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142 sats \ 2 replies \ @billytheked 3h \ parent \ on: A bunch of alarming shit BooksAndArticles
With respect to your contrarianism, a few more questions:
If we agree to leave it up to the individual to judge the rightness/wrongness (or wrongness/more wrongness, as you seem to suggest) of their actions, then shouldn't we also establish what measuring stick they need to use?
If it's the same one, or at least similar, in the past and future, then haven't we contradicted ourselves?
If it is different, then isn’t that quite the quandary, since then the number of lashing owed to, say, the persecutors of Jean d'Arc, depended on how much we are willing to admit that our ruler looks the same as theirs?
As for what I think, if I compared my own wongness/more wrongness with theirs, I'd say I am still in good shape, because, at least to me, there does seem to be something definitely wrong about persecuting a teenager for her heresy in claiming to have had visions of Saint Michael.
If we agree to leave it up to the individual to judge the rightness/wrongness (or wrongness/more wrongness, as you seem to suggest) of their actions, then shouldn't we also establish what measuring stick they need to use?
It depends on what the exercise is for. One could impose some set of moral axioms and reason forward from it, and say "this is how it should work" and make a rule set for how we should punish this or that. But others aren't likely to be bound by my logic, so I can't get very excited about the exercise.
You can get pretty far with some pretty basic stuff, though -- the golden rule is pretty good. It's relative, but it seems a stretch, in any era, to argue that people really don't see the problem with raping and murdering women in Juarez, or lynching negroes for moving into the wrong neighborhood. One can make the argument ("I'd expect the same if I moved into their place where I wasn't wanted") but I don't believe it.
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the bigger class of concerning things, ... are things we don't think twice about now that our successors will one day look as monstrous in the same way we're stunned that our ancestors thought slavery was fine.
You piqued my curiosity here.
I'd never really put the consequences of my actions under the microscope of this level of scrutiny.
Anyway, since we've come this far and we agree that others (especially our successors) likely won't feel bound by my logic or yours, then I'll admit that don't get very excited by discussing the limits of moral relativism either, since it feels a bit like playing a lose-lose game.
Self-examination, discernment, compassion, charity, understanding, the list can go on ... are principles of morality, besides the golden rule, that might be solid ground to stand on. (I am not sure how much these differ across the spectrum of belief systems.) I think if I am true to these, then how much does it really profit me to concern myself with the disapproval of my successors?
Over time our starting premises seems to change more than the logic itself.
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