Which do you think is better, to judge yourself against your own standards and morals or to judge yourself against the standards and morals of those around you?

[Edited on Apr 07, 2005 by MetaTag]

Alli

SUICIDEGIRL

Colorado, USA

APR 06, 2005 04:57 PM

yourself! hands down! Fuck everyone elses standards, there just going off what they think everyone else is doing.

As with most things, somewhere in the middle. You can't, if you don't want to wind up in jail or something, just make up all your own rules. However, a person who is good because of their own inner conscience is superior, to me, to someone who is only good because they're afraid of the disapproval of others.

FridgeMagnet

Chicago, IL

November 2004

APR 06, 2005 05:03 PM

If we're talking only about judging yourself, not actually acting, it's your own barometer that should be the guide.

Dollbabyamy

Lebanon, TN

March 2004

APR 06, 2005 05:12 PM

stay true to your own moral standards, as far as judging yourself. why conform to something that may not be the best thing for you, just because it's what everyone else thinks is right? why hide yourself?
I mean, if you are in a homophobic town and you are gay, would you pretend you weren't just because those people thought it wasn't morally acceptable? How would that be helping you to grow into a strong person?
Now, if you go out and kill said homophobes because of their attitudes, and your moral barometer says its ok...you might want to rethink that. That is a case where what is in the moral majority would rule.

koffee

I'm lost

December 2004

APR 06, 2005 05:16 PM

yourself of course.!!!

"thou shalt not sellout yourself!"

Andvari

Calgary, AB

April 2005

APR 06, 2005 05:19 PM

I'm the only one I know with morals worth being judged by.

Idjit

HOPEFUL

I'm lost

APR 06, 2005 05:22 PM

Kinda hard to have "morality" in a void.

FridgeMagnet

Chicago, IL

November 2004

APR 06, 2005 05:27 PM

Idjiit said:
Kinda hard to have "morality" in a void.

And of course the question is overly simplistic because everyone's internal barometer of right and wrong, good and bad, isn't inherently self shaped, it's shaped by the society you grow up in and the people you grow up with.

But I still say Fuck the Po-lice. I don't really say that.

koffee

I'm lost

December 2004

APR 06, 2005 05:31 PM

how about....fuck the southern preacher who says pokemon is the devil because they use witchcraft?

SilverRevolver

United Kingdom

May 2004

APR 06, 2005 05:37 PM

Throw it all out the window, I'm posting an essay of mine, and it's long, be warned!

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

I've been annotating Nietzsches "Birth of Tragedy" and a river of ideas came to me while reading what he has to say about Sophocles's "Oedipus Rex".

"The profound poet tells us that a man who is truly noble is incapable of sin, though every law, every natural order, indeed the entire cannon of ethics perish by his actions, those very actions will create a circle of higher consequences able to found a new world on the ruins of the old."

Every act of pure artistic genius throughout history, from Dostoyevsky to Jesus Christ exist without sin, insofar as they reject all established human morality and ethics. While the actions of many of these genius' could be interpreted as sinful by the majority of people, it is not because the genius recognizes human ethics as petty and false. Such is why men like Alfred Perles and Henry Miller could engage in all manner of "obscenity" and still retain childlike innocence and saint like countenance.

The artist through his connection with divinity in many respects is like a monk, through art he realizes his own insignificance, ergo the insignificance of all human endeavor. This realization releases him from the chains of human morality and ethics, seeing them for what they really are. Thus his focus becomes life and solely life and the expression of said life to others. (You can almost call this the perfect compassion of the Buddha, an indifferent compassion.) The artist has found the one way back into Eden that was offered to us. He understands that the knowledge contained in the forbidden fruit is false, because the understanding of good and evil is outside the realm of human understanding, reserved for God alone. Man takes his misunderstanding of this knowledge and so distorts it.

The artistic genius walks back through the gates of Eden with his head held high armed with two perfectly contradictory pieces of knowledge; the knowledge contained in the forbidden fruit and the knowledge that it is illusion in human hands. Through this rejection of human ethics he is returned to innocence, or Eden, this time not with a child's naive wisdom, but with the tempered wisdom of the sage. He has thus fulfilled humanity's great purpose, a return to Eden through his own grace, not through the grace of god.

Knowledge is power.
Power is bondage.
Realization that all knowledge is illusion is freedom.

[Edited on Apr 06, 2005 by Thought_Police]