No such thing as negative

[Dante]

"Everything is a coming together of opposites." As some Greek philosopher or other once said (It was either Heraclitus or Plato, can't quite remember which).

The theory goes that everything is made up of opposites and those things in between are mere combinations of them. For example, black and white. They are opposites and between them are many shades of grey. More complicated; there is up and down, love and loathing, left and right, positive and negative, pleasure and pain, yin and yang, good and evil...

Wolfwiz sent me an IM a few minutes ago with this quote:

"War is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courgae and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing for love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.

The truths are contradictory. It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty.

For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in an ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorous, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket's red glare. It's not pretty, exactly. It's astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference -- a powerful, implacable beauty -- and a true war story will tell the truth about this, though the truth is ugly."

Got me thinking, as I have thought before, that in truth there is no opposite, because there is an aspect of positive in everything negative and vice versa. And then Wolfwiz suggested a PRP post so...

There is nothing so ugly that there is no beauty in it, nothing so good that there is no evil. Everything is relative because everything depends on perception.

An example then. Malice. Harmful for the sake of being harmful, evil for the joy of being evil, revenge for the rush of joy that vengeance brings. Malice is frowned upon in society because it is seen as 'negative,' to be avoided. But malice is much more complicated. It brings joy, it brings pain, it can exhibit resourcefulness, genius, determination, obsessiveness, cruelty, sadism, retribution and much more; and each of those things is in turn a host of other words.

The point is, everything is relative. The questions are, So why bother? Is it really? Is it possible to have an extreme that is not relative? What point does this argument have? Does it have any bearing on our lives and if so, what and why?

...ahh, philsophy.

[Dragoon Knight]

What about negativity itself?  What positive side is there to unhappiness (to the person that is unhappy)?  What 'bright side' is there in total, utter despair?

[Dante]

What light side is there in total, gut-wrenching despair? Easy, the emotional significance is powerful and such emotion can be awe-inspiring. The sheer volume of agony would be staggering... Aesthetic beauty, poetic almost.

Even utter negativity. Something so jaw-droppingly negative would be similarly awe-inspiring, no?

[Dragoon Knight]

OK.  I concede that even in totally negative conditions, there can be a 'positive' side.  Sadists getting pleasure from pain; utter despair being aesthetically pleasing, etc.

But surely there must be some things that are totally negative?  A headache, for example... something mundane, but I can't see anything positive about it, unless we consider certain benefits (such as not having to go to work, or suchlike).

Also, I'd like to point out that the only way to judge whether an action / event / situation is positive / negative would be to measure each one in a quantifiable or qualative manner.  This, as you should know, has its problems...

(Spooky voice: Uuuuuuuuu-tilitarianism...) (Lightning strikes)

[Dante]

A headache is not pure evil, it is merely annoying and painful. So if it's not that bad, it must have some measure of good, mustn't it? Heh heh, funny logic but it seems to work...

As for measurement, well that's kind of hazy as well.  ;D

[Wolf]

I suppose we could ponder whether absolute positives and negatives only can exist in a metaphysical sense; example, God being the absolute positive, and his antithesis being the negative. Sort of like a theoretical, but unachievable, aim. No human being was as bad/good as <insert the ansolute>.

But I just say that because we've been talking about God a lot, recently. The above quote comes from the book, "The Things They Carried", and it is about the Vietnam War.

I asked my friend why people, throughout history, found war to be so compelling -- even though it is almost universally recognized that "War is hell". Here, he said, was the answer. Perhaps human beings, especially those of us raised in the modern, liberal Western world, are utterly in awe of such a thing as absolute moral indifference. In war, so many things that, in normal society, are unacceptable and terrifying happen daily as a matter of fact. You realize this the first day you hit dirt. And you wonder how you will ever survive -- not survive the war, but survive such moral indifference.

The freaky thing is that you do; you accept it. The daily horrors of war become your daily routine, your shower and shave. And it amazes you; everyone said you were born into a world of good and bad. And here's all this bad, and all this good. And everyone is telling you that its all bad. So, either they're wrong that its all bad, or the ideals of good and bad are wrong in the first place. Which is it?

[GUNWOUNDS]

no i am sorry... War is not romantic when it is realistic.

