The Moral Imperative

[vison]

What you guys seem to be forgetting is that for a large part of European history it was MORAL to hate Jews, and to forcibly convert Jews. It was the political correctness of the day. A few kings and popes protected them, but it was never from some sense that anti-Semitism was wrong, it was because they needed the Jews for financial reasons. That's one of the reasons that Shakespeare's speech is so astonishing, regardless of the "happy ending". He really saw it as a happy ending - the best outcome.

Benjamin Disraeli was a Jew who became Prime Minister of England. He faced terrible anti-Semitism - but it was still seen as "politically correct" and it took a very long and slow revolution of thought to turn the idea around. If you read books written in the 18th and 19th century the casual and acceptable anti-Semitism seems appalling to us - but we persist in seeing things through modern eyes.

Anti-Catholic prejudice was as bad, in England, though. You want to read about prejudice, read about the reaction to Cardinal Newman's conversion.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Of course, I had to look up what the Tuskegee Experiment was and it leads me to a request: very often, American references are used as common knowledge in discussions - and well, they are not. Would it be possible to include explanation links if you mention specific American examples, questions or persons?

That's a good point, and a valid request, Nin. On the flip side, sometimes we don't know what is necessarily common knowledge beyond America and what is not. In point of fact, Tar-Palantir, who was the person who spoke most extensively about the Tuskagee Experiment, is English, not American, and he certainly spoke of it as if it were something that was common knowledge. But that is probably because of his profession. If someone speaks of something that you are not familiar with, there is nothing that should stop you from asking for more information about it.

[yovargas]

What you guys seem to be forgetting is that for a large part of European history it was MORAL to hate Jews, and to forcibly convert Jews.

No, it wasn't. They merely thought it was.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Exactly, Yov. Just as the purveyors of the African slave trade thought they were being moral (or at least not being immoral) because the Africans that they were enslaving were subhuman and they were actually doing them a favor by giving their lives meanings (or some such justification). It was just as wrong then as it would be now, despite the fact that it is more understood to be wrong now than it was then. The same with the Tuskagee experiment; it was unambiguously wrong to fail to treat those poor African-Americans (and only those poor African-Americans) once penicillin became the standard treatment for syphilis (let alone to not to even tell them that they had syphilis). It was just a wrong then as it would be now.

"Good and ill have not changed since yesteryear!"

[axordil]

It may have been wrong, but given that there was pretty much zero chance anyone would think so at the time, what does "wrong" mean? How harshly can we judge someone for agreeing with everyone he or she knows, including (as far as they know) God himself?

I would say it's unreasonable to expect people to be saints, but in point of fact, most saints of the time were just as flawed from a modern, enlightened point of view. It's more like judging someone from the 14th century for not being able to pilot a plane.

Unless you're suggesting that everyone was wrong, the culture was wrong, and yet we can't judge them...in which case I'm not sure what the point of the discussion is, except that we're less savage that we were 600 years ago. If you squint a bit.

[vison]

What you guys seem to be forgetting is that for a large part of European history it was MORAL to hate Jews, and to forcibly convert Jews.

No, it wasn't. They merely thought it was.

I wonder why you don't see my point? They believed it was - just as certainly as we believe it wasn't.

When I was young, homosexuality was widely "known" to be at best a mental illness and at worst a sin so depraved it couldn't even be spoken of. I don't, in all honesty, know when I began to understand that it is just another way of being - but I wasn't born knowing that, it was something I had to learn. Now, it is clear to me. It's obvious that some people still believe it to be immoral, though.

I wonder what people 500 years from now are going to look back on - to our world and our "morals" and recoil in horror? Things we're so sure we have right?

Or, do you think that we have it all figured out?

It isn't that I am absolutely a moral relativist, because I'm not. I think there are certain certainties, or at least certain enough for me. But I'm not going to judge too harshly a poor soul in the past whose only hope of joy was Heaven and who trusted his church to steer him there.

[Frelga]

Everyone? Really everyone? At the time when it was perfectly acceptable to trade human beings and deny them every right over their property and body, there were always those who spoke up against it. I came across some pationate writing on the subject by Ben Franklin, for instance. If he could see it was wrong, how come everyone else couldn't? Or is that they did see that it was wrong, but it was inconvenient and unprofitable to act on that and so all sorts of excuses were necessary.

Treating people as things, that's where it all begins.

[vison]

Everyone? Really everyone? At the time when it was perfectly acceptable to trade human beings and deny them every right over their property and body, there were always those who spoke up against it. I came across some pationate writing on the subject by Ben Franklin, for instance. If he could see it was wrong, how come everyone else couldn't? Or is that they did see that it was wrong, but it was inconvenient and unprofitable to act on that and so all sorts of excuses were necessary.

Treating people as things, that's where it all begins.

I see your point, Frelga, and I largely agree with you.

However, slavery, as practiced in America and elsewhere wasn't exactly seen as "moral" though, not in a positive sense , not in the sense that it was something that if you did it, would put a star in your heavenly crown. It might not have been widely seen as immoral, which is a different thing.

There were always many people who thought it was wrong, men and women who understood that the slaves were fellow human beings - and you are right,it is always bad to treat people as objects.

[Frelga]

I x-posted with you there.

