Pagan Journeys
General Topics => General Chat => Topic started by: Claude on April 21, 2013, 09:52:39 PM
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I have no idea where to place this...
Anyways I was wondering what you guys thought about using cellphone numbers or personal emails in spells in place of things like hair or strips of clothing. They are unique to the individual but at the same time they don't seem to be that personal. So what do you guys think?
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Considering that I still get calls for someone else on the cell phone number that I've had for six years, I would not consider a cell number "personal".
As far as email address, I don't know that you need to go that far - couldn't the person's name work just as easily?
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If I knew their full names I would. I just don't feel like first and last are enough. It may just be me but I've had no luck without a full name.
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So, if you can't get full names one would have to assume you aren't doing a spell for them. Perhaps your lack of success has more to do with unethical spellwork on another without their permission?
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So, if you can't get full names one would have to assume you aren't doing a spell for them. Perhaps your lack of success has more to do with unethical spellwork on another without their permission?
:yeahthat:
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Your ethics are different than mine and my success rate is good enough. Having someone's full name is a preference and a guideline because first and last names are generic. The idea that spells should only be cast on people with their permission is nonsensical and reduces the effectiveness/usefulness of magic down to about nothing.
History is full of examples of magic being used against individuals or even nations without their permission. The hundreds of defixione found throughout the Roman Empire are wonderful examples. I doubt that the casters made the person aware of the fact that they were being offered to the Manes. Another good example would be Evocatio. Yes the unfortunate besieged people could see the Romans calling their gods from the city but they really didn't give permission to it. This isn't just unique to the Religio Romana. Nidstangs were certainly erected without the consent of the target.
But oddly enough I didn't want to call my ethics nor my limitless historical examples into question. I just wanted to know what others thought about using emails phone numbers etc in place of things like hair.
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My spells are directed to the correct person through my will and ability to send the energy along the correct path. Names have nothing to do with it. I do find it difficult to conceive of a situation where I would think a spell was necessary for someone with whom I am not well enough acquainted to know their real name. People are often much different than how they appear on the internet - it would be like doing a spell on an actor's character.
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But oddly enough I didn't want to call my ethics nor my limitless historical examples into question.
:rolleye:
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I don't like the cell phone or e-mail concept. If you can get something more directly connected to them it would be better. One of the reasons a sorcerer or sorceress would use a nail or hair clipping is the concept of once connected always connected. That concept has some basis in quantum physics actually even if rather thin. The use of a personal item that has been in contact with the person is a substitute for not being able to obtain a lock of hair. The theory there is that the energy of the person is transferred after long contact to the object. An e-mail is not enough contact. Barring that, an ability to visualize the person is sometimes more then sufficient rendering the e-mail or cell phone irrelevant. As a technical question not I don't like the concept. Now the substitution of photos for poppets or handmade figures was alright for it helped in the visualization process.
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But oddly enough I didn't want to call my ethics [..snip..] into question.
And yet, you've done just that.
History is full of stories of people who've committed atrocities in the name of some deity, some perceived wrong, or even just because someone was different. If you chose to have a morality that falls along those lines, then you should be prepared to have that questioned ... especially on a site full of pagans who have a higher moral standard than many other people on this earth.
Those of us who own/run this site, do not believe in using spellwork to harm or punish others without good reason, nor do we agree with the belief that just because someone else has done something makes it OK for us or others to do the same. We chose to be better than the average joe who lashes out at some perceived slight. If that is troublesome to you, perhaps this isn't a site you should be frequenting.
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But oddly enough I didn't want to call my ethics [..snip..] into question.
And yet, you've done just that.
History is full of stories of people who've committed atrocities in the name of some deity, some perceived wrong, or even just because someone was different. If you chose to have a morality that falls along those lines, then you should be prepared to have that questioned ... especially on a site full of pagans who have a higher moral standard than many other people on this earth.
Those of us who own/run this site, do not believe in using spellwork to harm or punish others without good reason, nor do we agree with the belief that just because someone else has done something makes it OK for us or others to do the same. We chose to be better than the average joe who lashes out at some perceived slight. If that is troublesome to you, perhaps this isn't a site you should be frequenting.
