Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by Juliate » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:13 AM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #116

stcredzero wrote: post #95

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…

> This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue. This is fucking garbage. It's garbage because the status quo isn't neutral, the status quo isn't necessarily just, and actually, the status quo is upheld with lots and lots of violence that isn't considered controversial. For example, France is clamping down really hard on civil liberties…

1. Parent post was not talking about statu quo.

2. Statu quo is not what you try to make out of your examples (there is no such thing as an unanimous moral framework in the West, and what you describe is not even building a statu quo, but more chaos).

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

#142

Post by xupybd » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:22 AM UTC

I liked this article, it went straight to the heart of the issue.

Many take a cheap shot at religion (in most cases Muslims) when they talk about this sort of stuff. But this article talks about morality as the factor.

While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions and even criminal organisations.

To me this seems to fly in the face of "the world would be so much better if this group didn't exist" thinking. By not focusing on a particular group, but isolating the mechanism through which this violence happens, I believe this paves the way for a far more constructive dialogue.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:26 AM UTC

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by tim333 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:30 AM UTC

nickbauman wrote: post #65

nostrademons wrote: post #37

One of the most perennially popular courses at my alma mater was entitled "Murder". It was an exploration of the moral justification behind state-sponsored violence, from capital punishment to war to genocide. The realization that most violence is morally motivated comes with interesting quandaries when you consider what the response to such violence should be. Say that society successfully develops the norm that vio…

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…

>article ... assumes morality is relative

I didn't get that from the article. The author seems to have looked at how people justify violence and found they gave moral explanations. Whether their morality is relative or absolute doesn't seem that important to the argument.

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

#145

Post by dang » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:38 AM UTC

danharaj wrote: post #133

stcredzero wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it's a massive, massive joke for anyone to distinguish themself from this group of people who engage in 'intellectually malformed pseudo-activism' because there are no apolitical stances and being complicit members of societies that shape the world through incredible violence is no different a hypocritical perversion of morality as anyone who rustles your jimmies on the fucking Internet. So, if I un…

> Lastly: From the tenor of your comment, it would seem that my writings have touched a nerve. Let's establish one thing first, and it's that I'm not a teenager and therefore my command of language is such that I have some degree of control over the tone I convey in writing. It does not take a struck nerve to litter someone's writing with fucks and write pointedly. Your writing style is as artificial as mine and I fi…

Please stop posting inflammatory ideological rants to Hacker News. Please also stop posting personal attacks, which this comment crosses into and which you've done before. Those are not allowed here.

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

#146

Post by millermp12 » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:39 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #111

[deleted] wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Apparently you've never been beat up, kicked, hospitalized, in Baltimore, spit on, while smothering your 17-month old daughter from harm. Activism isn't passive. Hence the term.

Sounds like a diversity training initiative gone wrong?

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

#147

Post by tomaskazemekas » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:43 AM UTC

One of the main problems with violence inspired by morality is that many moral systems accept the use of force and thus violence as main course of action to improve the status of the world.

This makes moral systems that propagate principles of non violence, like Ahimsa, worth spreading.

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

#148

Post by kuschku » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:45 AM UTC

tomaskazemekas wrote: post #147

One of the main problems with violence inspired by morality is that many moral systems accept the use of force and thus violence as main course of action to improve the status of the world. This makes moral systems that propagate principles of non violence, like Ahimsa, worth spreading.

Indeed.

"We fight for peace" is the best newspeak that could ever exist.

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

#149

Post by legulere » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:49 AM UTC

> The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral.

I'm not so sure about this. Humans tend to act first and then construct a reason why they do it. This is used to rationalize the actions through some seemingly higher cause when the behaviour was done because of very mundane things.

Humans certainly always act in a way that they think is best for an extended version of themselves (good for me, good for my family, good for my clique, good for my country, good for humankind, good for the world). But I doubt that this judgement of what is best to do is so often moral. Most of the time it's actually just satisfying urges by our bodies.

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

#150

Post by tajen » Thu, Dec 10, 2015, 7:59 AM UTC

chroma wrote: post #21

dnautics wrote: post #3

What is the opposing hypothesis here? That violence happens in a morally neutral setting? How would you define morally neutral? Could you make a claim, for example, that a bank robber is motivated by morality (the bank robber believes that robbing the bank is the morally correct thing to do - to redistribute wealth to himself?) Under what circumstances would that NOT be the case? Would the bank robber have to say, "w…

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…

> but not able to isolate uim from innocents

I often wonder what's the internal thinking of professional- and military-trained people. It could be closer to "I don't know whether they are guilty, but this is just my job" or "Precision destruction is a notch better than bombing a whole city like UK did in 1944 to win the war". Or "There isn't a right or wrong, but I'm on the US side, which has determined that this is "our" truth".