It shows that some contemporaries did know how to fly the plane in Ax's words. And that means that we can judge the rest.

As for us? Oh, we will have much to answer for. The way we treat this planet. The way we treat each other. But the yardstick will not be knewly cut. Three, four thousand years ago, when the Torah was written, we already knew the right thing was to love our neighbor and to support a widow and orphan. Then, as now, many ignored what they knew because it was inconvenient.

[axordil]

Ben Franklin was a man of the Enlightenment. If there's a bright line beyond which it gets harder to judge, that's it. They called it that for a reason.

Bear in mind that serfdom, the European equivalent of slavery, wasn't abolished for moral reasons, but withered for economic ones. Life before the Enlightenment was not the same as it is now, philosophically speaking. Like the man said: nasty, brutish, and short, and, moreover, designed by God to be like that.

It has always been easier to justify slavery in a religious society than a secular one. Most scriptures were written in the context of slave-holding societies, after all.

[yovargas]

I wonder why you don't see my point?

I did see your point. I used it to make a different point.

[vison]

I wonder why you don't see my point?

I did see your point. I used it to make a different point.

Well, my argument is, what we think is so obvious, and our certainties are such certainties, that we appear to have no difficulty in categorizing past beliefs and behaviors as "immoral" when in the context of their time they were firmly believed to be a sure way to please god. It wasn't just that they were "moral" in the sense of not being "immoral", they were, for lack of a better word, "proactively moral", almost a necessity for salvation.

As I said, I'm not a relativist. I think certain acts have always been wrong - but I am willing to not judge my fellows in the past too harshly.

Judging is seldom a very useful activity - condemning our ancestors for their beliefs is precisely what we think is wrong if we do it nowadays.

[Frelga]

Judging is seldom a very useful activity - condemning our ancestors for their beliefs is precisely what we think is wrong if we do it nowadays.

I don't think it wrong to condemn hateful actions just because they are justified by religion.

And judging is an extremely useful activity. How else are we going to decide anything?

Sure, you can say that they didn't know any better, that they did the best they could. But that does not make a wrong any righter.

[vison]

Judging is seldom a very useful activity - condemning our ancestors for their beliefs is precisely what we think is wrong if we do it nowadays.

I don't think it wrong to condemn hateful actions just because they are justified by religion.

And judging is an extremely useful activity. How else are we going to decide anything?

Sure, you can say that they didn't know any better, that they did the best they could. But that does not make a wrong any righter.

This is getting kind of circular, isn't it?

"Justified" isn't the word. "Required" is the word.

I have a very hard time with this. I can imagine some poor peasant in the 16th century, with a lifetime of teachings poured into his ear, a person whose life was an unending drudgery of labour, who saw nothing of beauty but what might be in his church, who heard no music but might be heard in his church, who could not read and who could not write, who saw no one but the people he always knew and who had a pretty savage fear of strangers, who believed utterly in Hell and who longed for Heaven, who lived in terror of damnation - and I can't "judge" him for believing what he was taught. It's as simple as that.

We know better, or we think we do. But we are still surrounded by people acting from ignorance and hate, aren't we? These beliefs and attitudes are "wrong", certainly. But merely saying they're wrong doesn't do much. It has taken millennia for us to arrive at our present pinnacle of civilization, but we still go to war, we still act like irresponsible spoiled children.

I can call something wrong. I can, as they say, hate the sin but love the sinner. But I have an issue with any assertion that we are much better. Some of us are. But a lot of us aren't.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

vison, I agree with you.

Frelga, I agree with you, too.

And yes, I know that is a paradox.

This has really turned into quite a valuble discussion.

[Frelga]

Judge =/= condemn.

[vison]

vison, I agree with you.

Frelga, I agree with you, too.

And yes, I know that is a paradox.

This has really turned into quite a valuble discussion.

I agree with Frelga, too. But I'm coming at the thing from a slightly different angle.

As I have said several times, I think there are some few absolutely immoral acts. But every society has to come to that understanding in its own way.

[yovargas]

My point was simply that what is or isn't moral isn't based on majority belief. (Or even universal belief.) You can choose not to "judge" them, whatever that means, but we can certainly learn from past (and current!) mistakes. Doing so makes our lives and our cultures better and better. Slowly, perhaps, but we get there.

[axordil]

Even within the context of cultures we now deem morally deficient, one can recognize an inherent moral response, that is, a desire to differentiate between right or wrong. We can also see what happens when conflicting goods come into play, for example, personal loyalty versus loyalty to a larger cause. If a culture were truly amoral, that wouldn't happen.

The issue really is one of the basis (not the origin) of the morality in question. With any externally imposed model, getting specific issues right is a hit or miss proposition: it all depends on the condition of the originatung culture before the code gets frozen in time. With a post-enlightenment code (small e, could be any similar change in frame, not just the one from 1650-1750 in the West) there is at least the chance of adapting and improving within a lifetime.

[Inanna]

vison, I agree with you.

Frelga, I agree with you, too.

And yes, I know that is a paradox.

The same paradox I struggle with personally, all the time.

I judge all the time - actions and people. And yet, as vison put it, I always, always, feel - do I have the right to judge? Do I know all the information about that person, his/her situation to make a sound judgment?