RE: Why some humans are so evil: double standards and irreligion
January 25, 2018 at 1:16 pm
(This post was last modified: January 25, 2018 at 1:29 pm by henryp.)
(January 25, 2018 at 1:10 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: So in your opinion, no good thing humans have ever done, no advancement or progress ever made, was for moral reasons? Literally everything is in selfish self-interest and defined by material gains and holdings?
I think selfish self-interest (and tribal-interest) and material gains and holdings are very much a primary driving force. Is it so odd? Is that not the 'law of the jungle' so to speak?
(January 25, 2018 at 1:11 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote:(January 25, 2018 at 1:08 pm)wallym Wrote: Progress/improvement/advancement is a product of self-interest. Both on the personal level, and on the societal level. It is not a moral thing. For example, slavery was progress at one time. People were trying to do the work themselves, and they thought "This is hard and not working great." And then someone came up with slavery. And everybody was all "This is fucking amazing! We should have owned another group of people a long time ago!" Slavery was a very important step in the advancement of society.
But how do you explain the fact that there was still a need to justify it morally?
I think people need societal norms to adhere to. I think that's important for a society to hold together, for it to have rules/laws. So the justification is necessary to maintain the rules/laws. You can't own people. But we want to own these people. Well we can't say anyone can own anyone, because I don't want to get owned. Well, let's just say you can own black people because they aren't human. I'd also add that because morality/law are intertwined, and people are taught they should be good, they want a way to frame themselves as good/follow the law. But if they really wanted to be good, would we have had slavery and all the other stuff?
It's always tricky trying to separate practicality and morality. Like you say with Catholic doctrine, most of it is rooted in natural law. So even if the church wasn't there to say it was right, it'd still be practical/common sense in many cases. The flaw being that it's common sense from the perspective of all humanity, whereas usually laws are more geared towards helping a specific group of humans rather than all of them.
My favorite modern example, is music. Look what happened when we were able to steal it off the internet instead of buy it. They had to change the whole industry.
We're seeing the same thing with tv/movies now as well even though it's 2018 and we're all in a non-broken society. You can steal it, and there are no consequences. So people steal it.
