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#moral relativism
areadersquoteslibrary · 8 months
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'"Good and evil are the prejudices of God" — said the snake.'
- Friedrich Nietzsche,
'The Gay Science'
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Now, it is the position, generally speaking, of our intellectual community that while we may not like this, we might think of this as "wrong" in Boston or Palo Alto, who are we to say that the proud denizens of an ancient culture are wrong to force their wives and daughters to live in cloth bags?
And who are we to say, even, that they're wrong to beat them with lengths of steel cable, or throw battery acid in their faces if they decline the privilege of being smothered in this way?
Well, who are we not to say this? Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human well-being that we have to be non-judgmental about a practice like this?
I'm not talking about voluntary wearing of a veil -- women should be able to wear whatever they want, as far as I'm concerned.
But what does voluntary mean in a community where, when a girl gets raped, her father's first impulse, rather often, is to murder her out of shame?
Just let that fact detonate in your brain for a minute: Your daughter gets raped, and what you want to do is kill her.
What are the chances that represents a peak of human flourishing?"
-- Sam Harris, "Science Can Answer Moral Questions"
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shallowseeker · 2 months
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Hey Shal, I have a question about your family diner meta. Mad respect, but in the Leviathan arc Biggerson's is made out to be a bad thing. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on that, since in the Cas tablet meta where Naomi attacks Cas, you talk about Biggerson's being bigger sons -> better than their fathers because of their bigger hearts is a good thing? Anyway, I'm hoping this comes across as a friendly question!
I tend to shy away from writing about some stuff from that season, because a lot of it seems very era-attenuated. Example: how an average librarian is referred to as "Chubby" and her beau as "Chub-chaser" in Repo Man. In general some of the mean despair over "fat people" in this season comes off Hollywood-seedy and thoughtless, but it's soooo of the times.
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For a little while era, the documentary SuperSize Me reigned supreme in every bit of small-talk and in every classroom. Jessica Simpson was a frequent target of weight-shaming, including this hugely publicized fiasco from 2009, when she looked like a walking dream BTW.
In this way, SPN is like a time capsule. (Like how, if you were alive at the time during post-"war on terror," Torture was the big topic in every current events class, verging on a buzz word.)
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Yes, Biggerson's is a BIG motif in season 7, and with negative connotations. It's a nod to SuperSize Me. It's especially damning for the punching-down attitudes in Hollywood.
I want to point out that although the name is cheeky, Biggerson's wasn't even inherently bad in-world.
The Leviathan were a rotten supplier to this family chain industry, dosing their food with additives, which mirrors a lot of the real-world chatter that was going on about trans-fats, partially hydrogenated oil, etc. People were working really hard to get them banned!
When you get down to it, the people inside Biggerson's were being actively preyed upon.
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What I think I want to carefully pivot to is the dark side of humanity and family, that of consumerism and exploitation.
I think overall that the family diner is still a positive motif, but as with every motif, there's a shadow side--the uncharitable side, a side that can be carried to extremes.
The "shadow self" of the family diner motif is excess and greed exploiting the family by ravaging its most basic requirement to survive: shelter and nourishment.
They are making humans into livestock. This was also a rampant idea in the 2000s: about selectively breeding farm animals so that they get dumber and dumber, until they're easy to subjugate for meat, assembly-line style. I think they briefly touch on this again in season 12...with the Moloch monster and family business of meat packaging.
Anyway, SPN was trying to loop this idea in, too.
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So, yes. BIG erson's. Bigger Sons. Etc. Etc.
You want your kids to be better than you, with "bigger hearts" and more kindness. But bigger and stronger can have a heck of a downside, too.
But at its heart, the family diner also represents communion and community. It is, after all, the weak, vulnerable human family that Cas wants to protect in season 8.
It's both things at once.
(ASIDE//
And Cas becomes the ideal/idea/motif of the always-working dad/husband that wants to provide for you but doesn't indulge in happiness or nourishment for himself.)
