The Moral Imperative

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Well, we have a certain bias--living in a large, complex, cosmopolitan society, we have a moral code that reflects that society, and we're going to find moral codes based on simpler, more insular societies lacking in some areas. This isn't a new phenomenon either. I think there's certainly ongoing change here, but calling it progress implies people have progressed.

Have we?

Is there a distinction between morals and morays? Is every aspect of our society part of the moral code? I hold the door open for something behind me because it is courteous, but I don't think I have a moral responsibility towards it.

(I'm not only responding to Ax, but asking the questions of the group. Ax's post just sparked my thought process.)

Also, moral progress implies that beating of wives and children was generally considered a 'good thing' rather than a necessary evil prior to this shift in perspective.

It was rooted in a religious notion for years. I venture to guess that they saw it as doing good work to help the child grow properly.

Are morals infinitely progressive? The economy certainly isn't. How limitless is progression?

[axordil]

TED--
I think teasing out differences between morals and mores is tricky. Sometimes arbitrary rules that seem fall short of being morals carry with them the last vestiges of a previous order, in a diluted form. Witness the forks at a formal dinner, arranged just so: the subtext is one of "if you don't know which to use, you are not from a class that belongs in this setting. You are wrong." Contrast rules which are in place for purely functional reasons, because some rule has to be in place: the side of the road you drive on, the color and arrangement of traffic signals. It's hard to make an argument that driving on the left is more or less moral than driving on the right.

[Inanna]

For me, this is probably why the debate on gay marriage is interesting. You have some people who claim it is immoral while you have others who say it is moral to allow gays the same rights as others. There is a lack of respect and love in this issue that forbids a moral resolution to the issue that is fair, and based on respect for all. Until that is achieved I do not think we'll see a fair or moral result on this issue and the debate will continue. We'll have what we have now, laws that forbid this because the majority claims it is immoral and thus illegal to allow. I think down the road gays will be allowed to marry like anyone else, but like The Shire, change comes slow in this country and I think it will be when my children are middle aged and I am either elderly or gone.

AJ, you beat me to it. Your discussion on morality leading to legal actions is head-on, and this example is a very good one. Because it's happening now. And, well, it is equally true that if some of the folks against gay marriage live with homosexuals, a lot of the irrationality will disappear. Right now, the entire homosexual community is a "thing" for the opposers.

Which brings me to the thought that it is easier to consider people as things when you believe those people are not like you.

Edit: corrected for mistakenly calling AJ, Ax. Thanks V

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Ax, you beat me to it.

Ax, or AJ?

[axordil]

I agree generally with the idea, but it was AJ.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Witness the forks at a formal dinner, arranged just so: the subtext is one of "if you don't know which to use, you are not from a class that belongs in this setting. You are wrong."

Are you immoral? Is wrong equivalent with immoral?

[Frelga]

Interesting question. I think the answer is no. In my mind, "wrong" is absolute, like gravity. "Moral" is more situational, dependent on the opinion of your peer group.

[yovargas]

Is wrong equivalent with immoral?

If by "wrong" you mean "incorrect" than of course not!

[axordil]

Allow me to rephrase: "Your lack of knowledge of arbitrary rules maintained by the upper class demonstrates you are intruding on a situation you do not belong in. You are trespassing. You are an intruder." I would argue that's the point where etiquette butts up against morality--when it's a thinly disguised means of enforcement.

I can only do so much polishing during conference calls.

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Ax, I perfectly understood. I was trying to get at the next logical question from your thoughts.

Is there an element of morality (aside from enforcement of social order) in etiquette and social taboos? Morality seems to be reserved for more weighty matters than which fork do I use, but ax's point is very good: if you don't know which fork, you are an intruder.

[axordil]

I would say there can be, if we slide along the spectrum from things like forks to things like the concept of honor/face/dignity/reputation, and what is acceptable in an effort to maintain it. This isn't as alien a concept to Western cultures as one might think at first glance, although it's not as front and center. Consider the legal notion of "fighting words." On one level they're designed to incite, but a deeper level, they're an assault on the dignity of the target. For that matter, the concepts of libel and slander are based on the idea that one's reputation can be damaged, and that one has a right to take redress against that damage.

