This is one of the greatest misperceptions of modern humanity, but understandable. Any time we want someone to do something they're not really inclined to do, we try to claim it's good for them, or at least someone.
Morality and moral codes of behavior exist to promote tranquility in a group of people. This goes back to the days of when we slept in trees or caves and our technology was a pointed stick and a sharp rock. A lone naked human cannot survive in the wild. We must live in cooperative groups in order to survive as an individual and as a species. Morality evolved with us, to allow us to understand what we were expected to do, in order to live in a cooperative group, and what to expect if we failed to follow the code.
All moral codes are based on two very simple edicts. First, do not kill members of your group. Second, do not steal stuff from members of your group.
After that, it gets very complicated, because we have to determine who is in our group, and what sort of thing can be someone else's stuff. Moral codes are always co-opted by whoever is in power, or seeks power. This can be government or church. but those in power always want to be seen as the enforcers of order.
This leads to the inevitable problem with moral codes. Morality is a reaction to the environment. A group who lives in a tropical climate with plenty of food growing wild all year round is going to have a very different moral code than a group living in a desert. The base rules are the same, but definitions of group membership and property will be very different.
History shows us that environments change slowly, but moral codes change even slower. What insured the survival of a desert tribe 4000 years ago may not work so well in an industrial society. The planet gets more crowded and group boundaries become very vague. We might like the idea of attacking the town over the hill and taking all their stuff, but they'll come back and do the same to us, or worse. It's just not a practical way to live in the long run. In many societies, rape was treated as a crime against property, like stealing a sheep, instead of a violent assault. This is because a woman was the property of some man, or actually, a group of men. She held value for the group and the rapist diminished her value to the group. Times change and our definition of group expands and our definition of property is clarified.
In the end, it is still an argument over definitions of group membership and property.
It is a struggle to expand group membership but ideally the group would eventually include everyone, all nations, all races, all religions. Surface differences would be transcended by fundamental similarities in significant matters, but perhaps retained for the benefits of variety.
Marvin, you seem to have things well in hand here. So nothing I am going to type should indicate that I assume you do not know something that I know. I regard that kind of pretentious thinking as very threatening to civil order, and have been outspoken about it for my entire time at Talk Freethought, and all over the Net. I was permanently banned (with zero possibility of parole, not even monitored probation
) from the ONLY two extant websites that offer discussion forums that act primarily as poet's workshops, and do so in a reasonably "objective" manner - leastways that's what they claim, and what they legitimately try to do most of the time, or so I believe. And I was banned from these sites after many years of membership, and was a veteran member in both, and in both highly regarded for my poems. However, being the numbnuts that I am, and being prone to emotionalism, as well as beset by severe depression and chronic anxiety, which can breed excessive paranoia and delusions of grandeur all at once, I began to become highly critical of the policies of both places. One of them even has this written at the top of their home page (satirically, not in earnest, or even frankly for that matter):
WARNING! We're mean. We're nasty. We're merciless. We're cruel. We're vile. We're heartless.
We'll slash your soul to ribbons. We're an evil clique conspiring to annihilate your self-esteem. Ready?
This message, added in red, appeared at the same time that I was launching severe critique of certain moderators on my blogs. I named names. I did not think anyone would notice, since my blogs are completely obscure and hardly ever seen, except by people who know me or who deliberately seek me out (they would have had to know my full name). I posted at this site as Urizen (Blake reference), and up until then did not go about uttering my name on the internet. Now I do it without invitation, effortlessly, and for no good reason save to be annoying, since I merely want my interlocutor to KNOW that I am who and what I claim to be - not a poser, not a paid shill for the Right (though I would NOT refuse a decent cash payment for anything I've written! Hello you crackers and silly Karens and Qanon morons! Quote me! But send me the fuckin' money!), or a conservolibertard-snowflake-Authoritarian-follower.