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ASIDE 2//
Flagrant consumerism is a big part of Nephilim concept, too, and that's a very ancient story. Theirs was an extensive appetite that so drained the world they had to be eradicated to save the world. In a very real symbolic sense, We are the Nephilim. (On the nose maybe, but we are empire: too tall, too strong, too wasteful, war-mongering, dominating etc. etc.)
And my point is, I think humans have always been aware of the tension and war that comes with the competition for finite resources. It's not just a modern, "American" concept.
In early days, our conceptualization of gods and demi-gods mimics the food chain. Ergo: If gods are above us, they're like other stronger animals...they want to eat us. Thus, sacrificing to them is a way to appease them.
Humanity and religion are historically oriented towards pooling resources to survive. Many religions, even the big ones imho, are a clever family-extension device, that's why it they’re so littered with parental components. (It's used to bind people “under one roof” and funnel the resources appropriately.
Certainly, that how Cults and Causes start; in meaningful ways they're all baby/early religions. And when enough time goes by, and the leaders die, etc etc...they devolve to myth and respectable religions proper. The ultimate difference is time.
If angels are royal families, ancient knights-and-tribalism, then Leviathan were supreme capitalism.
It worked well in theory, even when the execution was sometimes lacking to too campy to get the satire across. Especially coming from, you know, Hollywood. And Biggerson's is a warped shadow of that appetite symbol.
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elegantzombielite · 11 months
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"In its original literal sense, 'moral relativism' is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined 'relative' as 'arbitrary'."
Ellen Jane Willis, writer (14 December 1941-2006)
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iisthepopeoffools · 9 months
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I feel bad for Protagoras. He had many insights into how truth is constructed but none of his writings survive and we mainly know him from Plato dunking on him.
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The womb of a mother has become one of the greatest war zones in our world. Today, Burk Parsons reminds Christians of our duty to protect the unborn and the defenseless, particularly in a culture where human life is not recognized as sacred.
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alephskoteinos · 1 year
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I saw that Nietzsche said, "What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness."
I remembered that Spinoza said, "We call a thing good or evil, when it is of service or the reverse in preserving our being, that is, when it increases or diminishes, helps or hinders, our power of activity."
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locusnegotium · 1 year
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Many leftists & progressives turning away from moral relativism (thank fuck) in this and the previous decade still fail to grasp the irony of challenging Christians for merely having their own, sometimes-unique moral framework. It's as if "the right" opinion is something that's always easy to just intuit--as if our beliefs about the afterlife are amiss, but their culturally-aligned views are somehow infallible, or at least that the flaws of which are consistently easy to find & weed-out.*
It's just interesting that they give themselves permission to have an inner apologist, while anyone who hopes to spread the Word is lumped-in with colonizers.**
An unexamined double-standard, I suppose.
The point is: are humans meant to be moral relativists, or do we, on some level, believe in objectivity, and recognize no one can really function without it? Are people allowed to spread their truth, convince people, change their minds, challenge apparent falsehoods, or are they meant to stay in their own lane?
Rules for thee but not for me.
*But that's not the case. History, epistemology, research by specialists in their respective fields, and much more are needed to formulate any informed opinion, regardless of which religious views we ascribe to. This leaves much room for dissenting paths to truth, and outright errors at times--everyone makes mistakes, and every philosophy has its holes (and if we agree it's "some more than others," then we can also agree that it's just as likely a religious person's views stand an equal chance of passing that measure, once again re: relativism vs. objectivism.)
**Although I don't personally ascribe to Evangelism, the edict (to become "fishers of men") predates colonialism. The contents are exactly as listed on the "box's label:" bring others into His eternal light. No ulterior motives in the original instruction.
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forgottenbones · 1 year
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SHE SELLS SEASHELLS ON THE SEASHORE MEME
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I know he has scruples and likes to play the knight, but let's not forget Geralt still kills people as a coping mechanism. (He tries to pick "bad" people, but still.)
