"What's your problem? I'm not hurting anyone!"
I tire of this phrase. Generally it is used to justify any behaviour or deviancy that may elicit a tiny smidgen of guilt in the speaker when they are challenged about it. And it actuality, they may be correct - it doesn't hurt anybody, other than themselves perhaps. But it is still a rotten thing to say.
The breakdown of Morality is covered by many authors in far more significant (and useful to read) works than what I could even hope to scratch the surface of. This phrase is a natural outflow from it, not because it is not true, but because we don't really understand the purpose of Morality.
Most people see Morality as a neat sociological invention of human society which prevents conflict and lubricates social relationships to the point of ignoring individual faults and personal excesses. Which is correct to a certain degree. We turn our head and ignore painful displays of poor etiquette in order to spare the feelings of another. Or we learn to suppress the urge to voice all the thoughts in our head to make our presence palatable to those around us. These are not the deep parts of Morality however, and it is this confusion of etiquette and behaviour which causes us to want to say there is no universal moral standards. The fact is, there is a fairly regular theme of moral standards running through different cultures that have no other aspect in common. Virtues are praised and extolled, while vices are shunned and regarded are evil.
Thus things like lying, cheating, stealing, sexual behaviour, bravery/cowardice and murder are all in a degree moralised in all cultures. Certainly, have as many sexual partners as you want, but marry them first. By all means kill your enemy, but declare war first. Take what you want from someone, but be aware what will happen if you get caught by someone stronger than you. This is not meant to be exhaustive, but a representative paraphrase.
Why this regularity? Because we all know what a good person looks like and we all know what the characteristics of a good person are. And this is where morality comes in. Morality is not simply a inter-relational list of guidelines, but a path to becoming an admirable person.
So, why adhere to these guidelines which simply 'quash' our fun? Because countless generations of human beings have tested all possible paths and found these are the ones which make the best people
What do you think?
1 comment:
Thus things like lying, cheating, stealing, sexual behaviour, bravery/cowardice and murder are all in a degree moralised in all cultures. Certainly, have as many sexual partners as you want, but marry them first. By all means kill your enemy, but declare war first.
I don't know if it is your intent, but these sound like etiquette/manners to me.
I find present day morality to be a human construct, and thus relative. Whether that's important or not probably depends on one's view of many other human constructs, agglomerated into that which we call "society".
There is certainly no level playing field for the various agents operating within present society.
There have often been appeals to absolute morality and divine sources, but there has been no evidence for these qualities other than the appellants' own desire to add credibility and strength to the social contract.
I have yet to find evidence or a justification that we own anything and thus can lay claim against any diminishment or theft of those things which are temporarily in our possession (including sentience/life), other than our egos' emotional reaction to the offense given to it's sense of entitlement. Is that reaction intuitively correct? Tough to say given the amount of socialization and artifice inherent to our life experience.
The fact is, there is a fairly regular theme of moral standards running through different cultures that have no other aspect in common. Virtues are praised and extolled, while vices are shunned and regarded are evil.
Really? You mean like the Greeks idealizing debauchery and buggery? Polynesian cannibalism? Kurgan misogyny? One society's virtue is another society's vice. Virtue is extolled and vice condemned, but the actual virtues and vices are rarely agreed upon.
Thus things like lying, cheating, stealing, sexual behaviour, bravery/cowardice and murder are all in a degree moralised in all cultures.
Native cultures (and others) idealizing The Liar & The Prankster? Sexuality is all over the place amongst human cultures. Bravery/cowardice perhaps has something do with morality but the connection is tenuous and the quality has been influenced greatly by machoism, competition for females & offspring, group psychology, group preservation. As for the murder, for the largest part of human history, murder was only murder if it was the killing of another community member. Which again says a helluva lot more about The Group's need for preservation than it does about the wrongness or rightness of taking a human life.
And the so-called Golden Rule, "Do unto others...", is as relative and subjective as any rule could possibly be, dependent as it is on each individual's choices/views/self-knowledge.
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