We should also bear in mind duels over such issues--whether with swords, pistols at dawn, or six-guns--are not so distant a memory.

[Túrin Turambar]

I think a better example is the way that we all, by convention, drive on one side of the road in each country. Is it 'better' to drive on the left than the right or visa-versa? No. But it's dangerous (and therefore, I would say, immoral) to decide to drive on the left in a country where everyone drives on the right (yeah, this has been on my mind these past five months).

The forks at a formal dinner I see as being more a matter of convention - you always know to start with the left-most fork, so no matter what courses you're served you'll have the right cutlery. I think it's mainly for convenience and to avoid confusion, and drawing a class distinction is more of a side-affect.

[Primula Baggins]

You're well-grounded in that kind of etiquette, L_M, presumably because it interests you. But there are plenty of people who've never had occasion or opportunity to learn the leftmost fork rule. And I know (from my extensive reading of high-end British murder mysteries set in the 1920s and 1930s ) that there were some elaborate codes of upper-class speech and dress and behavior that it was almost impossible for someone not born to them to successfully crack. The fork thing is one of the easier ones, but it's one of many. It seems to me that all these shibboleths existed for the convenience of those who knew them, as an easy way to mark out anyone who wasn't quite quite.

[narya]

I think a better example is the way that we all, by convention, drive on one side of the road in each country. Is it 'better' to drive on the left than the right or visa-versa? No. But it's dangerous (and therefore, I would say, immoral) to decide to drive on the left in a country where everyone drives on the right (yeah, this has been on my mind these past five months).

Driving the right way ( ) is not a convention, it is a traffic law. You are licensed to drive on public streets with the promise that you will follow all the laws governing use of those streets. Traffic laws are the kind of laws that makes living with other people more predictable and safe. Driving down the wrong side of the road out in the middle of no where or going through a red light at 3 AM with no one in sight, is not inherently immoral (if we could figure out what "immoral" means). Driving down the wrong side of the road or running a red light during rush hour, however, is threatening others with bodily harm, and definitely immoral.

Similarly, parking meters and 2-hour parking limit rules are set in place to encourage turnover and new customer access. Going 10 minutes over the 2 hour limit is not particularly immoral, but the collective results of many people flouting the law (such as shop workers parking in front of their own stores and feeding the meter every two hours) will hurt commerce in general, and the families that depend on it, in a small way. So yes, even letting the parking meter expire is a tiny bit immoral. (Hey, I'm a transportation engineer, this is near and dear to my heart.)

Now to change the subject, consider this: deliberately breaking a law is generally thought of as being immoral, unless it is a bad law and you are practicing civil disobedience like Ghandi. Then people can't agree if you are moral or immoral. Or both.

[axordil]

What Prim said. Some conventions are less innocent in origin/intent/effect than others.

[MithLuin]

I would fall back on a philosophical tenet by.... hold your breath.... PTerry's Granny Weatherwax (yes, go ahead, laugh or smirk) - Wrong actions/evil arise(s) from considering people as things

Beat me to it.

I agree with this as well, though I should point out the Granny Weatherwax was hardly the first or only person to say this . The moment you cross over from viewing someone as a person, a subject who makes their own choices and has thoughts/desires/rights/wishes/what-have-you, to being an object, which thus exists in this world for your own use and manipulation...you've broken the most fundamental moral law. You have a bad heart .

Following laws and conventions comes from recognizing other people as people, ultimately. As long as that's the source of it, we should continue to obey/follow. We give up our own freedom to 'do whatever we want' for the sake of the common good of society - and this is a moral choice (though it can be a very minor one, depending on the situation). When these laws or conventions become more sinister (aimed at using and manipulating people rather than treating them with dignity and respect), then it is probably time for them to go.

How one goes about changing laws and customs is another matter entirely, but the desire to do so grows out of the moral imperative to recognize the humanity of person, and therefore not to treat them as objects (things).

