RE: Moral Obligations toward Possible Worlds
May 18, 2021 at 8:41 am
(This post was last modified: May 18, 2021 at 9:40 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Is there anything specifically wrong with child marriage, or do we have a subset of child marriage in mind when we deem it so? Sally and Johnny are teenage sweethearts and they get hitched. What they've done is unwise, perhaps..but is it immoral? If we deem it to be so, how would low life expectancy alter the moral field? If there were a place on the earth where life expectancy was falling (and there are) - do those places then become pocket universes where their bad deed is not bad or perhaps even good? Understandable, maybe, but as human beings a great deal of what we deem to be immoral is and always has been understandable. One in five girls are married, down from one in four a decade ago. We never stopped with this one. If anything, we've ramped it up. More girls to go around now than there ever have been.
As for the abolition of slavery, nothing to do with enlightenment values whatsoever. The lines of thought were there, and had been there, for some time. We'd had thousands of years beforehand to end slavery, and we didn't. Just using the us as our example - ideas about the morality and necessity of slavery were entirely predicated on profitability and opportunity cost. In the north, the land itself wasn't amenable to the large scale production of field crops like tobacco and cotton. On the border (of the civil war) it was barely profitable. In the south, immensely. It's no surprise that the people in these regions held positions on the matter that aligned with those circumstances. A northern abolitionists moral opinion on slavery could be held at no cost to him - and shouldn't be confused with an opinion on the dignity, decency or even the shared humanity of that abolitionist and those they would free. A virginian or kentuckyian might pay some cost, but could surmount it or write it off (and had to weigh it against the social cost to abolition-minded peers or society), and the people in the deep south could in no sense hold such a view and act on that view without impoverishing themselves, and had no real impetus to do so. Then there was the issue of the use of ships. We like to think that the end of import was an intentional babystep to abolition - but it wasn't. There was a more profitable use of ships, and we had plenty of breeding stock on the continent. The same became increasingly true of every aspect of the logistics of slavery. Slave patrols could be militias or police, and all of their time spent chasing slaves they weren't providing that service. The markets and warehouses and carts and maintenance and all of the non-slave labor and resources and salable commodities involved in holding slaves as a society...all of it, became increasingly untenable as we made technological advancements and discovered new land use opportunities. Slaves were livestock, which is just a fun word for tech with a pulse, and producers abandon unprofitable or inconvenient livestock just as soon as an alternative presents itself. From their end of things, todays circumstance vis a vis african americans outside of the plantation model is no more or less than letting chickens run loose and left to their own devices, unkept, because you started breeding rabbits.
I paint this picture above on the two issues so that we can dispense with the notion of moral superiority or moral improvement whatsoever, for a moment at least, and more directly address the related but very distinct issue of blame and shame. Ideas about moral desert, and what a person should get for having done such and such. Of holding some past society or tribe in moral contempt. There are people who do so - but it's not a requirement. Low blame/shame high reward systems are aimed squarely at the notion that we all falter and fall. That we all find reason, find it understandable, to do some bad things. People aren't improving, our decision field is improving. A southern slaver put in a time machine and transported to present day would probably not change his opinion of the lesser races, but it would be surprising as shit to find that person slaving with their land, as opposed to any of the far more profitable uses of the same unknown to them (or unavailable to them) at the time.
Have we improved, as individuals? Unlikely. Full modernity hit 50k years ago. No More Moral thought that any person has ever had now or during the enlightenment or even in classical history was a new thought then unthought of before - not even close. We'd always had those thoughts, and we see them expressed as in-group organization. As soon as we start writing we write about them, we'd been mulling it over for alot longer than narrative records existed for us to use as a reference. We've just gotten better at extending the sphere of the ingroup and have found ourselves with greater opportunities to do so..and even so, we all falter, we all fall...still.. This isn't a fringe or novel or new or whackaddodle apprehension - we find it well represented in the things we hold to be religiously true. The christ myth serves as a vehicle for this comment on the human condition, and leverages it's truth (or seeming truth) as a borrowed ladder, for example. How we feel about blaming and shaming in present from or toward our contemporaries can be extended to any past evil or bad person.
As a society? Indisputably so, but probably not because of any fundamental change in our nature as human beings, imo, or because one smart person wrote down what countless generations before them had already considered and discarded or put on the shelf for some later time, some other circumstance. If wishes were horses, and all that. Drawing it all together - Robert E Lee freed his slaves and married a woman that would have been an old maid, comparatively - and we can imagine that he did so because he held certain moral opinions (and he expounded on both at length) - but we also know that both cases were, whatever else they were, calculated political and economic moves predicated on circumstance. The available decision field. This, I think, is why we can associate what we call more moral behavior with technological advancement. Our tools expand our range of decisions, of consequence. Give us..we hope, more control over those items we deem of moral import. Allow us the privilege of extending that sphere as practical actors in an amoral environment. Absent that, we say that we understand why the savages of so and so may have done whatever they did. The idea that it's as much a tragedy as it was villainy, if not more.
