Open question: What do you think a normal person’s moral responsibilities are and why?
Some angles you can (but don’t have to) consider:
To themselves, family, friends and strangers?
Do you have thoughts about what it takes to make a good person or at what point someone is a bad person? (Is there a category of people who are neither?)
What do you think the default state of people is? (Generally good, evil or neutral by nature?)
Conversely do you believe morality is a construction and reject it entirely? (Even practically speaking when something bad happens to you?)
You have to leave it as good as you found it, doubly so if you’re tending to friends family or nature, and never stop trying to make things better for one(s) you love.
This means if you don’t put your cart away at the grocery store I’m giving you stink eye.
I think we’re all too tired, over worked, and taken advantage of to truly embody the above philosophy, so I let most people off the hook.
That said I think morality is a natural trait/occurrence of any living group, to be part of society is to contribute to morality, and to behave immorally within the context of a society is to not uphold the values of that society. Immoral isn’t inherently/naturally wrong, it’s just incorrect to the people you’re attempting to exist with.
If anyone claims to exist without morals they are just claiming to have different values to what their community finds important, and would probably benefit from finding community that aligns with their beliefs, but that risks extremism and echo chambers, see also the Internet and federated instances.
I like the point about people being too tired - as much as that might have felt like a side point I think there may be something there - one thing I noticed in Japan is that when I did something nice that was not culturally required people would not only be really happy but actually surprised.
Japan is not only overworked to death, but also very strict on manners and social rules, so you’re often required to pretend to be nice to someone and to follow your duty to others to the point that people start to lose the concept of doing nice things spontaneously.
As the vice grips tighten around the working and middle class, I think what you’re describing has also been happening in the West not only since Corona but gradually over the last several decades. People concerned primarily with survival have less room to be kind. (That said, it means more when they are).
I’ll take this a step farther than you did.
I submit that nobody sees the real you until you’ve suffered some kind of depredation in life. It’s easy to be a decent human being when “decency” is a tiny fraction of your available resources. Try being decent when it actually puts you out. That’s when you’re truly a decent person.
Example time.
A friend of mine used to make a LOT of money in tech. He was viewed as a very generous man, like to the point of handing over an over-sized, custom-tailored leather winter jacket he owned to an acquaintance of his he knew who had been living in the street for six months. That was a $2000 jacket… It was all so very generous … except he was taking home after taxes about $20,000 per month. He barely noticed the loss of it when he bought its replacement.
How did I find out he was decent?
Years later, after being out of touch, I met him again. He’d lost his tech job and his investments had tanked when the tech bubble burst. He was in a mediocre-salaried civil service job and was only just making ends meet. Why? Because he still donated to charities; when not with money, with time. He still shared what he had with those who had less. THAT is a decent person.
The billionaires tossing a million dollars in a careful PR campaign to show how “nice” they are … they’re not. With a billion dollars you could hand out a million dollars a day for almost three years before running out … and that assumes you never earn another cent. A million dollars is rounding error to them.
The weekly meals for unemployed friends my now-civil-servant friend held was a far bigger chunk.
The way I’d put this in technical terms is “What percentage of your disposable income is going towards helping others?” $50 for someone making minimum wage is probably more than $1 million coming from a billionaire.
After a few days thinking about this, it’s still insufficient in my books.
If I have $1000 cash and give away 50% of it, I have $500 left for myself.
If I have $1,000,000,000 cash and give away 99.44% of it I still have $600,000 left.
Which of us is suffering more (in real terms, not fantasy point score) in what we’ve given? With $500 cash … I’m not buying a whole lot. What is that? Ten coffees at Starbucks? (I kid, but … it really isn’t a lot.) With $600,000 left I can live quite comfortably for a long time in a reasonably-priced town or city.
And that doesn’t address non-cash possessions. If I only have $1000 cash total, I likely don’t own my own home, don’t have much of a car if any, etc. If I have $1,000,000,000 cash, I likely have MASSIVE property and possession holdings.