At which point did I say I was going to commit an atrocity or something negative in any way? The fact of the matter is you have no idea what my plans are. I can guarantee you that I never said anything about my spell that would logically lead someone to believe that I was going to "lash out" "punish" or "harm". I never called my morals into question either. Take note that I haven't even given my moral standing on this post at all.
I don't like the cell phone or e-mail concept. If you can get something more directly connected to them it would be better. One of the reasons a sorcerer or sorceress would use a nail or hair clipping is the concept of once connected always connected. That concept has some basis in quantum physics actually even if rather thin. The use of a personal item that has been in contact with the person is a substitute for not being able to obtain a lock of hair. The theory there is that the energy of the person is transferred after long contact to the object. An e-mail is not enough contact. Barring that, an ability to visualize the person is sometimes more then sufficient rendering the e-mail or cell phone irrelevant. As a technical question not I don't like the concept. Now the substitution of photos for poppets or handmade figures was alright for it helped in the visualization process.
That's kind of what I was thinking. Thanks for the input Vordan!
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This forum is a written medium. We can judge only on what we read. And in this, Claude, your initial inquiry sent up warning flares on the matter of ethics. I don't care if you think you are planning a beneficial action or not: if you can't ask someone for their full name, it indicates they don't know or wouldn't approve of what you are planning. With the exception of protective magic, that is, in the opinion of many here, UNethical. Period.
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This forum is a written medium. We can judge only on what we read. And in this, Claude, your initial inquiry sent up warning flares on the matter of ethics. I don't care if you think you are planning a beneficial action or not: if you can't ask someone for their full name, it indicates they don't know or wouldn't approve of what you are planning. With the exception of protective magic, that is, in the opinion of many here, UNethical. Period.
:yeahthat:
At which point did I say I was going to commit an atrocity or something negative in any way? The fact of the matter is you have no idea what my plans are. I can guarantee you that I never said anything about my spell that would logically lead someone to believe that I was going to "lash out" "punish" or "harm". I never called my morals into question either. Take note that I haven't even given my moral standing on this post at all.
Apparently you aren't as familiar with logic as you'd like to think. The fact that you were extremely vague about your intent is telling ... what one doesn't say sometimes says more than what one does say. If you feel you need something "personal" to effect a spell, then you don't know a person well (eg. would be less than effective at sending energy to the appropriate person) and there are very few reasons to cast a spell "for" someone one doesn't know well.
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"At which point did I say I was going to commit an atrocity or something negative in any way?" CD is absolutely right... When asked, you provided no positive purposes for your actions, and gave as historical examples hideous curses like a Nidstang. Logically, if you had a good or laudable intention in mind you'd have given it; therefore, given the bad examples you cited, we made the only logical conclusion. This was confirmed by your continuing to refuse explanation even as you complained about your ethics being questioned.
Frankly, I can conceive of no good example of a spell so personal that you need a direct connection to them that you would do without their knowledge and consent. Protection? A ward or shield doesn't need to know what's behind it, only what it's deflecting; personal identifiers are unnecessary. Healing? The only reason to attempt it without knowledge or consent would be if you knew in advance that they would not approve, or that it's against their own religious practices, in which case you'd be doing more harm than good. Only a violation of their person- an attempt at subjugating their will, or a curse of some nature- would require personal connections that you couldn't simply ask them for.
peace,
ES
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I could see it if you are being harassed or stalked by someone you don't know well... I once did a spell to keep someone away from me, that was designed to make her feel really uncomfortable when she came near me or my loved ones, or even thought about me.
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I don't think historical examples of why doing bad things is okay are really relevant in the world we live in today.
But then I also don't think preachiness and moralizing have any benefit except to the people agreeing with each other, if an open discussion about the matter isn't the goal of the conversation.
I would be very interested, Claude, in having a conversation with you about how your personal ethics evolved and what drew you to certain historical examples.
To answer your question - numbers of any kind are just a placeholder for more meaningful communication. For instance, social security numbers, policy numbers, etc. They are mutable and shifting and more numbers are piled on us as we grow older. Our reviews at work are contingent on our hiring dates, etc. All of the numbers add up to a personal profile of someone, but the numbers themselves are meaningless. Just data without context.
