Whether or not you’re religious, religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity. We had a guest preacher once who was talking about the prodigal son in the pig pen, and he said “it’s just gravity - the person in the pig pen can always pull you in easier than you can pull him out.” People can easily slide into depravity but have to work to embrace virtue. And our society has been pushed, subtly at first and then one great heave, onto the slide. We each have to pull ourselves out and that takes more work than many are willing to do, since the depravity seems to come much more naturally when you can find examples with the click of a mouse at any time of day or night.
Having grown up non-religious, it was only during covid I realized the true purpose religion, and more importantly the common moral code that came with it, (had) served in society.
Even after sharing the "fact checks" with friends back in 2015 when I first saw the meme many well-meaning types scoffed and said, "well it should be, it's good to have as an ideal to strive for."
I shook my head in bewilderment then as I do at the very things el gato malo highlights. That sort of fetishism of weakness as a virtue that defines the race to the bottom can only lead to the demise of the pack.
It's an example of psychological priming. I explored it in an old Stack:
For those with a belief system that proclaims evolution is the only origin theory that can be taught in schools, intelligent design (God's creation) having no scientific basis or proof, they sure dismiss the "survival of the fittest" pillar of Darwin's theory easily, without a peep.
As a scientist, I aways tell people that evolution describes the "how", but it doesn't describe the "why". It just seems difficult for people to separate these two concepts, but if you don't, you end up with paralizing extremes.
If that's true, the universe is just one giant cosmic casino, and there is no point in morality of any kind. Just satisfy your desires, whatever they are. My "common sense" might be "why work, just take from SCA". It's all a crap shoot anyway. We call this Nihilism.
You are saying things I have not said. I think you know that too.
Belief in a cult is no guarantee of anything except thinking you own the Truth. It hasn't worked well to protect any society from the worst of human nature. The worst of human nature is the heart of every cult.
The problem with your argument here, Kertch, is that it ignores the unavoidable fact that our decisions and actions have consequences - often immediate, but also over the longer duration. It's this constant interplay of action-reaction that is the true basis of morality - the cumulative experience, both individually or collectively, of the consequences of the many interactions between people. Some consequences are beneficial and constructive - corresponding with the positive outcomes from morally-affirmative behavior - while others are degenerative.
There are prominent arguments for the handing-down of morality by (a) deity, but from the above, it can be seen that such arguments are superfluous, at best, or just a misrepresentation.
"As a scientist, I aways tell people that evolution describes the "how", but it doesn't describe the "why". "
How : Science :: Why : Philosophy
And I also add that Evolution isn't even an Origin Story. It's more of a How We Got Here Story. Reaching back far enough, questions emerge that lack evidence so Science should be cautious, you know, extrapolating.
I agree with you that "religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity". But the collapse of our Western Christendom has not been the whole story of Gato's "how we got to here" question. The same dynamic Western culture that spawned the inventor and entrepreneur also spawned a resentful leisured intelligentsia - one that wanted to see itself as more sophisticated than thou by unpicking our culture's moral compass. And these types made a b-line for the public-funded universities and the rest of our polity was foolish enough to let this up-itself, malcontent intelligentsia entirely colonise them and sheep dip the rising generations of the professional/managerial elite with their bogus race and gender victimhood cults. The rest is history: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
I'd add, and this is merely my personal feeling, that a huge part of getting to where we are is tied up in our denial of the fact that we are, at the core, animals. We've built a world of our own making, that isolates (most of) us from nature in all, or at least almost all ways. In fact, it would seem nature is the considered the enemy much of the time.
There is much to be said for being out in the natural world and realizing ones own insignificance and vulnerability. It's hard to be an egotistical asshole once you've stood on a mountain as a storm rolls in around you, making you intensely aware that you could easily be wiped out. I use the mountain example from personal experience, but any similar situation, any that bring literal survival into question, has the same effect of peeling away the layers of civilized bullshit and arrogance.
And appreciating the significance and the solemnity of taking a life, against that living thing's will, because you have prioritized your own life and estimated it more worthy of persisting than the life you've taken. Ideally, that's the compassion that obliges the pact the life-taker should make with himself, if not with the life taken: that he will kill in order that he will keep living, because he is the agent with the greater will and the further-reaching ability to affect the world, and somehow, in some way he will make amends, and by his atonement he makes the world better for himself, his kind, and the kind of the life he took.
I'm genuinely glad you appreciate it. While they are only words put up somewhere on the Internet, I deeply believe what I said there, and with the greatest of humility, the spirit of those words evinces what I at least believe to be real morality.
And historically, the human condition has been abject poverty for most of humanity’s existence. Gleaning from the fields was how many fed their families. And the occasional roasted rodent was a treat, as Ryan points out.
The omnipresence of resource scarcity for all living things (all, that is, except for the globalist oligarch financier-owners) for all of time, is in fact the most important determinant and impetus to the emergence of morality. Because it obliges people to comprehend the finiteness of their environment, and then to resolve the problem of the effective distribution of resources in order that existence may be sustained and propagated into the future.
It is in these terms that it may also be understood why the globalist oligarch financier-owners truly are monsters: they and their behavior is not constantly held in-check by scarcity, and so there are no negative (physical) consequences that they need fear, they are ruthless, and hence almost the very definition of monstrosity. There is no need for us to resort to extravagant concepts such as The Devil, subterranean or submarine or even extraterrestrial influences to understand the great wickedness operating and driving the criminal players' hands as they steer the West toward collapse and as they expedite their pillaging by exterminating the competition.
Having worked with many of these types in academia, their main driving philosophy is envy: I'm so smart, I should be the one who's wealthy and running things. Most academics, though not all, have a very low opinion of people without Ph.Ds, and even of people with Ph.Ds but outside of academia.
Good point, so true. Academics are scammers, the biggest grifters in the game. They lie and they cheat to gain their power, and what does it give them? A moderate salary, summers off, total job security, the ability to walk briskly across a lawn in a nice blazer, and flirt with a few grad students.
I work for a large university. I’m one of the few in my college without a degree. I’ve observed that the PhDs who are the first in their family to have an advanced degree behave very differently than those who come from a family of academics. Humility and gratitude are still attributes of the first generation PhDs. Not so much the others.
"I’ve observed that the PhDs who are the first in their family to have an advanced degree behave very differently than those who come from a family of academics."
This is an interesting observation. In fact, in my family, my father was the first to earn not just his Ph.D. but also a college degree of any kind. After that, it was almost obligatory that we all did - all but 1 of the 9 grands (of which I'm the oldest) and even my uncle, Dad's brother. Both of my daughters have degrees and the next oldest three of my cousins' kids are in college.
At present, I'd say my daughters haven't really appreciated it.
Like I said, it’s been my observation. It could also have something to do with the focus of the college I work in. And 40 to 50 years ago there were more first generation advanced degrees than now. Heck, where I live it was unusual to go beyond a Bachelor’s until 15 years ago.
Because the emphasis on getting a degree is so pervasive in high schools, your daughters may know very few who don’t go to college and it’s the norm for them and thus not an appreciation-level event as it would be if they were in the minority.
Think of the 10 Commamdments (outside of a “religious” context), which begin with “You are not God.”
and then go on to outline the very most basic tenets for a mutually satisfying co-existence for yourself and with your neighbor. Everything else which determines a decent quality of life stems out from them.
I give anyone, whether child, teenager, or adult, just TWO rules:
Rule 1. Don't annoy anyone, and
Rule 2. Don't get yourself killed.
If there's any doubt, see Rule 1.
Effectively, there's really only need for Rule 1, because if you were to get yourself killed in my presence, then you'd annoy the bejesus out of me (I'd have to clean up the mess you left), and that's a violation of Rule 1.
I offer a different thesis. In nature, the divine is evident. There are patterns and dualities reconciling within the cosmos, if you can see it. To be close to nature is to be close to the divine and so the spiritual dimension is a fundamental part of being human and part of the organic world. Religion attempted to codify our relationship to the natural and installed a power structure, leading to the egoic struggles that corruption needs to gain a foothold. What is in essence, a pursuit, a verb, an individual engagement to discover the spiritual dynamic and establish an effective (for the individual) relationship to it, turned into an institution/establishment that tells you what to do. Where there is power to be found, wealth and worldly corruption. You see the brutality and oppression that most of the early religions throughout history. A legacy of trauma, not divinity. Add the hypocrisy seen among the 1% of those institutions, and lots of the hoi poloi that think they are holier than thou. It generates a natural moral revulsion by those who aren’t in its sway. Its a Swamp of a different kind. That’s what got us here. And it appears the lessons haven’t yet been learned. Scary.
This so nicely sums up my perception of the difference between spirituality and religion! Religion is, to me, a human corrupted manipulation of something beautiful and divine that's best experienced in nature away from the status and power hungry people who manipulate it for their own ends.
Agree, with a caveat: no group is altogether good for any individual, yet individuals need to be a part of groups to survive and thrive… imho being a healthy adult is to choose one’s groups consciously and wisely, while leaving those that are no longer serving your needs. As you state tho, cults are good at hijacking individual thinking, turning a person in a battery cell feeding the cult.
God is not a dictator. Until the nanosecond you die, He waits for you, but will never force himself on you. He only offers the choice- death or life, darkness or light, despair or joy, fear or freedom.
My only point is that everything that you see as existing ultimately could not have existed without the movement of some force which did not. That “unmoved mover” has created humanity as its only creation with the ability to exercise free will. Therefore, Logically does it not follow that this creator must have some desire that humanity orient its free will towards itself otherwise, why bother creating something which could choose one way or the other?
