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InvisibleIcelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Registered: 03/15/05
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: figgusfiddus]
    #7432425 - 09/20/07 01:45 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

You bring up some really good points here.

At this point I'm ready for the collapse of civilization (think that it's a good idea if we go all the way) and am willing to bear responsibility for anything I might contribute by being naughty.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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Invisiblethedudenj
Man of the Woods

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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: SlvrZeta]
    #7432456 - 09/20/07 01:51 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

its all culture,sub culture and counter culture


--------------------

"You all are just  puppets... You have no heart...and cannot feel any pain...""
you may think thats pain you feel but you must have a heart to feel true pain and that pain wont be yours


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Offlinefiggusfiddus
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: thedudenj]
    #7432469 - 09/20/07 01:55 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Don't forget liquid culture.


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FGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDS
FGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDS
FGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDSFGSFDS


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OfflineBlueCoyote
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #7432590 - 09/20/07 02:21 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

It doesn't seem obvous. Damned.:(


--------------------
Though lovers be lost love shall not  And death shall have no dominion
......................................................
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."Martin Luther King, Jr.
'Acceptance is the absolute key - at that moment you gain freedom and you gain power and you gain courage'


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Invisiblethedudenj
Man of the Woods

Registered: 08/18/04
Posts: 14,684
Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: BlueCoyote]
    #7433664 - 09/20/07 06:15 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

oh yeah liquid culture


--------------------

"You all are just  puppets... You have no heart...and cannot feel any pain...""
you may think thats pain you feel but you must have a heart to feel true pain and that pain wont be yours


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OfflinePhanTomCat
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: thedudenj]
    #7433737 - 09/20/07 06:41 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Damn doood, well spoken....    :thumbup:

FiggusFiddus for president....!    :grin:


>^;;^<


--------------------
I'll be your midnight French Fry....  :naughty:

"The most important things in life that are often ignored, are the things that one cannot see...."

>^;;^<


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OfflineNiamhNyx
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Veritas]
    #7434065 - 09/20/07 08:15 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Veritas said:
I think it is more than a lack of confidence in the validity of our beliefs.  It seems to me that diverging from our "tribe," no matter how much we may intellectually believe it is correct, triggers our ancient survival fears.  We really have not evolved very much since the days when acceptance and belonging made the difference between living and dying.  :shrug:  In our oldest brain, ostracism = death.




I think you're onto something here... to avoid ostracism one tries to convince others that thier difference is valid and to encourage others to join them in thier beliefs... to draw a larger circle of shared worldview around oneself. This is a pretty natural drive. Either one 'joins the herd' or attempts to draw others out of the herd to share in thier difference together. We are social animals after all, it's hard to blame anyone for this instinct.


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InvisibleIcelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: NiamhNyx]
    #7435906 - 09/21/07 10:02 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

This is what the power struggles for leadership of the tribe are all about. Lead or follow. To choose something else...?


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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InvisibleEgo Death
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: SlvrZeta]
    #7436102 - 09/21/07 11:04 AM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Of course it can,
morals are made by each individual and theres moral expectation. The general mass consensus morals.

The whole of life itself as we know it, was built on murder, rape and theft - life does not have morals, humans have morals.

If the pyramid of society broke down tomorrow; have no doubt that it would be a kill or be killed, steal or have stolen world.

I just do to others what I don't mind being done to myself and try not to cause other people hurt. I don't do this because of any other reason than its the way I like to be.


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OfflineViveka
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: SlvrZeta]
    #7440986 - 09/22/07 04:24 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

2) the CEO of WalMart doesn't need another gold doorknob or Mercedes Benz.



Who needs anything? Why do you need the shit you steal? Why do you need to live?

Quote:

3) Life is expensive as it is. How is it fair that the proletariat earn a shitty wage like $7.50/hr -- year after year -- when inflation is a constant battle? I don't know about you but my salary is still the same after 6 months --- and I can assure you gas prices, food prices, etc have ALL gone up in the past 6 months --- but I haven't had a raise to combat these threats.



Who are these "proletariats" and why are they constantly vascilating between the pride of their self-identification and the angst of their victimhood? They sound pretty fucking stupid to me. If you're earning $7.50 year after year, here's a clue: learn a skill. Or are proletariats people incapable of diversifying their abilities?

Quote:

4) people who would "never shoplift" are usually people who download music, DVDs, and video games --- all objects which cost money at a retail store.




A thief is a thief is a thief. What's your point?

Quote:

5) Capitalism by its nature is all about stealing. For every dollar you have in your pocket, that is one less dollar somebody else has in theirs



This is the biggest heap of bullshit in this thread.


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InvisibleIcelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Registered: 03/15/05
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Viveka]
    #7441044 - 09/22/07 04:38 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

This is the biggest heap of bullshit in this thread.

You're right. Capitalism is about power and control.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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InvisibleVeritas
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Viveka]
    #7441090 - 09/22/07 04:54 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Who are these "proletariats" and why are they constantly vascilating between the pride of their self-identification and the angst of their victimhood? They sound pretty fucking stupid to me. If you're earning $7.50 year after year, here's a clue: learn a skill. Or are proletariats people incapable of diversifying their abilities?