Likewise e-mail addresses are often chosen to represent a facet of a person, not the whole. Skydiver77@hotmail.com, for example, may tell you that someone was born in 77 and they like to sky dive but it doesn't touch on their whereabouts, their personal history, their family connections, what other hobbies they enjoy, etc.
So to base a spell with those bits of information as the focus, I think it would cause the results of the spell to become skewed or warped - or at best to be minimally effective.
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Good point... numbers are basically just placeholders, and email addresses are usually not representative of a whole person. However, the same can be said of names. I prefer to visualize the person when I am doing spellwork for somebody.
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Good point... numbers are basically just placeholders, and email addresses are usually not representative of a whole person. However, the same can be said of names. I prefer to visualize the person when I am doing spellwork for somebody.
That's true, to a degree, I think. But a person goes their whole life being recognized and responding to their name. Answering to it and using it and giving it out and repetition does make a stronger connection.
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But then I also don't think preachiness and moralizing have any benefit except to the people agreeing with each other, if an open discussion about the matter isn't the goal of the conversation.
Moonshine, care to define what you mean by this statement?
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But then I also don't think preachiness and moralizing have any benefit except to the people agreeing with each other, if an open discussion about the matter isn't the goal of the conversation.
Moonshine, care to define what you mean by this statement?
Sure. :) If the person raising the concern isn't willing to discuss side issues raised in a thread, then all that will happen is that people agreeing its bad and/or people agreeing its good will pat each other on the back and keep on agreeing with each other . . . but probably won't put any extra thought into the subject. I think we should make a separate thread for ethics and the evolution there of. :) It would be a very good discussion to have.
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Scroll down to the part that says "SUBSTITUTES FOR BODY FLUIDS: THE MAGICAL LINK".
http://www.luckymojo.com/bodyfluids.html
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Somehow, I think that if the OP couldn't obtain the subjects name, it would be pretty much impossible for him to obtain the substitutes listed in the link.
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Very true. :)
You can see the list is in hierarchical order, too, with the person's full name all the way at the bottom of the list. If you don't even have that, there's really no point.
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I tried to treat this as a technical question for I felt the morality aspect was well covered by others. Other people discussed the random nature of assigned numbers. I think he got a fairly broad response from everyone, which is all anybody could ask for.
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Good point... numbers are basically just placeholders, and email addresses are usually not representative of a whole person. However, the same can be said of names. I prefer to visualize the person when I am doing spellwork for somebody.
That's true, to a degree, I think. But a person goes their whole life being recognized and responding to their name. Answering to it and using it and giving it out and repetition does make a stronger connection.
That's not exactly true, necessarily. Maybe it's largely a function of where I live, but many people I know have had different names (both functionally and legally) at different times of their lives, both first and last.
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But then I also don't think preachiness and moralizing have any benefit except to the people agreeing with each other, if an open discussion about the matter isn't the goal of the conversation.
Moonshine, care to define what you mean by this statement?
Sure. :) If the person raising the concern isn't willing to discuss side issues raised in a thread, then all that will happen is that people agreeing its bad and/or people agreeing its good will pat each other on the back and keep on agreeing with each other . . . but probably won't put any extra thought into the subject. I think we should make a separate thread for ethics and the evolution there of. :) It would be a very good discussion to have.
We do have a separate area for discussing ethics. HOwever, there are times when it ends up relevant to answering any given thread, and it comes up again.
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Magical ethics are the same as regular ethics, IMHO.
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Magical ethics are the same as regular ethics, IMHO.
They should be, you would think. Trust me when I say, if they always are... some people we have seen come through these halls don't seem to have them.
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I would agree that ethics are ethics. However, in this instance the OP was requesting information on how to direct magical intent to someone over the internet. Some of us have witnessed people trying to hurt others magically because they got butthurt on the web. I think that the people he was asking the question of have a right to evaluate whether the information would be used ethically or not and to judge whether we wanted to help him in that endeavor.
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
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I find that with these (and most other) situations, the safeguards are built in.
