A a quick apology for the lateness of this post, I went on a minivacation
and then didn’t check the blog.
My colleague Stanek presents, as usual, an ultimately cheerful and uplifting
post for my humble self to consider! I will add at the outset that my personal religious beliefs will color this post; I believe in God, and I am a Christian, so I do believe that absolute evil exists in the world. Regarding Heaven and
Hell, they exist to, respectively, reward and punish those who believe in
God and follow His law, and those who do not. The idea is not necessarily that people who are Good go to Heaven, and people who are Bad go to Hell, but more that people whoare following God's law are doing the proper thing, and are rewarded for it. What makes Hell so awful is not only the whole lake-of-flame thing, but a permanent, irrevocable separation from God. If you will take it as true that a God does exist, then this would be pretty awful.
(For more on this, I direct you to Ted Chiang’s short story Hell Is The Absence Of God, which is pretty good considering I did not write it.) Many see the obvious loophole of the Deathbed Convert, but if God is infallible, I figure surely He would have seen that coming.
Stanek takes what sounds to me a Durkheimian view of morality. Religion arises as a result of society. If something benefits everybody, and everybody chips in doing it, it both benefits myself by proxy and involves
less personal work. As you already know, I disagree, and the reason is something that Stanek mentioned at the end of his post—inconsistency. I hate slippery-slope arguments, as they seem very fearmongery, and remind me of hysterical anti-drug
commercials. But in this case I think it applies. If you rationalize one thing,
you can rationalize anything if you really want to, and it’s much more likely
that you’ll rationalize something to help yourself, and explain away
possible collateral damage. Alright-- but does your ability to rationalize something necessarily make it okay? Does your ability to argue something is not evil under certain circumstances make it not evil? Does this mean that truthiness really does exist?! If, essentially, good and bad is what I can argue, what exactly keeps this web from collapsing against the whim of someone especially charismatic? It seems like the world eventually checks itself (albeit by sometimes overcompensating in the opposite direction). I always thought of it as a sort of infinite slide rule, where you have a great many amount of things that people disagree upon as bad or good, and then, heading towards one direction, you have things that more and more people agree are just bad. These things are fewer in number, however, and at the very, very far end of the spectrum you have something most all cultures have deemed bad, albeit with arguments on just how very bad it is. (See below.) You'll never get every single person to always say it is bad, full stop, but the overwhelming majority is such that you can probably round a bit. The worst thing ever is infinitely far out, and no person has reached it either. The same is true in the opposite direction. So I definitely think there are nuances, but on the other hand, some greys are so very dark that they look quite black, and some greys are so light they're close to white.
If one doesn’t subscribe to the idea that there’s a God that dictates
morality, there’s biological argument, that
something like altruism stems from the suspicion that the person drowning
over there might share genes with ourselves. This seems a bit funky to me,
because of the worldwide incest taboo which would, theoretically,
make dead sure your own personal genes survived. (If for some reason you
find yourself curious about the reasoning behind said incest taboo, feel
free to have a gander at that Wikipedia entry.) There are very few things
Anyway, I quote Stanek’s previous post:
The natural conclusion, I think, is that no one owns anything except
through force (or the threat of force supplied by their parent state), no one
has any inherent rights that can be violated, and thus no action can be
taken that is objectively "wrong" or "evil.
I agree with the first point, nobody really owns anything, although
for very different reasons (I believe that everything we have comes from
God, so there’s no point in being excessively greedy about hoarding
anything, it’s not actually YOURS). This second point, however, about
nobody having inherent rights, I dispute—I think that people have the right
to live. I don’t mean this in a Roe vs. Wade sense, but in the sense
of the death penalty, or even something as simple as a revenge killing. Even if the universe is a huge bunch of atoms meaninglessly careening
in space meaninglessly, the meaningless careening of atoms that
eventually led to life is outside of humanity’s, let alone society’s
jurisdiction. Is it possible to counter what the universe has set into motion? This is getting quite existential and excessively late-night-college-philosophy-session for me.