“The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.”
It sounds nice, kind of, but it's still just a made up thing.
On second thoughts, the idea of a death crow like that waiting for me to expire so that it can either resurrect my corpse, presumably, or just let it rot is macabre.
Is that the 'gift' of faith, or is it the 'accident'?
But your point is a very good one. We are in fact faced with irreconcilable differences because there are measurable differences in brain structure and therefore cognitive presentation between people. Simply put. some people's brains are wired for faith, while others' just aren't.
I don’t need to force it down your throat, you have free will. It’s like Dorothy’s red slippers, you have it in you, but until you see it for yourself, no amount of persuasion will make you understand.
@SCA I’m not religious but have a healthy respect for the most of them. I can tell you it is people like you who are part of the problem. You seem to have a desire to subvert anything fundamentally good including common sense.
Unfortunately, the bad guys have influenced 98% of the churches as well.
How many refused to shut their doors and chose to continue to serve their congregation and God, and not their government masters or the media public opinion? Very, very, very few.
Yep this was and is my husband’s biggest beef during that time. He confronted our pastor who claimed “safety for our half-black congregation” and absolutely could not see well, everything wrong with it. We left that church because how can you be “led” by that?
Right. The problem is, where the hell do you go (pun intended)? .0001% of churches never shut for a week. I don't know any within 100 miles of me. They all failed the test of faith, and it was a mighty big one.
I think it's kind of like Florida. Yes, even Florida shut it all down right at the beginning. The barage of BS was strong. But then they got serious, got actual experts, and changed course. While I'd certainly prefer a church that never "listened to the experts", I'll take one that stepped out of the slipstream early on. That's where we go now.
"Whether or not you’re religious, religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity ..." for spineless, characterless, and morally-weak people, perhaps. Are we then to infer that this describes the majority in a society?
In any case, why must anyone who is independently-minded, principled, and moral observe or obey an externally-derived (and conceived with the intention of controlling the masses) doctrine merely to accommodate the irresolute and weak-minded who principally might benefit from it?
As a tangent, a professionally successful black in-law described to me the "crabs in a bucket" attitude among many blacks. Crabs in a bucket will pull an escaping crab back into the bucket. Escape is not allowed. Similarly, some black social groups will attempt to "pull back" a relative/friend who is "escaping" into normalized, successful living and work relationships and lifestyles. "Acting white" is a disparagement of those who seek a better life than offered in the "proper" social group. It forces one to reject his roots as so many crabs in a bucket seeking to pull him back down...
They way I heard it is...it is easier for a person standing on a chair to be pulled down off the chair than the person pulling someone up onto it. But hey, that's white hereopatriarichal culture for you, damn chair makers.
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
It ain't going away until the middle recognizes we're already in a revolution.
We need a counter-revolution. That starts by informing (easy just point out the idiocracy) the middle/normies that the revolution by The Left started, in earnest, 20 years ago.
Best quote I've read, attributed to Napoleon: war happens when the government tells you who the enemy is. Revolution happens when you figure it out for yourself.
My children have told me and my wife that nobody lives like we do. I tell them that they should be lucky for that. With luck their children will tell them that too.
I agree with that. But the last 20 have produced a hegemony that half the country will vote for.... Because the other half has been uniformly painted as the enemy.
It has reached terminal velocity and is where the Left always ends up.
It crossed critical mass roughly 20 years ago. That's sort of my point.
Perhaps that's when we actually began to notice that we had, by agreeing to fight on their terms, with their weapons, on their ground, that we were essentially conceding the war to them.
You could be right about that. I remember the hostages in Iran debacle and how almost everyone in DC had bumper stickers berating the Ayatollah. Can you even imagine that happening
these days? What happened to people? To men? I am witness in one lifetime to the downfall of the West! Incredible!! The media is massively evil, complicit and corrupted!
“Hard times make hard men, hard men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times.” I don’t know who said this but it’s proven to be true.
And if you are blessed to have good men in your life, suddenly you find out society classifies them as patriarchal oppressors.
My husband noticed how the white heterosexual man was being written out of everything decades ago now. Most noticeable- tv commercials. It was all there if anyone cared to look. People unlikely to be discerning missed it. Sad!!!
Tell your husband he might be glad for this Patti. It appears that AI is having a difficult time recognizing white people as humans. If AI gets to Skynet/Terminator status, white people may make out okay!
In the *Abolition of Man* CS Lewis argues that without an emotional attachment to virtue, everything goes awry. He calls it "Men without chests". He's not arguing for a muscular masculinity, he is saying mankind, when reason rules over appetite WITHOUT the heart, without valuing virtue, become animals. I just went back and scanned some of the book. Its seems prescient to me.
Isaiah 3:12 O My people! Their taskmasters are infants, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And swallow up the way of your paths.
Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
Indeed, our guiding principle in the West is "safety first", an effeminate position. The First and Second Amendments would stand, if men alone voted. With women voters ascendant and the number of neutered, low-T men increasing, both will soon fall.
So true. After listening to SCOTUS argue Murthy v Missouri and the subsequent discussions, it’s very clear our society us leaning towards desire for perceived safety at the expense of liberty. Why wouldn’t it? We’ve become such a highly litigious nation, suing everyone and their neighbors for the least injury, cancelling for the tiniest slight.
What’s the quote and those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither? I would change “deserve” to “attain.”
I have extremely high trait-openness, and am sometimes tripped up by my willingness to inhabit a worldview for the purposes of testing it, even when I can see that it is not being proffered in good faith.
I’ll play the “pretend you are Socrates” game to the point of absurdity, leading my loved ones to suspect I’m bonkers at times.
So in my very first substack post, I experimented with the idea that there is no objective truth, and defended that position in arguments. And what I ultimately concluded is that there might *not* be, but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface, or we cannot function as a society, *and* that this is part of what *being* in a common culture means.
It’s way past time to recognize we are living in a nation of tribes of varying degrees of aggression, stop trying to convince people whose word for outsiders is “non-human” that we all have the same intentions and values, and take our toys and go.
I like James Lindsay a lot, but his mockery of national divorce as some kind of Christian Nationalist plot is mistaken. That’s like saying that leaving an abusive marriage is playing into the hands of the abuser by letting him win.
"but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface"
Could this not be deemed the root cause of virtually ALL differences of opinion, and all wars, since before each of us began to record our version of history?
True, but is it perhaps possible that being the target of an incessant, constant, onslaught of divide & conquer warfare for the last three generations might be contributing to our problems?
My personal filter is, 'Is this harmful to me, my family and friends or my neighbors?
Can it become so? This is where debate begins.
I read Daniel Dennett's 'Dangerous Idea' (not all the way through as it is very dense) but I did come away with an understanding of how long, extraordinarily long, evolution can take to filter out themes like 'parents need to split tasks' and 'both parents can add something to raising children'. I believe that evolution was crafting 'laws' long before written history and deism became a thing.
I sometimes think in terms of discovery vs. invention. If something has evolved organically and then gets refined and codified, it’s “discovered” and therefore more likely to be “natural” in the sense of “natural rights” or truths, while something that comes from technocratic projection is not and is generally going to be a net bad.
Actually, that gloriously and seemingly polite at first recommendation comes from the not often shown but devastating when it appears humour of John Le Carre in his novel "The Honourable Schoolboy". As I remember, the protagonist has been called to a high-up's office where it is evident that he is being expected to do something shady. The honourable schoolboy replies with this never to be forgotten line. But the Irish must have equivalents!
This is all part of normalizing the demoralization of society, of which we are already well on our way. Wokedom is a cancer that eats everything it touches and poisons the minds of the young. The followers of wokedom are zealous in their irrational pursuits. The people at the top of the food chain don't actually believe any of this garbage, they just push it on the useful idiots to carry out their mission because they are just a means to an end. The sad thing is that ideologies are not easily overcome. Really, there needs to be a widespread spiritual revival toward truth and goodness. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
“Heaven has given to every human being the power of controlling his passions, and if he neglects or loses it, the fault is his own, and he must be answerable for it.” - John Quincy Adams
Well, bad cat, you are starting to come around. You recognize, and have laid out a pretty good argument, the need to adhere to objective morality. It comes from the Creator. All other paths to morality are subjective and so who can argue one's morality is superior another's.
it need not follow that positive law, natural rights, or any other such objectively useful structure must emerge from or require a creator.
they may simple be discoveries like newton's laws and shared culture or time tested emergent ethos and story.
i think both sides of this discussion need to be more mindful that one can agree on precept without agreeing on source and thus find natural alliance on shared values rather than get hung up fighting over deity vs darwin.
El Gato, You are confirming the point made that unless there is a an objective morale standard that resides outside of our self or collective self then it is still subjective morality. If society, or the individual, defines what is right and what is wrong then there can be no evaluation or criticism of it because to what do you appeal? Societies have "discovered" morale laws since time began. And so here we are, living in a dystopian world where everyone does that which is right in their own eyes.
All of the "truths" that you take as self-evident come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's the water you have always swum in so you don't even recognize it as such. You should read Tom Holland's book "Dominion" (or at least watch him speak on Youtube a few times) to get a clearer picture of this. Your analysis is brilliant as far as it goes, but you have forgotten the step before "moral relativism" i.e., (as Nietzsche put it) the "death of God." Once you have that, moral relativism and all of its downstream consequences are inevitable.
Oh, I don't know. The Judeo-Christian-thing is so overrated. The cradle and first flowering of the West was the Classical world, in particular Ancient Greece. It's not an accident that Christianity was Hellenized for various reasons, but also in order that it could be made palatable to the cosmopolitan mind developing in the European centers of Western civilization.