In cases of internet butthurt, there's usually no way of getting the necessary things like a full name, much less hair, nails, or body fluids, as demonstrated in this thread.
Even with the actual name and an actual picture of the person printed off the net, chances are slim that it would be enough to do anything, else every little girl who googled a love spell would be married to Justin Bieber. :rotflmao:
And all of this information is easily googled anyway, you're not preventing the person from attempting the spell by withholding the info. Even the former secrets of the Masons are online. There's enough free info out there to throw any kind of magic you want. There's catches, though. For this stuff, you need personal concerns. For Tibetan, you might need to prepare with 100 million mantras. Magic is WORK. It's actually easier to get off your butt and fix things in the mundane. ;)
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In cases of internet butthurt, there's usually no way of getting the necessary things like a full name, much less hair, nails, or body fluids, as demonstrated in this thread.
True enough for one who is new or doesn't spend the time to do the work. Not necessarily true for folks who know what they are doing.
And all of this information is easily googled anyway, you're not preventing the person from attempting the spell by withholding the info. Even the former secrets of the Masons are online. There's enough free info out there to throw any kind of magic you want.
Disagree ... there is enough information on the net for someone who doesn't know what they're doing to get themselves in trouble. But not enough information (or not the correct information - the internet is full of bad/wrong info) to be effective.
But you're missing the point. Part of the reason this forum exists is to guide those who need to be nudged in the right direction and those who would be considered elders in the community step up and provide that guidance. Like other forums we tend to get people join who want "quick fixes" for their problems (real or perceived) but they don't usually stick around long once they realize those "quick fixes" aren't here.
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Part of being an adult is having the freedom and autonomy to make mistakes on your own.
There's a mindset these days - and I'm not pointing the finger here, I'm saying this in a very broad sense that encompasses the polical arena, national affairs, etc. - that people need to be supervised for their own safety. It's essentially a smokescreen for privacy violations, exploitation and loss of freedom.
"Dangerous" magic tends to be coercive magic, in most cases. In the wrong hands, it tends to do nothing. In some cases it does seem to backfire.
When I was five, my parents allowed me to bloody my knees learning to ride a bike. They were correct in doing this, I think, even though I was very young. I would certainly never deny an adult that level of autonomy.
Maybe it's my DNA (four Revolutionary War soldiers, etc.) but I tend to be very leery of controlling behaviors. If someone asks me what I think of something on an ethical level, I might sermonize, but if they ask for simple information, I provide it. It's their call what they do with it.
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Maybe it's my DNA (four Revolutionary War soldiers, etc.) but I tend to be very leery of controlling behaviors. If someone asks me what I think of something on an ethical level, I might sermonize, but if they ask for simple information, I provide it. It's their call what they do with it.
It is your right to act in whatever manner you see fit, just as it is others' right to ask questions before volunteering information that is better learned through experience. I fail to see how refusing to spoon feed someone is "controlling behavior".
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For what it's worth, if someone were asking for information about the most painless and effective way to commit suicide, I wouldn't be giving them that, either, even though the only person they wanted to harm was themselves.
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I agree that magical and mundane ethics are more or less the same. My line of interest lies in how each individual person defines their own sense of ethics.
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What do people think of the idea of doing some sort of general blessing without necessarily having consent? (Like health, happiness, prosperity, etc) I have done this, and I liken it to praying for someone. Maybe I should not do this?
As for using email addresses and the like, you might just find that certain powers might just block that tenuous a connection.
Be Blessed!
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What do people think of the idea of doing some sort of general blessing without necessarily having consent? (Like health, happiness, prosperity, etc) I have done this, and I liken it to praying for someone. Maybe I should not do this?
How do you feel when a Christian says "I will pray for you"? I try to accept their good will in the spirit it is given but it still kind of bothers me. I would think that some people might be uncomfortable accepting energy from a witch. Usually when I send good energy to people without their knowledge (such as the victims of a natural disaster), I will send out general well wish energy with the caveat that they can access it if they choose to do so.
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Maybe it's my DNA (four Revolutionary War soldiers, etc.) but I tend to be very leery of controlling behaviors. If someone asks me what I think of something on an ethical level, I might sermonize, but if they ask for simple information, I provide it. It's their call what they do with it.