Right, so I think you could push it even further than what I said. Maybe something more qualitative like “What are you willing to give up to help others?”
That said you can also go too far the other way and say that a very rich person who does or doesn’t give away things hadn’t really giving up much, but we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good. (And practically speaking it’s going to have almost as good of an outcome if they gave to the point of diminishing their well-being).
Your angle here is actually getting really close to Peter Singer’s Famine, Affluence and Morality. (Personally I stop a little short of where he’s at, but I think your position more closely resembles his).
… we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good …
This is a very heavily qualified “yes” for me.
It depends on how they’re giving it away and to whom. If they’re doing the usual billionaire “charity”, no, they’re not doing anything good and indeed it may be worse than them just hoarding their cash. Because the norm for billionaire “charity” is to support political parties that aid them in their hoarding of riches and to “charities” of their own founding which are generally used to force their viewpoint on the world, effectively being just another source of power for them.¹ They tend to displace actual expert charities in favour of their own PR branding, their foundations tend to work on projects that mysteriously aid their for-profit enterprises and personal wealth, and tend to fund lobbyists in government (not to mention the occasional hate group or ten).
That kind of “giving away” we can do without. Just eat that kind of billionaire.
If, however, you’ve got a billionaire donating to established, experienced charities with no strings attached, that’s doing something very good. Wake me up when that actually happens.
¹ https://newrepublic.com/post/177019/billionaire-philanthropy-scam-bill-gates
This starts to get into moral relativity vs moral absolution.
Is it ever moral to kill someone? Is it moral to kill out of a necessity to defend oneself?
I’m not sure that I really believe there are truly evil people. Don’t get me wrong, I think they exist, but they’re extremely rare (1 in a million type of odds)
Most people are the hero of their own story, and when you get down to it, they’re just trying to get their needs met. Are they unnecessarily cruel? Maybe, but they’ll have a justification for it. You might not agree with it, but you haven’t walked in their shoes.
If I have the ability to help friends I consider it my civic duty to do so. That being said, I don’t judge those who don’t help. (Usually) Why don’t I judge them? Because I’m fortunate enough to have the mental fortitude, capacity and ability to help. I wouldn’t judge a friend in a wheelchair for not helping me move into a walk-up apartment, because they mostly can’t. I don’t feel right judging a friend who isn’t in a good headspace to help me right now either.
I’m not firmly in either camp, morality on some things are relative, but absolute on others.
Good reply. I would highlight that the specific example you gave about whether you can be justified in killing someone would be a common example in the rules vs results based ethics debate. (Deontology vs Consequentialism).
Moral relativism is more the claim that morals are entirely dependent on a culture’s or individual’s idea of right. (Which means they would say yes to both, practically).
Fair statement, but I think it can be viewed from both pieces there.
Rules vs results can be individually determined and separated.
But you’re right, my example wasn’t ideal for my argument.
I do still think that cultural values will determine whether you value “helping your neighbours” and your moral responsibility there.
What do you think a normal person’s moral responsibilities are and why?
To treat other people in a way that you would want them to treat you.
To help them when they’re in trouble.
To share common resources with them.
To be honest with them, and not try to take advantage of them.
Simple but reasonable.
Incomplete, however.
The first item is the so-called “Golden Rule” but it has two formulations, the positive and the negative.
Positive: Do unto others as you would have done unto you. Negative: Do not do unto others that which you would not want done unto you.
Neither of them suffices by themselves. Both of them together are almost unassailable morally speaking.
I think part of the former may be a matter of culture and translation. In many languages and cultures the common sense interpretation of the former is equivalent to including the latter. (I would read the latter as how you would word a written rule or law people are going to try to get around). Some might suggest that “love others as you would love yourself,” is of such weight that it automatically includes not doing obviously bad things. I tend to favor “laymen’s” interpretations over “letter of the law,” style, particularly since in the original context of the golden rule the people who were the problem themselves (Pharisees) were of the latter type.
