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robertsnj · 56-60, M
rambing take , my apologies, going to deconstruct, reconstruct the word choice and expain why.
light / dark wicked, / good evil / good that feels like religous speak. this black-and-white view of morality and the world. It is such a useless way to view the world.
if over time some of you black-and-white thinkers could replace good / evil with ideas like
propensity towards (as opposed to aboslutes) altrusm constrasted with propsensit towards selfishness
propsensit of austerity contrasted to propensity share (pooled) resources and the characterisitcs for each situation you coul realy see the world in a clearer, though more complex but comprehensive way.
At the end of any contestement, conflict, what you call light/ dark / wicked / good is a base line of competitio for finite resources.
Those resources might be money, love,, food, healthcare, emotional security or literally anythng. How we as a society navigate our need for self preseration of those resources contrasted to a communal effort for sharing placed within the backdrop of access to those resources is,
Although a more complex process for navigating a moral landscape it is much more complete and comprehensive. It creates a more valuable answer, answers that
The black-and-white good and evil / thoughts of absolutes process so many of my fellow humans seem to use for literally almost everything. is almost always devoid of any shared value or ability for shared introspection except for inside the groupthink of people in that same group and even within that group to a dimished capacity.
light / dark wicked, / good evil / good that feels like religous speak. this black-and-white view of morality and the world. It is such a useless way to view the world.
if over time some of you black-and-white thinkers could replace good / evil with ideas like
propensity towards (as opposed to aboslutes) altrusm constrasted with propsensit towards selfishness
propsensit of austerity contrasted to propensity share (pooled) resources and the characterisitcs for each situation you coul realy see the world in a clearer, though more complex but comprehensive way.
At the end of any contestement, conflict, what you call light/ dark / wicked / good is a base line of competitio for finite resources.
Those resources might be money, love,, food, healthcare, emotional security or literally anythng. How we as a society navigate our need for self preseration of those resources contrasted to a communal effort for sharing placed within the backdrop of access to those resources is,
Although a more complex process for navigating a moral landscape it is much more complete and comprehensive. It creates a more valuable answer, answers that
The black-and-white good and evil / thoughts of absolutes process so many of my fellow humans seem to use for literally almost everything. is almost always devoid of any shared value or ability for shared introspection except for inside the groupthink of people in that same group and even within that group to a dimished capacity.
LordShadowfire · 46-50, M
@robertsnj Suppose I were to tell you that every aspect of what we call morality is ultimately based on a set of rules agreed upon by a group of our distant ancestors?
Thousands of years ago, bands of wild humans roamed the wilderness. But we weren't a very successful species, given the fact that our claws and teeth are so small. We were easy pray for the dire wolves and the saber toothed cats that dominated the scene. And bears? Forget about it. We lived in such fear of them that whatever name we originally gave them has been forgotten. It was believed by our ancestors that to call the true name of the bear was to summon one, and bears meant death in those days, so we started calling them the brown ones, and that name stuck.
It should not come as a surprise, then, that a bunch of humans got the idea to band together in greater numbers, given that such a plan would give us our only possible advantage in a savage world. Multiple families of humans living in one place together, so that the strongest among them could fend off carnivorous animals. But in order for humans to live in such large numbers together, they had to agree on a few ground rules. No murdering anybody in the camp. No stealing from anybody in the camp. No having sex with anybody else's partner in the camp. Punishment for failing to abide by these rules was swift and brutal. Exile or execution was the standard, because if you didn't want to make the community stronger, you were making it weaker.
At some point, inevitably you might say, the camps became permanent, and grew into villages. They became more common across the world as they were more successful than individual families of humans trying to make it on their own. And as the human settlements grew, the rules of living in them became more fleshed out. The idea of land ownership, something which would have seemed ridiculous before, was taken seriously.
Since humans had already developed the idea of gods and goddesses, and had formed primitive religions, it's inevitable that the rules of community living would be framed as moral laws from the gods, to be held sacred. Naturally, since each region of the planet was settled by different humans, they established different gods and goddesses, unique in many aspects, yet similar. The god of the forge. The goddess of the hearth. The party god. And of course, the god of the hunt and the god of war. And of course, each region began to have its own unique take on the community rules, adding to them various laws that they felt made sense. These rules and laws formed the basis of what was later called morality.
And so, armed with the certainty that the gods were with them, these various bands of humans became nations, each nation having its own ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. But such is the nature of humans that each nation was convinced that its moral code was the only correct one. So when two nations with conflicting moral codes encountered each other, war was inevitable. As a result of these wars, the moral codes which survived were deemed "good" by the survivors, because if they hadn't been good, the gods would not have let them win the war.
Y'all know where I'm going with this, I'm sure. Eventually, there came a nation of humans even more warlike and vicious than any before them. These humans had a strange monotheistic religion in which a single god, somehow all-knowing and all-powerful, had commanded them to take the land from their polytheistic neighbors. These people settled in a much-disputed region of the Middle East after wiping out the humans who had previously lived there, all under the command of their god. They were hardly the first civilization on the planet, but of course they assumed they were, since global communication wouldn't be a thing for several thousand more years.