It is your right to act in whatever manner you see fit, just as it is others' right to ask questions before volunteering information that is better learned through experience. I fail to see how refusing to spoon feed someone is "controlling behavior".
What I'm seeing in this thread isn't so much people saying "I don't choose to share that information with you", but rather, attempting to tell Claude NOT to do it, which can be perceived as controlling behavior.
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What I'm seeing in this thread isn't so much people saying "I don't choose to share that information with you", but rather, attempting to tell Claude NOT to do it, which can be perceived as controlling behavior.
I can see how you might have perceived that. I see people asking for the OP's intent and people expressing their own opinions on the ethics of doing spell work without the subject's knowledge. I don't believe that we have come to a level of political correctness here that would require people to keep their opinions to themselves, nor do I see that happening in the near future. This is, after all, a discussion board and censoring the opinions of members who are not being disrespectful is a bit too controlling for free discussion IMO.
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
Only if we had known it would be used to murder.
What do people think of the idea of doing some sort of general blessing without necessarily having consent? (Like health, happiness, prosperity, etc) I have done this, and I liken it to praying for someone. Maybe I should not do this?
It creeps me out when someone says, I'll pray for you.
...My response might be, "Ill pray for you too. Guess which god."
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What I'm seeing in this thread isn't so much people saying "I don't choose to share that information with you", but rather, attempting to tell Claude NOT to do it, which can be perceived as controlling behavior.
I can see how you might have perceived that. I see people asking for the OP's intent and people expressing their own opinions on the ethics of doing spell work without the subject's knowledge. I don't believe that we have come to a level of political correctness here that would require people to keep their opinions to themselves, nor do I see that happening in the near future. This is, after all, a discussion board and censoring the opinions of members who are not being disrespectful is a bit too controlling for free discussion IMO.
I do like the "not censoring" policy. As long as it's applied with an even hand, it's preferable.
It creeps me out when someone says, I'll pray for you.
...My response might be, "Ill pray for you too. Guess which god."
Personally, I wouldn't say that to someone nice enough to offer prayer in a crisis.
OTOH, it's PERFECT for LDS types. :crazylaugh:
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
No. A person's actions are their own.
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Maybe it's my DNA (four Revolutionary War soldiers, etc.) but I tend to be very leery of controlling behaviors. If someone asks me what I think of something on an ethical level, I might sermonize, but if they ask for simple information, I provide it. It's their call what they do with it.
It is your right to act in whatever manner you see fit, just as it is others' right to ask questions before volunteering information that is better learned through experience. I fail to see how refusing to spoon feed someone is "controlling behavior".
This is correct. If all you are doing is withholding information that you possess, then there is no censorship.
Not allowing others to share information IS censorship. However, this is not the government, it is a privately run message board, and therefore the people posting on it must either agree to the terms of service of the board, or go elsewhere, at least for the information in question.
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
Only if we had known it would be used to murder.
In a legal sense, you are correct. This would be accessory before the fact. However, on an ethical level, the burden of guilt is not shared. Even a soldier receiving an unethical order is held responsible if he obeys it, as was demonstrated by the Nuremberg trials (despite the fact that the USA has recently decided otherwise, with regard to activities at Abu Graib and Camp X-Ray).
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I'm going to ignore the ethics behind this topic and address the actual question. I do agree with the others on the ethics of the matter and let's leave it at that. Others have echoed my thoughts on the matter and so I have nothing to add to that.
The problem with using a phone number is that no one owns their phone number. That's something owned by the phone company. In the case of a landline the number is a code that tells the switching computers to route a call to that number to phone line circuit umptyscrunch.
This is why you can (depending on your company's service options) forward a call to another number if you're going to be away. The call doesn't go to your phone and then bounces back to the other number, the call gets redirected at the switching computer to the new location.
With a cell phone it's similar. The switching computer gets a call to a number and the computer looks up the cell phone identifier code attached to that number and sends it to there. This is why you can get a new phone every now and again and still have the same number. The computer gets the update that 123-456-789-012 is no longer associated to that number and that now 210-987-654-321 is.
