101–110 of 338 posts
I find that the most anti-intellectualism, cheap-shot emotional abuse, and stereotyping on the Internet is motivated by moral sentiments through online pseudo "activists" who are really working out their anger and self-esteem issues under the supposed imprimatur of one cause or another. This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue. Att…
I believe the author's hypothesis is probably correct. It seems the only way to avoid the "well my case is different; violence is justified in this situation because..."-bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". It's the only way you can be sure that you're not falling into the same biases that our "enemies" have fallen into. The more I learn about cognitive biases, the more I t…
> -bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". I haven't read it, to be honest, but that's what Kant was saying in his "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophic... ). I'd say that even though we're not there yet, we have been getting closer and closer to that ideal in the last 200 years, with the well-known hiccups alo…
Nice nickname btw. Is it from Captain Grant's Children?
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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…
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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 tur…
In the case of the Aztecs, they quite arguably happened to run into someone even more destructive, punitive, insular, judging, self-righteous, and violent then they were.
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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 t…
"sin" in Christian theology is disobedience (and therefore rebellion) against God. Defining it as "not being Christian enough" is problematic for at least two reasons:
1. If people self-identify as Christian, how do we identify the liars and the self-deluded?
2. If we can't trust people to identify themselves properly, how do we identify each other as Christians? What is the standard?
The Bible actually says that we can know Christians by how well they follow the commandments of Christ (a). Among the commandments of Christ is the commandment to be at peace with each other; we are supposed to reconcile with each other even before we perform (therefore insincere) religious rituals (b).
...the Bible doesn't say that "sin" is the cause of violence since violence (and hate generally) is itself sin. Instead, Paul teaches that sin, including murder, is a result of rejecting God for other things (c).
So given all that, it's tautological from Biblical principles that violent people are not followers of Christ. In fact, the Bible is full of warnings about people who claim to be Christian and are actually false teachers. It's actually where the "wolf in sheep's clothing" metaphor comes from.
(a) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+John+2%3A4-5&...
(b) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+5%3A21-...
(c) https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+1%3A28-3...
When I was a theatre student a thousand years ago my teachers used to say every character you play feels like they have the gods on their side. Bad guys (with the possible exception of Iago) generally don't go around thinking "today I'm going to be particularly evil". They think what they are doing is right and will make the world better in some way. That is the challenge with moral relativism, people are very good a…
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> 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...
Quaker here. I can't speak for Pennsylvanian quakers two centuries ago, but I'm very surprised to hear about stocks and flogging in a Quaker context. To be clear, Quakers renounce all violence, including against those who perpetrate it. The central tenet of our faith is that there is that of god in every person, so it follows directly that violence against any person is violence against god, and therefore unacceptabl…
My reference for colonial Pennsylvania is _Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America_, by David Hackett Fisher. Pennsylvania was a remarkable place, with a lot of very impressive accomplishments. Fisher is full of praise for their Old World-quality infrastructure, much of which is still in use today; he also points out their peaceful coexistence with the American Indians, their roughly equal rights for women, and their rehabilitative prisons, concern for animal welfare, and interest in vegetarianism. But there's also how they refused to bear arms and expected the British military to protect them -- and how they enforced sumptuary laws and the like with corporal punishments, and drove off the Scotch-Irish as being just this side of subhuman.
Admittedly, one could make a very strong case that the Scotch-Irish really were just this side of subhuman. They were lawless, xenophobic, and economically improvident, as well as scornful of the laws and customs of war; they committed savage atrocities in just about every war they engaged in, and were more or less responsible for the Indian Wars, the Mexican War, and the lawlessness of the Wild West. Andrew Jackson, who ethnically cleansed the Cherokees and the other Five Civilized Tribes, is still regarded as a hero in Appalachia today, and his atrocities are either brushed off or openly celebrated.
A large and politically powerful Scotch-Irish population would have poisoned Pennsylvania; the Quakers had the choice between self-destruction and rejection of their principles. They chose to reject their principles -- and then they kept preaching them, completely unmodified, as if they'd never rejected them at all.
I'm Catholic, so it's not surprising that I'd say this, but I'd say that Catholic social doctrine -- with its strict criteria for just wars, and various prescriptions for government and suppression of crime -- is a better choice than denying the necessity of violence and then having to improvise a solution when violence turns out necessary anyways.
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Cortez and his 300-odd men could never have taken down the Aztecs, were it not for how all their neighbors hated them so passionately that they'd rather be ruled by smelly, strange-looking, gold-hungry space aliens.
Far more important were the western diseases they had no idea they were carrying
I find that the most anti-intellectualism, cheap-shot emotional abuse, and stereotyping on the Internet is motivated by moral sentiments through online pseudo "activists" who are really working out their anger and self-esteem issues under the supposed imprimatur of one cause or another. This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue. Att…
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but, the point made was that no causes are free of it, but neither are they made up entirely of it. (it being "intellectually malformed pseudo-activisism" in this case)
I don't think anyone said it makes up a large portion of activism, or even implied it.