Modern morality

[Tonington]

Certainly, if one admitted to being moral today, what exactly would he be saying?

That's kind of my point. Have we reached a plateau, with some groups having moved beyond what is morally acceptable to others?

I don't see the impact of the Enlightenment, or at least the fundamental ideals debatable at all. Call the shift whatever we might, but the notions of a morality as passed down from a deity, specifically in our case Christianity, is what I would call debatable. Many different faiths have outlined what is and what is not acceptable, and many of them still hold true today. As time has progressed, we have realized that not all of the practices once deemed acceptable by a moral authority hold true today. Is it not more likely that our morals were inherent to a functioning society and thus requisite of any creed?

Is it simple coincidence that the Reformation overlaps the scientific revolution, which in turn overlaps with the beginning of the Enlightenment?

 

[Niflmir]

What is morality to begin with? To be considered moral a person must choose the right action consistently, without being told what to do. An automaton is not really moral. So unlike many things, objective morality cannot exist if it cannot be observed, because if there is no way to know what the right action is then you cannot be obliged to do it. A sentient being cannot create an objective morality, since they could simply choose to change it. If we are not born with the objective morality implicit in us, then we can never learn it since we would have no way of judging it as "more right" than another morality given that we don't know right from wrong. If objective morality is nothing more than acting instinctually, many murders should be considered morally acceptable.

That is the basis of moral relativity. Ethics nowadays choose an objective principle on which to base ethical theories and moves on from there. A good and modern principal is the elimination of "unnecessary" suffering (notice that the moral ambiguity is simply shuffled into the word unnecessary). Regardless of the fact that there are more regulations now then in the past, there is far less suffering now than in the past. There are less cases of hunger, diseases have been fought often in ways people at the time thought immoral, crime rates are decreasing. Yet somehow, I am supposed to believe that this is because people are more immoral today when these things came about directly from the abandonment of the old moral principles? If that is the case then someone has a lot of explaining to do.

 

[tamarin]

"crime rates are decreasing. Yet somehow, I am supposed to believe that this is because people are more immoral today..."

Say what? Crime rates aren't decreasing. Certainly, official numbers are, in key areas like juvenile crime, where figures tend to bloat quickly. Canada with the Youth Criminal Justice Act has put emphasis on redirecting as much youth criminal activity out of its clogged arteries as is possiblbe. Police officials who insist youth criminals be processed ( and recorded for stats, of course) must meet paperwork hurdles and the jaundiced eye of their superiors. All the anecdotal says youth crime is soaring. But as long as the stats can be suppressed through alternative management strategies the feel-good crowd gets its way.
Numbers have become big business. Massaging gateways for obesity, diabetes and heart disease have resulted in our much ballyhooed "epidemics." Beware those in charge of deciding what gets recorded and what doesn't.
Maybe, a better way to measure our justice system and what's happening there might be police budgets. If crime is falling, as you say, then those budgets must be falling too. Who would pay for redundancy?

 

[Libra Girl]

While the social contract has been perverted, the rights we give up to the government for some measure of social order, the governing system itself has been perverted to a state of help your friends, political gains, very much not in the civilians best interests. That is furthered by a media that refuses to report objectively, so that we must wade through the muck to find some hint of truth.

As usual an interesting and well thought out post...

 

[Niflmir]

"crime rates are decreasing. Yet somehow, I am supposed to believe that this is because people are more immoral today..."

Say what? Crime rates aren't decreasing. Certainly, official numbers are, in key areas like juvenile crime, where figures tend to bloat quickly. Canada with the Youth Criminal Justice Act has put emphasis on redirecting as much youth criminal activity out of its clogged arteries as is possiblbe. Police officials who insist youth criminals be processed ( and recorded for stats, of course) must meet paperwork hurdles and the jaundiced eye of their superiors. All the anecdotal says youth crime is soaring. But as long as the stats can be suppressed through alternative management strategies the feel-good crowd gets its way.
Numbers have become big business. Massaging gateways for obesity, diabetes and heart disease have resulted in our much ballyhooed "epidemics." Beware those in charge of deciding what gets recorded and what doesn't.
Maybe, a better way to measure our justice system and what's happening there might be police budgets. If crime is falling, as you say, then those budgets must be falling too. Who would pay for redundancy?

