Socrates

it fall under ill gotten gains , and karma , myself i believe it has more to do with nurture than nature

checks and balances

subjecting our common beliefs to critical scrutiny can we hope to discover how best to live."

Originally Posted by robert 14617

it fall under ill gotten gains , and karma , myself i believe it has more to do with nurture than nature

What do you mean by ill gotten gains and karma?

Does acting immorally harm your character more than the act harms the victim? What if you never get caught? Does personal guilt play any part in this statement?

Is genuine human happiness a matter of inner harmony and self-mastery?

Is acting morally the true route to personal flourishing?

If one truly knows what is good, can one choose otherwise?

Is an unexamined life worth living?

1. It harms the victimizer at least as much, yes. Guilt does play a huge role in this, because it keeps your caught in the 'past'. When you 'confess' and accept responsibility for your actions, you are actually bringing a part of yourself back to now, clearing up a leaking 'energetic' pathway.
2. Many sacred teachings point to this conclusion.
3. You get what you give. Personal integrity is a path of endurance and I believe that - yes - we will thrive on a personal level first. There are unseen consequences to a healthy psyche that allow the 'personal flourishing' to find its way into the collective. Like setting a good example for your little brother, people see those with integrity and they find inspiration in their actions. This is how one person can change the world in my humble opinion.
4. Yes they can choose otherwise, but only to a certain point. One can only ignore a deeper sense of knowing for so long, but yes it can and will be done. It is part of the learning process.
5. Yes. Every life is necessary. I can feel the heart of what hey is saying, because it could indeed be perceived as 'useless' but again - it is a learning process. We don't all become saints in this lifetime. Another thing to remember is that even people who are blissfully unaware of the deeper meaning of their own life are still teachers. Every person you meet is a teacher. Every life plays a role in development.

The hardest part is when you realize that by 'examining' your life, you find a huge amount of personal responsibility. It goes right along with holding personal integrity in an atmosphere of free will.


Thanks for your post, it really resonated with me.

Peace

Originally Posted by Padawanbater2

"Although Socrates himself never claimed to have knowledge, he does appear to have held certain positive doctrines. Principle among these is the Socratic paradox, that no one willingly chooses to act immorally. On the face of it this appears clearly false. After all, there are all kinds of actions one recognizes as wrong but which one may choose to perform if one judges that they will bring benefit to oneself. For example, someone may choose to lie, cheat, or steal if they believe they can get away with it and gain some advantage. Socrates, however, held that this betrays some confused thinking. For in acting immorally they actually harm their own character far more than they harm their victim. While they may succeed in stripping others of material possessions and other trappings of worldly accomplishment, genuine human happiness is a matter of inner harmony and self-mastery rather than material success. To come to this realization, however, requires some careful reflection on the true nature of virtue; reflection which will show, according to Socrates, that acting morally is the true route to personal flourishing. Hence another of his paradoxical claims, that virtue is knowledge, or, in other words, that if one truly knows what is good one cannot but choose to do it. He believed that the unexamined life is not worth living and that only by subjecting our common beliefs to critical scrutiny can we hope to discover how best to live."


What do you think of this?

Does acting immorally harm your character more than the act harms the victim? What if you never get caught? Does personal guilt play any part in this statement?

Is genuine human happiness a matter of inner harmony and self-mastery?

Is acting morally the true route to personal flourishing?

If one truly knows what is good, can one choose otherwise?

Is an unexamined life worth living?

Happiness isn't a main factor in Socratic Virtue. One will more than likely, be happy from time to time in a virtuous life, but there is no guarantee.

I've committed many moral and immoral acts in my life, and I agree that the immoral acts take away from one's personal power. IOW the immoral acts do hurt one's sense of self and character if one has a developed conscience. The problem is many do not have this sense, and there are many sociopaths around to which this principle doesn't apply. I think the basic mechanism has to do with guilt, but that's not the entire story. One's self-esteem hinges on one acting in a morally responsible way, and I feel most cannot be happy without a healthy sense of self, that one is part of the solution instead of the problems. Getting caught just adds insult to injury, but one doesn't need to be caught to feel the negative effects of one's immoral actions. I feel we have a wider responsibility for our actions than simply how they effect us, our actions can ripple out and effect many others in ways we'll never know: if one gets treated like shit, he tends to pass that on, and this is also true of good deeds. I like Heis' video above, and here's one of my favorite commercials on the same theme of paying good deeds forward and inspiring others to do the same:

Originally Posted by Heisenberg

Randy.