-it even comes to mind, as an aside, that Lees own notion of slavery as a moral evil for whites but a moral good for africans is well at home in the utilitarian goods of consequentialism today. It would be difficult for a person who accepts as much to thread the needle here - I can't see any other way than to contend that while Lee may have been (or was) right about the utilitarian good, he was wrong about slavery being part of it. That the benefits used to justify the practice (or some, at least) really were desirable or lead to a desirable outcome for those people. Wrong not in moral fact, but wrong in point of fact on a matter of moral import. This is, as above and ofc, not new - people thought as much and explained as much at the time.
As for the abolition of slavery, nothing to do with enlightenment values whatsoever. The lines of thought were there, and had been there, for some time. We'd had thousands of years beforehand to end slavery, and we didn't. Just using the us as our example - ideas about the morality and necessity of slavery were entirely predicated on profitability and opportunity cost. In the north, the land itself wasn't amenable to the large scale production of field crops like tobacco and cotton. On the border (of the civil war) it was barely profitable. In the south, immensely. It's no surprise that the people in these regions held positions on the matter that aligned with those circumstances. A northern abolitionists moral opinion on slavery could be held at no cost to him - and shouldn't be confused with an opinion on the dignity, decency or even the shared humanity of that abolitionist and those they would free. A virginian or kentuckyian might pay some cost, but could surmount it or write it off (and had to weigh it against the social cost to abolition-minded peers or society), and the people in the deep south could in no sense hold such a view and act on that view without impoverishing themselves, and had no real impetus to do so. Then there was the issue of the use of ships. We like to think that the end of import was an intentional babystep to abolition - but it wasn't. There was a more profitable use of ships, and we had plenty of breeding stock on the continent. The same became increasingly true of every aspect of the logistics of slavery. Slave patrols could be militias or police, and all of their time spent chasing slaves they weren't providing that service. The markets and warehouses and carts and maintenance and all of the non-slave labor and resources and salable commodities involved in holding slaves as a society...all of it, became increasingly untenable as we made technological advancements and discovered new land use opportunities. Slaves were livestock, which is just a fun word for tech with a pulse, and producers abandon unprofitable or inconvenient livestock just as soon as an alternative presents itself. From their end of things, todays circumstance vis a vis african americans outside of the plantation model is no more or less than letting chickens run loose and left to their own devices, unkept, because you started breeding rabbits.
I paint this picture above on the two issues so that we can dispense with the notion of moral superiority or moral improvement whatsoever, for a moment at least, and more directly address the related but very distinct issue of blame and shame. Ideas about moral desert, and what a person should get for having done such and such. Of holding some past society or tribe in moral contempt. There are people who do so - but it's not a requirement. Low blame/shame high reward systems are aimed squarely at the notion that we all falter and fall. That we all find reason, find it understandable, to do some bad things. People aren't improving, our decision field is improving. A southern slaver put in a time machine and transported to present day would probably not change his opinion of the lesser races, but it would be surprising as shit to find that person slaving with their land, as opposed to any of the far more profitable uses of the same unknown to them (or unavailable to them) at the time.
Have we improved, as individuals? Unlikely. Full modernity hit 50k years ago. No More Moral thought that any person has ever had now or during the enlightenment or even in classical history was a new thought then unthought of before - not even close. We'd always had those thoughts, and we see them expressed as in-group organization. As soon as we start writing we write about them, we'd been mulling it over for alot longer than narrative records existed for us to use as a reference. We've just gotten better at extending the sphere of the ingroup and have found ourselves with greater opportunities to do so..and even so, we all falter, we all fall...still.. This isn't a fringe or novel or new or whackaddodle apprehension - we find it well represented in the things we hold to be religiously true. The christ myth serves as a vehicle for this comment on the human condition, and leverages it's truth (or seeming truth) as a borrowed ladder, for example. How we feel about blaming and shaming in present from or toward our contemporaries can be extended to any past evil or bad person.
As a society? Indisputably so, but probably not because of any fundamental change in our nature as human beings, imo, or because one smart person wrote down what countless generations before them had already considered and discarded or put on the shelf for some later time, some other circumstance. If wishes were horses, and all that. Drawing it all together - Robert E Lee freed his slaves and married a woman that would have been an old maid, comparatively - and we can imagine that he did so because he held certain moral opinions (and he expounded on both at length) - but we also know that both cases were, whatever else they were, calculated political and economic moves predicated on circumstance. The available decision field. This, I think, is why we can associate what we call more moral behavior with technological advancement. Our tools expand our range of decisions, of consequence. Give us..we hope, more control over those items we deem of moral import. Allow us the privilege of extending that sphere as practical actors in an amoral environment. Absent that, we say that we understand why the savages of so and so may have done whatever they did. The idea that it's as much a tragedy as it was villainy, if not more.
-it even comes to mind, as an aside, that Lees own notion of slavery as a moral evil for whites but a moral good for africans is well at home in the utilitarian goods of consequentialism today. It would be difficult for a person who accepts as much to thread the needle here - I can't see any other way than to contend that while Lee may have been (or was) right about the utilitarian good, he was wrong about slavery being part of it. That the benefits used to justify the practice (or some, at least) really were desirable or lead to a desirable outcome for those people. Wrong not in moral fact, but wrong in point of fact on a matter of moral import. This is, as above and ofc, not new - people thought as much and explained as much at the time.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