You should listen to (or read) Tom Holland. He is historian who specializes in classical Greek and Roman history and he would strongly disagree with you. His point (in his bestselling book "Dominion" and in many of his lectures) is that their way of thinking (and their morality) was radically different from ours, because ours is fundamentally Christian. We don't recognize how unique and unusual our way of thinking is because we are so immersed in it that is seems "natural" but it was actually a radical departure from classical Greek/Roman morality. If you want a very short version of this, read my Substack on the topic! https://pairodocs.substack.com/p/in-defence-of-the-christians
I used to be more aggressive. I've even found myself starting to dig in a few places in this comments section.
But, of all the things you've presented - I came for the graphs and tables and charts then stayed for the absolutely alluring alliteration - this single idea, that The Faithful of All Faiths and The Heathens alike can come to agreement without the vitriol and disdain that's become so common in all two-sides disputes these days. This one shouldn't be so hard.
Thanks for reminding us that we're all people on the inside.
An excellent point worth pondering, although I believe Aquinas, in helping the Church to reconcile the co-existence of faith and reason after its rejection of Aristotelian logic, gave us a solid foundation in his Five Ways of Proving that God Exists (Summa Theologiae.)
It’s difficult for me to explain without this context, so I appreciate your response.
I've lately taken to using the term "master bedroom" when talking with Realtors. They rephrase as "primary bedroom" or even worse "owner's suite" (isn't the whole property the owner's property?) and I will rephrase as "master bedroom." As their commission is more important than PC, they eventually go along.
We'll probably be moving back to the States within a couple of years, and I will do the same.
Where's the master bedroom? Is this the master bedroom? Does this house have a master bedroom suite? Where are the slave quarte-----, well, maybe not THAT one.
objective morality must be discovered in much the same way that natural rights are discovered. you use it to build structures and see what stands, what flourishes. that becomes objective. it works like positive law. it is emergent, not dictatorial or devised. i think what you primarily seem to be objecting to are the utopian visions of "morality should be this" cast into stories that do not resemble humans or humanity and used to beat people into submission. this seems to arise around the distinction of "we made these rules to make you better, to perfect you" instead of "we made these rules in reflection of how humans work."
i used to subscribe to the idea you propose around "there are no objective rights or morality, it's all something someone chose" but after watching the way it works, i have come around to the fact that this is not so. you cannot simply choose any right or ethos an impose it and more than you can choose any law of gravity and seek to build a bridge that stays up. there are real and non-optional selectors around what can and will work and we ignore them at great peril. this is where the objectivity comes from: the consequences of poor choices are not dissipated by claiming "we'll no other choice was provable better in abstract fashion."
Excellent description. Personal observation of our own actions and those of others then the results is key. The adults innour lives, most important our parents, play vital role in teaching us so as to avoid hard lessons but it seems some of us must learn the hard way. Some can experience hardship repeatedly but never admit much less understand the role their own behavior has played in their own hardship, constantly going through life blaming others.
"here are no objective rights or morality, it's all something someone chose"
Don't put words in my mouth, thank you. The way you structured that sentence, and your entire response, is a gross mischaracterisation of what I wrote, and I can only conclude that you misunderstood me, as you are usually way above such.
Physical reality is objective; our interpretation of it is not, nor is our communication of it objective - even with best intents, it will be subjective.
Claiming one's preferred morality is objective is nothing but being a coward: stating that one prefers a specific set of subjective morality as a freely made conscious choice is not.
The liberals (and most others) insist that there's some magical state of being where a human can be morally objective, which is impossible simply because all morality is human-made. If it was human-made as part of traditions dating back before written language or because someone with too much time on his hands wrote a manifesto, or someone had a psychotic-schizoid episode and interpreted it as divine vision doesn't change that it was man-made.
It only changes /how/ it was man-made (which is the important bit).
And you were correct, the are no rights beyond what we agree to respect. That doesn't make rights meaningless, quite the opposite. It makes rights paramount for a society to exist at all.
Rickard, "coward"?! Them's fighting words! Ha. I wonder if you're hoping for an invigorating intellectual catfight with the gato.
I think it is interesting that these things require a conspiracy of people working together to create a morality. There is little chance for individual morality perhaps. It is also really interesting that there is explicit and observed morality, that what is said may be very different from what occurs in practice. So many very communities that I've seen attach themselves explicitly and intentionally to a morality, seem to have a conundrum of hypocrisy, but that is of a general aggregate identity as opposed to individual.
We do have the prime mover problem if you are thinking tradition could be the source of morality. If I understand, you assert that it is all man-made. What is the difference and significance of morality being man-made VS being necessarily experienced in a human form (because we don't really have any other way)? Is it subjectivity because a person is necessarily a subject? If God is working, the divine, you cannot really argue from outside of yourself, your form. And similarly, with all of the limitations of form (a human brain, the ready tools of perception what they are/are not, the ready interpretive parameters what they are, the faculties of imagination and so on), how do you presume that the vast unknown beyond you does not entirely supercede you in a divine manner? I wonder at the boldness of asserting morality to be entirely subjective when there is so clearly so much foundational substance and function the ignorance of which is possibly a structural characteristic of humanity and its subject(s). It seems we cannot help but be subjective, but, having not even resolved for ourselves the crucial heart of even the problem of our own consciousness, how can we not be intrigued and even paused by the possibility of a finality beyond ourselves, which may be what God is getting at? We cannot avoid the mystery, and finding ourselves in the cloud of its unknowing, why choose commitedly the role of creators of morality?
I have always been very attracted to notions of beauty, of ideals which may not exist in form but remain alike as feeling real and constantly calling for their reverent due in my own agency. I'd honestly give my life for them, and do so in effect. I wonder at the faulty practice, what does it have to say to the ideal? If I have eyes, do I also have "eyes" for the ideal morality? And what is the matter of it being my subjectivity by necessity of my fourth, by action as a human primal creator, or by mysterious sensitivity and submission to a greater ultimacy to which I have some relation?
"There is little chance for individual morality perhaps."
"a system is what the system does."
For a single person - think Castaway (Wilson doesn't count) - morality doesn't include the need to interact with society.
That system seems likely to be different than one that comes into being for a group.
That said, perhaps as societies evolve, and merge, and occasionally diverge, it might be the case that what's objectively good evolves, merges, and occasionally diverges.
Yes, reality eventually bites, whether it's morality, physics, health or anything else. Kant had a theory of 'objective morality' that's summarised at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nz0iaNvVpE in a very entertaining way.
Afghanistan has stayed up no matter which competing cultures have tried to remake it into their images, and though the Afghans have a very strong definition of morality, that doesn't stop them from all the common abuses forbidden by their state religion.
You will run into the inevitable "is vs ought" conundrum. Science is very good at giving us the first part. It can tell us how to build a nuclear weapon (or an mRNA vaccine) but it cannot tell us whether we should do so (or not.)
St Thomas Aquinas defines the moral law thusly: (From the Summa)
“Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law .”
(ST I-II, 91, 2)
In other words, the natural desire of humans to achieve their proper end through reason and free will is the natural law. More formally defined, the natural law is our participation in the eternal law, through reason and will.
Of course, a well-formed conscience is vital in the process of understanding the moral law and its importance in achieving a joyful life.
The natural law pertains to human beings, and while yes, human beings act brutally, the behavior stems from concupiscence. We have a natural tendency to rebel against God precisely because we were given free will.
this is the academic dodge that gets used to push post modernism, deconstructionism, and relativism. but it's basically the result of a high level misframing. all high function societies emerge from collective beliefs and shared values and not all such choices are equal. they have objectively different outcomes and capabilities.
one can make these sorts of (to my mind wish washy and rootless) claims to lack of objectivism by keeping all debate on a logical/intellectual plane, but that, to my mind, misses the point of what morality is for. it does not exist as some "pure abstract good" it exists to support human agency and thriving. a system is what the system does.
the objectivity lies in "so how is the world when we use these rules?"
ethics absent emergent outcomes are just parlor games.
Who benefits by the rules any society makes to govern itself?
It is perfectly true, for example, that more freedom for women is very bad for men. In religion-based societies everywhere, even the most gormless men can get a wife if they have sufficient money to buy one.
The more religious people are, the more they insist some people are designated as hierarchically superior to others and others are naturally designed to submit to them. We see the revolt of some people against the idiocies of the left by playacting "tradwives." Of course there's no shortage of traditional wives in extreme cult communities such as Mormons.
Not all functioning societies are ones healthy normal people can thrive in.
Calling it an "academic dodge" or pointing out that some people, like postmodernists, don't understand it, doesn't make it false.
Again, you seem to purposefully misunderstand what I write - don't read it as a defense of postmodernism or wokeism or nihilism, because I'm not about that crap.
If acknowledging reality is key - which it is - then acknowledging that it is us that create morality and rights and the rest of it and that how these are enacted are always on us, not gods or principles or the rights themselves is of utmost importance to avoid the cruelties called virtues history is so full of.
"that it is us that create morality and rights and the rest of it and that how these are enacted are always on us,"
That just isn't so. Elephants have morality, as do many other animals. Just because we do not understand their morals, or fully appreciate them, does NOT mean they don't have them, nor does it make them relative to ours. This seems to imply morality--which we could define as the level of socialization necessary for stratas of enduring societies to interactively function with minimal friction over time--is a construction of successful species, which implies morality has an EVOLUTIONARY (innate?) function. The question, now as always, is not where morality comes from, but what is the morality (or ethical framework?) a given group uses to further friction-less functioning to promote the species.
