Morality and Ethics

[Marvin Edwards]

I distinguish between morality and ethics.

Good. So do I.

Morality is assumed to be absolute, and the way that people tend to pursue it tends to be destructive and authoritarian. It is less about making society better and more about punishing people for being "wrong." The morals that are widely observed in society tend to change every two decades, but they will never acknowledge it. They tend to assume that their generation's morality is universal and eternal and true in all situations, and when society inevitably does change, they say that society has become terrible and despicable; they will look back on the previous generations and talk about how people were much better, then, and they will say that people have become weak and depraved.

The only thing absolute about morality is its goal, "to achieve the best good and the least harm for everyone". A simple look at current history shows Democrats and Republicans making arguments for one state of things versus another. The criteria of moral arguments remains the same. For example, will we all be better off if we expand free public education to cover early childhood and community college? What are the likely benefits? What are the likely harms?

Ethics, on the other hand, constitutes a tentative set of statements, which we attempt to find agreement on, as a social contract that we try to use to help us live together with a relative lack of conflict. We acknowledge that these ideas are imperfect, and we remain open to modifying those ideas in order to evolve as a society and improve our interpersonal relations. If we observe ethics, then we embrace social change, and we do our best to decipher the new conflicts and dilemmas that come up as a consequence. Ethics are adaptable.

Right. Except that it is in the specific rules and laws where we encounter conflict. One segment of society believes that the rules must be absolute. Another segment believes that the current rules are harmful and must be changed.

I am not sure that there is such a thing as a good system of morality (I have often argued that morality is inherently evil), but I believe that ethics can work out great!

I look at morality differently. I believe that everyone who professes an interest in the goal of morality is a potential ally of every other person who stakes a claim to the same, even when they argue over which rules are best.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Marvin Edwards I believe that the human habit, of concluding that any action at all is objectively wrong, is inherently harmful. In a generation from now, our assumptions will change. The people that have decided that their own current assumptions are objectively valid will howl, "Oh, society has gone so far south! Everything is horrible, now!" and the people that championed the next round of social changes will declare, "We have lifted ourselves out of barbarism! Our primitive ancestors, in the 2020's, were not as enlightened or as noble as we modern people are!"

It is just very hard to see morality as anything whatsoever except ethics minus theory of mind.

If one adds theory of mind to morality, one gets ethics. Theory of mind is as simple as the recognition that a different person that lives in a different context will have a different perception of what is right or wrong. People have very different life experiences, and people in different times use different systems for coping with the issues of their times. A person is not a moral abomination for doing their best to cope with the context in which they live.

For example, when I was growing up, it was considered to be a moral abomination for me to live as a transgender woman, and most people believed that it was morally just that I was lampooned, caricatured, and socially excluded. It would have horrified most people to hear that I might be allowed to raise children and have a normal family life. Most people would have said that I was being unreasonable and ridiculous and unjust if I said that I preferred to be called "she" and "her" in conversation.

Oh, but nowadays, there are many people that believe that misgendering a transgender woman might as well be murder. I don't think so: I merely find it incredibly irritating. People do many things that irritate me. One of the worst ones is that they tailgate me on the highway and then honk at me, even though I am already driving five miles per hour over the speed-limit. I look in the rear-view mirror, and I tell them, "I am already breaking the law for you. Is that not sufficient, you son of two strangers that never so much as learned each others' names? I am in a hurry, too! That is why I am driving 65 miles per hour when the legal speed limit is 60 miles per hour. The police officer that we just passed has generously turned a blind eye to this fact because that person recognizes that many honest, hard-working people are in a hurry at this hour of the day. If you actually were to have sped by the same guy at 90, which you seem to want to drive, then you would have been pulled over, and that would have ruined your day and created a costly inconvenience for you."

I refuse to grow accustomed to the privilege of people consistently getting my gender right because, for all that I know, someone will get the clever idea, tomorrow, that we ought to only call people by their assigned sex at birth, and people might go around saying, "back in the 2020's, our primitive ancestors believed that you could merely be whatever gender you felt like you were, but in our enlightened, utopian, and wonderful age, we know better. In the 2020's, everybody was immoral and wrong, but in the 2040's, we have made the world just and righteous." I would again be an outsider, just like I was in the late 1990's.

Either that, or people living in the 2040's might believe that it is profoundly crude to make any reference at all to people's gender, and they might even start saying that people that refer to gender at all, around minors, may as well be child-molesters. In hardcore pornography, people would call each other by he/him and she/her, and it would be considered to be scandalous and sexy. One would never show such despicable content to minors, though, whose young minds are not ready to handle those kinds of thoughts. People would go around saying that young people are too immature to understand the concept of gender, and they would point out scientific studies showing that teaching them too early can cause them to suffer from developmental disadvantages compared with those that were carefully protected from exposure to the concept of gender. Everybody would go around saying, "We are all very enlightened and intelligent, now, and we live far better than our primitive ancestors. This is a truly privileged time that we live in." They would be just as smug and arrogant about their mores as we are, today, the self-righteous punks. Of all the narcissistic belligerence. Every generation, I am agog all over again at how narcissistic every cohort is about their mores.

If one merely adds the theory of mind to the topic, then I could greatly simplify matters. While I do not regard misgendering me to be the equivalent of murdering me, I do believe that it is highly irritating when people misgender me. I felt this way in the 1990's, too. If you asked me how I dealt with that, then I would tell you that I spent a large quantity of my time feeling profoundly irritated at society. To tell you the truth, this caused me to come across as a bit of a misanthrope. People like me had the presence of mind to actually have open discussions about their feelings, and society is currently attempting to adjust their ethics to act with greater consideration toward our feelings, and while I appreciate the sentiment, I would also caution society against believing that these new ethics are anything more than a social contract that we are using in order to try to get along with each other better. You do not call me by my preferred gender because doing otherwise is immoral, but you call me by my correct gender because, currently, the prevailing ethical sentiments of your time suggest that this is the most efficient system by which we may attempt to get along with each other.

I am also aware that if I do not continuously have open discussions with others, about how I feel, then the prevailing sentiments, in society, might shift out of my favor. If I expect people's ethics to account for how I feel, then realistically, I must be honest with others about how I feel. Generally, I think that people prefer to get along with me nicely. I do not think that people appreciate when I say things like, "The human race is a worthless bunch of insolent monkeys, and I would exterminate them all in cold blood if I had a choice," so instead of insulting them all, I find it to be more productive, toward my interests, to have open and honest conversations about why I might feel that way.

Nevertheless, human nature is not, at heart, going to change. With every generation, people are going to develop the perception that the ethics that they live their lives by are so deeply absolute that any society that does not observe them is primitive, barbaric, and undeveloped. They will always have the self-righteous belief that their generation's ethics constitutes the objectively true morality that should rule the entire universe. They will always believe that human beings, having reached the ultimate state of enlightenment, will finally lift up in colony ships, and they will evangelize their enlightened morality to the universe. With every single generation, the people that cling to the mores of the last generation will say, "What barbaric and horrible times we are living in. Everything has gotten so bad! Our civilization has truly fallen from grace! We are in a dark age, now!"

Those that recognize how tentative these sorts of conclusions are tend to handle periods of social change with substantially more grace and decorum. Ethics are acknowledged to be an abstract system of ideas that we use in order to try to improve our interpersonal relationships, and we recognize that we might use a different set of solutions in another generation from now. We do not regard ethics as as completed, finished product, but like science, we consider it to be ever a work-in-progress that must respond to new information and fresh knowledge.

I say that I reject morality, and the reason why is the same reason why I am loathe to call any scientific theory a "law of nature." Even the theory of evolution must continuously evolve and adapt as new information pours in. When science stops changing, it stops being science. When our ethics stop changing or if we attempt to stop our ethics from changing, then we end up behaving extremely unethically, and we end up having holy wars with each other. We attempt to arrest the development of our society's ethical consciousness by turning it into a static system of morality, then hateful individuals sally forth on quixotic errands to smash the hearts of anybody that will not live their lives according to such moral absolutes. Terrorist cells grow like blackjacks, and frustrated individuals commit mass homicides because they have been driven to their wit's end and lost their ability to cope. When we attempt to arrest the fluidity of our culture's ethics, then the result of that is always catastrophic. No matter how many times we experiment with the idea that we have reached a perfected system of objective morality, the result is always the same, and it always ends in bloodshed and broken lives.

