Could an explanation of a Universal Law of everything be a Pandora's box?

[SteveA]

The Christian tenets are not universal law, nor even earthly law.

1-4 are about an invisible imaginary Being who wishes to be number 1 and has a need to be adored. They probably stem from the parent-child relationship. They are only of concern to believers.

The remainder are common natural laws that were recognized and codified by humanity long before the time of Moses, mainly no stealing, no lying in court, and no murder—or else penalty.

Other lies, being mean, disobeying parents, and adultery may be against the law in a few countries, but mostly they only have natural social penalties.

Yes, 1 to 4 appear optional. 5 just seems a recommendation, though it should be natural for a child ... if it's not, then maybe there's a reason. 6 to 9 are common to most societies and 10 I consider to be a sickness, not a crime. It's a problem that the individual should try to resolve for themself, but I can't see how someone else could fault someone for it.

So overall, I think they're 50-90% on the mark, largely dependent upon whether you believe 1 to 5 to be important - basically the first half are about paying homage to authority figures and I think the last wouldn't be a sin (though maybe in some intangible realm it's harmful).

Then again, if the 10 Commandments are taken as spiritual laws influencing spiritual growth, then maybe there's more reason for them as they're written, but taken as societal laws they don't appear highly applicable. (For example, maybe the 10th commandment regards ones own problems overcoming physical desires that are impeding in some spiritual manner and similarly, if we assume God exists, then 1-4 could also be important in this respect and maybe 5 also). Though I'd assume this would be true for any other spiritual realms too - consequences and actions go together.

[SB_UK]

The legal system appears to break most of the ten commandments.

For instance

The legal system

• places itself in God's position (with reference to 'moral' justice) @@@c#1-3,
• does not recognize adultery as valid reason for divorce (so I recently learned) @@@c#7,
• charges far too much money for assistance (steal) @@@c#8,
• formalizes unfair contracts which permit banks to repossess other peoples' houses (covet) @@@c#10,
• imprisons people (the death sentence, to award in excess of 1 life sentence, Andy's (Shawshank Redemption) mind,body,spirit were close to murdered by the legal system - they have that power) @@@c#6,
• misleading, confusing representation of facts (bear false misleading witness) in order to win a case (for instance by burying the facts in mounds of extraneous details to introduce doubt) @@@c#9.

Admittedly, though
- one struggles a little on

Thou shalt have a slap-up Sunday lunch with your entire family (@@@c#4,5) and not under any circumstances leave the table.

Was the legal system meant to represent definition of an exclusive club with special rights to flout (at will) and flagrantly
- the ten commandments?

If so
- then that it is.

[Mikal]

Hi SB….Interesting that you should make a connection between one of the professions that represent the foundation of a society’s needs and a societies’ moral state!

1 Timothy 6:10 states, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Notice he has not said money is the root but the love of money is the root.
This is an interesting statement because he proffered it in the context of a lecture really concerning those who represent the foundational needs of any society and their need to hold all relevance to responsibility and moral values that would ensure that the results of their performance are beneficial to the wellbeing of society as a whole.

I believe it was Durkheim who said, “If education is professionalized and monetized commonly held moral values could fall by the wayside through the pursuit of greater financial rewards from the promotion of a gain of private interest.”

I believe both speakers were pointing out that professions which are absolutely necessary for society to function can fall into the paradox of morally serving the public versus immorally using societies’ foundation to serve oneself. That paradox would shine a light on “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Essentially what both speakers were pointing out is that an immoral economic system compels a society to moral decline.

Regards Mikal

[SB_UK]

Hi SB….Interesting that you should make a connection between one of the professions that represent the foundation of a society’s needs and a societies’ moral state!

1 Timothy 6:10 states, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Notice he has not said money is the root but the love of money is the root.
This is an interesting statement because he proffered it in the context of a lecture really concerning those who represent the foundational needs of any society and their need to hold all relevance to responsibility and moral values that would ensure that the results of their performance are beneficial to the wellbeing of society as a whole.

I believe it was Durkheim who said, “If education is professionalized and monetized commonly held moral values could fall by the wayside through the pursuit of greater financial rewards from the promotion of a gain of private interest.”

I believe both speakers were pointing out that professions which are absolutely necessary for society to function can fall into the paradox of morally serving the public versus immorally using societies’ foundation to serve oneself. That paradox would shine a light on “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

Essentially what both speakers were pointing out is that an immoral economic system compels a society to moral decline.