It's at this point the relativists jump in, claiming relativity, to deconstruct the things they can't change in themselves, and to seize the power their nihilistic vacuum creates. They seek to undermine and replace systems that have worked more or less for 12 millennia (to the tune of 8 billion people) with an anti-life equation (Darkseid, anyone?) whose ultimate end-state is a lone neuro-atypical wretch sprawled alone on top a mountain of skulls when the "deconstruction" is complete, full intersectionality realized. In short, it is madness, it is destruction, it is fundamentally amoral, but it is not relative: it is a (hopefully) unachievable absolute the non-crazy (non-evil?) should resist with every fibre.
Agreed, the objectivity of a moral framework can be seen in the consequences. It is no coincidence that various civilizations throughout history developed comparable moral codes that worked in effect to lower people’s time preference. This “natural law” that humans discovered allowed them to build up civilization and further increase their chances for survival.
This would be like saying "Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is why your foot hurts when a tool box falls on your foot."
It's the other way around - we sought to ascribe a Law to explain the phenomenon we experienced, that is were informed of, by the Objective Reality of multiple broken metatarsals.
Everyone used to teach their children what to do with their hands. Women have *always* coded. Take a look at the textiles for daily use that even illiterate societies have produced for all of human history.
By marriageable age (matured gonads), in every society, male and female children had been trained in useful crafts. These days, middle- and upper-class parents spend tons of money having their children learn luxury talents but how many of these privileged kids can fix a torn pair of pants?
Now, it's true that there have always been bored people with just a few too many minutes in the day to keep them out of trouble. Some of that trouble leads to advance in knowledge. Some of it leads to picking at the worst parts of yourself until you've got a full-blown pathology.
It's not objective morality--which can't be defined--but common sense that we need to recultivate in modern society. We need to stop telling lies to little kids and raising them with illogic framed as inclusiveness.
Heather doesn't have two mommies. Somewhere there was a guy who fathered her, even if just by donating the sperm only a guy can produce. At least one of those ladies raising Heather has no biological relation to her. That's not anything shameful but it is entirely true. Children not raised to understand that are going into the real world unmoored from basic reality.
We need basic courage too. If a guy is shaving in the women's locker room, cancel your membership. You don't need to go swimming to be fit and healthy. You can do all useful forms of exercise in your living room even if your living room is in an apt.
Comments threads throughout purportedly sensible Substacks are full of whining. A little discipline and self-denial are what's needed. Your girl is playing on a team with a six-foot boy calling himself Heather? Take your girl off the team. Maybe she'll be sad. A little pain leads to growth.
I agree with your description, but then the problem is, who or what defines what is “practical, measured and logical?” In order for a society to get back to or establish itself where “common sense” rules the day, then we presumably must come to some common agreement as to how it is defined, right?
And this is the fundamental question I think this column poses, can we agree on an objective definition of morality or even that such a thing exists?
Every definition of objective morality smashes its face against reality.
It is wrong to kill (other human beings, and in some cultures animals or any sentient being). Yet few cultures refrain from warfare. There are people most cultures designate as legitimate to be killed. First we must call them "the enemy."
It is considered a moral imperative that parents raise their children with care and devotion. What if that care and devotion is to torture children according to the precepts of their cult beliefs? There are few religions that don't give parents permission or encouragement or imperatives to physically chastise their children.
It is wrong to take other people's property. Is it objectively wrong for someone to steal someone else's property in order to ensure the survival of a person who would not without that crime having been committed? For example creeping out of the Warsaw Ghetto to steal food or medicine, or any comparable action against the prevailing authorities in order to save a human life.
It's easy to think moral principles are undeniably manifestly enduringly true. But this is why we must use common sense. I think killing is wrong. I also think there are crimes against sentient creatures that merit the death penalty, because perpetrators have thereby forfeited their right to continue living in the world. Am I correct? Incorrect? We know that incarceration is an imperfect guarantee against dangerous predators being let loose in the world again. There are always fashions in criminal justice that defeat common sense.
We are a pack-animal species hard-wired to function in a hierarchy. How the hard-wiring occurred is not an answerable question. Nevertheless it's our operating system.
A big part of the reason is that in the late 20th/early21st c. our moral codes have come under attack from the disproportionate 'voice' mass media has given to one-track-minded politicos, 'activists', mouthy obsessives, narcissists, permanent malcontents....and general screwballs among us. Anyone who has actually got a reasonably balanced view of life is far less likely to be a media-type of person and so the voices of moral sanity are underrepresented. This has reached a crisis in the last few crazy wokey wokey years but has actually been brewing for 50 years and more. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
Before one feels entirely "comfortable" claiming there is no objective morality, they have first become comfortable claiming there is no objective REALITY! To make either claim one must embrace and become "comfortable" with logical contradictions.
We have begun purchasing tickets to board a doomed flight FROM Reason and its inviolate discipline of logic. It manifests in endless examples. From the simple political examples of the sixties in which we were "instructed" to practice the VIRTUE of racial discrimination in order to end the EVIL of racial discrimination, to the most recent absurdity. The willful ignorance of Aristotle’s epistemological law of identity, wherein “a thing cannot be itself and something else at the same time or in the same respect!” You merely have to "identify" as it!
It is a doomed flight, one that will crash in a destructive cacophony of the usual brutality, carnage, and injustice. Meanwhile, assure your seat belts are fastened, tray tables are up, and your seat backs are in the full upright position!
Very good article and the title is apt, except any religion that has to be accepted on faith cannot be the true religion. If God chose to communicate with people - and I believe He has - then surely He could communicate in such a manner that this communication would be apparent as truth.
I'm trying to devise a method for arranging the graphs in different ways.
For example, to learn which words were coming into the lexicon early, how long they stayed relevant or if they increased or decreased in usage, or which have been used most frequently.
*Monte Carlo Simulations have entered the chat*
Note for example that variations of 'victim' appear early on and stay strong but phrases like 'cultural appropriation' and 'triggering' roared onto the scene late and have stayed pretty hot.
Whether or not you’re religious, religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity. We had a guest preacher once who was talking about the prodigal son in the pig pen, and he said “it’s just gravity - the person in the pig pen can always pull you in easier than you can pull him out.” People can easily slide into depravity but have to work to embrace virtue. And our society has been pushed, subtly at first and then one great heave, onto the slide. We each have to pull ourselves out and that takes more work than many are willing to do, since the depravity seems to come much more naturally when you can find examples with the click of a mouse at any time of day or night.
Having grown up non-religious, it was only during covid I realized the true purpose religion, and more importantly the common moral code that came with it, (had) served in society.
The pigpen analogy is spot on.
This popular meme that began spreading in 2015 is a visual example of what bad kitty is describing:
https://factcheck.afp.com/sick-wolves-dont-lead-pack-and-leader-isnt-last-line
Even after sharing the "fact checks" with friends back in 2015 when I first saw the meme many well-meaning types scoffed and said, "well it should be, it's good to have as an ideal to strive for."
I shook my head in bewilderment then as I do at the very things el gato malo highlights. That sort of fetishism of weakness as a virtue that defines the race to the bottom can only lead to the demise of the pack.
It's an example of psychological priming. I explored it in an old Stack:
https://freedomfox.substack.com/p/foxes-know-wolves
For those with a belief system that proclaims evolution is the only origin theory that can be taught in schools, intelligent design (God's creation) having no scientific basis or proof, they sure dismiss the "survival of the fittest" pillar of Darwin's theory easily, without a peep.
As a scientist, I aways tell people that evolution describes the "how", but it doesn't describe the "why". It just seems difficult for people to separate these two concepts, but if you don't, you end up with paralizing extremes.
No one can describe the "why." That's beyond human knowledge.
If that's true, the universe is just one giant cosmic casino, and there is no point in morality of any kind. Just satisfy your desires, whatever they are. My "common sense" might be "why work, just take from SCA". It's all a crap shoot anyway. We call this Nihilism.
You are saying things I have not said. I think you know that too.
Belief in a cult is no guarantee of anything except thinking you own the Truth. It hasn't worked well to protect any society from the worst of human nature. The worst of human nature is the heart of every cult.
The problem with your argument here, Kertch, is that it ignores the unavoidable fact that our decisions and actions have consequences - often immediate, but also over the longer duration. It's this constant interplay of action-reaction that is the true basis of morality - the cumulative experience, both individually or collectively, of the consequences of the many interactions between people. Some consequences are beneficial and constructive - corresponding with the positive outcomes from morally-affirmative behavior - while others are degenerative.
There are prominent arguments for the handing-down of morality by (a) deity, but from the above, it can be seen that such arguments are superfluous, at best, or just a misrepresentation.
https://memes.getyarn.io/yarn-clip/66853000-7b50-439f-abc0-632de1d4c9f9/gif
"the universe is just one giant cosmic casino"
I'm not opposed to this but I don't think
"there is no point in morality of any kind"
is the only alternative.
Hence, we call it Faith.
Whose version?
Indeed, if it even has a tangible and identifiable existence.
It's a bit silly anyway to be concerned with unanswerable questions.
"As a scientist, I aways tell people that evolution describes the "how", but it doesn't describe the "why". "
How : Science :: Why : Philosophy
And I also add that Evolution isn't even an Origin Story. It's more of a How We Got Here Story. Reaching back far enough, questions emerge that lack evidence so Science should be cautious, you know, extrapolating.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/there-are-two-kinds-of-people-in-this-world-those-who-can-extrapolate-from-incomplete-data--590886413584745920/
The 'how' is intrinsic to the structure and workings of the universe.
