echidna

Emphryio, I sympathise with your position, and 2 years ago I might have even shared it. However I’ve now read enough threads on the subjectivity / objectivity of morality to realise that defining an objective morality is pointless. Sure, I would like nothing more than my particular flavour of compassion, altruism, integrity and the like to be objectively good. Trouble is, I can’t objectively prove it to someone who differs. And neither can you. The best you have is argumentum ad populum.

To me, such PC outrage at attempts to explain racism highlight many of my problems with Political Correctness. Appeal to logic in the field of base morality is just inappropriate & is the argumentative equivalent of “I’m right, you’re wrong, I’m smart, you’re dumb.” Fact is that some extremely intelligent, brutally logical people, act in ways which personally I describe as immoral. Similarly there are some quite lesser endowed individuals who are incredibly moral IMO.

Just calling it illogical, masks the problems behind racism & the like. The psychological drives behind racism, are the very same reasons that homo sapiens sapiens survives today, our ruthless instinct to survive, and our desire to dominate in various ways (heh, witness this forum as an example to intellectually dominate for instance). No right or wrong necessary, they’re just there. When resources are under competition, whenever culture is threatened, whenever difference is noticed, whenever any type of fear (justified or unjustified) is present, problems will occur.

Dismissing every act of intolerance as just dumb ignores the true causes and the base human drives which create xenophobia. Calling racism illogical is an act of denial and contributes nothing towards actually understanding intolerance and attempting to address it. Personally as one of the first non-Europeans at my school, I was subjected to a great deal of negative racism. Call them immoral, fine, but there is just no point in calling these people illogical, and as is painfully obvious, incorrect. A quick knowledge of history demonstrates that 9 times out of 10, oppression benefits the oppressor. (I guess by your definition though, that would be moral, since the oppressors are both more numerous, and happier through the dominating strength they felt.)

My comments are not a devil’s advocate defence of racism. They are an honest acknowledgement of the human characteristics which cause us all to act immorally from time to time. Acknowledging them is the first step towards dealing with them.

DD : Morality = greatest good for the greatest number (although DD subsequently removed this one)
E : It's really rather simple. What's is moral is whatever action brings an individual happiness. The more happiness, the more moral.

That’s the trouble with these PC motherhood statements, I think you’ll find that neither attempt to define moral behaviour is actually workable & people will easily be able to develop scenarios and examples which contradict each definition. Actually it’s not at all simple.

If you seriously want logical basis for personal morality, try Social Contractarianism. But personally I find that quite abhorrent.

DRFseven

The major flaw with humanity is that people are not all like me! They think and do things I wouldn't do in the same circumstances and this is quite irksome.

Actually, I'm illustrating a behavior that really does bother me. I wouldn't want to get rid of any of our flaws, however, because you never know when they'll come in handy.

echidna

Of course OTOH, it’s life’s greatest blessing that not everyone’s like me. Otherwise I doubt very much that life would have progressed much past the Devonian Age (circa 350 mya) without being utterly bored or irritated to death.

DRF7, I hope you appreciate that your saintly patience when I arrived wasn’t completely wasted. I slightly understand the subjectivity thing now. Belated thanks.

DRFseven

Not at all, Echidna; I enjoyed it very much, and learned from it, too because you made me think so hard.

Dee

Jesus Tap-Dancin' Christ

Money. Well, more precisely, property--because it quickly gives us the haves and the have-nots. And from there, it all falls down.
You can call me a commie if you want.