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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 6:00 pm 
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There are cultural differences between Europe and America, whatever the reasons for it, as we can see from the way hotly contested political and social issues in one of the two are ignored in the other. In the US, you have huge debates about whether to introduce socialised healthcare, for example, whereas over here the debate's on how best to run it - no successful politician could suggest a complete privatisation of healthcare. But for that matter, there's big differences within Europe. Abortion is a non-issue here, but a major one in Ireland. And for that matter, there are a minority here who consider it a major issue - we have a Pro-Life Party; they just don't break into the mainstream. I agree with Crake we have to be very careful about sweeping generalisations.

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Martin Luther King was a preacher, and he was quite disliked by a large majority of the white american population while he was alive.


Hell, plenty of people still hate what Martin Luther King actually said - it's just he's gone the path of many revolutionary icons after reactionaries airbrush out most of their beliefs so they can hold him up as acceptable. King was a socialist who fought for union rights and affirmative action - but now he's always portrayed as a pretty pansy 'can't we all just get along' kind of bloke.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 7:45 pm 
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IRT Swingerzetta: Everyone thinks that they're the good guys. Americans, Europeans etc. Hitler probably thought he was the good guy!

IRT Malice: Apathy isn't really "on the rise" with young people, it's more "rissen". As in, very few young people are not affected by it.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 8:26 pm 
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I think there needs to be some definition clarification here.

Immoral-- I take this to mean "against a person's held morals". However, some people seem to take this to mean "against the commonly held morals", or, worst of all, "against my morals". For example, somebody said "immoral behavior such as stealing and killing". It's my opinion that the terms moral and immoral cannot be objectively applied to any action; these distinctions are subject to the speaker's own moral code. If your moral code says that stealing is fine, then stealing in that case is not an immoral act.

Now, that's immoral and moral as qualifying adjectives. I'd like to see somebody else define moral(s) as a noun.

EDIT: Caff!! More confusion! Arrrrg. Anybody else want to weigh in on this? Does immoral mean against moral norms or against the person's own moral code?


Last edited by Malice on Sun Jan 02, 2005 8:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 8:28 pm 
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And to complete the definition, amoral is different to immoral. Whereas immoral describes acting against a moral norm, amoral describes acting without reference to moral norms.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 9:11 pm 
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Malice wrote:
Does immoral mean against moral norms or against the person's own moral code?

Yes, it does.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 9:23 pm 
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All definitions from www.dictionary.com
Moral: Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character.

Amoral: Lacking moral sensibility; not caring about right and wrong.

Immoral: Contrary to established moral principles.

Apathy: Lack of interest or concern, especially regarding matters of general importance or appeal; indifference.

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 Post Posted: Sun Jan 02, 2005 9:34 pm 
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More definitions, this time from the OED:

moral a. 4. a. Of a person, a person's conduct, etc.: morally good, virtuous; conforming to standards of morality.

immoral a. Not consistent with, or not conforming to, moral law or requirement; opposed to or violating morality; morally evil or impure; unprincipled, vicious, dissolute. (Of persons, things, actions, etc.)

amoral a. Not within the sphere of moral sense; not to be characterized as either good or bad; non-moral.

AxelFendersson wrote:
Malice wrote:
Does immoral mean against moral norms or against the person's own moral code?

Yes, it does.

Okay, I probably ought to expand on that. If one accepts that there is more than one moral code (ignoring the philosophical issue of whether morality is really subjective, or whether there is an inherent right and wrong and all other percieved moral systems are incorrect) an action can only be defined as moral or immoral within a given moral framework. If a person does something that goes against 'moral norms', but is in keeping with their personal moral convictions, then their actions are immoral by the standards of society, but moral by their own standards.

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 1:15 am 
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Elfy, I think what you're perceiving is the way in which moral rhetoric is framed in the US, versus Europe. In the US, the most common theme (often also the dominant one) is to frame morality in terms of religious values versus secular amorality. I understand what you mean when you say that the religious people you've spoken to think that athiests have no idea what they're doing. I've met a couple of people who were like that. They just perceive the world that way. They think that religious teachings are the only thing stopping everyone from sliding into a pit of selfishness and depravity. But well, it's natural for them to think that. There wouldn't be any point in their being so religious if they didn't.