One might say that one prefers to live in such a Mad Max type of atmosphere, but rest assured that it would become boring and stupid and wearisome, once the novelty had worn off. Someone that relished the idea of all of us fighting holy wars with each other and proving each other's mettle as white knights would find out, eventually, that they have been put on either one treadmill or another, and it would not really make them happy. Cervantes was right. Don Quixote was really a hopelessly lost individual that wasted his life living in the past and fighting against his changing society. His famous charge against the windmills anticipated the actions of Captain Ludd, generations later. It symbolized his failure to accept that the world had changed. It is imperative that we learn to embrace social change and learn how to live in the present, rather than the past, or we will ultimately go mad.

 

[steve_bank]

In the post WWII liberal democracies we have a genral moral sense iof what is moral and what is not. A lot of it comes from the atrocities of Ja[an and Germany.

It is a general consensus I agree with. To people in areas in the world the wetern systems are immoral.

To day morality is doing good, philisophicaly the obvious question is what does it mean to do good?

Go into tribal society with a population in balance with resources that has a decent local standard of living. In the name of doing good you go in and vaccinate and provide prenatal care. Population grows beyond resources and people go hungry. Is that doing a moral good?

Who decides what good is?

Our post war western morality says genocide is immoral, yet there are regions where it is considered acceptable culturally. Turks vs Kurds. Kosovo war.

Morality is a code, ethics is how well you follow the code. To an ancient Samurai it would have been unethical to flee a command for ritual suicide.

An ethical person is one you can trust to follow his morality regardless is if it offends you.

The 10 Commandments lay down a basic moral code. Don't lie, steal, or go after your neighbor's wife. An ethical Christian follows the rules.

Which is why I consider Christians generally unethical. They pick and choose which of the moral codes in the bible to follow and when. To a Christian divorce and remarriage along with fornication is untechnical by the rules, Yet they selectively harass gays.

In some cases I can disagree with moral codes yet respect one who is ethical.

Morality is a consensus. Not too long ago slavery was moral. Gays were actively suppressed ad abused. Today the moral consensus and code has changed.

Morality is an instrument of social stability. It resist chaos. The Chinese understand it, it is why they are rurgless at enforcing a soical and politcal conformity. They are scared of a return to the anarchy of the Cultural Revolution.

Here in the USA the old moral norms are pretty much gone. All behavior is sanctioned within broad limits of the law.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

...

Morality is a question of benefits and harms for everyone. Freedom is a benefit for everyone. Everyone wants to control their own lives and do what they want, rather than what someone else wants them to do. We would only want to curb freedom in order to prevent unnecessary harms. Gender transitioning is more beneficial than harmful for those who feel they need it. So, the other side of the coin would be how it might harm others. The thing that comes to my mind is not knowing whether the mate you fall in love with is able to actually mate and have children with you. I don't know what the ethics are for dealing with those situations. But that is only a possible harm to a single person. Most of the people you interact with are not looking for a mate, but just a friend, co-worker, a neighbor, a teacher, or a parent. And to them you are just who you are.

As to pronouns, I suspect this would be a bigger problem in France, where every noun is "male" or "female". I'd give an example, but I got D's in French.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Marvin Edwards Ah, so you feel favorably toward some variation upon consequentialism! I tend to feel similar sympathies.

However, I tend to acknowledge that the fact that I feel such sentiments stems partly from the fact that I am really tenderhearted. I cannot bear to see an animal in misery, even one of my own species. In spite of my occasional fantasies of running them over with a truck, I really feel compassionate toward my own species, and most of the time, I actually like their company.

However, what looks like a rational perspective on morality, today, might become unpopular, tomorrow. As clever as one might feel about having figured out how rational and informed one's moral opinions are, new information is being revealed with every hour. Groups of people that have remained quiet for centuries are going to eventually grow impatient with the negative externalities of the last attempt to fix all of the problems of another group of people, and once they have organized a successful protest, the ideas that you believed, at one time, to be absolutely bullet-proof will really put you at odds with the next generation's opinions.

Nevertheless, I will probably still be a tenderhearted individual, two decades from now. That will most likely affect the way that I receive the next generation's mixture of evolution and folly. When the time comes that it behooves me to disagree with the status quo, then I will have to do what everybody else must do whenever they take exception to the status quo, which is to painstakingly organize disaffected parties together and systematically communicate our views to society in the most palatable and effective possible way, and we will have to brave the usual attempts at deplatforming and suppression by the sorts of reactionaries that would rather die than witness any further social change. This is all quite inevitable, and I can either be prepared for that eventuality or get caught with my pants down. The kind of person that I am is unlikely to change, even though it is inevitable that society is going to evolve, and I will not always be able to get my way, at least not immediately.

Like you, I am sympathetic with a variety of different consequentialist perspectives, but I attribute even that, at least partly, to my inherent nature. It is the most reasonable approach to coping with being the kind of person that I am. It is not really absolute, even though my natural disposition is really non-negotiable. I will not always get my way. There are more people in this world than just myself, and it would be both mad and complacent to assume that I can expect to always win. I never really want to lose, but I must be prepared for how I am going to deal with times when I do. It is really a lot of work to keep the product of my own natural disposition competitive in the marketplace of ideas, and I should expect to always pay a price if I take anything for granted.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

@Marvin Edwards Ah, so you feel favorably toward some variation upon consequentialism! I tend to feel similar sympathies.

However, I tend to acknowledge that the fact that I feel such sentiments stems partly from the fact that I am really tenderhearted. I cannot bear to see an animal in misery, even one of my own species. In spite of my occasional fantasies of running them over with a truck, I really feel compassionate toward my own species, and most of the time, I actually like their company.

However, what looks like a rational perspective on morality, today, might become unpopular, tomorrow. As clever as one might feel about having figured out how rational and informed one's moral opinions are, new information is being revealed with every hour. Groups of people that have remained quiet for centuries are going to eventually grow impatient with the negative externalities of the last attempt to fix all of the problems of another group of people, and once they have organized a successful protest, the ideas that you believed, at one time, to be absolutely bullet-proof will really put you at odds with the next generation's opinions.

Nevertheless, I will probably still be a tenderhearted individual, two decades from now. That will most likely affect the way that I receive the next generation's mixture of evolution and folly. When the time comes that it behooves me to disagree with the status quo, then I will have to do what everybody else must do whenever they take exception to the status quo, which is to painstakingly organize disaffected parties together and systematically communicate our views to society in the most palatable and effective possible way, and we will have to brave the usual attempts at deplatforming and suppression by the sorts of reactionaries that would rather die than witness any further social change. This is all quite inevitable, and I can either be prepared for that eventuality or get caught with my pants down. The kind of person that I am is unlikely to change, even though it is inevitable that society is going to evolve, and I will not always be able to get my way, at least not immediately.

Like you, I am sympathetic with a variety of different consequentialist perspectives, but I attribute even that, at least partly, to my inherent nature. It is the most reasonable approach to coping with being the kind of person that I am. It is not really absolute, even though my natural disposition is really non-negotiable. I will not always get my way. There are more people in this world than just myself, and it would be both mad and complacent to assume that I can expect to always win. I never really want to lose, but I must be prepared for how I am going to deal with times when I do. It is really a lot of work to keep the product of my own natural disposition competitive in the marketplace of ideas, and I should expect to always pay a price if I take anything for granted.

Moral progress is often two steps forward and one step back. There is often backlash, like the 2017 Tiki Torch march by the white nationalists in Charlottesville, after two terms of our first black president.

Though my church is UU, I found myself in crisis over same-sex marriage. I was fine with "domestic partners", and supported full equal treatment of gay couples. But changing the definition of marriage caused me to break from the church for two years until things sorted themselves out. But I'm back now, singing in the choir.

While I was away, I participated in many on-line discussions. And that is where I ran into my first transgender person. I learned that there were some cases where a newborn had ambiguous genitals and the doctor chose their sex by operation. But those cases were rare. Mostly it was an inner sense of being a different gender than their physical presentation. That's why sex-change operations were so important.

After I rejoined the choir, I met Sara and Bob. She was an older woman, but still had great legs when wearing heels. He had long hair wrapped in a pony tail. And it was several weeks before other choir members let me in on the fact that they were the same person. They were like two different personalities, and not similar at all in presentation. And I always felt more comfortable speaking with her at church. But I did run into Bob several times at the gym. Two entirely different matters, I know, transgender and transvestite.

In any case, I was happy to contribute to Danica Roem's campaign, which she successfully won, becoming the first transgender woman in Virginia's General Assembly.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Marvin Edwards I have not been a part of a church in many years. I have a community of friends that I care about in the same way, though.

