5/16/16

Actions Harm; Not Words or Lies or Truths

A Nazi prison guard looks over the Jews and sees one that has been excused from going into the gas chamber directly. The Jew told the guard he was a scientist (and he was really an electrician), and the camp commandant had a special that week on sparing scientists from execution so they could work on building a nuclear weapon. How much harm did the Jew do to the Nazi guard by telling him the lie?

Absurd philosophical situations like that arise when one credits all lies with necessarily being harmful. Satan may be the father of lies yet he is also the father of everything evil including actions that really do cause harm. Lies printed on paper that isn't read do no harm. Falsehoods are not magical incantations that bring the wrath of harm and doom to the gullible. In fact telling the objective truth to people can in some circumstances cause as much harm, or more, than a lie. it is actions that bring harm to the soul.

A lie without an action accompanying it to bring harm usually can do little harm. A truth not acted upon can cause harm just as readily as a lie, since it is the action or inaction, response or non-response to words that can bring good or evil to others. People need to be given credit for some cognitive  reasoning capacity to discern for-themselves what is true or false, right or wrong, good or evil and decide for-themselves if or how they should act.

Without thought the human body does very little beside biologically metabolize or fall if in a gravitational field. Human actions follow human thought and the will to act or move.

So the prison guard is happy that he has saved the fake Jewish scientist from death and looks at the Jew menacingly knowing that he can act some varieties of sadistic torture upon him later to motivate Jewish science. Then another prison guard arrives and sees the Jew. Looking upon him he says-what is that Jewish electrician from my village doing in the scientist's line Heinrich? The guard has only said the truth. Nothing changes until the first guard then orders the electrician to the gas chamber. That was the harmful action.

Belief in words is for-itself a kind of action. Human will and thought are actions some use better than others. Each individual is responsible for his own thought, action or inaction for-himself, though it is possible for others to interfere with one's own freedom to act and think. Sadists and the too comfortable in politics, government and business are susceptible to perpetrating callous victimization of others overcome with their own easily arrived concepts of self-worth.

Lies and falsehoods intentional or not probably have a greater prospect for prompting harmful actions than truthful statements. Reckless driving has a greater prospect for causing harm in comparison to safe, truthful driving, yet reckless driving could be identical in appearance to evasive driving by a car and driver seeking to not get strafed by an opposition force aircraft.

Plainly virtuous actions would work for the intentionally good with accuracy and truthfulness, yet that may be a complex line of travel.

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