Viewing Single Post From: Morality

Viewing Single Post From: Morality
Yzarc	Nov 20 2008, 08:21 PM
Coxian Posts: 3,432 Group: Veteran Member #308 Joined: July 8, 2005	Wind Sword Morality doesn't change. No one argues that slavery and witch burnings were once moral, only they just thought they were moral actions. That isn't changing morality. In fact, the reasons that those things stopped taking place is because we slowly realized they were immoral. We didn't decide one day, "From now on witch burnings are immoral." We gradually said, "Witch burnings, including those of the past, are wrong." That's probably one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Morals changed, our view of morality changed...It's all the same thing. Morality is a social institution, created and perpetuated by (wait for it) humanity! As society changes and evolves, so too do our views on morality. So does morality in itself. Morality is only what we view it as. So you're right, we do say all witch burnings, even those in the past, are immoral. But at the time, they were moral. In hindsight, they were extraordinarily immoral, but that is according to our view of morality. Wind Sword To put it this way, if objective morality is true, than morals are facts. If someone had said in 1600 "Flies are born from meat", he wouldn't be right, even though that's a societal norm. Likewise, if someone had said "Slavery is good", and we believe in moral objectivity, he's just wrong. This claim is inherently a fallacy in that you're presupposing your argument to be true. Wind Sword I half-agree that morality didn't exist before mankind. I think it did exist, but it just needed mankind to conceive of it. It can be compared to math. It's a universal truth that underpins the universe, but only thinking, rational beings can actually put it to words. How does that make sense? Morality is specific to humanity. You can't call anything other than human moral or immoral, so morality cannot have existed prior to us. Math applies to more than humanity, but what justifies you in saying some animals are moral and some are immoral? Humans evolved from animals (and are animals) and so came after them. Where did morals come from if they were not created by humans or some more primitive animals? Wind Sword Do different societies disagree on morality? Sure. But to put it bluntly, some are right, some are wrong. What a horribly ignorant thing to say. Wind Sword Even then, there are always points of convergence. Every society says that murder and thievery are bad. But more importantly, people realize that stuff like hate and heartlessness are bad, but love and care is good. I believe we have an innate understanding. Of course. Because there are always things that are good for ever society. It is advantageous for a society to have people who care for each other as a community. It is advantageous for any society to not have its people killing each other or otherwise hurting each other. Morals are what are advantageous for society, and nothing more. Your morals are no more correct than the morals of the Native Americans. They're different, but to say one is right and one is wrong is to have a complete lack of understanding of how society works and why morals are created. It was advantageous for southern whites to believe that slavery was moral, so slavery was moral to them. If morals weren't created, and don't change, then they would always have existed as they are now: "Perfect" Wind Sword No, CEO's don't rape and murder. Yes, they're still immoral. I pray your being sarcastic when you say blacks killing blacks isn't our problem. Of course I was being sarcastic. I was being sarcastic about the whole thing. Wind Sword There's always a correlation between crime and poverty, but I'd never go as far as calling it a cause. There are several examples of the opposite. Off the top of my head, I know crime actually went down during the Depression. During the Depression, the San Francisco Chinese lived in some of the worst living conditions in the history of our country and in extreme poverty, but had the lowest crime rate of all the ethnic groups in the city. Okay? Then what do you propose is the cause of crime? There are only two things that make a person: Nature and Nurture. I would argue that nurture plays a much more significant role in personality, beliefs, values and norms than biology ever could. If society didn't matter when it comes to how a person turns out to be, we would all still be like the ancestral human. Wind Sword The difference? People in the 30's and Asians even today had much higher beliefs in hard work, common decency, that kind of thing. The Chinese and Japanese especially have extremely high notions of community, honor, and discipline. A lot of people starved rather than take handouts. STARVED for God's sake. Nowadays we have people complaining because minimum wage isn't high enough. And that has nothing to do with socialization? Wind Sword Poverty is an easy answer. I don't think it's the best one. What is then? How the person's parents raised them? Well, what do you think caused that person's parents to raise them the way they did? What I'm saying is that it's ridiculous to say people who are poor are somehow less morally righteous than the middle and upper class. Soja Uh. I'm just going to go ahead here and disagree -- hugely -- with the notion that people commit crimes just because or mostly because they're in the lower class. You can say that, but you'd be discounting individuality. You'd also be wrong. While poverty does affect people's tendency to commit crimes such as theft in the name of survival, I doubt it has as strong an influence on rape and murder. Same for paternal abandonment. Individuality...I believe that a person's "individual" personality is formed by how he is raised combined with his experiences. Well, how a person is raised and the experiences he or she goes through is largely determined based on the kind of society he or she grows up in. Soja It's not a conscious choice? Bullshit. It's always a conscious choice. When someone does something, they very well know what they are doing. Whether or not they actually care is the question. Of course it's a conscious choice. I'm not arguing that everybody is a robot, and that consciousness doesn't exist. I'm just saying that it is in fact formed by your socioeconomic standing, race, gender and other variables that affect your every day life. If a higher number of those impoverished commit murder than those more well off, well that says that it has more to do with class than...Some other variable? I don't know what other variable you could possibly point to. It's obviously not biology, or there wouldn't be more people in poverty committing these kinds of crimes. Soja You can say blah, blah, the social environment, blah, blah, societal influences, but nothing forces someone to commit a crime. That's why you have white-collar crime, violent crime, fraud, etc. All types of people commit all types of crime. Rich people rape and murder, too. Impoverished people abide by the law, too. It's because they want to, more often than not. Circumstances are very rarely an influence on people with any moral fiber. Okay? From what I can tell, you have no point here other than to say "Sociologists have no idea what they're talking about" and if that's your point then I don't really think there's anything left to argue, because you're obviously ignorant of how society works and how it affects people, and that's kind of my entire base of argument. It'd be like trying to explain calculus to a dog. I'm not saying you're as smart as a dog. Soja If people are in the lower class, it's usually because they did something to end up there. That's highly untrue. Most people in the lower class were born in the lower class. Most people born in the lower class are more likely than not to stay in the lower class.


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