I seldom ever see true gender fluidity, but it's very fun when I do. I could never pull it off, myself. My style is far too drab and boring. The closest I come to dressing up is putting on a little pair of DRAGON WINGS that I got while I was at a gift shop in Memphis. It is not even slightly serious. FYIAD! Dragons are very special to me. Some people think that dragons are monsters, but they are really just a funny-looking angel.

I do not see us as becoming progressively more moral, though. The information that is available to us changes generation-by-generation, and we adapt to that changing information either competently or incompetently. In some cases, we turn our attempts to make society into a better place into a destructive moral crusade without really meaning to.

For example, anti-gay persecution might have been an outcropping of early 20th Century attempts to improve the lives of children. The idea was that children deserved a "normal" upbringing, and modernist ethics were all about fitting people into idealized molds for what a good person ought to be. The idea that "all children are born good," in most people's minds, precluded, for almost all Americans, the idea that they could be born gay, so when some of them turned out to be gay, anyhow, this caused them to panic. During the McCarthy Era, many people believed that homosexuality was being spread in the same way as communism, which led to the Lavender Scare policies that started in 1947.

The curious thing about the Lavender Scare, though, was that it really constituted an unintentional outcropping of a movement that was started with excellent intentions. In fact, the movement to improve the lives of young people, by giving them a chance for clean and normal lives and universal free education, was overall successful. Nobody expected the persecution of scapegoats to get so out-of-hand.

If you want to know what the next iteration of the Lavender Scare is going to come from, then I suggest that you examine the current efforts that we are making to try to erase the evils of society. It is most likely something that you agree with, and I probably agree with its intentions. Nevertheless, you cannot always predict the negative externalities. Protecting stakeholders that we never really intended to hurt is going to be a whole new project, and it's going to be just as complicated and difficult as the gay rights movement.

The toughest part is that most of us will never see it coming. Most of us will think that we know who the good guys and the bad guys in society are, but we are going to be wrong. The real heroes are probably going to be people that we fought against, and we are going to owe them one truly eloquent apology. This is not really shameful.

We never really have it perfect. It cannot possibly be perfect. There is no finished product. It is a living, constantly evolving sort of thing. It is always growing and shifting. It is very like science in that way. If it ever stopped changing, it would cease to be ethics.

 

[Jarhyn]

@Marvin Edwards I have not been a part of a church in many years. I have a community of friends that I care about in the same way, though.

I seldom ever see true gender fluidity, but it's very fun when I do. I could never pull it off, myself. My style is far too drab and boring. The closest I come to dressing up is putting on a little pair of DRAGON WINGS that I got while I was at a gift shop in Memphis. It is not even slightly serious. FYIAD! Dragons are very special to me. Some people think that dragons are monsters, but they are really just a funny-looking angel.

I do not see us as becoming progressively more moral, though. The information that is available to us changes generation-by-generation, and we adapt to that changing information either competently or incompetently. In some cases, we turn our attempts to make society into a better place into a destructive moral crusade without really meaning to.

For example, anti-gay persecution might have been an outcropping of early 20th Century attempts to improve the lives of children. The idea was that children deserved a "normal" upbringing, and modernist ethics were all about fitting people into idealized molds for what a good person ought to be. The idea that "all children are born good," in most people's minds, precluded, for almost all Americans, the idea that they could be born gay, so when some of them turned out to be gay, anyhow, this caused them to panic. During the McCarthy Era, many people believed that homosexuality was being spread in the same way as communism, which led to the Lavender Scare policies that started in 1947.

The curious thing about the Lavender Scare, though, was that it really constituted an unintentional outcropping of a movement that was started with excellent intentions. In fact, the movement to improve the lives of young people, by giving them a chance for clean and normal lives and universal free education, was overall successful. Nobody expected the persecution of scapegoats to get so out-of-hand.

If you want to know what the next iteration of the Lavender Scare is going to come from, then I suggest that you examine the current efforts that we are making to try to erase the evils of society. It is most likely something that you agree with, and I probably agree with its intentions. Nevertheless, you cannot always predict the negative externalities. Protecting stakeholders that we never really intended to hurt is going to be a whole new project, and it's going to be just as complicated and difficult as the gay rights movement.

The toughest part is that most of us will never see it coming. Most of us will think that we know who the good guys and the bad guys in society are, but we are going to be wrong. The real heroes are probably going to be people that we fought against, and we are going to owe them one truly eloquent apology. This is not really shameful.

We never really have it perfect. It cannot possibly be perfect. There is no finished product. It is a living, constantly evolving sort of thing. It is always growing and shifting. It is very like science in that way. If it ever stopped changing, it would cease to be ethics.

I'm worried the next big thing is going to be a push against autism and neurodivergance.

We've seen several iterations of negative aspersions directed at the neurodivergant, with the autism/vaccine discussion.

Usually the call is far and away from the same general voices I have seen originate "panic" responses (satanic/lavender/comic book/reefer/prohibition) that is largely 'the basic stay-at-home' population.

Be basic enough, and have enough time on your hands, and that's a lot of nervous active energy that has nowhere to go. It goes somewhere, and usually that's "protect the children from... Something?"

Some things can in fact be observed on the trends of what kids must be "protected" from, and featured heavily in that set is "that which autistic kids tend to gravitate towards". Well, those things and "drugs".

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Marvin Edwards I have not been a part of a church in many years. I have a community of friends that I care about in the same way, though.

I seldom ever see true gender fluidity, but it's very fun when I do. I could never pull it off, myself. My style is far too drab and boring. The closest I come to dressing up is putting on a little pair of DRAGON WINGS that I got while I was at a gift shop in Memphis. It is not even slightly serious. FYIAD! Dragons are very special to me. Some people think that dragons are monsters, but they are really just a funny-looking angel.

I do not see us as becoming progressively more moral, though. The information that is available to us changes generation-by-generation, and we adapt to that changing information either competently or incompetently. In some cases, we turn our attempts to make society into a better place into a destructive moral crusade without really meaning to.

For example, anti-gay persecution might have been an outcropping of early 20th Century attempts to improve the lives of children. The idea was that children deserved a "normal" upbringing, and modernist ethics were all about fitting people into idealized molds for what a good person ought to be. The idea that "all children are born good," in most people's minds, precluded, for almost all Americans, the idea that they could be born gay, so when some of them turned out to be gay, anyhow, this caused them to panic. During the McCarthy Era, many people believed that homosexuality was being spread in the same way as communism, which led to the Lavender Scare policies that started in 1947.

The curious thing about the Lavender Scare, though, was that it really constituted an unintentional outcropping of a movement that was started with excellent intentions. In fact, the movement to improve the lives of young people, by giving them a chance for clean and normal lives and universal free education, was overall successful. Nobody expected the persecution of scapegoats to get so out-of-hand.

If you want to know what the next iteration of the Lavender Scare is going to come from, then I suggest that you examine the current efforts that we are making to try to erase the evils of society. It is most likely something that you agree with, and I probably agree with its intentions. Nevertheless, you cannot always predict the negative externalities. Protecting stakeholders that we never really intended to hurt is going to be a whole new project, and it's going to be just as complicated and difficult as the gay rights movement.

The toughest part is that most of us will never see it coming. Most of us will think that we know who the good guys and the bad guys in society are, but we are going to be wrong. The real heroes are probably going to be people that we fought against, and we are going to owe them one truly eloquent apology. This is not really shameful.

We never really have it perfect. It cannot possibly be perfect. There is no finished product. It is a living, constantly evolving sort of thing. It is always growing and shifting. It is very like science in that way. If it ever stopped changing, it would cease to be ethics.

I'm worried the next big thing is going to be a push against autism and neurodivergance.

We've seen several iterations of negative aspersions directed at the neurodivergant, with the autism/vaccine discussion.

Usually the call is far and away from the same general voices I have seen originate "panic" responses (satanic/lavender/comic book/reefer/prohibition) that is largely 'the basic stay-at-home' population.

Be basic enough, and have enough time on your hands, and that's a lot of nervous active energy that has nowhere to go. It goes somewhere, and usually that's "protect the children from... Something?"

Some things can in fact be observed on the trends of what kids must be "protected" from, and featured heavily in that set is "that which autistic kids tend to gravitate towards". Well, those things and "drugs".

I am not precisely autistic, personally. I am definitely neurodivergent, but after several years of talking it over with my psychiatrist, he eventually admitted to me that these classification systems are largely artificial, imperfect, and based more on convenience than precision.

Ultimately, what I mean is this.