Facts are facts Tamarin, whether or not you or I accept them. One can't just disregard evidence because it disagrees with what one previously believed. Anyone is entitled to an unfounded opinion but they must acknowledge that the actual evidence might support the opposite conclusion. The crime rates are based on actual reported crimes, not necessarily on convictions. If this were not the case your objections would be accurate. It is the job of actuaries to know the nuances of their data, they look out for these things. The anecdotal evidence has increased as the ability to learn of events has increased. The media ensure that every violent crime is reported and so give the illusion of a higher crime rate. Measuring the budget would be terrible for you and I, since we would have to account for the increase in paperwork over those years, the increase in new laws, increases in the budget due to inflation, training for new recruits as the baby boomers leave and way too many other factors. Furthermore, while the crime rate may be low, a constant police presence might be necessary to keep it that way, which surely wouldn't imply a lower budget.

Regardless, all of that is highly irrelevent to the main point. Even if the crime rate was constant, we would be better to view the non-offenders if we want a good guage of moral behavior. Back in the early twentieth century I might have been an upstanding citizen in every regard, yet I would never hear anyone suggest my wife should be allowed to vote, would turn over any homosexuals in the neighbourhood over to the police for a quick jaunt to the slammer as well as any woman who thought she could prance around topless like a man, would think that whatever they did to animals to make my wife's cosmetics was fine, and would have other now seemingly barbaric views and people would still consider me a morally sound example for the community. Furthermore, one can only imagine the number of innocent people killed because of false convictions for murder until 1976! The death of one innocent in the name of the law unequivocably extinguishes the flame of justice, proof beyond any doubt is impossible in law and surely "We didn't think his excuse was reasonable," is a horrible justification for killing someone.

In short, look to who we would consider as moral citizens by today's standards and compare to the moral citizens using the standards of the past. I think we certainly produce citizens of a much superior caliber. I only wish I could do justice to Tonington's opening statement.

 

[MikeyDB]

"There is no morality there is only popular opinion.": Geofry Goines.
"Morality" is human preference for a particular condition/experience of existence. When human beings attempt to define a structure of "right" / "wrong", that definition is predicated on what is satisfactory to those elements of the social structure that have the means and willingness to effect change....with or without acknowledgement of any "standard" of morality that's been dictated and either embraced or rejected by the power elite of prior agents in earlier times. There is no objective proof/evidence or substantiation for any particular "moral code". As Dawkins would suggest, our genetic development to a significant degree predetermines some of our basic notions regarding "right" and "wrong". Phenotypic plasticity as discussed in the work of Baldwin (Baldwin Effect) is the vehicle among complex multi-celled creatures that both propagates and preserves any particular framework of both ethics and morals. Religion has forced and invited subscription to various moral and ethical codes...since the earliest days of humankind when there was a nearly total absence of scientific inquiry and structure of protocols adequate to the task of identifying and defining particular cause effect relationships that through 'default' became the foundation for organized religion.
Part of the reason why religion has failed to achieve "whole-cloth" change ..effective long-term change in the ideology of the huaman being is because the nature of organization as adopted by humankind to his evolutionary adjustments to a hostile planet has subsumed individual personal dynamics within the effort with the result being a hypocrisy loosed upon the world by a situational morality. Mankind must lose himself ...to find himself.
Although we've practiced great wars and all the machinations that have been passionately and fervantly embraced...religion and "believer-constructs"....greed, genuflection and alms paid to the victor in response to imperialism of all kinds, our systems and code of "morality" haven't worked. We have evolved in many respects to adopt an amoral...perspective on existence....that won't work either.

 

[MikeyDB]

Well there you go...

I had forgotten this thread entirely....

Barbara Frum's little boy David worked as a speechwriter for George Bush. David wrote a speech delivered in Cincinnati by the President regarding the conflicts and turmoil brewing and boiling throughout the Middle East (with special emphasis of course on Iraq) and the "urgent necessity" to bomb the beejeepers out of men women and children there...to secure world peace. Davey used the term "crusade" to characterize the "value(s)-conflict" between the United States and Iraq. Although it's been some time since I reviewed that speech, the phrase "crusade" was I believe dropped from the delivered version...

This issue of "values"..played a significant role in this early attempt by Bush to rationalize and legitimize the extermination of (approx..) 500,000 Iraqi people as effect of the various economic embargoes and sanctions against Iraq. Before of course the threat of enormous weapons of mass destruction, and the obscurity surrounding UNSCOM inspections being denied full access and Iraq failing to make complete disclosure of its weapons program necessitated armed invasion.

While our friend George Bush is a good practicing Christian, and with a spectrum of helping hands like Davey Frum and religious advisers available...this good gentleman could make an argument for murdering children in their beds as they slept....

Wait a minute that's not fair!.....