The 'why' is the propensity for subjectivity by human consciousness that seeks justification regardless of there objectively being any.
Yes! Same for me
I agree with you that "religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity". But the collapse of our Western Christendom has not been the whole story of Gato's "how we got to here" question. The same dynamic Western culture that spawned the inventor and entrepreneur also spawned a resentful leisured intelligentsia - one that wanted to see itself as more sophisticated than thou by unpicking our culture's moral compass. And these types made a b-line for the public-funded universities and the rest of our polity was foolish enough to let this up-itself, malcontent intelligentsia entirely colonise them and sheep dip the rising generations of the professional/managerial elite with their bogus race and gender victimhood cults. The rest is history: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
I'd add, and this is merely my personal feeling, that a huge part of getting to where we are is tied up in our denial of the fact that we are, at the core, animals. We've built a world of our own making, that isolates (most of) us from nature in all, or at least almost all ways. In fact, it would seem nature is the considered the enemy much of the time.
There is much to be said for being out in the natural world and realizing ones own insignificance and vulnerability. It's hard to be an egotistical asshole once you've stood on a mountain as a storm rolls in around you, making you intensely aware that you could easily be wiped out. I use the mountain example from personal experience, but any similar situation, any that bring literal survival into question, has the same effect of peeling away the layers of civilized bullshit and arrogance.
yeah or having to kill your meal to eat
And appreciating the significance and the solemnity of taking a life, against that living thing's will, because you have prioritized your own life and estimated it more worthy of persisting than the life you've taken. Ideally, that's the compassion that obliges the pact the life-taker should make with himself, if not with the life taken: that he will kill in order that he will keep living, because he is the agent with the greater will and the further-reaching ability to affect the world, and somehow, in some way he will make amends, and by his atonement he makes the world better for himself, his kind, and the kind of the life he took.
Very well said
I'm genuinely glad you appreciate it. While they are only words put up somewhere on the Internet, I deeply believe what I said there, and with the greatest of humility, the spirit of those words evinces what I at least believe to be real morality.
And historically, the human condition has been abject poverty for most of humanity’s existence. Gleaning from the fields was how many fed their families. And the occasional roasted rodent was a treat, as Ryan points out.
The omnipresence of resource scarcity for all living things (all, that is, except for the globalist oligarch financier-owners) for all of time, is in fact the most important determinant and impetus to the emergence of morality. Because it obliges people to comprehend the finiteness of their environment, and then to resolve the problem of the effective distribution of resources in order that existence may be sustained and propagated into the future.
It is in these terms that it may also be understood why the globalist oligarch financier-owners truly are monsters: they and their behavior is not constantly held in-check by scarcity, and so there are no negative (physical) consequences that they need fear, they are ruthless, and hence almost the very definition of monstrosity. There is no need for us to resort to extravagant concepts such as The Devil, subterranean or submarine or even extraterrestrial influences to understand the great wickedness operating and driving the criminal players' hands as they steer the West toward collapse and as they expedite their pillaging by exterminating the competition.
Having worked with many of these types in academia, their main driving philosophy is envy: I'm so smart, I should be the one who's wealthy and running things. Most academics, though not all, have a very low opinion of people without Ph.Ds, and even of people with Ph.Ds but outside of academia.
Good point, so true. Academics are scammers, the biggest grifters in the game. They lie and they cheat to gain their power, and what does it give them? A moderate salary, summers off, total job security, the ability to walk briskly across a lawn in a nice blazer, and flirt with a few grad students.
I work for a large university. I’m one of the few in my college without a degree. I’ve observed that the PhDs who are the first in their family to have an advanced degree behave very differently than those who come from a family of academics. Humility and gratitude are still attributes of the first generation PhDs. Not so much the others.
"I’ve observed that the PhDs who are the first in their family to have an advanced degree behave very differently than those who come from a family of academics."
This is an interesting observation. In fact, in my family, my father was the first to earn not just his Ph.D. but also a college degree of any kind. After that, it was almost obligatory that we all did - all but 1 of the 9 grands (of which I'm the oldest) and even my uncle, Dad's brother. Both of my daughters have degrees and the next oldest three of my cousins' kids are in college.
At present, I'd say my daughters haven't really appreciated it.
Like I said, it’s been my observation. It could also have something to do with the focus of the college I work in. And 40 to 50 years ago there were more first generation advanced degrees than now. Heck, where I live it was unusual to go beyond a Bachelor’s until 15 years ago.
Because the emphasis on getting a degree is so pervasive in high schools, your daughters may know very few who don’t go to college and it’s the norm for them and thus not an appreciation-level event as it would be if they were in the minority.
Excellent point.
Thank you.
No cult is good for people.
Think of the 10 Commamdments (outside of a “religious” context), which begin with “You are not God.”
and then go on to outline the very most basic tenets for a mutually satisfying co-existence for yourself and with your neighbor. Everything else which determines a decent quality of life stems out from them.
My dad used to say we were given 10 rules, just 10. Simple to follow, good morale compass, anyone can follow along!
10 rules?! Way too many!
I give anyone, whether child, teenager, or adult, just TWO rules:
Rule 1. Don't annoy anyone, and
Rule 2. Don't get yourself killed.
If there's any doubt, see Rule 1.
Effectively, there's really only need for Rule 1, because if you were to get yourself killed in my presence, then you'd annoy the bejesus out of me (I'd have to clean up the mess you left), and that's a violation of Rule 1.
Rule 1 is The Golden Rule™.
Every durable culture has similar rules.
How do you suppose that happened?
Common sense.
Circular logic.
I offer a different thesis. In nature, the divine is evident. There are patterns and dualities reconciling within the cosmos, if you can see it. To be close to nature is to be close to the divine and so the spiritual dimension is a fundamental part of being human and part of the organic world. Religion attempted to codify our relationship to the natural and installed a power structure, leading to the egoic struggles that corruption needs to gain a foothold. What is in essence, a pursuit, a verb, an individual engagement to discover the spiritual dynamic and establish an effective (for the individual) relationship to it, turned into an institution/establishment that tells you what to do. Where there is power to be found, wealth and worldly corruption. You see the brutality and oppression that most of the early religions throughout history. A legacy of trauma, not divinity. Add the hypocrisy seen among the 1% of those institutions, and lots of the hoi poloi that think they are holier than thou. It generates a natural moral revulsion by those who aren’t in its sway. Its a Swamp of a different kind. That’s what got us here. And it appears the lessons haven’t yet been learned. Scary.
This so nicely sums up my perception of the difference between spirituality and religion! Religion is, to me, a human corrupted manipulation of something beautiful and divine that's best experienced in nature away from the status and power hungry people who manipulate it for their own ends.
BINGO
Human language is insufficient to grasp Big Things.
Amen
Agree, with a caveat: no group is altogether good for any individual, yet individuals need to be a part of groups to survive and thrive… imho being a healthy adult is to choose one’s groups consciously and wisely, while leaving those that are no longer serving your needs. As you state tho, cults are good at hijacking individual thinking, turning a person in a battery cell feeding the cult.
Describing religion as cult is an oversimplification, but perhaps a better way to say it is “the proper exercise of religion.”
No. There is no proper exercise of religion.
Whose definition of a Greater Power are you going to force down the throats of society? Every religion starts with that.
God is not a dictator. Until the nanosecond you die, He waits for you, but will never force himself on you. He only offers the choice- death or life, darkness or light, despair or joy, fear or freedom.
Perfect example of the problem. This is *your* version of God.
And I am not forcing you to accept my definition.
My only point is that everything that you see as existing ultimately could not have existed without the movement of some force which did not. That “unmoved mover” has created humanity as its only creation with the ability to exercise free will. Therefore, Logically does it not follow that this creator must have some desire that humanity orient its free will towards itself otherwise, why bother creating something which could choose one way or the other?
"He waits for you, but will never force himself on you."
It's never been the gods that have forced themselves upon me.
Not ever.
“The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.”
― Aldous Huxley,
You made that up.
It sounds nice, kind of, but it's still just a made up thing.
On second thoughts, the idea of a death crow like that waiting for me to expire so that it can either resurrect my corpse, presumably, or just let it rot is macabre.
Just start with : You are NOT God, and go from there.
I am not a god.
That's it. There isn't any 'from there' for some people.
Some simply don't feel that void. Or perhaps we've not yet been granted the gift of faith.
Is that the 'gift' of faith, or is it the 'accident'?
But your point is a very good one. We are in fact faced with irreconcilable differences because there are measurable differences in brain structure and therefore cognitive presentation between people. Simply put. some people's brains are wired for faith, while others' just aren't.
…or have rejected it.
Whose definition of God?
I don’t need to force it down your throat, you have free will. It’s like Dorothy’s red slippers, you have it in you, but until you see it for yourself, no amount of persuasion will make you understand.
Your comment is a perfect example of the problem.
@SCA I’m not religious but have a healthy respect for the most of them. I can tell you it is people like you who are part of the problem. You seem to have a desire to subvert anything fundamentally good including common sense.
“Faith is the SUBSTANCE of things hoped for, the EVIDENCE of things not seen.”
How so?
What is your concept of what a cult is, I am curious?
My own understanding of a cult is a movement which requires unconditional obedience and surrender to one’s own free will.
Do you not know what a cult is?
Unfortunately, the bad guys have influenced 98% of the churches as well.
How many refused to shut their doors and chose to continue to serve their congregation and God, and not their government masters or the media public opinion? Very, very, very few.