The other site, where I had a really good rep as a poet, began to heavily politicize the forum. Anyone not repeating the party line was fished out and dog-piled, for whatever dreamed-up reason. Even very well-known, widely published poets, such as John Whitworth, Tim Murphy, Allen Sullivan, Charles Southerland (actual homophobe, anti-semitic, and nasty, nasty person altogether - a fire and brimstone breathing WASP, who came to this site to learn how to write in rhyme and meter, and eventually revealed himself, and got booted), Jennifer Reeser (who authored a book that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize), and way too many other American and English-language poets to possibly name, were either interrogated McCarthy-style, made up to be objects of suspicion (while some were openly gay [Tim Murphy and Alan Sullivan were married - to each other - and both outspokenly conservative], women, POC, members of protected groups [Reeser is significantly Cherokee and has proven it onsite and off with tons of photos and documentation - because she was doubted simply because she espouses religious values and is a Christian, though she is not preachy and probably doesn't go in for the Dantean version of Hell and damnation - which, IMO, one would have to be either sick, or in some fashion debilitated or cognitively unable to critically and deeply examine the proposition of a real, conscious, eternally existing place of inconceivable torment and real physical, mental, suffering and pain] ), ...etc, etc, etc.
To sum it up, as briefly as I can because to utter things with brevity on the Internet is a sure-fire way invite the slings and arrows of outrageously triggered net-folk:
I believe - although I am not certain - that there are some at TFT, present and active, whether under the radar (in sneaky mode), or posting, guests or what have you, who understand all about what the freewill/determinism argument is, and understand every facet of it (it ain't rocket science); but who will remain stubborn and refuse to explain themselves, for whatever reason. They will either not address direct questions, or be evasive and
simply gainsay arguments rather than
actually argue a point, with sentences and paragraphs of explanatory...
er....
hopefully explanatory, lucid, clear, and direct commentary; and they will posture and ridicule instead: They will seek out flaws in one's arguments, and ignore the parts they agree with; they will pretend to be Socrates and respond to questions with questions, or play devil's advocate just for fun (while never
ever coming out and writing in any kind of level-headed, responsible, socially decent manner); they will almost never be gentle, almost never apologize, and almost never type into the thread the words,
"Sorry for that. I was in error and I retract what I typed in post #xxxx"; - or - "Sorry, I was being an a55hole...I regret it."
What
really bothers me is the odd poster who comes in and thinks they are a prophet of old, or Clint Eastwood, or a declamatory, elocutionary icon like Charleton Heston, or just someone (almost always anonymous, but there are exceptions) who will
declare things and present opinions as facts, will not use qualifiers or caveats, will not be kind and gentle, and will NOT respond to rep comments, no matter how critical, no matter how kind. One gets the feeling that some of these folks do not mind receiving sparklies, but do not wish to hand them out, or are
extremely picky about it; OR, they are so assured of themselves, so certain, that they do not feel compelled to rep me at all, for any reason (
Leastways, rekkin - character of mine I invented whose name is Emmet) I presume, as I have lavishly commented to
just about everyone by way of the rep text feature, and have had ZERO response or interaction with several long-time members (whose names I shall discuss if any one of them should PM me, as occasionally happens. And when it does, it usually goes well, though of late (very recently), it went south fast.
I will stop here. I could write a thousand-page book at this rate in ohhh, a few days, given enough coffee and chocolate. And dopamine. With footnotes, indexes, appendi...uh...appendix
es, and a forty volume bibliography.
The extra bits below are for Shakespeare and/or Monty Python fans.
Onwards, into the stinky depths of hell
My friends, for what advantage can be gain'd
Were champions and warriors such as we
To sit and gather dust upon our flanks?
Nay, lads, but we shall lift these sluggish swords
And slay to bits all enemies of Christ,
Including hippies and inebriate loons
Who trespass our benevolent domains
With silly and untutor'd speech; who lack
The trade certificate or P.H.D.;
Who shovel horse's dung and th' piddle of pigs
And stoop with brush and bucket to a loo
Besmatter'd with the teeming excrement
of their unworshipt idols! Ah, those droves
of...
[
Enough. CUT!!! What is it with you actizz? Can you read a script and say the woids as written, or must you go on and on and on? Now go home, and clean your armor. And please, somebody, catch that poor bunny...poor litt-el thing...I knew this film would be a disastih but what can I do...]