In Europe, people aren't necessarily more moral, it's just that the debate is framed differently. Because of Europe's history of long and pointless religious wars, the language of religious rhetoric has been replaced by the language of secular humanitarianism - the sort of language you get in the UN Convention on Human Rights. It's also an internationalist perspective, which allows things like the European Union to become politically feasible.

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 7:20 am 
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Yes, Crake, people's individual morals are very different. I am trying to talk about general cultural morals. Individual people have sources for morals and different end morals, but one of the sources of morals is the general culture they live in. In American, no matter your personal religious beliefs, you will be familiar with the holiday of Christmas because it is so important to our wider culture. You are concerned that this is sterotyping; assuming that a single person will act as the group is statistically likely to act or as the group is presumed to act is sterotyping. Studying the group as a whole and using individual examples of members of the group is not sterotyping, it is simply talking about the group. I am not sterotyping when I say that black males are more likely to be incarcerated in the US than white males are. I am sterotyping when I look at a black man and assume that he's been in jail. Knowing that black males have a higher incarceration rate than white males is necessary in order to try to do something to change this situation. Figuring out group characteristics could result in sterotyping, but it is important for other uses.

Kea, I'd met the religious people who don't believe in secular morals quite a long time ago. I recently realized that some people who are secular have no morals. This shocked me. But I started thinking about it, and I couldn't think of any secular morals in America's wider culture.

I'm not just talking about apathy, either. If you have the power to "fix" speeding tickets for your friends, would you do it? If you weren't going to be caught, would it be right or wrong to do it? I think that it is morally wrong because you are not treating people equally. The laws are being applied to some people and not to other people. I don't think it's wrong because God wants me to treat people equally, I think it's wrong because we need people to be treated equally by the government in order for the government to work (otherwise the unfairly treated may one day rise up and replace the current government with one that unfairly treats the OTHER group). But when I look at the above sentence, it is simply a functional description. It's essentially far-sighted selfishness. I've become very adept at avoiding moral explinantions, because they have no weight in my culture without God behind them. Honestly, I simply think that nepotism is wrong. Not because it could hurt the proper functioning of society, just because it is morally wrong. But I can't say that, because morals without religious foundations mean nothing in America and I could convince only my sister with that argument.

To put the whole idea in another perspective;

Postulate One: Evangelism is stronger in America than in other wealthy western industrial countries

Postulate Two: Generally accepted, not explicitly religiously sourced morals do not exist in american popular culture

Some of you have argued with my Postulate Two, but I haven't yet been convinced. Many of you have argued about the relationship between these two postulates. I orginally said that Postulate One occurs because of Postulate Two; without general morals we need religious morals. Kea argues that Europe has simply had enough of religion, and so has moved from the basic state of having religious morals to a new state of having general morals. Or are you saying that the morals all come from the same place, and it's just the rhetoric that changes? Where do the morals come from, then?

So, if you accept my two postulates, figuring out how they are related to each other could be very interesting. Is there really any non-religious way to source morals? Is the fact that I don't argue on moral grounds because I can't have a moral base? Does the fact that America has such religious evangelism make non-religious morals irrelevant? Am I correct that one causes two?

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 8:24 am 
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I'm not saying that all morals come ultimately from religion. I don't know where morals come from. My personal feeling is that when you get down to it, people just have a basic sense of fairness.

All I'm saying is that different cultures state the question of morality/amorality differently. In America, a lot of people talk about living according to the Bible. In Europe, moral arguments have more of a basis in Western philosophy than religion. The French have "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". In the Middle East, people talk about honour versus dishonour. In East Asian countries, people talk about one's obligations towards one's family (though this is an increasingly old-fashioned point of view).

In each of these cultures, there are people who don't agree with the dominant moral framework. Some of them, like Elfy, find an alternative framework - some do it consciously, some not so consciously. Others remain amoral, and act selfishly. Does one culture have a greater percentage of amoral people than another? I don't know.