Regards Mikal

Thanks - completely agree with every line of your post.

~*~

Presumably the lawyer is generally fighting for money.

One of the warring factions wants money -
the other choosing to withold.

In this kinda' environment, the lawyer, spending his every waking minute attempting to acquire money -
spends his every waking minute attempting to acquire money.

For his client becomes for himself.

Presumably the mind of the lawyer needs to have the strong belief in acquisition of money, perhaps initially on his client's behalf -

- one just knows though that the ring does so mesmerise and before long 'Gollum'.

~*~

*** POST EDIT ***
ooops! gottem' (below) the wrong way round
(first time around)

*** POST EDIT ***

These represent the two structures of minds :
Stage I (child)

immorally using societies’ foundation to serve oneself

Stage II (mature)

morally serving the public

... ... where the very vast majority of adults (most notably including those who write policy) continue to sport the immature structure of mind.

It is not possible for the immature structure of mind to turn away from corruption; the mature form of mind is not affected by the pull of immoral coercion - *needs* to do the right thing

- where Stage II mind actually has little choice in the matter.

To Stage I minds, morality is something to be aspired to.
To Stage II minds - morality just is.

Two fundamentally different perspectives out on reality -
the simple and exquisitely complex (strictly relatively speaking).

[Mikal]

I love your structures of Mind and see our present problems as formulating from almost total immersion in stage II which holds itself up as an immoral economic system..

Thanks...regards Mikal

[SB_UK]

~

ooops!

I switched I and II by accident; they're back in place now.

II's the good guy.

[Mikal]

Thanks SB....a small error seeing we both understand the dynamics however reversing it into Stage 1 does imply a state of mind devoid of endowed moral values sufficient to hold responsibility to performance or acting in the system of societies' foundational needs based on the moral imperative to morally serve the public....

Regards Mikal

[SB_UK]

Thanks SB....a small error seeing we both understand the dynamics however reversing it into Stage 1 does imply a state of mind devoid of endowed moral values sufficient to hold responsibility to performance or acting in the system of societies' foundational needs based on the moral imperative to morally serve the public....

Regards Mikal

exactly

- a state of mind devoid of endowed moral values won't ever seek to serve others by~definition of our species.

[SteveA]

Hi SB….Interesting that you should make a connection between one of the professions that represent the foundation of a society’s needs and a societies’ moral state!

1 Timothy 6:10 states, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Notice he has not said money is the root but the love of money is the root.
This is an interesting statement because he proffered it in the context of a lecture really concerning those who represent the foundational needs of any society and their need to hold all relevance to responsibility and moral values that would ensure that the results of their performance are beneficial to the wellbeing of society as a whole.

Consider that ideally money can represent values provided to people - in a sense, money itself has no direct use except that it simplifies exchanges of value between people in a community. If there is no Craig's List for production and consumption of value in a society (and I'd hate to see the fighting over who got to run such a list, if it existed), then money serves a purpose in its convenience of communication of exchanges between people.

The problem is in having a form of currency that actually represents the ideal. Paper reflects the efficiency of printing techniques and the nerve of the printer in how many zeroes to put in the trailing digits. There's little more tangible value to people in this than there is in stamp collecting.

Also, in order to assure there's no "competition" in this industry we have various armed individuals and prison facilities to "add value" (NOT!) to the paper (the paper is effectively a get out of prison "free" card - imagine if a neighbor said that by accepting a pebble in exchange for your car, he would not take your home and chain you up - that's the sort of "valueable" exchange that keeps the current system gradually sinking (I would say it kept the system afloat, but that's not the case)).

Obviously such exchanges need to represent value provided and not be a lack of harm imposed - by default people have a right to at least not be harmed by some social interaction, of course rights are only acknowledged to the extent either someone extends the courtesy or they're pressure to recognize it when it goes overlooked, otherwise there are not rights and similarly there are no rights for anyone to rule either - it's all exchanges, though it's better for everyone when people can agree to minimizing the conflicts and harm done.

But let's say that we had a system in which no specific form of currency was imposed upon people - I'm certain plenty would still use many existing currencies, but as long as these are voluntarily exchanged (harmful actions outside these can need compensation and/or deterence) then money itself is works just fine - i.e. you might earn money trimming yards and doing gardening services for people - your neighbor offers payment for this help. You then go buy some food with this money from a store. The cashier gets part of this and pays it to someone else for some fertalizer. The cashier then brings it back home to the neighbors house where you were working earlier. That neighbor then sells some of the produce to a store etc.