I end with another short story recommendation, Robert Charles
Wilson’s “The Cartesian Theater”*, that addresses the existence of evil
indirectly. If you’re not already familiar with the idea of the Cartesian Theater, I won’t tell the true subject of the story, as it’ll give things away a little. But I will say that it addresses Stanek’s ending point, that “One can't help but feel that "evil"-- soul-crushing, gut-wrenching awfulness that doesn't lend itself to mere
rational analysis--exists; no, not in an absolute sense but in some
nuanced way.” I would just say “It’s something more
powerful than you can possibly imagine", but that is, of course, not
an intellectually satisfying argument. My bad. It seems to me that if one
feels this way, and the explanation for why one feels this way isn’t
satisfactory, despite being a good explanation it isn’t complete…it’s a
tricky thing.
*You can read it in Futureshocks, ed. Lou
Anders, or Science Fiction: The Best Of
The Year 2007, ed. Rich Horton.
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5 comments:
Damn, I was going to vote 42 in the poll.
-Teshale
Worth the wait, Teshale, worth the wait. There's one part that jumps out of at me:
"Alright-- but does your ability to rationalize something necessarily make it okay? Does your ability to argue something is not evil under certain circumstances make it not evil? Does this mean that truthiness really does exist?!"
I'm afraid a reductio ad absurdum won't work on me because I believe the universe is--at its core--absurd. We approach this question, of course, from very different points of view. I'm not convinced that it makes much sense to ask if something is "okay" or "right." Doing so implies an objective standard of comparison. If we don't start off by assuming that golden standard, then the question (if one should be asked) is more appropriately "why would this not be okay?"
In other words, instead of beginning by asking "does this meet Objective Standard X?" it would make more sense to ask "why would I expect this to violate some objective standard?" This assumes we either cannot have knowledge of that absolute standard (should it even exist) or we cannot be 100% certain that our knowledge of it is accurate. Obviously this is where the degree of one's religious faith becomes significant. But what I'm getting at is that unless you rely entirely on the word of others as to what "right" is (or perhaps go entirely based on your own emotional responses) then a degree of rationalization has to come into play.
I think it's more of a straight drop than a slippery slope. As I outlined in my post, there's little reason I can find that this or that action is "good" or "bad" in any objective sense. Different actions will have different outcomes, some that I want to see for whatever reason and some that I don't. But that's just regular decision-making. The only rationale for a full morality with staying power that arises is that we should want certain outcomes--at both the social and individual level--to come to pass, leading us to police everyone else. This, however, doesn't necessarily provide a good reason to engage in certain behavior yourself, should your neighbors be lax in their duties policing you. I would argue that a shallow aversion to hypocrisy has led to a mass internalization of behaviors we expect and want from others--that's essentially what any reference to the Golden or Silver rules is.
If, essentially, good and bad is what I can argue, what exactly keeps this web from collapsing against the whim of someone especially charismatic? It seems like the world eventually checks itself (albeit by sometimes overcompensating in the opposite direction).
It's very difficult for a single leader, no matter how charismatic, to overturn established social institutions. There's a quote I came across the other day: "I'm interested in organizations, not movements, because movements dissipate and organizations don't." That's Barack Obama in 1990. The broader principle there applies here. The web isn't as fragile as it would seem because society's existing norms are firmly anchored in nearly every society-wide organization (primarily governments and organized religions) and traditions derived both from familial teachings and the broader culture. There was a time and place when social norms--particularly religious norms--demanded the mass slaughter of both domestic citizens and enemies captured from rival city-states (I'm thinking of Central America several centuries ago). The idea of removing the heads and hearts of people by the thousands would be abhorrent today but, well, that's today.
Even if you believe there is--in reality--no true morality, that's certainly not a viewpoint that's found its way into the popular social consciousness. I don't know that I would want it to. I doubt it would be wise to remove the controls that are currently in place.
I think that what a person deems right or wrong depends greatly upon the immediacy of the situation. I feel that any one person's life can be roughly divided into three levels; myself, my family, and everyone else. This division is by no means deduced by any scientific method, but rather an observation.
I feel that for most people, it is most instinctive to think first of personal survival, then of those closest to us-family, best friends, etc., and then, the rest of the world. I think that this applies particularly to financial and social issues, though can certainly be extrapolated to right and wrong, as I hope to show.