Saddam Hussein was a monster who killed thousands and ruled Iraq with an iron fist...He (Saddam Husein had little compunction about killing Kurds or anyone else for that matter)...perfect justification for slaughtering thousands more....?

We are confronted with the ambiguity of "modern morality", as means to justify some "end", demonizing the actions and behaviors of many rogues over the years (WWI, WWII, slaughter of the North American plains indians, Conquistadors and fortune hunters exterminating millions is South and Central America...) and one could understandably become confused about how one can determine "right-thinking" and "right-behavior" in the context of "morality" that permits descriminating the actions of Saddam Hussein as remarably more "evil" or "wrong" than the prelude and execution of the American invasion of Iraq.

The American ethos suggests that "oppressive regimes" un-friendly to coercion and manipulation by the United States and Britain...when it comes to controlling arms proliferation and natural resources (petroleum) ought best be characterized as outgrowths of religious fundamentalism gone awry...

The assumption (proposition) that the "right-minded-ness" accompanying subscription to Christianity and "western values" is a priori the greater "good". One could wonder or at least consider how this same rationale translates into the bloody regimes established financed and militarily supported by the United States in various locations around the world....

These are of course dynamics and notions well beyond the capacity and thinking of your humble scribe, and better left to the greater minds of Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powel, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and of course the beacon of "right-thinking"...George Bush.

But let's explore the notion of "morality" and I'd like to focus my attention as the dialogue develops to the phenomenon of "morality" in the context of post-modernism.

Anyone want to get the ball rolling?

 

[MikeyDB]

Spanking kids...euthanasia...contraception...genetics...moral decay and the hobgoblins of post-modernity...

Is there any interest in looking at these dynamics?

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

MOVED FROM OTHER THREAD I FORGOT TITLE OF....lol


Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeyDB
The issue of spanking children...is it abuse or is it a necessity stemming out of the realization that children (according to Piget and others) don't yet enjoy the facility to internalize instructions before age 7... even when those instructions are intended as means to securing the child's safety and reinforcing discipline..to later of course merge into the capacity for self-discipline...


first off yeah I like this guy too Robin, said so in the pot thread.

Now as per spanking kids.
Never allow your judgement of children not comprehending you drop to the level of violence is a solution!!! please I beg of you.

children even if mentally challenged are not farm animals to be beaten. Even farm animals should not be prodded but that is another thread.

Parents lacking in skill resort to violence to teach or demand their will be done.
It teaches violence as an answer when you do not get your own way as one grows up.
It desensitzes the child as well.....

It's never an option.

please do not condone this sort of really low economic scale ignorant toally out of date misuse of parenting skills.

 

[triedit]

What complicates the spanking issue is the degree. I don't approve of beating a child (although Ive been guilty of it out of my own lack of control and my childs' obstinance). I do, however, think that slapping hands and swatting butts serves a good purpose for a short period of time. Roughly 6mos to 3 years old. During that time children are not in the least bit reasonable and sometimes it takes a twinge to get thier full attention or to put an immediate stop to a behavior. The difference is twofold. First, the motivation. If the desire truly is to teach and protect the child rather than revenge or frustration or anger, then to me that's a moral plus. Secondly, if the actual act is once--one slap on a hand or one slap on a butt-then it should not be considered spanking. And certainly if an object besides an open palm is used, THAT is wrong.

So basically Im saying that my morals are that if I swat my 2 year old on the butt once with an open hand to get him to not touch something breakable that he's already been told not to touch, Im ok with that.

I will fully admit to breaking my own moral code. I think most of us, as parents, have done so. Its something Im not proud of and have to combat from time to time. Fortunately, the urge doesnt happen often.

 

[MikeyDB]

It's difficult to "know"...what's right and what's wrong...especially in these times of human evolution.

Is there a place for moral ideation in every paradigm? Is there a component of moralistic imperative functioning throughout modernity?

We have sexual taboos that inform us that gender orientation (same sex marriage) is morally wrong..and we have grave concerns with euthanasia...(See Terri Shaivo...probably have the spelling wrong..) we have unrelenting violence throughout media and we have child-gunmen--children-gangsters killing their schoolmates...

To what degree (if any) does our perspectives and attitudes regarding moral "virtue" direct and influence modern media and behaviour in the context of a dramatically evolving world?

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

DocDred

I've watched as youngsters...(improperly supervised mind you) got themselves into potentially dangerous situations. Running into traffic to retrieve a ball or object wisked into harms way by happenstance..the breeze or simply by accident. A four year old can't make the connection between cause and effect...can't anticipate danger and are sublimely unaware of the possibility of calamity...