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tabernacleheart · 2 years
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[The Jewish people were] put in charge of writing down and caring for God’s revelation, these Holy Scriptures. [However,] in the course of doing that, some of those Jews abandoned their post; [they disobeyed and doubted Him. But] God didn’t abandon them. Do you think their faithlessness cancels out His faithfulness? [Do you think He would break His Covenant promises with His people just because they did?] Not on your life! Depend on it: God keeps His word even when the whole world is lying through its teeth. [God's words] stand fast and true; [our] rejection doesn’t [change that]. But if our wrongdoing only underlines and confirms God’s rightdoing, shouldn’t we be commended for 'helping out'? Since our lies don’t even make a dent in His truth, [would it be] 'wrong' of God to back us to the wall and hold us to our word? These questions come up, [when guilty people try to justify themselves]. The answer to such questions is no, a most emphatic No! How else would things ever get straightened out if God didn’t do the straightening? It’s simply perverse to say, “If my lies serve to show off God’s truth all the more gloriously, why blame me? I’m doing God a favor.” Some people are actually trying to put such words in our mouths, claiming that we go around saying, “The more evil we do, the more good God does, so let’s just do it!” That’s pure slander, as I’m sure you’ll agree. [Every evil deed will be punished, because it is evil.] All of us, [regardless of religion], start out in identical conditions, which is to say that we all start out as sinners. Scripture leaves no doubt about it: "There’s nobody living right, not even one..." [and] whatever is written in these Scriptures is not what God says about 'others', but to us, to whom these Scriptures were addressed in the first place! And it’s clear enough, isn’t it, that we’re sinners, every one of us, in the same sinking boat with everybody else? Our involvement with God’s revelation doesn’t put us right with God. What it does is force us to face our complicity in everyone else’s sin, [for we of all people should have known better].
Romans 3:2-8 MSG
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barbarian15 · 2 years
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So is destroying statues of historical figures bad now?
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By: Eva Kurilova
Published: Jan 15, 2024
In 1943, C.S. Lewis delivered a series of lectures at King’s College that warned about the erosion of moral values and the rise of relativism, which he believed would lead to humanity’s ruin. These thought-provoking lectures were later compiled into The Abolition of Man, a book that has since been acknowledged as one of the most significant and influential works of the 20th century.
Today, I believe society has reached the very crossroads Lewis forewarned—an era of subjectivism where concepts of “right” and “wrong” have lost their objective anchor and are instead dictated by personal whims and desires. A striking manifestation of this shift is evident in the construction of an oppression hierarchy. This hierarchy asserts that moral judgements in any given situation is not determined by external, consistent values for judging behavior, but rather by the fluctuating perceptions of who is deemed “privileged” and who is deemed “oppressed.”
In his lectures, Lewis emphasized the importance of universal virtues in guiding our morality. He referred to these virtues, which he believed to be found universally across humanity, as the “Tao.” Originating from Chinese philosophy, the Tao represents a way of life in harmony with the world. Discerning the right way to live, according to Lewis, requires wisdom and character. He describes the Tao as “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”
Regrettably, Lewis observed a decline in such wisdom and integrity among the youth of his era, leading to what he termed “men without chests”—individuals devoid of honor and virtue. His critique was not about dictating the specifics of what is “right,” “moral,” and “good.” Rather, Lewis lamented that we have lost any sense that the right, moral, and good exist at all, writing: “Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it.”
To illustrate his point, Lewis began his first lecture with an anecdote about the English poet Samuel Coleridge. Coleridge was once gazing at his favorite waterfall when two tourists came along, one calling the waterfall “sublime” and the other as merely “pretty.” Coleridge approved the former judgment and rejected the latter.
Lewis’ intention was not to dictate perceptions of waterfalls. His concern was that, when the story was referenced in a “little book on English” for schoolchildren that he called The Green Book, the authors declared that the tourist who called the waterfall “sublime” was merely making a statement about his own feelings. This, according to Lewis, exemplified a troubling shift away from recognizing objective beauty and value.
