Complex Numbers

Revisited: "Good and Gooder"

Before I get back to posting commentary on articles—I still have a large selection to choose from—I thought I'd try something different today.

This blog is now nearly 16 years old and contains 2142 entries (this one will be #2143). Sure, most of them are from the past few years, and I took a long hiatus in the middle there. But recently I've had occasion to go back to revisit old entries. Some of them made me laugh, because I didn't remember typing them. Others made me cringe because, newsflash, I change over time.

I wanted to revisit some old entries to see how my views might have shifted. True to form, I picked one at random for this purpose. If I do this again, I'll pick a different one at random. I'm excluding anything from the past 12 months.

So here's one from March 19, 2019: "Good and Gooder" 

It's based on this article, which, fortunately, is still available. I'll link it here again in my currently favored format:

An Oxford researcher says there are seven moral rules that unite humanity  

While I don't have anything to change about that entry, I wanted to do what I didn't back then, and actually list the "seven moral rules" as presented in the article:

1. Help your family
2. Help your group
3. Return favors
4. Be brave
5. Defer to superiors
6. Divide resources fairly
7. Respect others’ property

What strikes me now (and might have struck me at the time, but I didn't mention it) is what's excluded from this list, moral/ethical rules that, if they're not universal, I think should be.

First and probably most obvious, "Don't murder people."

Most societies that I'm aware of draw a distinction between the illegal killing of people, and the legal killing thereof. There are also gray areas in between, as with self-defense. Some examples of legal killing would be warfare or capital punishment. I'm not saying these things are right, mind you; just that they're legal.

But walking up to someone on the street and putting a bullet in their head is generally frowned upon in most societies I'm aware of, though it happens more often than we'd like. I guess I assumed it was the same everywhere, though with its exclusion from this list, I have to wonder if "don't murder people" just isn't a major no-no in other societies. Sometimes, it's okay to kill someone from the out-group (North Sentinel Island comes to mind) but not the in-group; more on this later.

There might be different lines drawn elsewhere, but I've heard of very few cultures that say it's okay to murder someone—though the definition of "murder" can vary.

Second glaring omission: refraining from child abuse. Again, what's considered abuse can vary. For example, there was a big deal made a few years of the practice of female circumcision in some societies, though I haven't seen anyone railing against it recently. This is usually done to children, so from our Western perspective it's child abuse. And then some people noted "what's the difference between that and male child circumcision," a practice strongly rooted in the West, so I think that's one reason the moral panic died out. It's a false equivalence, and most people recognize that.

That's just one example, though. When I was a kid, it was expected that corporeal punishment (not to be confused with corporal punishment) was acceptable to keep kids in line. My elementary school principal even had a paddle with "School Board" on one side (the other side was engraved with my name). In a nod to changing morality, though, the school needed parental permission to use it. My dad gave them blanket permission, because he knew me. My mom, on the other hand, was more on the side of alternative punishments. Nowadays, even thinking about spanking your kid gets you labeled as a child abuser.

Point being that what we define as child abuse changes over time, just as it changes between cultures. Yet I feel like some version of it should be on that list (as a negative), and it is not.

Third omission: don't rape. I don't have much more to say about that except that, again, it should be right there.

I suppose it is possible that the list was constructed to include "positive" morality; that is, "do these things" rather than the "negative" morality of "don't do these things." But in that case, one could turn all three of these things around to "respect the autonomy of others," and the fact that this is not on the list is still worrisome, in that it implies that there are cultures where that's not a moral rule.

The list, however, purports to be about what is, and not what one random blogger thinks should be. If I were writing codes of morality, I'd make some changes. For example:

1 and 2 would be combined into "help humanity." If you just help your family and your group (which I read as tribe, or political affiliation, or extended family, or religion, or whatever sets you apart from the rest of the population), you're part of the problem. Thinking in such small terms appears to be baked into the tribal psychology of humanity, and it's not easy to change. But hell, some people take it even one step further to "help the biosphere."

I don't have a problem with 3, "return favors." This seems like basic reciprocity, which helps smooth social interactions and ties into 1 and 2.

4, "be brave," can be problematic. There's a blurry line between bravery and stupidity. It's fine to respect someone for being brave, but being brave by itself doesn't cut it, in my view. As an example, it would be brave of me to take off all my clothes and walk up the street. That doesn't mean it's a good idea.

5- I don't have superiors. Nor do I have inferiors. In certain circumstances, a person does have these things; a job, for example, or military service, in which case, well, okay. But the idea that one person is inherently superior to another (rather than being in a manager / employee situation) is, again, part of the problem.

6- "Divide resources fairly." By that measure, the US is a highly immoral society. I'm not going to argue against that. But "divide resources fairly" is not what we practice. Why, that would be soshulism!!! Also, who gets to define what's "fair?"

7 seems to contradict 6, anyway. We tend to idolize the Robin Hood types, but they don't respect others' property. One can make the argument that Robin Hood was just correcting economic injustice, and I won't argue there, but stealing is wrong, whether a rich person or a poor person is doing it (I can make moral, if not legal, exceptions for those who steal to alleviate hunger, but our legal system isn't set up for such nuance).

And I'd add the bits about respecting others' autonomy that I discussed above, with "slavery is wrong" added to that mix just to be clear about it.

That's enough for today. Back to regularly scheduled random programming tomorrow, unless something major happens.