Applying the subjective, Part II

**Gary Wassner** · February 25th, 2008, 11:45 AM

If every morality is a recipe for a certain type of man, an explication of a vision of what man might be, then is morality aesthetics after all?

**Fung Koo** · February 25th, 2008, 03:15 PM

So why are there three of these threads?

**Gary Wassner** · February 25th, 2008, 03:21 PM

Not sure what you mean.

**KatG** · February 25th, 2008, 03:39 PM

Because this is Gary's favorite subject.

Okay, morality and subjectivity. This is not my area of expertise. I can only go by my own thoughts on the matter. Which is that morality is not aesthetic. It is a matter of many different factors -- biology, threat levels, emotions, comprehension of context, time pressures, culture and religious belief, personal experience, etc., that all effect how we see things but are not all subjective.

**Hereford Eye** · February 25th, 2008, 03:49 PM

Isn't morality more prescriptive than ruminative?
Having identified a morality, a person attempts to act out that morality. It works even better when lots of people agree with the man's identified morality. See the Tale of the Bagelman in Freakonomics. Evidently, in our culture, there is a high level of agreement.

Why were there three threads? The Quester had the flu which weakened his iron will enough to allow his other personalities freedom to ask questions. In an illustrative case of shared morality, they alll came up with the same question.

**Gary Wassner** · February 25th, 2008, 04:04 PM

The real question is, is morality just a matter of taste, are the definitions we come up with for good and bad arbitrary, just a matter or taste? Once again we're dealing with qualitative issues. How different is it really to claim something is good or bad from claiming it's beautiful or ugly?

**Fung Koo** · February 25th, 2008, 04:09 PM

Yeah I'd go for morality as principally aesthetic. Most people mean Law, Order, and Justice when they say Morality.

If you compare morality and justice as being part of the same system, it's no wonder our current relativistic state has come up with this retarded notion of "hate crimes."

Who cares why you committed the crime, it's the action that's supposed to be punished. What's next -- "hungry theft"? If you're starving because you're a crazy homeless person, by all means rob a grocery store. The theft wasn't so good, but your reasoning is valid. You're special and the rules don't apply because you're crazy homeless and hungry.

Good and bad motivation?

Eff that.

**Hereford Eye** · February 25th, 2008, 04:20 PM

I suubmit that it makes no practical difference which way you go.

Update: Given that every group of two or more people establishes its own operating morality, code of conduct if you will, and the existence of said moralities contributes mightily to the conflict in our world, would it be desirable, as some current moralities seem to think, to convince everyone to abide by a single morality?

**Fung Koo** · February 27th, 2008, 12:19 PM

Under multiculturalism... difficult to say.

In theory, one culture = one set of morals. So multiple cultures is multiple moralities. But what happens when two or more sets of morals provide different answers for one problem? This is why I think social morality needs to be arrived at democratically in a multicultural society.

Which is why the jury system seems like a good idea up until the "peerhood" of ones peers is called into question by multicultural reality. Can we be guaranteed that jury members of different cultural backgrounds are holding up different shades of one morality? Or are they representing their own cultural morality within a different system of morality? If so, is their judgment viable?

Hell, is the legal system even reflective of morality in the first place?

**Hereford Eye** · February 27th, 2008, 01:16 PM

No, the legal system is about laws.
In the beginning, much flag waving and appropriate rhetoric was given to the idea of Justice but that gradually faded into oblivion as we elevated The Law to a position of godhood. Consider the marriage of the terms Law and Order.

**Fung Koo** · February 27th, 2008, 01:43 PM

An awful lot of the laws sound like morals to me... Thou shalt not kill (it's bad), thou shalt not steal (it's bad too), thou shalt not nail thy neighbour or his wife (doubly bad in the first, still bad in the second)...

Granted laws seem to only reflect the bad side of morality. But didn't the law come from morals? And isn't Order just the branch of the system that is supposed to make sure you're being morally good, and to catch you if you're morally bad?

**Hereford Eye** · February 27th, 2008, 01:51 PM

Distinguish between possible laws (sic commandments) and The Law as used in the good ole U.S. of A. I do not believe there are any laws on the books in the U.S. that begin "Thou shalt not." While this is disappointing to many citizens, many other citizens are quite comfortable with this state of affairs.

**Fung Koo** · February 27th, 2008, 02:05 PM

Yeah, I know there's the whole "separation of church and state" thing... What other source do you suggest is the basis for the American constitution?

**Gary Wassner** · February 27th, 2008, 02:18 PM

Separation of Church and State? And yet our money says "In God We Trust"?

The fact is that our entire legal system presupposes a Judeo Christian ethic, which defines good and bad from a philosophical POV, the premises of which are derived from a belief in first principles, ipso facto, God.

**Hereford Eye** · February 27th, 2008, 03:01 PM

And yet our money also carries many FreeMason symbols. Which ones really mean something to us today?
Lest you assume I am merely arguing for the sake of arguing - which I am known to do - consider this:
http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/s...7/secular.html