With an email, it's similar.
When I was working at a small computer store in New Jersey, we had our own Web Hosting service. We owned the equipment that our web page was attached to AND the email server was running on. So in that case if you were to have sent a spell (good, bad, or indifferent) you would have had a better chance of targeting him since it was in all sense of the word, HIS email. owner.bosspants@computerstore.com was totally his and with his attachment to the servers (in which he put as much of himself into the servers as he did the rest of his business) had a strong connection.
Certainly the server seemed to have his stubborn streak. I could never get the updates installed without getting errors...only he could.
But that's the very rare exception to the rule. Most people have their email hosted on someone else's equipment and only log in and have their client software politely ask if it may download the messages.
Think Oliver Twist asking "Please sir? May I have another?"
Or in the case of webmail, it's you asking politely if you may look at what's in your mailbox.
And with the case that an email message is bounced from computer to computer to computer...that address touches a multitude of equipment. Heck, for me to get to my gmail account I'm an 11-machine hop according to my traceroute app.
So if you were to try to send a spell (good, bad or indifferent) you're more likely to either have it bleem out into nowhere...or may target people who have more close ties with the email or number than the person you're trying to target.
It's one of those things that's both very personal and yet at the same time as impersonal as one can get.
A fair analogy would be to try to target me with energy by using Nintendo Wii as a focus. Sure it's *mine* but I don't use it that much since my children and their friends use it far more often than I do. So if anyone were to try to target me with that as a focus...odds are I'm not going to be hit. More likely to hit one of my children or their friends my mistake.
And that's where I put in my one bit of ethics. If one can not be sure of the target, then that person is as irresponsible as a person shooting at a firing range without making sure that the range is clear before pulling the trigger.
And just as responsible for any consequences.
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What I'm seeing in this thread isn't so much people saying "I don't choose to share that information with you", but rather, attempting to tell Claude NOT to do it, which can be perceived as controlling behavior.
I can see how you might have perceived that. I see people asking for the OP's intent and people expressing their own opinions on the ethics of doing spell work without the subject's knowledge. I don't believe that we have come to a level of political correctness here that would require people to keep their opinions to themselves, nor do I see that happening in the near future. This is, after all, a discussion board and censoring the opinions of members who are not being disrespectful is a bit too controlling for free discussion IMO.
I do like the "not censoring" policy. As long as it's applied with an even hand, it's preferable.
It creeps me out when someone says, I'll pray for you.
...My response might be, "Ill pray for you too. Guess which god."
Personally, I wouldn't say that to someone nice enough to offer prayer in a crisis.
OTOH, it's PERFECT for LDS types. :crazylaugh:
Oh...yep...
If they were trying to be kind, I'd just bite my tongue, but that's not usually why they say it to me.
Mostly it's folks who want to save my heathen self from the fires of hell to get brownie points with Jesus.
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It creeps me out when someone says, I'll pray for you.
...My response might be, "Ill pray for you too. Guess which god."
Personally, I wouldn't say that to someone nice enough to offer prayer in a crisis.
OTOH, it's PERFECT for LDS types. :crazylaugh:
Are you suggesting that individuals who belong to LDS aren't capable of being kind? I have a number of friends in LDS and have never had any of them offer to pray for me ... in fact, they are more accepting of my beliefs than friends who are Christian.
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It creeps me out when someone says, I'll pray for you.
...My response might be, "Ill pray for you too. Guess which god."
Personally, I wouldn't say that to someone nice enough to offer prayer in a crisis.
OTOH, it's PERFECT for LDS types. :crazylaugh:
Are you suggesting that individuals who belong to LDS aren't capable of being kind? I have a number of friends in LDS and have never had any of them offer to pray for me ... in fact, they are more accepting of my beliefs than friends who are Christian.
While I have met people in the LDS who were very nice, the fact remains that they are members of a religious organization that actively opposes basic rights for 5-10% of the population. As such, though I hold no particular ill-will toward them, I prefer not to associate with them in any meaningful way.
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
Only if we had known it would be used to murder.
So, you think if a stranger asks you for a weapon and you just hand one to him/her without asking why they need it ... and they go off and kill someone that you're not at all, not even partially responsible?