Now for the other part of Elfy's question: if you can't convince people with moral arguments that don't involve God, does that mean you have no moral basis? Nah. I just think you need to find some different people. ;P

Because I don't see how "People should be treated equally and fairly" is any less of a moral argument than "Because God said so." I think it's probably a more moral argument. Because you can justify just about anything with "Because God said so." But when you don't have a holy book to go back to, you have to use your own reasoning to discern what is right and what is wrong. I kinda like this one:

"I believe that because we are intelligent creatures capable of empathy, we have the ability to figure out what is just and what is unjust. We all can empathise with someone who has been wronged, so we should not, ourselves, treat others badly. On a societal level, this means equal treatment under the law. Because if you do special favours for some people, it means that others aren't being treated fairly. And this is wrong."

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 9:53 am 
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I understand what you mean about religion being used as a standard basis for morals, and being, in some people's view, the only basis for morals. And I can see what you mean about secular people having a rough time trying to explain where their morals come from in such a framework. I've sometimes encountered such situations myself.

So elfy and others, what do you think of people who interpret the same religion differently? A common example would be how they view homosexuality - some people who are religious (not just Christians) think it's a sin based on their understanding of religion, and some don't. And each thinks that the other group is just plain wrong in their interpretation. So who would be amoral in this situation?

Seeing how people can take the same religion and view it so differently causes me to believe that religion and morals are not necessarily entwined together. Religious texts give lots of basic guidelines, but it's impossible for them to specify what to do in every given situation, so clearly there's some room for individual judgement in there. In the Ten Commandments God tells us not to kill, but he doesn't tell us what to do with people who have killed, and boy do people have loads of differening moral opinions about that! Sometimes I wonder whether some people just come to the conclusion they want and justify themselves by finding a way in which their religion would back them up ("A murderer has gone against God's will and must be dealt a hefty punishment" or "God is the only person who can deal death - we must leave the judgement to Him").

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 11:19 am 
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Amorality does not imply selfishness. But then again, it's nearly impossible to successfully apply 'amoral' to a human being. We make conscious decisions every day, and something forms those decisions. That's our morality, whether other people agree with it or not.

Truly amoral things are entities that have no business taking actions on the world, but do so anyway; for the most part, these are corporations, though other groups that take on a life of their own (political parties come foremost to mind) can become this way as well. When this starts, these entities are making decisions, tending towards those outcomes that are most beneficial to the entity itself; however, since the entity is neither a person nor a single being, it can't really be called selfish. It's just an amoral decision: one made without consideration of morals.

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 12:28 pm 
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Morality is behind all the concious decisions I make? How about if I decide to make split pea soup instead of vegetarian chili? Are there morals behind that decision? I think that morality covers a very much narrower range of things, where decisions you make could interfere with a certain set of moral rules you or someone else holds.

I don't consider selfishness to have anything to do with morality most of the time. For example, say I've cooked a really good vegetarian chili, and I take the last of it instead of letting my fiance eat it. I am being selfish. But my fiance is not starving, or even hungry, and if he wanted good tasting healthy food he could easily make some from what is in our refridgerator. There is no moral rule to apply in this situation, but I can apply the non-moral, or amoral, rule of selfishness.

Personally, I think selfishness is a very good, utilitarian rule most of the time. I'm much better at figuring out what is best for me, so I should do my best to fulfill my needs and leave other people to fulfill their own needs, which they know better than I do. The problem occurs when there are no moral rules that can trump selfishness when necessary.

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 8:09 pm 
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One thing confuses me why does the American culture with its influences on capitalism and Christian morals create more apathy than other countries?

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 Post Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2005 8:43 pm 
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Apathy is unrelated to morality. "Lies My Teacher Told Me" postulates that a good deal of political apathy in this country comes from our poor American History educational system. Since the American history we get in gradeschool is heavily whitewashed, dehumanized, relentlessly optimistic and soul-crushingly booring, it very rarely connects with the students. Further, the optimistic tone (America, The Land of Oppertunity!) so heavily contrasts with the reality (America, The Land of the McJob!), it further distances any relevance history or one's place in society from relevance.

Combine this with a winner take all political system and the idea that monetary campaign contributions constitute protected speech and you have a recipie for apathy in those not invested in the system.

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