All this talk of good and bad people
last edit on
3/18/2023 8:36:14 PM
yes and no. we get to decide, which technically means it's not vested in a natural law, but we can decide on objective morality by looking at common points, which usually all boils down to violence. Most predominantly, for the western lifestyle, violence is considered grounds for deeming something immoral
Have you ever heard of the phrase "History is written by victors."?
The Soviets mass murdered and raped German civilians during WW2, and no one gave a shit. You might be thinking that's horrible, but is it really?
The Germans had forced young Soviet men to take up arms against them, many of the latter being arbitrarily executed and perishing in concentration camps.
Now you see the problem with objective morality. A person who's put through enough suffering or deals with a tyrannical enemy is capable of a lot, and the line of morality becomes blurred easily.
Morality is subjective and unique to each person.
last edit on
3/20/2023 12:59:32 PM
yes and no. we get to decide, which technically means it's not vested in a natural law, but we can decide on objective morality by looking at common points, which usually all boils down to violence. Most predominantly, for the western lifestyle, violence is considered grounds for deeming something immoral
Our 'decisions' are made for us by the events that precede our decision making, if you look at it from a Causally Deterministic framework at least.
There's also enough to suggest that people have enough in common as a matter of human nature to found similar enough laws of morality to one another, such as seeing theft and murder as generally a bad thing. You can see it span across most cultures and religions without having needed direct involvement with one another, so it is likely inherent to the species to some degree.
Even humanity's means of inflicting inhumane things on one another typically involves going through steps to not see them as like themselves, as less human, to sanction it. If they don't separate them from their culture they tend to separate themselves from said culture, showing elements of groupthink rooting from our base natures rather than nurtured by our environment plainly.
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last edit on
3/20/2023 5:29:44 PM
Have you ever heard of the phrase "History is written by victors."?
The Soviets mass murdered and raped German civilians during WW2, and no one gave a shit. You might be thinking that's horrible, but is it really?
The Germans had forced young Soviet men to take up arms against them, many of the latter being arbitrarily executed and perishing in concentration camps.
Now you see the problem with objective morality. A person who's put through enough suffering or deals with a tyrannical enemy is capable of a lot, and the line of morality becomes blurred easily.
Morality is subjective and unique to each person.
no offense, but this is a very simplistic take ignoring the role of justice as an extension of objective morality
yes and no. we get to decide, which technically means it's not vested in a natural law, but we can decide on objective morality by looking at common points, which usually all boils down to violence. Most predominantly, for the western lifestyle, violence is considered grounds for deeming something immoral
Our 'decisions' are made for us by the events that precede our decision making, if you look at it from a Causally Deterministic framework at least.
There's also enough to suggest that people have enough in common as a matter of human nature to found similar enough laws of morality to one another, such as seeing theft and murder as generally a bad thing. You can see it span across most cultures and religions without having needed direct involvement with one another, so it is likely inherent to the species to some degree.
Even humanity's means of inflicting inhumane things on one another typically involves going through steps to not see them as like themselves, as less human, to sanction it. If they don't separate them from their culture they tend to separate themselves from said culture, showing elements of groupthink rooting from our base natures rather than nurtured by our environment plainly.
In a nutshell, tribalism. Humans can inflict great suffering outside their tribe when the motivation is protective and survival in nature.