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
No. A person's actions are their own.
So, the person who hands a weapon to a stranger without even questioning why they want it has zero responsibility? Sorry, disagree completely.
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We not only have a right, we have an obligation to make sure that what ever information we provide can/will not be used to harm another. If you hand someone a gun and they kill another person, aren't you also responsible?
No. A person's actions are their own.
So, the person who hands a weapon to a stranger without even questioning why they want it has zero responsibility? Sorry, disagree completely.
From an ethics standpoint, they are guilty of giving a gun to someone they didn't know.
Not the same thing as being ethically responsible for a murder.
On a moral level, this may be different. They aren't the same thing.
SUPPOSE
Joe Boo knows his brakes are bad. A child runs into the street, and Joe can't stop, and kills the kid.
Is he guilty of manslaughter in a legal sense?
Is he guilty of manslaughter in an ethical sense?
Is he guilty of manslaughter in a moral sense?
They aren't the same thing.
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Handing someone a gun who appears to be homicidal is wrong and we all know it. If we don't know it, then we have different values and there is really no point in continuing to quibble about the difference between legal, ethical, and moral.
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Handing someone a gun who appears to be homicidal is wrong and we all know it. If we don't know it, then we have different values and there is really no point in continuing to quibble about the difference between legal, ethical, and moral.
Okay.
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So wait.
Crystal Dragon, you can look at voting like handing somebody a gun. A BIG gun.
Whoever gets elected generally ends up getting a lot of people killed. Even in times of peace, there's always more cuts in services and a lot of people suffer and die because of that.
And there is a school of thought that goes if you DON'T vote, what happens is still your fault because you should have voted against the guys who made it happen.
So by this "being responsible for murder if you hand somebody a gun" logic, we're all screwed anyway.
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I'm reasonably certain the conversation has been shut down, CWS.
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Ah. OK.
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It's not shutdown. I just think it is pointless. And yes, I think we are pretty much all screwed. Some of us just prefer not to be magnets for more screwage.
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I think it all comes down to whether a person is going to be responsible for their actions. Some people think that they can escape consequences, like the Rule of Three or karma.
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I think it all comes down to whether a person is going to be responsible for their actions. Some people think that they can escape consequences, like the Rule of Three or karma.
Hmmm.
Ask Dick Cheney about that.
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It's not shutdown. I just think it is pointless. And yes, I think we are pretty much all screwed. Some of us just prefer not to be magnets for more screwage.
In CWS's example, that won't help. I work in the belly of the beast, in the energy industry. Keeping your head down is precisely the intended goal of the social engineering set forth by such companies.
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Hmm. Perhaps we have something in common. I work with energy savings guarantee projects all the time.
I want to apologize if I gave the impression that the thread was shutdown. For future reference, closed threads are locked by the staff. In regards to Dick Cheney, want to point out that we have a policy of no political discussions on this board. There are a wide range of political stances represented here and political discussions are better left to political boards.
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Hmm. Perhaps we have something in common. I work with energy savings guarantee projects all the time.
I work with yanking natural gas out of rock substrate. I'm not actually on the production side, though.
I want to apologize if I gave the impression that the thread was shutdown. For future reference, closed threads are locked by the staff. In regards to Dick Cheney, want to point out that we have a policy of no political discussions on this board. There are a wide range of political stances represented here and political discussions are better left to political boards.
Okay. I wasn't presenting it as a political point. Politics are the stupidest thing mankind ever invented.
I was presenting it as an example of karma not functioning. Unless karma means he gets reincarnated as a dung beetle or a mime or something. Not because he is on one side or the other, the sides are meaningless...But rather on the merits of his behavior as CEO of Halliburton, and then the whole shooting his friend in the face with a shotgun while "hunting" staked-down birds.
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I have split this topic due to a radical change in subject matter. The new topic can be found here:
http://www.paganjourneys.com/index.php?topic=2532.0
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HI!
What I found works reallly well in magicks is hair! I think it may be the act of getting it that focuses your will on the eventual spell but I've not done that many.
There were a couple of wealth rituals I tried that used my own hair, and even they were quite effective!