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Blogs > wickedeasy > wicked and that ain't so easy |
carrot and the stick
carrot and the stick i was thinking about religion and how much it depends on the premise of guilt and punishment. take away the stick and you sort of take away the incentive for obedience. having been raised catholic this was clearly a big part of how the nuns kept us in line and without the possibility of eternal damnation....well, where's the harm, eh? every day i drive to work past a hospital where a very devoted group pickets against abortion. their signs simply say, pray to stop abortion. they are there every day. every day. one day this past week, i was driving in and we had a sudden down pour and two ladies were being drenched. no umbrellas - i pulled over and offered them my back seat until the rain let up. they climed in and we started chatting. they of course assumed i was a supporter. no, i just didn't want y'all to get soaked. actually, i'm pro choice. now it was their decision to either sit in a dry car or get out into what was the equivalent of having firemen hose you down. they sat. one said....have you had an abortion. i answered yes i have. i was young and i certainly couldn't have raised a . it was illegal then and i almost bled out on my way home. i think, after having a i probably wouldn't have had another abortion...but i think people have the right to choose. the coverstaion went on until the rain let up. no one changed their minds. no big epiphanies. but it was not a bad conversation and no one shouted and we parted well. thing is. i was thinking afterwards, if you take away the concept of punishment for personal choice, do you ultimately alter the person's decision? the argments these women were offering all had to do with consequence of punishment in the hereafter. take away the stick and is it still wrong? is it not just a choice? and of course i'm not being so idiotic as to assume all moral choices/things are so simple like murder, blah, blah, blah. but on a personal individual scope....how do you decide if what your ethical boundaries are? do you need a stick? a carrot? or it is simply something inside you that says...nope, no way? You cannot conceive the many without the one. |
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I had some religion growing up, but even if I had a lot, I don't think it would have changed my mind when I got pregnant and was married to a maniac (literally...he was bi-polar, I never knew what to expect from him.) So when I got pregnant, I immediately said to myself, "I can't have this baby." The circumstances would have left me chained to a man who was driving me crazy (when I met him, I was a size 8, when we divorced 20 months later, I was a size 18...he literally drove me so crazy, I turned to food for consolation since there was no one else I could turn to). I went to an abortion clinic without thinking of any afterlife consequences, my only thought was of the hell I was going through with him. I knew we would eventually divorce, and I didn't want to have to raise a child on my own...I thought a child deserved to have both parents and I wasn't going to stay with or around him. (I had orders to go overseas with a new job, so I did what I felt I had to do and what was right for the child.) I think I got some form of payback when I later married again and had my son. My husband ended up killing himself (something he had tried twice before he ever met me, but I never knew until after he died.) There I was, a single mom raising a son by myself...so life sometimes pays you back while you're still alive. FYI...my son just turned 18 this year and I have to say, it wasn't such a bad road doing it all alone. Fortunately, God gave me the right son (or I am the right mother for him)...either way, we work well as a family...small as it may be. Do I regret my decision to abort? No. But I always wished I had a girl, too and my gut told me then it was a girl. I do believe if we make that choice (which is never an easy one for any woman), she will always have to live with it her whole life and for some they will think it was a mistake. For you and I, we knew what was best, and we will pay the consequences if there is any we haven't already paid. (I am far more religious now than I was as a kid, so I believe in Judgment Day. I also believe in Jesus as my Savior who has absolved me of my sins.) -SNW
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I love your style. For me, like I blogged about recently, my moral choices are based on how my choices impact myself and others. Do no harm is how I try to live. But really, I don't find myself often thinking, "But if I rob that bank, the people inside will feel violated." I tend to lean to "If I smaile at that person, will they smile back?" consequences be damned....I'm smiling!
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I think Albert Einstein said it best: "A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." I am a devout agnostic. I respect others' beliefs, but feel no presence myself. I can honestly say my strong sense of ethics has no basis in religion and, if it has any basis in my upbringing, it's only in how *not* to act. Excellent post, chick.
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Well, I can't say it better than hippiechick. So ditto.
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Great post McWickster. Sounds like a useful discussion too, no raised vices, reasonable. I was brought up in the catholic faith, a very anti-abortion and anti-birth control environment. So I must have rebelled completely against the teachings from my youth. While I don't think I'd ever have an abortion, given the choice, I do firmly believe that people should have the choice. And having made that choice they should be entitled to have the termination in as safe an environment as they can be.
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Ah, Wicked, yet another post that deserves more than this little box will provide. Right & Wrong? I can say simply "Do unto others" but that fails completely in the discussion of abortion (and in many other discussions, in fact). Yet I think that Do Unto is a good starting point for choosing a moral direction. Even in a discussion of abortion, it is possible to forsee a life of misery for any child born in some given circumstances. IF we accept the theologian's 'life at conception' myth and their god myths too, then the unborn is swept into limbo .. neither heaven nor hell and not even purgatory. Sounds like that might beat misery??? I'll recommend Thomas P Cahill's Hinges of History series (five or six books on the history of western civilization) especially, in this context, his series about Jewish influences on our civilization (can't remember that title). Once the priests started to offer heaven, they had to invent hell .... as how else can you explain someone who is visibly BAD in this live seeming to succeed? And finally, W. Easy, you are a far more compassionate person than I am; I'd have likely not offered sanctuary in my car, under those circumstances. Chas
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Good post, WE. As for me, my moral compass has been informed, influenced and designed by a combination of factors ... the beliefs and values of my parents and grandparents, my fundamentalist religious upbringing, local community standards of decency, as well as my own inquiry and discovery. I don't feel particularly threatened by any "stick". But I do have a pretty good sense of what I believe to be right and wrong. And when I stay on the "straight and narrow", I seem to feel better about myself and I get myself into less trouble. When I stray off the "path", there is usually more turmoil in my life. Good luck to your Boston Bruins!
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This was the theme of A ClockWork Orange, of course, and I was young when I first read it, and had some trouble getting it at first. Certainly you can have ethics, morality, without religious training. Pam is a recovering Catholic and is both grateful and angry about what the church has done for and to her. We rarely argue or debate these points. In the end each of us is left with her or his faith- my faith in a mechanistic universe that is beyond our ken, and hers in a conscious universe that is also beyond our ken. Become a member now and get a free tote bag.
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9/7/2019 12:09 am |
][ ]-\\m a recovering catholic. This Catholicism is NOT what Christ started, nor wanted. ][t is nothing more to me now than Satanism. They prove it every day. ][ stand against them, they have NO power over (\/)e. To each one their own judgement, and not of another, we do not have that right. Fanaticism of religion is everywhere, they have turned this Heaven on Earth to HELL. ][ would pity the ill informed, but that is their choice NOT mine. Where ][ go, they can not follow, where ][ ]-\\m, they can not Stand. Each of Us must raise ourselve*z, no one can testify Your Truth that only You and the Universe know. Seek and You shall Find, Ask and it shall be Given, Knock and it shall be Opened. This subject is very very deep and touching, it is not restful. To each one their Quest, and to each one their Knowledge. Tis better to Light a Candle, then to uselessly Curse the Darkness. tY****
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9/7/2019 12:32 am |
***smartnlwitty14u*** YU have no sin,,, ,,, sin is nothing more but someone else*z OVERATED opinion. YU have done exactly what YU came here(Earth) to do. Just as Jesus(Yashua) did. Did You Know: There was no letter "J" during the time of Jesus, but the letter "Y". There were NO Jews before Babylon, they were Hebrew*z. Abraham came from a region known as Sumer, he was Sumerian.
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