The history of the Golden Rule long predates Christianity (and, indeed, likely even Judaism), so its original context has nothing to do with Pharisees. It is arguably the oldest moral injunction in written history.
- The positive formulation was used in Middle Kingdom Egypt (~2000BCE) while the negative was used in Late Period Egypt (~500BCE).
- The Chinese, via Confucius’ Analects (~500BCE), had it in the negative form.
- The negative form was used in ancient India (~400BCE) and by ancient Tamils (~100BCE). (There are persistent claims that you can find the Golden Rule in Vedic texts which would place India as the originator at ~3000BCE if substantiated; I have not as yet found it, but neither have I looked very hard. It’s a hard slog to read that.)
- The Greeks used almost exclusively the negative (~600-300BCE) in their philosophical writings as did the ancient Persians via Zoroaster (~300BCE).
- Interestingly the Romans had the positive formulation in an interesting hierarchical twist: treat your slaves as you would wish your master to treat you (~5BCE).
Note that all of those are dated “BCE” and are thus by definition precursors to Christianity. 😉
I believe that morals should be created and based off of logical processes, but they often are not. People will make a decision based on emotion and make up reasons later for it if challenged. Frequently (as you can see in many threads in this Community) people will have opinions based on those morals that are completely abandoned when faced with a universally-applicable logic process.
“I believe X and Y because of Z. My opponents are evil because (strawman).”
“Here is evidence that this is not the thinking behind this. Your decision is knee-jerk or moral and is based off of what you feel and only the evidence you choose to accept. Your logic here does not apply to M situation you advocated for and actually has the opposite effect. Are you able to comment on why that would not be the case?”
SILENCE
This is nonsensical thinking. Feeling (or morals) should be based on evidence, and we should challenge ourselves constantly, evaluating and accepting new information and new views.
Conversely I’ve seen some very seemingly very logical people unaware that some deeper emotions are motivating their logic - people who can make what seem like very logical arguments, yet the conclusions of which immediately fail the “sniff test,” of any reasonably empathetic individual.
I think that whole rationality is a necessary component of ethics, it alone won’t ensure good ethical standards - someone who genuinely doesn’t care how others or society at large feel well see it as rational to betray them when they can get away with it.
I would say generally there good reason for us to have various senses and that some people are better at one than the other, and an extreme weakness emotionally or rationally will impact one’s ability to be a moral person.
The issue with logic is that it is a great tool for analysis … but fails utterly at telling you what to analyze. The issue is the inevitable core of all logical argumentation: your warrants (sorta a.k.a. axioms).
No logical system can exist without axioms. And axioms by their nature cannot be logically proved. Axioms are where the failures of logic, even in otherwise rational and analytical people, slip in, often unseen until it’s too late.
By way of analogy, the field of human knowledge is a large meadow. Somewhere in that meadow is a large chest of buried treasure you have to find. Most tools of analysis are like digging into the meadow with your bare hands in search of the treasure. Logic is a backhoe. NOTHING will dig through the ground faster and better than logic to get you to the tasty, tasty treasure.
But it does you no good if you dig in the wrong place.
At the very base level you should simply never make any situation worse.
If you can help make things better, great! But at the very least don’t make it worse. I’d rather see a guy watching a house burn, than watch a guy actively making the fire bigger.
you should simply never make any situation worse
That word “simply” is doing a lot of very heavy lifting there.
Early in my stay in China, I lived in a little city¹ called Jiujiang. There was a hotel that had an attached restaurant making “western” food that other expats in the city would congregate in for a taste of “home” when China was being too Chinese for them. (Culture shock is real and profound.) I was hanging with the gang once, one of whom was a former collegiate Aussie Rules football player. Big, strong, tough guy. With us was one of our “foreign affairs assistants”.