This sly inward turn toward subjectivity, and away from the belief that certain emotional responses can be congruous or incongruous with reality, deeply troubled Lewis. He feared this trend would lead to “men without chests.” He posited that we would demand from such men qualities like drive and self-sacrifice while relegating virtues like honor and patriotism to mere feeling and opinion. He uses the example of a Roman father telling his son that it is a “sweet and seemly thing to die for his country.” The authors of The Green Book, however, would feel the need to debunk this sentiment the same way they debunked the idea that the sublime nature of the waterfall has any reality outside of the tourist’s own feelings.
Lewis further illustrated his point using a humorous example of himself and his attitude toward children. He admitted, “I myself do not enjoy the society of small children: because I speak from within the Tao I recognize this as a defect in myself—just as a man may have to recognize that he is tone deaf or colour blind.”
Rather than trying to justify the fact that he doesn’t enjoy the company of children by forcing the rest of society to see it as a virtue, Lewis acknowledged it as a personal shortcoming, recognizing that we should value spending time with children. However, it often seems today that people do the opposite: they argue that what they personally like is valuable and what they personally dislike is not. And this is exactly what Lewis saw coming.
When we move away from the Tao and the idea that certain attitudes toward the world are really true and good, we risk evaluating the world solely through the lens of desire and emotional impulses. “When all that says ‘It is good’ has been debunked,” says Lewis, “what says ‘I want’ remains.” He further remarks: “Those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse.”
I believe Lewis correctly predicted humanity’s moral trajectory, which is highly concerning considering where he said it would lead. What I don’t think he could have predicted, however, was that one of the major ways that subjective and relativistic morality would manifest was through the oppression hierarchy.
Based on identity characteristics like race, sex, sexuality, and “gender identity,” the oppression hierarchy slots individuals into a stack that ranges from most privileged to most oppressed. At the top, you will invariably find “cis” straight white men. At the bottom, you will likely find black “trans” women, often bearing additional marginalized identities like “disabled.”
The morality underpinning this hierarchy is inherently relativistic. It contends that those lower in the stack are incapable of wrongdoing toward those above. For example, you might have heard that non-white people can’t be racist against white people because they are more oppressed as a group on the basis of race. It is also reflected in the idea that there is no such thing as misandry because under patriarchy men as a class oppress women as a class. This ideology further manifests in attitudes that trivialize or even endorse acts like shoplifting, justified by the belief that capitalism is an “oppressive” system.
Gone is the traditional notion of treating others equally and recognizing antisocial behaviors like theft as inherently wrong. According to this new moral framework, any attitude or action directed against an “oppressor”–be it an individual or a system–is deemed justifiable.
This new morality and its value calculus is also prevalent in contemporary gender ideology. It becomes particularly apparent in how trans-identifying individuals demand privileges that clash with the rights of women. Gender self-identification is a disaster for women’s sports, women’s prisons, and women’s private spaces, but it doesn’t matter because “trans” people are considered oppressed, and “cis” people the oppressors. As a result, trans-identified men can therefore demand anything at the expense of women’s rights, and women who refuse or fail to swiftly comply with every demand are branded as hateful.
Oppression stack-based morality is why trans rights activists feel entitled to call for violence, rape, and death against so-called “transphobes” who disagree with them, and why they receive no real pushback from within their communities. It’s why they feel emboldened enough to hold up signs that say “decapitate TERFs” and to show up at women’s rights events with fake guillotines. It’s why they regularly jump to the defense of male pedophiles, rapists, and murderers who seek transfer to women’s prisons. Critics of such transfers are often accused of bigotry and “misgendering.”
No matter what, the “trans” person in any scenario is viewed as inherently oppressed and incapable of wrongdoing, especially against those deemed as oppressors.
A case in point is Audrey Hale, a mass shooter who killed three adults and three nine-year-old children at a private Christian school in Tennessee. Because she identified as a transgender man, activists quickly slammed media outlets for “misgendering” Hale by referring to her using female pronouns. CNN and The New York Times even issued “corrections,” essentially capitulating to the preferences of a mass child killer. Prominent transgender activist Eli Erlick even called the school a “right-wing institution” and asserted, without evidence, that Hale had been “abused” there.
