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But this does not mean that happiness and morality are inextricably bound together.
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As a matter of fact, I happen to think that they are.
Can I prove it? Obviously I’m not in a position to know the secret thoughts and hearts of the six or seven billion people on the planet, so there’s no way for me to mount a logically unassailable defense of this position. If thousands of years’ worth of writings of the wisest men in history haven’t been able to produce a bulletproof defense of the logic of morality, I won’t be able to do it here in the context of these boards, so I won’t even try.
But logic isn’t the whole story. Logic and morality seem to be uneasy bedfellows at best. Yet I think there is a reason why the words of Plato, Confucius, the Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, et al have survived for centuries. I can’t prove it, but I know it when I see it. People seem to respond to the principle in a general way in art and entertainment. My personal experience bears it out. I can't rule out your hypothetically immoral but perfectly happy and at peace person, but I've never met him or her. It may all be some grand illusion propagated by the (secretly) wise and powerful and eminently happy and fulfilled immoral elite to trick the masses into being moral, but I don’t think so.
[ October 23, 2003: Message edited by: Mister Underhill ]