Excellent points.  If one is earning minimum wage, or even the same sub-standard wage year-after-year, the problem is not with the system, it is with your self-marketing.  Improve your "product," and demand a higher price.

I'm working on this myself, though it has been a great many years since I earned the minimum wage. :wink:


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InvisibleIcelander
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Veritas]
    #7441095 - 09/22/07 04:55 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Or get good at stealing and consider that your skill.:grin:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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InvisibleVeritas
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Icelander]
    #7441099 - 09/22/07 04:57 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

It's not a good skill if I don't feel OK with it at the end of the day. :shrug:


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InvisibleIcelander
The Minstrel in the Gallery
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Registered: 03/15/05
Posts: 95,368
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Veritas]
    #7441104 - 09/22/07 04:58 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

True, but for the rest of us low lifes...:monkeydance:


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC


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OfflineViveka
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Icelander]
    #7444889 - 09/23/07 05:27 PM (16 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

This is the biggest heap of bullshit in this thread.

You're right. Capitalism is about power and control.



That's one way to look at it. More simply, it's about supply and demand, though some manipulate the system as fully as possible in order to consolidate as much leverage for themselves as possible.

Collectivism is more about power and control: the redistribution of wealth generated by others in order to ply the will and values of a governing state to a coerced populous. There are always those whose values align with those of the state and many whose values don't. There's a tyranny lurking, if not actively working, in any system. But the canard about every dollar earned equaling a dollar robbed from someone shouldn't go unchecked. It's such a fundamental falsehood.

There is a scheme where wealth is stolen instead of being generated. It's not Capitalism -- it's called Government.


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OfflineCompass
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: SlvrZeta]
    #8457381 - 05/28/08 09:27 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

Nothing compares to the feeling of elation, of burdens being lifted and constraints escaped, that I feel when I walk out of a store with their products in my pockets. In a world where everything already belongs to someone else, where I am expected to sell away my life at work in order to get the money to pay for the minimum I need to survive, where I am surrounded by forces beyond my control or comprehension that obviously are not concerned about my needs or welfare, it is a way to carve out a little piece of the world for myself—to act back upon a world that acts so much upon me.

It is an entirely different sensation than the one I feel when I buy something. When I pay for something, I'm making a trade; I'm offering the money that I bought with my labor, my time, and my creativity for a product or service that the corporation wouldn't share with me under any other circumstances. In a sense, we have a relationship based on violence: we negotiate an exchange not according to our respect or concern for each other, but according to the forces that we can bring to bear on each other. Supermarkets know they can charge me a dollar for bread because I will starve if I do not buy it from them; they know they can't charge me four dollars, because I will go somewhere else. So our interaction revolves around unspoken threats, rather than love, and I am forced to give up something of my own to get anything from them.[1][1] In a love relationship, conversley, people usually think of themselves as benefitting from giving to others, and vice versa.

Everything changes when I shoplift. I'm no longer negotiating with faceless, inhuman entities that have no concern for my welfare; instead, I'm taking what I need without giving anything up. I no longer feel like I am being forced into an exchange, and I no longer feel as if I have no control over the way the world around me dictates my life. I no longer have to worry about whether the pleasure I receive from the book I purchased was equal to the two hours of labor it cost me to be able to afford it. In these and a thousand other ways, shoplifting makes me feel liberated and empowered. Let's examine what shoplifting has to offer as an alternative way of life.

The shoplifter wins her prize by taking risks, not by exchanging a piece of her life for it. Life for her is not something that must be sold away for seven or eight dollars an hour in return for survival; it is something that is hers because she takes it for herself, because she lays claim to it. In stark contrast to the law-abiding consumer, the means by which she acquires goods is as exciting as the goods themselves; and this means is also, in many ways, more praiseworthy.

Shoplifting is a refusal of the exchange economy. It is a denial that people deserve to eat, live, and die based on how effectively they are able to exchange their labor and capital with others. It is a denial that a monetary value can be ascribed to everything, that having a piece of delicious chocolate in your mouth is worth exactly fifty cents or that an hour of one person's life can really be worth ten dollars more than that of another person. It is a refusal to accept the capitalist system, in which workers have to buy back the products of their own labor at a profit to the owners of capital, who thus get them coming and going.

Shoplifting says NO to all the objectionable features that have come to characterize the modern corporation. It is an expression of discontent with the low wages and lack of benefits that so many exploiting corporations force their employees to suffer in the name of company profits. It is a refusal to pay for low quality products that have been designed to break or wear out soon in order to force consumers to buy more. It is a refusal to fund the environmental damage that so many corporations perpetrate heartlessly in the course of manufacturing their products and building new stores, a refusal to support the corporations that run private, local businesses into bankruptcy, a refusal to accept the murder of animals in the meat and dairy industries and the exploitation of migrant labor in the fruit and vegetable industries. Shoplifting makes a statement against the alienation of the modern consumer. "If we are not able to find or afford any products other than these, that were made a thousand miles from us and about which we can know nothing," it asserts, "then we refuse to pay for these."