[TheEllipticalDisillusion]

Now to change the subject, consider this: deliberately breaking a law is generally thought of as being immoral, unless it is a bad law and you are practicing civil disobedience like Ghandi. Then people can't agree if you are moral or immoral. Or both.

I think that this train of thought is an incorrect assumption that legal = moral. Is it moral, immoral or amoral to follow the laws of man regardless of what those laws are in place for? Parking meters is a good example. It is illegal to park over the time limit, but is it really immoral, even considering the overall effect such behavior might have on commerce? Does commerce fall into the world of morals?

I think the fork has more moral implications than driving on whichever side of the road. Consider the prince and the pauper, or other stories of poor people rising up somehow to become part of the rich. They are usually looked down upon, or seen as a game like in the moves The Toy or Trading Places. Driving on whichever side of the road is the convention of which side your country has decided it would rather use. Ultimately, it doesn't matter which side as long as everyone agrees.

[MithLuin]

I think if you ferret out root causes, they tend to come down to issues of respecting other people as...people - who are people beyond what they can do to and for us. Choosing to ignore that causes all sorts of problems, and yes...tends to result in immoral actions.

You wouldn't believe how many mothers there were on the first message board I ever belonged to, who beat their children regularly because they didn't want to "spare the rod and spoil the child". They honestly thought they were doing the right, moral, loving, respectful thing to their kids. They were not motivated by the same thing as the parent who comes home drunk and beats kids for being too loud. But it was probably just as damaging to the kids.

People who employ corporal punishment because they love their kids and want to give them clear consequences for bad actions are doing something very different from parents who come home drunk and beat their kids because they are noisy. The parents who are attempting to discipline their children are not out-of-control angry when they do it, and (trust me) that makes a difference. If the punishment is severe enough to leave scars or other more permanent marks, obviously we're not talking about the same thing.

Hey, plenty of parents discipline their kids without smacking them, so I'm not saying that's necessary by any means. Depends on the kid and the parent and other situations (some kids have more that can be taken away than others). I'm just saying that a kid who gets a spanking as a clear consequence for what they have done recognizes the punishment as punishment. A kid who gets beaten because of the adult's issues thinks they must have done something wrong to make Mommy or Daddy angry, but is very confused as to what that might have been. Very different result. I probably don't have to point out that someone who is drunk is less likely to moderate their behavior, thus resulting in more severe beatings that would never be appropriate.

But the fact remains that in our society, it is illegal to beat your kid, in a way that would involve a trip to the hospital or that sort of thing. I seriously doubt that many of those parents at that messageboard were...doing anything like that. They were (hopefully) just smacking their kids when they acted up. Certainly that's something that some people would not want to do, but it's not the same thing, either.

And on that note, St. Anselm of Bec wrote a letter to some monks chastising them for beating students regularly. In the 11th century. Awareness that it is wrong to beat kids is not strictly a modern phenomena, though you could argue that the sentiment is more widespread now.

[Túrin Turambar]

You're well-grounded in that kind of etiquette, L_M, presumably because it interests you. But there are plenty of people who've never had occasion or opportunity to learn the leftmost fork rule. And I know (from my extensive reading of high-end British murder mysteries set in the 1920s and 1930s ) that there were some elaborate codes of upper-class speech and dress and behavior that it was almost impossible for someone not born to them to successfully crack. The fork thing is one of the easier ones, but it's one of many. It seems to me that all these shibboleths existed for the convenience of those who knew them, as an easy way to mark out anyone who wasn't quite quite.

That is true (and I also have picked these things up in a large part from interwar British crime novels ), but I just wanted to illustrate that we can make something conventional and require people to do it because the alternative is worse. It isn't immoral to drive on the left per se, but it is to do so somewhere like China or France where everyone drives on the right by law.

[narya]

We give up our own freedom to 'do whatever we want' for the sake of the common good of society - and this is a moral choice (though it can be a very minor one, depending on the situation).

I think this is the crux of it. There is a continuum between absolute freedom and absolute security. In order to feel the security of living in a predictable, safe world, we all have to collectively agree to give up some of our freedoms. This is an expediency. Not sure if the things we all agree not to do are "bad" or "evil" per se, just not that good for our collective security, as we envision it.