fun? I’m sure most people would instinctively feel that it would be immoral, even if they don’t admit it. And they’d be right. Harming another human being without just cause is just one way of doing something immoral. Morality is based on nature because nature is of divine origin. It’s surprising how much of what we think is our moral values is really just being afraid of our peers judging us and rejecting us for breaking those values. (2/2)
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i think I somewhat agree? You had me until you said morality was nature, and nature is of divine origin because well, thats not true, unless you’re talking about a pagan religion where there is literally a god of nature.
If you’re talking about the abrahamic god (Christian, Jewish, and Islamic god) which, shot in the dark its pretty likely thats what you mean by divine, the nature isn’t dictated by god, either that or everything in nature should be deemed moral, because god doesn’t do immorality, that goes against one of the most core beliefs about god, being god is good. However, we know that nature isn’t moral, because animals in fact have their own social ethics and morals. Animals can and do ostracise other members of their group, and ostracism only happens when a creature is deemed as doing wrong, and doing bad things is the most fundamental part of morality, so, either nature is not divine, or divinity is not always moral, and that just goes back to the ‘if god is good and all powerful, then why does cancer exist" argument and thats an unfalsifiable claim and cannot be argued.
Our morals and social ethics are entirely based on our society and social norms. Even if your morals are informed by the bible and by god, those morals come from a book, that was at the very least penned by people interpreting god, or the divine acts they saw, and is ultimately a product of humanity and human society, even if god spoke to them, they wrote what they heard, and their hearing is not infallable, neither is their hand, word choice, or politcal and moral motivations in writing the book.
So, morality is a product of not only humanity, but of any organised, complex life forms. The queen bee’s place as commander of the hive is a moral statement, it is a statement that worker bees are less than the queen, their lives are worth less both individually and as a whole. This moral argument is both supported and enforced by the biology of the bee with its hivemind structure.
The morality of human society is the sum total of all the moral opinions and statements of individual humans, for example, if you have a moral question, you weigh all the arguments for, and against, and the ones who’s arguments hold greater value, and significance, ultimately win in the 'market place fo ideas’ and a moral statement is created. The moral status quo for that question.
The easiest and simplest moral ideology is the consequalist argument, basically, an immoral action is an action that causes direct or indirect harm, and a moral action being an action that causes direct or indirect good, and an amoral action being a net 0 harm done or good done.
An example of the three being, a moral action is helping someone with their homework, the net result is good. An immoral action is kicking someone for your own enjoyment, the harm done to the other person, combined with the type of harmful enjoyment makes it a net harmful action, and amoral action would be smoking in an isolated area, while harm is done to the self, you are doing so willingly and knowingly, and (generally) do get a level of enjoyment out of it so the net harm done is 0.
The problem with this is when actions become more complicated. When the net harm, or net good is a subjective opinion (There’s also the sequence of actions, is kicking someone an immoral act, if such a person kicked the kicker before hand? Did they 'deserve it?’ ), or when the net harm and net good is on a grand scale. It’s an ends justify the means situation. Is something of great harm worth the cost, if the result is something of great good? The net good might be far, far greater than the net harm, but many people will still say the net harm is too great.
Think of it like a critical mass, is there a threshold of harm so great, that no amount of good actions can account for it? Or at the very least, that the human life is too short to be able to account for it properly, theres also the concept of 'time heals all wounds’ while you might not have done i direct moral act to account for something, any harm done has become irrelevant and this is inconsequential, and to a consequentialist, inconsequeential acts are irrelevent.
The point I’m leading to here, is that the consequentialist outlook is the core principle behind the concept of redemption. to be redeemed, you must do good, to make up for the harm you have doen previously. You go from an immoral person (a person who has done net harm) to an amoral or even moral person (a person who has done net 0 harm or net good).
Now, the amount of good one must do to redeem themselves is relative. Steal a cookie? then just apologising is usually enough. Kill a man? Well you may have to do some greater good.
This graph is exponential, not linear. It’s not a clean 1 unit of good = 1 unit of bad, where certain moral or immoral actions are worth their own dedicated units of good or bad (obviously mathematising morality is a useless idea becuase of its objective subjectivity, but this is just for an example.) The way redemption works mean that the more bad you do, an exponential more good you must do. (see pic.)
As you can see, someone who repeatedly does a lot of harm, needs to do a lot more good because they’ve shown on repeated occassions they are willing to do great, great harm, and thus need to show they are capable of good even more. This can often be frustrating for the person attempting redemption, but, thats just how it is.
I’ll leave off on the alternate idea of redemption where instead of doing good actions, if enough harm is inflicted upon the person comitting harm, then it cancels out. I think that’s a bad way to measure it because that is not a moral redemption, it is an immoral redemption, you have solved the problem with more immorality, and the net product of that 'redemption’ is twice the immorality, when the whole point of a redemption is to make up for the harm done.
basicallt, if you are punished enough, then you are let off the hook, you are fine. This is the counter intuitive to the whole idea of redemption, and even the whole concept of morality, because the whole point of morality is to do good.
Anyway, thanks for the ask, this was a lot of fun to write.