Societies today are much larger and people can't keep track of reputations as they could in a small villiage a thousand years ago and so there's less ability for such a social credit system to operate as there was and people have a greater concern about running into those with "bad social credit ratings" , but the principle is still basically the same.

But there are many ways in which things have moved away from individuals having voluntary control over these social exchanges and more ways that people are coerced and forced (generally initiating from bad laws, fraud, theft or destructive actions to people for which justice never comes, and even if it does, it comes with a large legal price tag, or at least people are intimidated into believing this).

I think the solution is really for people to simply try to detach themselves from the current system as much as they can and work toward creating better communities without all the overhead and red tape we have today. The cost is that people need to learn to be more self reliant, but ultimately this has always been the case and it's mostly an artificial dependency that has coerced, or publicly educated into people.

In the end, the laws don't run the show except to the extent people believe they do - nature/God/evolution etc. is still in charge and that's what humanity is ultimately accountable to.

[SteveA]

Presumably the lawyer is generally fighting for money.

One of the warring factions wants money -
the other choosing to withold.

In this kinda' environment, the lawyer, spending his every waking minute attempting to acquire money -
spends his every waking minute attempting to acquire money.

For his client becomes for himself.

Presumably the mind of the lawyer needs to have the strong belief in acquisition of money, perhaps initially on his client's behalf

It's interesting to consider that a witness can be sworn under oath to not lie and this is considered to be a prosecutable crime ... should the same be true for the people determining who gets to take the witness stand?

Something to consider is that lying and fraud is indirectly encouraged by not rewarding honesty and forthrightness.

Considering that many people enjoy freedom of speech and it's difficult to determine at times, especially not in a subjective manner, whether or not someone has intentionally lied or fraudulently represented something, there's still a potential way to "punish" these and it would be by removing rewards for honest and non-deceitful actions.

Maybe the good guys are being rewarded enough?

One thing to consider is that the way things currently operate, there's little benefit to someone in being honest because the legal system just seems to want to fine people and the attitude appears largely to be that most everything should be punishable, but there's not a lot of attention paid to assuring that people who aren't trying to avoid a just restitution are rewarded for their assistance.

For example, if someone's playing ball and knocks one over a fence and breaks something, if they seek to repair this damage or otherwise try to compensate for it, then there really wasn't even a crime but just an accident. I recognize that we do have this to an extent already in the legal system, but it appears more and more than innocent people are treated as criminals. (I think you could practically write off most crimes unless there's some evidence that there's a recurring intent involved - the only value of the laws are in deterence - punishment itself is only destructive and gains nothing for a society).

Personally I think a community could work perfectly fine with just a single law and that law is simply that if enough people want you out - you have to pack your stuff and move elsewhere. There really needs be no other "official" form of government and the rest of it appears to naturally sort itself out and you don't need any official prisons or punishments. Someone might think that such a system couldn't work because you might have someone shooting up a school and they're not going to show up for a jury summons ... but it still works fine because there's also no specific law against someone taking out the shooter, and if some relative tried to take that person to court for killing the schoolyard sniper, I seriously doubt they'd evict such a person and in fact the person might even get a reward. Also if someone wanted to give speeding tickets, despite there being no official law against speeding, the same thing works - if someone decides to challenge this self appointed police officer and take them to court, then a decision would be made as to who needs to leave. Neither the person getting the ticket nor the police officer would generally want to risk this and so both would feel obligated to try to work to some compromise, or if the "officer" was generally in good standing in the community, then it would be most likely that without a lot of evidence of abuse in some case that this officer would be removed from the community.

And the beauty of such a system is it's the type of thing that even most 7 years old can understand and there are no official judges or lawyers or legislators or Presidents etc. that would be doing anything other than offering opinions on something, just like anyone else and the rule of thumb is very simple - try to play nice and not get too many people upset - beyond that, have fun and do what you like ... simple, and there are no reams of law books nor complex tax structures etc. involved (though these can still arise indirectly, but people can recognize that noone is truly expected to comply with these recommendations and in the end it's just some neighbors that decide if there's enough of a problem to tell someone to start packing and collect their things).