There are a large number of characteristics, about the human race, that are not really mutable. For example, I cannot really change the fact that I have a slight stutter. If I quaff a certain quantity of alcohol, it is slightly diminished, but it never really disappears.

Well, what if our society were to decide that it is "immoral" to stutter?

Do not ridicule this scenario. Similar things have happened before. People believed, for centuries, that gay sex was "immoral," and look how abominably gay people were treated as a consequence. The way that they were treated, for centuries, was really horrifyingly cruel.

However, the standpoint of society was that being gay was not inherent to anybody's nature. From the standpoint of society, people were either willing or unwilling to behave morally. If you were not able to restrict yourself to morally acceptable behavior, then you were clearly not interested in behaving morally at all. If you were engaging in gay sex every day, perhaps even several times a day, then how dare you expect society to trust you at all? It truly is rich, society said, that such a person would claim that society is wrong to punish people that clearly have no respect at all for society's morals. If you are going to engage in such despicable behavior, society said, then you clearly do not deserve society's sympathy.

Therefore, society could simply deny that a stutter is really inherent in anybody's nature. By doing so, they could construct an argument that, whenever I stutter, I am consciously deviating from clear speech, and if I would do so, then I clearly do not have respect for society's moral beliefs regarding clear speech. Why should I expect society to trust me at all if I am constantly stuttering in their faces? Their philosophy would be that if I did not want society to punish me for stuttering, then I am at liberty to stop stuttering at them anytime that I took it into my head to respect society's moral principles regarding clear speech.

I might object that it is hard for me to speak clearly.

Society would say, it is not hard at all. Do you hear me stuttering? I am not even sure how you make that stuttering sound in your speech. It is as easy as breathing. By these simple remarks, I am proving that you are a liar. It is a lie that you could have difficulty performing such a trivial act.

What should I do, then, under this scenario? Should I and my fellow stutterers gather in stutterer bars and drink away our sorrows?

No! F-f-f-f-fu-, uh, to heck with th-that sh-sh-sh-sh-, uh, stuff.

Instead, it is imperative that we develop a better relationship with society. The first step is recognizing that that improved relationship does not come for free. To the concept that we can just say, we stutterers cannot help being stutters, so you have to accept us, the answer is no. The King's Speech is an example of the kind of content that can demonstrate that stutterers can be just about any kind's of people, even the figurehead of a nation, and we would have to prove that that person is a well-meaning and hardworking individual. We would have to prove how much that person suffers from attempting to suppress their stutter, and we would have to prove to society that making stutterers self-conscious about their stutter truly only makes it worse and gets in the way of people that are really fully committed to pulling their weight in society.

If it had not been for the film The King's Speech, I am not sure that Joe Biden would have won the 2020 election. He has always had a natural stutter, and while it shows up substantially less often at this point in his life, it still shows up. When Trump's supporters attacked Joe Biden over his stutter, the alternative scenario would have been that the "moderates," DINOs, and wavering Republicans would have been substantially more influenced by those attacks. It would have been substantially easier for them to portray Joe Biden as somebody that is clearly slipping, mentally. Thanks to that film that showed how a historical King of England was really a highly talented statesman that successfully organized the defense of his country during the most serious and deadly war of modern history, people that otherwise would have been skeptical of a stuttering Joe Biden were able to perceive how Joe Biden might really be a talented statesman in spite of his stutter.

However, some members of society might truly care deeply about their moral beliefs about clear speech. They might go through life bemoaning how society is truly corrupted. They might go through life saying, society is so terribly wicked. They allow even their presidents to stutter at society. This society is full of sin and wickedness, they say. We are living in a dark time when the idea of clear speech is but a memory. They might spend their lives dreaming of a revival in the idea of free speech. They might go door-to-door evangelizing their clear speech beliefs. They might open the hearts of the people and get them to believe that clear speech matters.

If they got their way, though, then society would waste endless time and energy persecuting stutterers, and it would not really fix the real problems of society. It would just make a substantial number of people deeply unhappy, and nobody would really gain anything at all from their misery.

We must regard all moral ideas with skepticism. Moralizing often translates to "treating people like crap for no self-evident reason."

I do believe in the idea of ethics. Ethics involves a problem-solving approach to figuring out how we can get along peacefully with each other. No solution is deemed to be absolute. Our ethics may change fluidly in order to accommodate for newly discovered groups, and as we continuously discover new groups that need to be bargained with on how to integrate them with society, we may strategically alter our ethics in order to find peaceful solutions. No solution is deemed permanent, and every solution is deemed worthy of eventually being improved if at all possible.

Ethics works more like a science. We never declare that we have our ethics exactly right or completed. Every new solution we devise, for helping our fellow human beings get along with each other and treat each other with dignity, only reveals new issues and complexities. Every time we solve one problem, we expose another that had previously gone unnoticed. Developing new norms takes generations, and phasing out old ones that were not working, in their erstwhile forms, takes generations. Ethics are always considered to be open to improvement and discussion.

Whenever somebody declares, "Wait, we are not really allowed to discuss that. That has been settled. Everybody agrees that that is despicable. No serious person is really defending that. The subject is closed," then they are moralizing. Morality is static. Morality is a mummy. It is arrested development. It is intellectual living death. No good can ever come of moralizing.

When you see society engaged in moralizing, then that is an opportunity to stop moralizing and start thinking ethically.

 

[Jarhyn]

@Marvin Edwards I have not been a part of a church in many years. I have a community of friends that I care about in the same way, though.

I seldom ever see true gender fluidity, but it's very fun when I do. I could never pull it off, myself. My style is far too drab and boring. The closest I come to dressing up is putting on a little pair of DRAGON WINGS that I got while I was at a gift shop in Memphis. It is not even slightly serious. FYIAD! Dragons are very special to me. Some people think that dragons are monsters, but they are really just a funny-looking angel.

I do not see us as becoming progressively more moral, though. The information that is available to us changes generation-by-generation, and we adapt to that changing information either competently or incompetently. In some cases, we turn our attempts to make society into a better place into a destructive moral crusade without really meaning to.

For example, anti-gay persecution might have been an outcropping of early 20th Century attempts to improve the lives of children. The idea was that children deserved a "normal" upbringing, and modernist ethics were all about fitting people into idealized molds for what a good person ought to be. The idea that "all children are born good," in most people's minds, precluded, for almost all Americans, the idea that they could be born gay, so when some of them turned out to be gay, anyhow, this caused them to panic. During the McCarthy Era, many people believed that homosexuality was being spread in the same way as communism, which led to the Lavender Scare policies that started in 1947.

The curious thing about the Lavender Scare, though, was that it really constituted an unintentional outcropping of a movement that was started with excellent intentions. In fact, the movement to improve the lives of young people, by giving them a chance for clean and normal lives and universal free education, was overall successful. Nobody expected the persecution of scapegoats to get so out-of-hand.

If you want to know what the next iteration of the Lavender Scare is going to come from, then I suggest that you examine the current efforts that we are making to try to erase the evils of society. It is most likely something that you agree with, and I probably agree with its intentions. Nevertheless, you cannot always predict the negative externalities. Protecting stakeholders that we never really intended to hurt is going to be a whole new project, and it's going to be just as complicated and difficult as the gay rights movement.

The toughest part is that most of us will never see it coming. Most of us will think that we know who the good guys and the bad guys in society are, but we are going to be wrong. The real heroes are probably going to be people that we fought against, and we are going to owe them one truly eloquent apology. This is not really shameful.

We never really have it perfect. It cannot possibly be perfect. There is no finished product. It is a living, constantly evolving sort of thing. It is always growing and shifting. It is very like science in that way. If it ever stopped changing, it would cease to be ethics.

I'm worried the next big thing is going to be a push against autism and neurodivergance.

We've seen several iterations of negative aspersions directed at the neurodivergant, with the autism/vaccine discussion.

Usually the call is far and away from the same general voices I have seen originate "panic" responses (satanic/lavender/comic book/reefer/prohibition) that is largely 'the basic stay-at-home' population.

Be basic enough, and have enough time on your hands, and that's a lot of nervous active energy that has nowhere to go. It goes somewhere, and usually that's "protect the children from... Something?"

Some things can in fact be observed on the trends of what kids must be "protected" from, and featured heavily in that set is "that which autistic kids tend to gravitate towards". Well, those things and "drugs".

I am not precisely autistic, personally. I am definitely neurodivergent, but after several years of talking it over with my psychiatrist, he eventually admitted to me that these classification systems are largely artificial, imperfect, and based more on convenience than precision.

Ultimately, what I mean is this.