I use to think war was all excitement and adventure ......

you know rambo and all... ya fun times huh??... except...

except... when i saw the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan... seeing those boys preparing to storm Omaha beach ... vomiting over the sides of their amphibious units.... kissing their crucifixes.... then as the tail-gate drops they all die a pre-mature death as nazis chain guns which were aimed at their precise location tear thru the men like raw chunks of meat.

then they start jumping overboard... getting caught in their gear ... getting strangled and drowning... bullets tearing thru them underwater.....

then the letter being written to the mothers informing them of how their sons paid the ultimate price...

there is nothing romantic about that.... nothing exciting... and nothing adventurous.... its all sickening... fun and glory in war is all but a boys fantasy... "real" war is hell.

perhaps there are fleeting moments when seeing technology in action (rockets, bullets)

[GUNWOUNDS]

Got me thinking, as I have thought before, that in truth there is no opposite, because there is an aspect of positive in everything negative and vice versa. 

explain what you mean by that... are you saying that truth is an absolute good?

[Wolf]

Or that opposites don't truly exist, because everything is a mix of other things? "In truth" was just a way of saying, "but its really like so..."

[GUNWOUNDS]

Or that opposites don't truly exist, because everything is a mix of other things? "In truth" was just a way of saying, "but its really like so..."

oh i see i misread his words.

[GUNWOUNDS]

well basically this train of thought is nothing new... i believe the sayings "look on the bright side" and "things could always get worse"

[Anathema]

No sane man who ever experienced real war will say there is a certain romance about it.

There is a certain beauty in dying for a good cause, I'll grant you that. The will to selflessly make the ultimate sacrifice so that others might live is looked upon as noble, that however does not mean that dying in a trench, lying in the blood of your comrades is not inherently a bad and unpleasant thing.

Also, awe and astonishment are "colourless". Only the emotion that accompanies it (joy, disgust) give it a good or bad meaning.

[Dante]

Altruism has a kind of dignity to it.

well basically this train of thought is nothing new... i believe the sayings "look on the bright side" and "things could always get worse"

[GUNWOUNDS]

we are not taught these things falsely dustscout... there is more to it...

Everyone has heard people quarrelling.

[Dante]

The point of my post was to say that there is no ultimate negative, this does not imply that there is no such thing as negative at all, but I'm happy to take that on for the time being...

It looks, in fact, very much if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behavior or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed. And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals, but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the rules of football.

There is no sense in arguing against rules, the question is whether the rules are inherant or merely manufactured. The rules of football are manufactured and thus they only apply where people want them to, and for the most part people apply them only during the games of football. The rules of morality (all the many different versions of them) are similarly manufactured and they too only apply when it is useful for them to do so.

The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by gravitation, and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law---with this great difference-- the difference being that while material bodies could not choose whether to obey the law of gravitation or not....a man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.

Why should anything apply only to a single species? It's always seemed to me to be gratuitous arrogence to assume that the human species is somehow better than the others...

This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that everyone knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it.

[GUNWOUNDS]

"I judge their ideas on grounds of rationality and common sense

[Dante]

How on earth is judging by rational facts the same as judging by a wishy-washy subjective concept that doesn't exist?

[GUNWOUNDS]

just because some people do not understand the concept of morality does not mean it doesnt exist.  If someone is color blind or tone deaf .. does that mean that particular color doesnt exist or that there is no such thing as tone?

you may say.. "oh there is empirical evidence that this color exists and that tone exists"

BUT not to the person who is color-blind or tone deaf... they can never see the color you wish to show them or  have him hear the tone he cannot hear.  You can never prove to them that it exists.

Now imagine the frustration of someone who understands morality trying to explain to someone who doesnt get it.

Its like trying to explain color to a blind man.

[GUNWOUNDS]

What of the Vikings then, many of whom made a living out of murder and raiding? The Aztecs, who slaughtered thousands to keep the sun rising? Even those you mentioned, the Romans enjoyed gratuitous death in the arena and the Greek sexual norm was very different from our own. The Victorians, who thought it was obscene to use the word 'leg,' and of course the nazis, whose ideas were so very different.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Sorry for such long responces

[GUNWOUNDS]

one more point i need to add....

some people may try to dismiss the Law of Morality as something that is just convenient.

