Witnessing people you believe to be moral now supporting genocide will create strange inconsistencies like that.
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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It is not a genocide if god's chosen people do it!
Good! In a culture that worships cops and "thought leaders", this is two steps up from meekly accepting whatever powerful people say.
Now it's time for:
(3) Acting on your ethical convictions towards specific goals, and learning to work with people who share them, even when their motivations or values are different.
P.S. As others here have stated, (1) and (2) are not contradictory. If morality is constructed, then we all construct our own. Unless you actually WANT to be an amoral bastard.
I believe the only objective morality is that you must act without intent to harm others unless it is in self-defense.
How far in advance are you allowed to act in self defense? If you all but know they're leaving the room to go get a gun out of the next room can you strike while their back is turned as they leave? What if it's the neighbor who thinks you banged his wife and he's going next door to get the gun? For most people there's probably a distance at which the answer becomes "call the cops" but that distance probably gets a lot farther if the guy you think is about to shoot you is the sheriff's brother. And what if you're less sure? What if the person is clearly unhinged but it feels like a coinflip as to whether or not they're about to try to murder you?
What about on a wider societal level? If you think a group of people is marshalling to attack you or the wider society can you attack first? Do you arrest them or even have the police violently disrupt their gatherings? Do you become a terrorist and commit an act of mass violence in the hopes that it will prevent them from attacking you or another group you consider vulnerable?
That raises the other question of whether it's acceptable to defend others, but for the sake of simplicity it sounds like you're not in favor of getting in the middle of other people's fights which is fair, but do your kids fights count as your fights? Is there an age limit on that?
None of those questions necessarily apply to any particular ideology but I can think of a few ways people might and often actually have used these concepts in ways both favoring and disfavoring my own personal convictions.
And now you successfully turned a simple statement into one hell of a philophical exam.
A few years ago a coworker asked what thing is seen as normal now that's going to be looked back on in 100 years as completely barbaric and I was like seriously? We're acute inpatient psych nurses who have to force people to take medications, often by physically holding them down and injecting them. We're doing the best we can, and I actually got into this field because I was that patient (my first restraint incident was my own) and I like to think I'm part of working towards that better future but holy shit does it suck right now.
Even if you skip over the psychiatric emergencies volatile enough to warrant emergency meds there's so much more awful shit that I don't have any good alternatives to. I have to see every person's full skin including removing their pants on admission. I'm as tactful as I can be, I try to make sure the staff members are the same gender (although usually the men don't mind the nurses all being female). I try to provide as much modesty and dignity as I can, but in the end I can't tell just by looking which ones have a knife taped to their leg until their pants are actually off. One person actually had an entire loaded gun that the ED somehow missed. I don't make them squat and cough or put my fingers in any orifices but it still traumatizes the depressed college students who think we're gonna heal them instead of just prevent them from dying for three days while we make sure it's safe for them to take the sedatives they're gonna need for the weeks or even months until they can see an outpatient psych or therapist who will do the actual helping.
Life is horrible. We do the best we can. I've decided my meaning of life is to reduce suffering. I don't work in an environment that's conducive to that but I also don't have a whole lot of better options. There are places that are kinder but they're not designed to handle the really hard cases and a certain amount of those will always exist. At least the more time I spend trying the better idea I have of what actions I can take that will actually reduce suffering (although luck remains a significant factor) and sometimes I even succeed!
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For the people not getting it:
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They treat morals as opinions.
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They also treat their personal opinions like they're the absolute best opinion.
Another way:
They think everyone likes different ice cream flavors and that's fine. They like Rocky Road flavor. They also think anyone who doesn't is a monster.
Convictions are one thing. But they need to be logically consistent. Saying morality is subjective but you're evil if you don't subscribe to my personal version is illogical.
Let's say we decide that ~~morals~~ what is right and wrong is decided entirely by ourselves. Then it makes perfect sense to defend your own opinions and to disagree with people who disagree with your stance on right and wrong. You chose those morals after all. It's kinda part of the deal that they can't apply to you alone (example: when is it just to kill?)
So I don't see a contradiction.
I guess this post is about Inability to engage with a different set of morals. But assuming that their is an absolute truth for right and wrong wouldn't solve that issue, so I'm not sure why they brought it up.
The issue is believing that everyone has a right to their beliefs but then attacking them. It's like in cultural anthropology: you should only judge a culture by its own internal morals and standards and not impose your outside view when studying them. Kinda like Star Trek Prime Directive.
If you TRULY believe everyone is entitled to their own morals, then you're breaking that when you criticize someone else's. After all, they have their own morals system and you're perfectly fine with that. Your morals can only include your actions. If you believe that your morals are objectively the best, you're no longer thinking the first thing anymore. It's subjectivism vs objectivism.
Now that is funny. Its funny because its true.
What’s even funnier- is the amount of people in the comments here that perfectly illustrate the humor in the post without even understanding why.
Could somebody explain it to me, please?
The humor is based on a seeming contradiction this guy's students exhibit.
They apparently simultaneously believe:
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in a relativistic moral framework - that morality is a social construct (that can mean other things, too, but morality as a social construct is a very common type of relativistic moral framework)
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that their morality is correct and get outraged at disagreements with their moral judgments.
This isn't logically inconsistent, but it is kind of funny.
It isn't logically inconsistent because, if you believe morality is relative and what is right/wrong for people in other societies is not necessarily right/wrong for people in your society, then assuming that the professor and his student are part of the same or similar societies, they should share the same or similar morality. People in the same society can disagree on who is a part of their society as well as what is moral. Ethics is messy. So, it is not necessarily logically inconsistent to try to hold others to your relativized moral framework - assuming you believe that it applies to them too since "relativized" doesn't mean "completely individualized". And, due to globalization, you might reasonably hold a pretty wide range of people to your moral views.