There are a large number of characteristics, about the human race, that are not really mutable. For example, I cannot really change the fact that I have a slight stutter. If I quaff a certain quantity of alcohol, it is slightly diminished, but it never really disappears.

Well, what if our society were to decide that it is "immoral" to stutter?

Do not ridicule this scenario. Similar things have happened before. People believed, for centuries, that gay sex was "immoral," and look how abominably gay people were treated as a consequence. The way that they were treated, for centuries, was really horrifyingly cruel.

However, the standpoint of society was that being gay was not inherent to anybody's nature. From the standpoint of society, people were either willing or unwilling to behave morally. If you were not able to restrict yourself to morally acceptable behavior, then you were clearly not interested in behaving morally at all. If you were engaging in gay sex every day, perhaps even several times a day, then how dare you expect society to trust you at all? It truly is rich, society said, that such a person would claim that society is wrong to punish people that clearly have no respect at all for society's morals. If you are going to engage in such despicable behavior, society said, then you clearly do not deserve society's sympathy.

Therefore, society could simply deny that a stutter is really inherent in anybody's nature. By doing so, they could construct an argument that, whenever I stutter, I am consciously deviating from clear speech, and if I would do so, then I clearly do not have respect for society's moral beliefs regarding clear speech. Why should I expect society to trust me at all if I am constantly stuttering in their faces? Their philosophy would be that if I did not want society to punish me for stuttering, then I am at liberty to stop stuttering at them anytime that I took it into my head to respect society's moral principles regarding clear speech.

I might object that it is hard for me to speak clearly.

Society would say, it is not hard at all. Do you hear me stuttering? I am not even sure how you make that stuttering sound in your speech. It is as easy as breathing. By these simple remarks, I am proving that you are a liar. It is a lie that you could have difficulty performing such a trivial act.

What should I do, then, under this scenario? Should I and my fellow stutterers gather in stutterer bars and drink away our sorrows?

No! F-f-f-f-fu-, uh, to heck with th-that sh-sh-sh-sh-, uh, stuff.

Instead, it is imperative that we develop a better relationship with society. The first step is recognizing that that improved relationship does not come for free. To the concept that we can just say, we stutterers cannot help being stutters, so you have to accept us, the answer is no. The King's Speech is an example of the kind of content that can demonstrate that stutterers can be just about any kind's of people, even the figurehead of a nation, and we would have to prove that that person is a well-meaning and hardworking individual. We would have to prove how much that person suffers from attempting to suppress their stutter, and we would have to prove to society that making stutterers self-conscious about their stutter truly only makes it worse and gets in the way of people that are really fully committed to pulling their weight in society.

If it had not been for the film The King's Speech, I am not sure that Joe Biden would have won the 2020 election. He has always had a natural stutter, and while it shows up substantially less often at this point in his life, it still shows up. When Trump's supporters attacked Joe Biden over his stutter, the alternative scenario would have been that the "moderates," DINOs, and wavering Republicans would have been substantially more influenced by those attacks. It would have been substantially easier for them to portray Joe Biden as somebody that is clearly slipping, mentally. Thanks to that film that showed how a historical King of England was really a highly talented statesman that successfully organized the defense of his country during the most serious and deadly war of modern history, people that otherwise would have been skeptical of a stuttering Joe Biden were able to perceive how Joe Biden might really be a talented statesman in spite of his stutter.

However, some members of society might truly care deeply about their moral beliefs about clear speech. They might go through life bemoaning how society is truly corrupted. They might go through life saying, society is so terribly wicked. They allow even their presidents to stutter at society. This society is full of sin and wickedness, they say. We are living in a dark time when the idea of clear speech is but a memory. They might spend their lives dreaming of a revival in the idea of free speech. They might go door-to-door evangelizing their clear speech beliefs. They might open the hearts of the people and get them to believe that clear speech matters.

If they got their way, though, then society would waste endless time and energy persecuting stutterers, and it would not really fix the real problems of society. It would just make a substantial number of people deeply unhappy, and nobody would really gain anything at all from their misery.

We must regard all moral ideas with skepticism. Moralizing often translates to "treating people like crap for no self-evident reason."

I do believe in the idea of ethics. Ethics involves a problem-solving approach to figuring out how we can get along peacefully with each other. No solution is deemed to be absolute. Our ethics may change fluidly in order to accommodate for newly discovered groups, and as we continuously discover new groups that need to be bargained with on how to integrate them with society, we may strategically alter our ethics in order to find peaceful solutions. No solution is deemed permanent, and every solution is deemed worthy of eventually being improved if at all possible.

Ethics works more like a science. We never declare that we have our ethics exactly right or completed. Every new solution we devise, for helping our fellow human beings get along with each other and treat each other with dignity, only reveals new issues and complexities. Every time we solve one problem, we expose another that had previously gone unnoticed. Developing new norms takes generations, and phasing out old ones that were not working, in their erstwhile forms, takes generations. Ethics are always considered to be open to improvement and discussion.

Whenever somebody declares, "Wait, we are not really allowed to discuss that. That has been settled. Everybody agrees that that is despicable. No serious person is really defending that. The subject is closed," then they are moralizing. Morality is static. Morality is a mummy. It is arrested development. It is intellectual living death. No good can ever come of moralizing.

When you see society engaged in moralizing, then that is an opportunity to stop moralizing and start thinking ethically.

Yeah, my thought is, if someone wants to have a moral position, they need to point to the ethical underpinnings. If they cannot do that, then I will treat their morals as I treat any thing that has no verification for the trust requested: I put it where all the other stinky turds go.

I bring up what I do about neurodivergence because it seems to be exactly the neurodivergency that has been under attack for generations.

The reality is that neurodivergency represents a huge challenge to parents. Parenting a neurodivergency kid is not like parenting a socially normal one. It's just not. It's frustrating and confusing; nothing works, even stuff that does with many other such divergent children. Well, except the things that do work.

But that's the problem isn't it? The things that do work are like the things that work to make certain of us feel horny: they are largely a mystery even to us and making sense of it is a fool's errand.

Really to raise such a child well, you need to already have parents experienced in making mistakes and even then it will be very hard.

Humans don't like doing work they don't have to. Some of the humans around here are real pieces of self centered shit. So when they are confronted with autistic children, more and more even these days, "measures" are taken.

We had a housemate we recently evicted. While the reasons for that were amounting to "Jarhyn had a nervous breakdown, asked for his husband because he was having a nervous breakdown, and was unable using clear and concise language "I need my husband. I am not ok." to determine the correct course of action (to get said husband in touch with me ASAP). I can absolutely forgive her for that. I cannot, however, stand in for her parents. I cannot do all that work to raise a grown adult who is already starting to "set".

But moreover, her parents ruined her in this way. Because she was autistic and "socially abnormal" they sent her to a school specially for socializing her. Her story reminded me of The Owl House. I've only watched a few episodes and it didn't strictly grab me, but it only took an episode or two to put in perspective the way kids are being treated and abused to "normalize" them.

Now, she's barely functional, and also capable of social leverage. Rather than helping her develop herself into a good person, they gave her a sword and didn't teach her why or when to even wield it. So now, this person as a pattern of behavior goes from game to game as her preference attracting "simps" and having them shower her with flirtations whenever she is depressed. She gets depressed because she procrastinates and does nothing to improve her life. Because people thought it was valuable that she get an education in being "social" without an education in how society functions, how to actually be socially oriented.

If you want your crime, there it is. The reality is that the majority of progress and magic in this world came from the hands of the most divergent people.

I expect this war on autism is as much waged by the selfish gene as much as it is by anything else. The social gene is a threat to the selfish gene. When everything is socially oriented, the selfish gene atrophies and dies and gets, well, genocided, mostly out of pure obsolescence, and not in a big bang but a dull, basic incel whisper, kicking and choking in the occasional violent last gasp of nobody caring anymore about those who ONLY care about themselves and their own "special" genetics, or who use "social" as a sword for self rather than for the purposes we accept of the use of swords.

I look back at the autism/vaxx bullshit, and then all the patterns of the "moral panics" and it is always targeting escapism, fantasy and robust mental landscapes. Divergence itself is the enemy of the selfish gene and I expect this core conflict will precipitate clearly, and a breaking point reached between the divergent and those who would seek to erase such aberration.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Jarhyn

The phrase "throwing good money after bad" applies.

Here is a paradox that I have seen, in human nature.

Take any social outgroup. Let's call them "xyonagols," a random nonsense term.