Yep this was and is my husband’s biggest beef during that time. He confronted our pastor who claimed “safety for our half-black congregation” and absolutely could not see well, everything wrong with it. We left that church because how can you be “led” by that?
Right. The problem is, where the hell do you go (pun intended)? .0001% of churches never shut for a week. I don't know any within 100 miles of me. They all failed the test of faith, and it was a mighty big one.
I think it's kind of like Florida. Yes, even Florida shut it all down right at the beginning. The barage of BS was strong. But then they got serious, got actual experts, and changed course. While I'd certainly prefer a church that never "listened to the experts", I'll take one that stepped out of the slipstream early on. That's where we go now.
I'm having trouble forgiving and moving on. It's just such an awful thing to do.
So very true. Our culture has been perverted….on purpose. So many addicted now to porn. I don’t see a way out!
"Whether or not you’re religious, religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity ..." for spineless, characterless, and morally-weak people, perhaps. Are we then to infer that this describes the majority in a society?
In any case, why must anyone who is independently-minded, principled, and moral observe or obey an externally-derived (and conceived with the intention of controlling the masses) doctrine merely to accommodate the irresolute and weak-minded who principally might benefit from it?
'"... religion has been the gatekeeper of moral sanity ... " for spineless, characterless, and morally-weak people, '
This is standard modus operandi of paranoid ruling class and the managerial hierarchy: appeal to the lowest common denominator.
As a tangent, a professionally successful black in-law described to me the "crabs in a bucket" attitude among many blacks. Crabs in a bucket will pull an escaping crab back into the bucket. Escape is not allowed. Similarly, some black social groups will attempt to "pull back" a relative/friend who is "escaping" into normalized, successful living and work relationships and lifestyles. "Acting white" is a disparagement of those who seek a better life than offered in the "proper" social group. It forces one to reject his roots as so many crabs in a bucket seeking to pull him back down...
They way I heard it is...it is easier for a person standing on a chair to be pulled down off the chair than the person pulling someone up onto it. But hey, that's white hereopatriarichal culture for you, damn chair makers.
D A Carson quote:
“People do not drift toward Holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated.”
It ain't going away until the middle recognizes we're already in a revolution.
We need a counter-revolution. That starts by informing (easy just point out the idiocracy) the middle/normies that the revolution by The Left started, in earnest, 20 years ago.
Best quote I've read, attributed to Napoleon: war happens when the government tells you who the enemy is. Revolution happens when you figure it out for yourself.
“War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.”
― Carl von Clausewitz, On War
Ooh that is good
My children have told me and my wife that nobody lives like we do. I tell them that they should be lucky for that. With luck their children will tell them that too.
Much longer than20 years ago I’m afraid!
I agree with that. But the last 20 have produced a hegemony that half the country will vote for.... Because the other half has been uniformly painted as the enemy.
It has reached terminal velocity and is where the Left always ends up.
It crossed critical mass roughly 20 years ago. That's sort of my point.
Twenty years RG?
Perhaps that's when we actually began to notice that we had, by agreeing to fight on their terms, with their weapons, on their ground, that we were essentially conceding the war to them.
You could be right about that. I remember the hostages in Iran debacle and how almost everyone in DC had bumper stickers berating the Ayatollah. Can you even imagine that happening
these days? What happened to people? To men? I am witness in one lifetime to the downfall of the West! Incredible!! The media is massively evil, complicit and corrupted!
What happened o men? ....EXACTLY!
This is what happened:
https://tinyurl.com/3vsvkkb4
Exactly!
Truth! 😂
“Hard times make hard men, hard men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times.” I don’t know who said this but it’s proven to be true.
And if you are blessed to have good men in your life, suddenly you find out society classifies them as patriarchal oppressors.
My husband noticed how the white heterosexual man was being written out of everything decades ago now. Most noticeable- tv commercials. It was all there if anyone cared to look. People unlikely to be discerning missed it. Sad!!!
Tell your husband he might be glad for this Patti. It appears that AI is having a difficult time recognizing white people as humans. If AI gets to Skynet/Terminator status, white people may make out okay!
In the *Abolition of Man* CS Lewis argues that without an emotional attachment to virtue, everything goes awry. He calls it "Men without chests". He's not arguing for a muscular masculinity, he is saying mankind, when reason rules over appetite WITHOUT the heart, without valuing virtue, become animals. I just went back and scanned some of the book. Its seems prescient to me.
Thank you for this!! I will check it out!
Isaiah 3:12 O My people! Their taskmasters are infants, And women rule over them. O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray And swallow up the way of your paths.
The Bible is always right!
Also,
Isaiah 5:20 “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
Indeed, our guiding principle in the West is "safety first", an effeminate position. The First and Second Amendments would stand, if men alone voted. With women voters ascendant and the number of neutered, low-T men increasing, both will soon fall.
They kept warning us that "The Future is Female."
So true. After listening to SCOTUS argue Murthy v Missouri and the subsequent discussions, it’s very clear our society us leaning towards desire for perceived safety at the expense of liberty. Why wouldn’t it? We’ve become such a highly litigious nation, suing everyone and their neighbors for the least injury, cancelling for the tiniest slight.
What’s the quote and those who would trade liberty for security deserve neither? I would change “deserve” to “attain.”
By design this has happened! Saw it coming since the 60s
Without a universally agreed upon set of principle beliefs, such as those that religion provided for centuries, there can be nothing but chaos.
We have to have a baseline standard to work within or we end up in the hell you’re describing.
The baseline standard is the Natural Law. Religions are not inherently good unless the tenets are informed by the Natural Law.
The fundamental mistake in this logic is that this existence and its preservation is paramount.
What is the natural law if there's one life-jacket and you and I are competing for it?
That the most vicious of us gets it.
Natural Law, not law of nature. Easy mistake to make.
It is worth noting as well that the question of who gets the life jacket isn't terribly well covered by most religions.
I have extremely high trait-openness, and am sometimes tripped up by my willingness to inhabit a worldview for the purposes of testing it, even when I can see that it is not being proffered in good faith.
I’ll play the “pretend you are Socrates” game to the point of absurdity, leading my loved ones to suspect I’m bonkers at times.
So in my very first substack post, I experimented with the idea that there is no objective truth, and defended that position in arguments. And what I ultimately concluded is that there might *not* be, but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface, or we cannot function as a society, *and* that this is part of what *being* in a common culture means.
It’s way past time to recognize we are living in a nation of tribes of varying degrees of aggression, stop trying to convince people whose word for outsiders is “non-human” that we all have the same intentions and values, and take our toys and go.
I like James Lindsay a lot, but his mockery of national divorce as some kind of Christian Nationalist plot is mistaken. That’s like saying that leaving an abusive marriage is playing into the hands of the abuser by letting him win.
"but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface"
I like this quote a lot.
Over time, and after some threshold of acceptance, this might be called Tradition or Customs or Culture.
"but we *have* to agree on a certain number of turtles below which there is a solid surface"
Could this not be deemed the root cause of virtually ALL differences of opinion, and all wars, since before each of us began to record our version of history?
Yeah; if we don’t agree on some root axioms, we can’t get along.
True, but is it perhaps possible that being the target of an incessant, constant, onslaught of divide & conquer warfare for the last three generations might be contributing to our problems?
It's unlikely to be helping
This is the value in being open to at least some assimilation.
Or even a lot. But how many turtles, is the important question.
This is such a thoughtful comment. Thank you for sharing.
My personal filter is, 'Is this harmful to me, my family and friends or my neighbors?
Can it become so? This is where debate begins.
I read Daniel Dennett's 'Dangerous Idea' (not all the way through as it is very dense) but I did come away with an understanding of how long, extraordinarily long, evolution can take to filter out themes like 'parents need to split tasks' and 'both parents can add something to raising children'. I believe that evolution was crafting 'laws' long before written history and deism became a thing.
I sometimes think in terms of discovery vs. invention. If something has evolved organically and then gets refined and codified, it’s “discovered” and therefore more likely to be “natural” in the sense of “natural rights” or truths, while something that comes from technocratic projection is not and is generally going to be a net bad.
Your comment and dialectic are levels above my polemical abilities.
The Irish just said "Pop it up the old back passage" to their government's plans to constitutionalise relativism. Take heart.
Hah! I wish I was as eloquent as the Irish are!
Actually, that gloriously and seemingly polite at first recommendation comes from the not often shown but devastating when it appears humour of John Le Carre in his novel "The Honourable Schoolboy". As I remember, the protagonist has been called to a high-up's office where it is evident that he is being expected to do something shady. The honourable schoolboy replies with this never to be forgotten line. But the Irish must have equivalents!
This is all part of normalizing the demoralization of society, of which we are already well on our way. Wokedom is a cancer that eats everything it touches and poisons the minds of the young. The followers of wokedom are zealous in their irrational pursuits. The people at the top of the food chain don't actually believe any of this garbage, they just push it on the useful idiots to carry out their mission because they are just a means to an end. The sad thing is that ideologies are not easily overcome. Really, there needs to be a widespread spiritual revival toward truth and goodness. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. (John 14:6)
Like I said maybe 20 years ago to someone the Left's main job is to normalize the abnormal.
What is happening now is just the 1960s on steroids. The result will be much worse if that’s even possible!
Yuri Besmanov said it first ☺️
Correct. He certainly did.