However, perhaps the most striking illustration of this new morality at play was seen in the response to the Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Despite the heinous nature of the atrocities committed on that day, a disturbing number of people praised the actions of the terrorists. The moral calculus has been grim. The terrorists were rebranded as oppressed freedom fighters. Consequently, their actions, regardless of how morally reprehensible, were often rationalized or justified because they were perceived as acts against “oppressors.” In this context, the conventional condemnation of acts like mass rape and murder has become contingent on the relative privilege of the perpetrator and the victim. Then, a terrorist attack is no longer a terrorist attack.
While Lewis couldn’t have foreseen the specific outcomes of a shift towards subjective morality, nor the intricate oppression hierarchy that now informs societal judgments of “right” and “wrong,” he was nevertheless correct in identifying that it would be based on nothing more than personal desires and emotional impulses. The supposed objectivity of the oppression hierarchy is, in reality, a façade. The allocation of characteristics within this hierarchy, and the corresponding levels of privilege or disadvantage they confer, are seldom reflective of real-life circumstances. Instead, they are dictated by prevailing social and political trends, and the caprices of those in power. The clearest evidence of this is that a straight man instantly plummets from a position of unrivaled privilege to one of significant oppression simply by donning a dress and wig.
But what implications does this perspective have for society? Lewis wasn’t optimistic. He argued that discarding traditional values in favor of self-crafted ones, based on whims and impulses, does not lead to emancipation. On the contrary, it subjects us to what he termed “Conditioners”—those who “cut out all posterity in what shape they please.” These Conditioners are, in my opinion, analogous to those making the decisions about where individuals sit on the oppression hierarchy. “They produce conscience,” Lewis says, “and decide what kind of conscience they will produce.” In this manner, the Conditioners effectively conquer human nature. However:
At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely ‘natural’—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man.
Lewis feared that a shift toward subjective and relativistic morality might inexorably lead to totalitarianism, with those in power guided by their basest instincts. Reflecting on the latter part of the 20th century, it appears his fears were not unfounded. At the time of his observations, such moral perspectives were already shaping the ideologies of fascism and communism. Despite his cautionary words and the unfolding of events that mirrored his warnings, this new morality continued to proliferate throughout society and it is now the guiding star of radical progressives.
While I favor Lewis’ view, I’m not arguing that everyone must necessarily agree with the concept of objective morality. I’m sure many lively debates could spring up around his words, and no doubt many have. I know numerous people with strong morals and values who might insist that they came to those values rationally, that we don’t need to rely on tradition, and that morals aren’t necessarily objective. I also know that some would say evolutionary biology has played a significant role in shaping moral attitudes, a view I accept, though I believe is not the sole factor at play.
Yet, I hope we can collectively recognize the dangers inherent in the other view—that right and wrong should be judged only according to the emotional intensity of a given impulse. This new morality has created an oppression hierarchy, where the moral standing of an action hinges entirely on the relative oppression or privilege of the involved parties. This perspective has led us to a precipice where, alarmingly, an act as heinous as cold-blooded murder might not be deemed wrong if perpetrated by someone from an oppressed group against an individual from a perceived oppressor group.
Do not let yourself become conditioned to accept this.
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ahb-writes · 4 months
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"Most persons have a very moderate capacity of happiness."
John Stuart Mill, as quoted in: Wright, R. 1995. The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. Vintage Books, New York, New York, U.S. 496 pp.
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elegantzombielite · 10 months
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"Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right."
Isaac Asimov, scientist and writer (2nd January 1920-1992)
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tom4jc · 8 months
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Hidden Worldviews (book review)
Title: Hidden WorldviewAuthor: Steve Wilkens and Mark L. SanfordPublisher: InterVarsity PressPages: 218 Hidden Worldviews The authors, Steven Wilkens and Mark L. Sandford, of this book begin by describing what makes a worldview a worldview. They state the often people look at certain major worldviews, but miss what the common worldviews are that are very seldom seen as a worldview, though held…
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