For centuries, xyonagols were rarely heard about. The xyonagols are, for the most part, highly secretive about the fact that they are xyonagols, and most of them can live normal lives. Most people that are socially outgoing know at least one xyonagol, but that xyonagol has not come out yet and confessed themselves to be a xyonagol. The only probable way that you could find out that somebody is a xyonagol is if you A) knew that xyonagols exist, and B) happened to be looking for one.

Well, let's say that some individual, let's call him Pierre Putrid were to be treated badly by a group of xyonagols, one day, and Pierre turned out to be so utterly petty and cruel that they were to swear, "I will make sure that all xyonagols are punished for how mean those people were to me!" and they were to start a hate group aimed at stirring up hatred and fear against xyonagols.

And then let's imagine that Pierre were to be successful at peddling enough lies and distortions about xyonagols that they succeeded at getting state legislatures and the legislative assemblies of entire countries that effectively make being a xyonagol a serious crime.

In response to this new peril, the few xyonagols were publicly visible and known to be xyonagols would go deep into hiding. This is natural self-preservation instinct. Nobody wants their lives to be ruined.

Without anybody besides xyonagols that were really knowledgeable about xyonagols, Pierre would be able to continuously peddle their anti-xyonagol rhetoric without anybody to challenge them on their claims, and Pierre was so motivated to cause the xyonagols as much harm and grief as possible that they created a powerful movement that was aimed at no cause in the world except "stopping the evil xyonagols."

However, the xyonagols do not react in the same way that normal "baddies" tend to react. Instead, a large number of them, due to extreme distress, end up killing themselves. Pierre's hate group has become a victim of its own success. Rather than really having a problem of never quite succeeding in their attempts to suppress the xyonagols, they end up with a whole different problem, which is an actual body count.

And here is where the paradox comes in.

Pierre's hate group therefore has a serious problem. If their crimes against the xyonagols are ever discovered to really be crimes against innocent people, then society will turn against them. Great masses of people would speak up in outrage to condemn their behavior.

The only way they can stop justice from being done, within their lifetimes, is to cause the xyonagols so much loneliness and isolation and fear that there is little or no hope that the xyonagols will succeed at seeking redress for the harm that has been done against them. That way, Pierre Putrid and his hate group can hope that, at least within the context of their own lifetimes, they can successfully portray themselves as the "great heroes that stopped the xyonagol threat."

By the time the xyonagols have successfully mustered any substantial defense, Pierre and their followers has spread their anti-xyonagol message so broadly throughout society that most people that have heard of xyonagols at all have only ever heard the rhetoric that was being peddled by Pierre and their followers.

Even as many members of the anti-xyonagol movement come to realize that the xyonagols are not actually dangerous at all, they end up with the same problem as Pierre and their followers: they have a body count. They have caused serious pain and grief against innocent people. If they are ever found out to have been wrong to hurt the xyonagols, then they will have to face the scorn and judgment of society for some extremely serious crimes.

Replace the word "xyonagol" with "Jews." You could put any otherwise innocuous group of people in there, though. It doesn't have to be Jews. Unfortunately, this is how genocides happen, and this is how centuries of violent moral repression happen.

The Holocaust was caused, ultimately, by the same force that causes inexperienced investors to keep on doubling down on bad investments just because they are afraid to admit to failure. If they walk away from the investment, they lose a tremendous amount of money, and worse, they have to admit that they had made a mistake. Therefore, they lose even more money trying to recover the money they have already lost.

Sometimes, the xyonagols decide to push back.

When this does happen, it is going to makes the Pierre Putrid and their followers absolutely hysterical. They committed some serious crimes, and if those xyonagols are successful at pushing back, then Pierre Putrid and their immediate followers will eventually become the subject of society's undying scorn. It is one thing to be called out early as wrong because you can live it down. It is quite another if your name becomes a synonym for "evil itself."

Pierre Putrid is the spitting image of an unethical moralist.

 

[Jarhyn]

@Jarhyn

The phrase "throwing good money after bad" applies.

Here is a paradox that I have seen, in human nature.

Take any social outgroup. Let's call them "xyonagols," a random nonsense term.

For centuries, xyonagols were rarely heard about. The xyonagols are, for the most part, highly secretive about the fact that they are xyonagols, and most of them can live normal lives. Most people that are socially outgoing know at least one xyonagol, but that xyonagol has not come out yet and confessed themselves to be a xyonagol. The only probable way that you could find out that somebody is a xyonagol is if you A) knew that xyonagols exist, and B) happened to be looking for one.

Well, let's say that some individual, let's call him Pierre Putrid were to be treated badly by a group of xyonagols, one day, and Pierre turned out to be so utterly petty and cruel that they were to swear, "I will make sure that all xyonagols are punished for how mean those people were to me!" and they were to start a hate group aimed at stirring up hatred and fear against xyonagols.

And then let's imagine that Pierre were to be successful at peddling enough lies and distortions about xyonagols that they succeeded at getting state legislatures and the legislative assemblies of entire countries that effectively make being a xyonagol a serious crime.

In response to this new peril, the few xyonagols were publicly visible and known to be xyonagols would go deep into hiding. This is natural self-preservation instinct. Nobody wants their lives to be ruined.

Without anybody besides xyonagols that were really knowledgeable about xyonagols, Pierre would be able to continuously peddle their anti-xyonagol rhetoric without anybody to challenge them on their claims, and Pierre was so motivated to cause the xyonagols as much harm and grief as possible that they created a powerful movement that was aimed at no cause in the world except "stopping the evil xyonagols."

However, the xyonagols do not react in the same way that normal "baddies" tend to react. Instead, a large number of them, due to extreme distress, end up killing themselves. Pierre's hate group has become a victim of its own success. Rather than really having a problem of never quite succeeding in their attempts to suppress the xyonagols, they end up with a whole different problem, which is an actual body count.

And here is where the paradox comes in.

Pierre's hate group therefore has a serious problem. If their crimes against the xyonagols are ever discovered to really be crimes against innocent people, then society will turn against them. Great masses of people would speak up in outrage to condemn their behavior.

The only way they can stop justice from being done, within their lifetimes, is to cause the xyonagols so much loneliness and isolation and fear that there is little or no hope that the xyonagols will succeed at seeking redress for the harm that has been done against them. That way, Pierre Putrid and his hate group can hope that, at least within the context of their own lifetimes, they can successfully portray themselves as the "great heroes that stopped the xyonagol threat."

By the time the xyonagols have successfully mustered any substantial defense, Pierre and their followers has spread their anti-xyonagol message so broadly throughout society that most people that have heard of xyonagols at all have only ever heard the rhetoric that was being peddled by Pierre and their followers.

Even as many members of the anti-xyonagol movement come to realize that the xyonagols are not actually dangerous at all, they end up with the same problem as Pierre and their followers: they have a body count. They have caused serious pain and grief against innocent people. If they are ever found out to have been wrong to hurt the xyonagols, then they will have to face the scorn and judgment of society for some extremely serious crimes.

Replace the word "xyonagol" with "Jews." You could put any otherwise innocuous group of people in there, though. It doesn't have to be Jews. Unfortunately, this is how genocides happen, and this is how centuries of violent moral repression happen.

The Holocaust was caused, ultimately, by the same force that causes inexperienced investors to keep on doubling down on bad investments just because they are afraid to admit to failure. If they walk away from the investment, they lose a tremendous amount of money, and worse, they have to admit that they had made a mistake. Therefore, they lose even more money trying to recover the money they have already lost.

Sometimes, the xyonagols decide to push back.

When this does happen, it is going to makes the Pierre Putrid and their followers absolutely hysterical. They committed some serious crimes, and if those xyonagols are successful at pushing back, then Pierre Putrid and their immediate followers will eventually become the subject of society's undying scorn. It is one thing to be called out early as wrong because you can live it down. It is quite another if your name becomes a synonym for "evil itself."

Pierre Putrid is the spitting image of an unethical moralist.

I guess what I'm talking about is not exactly genocide but phenocide.

I agree that Pierre Putrid is exactly an unethical moralist. You have in fact given me a good idea for a character I've been needing to fill out a piece of urban fantasy that is meant to explore this very landscape.

I really want to feature various aspects of ethical/moral/nonethical/amoral/unethical/immoral combinations, mostly of the various combinations of unethical/* and */amoral in a number of settings, though a few examples otherwise.

Beyond this though, I can't stress how much this legitimately terrifies me, because of the campaign waged in waves against those who I share some manner of "magnitude of divergence" with.

 

[SigmatheZeta]

@Jarhyn

The phrase "throwing good money after bad" applies.

Here is a paradox that I have seen, in human nature.