The shoplifter attacks the cynical mind control tactics of modern advertising. Today's commercials, billboards, even the floor—layouts and product displays in stores are designed by psychologists to manipulate potential consumers into purchasing products. Corporations carry out extensive advertising campaigns to insinuate their exhortations to consumption into every mind, and even work to make their products into status symbols that people from some walks of society eventually must own in order to be accorded respect. Faced with this kind of manipulation, the law-abiding consumer has two choices: either to come up with the money to purchase these products by selling his life away as a wage laborer, or to go without and possibly invite public ridicule as well as private frustration. The shoplifter creates a third choice of her own: she takes the products she has been conditioned to desire without paying for them, so the corporations themselves must pay for all of their propagandizing and mind control tactics.

Shoplifting is the most effective protest against all these objectionable attributes of modern corporations because it is not merely theoretical—it is practical, it involves action. Verbal protests can be raised to irresponsible business practices without ever having any solid effect, but shoplifting is intrinsically damaging these corporations at the same time as it (however covertly) demonstrates dissatisfaction. It is better than a boycott, because not only does it cost the corporation money rather than just denying it profit, it also means that the shoplifter is still able to obtain the products, which she may need to survive. And in these days when so many corporations are interconnected, and so many multinationals are involved in unacceptable activity, shoplifting is a generalized protest: it is a refusal to put any cash into the economy at all, so that the shoplifter can be sure that none of her cash will ever end up in the hands of the corporations she disapproves of. In addition to that, she will have to work less for them, as well!

But what about the people in the corporations? What about their welfare? First of all, corporations are distinct from traditional private businesses in that they exist as separate financial entities from their owners. So the shoplifter is stealing from a non-human entity, not directly from the pocket of a human being. Second, since so many workers are paid set wages (minimum wage, for example) that depend more on how little the corporation can get away with paying rather than on how much profit it is making, the shoplifter is not really hurting most of the workforce at any given company either. The stockholders, who are almost always far richer than your average thief, are the ones who stand to lose a little if the company suffers significant losses; but realistically, no campaign of shoplifting could be intense enough to force any of the wealthy individuals who actually profit from these companies into poverty. Besides, modern corporations have money set aside for shoplifting losses, because they anticipate them. That's correct—these corporations are aware that there is enough dissatisfaction with them and their capitalist economy that people are going to steal from them remorselessly. In that sense, shoplifters are just playing their role in society, just like C.E.O.s. More significantly, these corporations are cynical enough to go about their business as usual, even though they know this leaves many of their customers (and employees!) ready to steal anything from them that they can. If they are willing to continue doing business in this way even when they are aware how many people it alienates, they should not be surprised that people continue stealing from them.

Shoplifting is more than a way to survive in the cutthroat competition of the "free market" and protest corporate injustices. It is also a different kind of orientation to the world and to life.

The shoplifter makes do with an environment that has been conquered by capitalism and industry, where there is no longer a natural world from which to gather resources and everything has become private property, without accepting it or the absurd way of life it entails. She takes her life into her own hands by applying an ancient method to the problem of modern survival: she lives by urban hunting and gathering. In this way she is able to live much as her distant ancestors did before the world was subjugated by technology, imperialism, and the irrational demands of the "free" market; and she can find the same challenges and rewards in her work, rewards that are lost to the rest of us today. For her, the world is as dangerous and as exciting as it was to prehistoric humanity: every day she is in new situations, confronting new risks, living by her wits in a constantly changing environment. For the law-abiding consumer, it is likely that every day at work is similar to the last one and danger is as sorely lacking in life as meaning and purpose are.

To shoplift is to affirm immediate, bodily desires (such as hunger) over abstract "ethics" and other such ethereal constructs, most of which are left over from a deceased Christianity anyway. Shoplifting divests commodities (and the marketplace in general) of the mythical power they seem to have to control the lives of consumers... when they are seized by force, they show themselves for what they are: merely resources that have been held by force by these corporations at the expense of everyone else. Shoplifting places us back in the physical world, where things are real, where things are nothing more than their physical characteristics (weight, taste, ease of acquisition) and are not invested with superstitious qualities such as "market value" and "profit margin." It forces us to take risks and experience life firsthand again. Perhaps shoplifting alone will not be able to overthrow industrial society or the capitalist system... but in the meantime it is one of the best forms of protest and self-empowerment, and one of the most practical, too!




But shoplifting isn't herbaceous.


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Invisibleblewmeanie
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: Compass]
    #8457391 - 05/28/08 09:29 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Truthfully I don't even care if its wrong, I rob the fuck out of kangaroo gas stations every chance I get. I steal things I dont even want just because I can. My level of hatred for them is a little ridiculous.


--------------------
The Prophecy!

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Offlinebackfromthedead
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Re: Shoplifting can be morally right. [Re: blewmeanie]
    #8457818 - 05/28/08 11:00 PM (15 years, 8 months ago)

Quote:

blewmeanie said:
Truthfully I don't even care if its wrong, I rob the fuck out of kangaroo gas stations every chance I get. I steal things I dont even want just because I can. My level of hatred for them is a little ridiculous.




:yourock:


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