For Faith and Reason we had to read two articles on the moral argument for the existence of God. Basically, the argument is that we have objective moral laws because God commanded them. Anyway, it reminded me of this quote from the Kite Runner:
"When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father.
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.
When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
There is no act more wretched than stealing."
What Baba is trying to explain to Amir is that all crimes are related back to stealing. I think that's so interesting. I think it's a pretty standard human thing to want to keep that which belongs to us. We all want to have things that belong to us. These can be material things or these can be immaterial things. But we want to have them. We can all agree that it is in the best interest of ourselves and of each other that we all be allowed to keep those things. We all understand this, and we all do our best to not take things from others, in order that no one take from us. Balance.
To me, then, morals are about balance. Someone once told me to screw the golden rule and live by her platinum one: treat others the way you see them treat other people. That's not something I totally agree with, because I think it upsets the balance. If someone has done wrong to someone else, in order to reset the balance, you ought to do good to someone else, and especially to that person. Theoretically, then, the good things would at least balance the bad. And maybe that person would grow to understand that it is important to keep that balance. Of course, this means that they could then do one good thing and one bad thing and attribute it all to the balance. So maybe my whole balance idea has some flaws.
It's just something I was thinking about.
"When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife’s right to a husband, rob his children of a father.
When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth.
When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
There is no act more wretched than stealing."
What Baba is trying to explain to Amir is that all crimes are related back to stealing. I think that's so interesting. I think it's a pretty standard human thing to want to keep that which belongs to us. We all want to have things that belong to us. These can be material things or these can be immaterial things. But we want to have them. We can all agree that it is in the best interest of ourselves and of each other that we all be allowed to keep those things. We all understand this, and we all do our best to not take things from others, in order that no one take from us. Balance.
To me, then, morals are about balance. Someone once told me to screw the golden rule and live by her platinum one: treat others the way you see them treat other people. That's not something I totally agree with, because I think it upsets the balance. If someone has done wrong to someone else, in order to reset the balance, you ought to do good to someone else, and especially to that person. Theoretically, then, the good things would at least balance the bad. And maybe that person would grow to understand that it is important to keep that balance. Of course, this means that they could then do one good thing and one bad thing and attribute it all to the balance. So maybe my whole balance idea has some flaws.
It's just something I was thinking about.