Take any social outgroup. Let's call them "xyonagols," a random nonsense term.

For centuries, xyonagols were rarely heard about. The xyonagols are, for the most part, highly secretive about the fact that they are xyonagols, and most of them can live normal lives. Most people that are socially outgoing know at least one xyonagol, but that xyonagol has not come out yet and confessed themselves to be a xyonagol. The only probable way that you could find out that somebody is a xyonagol is if you A) knew that xyonagols exist, and B) happened to be looking for one.

Well, let's say that some individual, let's call him Pierre Putrid were to be treated badly by a group of xyonagols, one day, and Pierre turned out to be so utterly petty and cruel that they were to swear, "I will make sure that all xyonagols are punished for how mean those people were to me!" and they were to start a hate group aimed at stirring up hatred and fear against xyonagols.

And then let's imagine that Pierre were to be successful at peddling enough lies and distortions about xyonagols that they succeeded at getting state legislatures and the legislative assemblies of entire countries that effectively make being a xyonagol a serious crime.

In response to this new peril, the few xyonagols were publicly visible and known to be xyonagols would go deep into hiding. This is natural self-preservation instinct. Nobody wants their lives to be ruined.

Without anybody besides xyonagols that were really knowledgeable about xyonagols, Pierre would be able to continuously peddle their anti-xyonagol rhetoric without anybody to challenge them on their claims, and Pierre was so motivated to cause the xyonagols as much harm and grief as possible that they created a powerful movement that was aimed at no cause in the world except "stopping the evil xyonagols."

However, the xyonagols do not react in the same way that normal "baddies" tend to react. Instead, a large number of them, due to extreme distress, end up killing themselves. Pierre's hate group has become a victim of its own success. Rather than really having a problem of never quite succeeding in their attempts to suppress the xyonagols, they end up with a whole different problem, which is an actual body count.

And here is where the paradox comes in.

Pierre's hate group therefore has a serious problem. If their crimes against the xyonagols are ever discovered to really be crimes against innocent people, then society will turn against them. Great masses of people would speak up in outrage to condemn their behavior.

The only way they can stop justice from being done, within their lifetimes, is to cause the xyonagols so much loneliness and isolation and fear that there is little or no hope that the xyonagols will succeed at seeking redress for the harm that has been done against them. That way, Pierre Putrid and his hate group can hope that, at least within the context of their own lifetimes, they can successfully portray themselves as the "great heroes that stopped the xyonagol threat."

By the time the xyonagols have successfully mustered any substantial defense, Pierre and their followers has spread their anti-xyonagol message so broadly throughout society that most people that have heard of xyonagols at all have only ever heard the rhetoric that was being peddled by Pierre and their followers.

Even as many members of the anti-xyonagol movement come to realize that the xyonagols are not actually dangerous at all, they end up with the same problem as Pierre and their followers: they have a body count. They have caused serious pain and grief against innocent people. If they are ever found out to have been wrong to hurt the xyonagols, then they will have to face the scorn and judgment of society for some extremely serious crimes.

Replace the word "xyonagol" with "Jews." You could put any otherwise innocuous group of people in there, though. It doesn't have to be Jews. Unfortunately, this is how genocides happen, and this is how centuries of violent moral repression happen.

The Holocaust was caused, ultimately, by the same force that causes inexperienced investors to keep on doubling down on bad investments just because they are afraid to admit to failure. If they walk away from the investment, they lose a tremendous amount of money, and worse, they have to admit that they had made a mistake. Therefore, they lose even more money trying to recover the money they have already lost.

Sometimes, the xyonagols decide to push back.

When this does happen, it is going to makes the Pierre Putrid and their followers absolutely hysterical. They committed some serious crimes, and if those xyonagols are successful at pushing back, then Pierre Putrid and their immediate followers will eventually become the subject of society's undying scorn. It is one thing to be called out early as wrong because you can live it down. It is quite another if your name becomes a synonym for "evil itself."

Pierre Putrid is the spitting image of an unethical moralist.

I guess what I'm talking about is not exactly genocide but phenocide.

I agree that Pierre Putrid is exactly an unethical moralist. You have in fact given me a good idea for a character I've been needing to fill out a piece of urban fantasy that is meant to explore this very landscape.

I really want to feature various aspects of ethical/moral/nonethical/amoral/unethical/immoral combinations, mostly of the various combinations of unethical/* and */amoral in a number of settings, though a few examples otherwise.

Beyond this though, I can't stress how much this legitimately terrifies me, because of the campaign waged in waves against those who I share some manner of "magnitude of divergence" with.

Shush. There are many ways to take part in improving matters, and the most important work is actually the housekeeping stuff. We really need more hands on organizing Gantt charts and helping break up dumb quarrels than we do at fighting with crazy people. The best thing you can do about fear is to get yourself up to your eyeballs in work. Trust me, getting to work doing something genuinely useful, especially while surrounded by your tovarishes and your allies, is the only thing that cuts off your fight-or-flight reaction in these situations.

I have a personal adage, and I use it often: war is 90% housekeeping, and most of the rest is logistics.

 

[fromderinside]

@Jarhyn

The phrase "throwing good money after bad" applies.

Here is a paradox that I have seen, in human nature.

Take any social outgroup. Let's call them "xyonagols," a random nonsense term.

For centuries, xyonagols were rarely heard about. The xyonagols are, for the most part, highly secretive about the fact that they are xyonagols, and most of them can live normal lives. Most people that are socially outgoing know at least one xyonagol, but that xyonagol has not come out yet and confessed themselves to be a xyonagol. The only probable way that you could find out that somebody is a xyonagol is if you A) knew that xyonagols exist, and B) happened to be looking for one.

Well, let's say that some individual, let's call him Pierre Putrid were to be treated badly by a group of xyonagols, one day, and Pierre turned out to be so utterly petty and cruel that they were to swear, "I will make sure that all xyonagols are punished for how mean those people were to me!" and they were to start a hate group aimed at stirring up hatred and fear against xyonagols.

And then let's imagine that Pierre were to be successful at peddling enough lies and distortions about xyonagols that they succeeded at getting state legislatures and the legislative assemblies of entire countries that effectively make being a xyonagol a serious crime.

In response to this new peril, the few xyonagols were publicly visible and known to be xyonagols would go deep into hiding. This is natural self-preservation instinct. Nobody wants their lives to be ruined.

Without anybody besides xyonagols that were really knowledgeable about xyonagols, Pierre would be able to continuously peddle their anti-xyonagol rhetoric without anybody to challenge them on their claims, and Pierre was so motivated to cause the xyonagols as much harm and grief as possible that they created a powerful movement that was aimed at no cause in the world except "stopping the evil xyonagols."

However, the xyonagols do not react in the same way that normal "baddies" tend to react. Instead, a large number of them, due to extreme distress, end up killing themselves. Pierre's hate group has become a victim of its own success. Rather than really having a problem of never quite succeeding in their attempts to suppress the xyonagols, they end up with a whole different problem, which is an actual body count.

And here is where the paradox comes in.

Pierre's hate group therefore has a serious problem. If their crimes against the xyonagols are ever discovered to really be crimes against innocent people, then society will turn against them. Great masses of people would speak up in outrage to condemn their behavior.

The only way they can stop justice from being done, within their lifetimes, is to cause the xyonagols so much loneliness and isolation and fear that there is little or no hope that the xyonagols will succeed at seeking redress for the harm that has been done against them. That way, Pierre Putrid and his hate group can hope that, at least within the context of their own lifetimes, they can successfully portray themselves as the "great heroes that stopped the xyonagol threat."

By the time the xyonagols have successfully mustered any substantial defense, Pierre and their followers has spread their anti-xyonagol message so broadly throughout society that most people that have heard of xyonagols at all have only ever heard the rhetoric that was being peddled by Pierre and their followers.

Even as many members of the anti-xyonagol movement come to realize that the xyonagols are not actually dangerous at all, they end up with the same problem as Pierre and their followers: they have a body count. They have caused serious pain and grief against innocent people. If they are ever found out to have been wrong to hurt the xyonagols, then they will have to face the scorn and judgment of society for some extremely serious crimes.

Replace the word "xyonagol" with "Jews." You could put any otherwise innocuous group of people in there, though. It doesn't have to be Jews. Unfortunately, this is how genocides happen, and this is how centuries of violent moral repression happen.

The Holocaust was caused, ultimately, by the same force that causes inexperienced investors to keep on doubling down on bad investments just because they are afraid to admit to failure. If they walk away from the investment, they lose a tremendous amount of money, and worse, they have to admit that they had made a mistake. Therefore, they lose even more money trying to recover the money they have already lost.