It is from that nation, whose leaders styled themselves as priests and claimed to talk to the One True God, that western morality was derived. When they themselves were conquered by the Romans, whose policy it was to accommodate and adopt the gods of the nations they conquered, it changed them forever. A polytheistic empire cannot endure in the face of a jealous, monotheistic god, and so they abandoned the old gods and gave all allegiance to the god Yahweh. Under his flag and in his name, the newly rebranded Holy Roman Empire conquered all of Europe.
Eventually, as I'm sure you all know, cracks began to form in this previously unified empire, as the sacred texts which were passed down were copied by hand from one version to the next, and the people doing the copying added their own commentary. This led to the creation of what we now know as denominations, but to the people of the day were thought of as separate religions. (Each one, of course, was uniquely blessed by the one true God, and all the others were defiled by Satan.) And that is how morality as we understand it today in the western world came to be. And that's why so much of it is contested, despite people thinking it is reflective of objective reality.
TL;DR: we have moral codes today because your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa didn't want his head cracked open by a saber toothed tiger.
Thousands of years ago, bands of wild humans roamed the wilderness. But we weren't a very successful species, given the fact that our claws and teeth are so small. We were easy pray for the dire wolves and the saber toothed cats that dominated the scene. And bears? Forget about it. We lived in such fear of them that whatever name we originally gave them has been forgotten. It was believed by our ancestors that to call the true name of the bear was to summon one, and bears meant death in those days, so we started calling them the brown ones, and that name stuck.
It should not come as a surprise, then, that a bunch of humans got the idea to band together in greater numbers, given that such a plan would give us our only possible advantage in a savage world. Multiple families of humans living in one place together, so that the strongest among them could fend off carnivorous animals. But in order for humans to live in such large numbers together, they had to agree on a few ground rules. No murdering anybody in the camp. No stealing from anybody in the camp. No having sex with anybody else's partner in the camp. Punishment for failing to abide by these rules was swift and brutal. Exile or execution was the standard, because if you didn't want to make the community stronger, you were making it weaker.
At some point, inevitably you might say, the camps became permanent, and grew into villages. They became more common across the world as they were more successful than individual families of humans trying to make it on their own. And as the human settlements grew, the rules of living in them became more fleshed out. The idea of land ownership, something which would have seemed ridiculous before, was taken seriously.
Since humans had already developed the idea of gods and goddesses, and had formed primitive religions, it's inevitable that the rules of community living would be framed as moral laws from the gods, to be held sacred. Naturally, since each region of the planet was settled by different humans, they established different gods and goddesses, unique in many aspects, yet similar. The god of the forge. The goddess of the hearth. The party god. And of course, the god of the hunt and the god of war. And of course, each region began to have its own unique take on the community rules, adding to them various laws that they felt made sense. These rules and laws formed the basis of what was later called morality.
And so, armed with the certainty that the gods were with them, these various bands of humans became nations, each nation having its own ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. But such is the nature of humans that each nation was convinced that its moral code was the only correct one. So when two nations with conflicting moral codes encountered each other, war was inevitable. As a result of these wars, the moral codes which survived were deemed "good" by the survivors, because if they hadn't been good, the gods would not have let them win the war.
Y'all know where I'm going with this, I'm sure. Eventually, there came a nation of humans even more warlike and vicious than any before them. These humans had a strange monotheistic religion in which a single god, somehow all-knowing and all-powerful, had commanded them to take the land from their polytheistic neighbors. These people settled in a much-disputed region of the Middle East after wiping out the humans who had previously lived there, all under the command of their god. They were hardly the first civilization on the planet, but of course they assumed they were, since global communication wouldn't be a thing for several thousand more years.
It is from that nation, whose leaders styled themselves as priests and claimed to talk to the One True God, that western morality was derived. When they themselves were conquered by the Romans, whose policy it was to accommodate and adopt the gods of the nations they conquered, it changed them forever. A polytheistic empire cannot endure in the face of a jealous, monotheistic god, and so they abandoned the old gods and gave all allegiance to the god Yahweh. Under his flag and in his name, the newly rebranded Holy Roman Empire conquered all of Europe.
Eventually, as I'm sure you all know, cracks began to form in this previously unified empire, as the sacred texts which were passed down were copied by hand from one version to the next, and the people doing the copying added their own commentary. This led to the creation of what we now know as denominations, but to the people of the day were thought of as separate religions. (Each one, of course, was uniquely blessed by the one true God, and all the others were defiled by Satan.) And that is how morality as we understand it today in the western world came to be. And that's why so much of it is contested, despite people thinking it is reflective of objective reality.
TL;DR: we have moral codes today because your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandpa didn't want his head cracked open by a saber toothed tiger.