From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   In a debate on the Internet about divorce, someone wrote that only an idiot or   
   sociopath will be building his happiness on someone else’s misery.   
      
   By that standard he is an idiot and a sociopath because he works in a   
   capitalist economy, where he is competing against someone else and builds his   
   success on their misery.   
      
   What are the correct parameters here? There needs to be a vigorous debate on   
   this matter in many places.  Much here is at stake. I particularly would like   
   hypocrisy to be addressed. One man goes to jail for “beating up [his]   
   wife’s fist with [his]    
   face”; another man breaks his wife’s skull so badly that she needs 40   
   stitches and walks away with the child. One man goes to jail for a year and   
   loses everything he has for getting drunk and chatting up a 16-year-old;   
   another man rapes his daughter    
   repeatedly since she is 4 and keeps both his freedom and his custody over the   
   kid. The high school kid who beats up other kids and impregnates his female   
   classmate is a stud; the high school kid who takes school seriously is a   
   “know-it-all” and “   
   thinks he’s better than everyone else.”    
      
   Of course wrong things get done all the time. Man-woman relationships are just   
   one of the many things that can go wrong. So is high school. So is business.   
   So is society. It is important to anticipat4e what can go wrong in any given   
   situation and put in    
   the correct antidotes to the problem.   
      
   It is also important to look at degrees of the wrongdoing. I once heard   
   someone comparing a woman who was mildly promiscuous to Adolf Hitler because   
   she did not fully follow conservative sexual morality. Meanwhile much greater   
   violation – incest –    
   was gone unredressed by him. Abuses done in the name of ethics give ethics a   
   bad name and leads many sincere people to reject it. They don’t reject it   
   because they are evil. They reject it because it is hypocritical. A huge   
   social problem gets created    
   as people who are sincere reject ethics because they identify ethics with the   
   bullying and mean-spirited way in which it is practiced. And we find ourselves   
   in a paradoxical situation in which the most genuine people reject   
   conventional morality while    
   the platform of ethics is claimed by heartless jerks.   
      
   With divorce, in many cases it is the existing partner that is building his   
   happiness on his partner’s misery. Sometimes women divorce for wrong   
   reasons, but that is not the only possible outcome. Once again, it is   
   important to look at degrees. It is    
   also important to look at the dynamics. Many relationships can, and should, be   
   saved. But there are others that are simply ill-advised, and for the person to   
   find herself in one – especially at a young age - should not be a life-   
   ruining mistake.   
      
   What ethics are applicable to relationship, and what ethics are applicable to   
   work? And is it right to support cut-throat competitive tactics of business to   
   heavy-headed strictures exerted over relationships?   
      
   What is the correct set of moral values in each instance?   
      
   Once again, there needs to be vigorous debate on this manner.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)