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Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

qz.com

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Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#71

Post by clock_tower »

strayptr wrote: post #66
nickbauman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is missing the forest for the trees. It assumes morality is relative. Morality is the product of the intersection of narrative and mythology on a group. Morality is the story a particular group (or civilization) is enacting: the program they're executing. All groups hold myths. Even atheist groups hold myths. They just think their myths are just "the world" or "reality" or "how we got here". Civilizations…

Civilizations that have (generally) destructive, punitive, insular, judging, self-righteous, and violent myths don't. This seems to be the opposite of history. Until recently, violence was one of the only ways for any civilization to persist. The advent of nuclear weapons changed that somewhat (but not if civilizations begin to use them). And most of the myths of a civilization seem to be a byproduct of their actions…

Despite complaining about the Quakers below, I'd have to disagree here, too. It's possible to be too peaceful, but it's also possible -- and very easy and common -- to be too violent.

Being warlike enough to defend your society is one thing; being warlike enough to conquer neighbors who hate you, or to throw away lives and wealth in pursuit of glory, is something else. Sparta, Assyria, and the Aztec Empire didn't turn out so well, after all...

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#72

Post by clock_tower »

nebopolis wrote: post #70
clock_tower wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What annoys me about the Quakers isn't quite what you'd thought; it's that the Quakers preached that no one should be violent (up to and including preaching peaceful resistance against military invaders), and then they turned around and practiced violence. It's like if Martin Luther King had sponsored terrorism. If you're going to preach pacifism to others, you should be pacifist at home. As it is, the Quakers feel l…

Do you have any citations to say that Quakers were particularly disposed to capitol punishment during the colonial era? While people of their time what I've been able to find indicates the opposite: [Who Should Die?: The Evolution of Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania, 1681-1794]( http://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2390&... ) The above seems to show that Quakers resisted the use of capitol punishm…

I don't know if they used capital punishment or not, and it sounds like they didn't; but _Albion's Seed_ talks of the Quakers using flogging, stocks, and the like in early Pennsylvania.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#73

Post by clock_tower »

lotharbot wrote: post #64
Natsu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, any ideal which is unwilling to do this is likely to die out when those who are not opposed to force use force against them.

the Anabaptist tradition has lasted about 5 centuries, not by using force, but by being willing to inspire others by facing death courageously (when persecution is targeted and limited), or by fleeing en masse (when persecution is structural and absolute).

Good point. The Yazidis have done much the same in the Middle East; and I imagine the Jains must do something similar. Christianity before Constantine is probably also an example.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#74

Post by clock_tower »

knughit wrote: post #57
clock_tower wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you justified in using force against them? Annoyingly enough, the Quakers -- despite being doctrinaire pacifists in all other areas -- answered this question with a resounding "yes". Flogging, stocks, and various other brutalities (I don't remember if they used capital punishment, but I think they did) were routine in colonial Pennsylvania...

Do you have citations for your libelous claim?

_Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America_. The book has a whole chapter on "Quaker Order Ways," complete with stocks and flogging.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#75

Post by rcthompson »

I have to wonder whether morality is the motivation for violence, or just the rationalization of an act that was actually motivated by something else. This would probably be really hard to distinguish, since all we have to go on is why people said they did things, which could just as easily be their true motivation or their post-hoc rationalization.

If two people are stranded on a desert island with only enough food for one person, one of them is going to die one way or another, and they're probably not going to wait and see who starves first. But when the lone survivor is finally rescued, there's a pretty good chance they'll have convinced themselves that the other one deserved what they got. That doesn't make it an act of morally justified violence. (Yes, this is an obviously idealized and unrealistic scenario, but you get the point.)

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#76

Post by danharaj »

michael_fine wrote: post #24
chroma wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also not sure what sort of violence the author would classify as not motivated by morality. From the article: > ISIL members believe they are morally justified and obligated to commit acts of terror, while US soldiers accept some loss of civilian lives to achieve the deaths of those terrorists. In all of these scenarios, the violent act is perceived by the perpetrator as virtuous. In the case of ISIS, the author…

Well, pure self-interest would probably fall outside of morality, but one could make an argument that many conscriped ISIS fighters, US soldiers, and perhaps US leaders are acting out of self-interest.

Self-interest is not a well defined concept. The notion of self is not somehow objective or immutable. Describing someone's self-interest is just another framework for describing the same underlying system that morality and all that is trying to describe. There is a bit of circularity when one tries to make self-interest an essential feature of brains:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_egoism#Circulari...

In cases like extreme nationalism, the zealot has essentialized the nation-state into their identity and is thus acting in their 'self-interest'. If one defines self-interest as interest in the health and reproduction of the body, then humans are emphatically not drive solely by self-interest.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#77

Post by pekk »

russnewcomer wrote: post #45
mgmeyers wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of their righteousness I like that. This idea is also present in Buddhism, though they take it a step further and say that all suffering (everything from external violence to internal dissatisfaction with life) is caused by some form of judgment. They say the same thing that you mentioned above: violence is caused by the judgment, "I am right,…

I'm not sure that I expressed myself the best above based on your response, but partly that's because of the difficulty in discussing topics like this across religious traditions. I would disagree that violence is caused by the judgement, 'you are right, I am wrong'. I think that violence is ultimately caused by sin, vis a vis Augustinian total depravity. But the justification for violence, often among Christians, is…

Where "sin" means essentially not being Christian enough, I am skeptical that the correct diagnosis for violence is "sin" when people who identify as Christian do not seem especially less likely to commit violence than people who identify as adhering to some other worldview with moral entailments. Frankly, if you want everyone else to believe that Christians are less violent than people of other religions, you have to bring data rather than just saying that "sin" (non-Christianness) is the cause.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#78

Post by Uhhrrr »

Is there a peer reviewed paper showing their findings? The author is an academic who says he has studied this, but there is no link to such a paper.

I would also note that police usually investigate people who knew the victim, rather than people who were morally opposed to them. But I don't have a peer reviewed study either.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#79

Post by kej »

wavefunction wrote: post #25
kej wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna guess that PhDs working on non-profit public domain cancer research probably don't overlap all that much with the taxation-is-theft crowd.

Which part is supposed to convince me otherwise? The PhD? Non-profit public domain cancer research? There's nothing inherent in either of those personal qualities to suggest such. I have never heard anyone refer to theft as "redistributing wealth" without corresponding usages of "taxation = theft."

I just meant that working in the non-profit sector and working on public domain research generally coincide with wanting to benefit society at the expense of your own bank account, whereas the taxes are theft people would usually preserve their own bank account at the expense of society.

Re: Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

#80

Post by nebopolis »

clock_tower wrote: post #72
nebopolis wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any citations to say that Quakers were particularly disposed to capitol punishment during the colonial era? While people of their time what I've been able to find indicates the opposite: [Who Should Die?: The Evolution of Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania, 1681-1794]( http://preserve.lehigh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2390&... ) The above seems to show that Quakers resisted the use of capitol punishm…

I don't know if they used capital punishment or not, and it sounds like they didn't; but _Albion's Seed_ talks of the Quakers using flogging, stocks, and the like in early Pennsylvania.

This would not surprise me - the colonial penal code was derived as far as I can tell from the English penal code, although less harsh. It is possible to simultaneously be much less harsh than the contemporary norms and still be abhorrent from a modern viewpoint. A more interesting comparison would be to contrast the usage of corporal punishment in early Pennsylvania versus other nearby colonies.
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