It is kind of funny because there is a little bit of tension between the rigidity of the ethical beliefs held and the acceptance that ethics are not universal and others may have different moral beliefs that are correct in their cultural context. Basically, to act like your morals are universally correct while believing that your morals are correct for you, but not for everyone, represents a possible contradiction and could be a bit ironic.
A good example of relativistic morality based on culture/society:
On the Mongolian steppe, it has traditionally been seen by some nomadic groups as good and proper for the old, when they can no longer care for themselves, to walk out on the steppe to be killed by the elements and be scavenged - a "sky burial". Many in the West would find this unacceptable in their cultural context. In fact, they might say, it is wrong to expect or allow your mom to go sky bury herself in Ohio or say... Cambridge. Instead, they might think you should take her in or put her in a home.
Now, if your professor said to you "So you don't think Mongolians expecting their mothers to die in sky burials is wrong, but you believe me expecting my mother to die in a sky burial is wrong in Cambridge? Curious. I am very intelligent." You could probably assume they are either a Mongolian nomad or don't understand relatvistic morality.
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Even if all morality is subjective or inter-subjective I have some very strong opinions about tabs vs spaces
Morality is, and always has been, built entirely upon empathy. Understanding how someone else feels and considering the greater implications beyond yourself is the fundamental building block to living a moral life. If you're willing to condemn the world to your shitty code just because the tab key is quicker, you're a selfish monster who deserves hyponichial splinters. See also: double spaces after a period.
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Yeah, that's because moral relativism is cool when you live in a free and decent society.
The irony is that you can afford to debate morality when society is moral and you're not facing an onslaught of inhumanity in the form of fascism and unchecked greed that's threatening any hope for a future.
But when shit hits the fan, morality becomes pretty fucking clear. And that's what's happening right now. Philosophical debates about morality are out the window when you're facing an existential threat.
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Hah! Cool to see Henry pop up on my feed. I knew this guy back when he was a grad student. And as somebody that also teaches ethics, he is dead on. Undergrads are not only believe all morality is relative and that this is necessary for tolerance and pluralism (it's not), but are also insanely judgmental if something contradicts their basic sense of morality.
Turns out, ordinary people's metaethics are highly irrational.
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I see no paradox here. Yes, the rubrics change over time, making morality relative, but the motivation (empathy) remains constant, meaning you can evaluate morality in absolute terms.
A simple analog can be found in chess, an old game that’s fairly well-defined and well-understood compared to ethics. Beginners in chess are sometimes confused when they hear masters evaluate moves using absolute terms — e.g. “this move is more accurate than that move.
Doesn’t that suggest a known optimum — i.e., the most accurate move? Of course it does, but we can’t actually know for sure what move is best until the game is near its end, because finding it is hard. Otherwise the “most accurate” move is never anything more than an educated guess made by the winningest minds/software of the day.
As a result, modern analysis is especially good at picking apart historic games, because it’s only after seeing the better move that we can understand the weaknesses of the one we once thought was best.
Ethical absolutism is similarly retrospective. Every paradigm ever proposed has flaws, but we absolutely can evaluate all of them comparatively by how well their outcomes express empathy. Let the kids cook.
To add to this, morality can be entirely subjective, but yeah, of course if I see someone kicking puppies in the street I'll think: "That's intrinsically morally wrong." Before I try to play in the space of "there's no true morality and their perspective is as valid as mine."
If my subjective morality says that slavery is wrong, I don't care what yours says. If you try to keep slaves in the society I live in as well I want you kicked out and ostracized.
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Subjective morality is self evidently true, but that gives us no information about how to live our lives, so we must live as if absolute morality is true.
We only have our own perspective. Someone else's subjective morality is meaningless to us, we aren't them.
I don't see the problem. One can have unshakeable moral values they believe everyone should have while acknowledging those values may be a product of their upbringing and others' lack of them the same.
I think you're missing the significance of his phrase "entirely relative".
In moral philosophy, cultural relativity holds that morals are not good or bad in themselves but only within their particular context. Strong moral relativists would hold the belief that it's fine to murder children if that is a normal part of your culture.
I guess I'm parsing the statement as "understand it as a concept" when they mean "hold that position."
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I've been a College and University prof for the past 6 years. I'm in my young 40s, and I just don't understand most of the people in their 20s. I get that we grew up in really different times, but I wouldn't have thought there would be such a big clash between them and me. I teach about sound and music, and I simply cannot catch the interest of most of them, no matter what I try. To the point were I'm no sure I want to keep doing this. Maybe I'm already too old school for them but I wonder who will want to teach anymore....
That is the same sentiment my music teacher had 15 years ago and the same sentiment his music teacher did before that. I don’t think it’s illustrating the times as much as just that teaching is a tough and thankless job and most people aren’t interested in learning
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Everything in moderating or something. I'm not an ear doctor
I've had people, presumably young, argue with me on here about politics and morals. For example, I say the right to abortion is a political issue. Been screamed out that it's not a political issue because a woman's right to an abortion is a moral issue. Yeah, I agree, but the argument is still political. Some believe abortion is murder and that they're right. That's politics.
It's like they have no sense that other views exist, and opposing views do not constitute politics. "I'm on the right side of this thing so it's not politics!" As if I'm somehow lowering the debate to mere... something?
That was one of the first things I got confused by on lemmy. Am I making sense? Just crawled in from work and I'm wasted tired.
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Kids thinking anything goes while also being incredibly close-minded is not new.
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