world around me. So, to choose acceptance means choosing holiness, a reconciliation within and without. And to me, this is a more merciful and loving way of living and interacting.
I think I may have to go back to “square one” because you brought up so many good points and challenges. I am going to have to go back to my friend again, and he finally answered my call this morning and said he could get back to me by this weekend. So stay tuned, and thank you so much for your feedback!
You see, this is one of the very good points you make. Suffering, in my experience does lead to transformation. If nothing else, it certainly leads to learning, to wisdom. There is, in the short run, no way to avoid it. However, after the initial reaction of rejection I have to something (and the subsequent suffering I experience because of such rejection) and I come to realize that I am indeed rejecting , I can come to a point of decision, just as you so accurately described in the symbolic decision of Adam and Eve. I can choose to reject, or I can choose to accept.
Which ever choice I make, it really has no bearing on whether I make a change in my life or the world around me. So, to choose acceptance means choosing holiness, a reconciliation within and without. And to me, this is a more merciful and loving way of living and interacting.
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OneSheep
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Well, as soon as you bring “judging” into it, it is definitely a conscience thing, for sure.
Yeah, now the conscience comes into play.
Oops, for some reason I put your line in my quote of that post. My response was below it, about Robert Wright. You addressed it here:
Can you give an example?
What do you mean by “the negative side”?
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OneSheep
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All good points. I did not mean to imply that guilt and the conscience are the same thing, but guilt certainly is part of the functioning of the conscience, right?
I think it depends on which “feelings” you are referring to. My desire for something is decidedly not a good moral compass.
Guilt is generally pretty accurate.
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PetraG
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I think it is very important to understand how feelings of guilt do and don’t have anything to do with a functioning conscience. A person who puts too much stock in guilt is so vulnerable. They’re vulnerable to doing things they know are wrong because they don’t happen to feel guilty about it. They are vulnerable to failing to do things they ought to do because they feel guilty about subjecting someone else to consequences that are necessary. They are vulnerable to hide their wrongdoing and avoid repenting, confessing and making amends because they turn feelings of guilt into feelings of shame. They are also very vulnerable to manipulation by narcissists and sociopaths.
It is bad to learn to ignore feelings of guilty just as it is bad to unplug a smoke detector. Having said that, you have to understand that the conscience is an informed source of wisdom to the will, not a feeling. Guilt is a very useful feeling, but like all feelings it also must be both freely felt and yet also mastered.
Burying feelings is not mastery. That is merely repression. It can be a very harmful way to deal with difficult emotions and it is a false mastery, like thinking you have trained a pet when you have actually decided to chain him in the back yard and ignore the poor fellow. He will not be the friend he is intended to be when you finally have to face him, let’s just say that. Having said that, you can’t have your feelings of guilt dragging you along like a handler who has no control over the dog that is supposed to be serving the handler, rather than the other way around.
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PetraG
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I remember teaching CCD to some 5th graders. One of them said, “If you’re a good person, God won’t let anything bad happen to you.” I pointed to the crucifix in the classroom and said, “What did he do wrong? Why did God allow that to happen to him?..Remember, though, what took place because he stayed faithful even though that was being done to him.”
Then I explained that God doesn’t guarantee that if we are faithful, nothing bad can happen to us. I said what the crucifix teaches is that God has the power to take the worst thing that ever happened and to transform it into the best thing that has ever happened. If you are faithful to what God asks you to do, no matter what that brings, God can transform the suffering of this world into victory. You don’t have to go looking for suffering. You just have to be willing to suffer, if that is what it takes to remain faithful to the love of God and neighbor. That is the way of the Lord, that is the way of life, that is the way through suffering.
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WileyC1949
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You said:
I agree that we do remain in a constant state of dissatisfaction other wise we would not work to improve our condition. But I believe that this dissatisfaction is a call of the conscience to always think of something better… the greater good. It is an itch we cannot scratch until we find a solution for that particular problem, aka a backscratcher. But then another thing will always come up where we search for another greater good. It is the conscience which is in our genes, not the improvements in our condition or our inventions we come up with to solve problems. Our development of more brain power I believe is because the conscience stimulated our imagination and made us always looking beyond the status quo. That is an ability that animals simply lack. That is why I said that the conscience is at the root of all of the achievements and advancements of man, both on the good AND evil sides.
Judging others leads to a kind of self- adoration. Like the Pharisee in the temple saying “Thank you God that I am not like him…”. It leads to thinking “I am better than him”. Certainly on the positive side would be seeing someone whom you think did a good job and praising him for it. The negative side is seeing that he did something wrong and judging him for it.
Again, the ultimate goal of the conscience in pushing us and pushing us to find a greater good than we already have is actually the Spirit’s pushing us to find the greatest good which is God.
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edwest211
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People are judging others all the time. Just as a fair judge would. Do I want to get to know that loud, obnoxious person who wants his own way all the time?
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WileyC1949
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Whether or not you want to get them or not is totally up to you. Christ’s command was that we love them, do good for them, and never speak ill of them. He didn’t say you have to make them your best friends.
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OneSheep
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I think that what “makes us look beyond the status quo” are the innate desires for power, status, wealth, etc. as well as the “adult version” of sibling rivalry: the want to possess what others have.
I’m not really seeing how the conscience, with its guilt/condemning/rewarding/elevating aspects when we behave well are really involved. Do you feel guilty about not “improving your status”? I don’t, really. However, categorizing our dissatisfaction as coming under the umbrella of conscience is not a huge issue, so I have no reason to contest it.
I’ll get back to the rest when I can…
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