“Heaven has given to every human being the power of controlling his passions, and if he neglects or loses it, the fault is his own, and he must be answerable for it.” - John Quincy Adams
Well, bad cat, you are starting to come around. You recognize, and have laid out a pretty good argument, the need to adhere to objective morality. It comes from the Creator. All other paths to morality are subjective and so who can argue one's morality is superior another's.
it need not follow that positive law, natural rights, or any other such objectively useful structure must emerge from or require a creator.
they may simple be discoveries like newton's laws and shared culture or time tested emergent ethos and story.
i think both sides of this discussion need to be more mindful that one can agree on precept without agreeing on source and thus find natural alliance on shared values rather than get hung up fighting over deity vs darwin.
El Gato, You are confirming the point made that unless there is a an objective morale standard that resides outside of our self or collective self then it is still subjective morality. If society, or the individual, defines what is right and what is wrong then there can be no evaluation or criticism of it because to what do you appeal? Societies have "discovered" morale laws since time began. And so here we are, living in a dystopian world where everyone does that which is right in their own eyes.
All of life is a cycle and not a straight or even wobbly path forward.
Hi SCA. Not following what you mean here. Could you elaborate?
We are not in new unprecedented times. We are just now.
All of the "truths" that you take as self-evident come from the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's the water you have always swum in so you don't even recognize it as such. You should read Tom Holland's book "Dominion" (or at least watch him speak on Youtube a few times) to get a clearer picture of this. Your analysis is brilliant as far as it goes, but you have forgotten the step before "moral relativism" i.e., (as Nietzsche put it) the "death of God." Once you have that, moral relativism and all of its downstream consequences are inevitable.
Oh, I don't know. The Judeo-Christian-thing is so overrated. The cradle and first flowering of the West was the Classical world, in particular Ancient Greece. It's not an accident that Christianity was Hellenized for various reasons, but also in order that it could be made palatable to the cosmopolitan mind developing in the European centers of Western civilization.
You should listen to (or read) Tom Holland. He is historian who specializes in classical Greek and Roman history and he would strongly disagree with you. His point (in his bestselling book "Dominion" and in many of his lectures) is that their way of thinking (and their morality) was radically different from ours, because ours is fundamentally Christian. We don't recognize how unique and unusual our way of thinking is because we are so immersed in it that is seems "natural" but it was actually a radical departure from classical Greek/Roman morality. If you want a very short version of this, read my Substack on the topic! https://pairodocs.substack.com/p/in-defence-of-the-christians
I used to be more aggressive. I've even found myself starting to dig in a few places in this comments section.
But, of all the things you've presented - I came for the graphs and tables and charts then stayed for the absolutely alluring alliteration - this single idea, that The Faithful of All Faiths and The Heathens alike can come to agreement without the vitriol and disdain that's become so common in all two-sides disputes these days. This one shouldn't be so hard.
Thanks for reminding us that we're all people on the inside.
An excellent point worth pondering, although I believe Aquinas, in helping the Church to reconcile the co-existence of faith and reason after its rejection of Aristotelian logic, gave us a solid foundation in his Five Ways of Proving that God Exists (Summa Theologiae.)
It’s difficult for me to explain without this context, so I appreciate your response.
The most basic rules of any society revolve around the control of fertility, most generally that of women. Religion grows from that.
I've lately taken to using the term "master bedroom" when talking with Realtors. They rephrase as "primary bedroom" or even worse "owner's suite" (isn't the whole property the owner's property?) and I will rephrase as "master bedroom." As their commission is more important than PC, they eventually go along.
We'll probably be moving back to the States within a couple of years, and I will do the same.
Where's the master bedroom? Is this the master bedroom? Does this house have a master bedroom suite? Where are the slave quarte-----, well, maybe not THAT one.
Go for the Aristotelian golden mean!
Define objective morality. Unless you can do that, all morality is relative.
objective morality must be discovered in much the same way that natural rights are discovered. you use it to build structures and see what stands, what flourishes. that becomes objective. it works like positive law. it is emergent, not dictatorial or devised. i think what you primarily seem to be objecting to are the utopian visions of "morality should be this" cast into stories that do not resemble humans or humanity and used to beat people into submission. this seems to arise around the distinction of "we made these rules to make you better, to perfect you" instead of "we made these rules in reflection of how humans work."
i used to subscribe to the idea you propose around "there are no objective rights or morality, it's all something someone chose" but after watching the way it works, i have come around to the fact that this is not so. you cannot simply choose any right or ethos an impose it and more than you can choose any law of gravity and seek to build a bridge that stays up. there are real and non-optional selectors around what can and will work and we ignore them at great peril. this is where the objectivity comes from: the consequences of poor choices are not dissipated by claiming "we'll no other choice was provable better in abstract fashion."
it's "does the building stay up or doesn't it?"
Excellent description. Personal observation of our own actions and those of others then the results is key. The adults innour lives, most important our parents, play vital role in teaching us so as to avoid hard lessons but it seems some of us must learn the hard way. Some can experience hardship repeatedly but never admit much less understand the role their own behavior has played in their own hardship, constantly going through life blaming others.
"here are no objective rights or morality, it's all something someone chose"
Don't put words in my mouth, thank you. The way you structured that sentence, and your entire response, is a gross mischaracterisation of what I wrote, and I can only conclude that you misunderstood me, as you are usually way above such.
Physical reality is objective; our interpretation of it is not, nor is our communication of it objective - even with best intents, it will be subjective.
Claiming one's preferred morality is objective is nothing but being a coward: stating that one prefers a specific set of subjective morality as a freely made conscious choice is not.
The liberals (and most others) insist that there's some magical state of being where a human can be morally objective, which is impossible simply because all morality is human-made. If it was human-made as part of traditions dating back before written language or because someone with too much time on his hands wrote a manifesto, or someone had a psychotic-schizoid episode and interpreted it as divine vision doesn't change that it was man-made.
It only changes /how/ it was man-made (which is the important bit).
And you were correct, the are no rights beyond what we agree to respect. That doesn't make rights meaningless, quite the opposite. It makes rights paramount for a society to exist at all.
Rickard, "coward"?! Them's fighting words! Ha. I wonder if you're hoping for an invigorating intellectual catfight with the gato.
I think it is interesting that these things require a conspiracy of people working together to create a morality. There is little chance for individual morality perhaps. It is also really interesting that there is explicit and observed morality, that what is said may be very different from what occurs in practice. So many very communities that I've seen attach themselves explicitly and intentionally to a morality, seem to have a conundrum of hypocrisy, but that is of a general aggregate identity as opposed to individual.
We do have the prime mover problem if you are thinking tradition could be the source of morality. If I understand, you assert that it is all man-made. What is the difference and significance of morality being man-made VS being necessarily experienced in a human form (because we don't really have any other way)? Is it subjectivity because a person is necessarily a subject? If God is working, the divine, you cannot really argue from outside of yourself, your form. And similarly, with all of the limitations of form (a human brain, the ready tools of perception what they are/are not, the ready interpretive parameters what they are, the faculties of imagination and so on), how do you presume that the vast unknown beyond you does not entirely supercede you in a divine manner? I wonder at the boldness of asserting morality to be entirely subjective when there is so clearly so much foundational substance and function the ignorance of which is possibly a structural characteristic of humanity and its subject(s). It seems we cannot help but be subjective, but, having not even resolved for ourselves the crucial heart of even the problem of our own consciousness, how can we not be intrigued and even paused by the possibility of a finality beyond ourselves, which may be what God is getting at? We cannot avoid the mystery, and finding ourselves in the cloud of its unknowing, why choose commitedly the role of creators of morality?
I have always been very attracted to notions of beauty, of ideals which may not exist in form but remain alike as feeling real and constantly calling for their reverent due in my own agency. I'd honestly give my life for them, and do so in effect. I wonder at the faulty practice, what does it have to say to the ideal? If I have eyes, do I also have "eyes" for the ideal morality? And what is the matter of it being my subjectivity by necessity of my fourth, by action as a human primal creator, or by mysterious sensitivity and submission to a greater ultimacy to which I have some relation?
"There is little chance for individual morality perhaps."
"a system is what the system does."
For a single person - think Castaway (Wilson doesn't count) - morality doesn't include the need to interact with society.
That system seems likely to be different than one that comes into being for a group.
That said, perhaps as societies evolve, and merge, and occasionally diverge, it might be the case that what's objectively good evolves, merges, and occasionally diverges.
You are begging the question with your statement that "all morality is human-made."
Yes, reality eventually bites, whether it's morality, physics, health or anything else. Kant had a theory of 'objective morality' that's summarised at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nz0iaNvVpE in a very entertaining way.
I watched that. Those ideas are so fundamental now. I really need to spend more time on exploring the history of thought.
Afghanistan has stayed up no matter which competing cultures have tried to remake it into their images, and though the Afghans have a very strong definition of morality, that doesn't stop them from all the common abuses forbidden by their state religion.
You will run into the inevitable "is vs ought" conundrum. Science is very good at giving us the first part. It can tell us how to build a nuclear weapon (or an mRNA vaccine) but it cannot tell us whether we should do so (or not.)
The substance of evidence.
Natural law informs objective reality.
St Thomas Aquinas defines the moral law thusly: (From the Summa)
“Now among all others, the rational creature is subject to Divine providence in the most excellent way, in so far as it partakes of a share of providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Wherefore it has a share of the Eternal Reason, whereby it has a natural inclination to its proper act and end: and this participation of the eternal law in the rational creature is called the natural law .”
(ST I-II, 91, 2)
In other words, the natural desire of humans to achieve their proper end through reason and free will is the natural law. More formally defined, the natural law is our participation in the eternal law, through reason and will.
Of course, a well-formed conscience is vital in the process of understanding the moral law and its importance in achieving a joyful life.
Natural law is pretty brutal. Society was invented to tame it.