Materially, most (and I stress this qualifier) people concern themselves first and foremost with becoming self-supporting. Finding a high-paying job, driving the newest car, buying the best house or apartment, all serve to secure purely personal well-being or personal desires. After these wants are fulfilled, family and close friends then come into play. Supporting a family, or helping a friend with a serious chore or debt are often considered only after essential personal needs are fulfilled. Finally, the well-being of a larger community is the last area that a person turns his or her thoughts to. Donations to political campaigns, charity organizations, an alma mater, and even significant investment in the stock market are usually works of the relatively wealthy, who have the time and money to think of more than themselves and their families. Very rarely (if ever) do we hear of a person of middle class standing making a large contribution to any of the above. The reason? They are too preoccupied with making car payments, rent, or their child's tuition to do so. And rightly so, I believe.
For right and wrong, this theory works similarly. The further away from a situation one person is, the more they adhere to certain principles. As Stanek's example of the poor woman demonstrates, people may change their views of an action depending upon how immediately it affects their life. Let us take a different, perhaps more extreme example. A woman believes that the death penalty is "wrong" in all situations, though when her son is murdered and his killer put on trial, she feels that the killer receiving the same fate as her son is the only "right" solution, despite her prior opinions on the subject.
Though this is a theoretical example, it is relevant because it demonstrates how extreme situations can change a person's perception of right and wrong. It would be near impossible to determine such decisions ahead of time, because the justifications of right and wrong differ from person to person, and the human mind is ultimately unpredictable. This leads me to believe that absolute good and absolute evil do exist, though attempting to identify them is an exercise in utter futility. Perhaps, it is a purely emotional thing, this gut-wrenching, blood-curdling sickness we call evil.
Sorry, that was my comment under a different account.
Though I do agree that a certain amount of rationalization is necessary just to function in life, I still don't take that as the lack of absolute morals in a broader sense. Having the state sanction public executions or gladiatorial games or stonings or child sacrifices to Quetzalcotl doesn't make them not bad, it just means certain people can get away with it, or that it is something that (the state feels) needs to be done to ensure survival on a natural or supernatural level.
The reason I mentioned truthiness is because truthiness is what you feel is true, despite logical arguments to the contrary. (The polar caps are melting, but I feeeeeeeeeeel global warming doesn't exist, say some.) Most people are of the opinion that truthiness is silly, but that's what, essentially, seems to be happening here. Despite your logical reasoning that absolute morality doesn't exist, you still feel, somehow, that within the maze of things we call good and bad, there are some things that are really, really, really bad. You can say that feeling is just conditioning of other people in your youth telling you what should make you feel bad (hurting people), and what should make you feel good (helping people). I read the argument as basically being "I could do whatever I want, and none of it will ever be cosmically right or wrong. But I will feel bad about doing certain actions that actively hinder the society I live in...except when I feel wrong despite it not hurting anyone, but that's just society's conditioning. Or when I feel it's right, despite it screwing up the society I live in, that's just society being wrong, I'm a progressive." People's inconsistency doesn't specifically prove that an absolute morality doesn't exist-- it just indicates that people are bad at following rules, however arbitrary or absolute they are, and will make excuses for why they can't do so. Within your argument, assuming there is no higher power dictating laws, I would argue that there is an absolute morality, there is something that everyone considers "bad" (albeit to a certain extent)-- if only because societies operate on the same very, very basic framework at the heart of it all. Killing will destroy any society at any time in history, which is why it is so tightly regulated and...let us say tolerated, instead of condoned, in many cases. In the Crusades, for instance, killing wasn't suddenly a totally awesome thing to do in general-- it was something that, in crusaders' minds, had to be done, however distasteful, in a very specific way. I would also argue that I think many people participating in the Crusades had little interest in spreading Christianity, and a greater interest in doing whatever they wanted and getting away with it by saying "But they're not CHRISTIAN so it's okay," but I digress.
This is why I've never had much interest in philosophy along these lines. Debating Big Philosophical Questions like this is entertaining, but ultimately fruitless. It makes you go round and round, and it never gets anywhere and it doesn't apply to the real world. If one does believe that 'secretly' there is no absolute morality, but that it is perhaps better that the world go on operating as if there is, then what's the point?
By the way, this is completely irrelevant, but I just started watching M.A.S.H. It is AWESOME.
-Teshale
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