{"id":473,"date":"2020-06-20T12:03:15","date_gmt":"2020-06-20T18:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/?p=473"},"modified":"2020-06-20T12:24:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-20T18:24:58","slug":"moral-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/moral-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"Moral Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"688\" height=\"387\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1DyD2jrWjFM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/>\n\tSuperman, after rescuing Lois Lane, has a bone to pick with Lex Luther. Luther<br \/>\nhad a brilliant plan to get rid of Superman, and part of his plan included<br \/>\nanother superhero who keeps the peace, Batman. Luther&#8217;s plan was to create a rift<br \/>\nbetween the two, cause them to fight and then take over.<\/p>\n<p>I have to admit I was suspect when I first saw this movie come out. I was<br \/>\nlike &#8220;Batman versus Superman&#8230;that seems like a no contest.&#8221; Superman is<br \/>\nsuperman, all-powerful, virtually unstoppable, and the protector of<br \/>\nmankind. Batman is just a rich man with a protective suite, with tons<br \/>\nof cool gadgets to give him an upperhand. He certainly cannot kill<br \/>\nSuperman&#8230;unless one of his gadgets includes Kryptonite. Now we<br \/>\ngot a movie folks.<\/p>\n<p>There is a scene in the movie where Lois Lane is in some hostile<br \/>\ncountry getting a story from the leader of a group of rebels. The rebels<br \/>\nare very strict on the circumstances of the meeting. Their location<br \/>\ncannot be known, and the contents of Lane&#8217;s crew are inspected to assure<br \/>\nthey are not being tracked. Along with Lane is a CIA agent who<br \/>\nposes as a cameraman for the paper. He is sniffed out, and Lois is<br \/>\nin grave danger. BUT who is ever really in danger when you are<br \/>\nloved and protected basically by a god. Superman makes short work<br \/>\nof the threat, but his action of killing the threat to Lois is put<br \/>\nunder scrutiny. If Superman can make moral judgements, he must<br \/>\nbe held accountable for them&#8230;right?<\/p>\n<p>Well Batman certainly thinks so. He didn&#8217;t need much convincing from<br \/>\nLuther that Superman needed to go. Bruce Wayne already has a bad taste in<br \/>\nhis mouth when the Kryponians came to duke it out on Earth a few<br \/>\nyears earlier. No one could stop them, and during their battling,<br \/>\ninnocent people were killed who had no beef with Kryptonians. Superman<br \/>\nwho does not live under the morality of humankind, does not need<br \/>\nto be the protector, judge, and administrator of justice, and certainly<br \/>\nis not the standard of morality in Wayne&#8217;s mind.<\/p>\n<p>Which leds to Luther&#8217;s dialog, &#8220;if God is all-powerful, then he cannot<br \/>\nbe all good.&#8221; Or &#8220;if God is all-good he cannot be all-powerful.&#8221; Get<br \/>\nrid of God and what else is in your way?<\/p>\n<p>Nietzche did just that. He felt that the enlightment removed the<br \/>\nconcept of God. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.<br \/>\nHow shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?<br \/>\nWhat was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet<br \/>\nowned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this<br \/>\nblood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?<br \/>\nWhat festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of<br \/>\nthis deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods<br \/>\nsimply to appear worthy of it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 <i>Nietzsche<\/i>, The Gay Science, Section 125<\/p>\n<p>Nietzche argued that morality came from our conquest for power. The<br \/>\ncode of conduct that we live by was established by a master-slave relationship.<br \/>\nThose in power felt they were morally just because they were<br \/>\nbenifitted with all the luxuries of being in control. Those who<br \/>\nwere enslaved saw that the character of those in control were morally<br \/>\nwrong and evil. Morality was based on perspective and this cannot<br \/>\nbe truth, because morality shouldn&#8217;t shift based on social-economic<br \/>\ncircumstances, it should be universal.<\/p>\n<p>Nietzche argued that morality defined from certain criteria is not<br \/>\ntrue morality. There are two components that establish morality.<br \/>\nThere is the Description Component and the Normative Component. There<br \/>\nare three criteria that would make morality false in the description sense according<br \/>\nto Nietzche. <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Humans have free will<\/li>\n<li>Humans are self-aware and can distiguish actions from motives<\/li>\n<li>One morality fits all<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If morality is based on any or a combination of these then <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If humans lacked free-will then they are not responsible for their actions<\/li>\n<li>If motives could not be distiguished then they could not be evaluated<\/li>\n<li>Universal morality would not vary based on perspective<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The first point is obvious, if we don&#8217;t have free-will, then our<br \/>\nmoral code is not human defined. The second point requires a bit of<br \/>\nreflection. Let&#8217;s say we don&#8217;t use a human agent, but something else.<br \/>\nDoes a toaster know it&#8217;s a toaster? Does a number know that it is a number?<br \/>\nWhen 25 asks the neighbor &#8220;Who are you, would the next number know well enough<br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;m 26.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> We are self-aware, we do know our existence, but according<br \/>\nto Nietzche our will and motivation seeks power above everything else, and<br \/>\nthe quest for power has no morality, it is morality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Superman, after rescuing Lois Lane, has a bone to pick with Lex Luther. Luther had a brilliant plan to get&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478,"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473\/revisions\/478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joshuadahl.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}