[Wolf]

I do not think that people are taught "false" values per se, but I grant that it is possible that they give these values false justifications. There is much benefit to doing what society generally calls "good" as opposed to "bad". If the false justifications bother you, don't ascribe to them, and work against those justifications, yet, the values, if they have actual subjective merit, should not be discounted.

[Anathema]

The Natural Law Gunwounds mentioned is actually believed to exist since the Greek Stoics.

Natural law assumes there is a universally applicant set of laws, and that the knowledge of it is inherent in all human beings. By rationally thinking one can always find the right solution.

The Romans also aknowledged the existance of natural law. They observed that there were certain rules and customs that were present in every culture they encountered, and called it ius gentium. However, slavery for example was widely spread, but it was widely accepted that men have the inherent right for freedom. They therefore used another term, ius naturalis (natural law), wich wasn't the same as ius gentium though they overlapped eachother often.

The Roman Catholic church preserved much of the Stoics ideas. They thought that God had given each and every man an instict of some sort that enabled them to find justice through rational thought.

Later on however, the famed academic Hugo de Groot (Dutch, I might mention) "secularised" Natural Law by writing that N.L. had an independant existance from God.

...and this would be valid even if we would assume there is no God, or that human affairs are not managed by him.

During the 19th and 20th century most people lost interest in Natural Law as a result of the codifications of law that sprouted throughout the world. The problem with Natural Law is that it's difficult to get a hold on, it can be used to justify X just as it can be used to justify Y. A fully codified set of laws would forever do away with these problems, so they thought.

At the Neurenberg trials, there was absolutely no legal ground to sentence the Nazi criminals, as there were no laws that prohibited such acts when they were committed. Natural Law was the solution: an objective standard by wich everyone can be judged at any time.

WW2 had lead to even hard core critics of Natural Law like Rattbuch to embrace it again.

It also deserves to be mentioned that the American declaration of independence is completely soaked with Natural Law. (we hold these truths to be self evident...)

It's also present in the European Convention on Human Rights (it speaks for example about general principles of law recognised by civilized nations), as well as many other treaties.

[GUNWOUNDS]

The Natural Law Gunwounds mentioned is actually believed to exist since the Greek Stoics.

Natural law assumes there is a universally applicant set of laws, and that the knowledge of it is inherent in all human beings. By rationally thinking one can always find the right solution.

The Romans also aknowledged the existance of natural law. They observed that there were certain rules and customs that were present in every culture they encountered, and called it ius gentium. However, slavery for example was widely spread, but it was widely accepted that men have the inherent right for freedom. They therefore used another term, ius naturalis (natural law), wich wasn't the same as ius gentium though they overlapped eachother often.

The Roman Catholic church preserved much of the Stoics ideas. They thought that God had given each and every man an instict of some sort that enabled them to find justice through rational thought.

Later on however, the famed academic Hugo de Groot (Dutch, I might mention) "secularised" Natural Law by writing that N.L. had an independant existance from God.

...and this would be valid even if we would assume there is no God, or that human affairs are not managed by him.

During the 19th and 20th century most people lost interest in Natural Law as a result of the codifications of law that sprouted throughout the world. The problem with Natural Law is that it's difficult to get a hold on, it can be used to justify X just as it can be used to justify Y. A fully codified set of laws would forever do away with these problems, so they thought.

At the Neurenberg trials, there was absolutely no legal ground to sentence the Nazi criminals, as there were no laws that prohibited such acts when they were committed. Natural Law was the solution: an objective standard by wich everyone can be judged at any time.

WW2 had lead to even hard core critics of Natural Law like Rattbuch to embrace it again.

It also deserves to be mentioned that the American declaration of independence is completely soaked with Natural Law. (we hold these truths to be self evident...)

It's also present in the European Convention on Human Rights (it speaks for example about general principles of law recognised by civilized nations), as well as many other treaties.

interesting ... i like how you pointed out the "we hold these truths to be self-evident" ... didnt notice how soaked with natural law the declaration was

[Dante]

"well since "this species" is the one currently having a discussion on an internet forum about this topic.... i see nothing wrong with putting us first and apply rules to us as we are not talking about beasts.