(June 17, 2024 at 11:52 pm)The Grand Nudger Wrote: The idea that we choose our moralities and the idea that moralities are emergent properties of societies are two very different contentions.
I'd suggest that they're not so much different contentions and more competing motivations. On the one hand we have an overarching moral framework emerging from society and on the other we have a variety of personal preferences on which of those get implemented and how rigorously. This leads to the usual assortment of saints, sinners, and ordinary citizens that populates the landscape. Interestingly, both the saints and sinners deviate from the moral norm, it's just that only the sinners cause problems and sometimes need smacking down. I suspect that this variation is necessary to a healthy society so that it can properly cope with unexpected changes in circumstance. Sometimes you need that person who will literally give you the shirt of their back. Other times you need someone who has fewer qualms about doing things that the rest of us would regard as morally reprehensible. Too much variation and your society loses coherence, but too little and it's stifled by a very narrow range of thoughts and deeds.