Sometimes, the xyonagols decide to push back.

When this does happen, it is going to makes the Pierre Putrid and their followers absolutely hysterical. They committed some serious crimes, and if those xyonagols are successful at pushing back, then Pierre Putrid and their immediate followers will eventually become the subject of society's undying scorn. It is one thing to be called out early as wrong because you can live it down. It is quite another if your name becomes a synonym for "evil itself."

Pierre Putrid is the spitting image of an unethical moralist.

I guess what I'm talking about is not exactly genocide but phenocide.

I agree that Pierre Putrid is exactly an unethical moralist. You have in fact given me a good idea for a character I've been needing to fill out a piece of urban fantasy that is meant to explore this very landscape.

I really want to feature various aspects of ethical/moral/nonethical/amoral/unethical/immoral combinations, mostly of the various combinations of unethical/* and */amoral in a number of settings, though a few examples otherwise.

Beyond this though, I can't stress how much this legitimately terrifies me, because of the campaign waged in waves against those who I share some manner of "magnitude of divergence" with.

Shush. There are many ways to take part in improving matters, and the most important work is actually the housekeeping stuff. We really need more hands on organizing Gantt charts and helping break up dumb quarrels than we do at fighting with crazy people. The best thing you can do about fear is to get yourself up to your eyeballs in work. Trust me, getting to work doing something genuinely useful, especially while surrounded by your tovarishes and your allies, is the only thing that cuts off your fight-or-flight reaction in these situations.

I have a personal adage, and I use it often: war is 90% housekeeping, and most of the rest is logistics.

Logistics is the mother load in one's belief system. I use about three tons of it every year on plants in my deer fenced area.

 

[steve_bank]

Morality is the intent to achieve good, and to achieve it for others as well as for ourselves. Ethics is the pursuit of the best rules, those that will most likely achieve the best possible results for everyone.

To see the distinction, consider the Jewish family of Anne Frank hiding in the attic during Nazi occupation. The soldiers knock on the door and ask if there are any Jews. It would be unethical to lie, but it would be immoral not to.

We call something “good” if it meets a real need we have as an individual, a society, or a species. A “moral good” is actually good for us and benefits us in some way. A “moral harm” unnecessarily damages us or diminishes our rights in some way.

Morality seeks “the best good and least harm for everyone”. Moral judgment considers the evidence of probable benefits and harms to decide a course of action. This judgment is objective to the degree that the harms and benefits are easily observed and compared. But the ultimate consequences of a decision are not always known. Two good and honest individuals may differ as to what course of action will produce the best result. A democratic decision can be made to determine a working course of action, which can be further evaluated based on subsequent experience.

Ethics are about rule systems. Rules include customs, manners, principles, ethics, rights and law. When one speaks of “morals” or “moral codes” one is usually speaking of ethics. But morality is not the rule, but rather the reason for the rule, which is to achieve good.

Throughout history, rules have changed as our moral judgment evolved. Slavery was once permitted, but later outlawed. The equal rights of women to vote was established. The right to equal treatment without regard to races, gender, or religion was established.

Different cultures may have different rules. But all rules move slowly toward the same goal, to achieve the best possible good for everyone. And, to the degree that moral judgment is based in objective evidence, all variations are moving toward a common, ideal set of rules and rights.

In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest principle?”, and Jesus said the first principle is to love God and the second principle is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

A Humanist translation would be to love good, and to love good for others as you love it for yourself.

But Jesus said one more thing, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, this is the reason behind every rule. It is the criteria by which all other principles, ethics, and rules are to be judged.

Can doing what yiu think is good for someone actually be the wrong thing to do?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Morality is the intent to achieve good, and to achieve it for others as well as for ourselves. Ethics is the pursuit of the best rules, those that will most likely achieve the best possible results for everyone.

To see the distinction, consider the Jewish family of Anne Frank hiding in the attic during Nazi occupation. The soldiers knock on the door and ask if there are any Jews. It would be unethical to lie, but it would be immoral not to.

We call something “good” if it meets a real need we have as an individual, a society, or a species. A “moral good” is actually good for us and benefits us in some way. A “moral harm” unnecessarily damages us or diminishes our rights in some way.

Morality seeks “the best good and least harm for everyone”. Moral judgment considers the evidence of probable benefits and harms to decide a course of action. This judgment is objective to the degree that the harms and benefits are easily observed and compared. But the ultimate consequences of a decision are not always known. Two good and honest individuals may differ as to what course of action will produce the best result. A democratic decision can be made to determine a working course of action, which can be further evaluated based on subsequent experience.

Ethics are about rule systems. Rules include customs, manners, principles, ethics, rights and law. When one speaks of “morals” or “moral codes” one is usually speaking of ethics. But morality is not the rule, but rather the reason for the rule, which is to achieve good.

Throughout history, rules have changed as our moral judgment evolved. Slavery was once permitted, but later outlawed. The equal rights of women to vote was established. The right to equal treatment without regard to races, gender, or religion was established.

Different cultures may have different rules. But all rules move slowly toward the same goal, to achieve the best possible good for everyone. And, to the degree that moral judgment is based in objective evidence, all variations are moving toward a common, ideal set of rules and rights.

In Matthew 22:35-40, Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest principle?”, and Jesus said the first principle is to love God and the second principle is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.

A Humanist translation would be to love good, and to love good for others as you love it for yourself.

But Jesus said one more thing, “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, this is the reason behind every rule. It is the criteria by which all other principles, ethics, and rules are to be judged.

Can doing what yiu think is good for someone actually be the wrong thing to do?

Now that you know how moral judgment works, explain how you would apply it to your question.

 

[steve_bank]

OMG he turned the tables on me!!!! I am all discombobulated.

Sorry, you don't get off the hook that easily.

The question is to you. It is a yes no question. Answer and I will continue.

 

[Jarhyn]

Can doing what yiu think is good for someone actually be the wrong thing to do?

What I might return with this is, in fact, what I think has become the most functional iteration of my own ethical core: Mutually Compatible Self-Actualization.

What is 'good for someone' is always going to have to fit through that doorway, because that's the doorway "shaped as all and only that which is good".

I can think of many ways that "what someone thinks is good for someone else" is not, and thus it becomes the wrong thing to do.

The solution is to expect people to think more before they act and respect the consent of others.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Can doing what yiu think is good for someone actually be the wrong thing to do?

Morality seeks the best good and the least harm for everyone. Ethics seeks the best rules to follow in order to achieve that result.

The moral question is what is the most likely outcome of your doing what you think is good for someone.
The ethical question is what would the world be like if everyone made a rule of doing that.

The objective benefits are the probability that everyone would be better off if we were all doing what we thought was good for each other.

The objective harms are the probability that everyone would find it very annoying that other people were constantly interfering with their lives. It would compromise their freedom and independence.

Ethics works rule by rule. For the sake of liberty and sanity, we generally want to keep the number rules limited to those that are really necessary to prevent harm.

Morality works case by case. How confident are you that your intervention will produce more good than harm? And this question cannot be answered without more details about the actual case.

So, what exactly did you have in mind? Are you acting as the parent of a child too young to care for themselves? In that case, you must do what you think is good for the child. Or, are you acting as a Christian to try to save a native from Hell by forcing them to believe in your God? In one case, moral judgment finds more good than harm. In the other case, moral judgment finds more harm than good.

And that's why the ball is still in your court.

 

[steve_bank]

We removed Hussein and Qaddafi because it was a good thing to get rid of tem becuase they were dictators and undemocratic. Result never ending civil war and destruction. The Star Trek Prime Directive.

Our forign policy continues to be western liberal democarcy is best for the entire world when we keep seeing it is not.

An aboriginal group in the Amazon has a relatively good life with population in balance with resources. You go in and provide inoculations and prenatal care raising the population which exhausts resources. Playing god.

I watched a BBC segment about an area in Africa. Cattle and large families, no starvation, decent shelter, and little education. Start educating people who migrate to cities and end up in poverty. Again the Prime Directive.

One can be an atheist rejecting gods, yet act as if one were god imposing arbitrary morality.

Morality seeks the best good and the least harm for everyone. Ethics seeks the best rules to follow in order to achieve that result

Simplistic at best. What is the best good? This is all pop slogans. Chines communists say the best good fr the country is centralized authoritarian control and enforced conformity.

The Star Trek Prime Directive says you do not tinker in other cultures even with best intentions because yoou can not see all ends.