The natural law pertains to human beings, and while yes, human beings act brutally, the behavior stems from concupiscence. We have a natural tendency to rebel against God precisely because we were given free will.
This is *your* definition of the relationship between The Creative Force and human beings.
What is your explanation for why human beings act against their best interests?
Who defines "best interests?"
Gato used this term: "moral relativism".
Not objective reality which certainly does exist.
Morality is a solely human concept, not a natural one.
And reality may be objective as itself, but our perception and our mutual communication of the obejctive reality is always in some way subjective.
Sadly, people down the ages have used that fact to justify whatever morality and interpretation reality they preferred, as being objective.
this is the academic dodge that gets used to push post modernism, deconstructionism, and relativism. but it's basically the result of a high level misframing. all high function societies emerge from collective beliefs and shared values and not all such choices are equal. they have objectively different outcomes and capabilities.
one can make these sorts of (to my mind wish washy and rootless) claims to lack of objectivism by keeping all debate on a logical/intellectual plane, but that, to my mind, misses the point of what morality is for. it does not exist as some "pure abstract good" it exists to support human agency and thriving. a system is what the system does.
the objectivity lies in "so how is the world when we use these rules?"
ethics absent emergent outcomes are just parlor games.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/golden-rules-and-golden-ages
Who benefits by the rules any society makes to govern itself?
It is perfectly true, for example, that more freedom for women is very bad for men. In religion-based societies everywhere, even the most gormless men can get a wife if they have sufficient money to buy one.
The more religious people are, the more they insist some people are designated as hierarchically superior to others and others are naturally designed to submit to them. We see the revolt of some people against the idiocies of the left by playacting "tradwives." Of course there's no shortage of traditional wives in extreme cult communities such as Mormons.
Not all functioning societies are ones healthy normal people can thrive in.
I can’t agree more. It’s a foolish and grossly misinformed idea that belief in objective reality stems from a lack of intelligence.
Calling it an "academic dodge" or pointing out that some people, like postmodernists, don't understand it, doesn't make it false.
Again, you seem to purposefully misunderstand what I write - don't read it as a defense of postmodernism or wokeism or nihilism, because I'm not about that crap.
If acknowledging reality is key - which it is - then acknowledging that it is us that create morality and rights and the rest of it and that how these are enacted are always on us, not gods or principles or the rights themselves is of utmost importance to avoid the cruelties called virtues history is so full of.
"that it is us that create morality and rights and the rest of it and that how these are enacted are always on us,"
That just isn't so. Elephants have morality, as do many other animals. Just because we do not understand their morals, or fully appreciate them, does NOT mean they don't have them, nor does it make them relative to ours. This seems to imply morality--which we could define as the level of socialization necessary for stratas of enduring societies to interactively function with minimal friction over time--is a construction of successful species, which implies morality has an EVOLUTIONARY (innate?) function. The question, now as always, is not where morality comes from, but what is the morality (or ethical framework?) a given group uses to further friction-less functioning to promote the species.
It's at this point the relativists jump in, claiming relativity, to deconstruct the things they can't change in themselves, and to seize the power their nihilistic vacuum creates. They seek to undermine and replace systems that have worked more or less for 12 millennia (to the tune of 8 billion people) with an anti-life equation (Darkseid, anyone?) whose ultimate end-state is a lone neuro-atypical wretch sprawled alone on top a mountain of skulls when the "deconstruction" is complete, full intersectionality realized. In short, it is madness, it is destruction, it is fundamentally amoral, but it is not relative: it is a (hopefully) unachievable absolute the non-crazy (non-evil?) should resist with every fibre.
How is the world now and to what could it be due? The rules? Other?
Agreed, the objectivity of a moral framework can be seen in the consequences. It is no coincidence that various civilizations throughout history developed comparable moral codes that worked in effect to lower people’s time preference. This “natural law” that humans discovered allowed them to build up civilization and further increase their chances for survival.
"Natural law informs objective reality."
I think you have cause and effect reversed.
This would be like saying "Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation is why your foot hurts when a tool box falls on your foot."
It's the other way around - we sought to ascribe a Law to explain the phenomenon we experienced, that is were informed of, by the Objective Reality of multiple broken metatarsals.
It's just malignant boredom.
Everyone used to teach their children what to do with their hands. Women have *always* coded. Take a look at the textiles for daily use that even illiterate societies have produced for all of human history.
By marriageable age (matured gonads), in every society, male and female children had been trained in useful crafts. These days, middle- and upper-class parents spend tons of money having their children learn luxury talents but how many of these privileged kids can fix a torn pair of pants?
Now, it's true that there have always been bored people with just a few too many minutes in the day to keep them out of trouble. Some of that trouble leads to advance in knowledge. Some of it leads to picking at the worst parts of yourself until you've got a full-blown pathology.
It's not objective morality--which can't be defined--but common sense that we need to recultivate in modern society. We need to stop telling lies to little kids and raising them with illogic framed as inclusiveness.
Heather doesn't have two mommies. Somewhere there was a guy who fathered her, even if just by donating the sperm only a guy can produce. At least one of those ladies raising Heather has no biological relation to her. That's not anything shameful but it is entirely true. Children not raised to understand that are going into the real world unmoored from basic reality.
We need basic courage too. If a guy is shaving in the women's locker room, cancel your membership. You don't need to go swimming to be fit and healthy. You can do all useful forms of exercise in your living room even if your living room is in an apt.
Comments threads throughout purportedly sensible Substacks are full of whining. A little discipline and self-denial are what's needed. Your girl is playing on a team with a six-foot boy calling himself Heather? Take your girl off the team. Maybe she'll be sad. A little pain leads to growth.
What exactly is “common sense?”
That depends on one's perspective, doesn't it?
I agree with your description, but then the problem is, who or what defines what is “practical, measured and logical?” In order for a society to get back to or establish itself where “common sense” rules the day, then we presumably must come to some common agreement as to how it is defined, right?
And this is the fundamental question I think this column poses, can we agree on an objective definition of morality or even that such a thing exists?
Every definition of objective morality smashes its face against reality.
It is wrong to kill (other human beings, and in some cultures animals or any sentient being). Yet few cultures refrain from warfare. There are people most cultures designate as legitimate to be killed. First we must call them "the enemy."
It is considered a moral imperative that parents raise their children with care and devotion. What if that care and devotion is to torture children according to the precepts of their cult beliefs? There are few religions that don't give parents permission or encouragement or imperatives to physically chastise their children.
It is wrong to take other people's property. Is it objectively wrong for someone to steal someone else's property in order to ensure the survival of a person who would not without that crime having been committed? For example creeping out of the Warsaw Ghetto to steal food or medicine, or any comparable action against the prevailing authorities in order to save a human life.
It's easy to think moral principles are undeniably manifestly enduringly true. But this is why we must use common sense. I think killing is wrong. I also think there are crimes against sentient creatures that merit the death penalty, because perpetrators have thereby forfeited their right to continue living in the world. Am I correct? Incorrect? We know that incarceration is an imperfect guarantee against dangerous predators being let loose in the world again. There are always fashions in criminal justice that defeat common sense.
But that’s the point, it can’t be considered common if a plurality of humanity didn’t agree on it in the first place.
I don’t think of the word common in common sense as established by a majority. To me it means, being of practical, measured and logical conclusion.
We are a pack-animal species hard-wired to function in a hierarchy. How the hard-wiring occurred is not an answerable question. Nevertheless it's our operating system.
A big part of the reason is that in the late 20th/early21st c. our moral codes have come under attack from the disproportionate 'voice' mass media has given to one-track-minded politicos, 'activists', mouthy obsessives, narcissists, permanent malcontents....and general screwballs among us. Anyone who has actually got a reasonably balanced view of life is far less likely to be a media-type of person and so the voices of moral sanity are underrepresented. This has reached a crisis in the last few crazy wokey wokey years but has actually been brewing for 50 years and more. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/non-binary-sibling-is-entertaining
Same can be said now of politicians! The lowest of the low!
Before one feels entirely "comfortable" claiming there is no objective morality, they have first become comfortable claiming there is no objective REALITY! To make either claim one must embrace and become "comfortable" with logical contradictions.
We have begun purchasing tickets to board a doomed flight FROM Reason and its inviolate discipline of logic. It manifests in endless examples. From the simple political examples of the sixties in which we were "instructed" to practice the VIRTUE of racial discrimination in order to end the EVIL of racial discrimination, to the most recent absurdity. The willful ignorance of Aristotle’s epistemological law of identity, wherein “a thing cannot be itself and something else at the same time or in the same respect!” You merely have to "identify" as it!
It is a doomed flight, one that will crash in a destructive cacophony of the usual brutality, carnage, and injustice. Meanwhile, assure your seat belts are fastened, tray tables are up, and your seat backs are in the full upright position!
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn answered this question in 1983. “How we got here” - “Men have forgotten God.”
https://www.templetonprize.org/laureate-sub/solzhenitsyn-acceptance-speech/
Very good article and the title is apt, except any religion that has to be accepted on faith cannot be the true religion. If God chose to communicate with people - and I believe He has - then surely He could communicate in such a manner that this communication would be apparent as truth.
Great post!
The NYT word usage graphs are a real eye-opener.
I'm trying to devise a method for arranging the graphs in different ways.
For example, to learn which words were coming into the lexicon early, how long they stayed relevant or if they increased or decreased in usage, or which have been used most frequently.
*Monte Carlo Simulations have entered the chat*
Note for example that variations of 'victim' appear early on and stay strong but phrases like 'cultural appropriation' and 'triggering' roared onto the scene late and have stayed pretty hot.