NationStates Jolt Archive

Moral relativity. One of the biggest pains in the ass of any philosophical structure. One culture says something is great, another says it's horrible. The two are rarely reconcilable. Generations, too, have this problem. To every new generation, the last generation are seen as tyrants, backwards, or otherwise wrong, to one degree or another. Within any country, there are members who are against the local culture, and are outcasts or, at the very least, part of a sub-culture of their own. There are people who have nearly opposite moral beliefs, who may be next door neighbors. One person may think women should hide their entire bodies, another may think that clothing is a sin against nature.

Ultimately, I feel, it comes down to the fact that, as a whole, people have not Consented to the culture they were born in.

Revolutions are an easy example. The US colonies were founded, in many cases, by people who dearly loved Europe, and wanted to expand. Some generations pass, and they want to cut the throat of every red coat on American soil.

In Russia, there used to be the czar. Then they overthrew him and completely changed the social structure.

And in all of these, people died by the droves.

But why are all these people who hate the situation around them IN that situation? Because they had no CHOICE but to be there. They did not consent to be born in that culture, during that time.

There are people on this planet with what most of us would consider to be truly disturbing ideas (And, for some people, all that requires is being a communist or a capitalist, heh). To say one is allowed, and the other is not, leads to some form of oppression, and possibly later conflict.

There are people who would even happily BE in the preffered situation these people desire. The many people who happily and willingly become nuns and monks, for example, shows how readily some people would cast off certain notions in exchange for others. Hell, there's people on this planet who wouldn't mind being enslaved in one fashion or another, despite the majority of us who desire freedom for all. There are people who want to only be surrounded by straight monogamous couples, and others who wouldn't mind if the threesome wedded groups all got together for weekend orgies.

So, a notion, though it's logistically impossible to accomplish:

Would there be any morality if everyone, being allowed to grow up mentally free (no brainwashing, threats, et cetera) to, say, age 18, with full knowledge of the consequences, got to choose exactly the sort of society they lived in?

Would horrific crimes be immoral, if you had willingly consented to be a likely victim of them? If you chose, say, a culture where a bullet to the head was a DESIRED way to solve conflicts, accepted by you and everyone around you?

(Obviously this doesn't work with religious teachings of absolute morality, so no need to even get in to that here)

So, any thoughts?

Interesting concept. Completely unachievable. Entirely hypothetical. Further thought into this would be a total waste of time, effort, typing ability and electricity. Sounds like a job for us, anyway.

If morality is held be be culturally-learned, as it almost certainly is, with only mild individual quirks, you'd end up with millions of seperate cultures, all very similar. And what about cross-cultural conflicts? What if the pacifist cultures are attacked by the barbarous anarchist groups?

The morality of acts in themselves would be completely unquestionable. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and all that malarky, so surely the answer to the question is "Yes, there would be morals" and "They'd all be different". No idea what would occur several years down the line. The various cultures would become increasingly different, as even though you stipulate no brain-washing it's inevitable that you pick up most of your morality from parental figures. The end result is thousands of complete irreconcilable cultures, which will inevitably destroy one another as travesties against all that is good and pure.

Oh, trust me, I know its absolutely impossible to actually DO.

I just find it an interesting thought experiment in to the nature of morality.

Moral Relativism, was the first strand on whiney liberality, as oposed to awsome sell opium to china and then kick there asses good old british liberality.

Its gay ok, some cultures are stupid.

For example dose it make it ok for the nazi's to kill political oponents and jews, becuase after all its nazi germany.

No

Stupid gay theory.

If the NAZIs have their own little supremicist island, where they note that they will do mean things to Jewish people, and a Jewish person moves there...

Remember, in REAL NAZI Germany, the Jewish people were already -born- there. They did NOT consent to that culture.

it seems to me that if you want morality and cultural stability you need to have extreme indoctrination. everyone must be on the same page. you cant be having a mixed "taliban" "nudist" culture.

the clash of different moralities would make it very difficult to pass rational laws and expect them to be obeyed by everyone. what basis would you use to decide what would be legal and illegal?

to let people be utterly "free" to choose the culture they want, without having it already exist and not be free to move to where it already does exist would seem to me to just increase discontent.

Admittedly, even my little situation creates a form of culture, a culture where you move to wherever you want to bask in your own culture and, in theory, leave other cultures alone.

Most modern cultures prefer to make their kids be just like them, besides.

If morality is held be be culturally-learned, as it almost certainly is, with only mild individual quirks, you'd end up with millions of seperate cultures, all very similar. And what about cross-cultural conflicts? What if the pacifist cultures are attacked by the barbarous anarchist groups?

Anarchists don't attack like that. You are thinking of fascists.

Hmm, I like that theory. It's certainly an interesting one... of course, the ideal sokution is impossible; but maybe we could at least make an effort towards that through relaxing immigration controls and the like? Alright, take European Communists, Whispering Legs, and Dogburg.

EC probably wants to move to a communist state. Well there aren't too many around right now, but he could certainly take a good shot at a socialized country like Sweden or the Netherlands. Maybe WL thinks gun control is the single most important criteria regarding wherer he chooses to live; so he moves to a nation where he can trundle down the street in a full-armed Challenger 2. And Dogburg might decide he wants to see if America's system is closer to his ideal than the British one, so he moves over there to find out.

It's hardly perfect, it's not going to solve the world's problems, but I think it'd be a reasonable step in the right direction. I can see few arguments against it, at least. Valid ones I mean. ("They'll take our jobs/women/Christmas trees" and "It opens the doors to terrorists" are NOT, for the record, valid.)

what we're running here is the idea of a perfect society. One where everyone agrees with each other and where there are no conflicting ideas.

This of course, is only hypothetical. Thanks to the wonderful ideal of relative morals, we all have different beliefs. The proof of lack of absolutes is within culture itself, the thing we cannot consent to. In what culture we are born in, we are raised in. Hence, we adopt the morals of that culture and tend to view people with conflicting morals as wrong.

Within the culture though, there are sub-cultures. One does have some level of choice about which sub-culture to belong to. (I.E. the "rich culture" vs. the "poor culture" or "liberal" vs. Conservative" etc....)

So, we have the hypothetical perfect society. Not happening. What we also need to account for is the fact that cultures change over time. We saw a move from the up-tight sexual repression of the 50s into the full blown fuck-fest of the late 60s and into the 70s.

I think what we are basically seeing is that no culture will ever agree with any other culture because every moral idea is fluid: there is no standard, there is no stagnation.

If that was confusing, I apologize. I'm really tired and my thought process sort of went in five directions at once.