[lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
- From: Mike Geary <jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:11:40 -0500
Apparently Andy doesn't watch the news. No awareness of what's going on in
Somalia or the Sudan even as we type. Migrations of starving peoples,
decisions being made whether to abandon a child who can no longer walk for
the sake of the others. These are real decisions, not hypothetical moral
preachments against having more children than one can afford to raise --
presuming, of course, that it was a free choice by the mother, assuming of
course that "other moral imperatives" are not driving such decisions,
assuming, of course, that social disorder has not destroyed the fabric of a
group that would have managed otherwise. One should not steal, but to die
rather than steal is an immoral decision within my scope of moral
priorities. How many thousands of years have parents left "excess" children
on a hillside to die? Such actions cry to the heavens for a loving and just
God, but none has ever been forthcoming. Why do the parents then not slit
the child's throat, put a quick end to it? Why leave the newborn to suffer
unto death? Why? I would guess because few human beings are callous enough
to do the deed, to accept that life can be so horridly cruel. Put the kid
out on a hillside and let God do the killing. God has no compunctions
against such.
If you think, I'm endorsing infanticide, or dismissing it as the way the
world is, you misread me. I'm arguing that there's nothing universal about
morality. It is a cultural construct, just as everything humans engage in
is. Moral principles are OUR principles -- not God's -- and not
that culture over there. Morality is limited to we. Was Hitler evil?
According to my beliefs he was and I would not have hesitated to kill the
motherfucker, but a hell of a lot of Germans looked on him as the moral
voice of German culture. I understand how that can happen.
Mike Geary
Mired in but still fighting Memphis Morality
On Mon, Oct 10, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Fair enough. I'll answer the question. Yes, it is immoral. That baby
> did not ask to be born. Presumably the parents knew ahead of time where
> babies come from and created the baby anyway. Therefore, if there's not
> enough food to feed the newborn baby that resulted from one's behavior,
> then one feeds that baby and does with less for one's self, or even starves
> if necessary. It becomes a crime of passion under those circumstances to
> put the baby on the hillside. Granted, if you die then the baby dies, but
> the baby dies anyway if it's deliberately left to die. If one has to take
> someone else's baby because the parents are killed in war say, and there's
> not enough food for it, then there's really no issue, unless everyone can do
> with a little less so as to have enough for the baby. However, those
> situations are basically Malthusian economics, not morality.
>
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus
>
> Interestingly, however, (paraphrasing the above site) as an Anglican minister
> Malthus
> saw starvation based in scarcity as divinely imposed to teach virtuous
> behavior, so presumably that would be morality. I do away with the divine
> and simply see cause and effect in real time, common sense. Curiously, or
> maybe just realistically, Malthus didn't think human nature could be
> changed, but even here, demographically, as education and wealth goes up,
> population goes down, so there's something more at work than just human
> spirits. Presumably the passions would be no less strong in a situation of
> abundance. Malthus thought that all humans have a tendency toward
> "virtuous attachment" (which I'm understanding as a drive to copulate) such
> that overpopulation on a planet that can't support them all is inevitable.
> "Yet
> in all societies, even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a
> virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an
> increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject
> the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great
> permanent amelioration of their condition". (1798)
>
> Maybe when situations become dire is when people's brains most
> energetically fly out the window. Sex is clearly a releaser of feel good
> hormones, plus there's a power component in it. My understanding is that in
> the animal kingdom food requirements are met first, then reproduction. In a
> situation of starvation, reproduction probably would be shut down, or the
> desire for it. I would imagine Mike's scenario is based not in actual
> starvation but simply in scarcity, which would make the act of reproduction
> no different from an act of, say, vandalism, that feels good but is
> ultimately destructive. So, yes, it would be immoral.
>
> In the end, economics and morality are one and the same. Adam Smith was a
> moral philosopher. He wrote Theory of Moral Sentiment *before* he wrote
> his Wealth of Nations, and both were written in an effort to improve the
> plight of man. The Wealth of Nations today is treated as purely an economic
> tract precisely because nobody reads it and has no idea what it is they're
> conveniently using to justify their essentially immoral behavior.
>
> Andy
>
>
> *From:* Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
> *To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Sent:* Sunday, October 9, 2011 11:01 PM
>
> *Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: Malevolence (Was: The Evil That We Do)
>
> On 10/9/11 10:04 AM, Andy wrote:
>
> Mike: Is it immoral to leave a newborn baby out on a hill to die when
> there is not enough food to feed the family?
>
> Andy: Seems to me that having a baby if one can't afford one is the
> immoral part. If one cannot afford a baby, one has no business having
> one. There are circumstances, no doubt, but for the most part it's those
> human spirits again. Curiously it would be just common sense, i.e., if
> there's less food, then let's not invite more people to the party. Instead,
> it's more like tomorrow we die, so let's have sex today, however much we
> compound our misery. Do I ask too much of people?
>
> You do if you expect them to follow this argument-by-false-analogy, which
> simply avoids Mike's question.
>
>
> Robert Paul
>
>
>
>
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