Am I suggesting that you beat your child with a stick? No indeed. What I am suggesting is that we've over-reacted to the wrong thing.

Why and how is a child placed in a situation like that? Sometimes yes it's an accident....sometimes it's poor supervision....our focus needs to be on preventing these kinds of situations. That said, a child simply doesn't have the cognitive ability to internalize the gravity of many instances of potential harm. I don't see anything wrong with a firm..open hand...smack on the butt that emphasizes that the word "no" and the limits imposed on behavior are important. I've worked with families and abused children for a very long time...

I'm sickened that adult human beings carry sufficient baggage (emotional) around with them as part of their coping skills that they lack the impulse controls necessary to be able to differentiate between appropriate discipline and abuse...

I would agree that if you aren't able to make that differentiation then you should avoid being the instrument of discipline.

Both you and Triedit make a great argument for allowing the use of violent behaivour as a means of discipline. And you temper it with not useing the belt or cane.
We are talking about violence being used though , right.
You both agree that this is a violent act here. And the amount of pain imflicated upon the victim is being justifyed, not to mention the violence starts for Triedit at age 6 months before the child is even walking????

 

[triedit]

I don't consider a swat violent behavior. I consider it attention getting. And even children at 6 months can be reaching for things.

Pain can be a natural and logical consequence. Lets say the toddler repeatedly reaches for a lit candle, safely just out of her reach (hopefully). She reaches, has been held back, reaches, has been held back, and finally gets to the point where it's obvious she's not getting a clue. Im all for smacking her hand. If that makes me a bad parent so be it.

 

[MikeyDB]

DocDred

Yes, violence is what it is....

And I understand your position and would welcome an alternative suggestion. How does the violence of corporal discipline directed toward children differ from the decisions taken by an informed and enlightened society to take the life of a human being convicted of murder..or whatever other reasons some states or nations declare as appropriate for the death penalty?

Understand first of all that I realize these two instances are far enough apart to be regarded as unrelated, but if we can agree that the foundation of our principles of law and justice reflect the moral current of our times...

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

DocDred

Yes, violence is what it is....

And I understand your position and would welcome an alternative suggestion. How does the violence of corporal discipline directed toward children differ from the decisions taken by an informed and enlightened society to take the life of a human being convicted of murder..or whatever other reasons some states or nations declare as appropriate for the death penalty?

Understand first of all that I realize these two instances are far enough apart to be regarded as unrelated, but if we can agree that the foundation of our principles of law and justice reflect the moral current of our times...

I admit it's a leap from slapping children to murdering murders, where i live, Canada both are deemed ilegal.

Prolly for a reason.

I would argue that desensitizing children to violent behaivour with violent behaivour is part of that road to turn one into a murder, but thats another huge leap. But there is a point to be made here.

 

[triedit]

I would argue that desensitizing children to violent behaivour with violent behaivour is part of that road to turn one into a murder,

Absolutely. But the reverse is also true. If children are not given consequences that get thier attention and teach them harm may come from an act, then they are ALSO more prone to commit crime...

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

Absolutely. But the reverse is also true. If children are not given consequences that get thier attention and teach them harm may come from an act, then they are ALSO more prone to commit crime...

Absolutly! But wait a sec here , i never entered the reverse side as you put it, that being implying no discipline...

this the modern day morality topic. surely we can come up with a little more sophistication than violence to teach our children with.

 

[Dreadful Nonsense]

you know dogs know their masters voice. A dog knows when their master is happy, or unhappy with their actions.
Hence the rolled up newspaper is banned from all modern day dog discipline techniques....
Ok thats my point.

 

[MikeyDB]

Does our consumerist ethos teach children personal responsibility? Do we regard the fundamental rights of women and children on the same plane as we're prepared to evaluate white-collar crime? Is Johnny being a "bad-boy" when he steals something...or is he acting on an internalized situational morality that he see's happenning all around him?

What models from the adult community/world would anyone think appropriate as methodologies or strategies in raising children? Do we expect one thing from our children but willingly accept that same negative "wrong" behaviour when Conrad Black or Ken Lay or George Bush or ...

Aren't we expecting our children to live a double-standard?

 

[IdRatherBeSkiing]

you know dogs know their masters voice. A dog knows when their master is happy, or unhappy with their actions.
Hence the rolled up newspaper is banned from all modern day dog discipline techniques....
Ok thats my point.

Kids are not dogs. They do not respond or act in simular manners when presented with authority. I have never had my dog question why the walk is ending or ask for 2 more minutes. I have never had my dog have a temper tantrum because he is told to sit. When I tell my dog to come, he comes.