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[–] 62 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Yea, laws are made up. So is currency, boarders, sovereignty, human rights, and democracy. Made up things are consequential.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Identity too! That's like the most important one I think. A lot of our worst behavior is in service of these completely made up identities which none-the-less help us secure access to resources.

    I heard someone talking about how a lot of our rituals are these imaginary actions we take to reify these imaginary but vital institutions like identities and nation states.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Made up things are consequential.

    Sometimes

    All those things operate on Tinkerbell logic:

    currency, boarders, sovereignty, human rights, and democracy

    They can all be thrown away in an instance if people (for whatever reason) don't fight for them.

    There will always be people who fight against those things, and people that don't give a fuck too. But we always have to have enough willing to fight for them, the % necessary just fluctuates.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Seashells used to be currency

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    All it takes is one other person and you can bring it back.

    I'd wager to bet that every single day, someone trades a seashell for something.

    And I like being pedantic, so I'd say that seashells are actively currency.

    Because that's really all it takes.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago

    I mean, we did make them up. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    "Laws are a threat made by the dominant socioeconomic ethnic group in a given nation. It’s just the promise of violence that’s enacted, and the police are basically an occupying army, you know what I mean?"

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    There are laws. We made them up.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    There are no stories! We made them all up!

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    There's no law of gravity, it's just curved spacetime! *jumps off a cliff

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    There are many social constructs that govern our lives

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  • [+] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    They keep claiming all immigrants are dangerous criminals, while not being at all concerned that a dangerous criminal is in charge of the government

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Congratulations, you have discovered the starting point of anarchist philosophy. Please, read further. It's good stuff.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Might makes right is the whole of the law.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago
    [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    There is no property! They made the whole thing up!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Well yeah. Everything we do in society from laws to customs to fads are just made up things we go with. Thats what makes religious folks to tend toward nuttiness as it can often go down the path of. So and so rule came from GOD!!!

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  • Even your perception of trees is a construct of man.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Absolutely and that is what makes what Trump is doing so fucking dangerous. He is actively undermining the US government, once the vast majority of people no longer believe in the government it wont be.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Just like we made up prisons.

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  • [+] -9 points 1 year ago (14 children)

    But morality wasn't (unless you are, and may the Creator forgive me for uttering this word, a relativist), and that's important to remember! Ideally, laws follow from moral truths but alas...

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Any claim of universal system of morality existence shatters at the minutest contact with history.

    The idea of morality is dominant and potentially universal across human societies. The actual definitions are invented and reinvented constantly and fairly rapidly.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Just because people have been wrong in their understanding of right and wrong many times and in many places does not mean objective, factual things cannot exist and be said about them. I'm sure that if we sat down the entirety of humanity to talk about it, we'd reach consensus about everything major and simple and concessions about anything minor and complex (and we'd understand the Ted Bundys of the world and their utterings in the similar fashion to our understandings of people born with major genetic defects... without the moral disgust, ofc).

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    By far, society is more moral than it's ever been. There have been ups and downs and some people are better than others, but if you look at all the atrocities that have been justified by the morality of the time, we've made a lot of progress as a whole.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So why do you need an external creator to believe in them?

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  • I don't think you do necessarily... if you're very clever, honest, empathetic and/or honourable, but it will certainly keep you more accountable and remorseful even in that case! And for the vast majority of people, who simply don't have any of those qualities to the necessary degree to competently move around in the world righteously, belief in God and fear of the Day of Judgment will be the main/only barrier to stop them from transgressing greatly. It would certainly help in this amoral, self-serving, anti-intellectual, post-truth USA, for example (and don't say these people believe in what Jesus believed in or anything like that, cause any cursory reading of the Sermon on the Mount could show you these so called religious people don't conduct themselves in any prosocial, selfless way, nor do the believe God will judge them for their atrocities/troublemaking).

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Provide evidence of a creator.

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  • [–] -5 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    If the Creation is not enough, then idk. 🤷

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    What a crazy way to live. Have fun with that.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I can't "show you evidence" for something that exists outside and before space-time! And, lol, I appreciate your good vibes despite my madness.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Then how the fuck do you know it exists? You can't show evidence, but somehow through the power of your own satisfaction you know it exists?

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