Just outside the hotel window, near where we were sitting, was a drama blowing up. A husband was berating his wife and, at one point, smacking her hard several times. Like shockingly hard. Phil (the aforementioned football player) was up in an instant, rushing for the restaurant door. As one of the few expats who could speak the local language he started lacing in to the guy, grabbing his arm and twisting it up behind his back, such that the farmer’s face was pressed up against the glass of the window. From what he reported later he was apparently telling the guy that if he ever saw him raise hands against a woman again he was going to be a bloody mess on the ground.
The farmer and his wife hastily shuffled off when Phil let go.
When Phil came back, he was all pleased with himself for leaping in to stop a problem. For saving the weak against the abusive strong.
I’m going to let you think a moment on Phil’s actions and decide if his actions were “moral” or “immoral”. If he was making things better or worse. I’ll put the outcome into a reply.
¹ Where “little” means “population of about 4.5 million”. Scales are … different here.
TL;DR summary: It's not always so simple to not make things worse. The choices are not always obvious; the situations aren't always clear.
When Phil came back basking in what he was sure was going to be profuse praise for his bravely intervening in a domestic violence situation he was surprised to find out that only his fellow expats (spoiler warning: myself excluded, because Mom’s Chinese and I knew what was coming) were doing so. Chinese witnesses were glaring at him. Our “foreign affairs assistant” had a very stony expression on her face. (Yes. Her.) Here’s the paraphrased conversation that ensued:
Foreign Affairs Assistant (FAA): What did you think you accomplished here?
Phil (P): I stopped a guy from beating his wife.
FAA: No. No you didn’t. You made him lose face.
P: Well if he didn’t want to lose face he shouldn’t have beaten his wife!
FAA: All you have done is made him angry. He knows he can’t do anything to you, both because you’re much larger and more violent than him [Phil was very shocked at the ‘more violent’ part of this.—zdl] and because you’re a foreigner and will be protected by the police.
P (slowly dawning): …
FAA (increasingly angry): Now that man is going to take control of his face once more by ‘proving’ to himself and his wife that he is the strong one. What would have been handled by her relatives talking to his relatives and getting justice done through private censure is now getting handled by that woman probably winding up in the hospital … and the social approach to justice will have its hands tied; police will become involved, the man will be jailed, the woman will lose her source of household income, and will be in great pain possibly requiring more money to pay for medicine. You haven’t saved her from anything. You’ve made her life immeasurably worse. (final words in great sarcasm) You are truly a great hero.
My point of view would generally be that people who try to make things better, even if in individual cases make them worse, will, generally, overall learn from those mistakes and get better at their decision-making. (Similarly if someone who helps themselves at the expense of others accidentally helps them, they will “learn” from is as well, not making that “mistake” in the future).
Morality is absolutely a construct, but that doesn’t mean people don’t have moral obligations.
I believe the average person’s moral obligation is first and foremost to themselves and their happiness, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a line when dealing with other people. It’s a ‘know it when you see it’ kinda line too, i wouldn’t fault someone for taking a few hundred grand from Taylor Swift or Elon Musk for instance even though that would very nebulously harm both of them, or for scamming a tourist out of their entertainment budget. But robbing a homeless guy’s tent is going to far.
I wouldn’t fault someone for making someone else’s life a living hell if they deserve it, either, or even killing someone. But that’s all very difficult to draw a line in too.
I would want to tease a little more out here - why is it constructed, who constructed it, and does morality in general have merits? (If so, what would you say those are?)
It’s constructed because we can’t find it just lying around out in the world, it’s something humans had to come up with. Preferably everyone constructs their own. Yes morality has benefits, the broadest being social control (although that could be argued to be a bad thing), more individually morals could help people make choices in difficult situations.
I think you might find “evolutionary ethics” to be interesting - it’s probably the biggest new theory in ethics in the last few hundred years. Really interesting stuff.
Not deeply studied but some very early pre-linguistic studies showing babies only a few months old essentially having something resembling a concept of fairness/justice/trust. The idea is essentially that much like language most people have at least some very general moral predispositions. Really fascinating stuff.
