God and Communism

The first example is more "etiquette", more like rules in a game, than true morals.

The second is a better example of your point. It also shows that there are seperate moral drives operating independantly in a person. A bit like primary colors in a mix, or different instrument channels in a mixing desk, each with its own individualised gain setting for a particular person.

One of those drives as I mentioned is the urge to comply with rules and recognise hierachy and authority. The content of the hierachy is entirely cultural. So are methods of enforcements. Unfortunately in Islamic cultures women are placed as "lesser", even dehumanised. A compassionate individual Muslim who has his "respect for hierachy" lever rather low might be very kind to his wife, and hate the way his neighbour beats the shit out of her. If all his meighbours do it he might to a degree conform and become desensitised.

What the Enlightenment in Europe did was to give in to another instinctive moral drive: sensitivity to fairness and justice. This particular moral drive to a degree works in opposition to the one that respects hierachy, (and more than any determines which side of the left - right political spectrum an individual is drawn to). Effectively the Enlightenment began to recognise universal rights for individuals, eventually culminating in equal status for women.

The Muslim world has not had a similar enlightenment.

For completeness sake: a 5th moral drive is the degree of loyalty to ones "own" (community, tribe, nation), which requires the abililty to discriminate sharply between a "them" and "us". I guess this links up with recognition of hierachy and there is a tendency for right wingers to have this particular gain control up high, and they therefore tend to be more partriotic, at extremes nationalistic. Note that where the lines of "them" and "us" are drawn is cultural. So right wing white kids brought up to believe that people with colored skin and homosexuals are "other" grow up as bigots. Liberal kids, with their tribal control set low, placed in a bigotted culture get the same upbringing yet as adults their compassion can override their weak inherent sense of "other".

Since the enlightenment there has been a tendency to enlarge the circle of "us" and "them" until racial discrimination has become unlawful. Note this is a cultural change of content only.

 

Child psychology -and adult psychology for that matter- is a minefield of bollocks, largely because they (Bowlby, Piaget et al) forgot about genes (duh)

 

Roneoed reply for any American who disagrees with you.

 

Are you saying my alcoholism was genetically determined? That alkies/addicts don't need a "Higher Power" to take away their addictions?

SACRILEGE!....BURN THE WITCH!!

 

Nah. But being a witch is genetically determined.

Only the degree of susceptibility to alcoholism/ drug addiction is heritable

 

sadly, greed, status and lust are considered to be moral values by a hell of a lot of people . . .

 

Crap! You mean...... all my life I 've been doing it all wrong?!

 

no, you've been doing it by your set of morals

hardwired? who knows, but both sides are guides to living correctly, as variously interpreted, and as such are both morals

digression:

i've always been fond of the idea that between the influence of nature and influence of nurture there may be a third influence - that of personality

a non-spiritual word for a very spiritual idea - the idea that you are inherently you, and that dna and parenting can only do so much alteration

this is a matter of private conjecture, not public discussion, and i try not to speculate on the origins of personality

[please note that because i like the idea does not necessarily mean that i believe it]

 

i doubt that, based on wide and careful reading of the literature

not to mention his following in pretty much every country in the world that had newspapers

including all of those he either conquered or wanted to conquer - and even after he had done so . . . plenty of those troops fighting for him were not german . . .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Foreign_volunteer_units_of_Nazi_Germany

 

and the anti-semitic stuff goes way back in history

and continues to this day

not to mention the marriage of government and corporations bit, stronger than ever

[mussolini won the cold war?]

 

In the '30s Hitler got much support from rightwingers and big business, largely as a reaction the nation's communists. Further, he gained most of his public support through the promise of economic recovery in very harsh times. A further element of support came from regular patriotism following the humiliation of the Versailles treaty and occupation of the Rhineland. None of this implies complicity in his subsequent warmongering and utter disregard for the lives of non-Aryans.

A lot of people were pressed into his institutions, including the Hilter Youth, with most feeling nothing more radical than patriotism and hope (but were then exposed to heavy indoctrination)


Every country in the world has its radical rightwingers, nationalists, supremacists, fascists, stirred up by the reaction to communism. Of course Hitler was a hero to them, music to their ears. All a lot of those radicals wanted to do is fight communism.

None of this implies popular support for Hitler's morals.

 

perhaps you're talking about virtue. In many warrior cultures gratuitous killing and being extra cruel is seen as a virtue. And maybe on Wall street greed is seen as a virtue. Virtue is not always the same as morals, which refers to behavior that benefits the recipient -promoting non-zero sum games as they say.

I think you're much more right than you think. Morality is part of personality.

 

whatever it is that you define as 'morals' may be a part of your personality

others' mileage may vary . . .

 

I think we're talking about different things

 

and that was my point in the first place

what are morals?

mine, yours, ours?

 

Morals are intuitions on what is "good" behavioral intent towards others (and towards oneself. - I've put that in brackets)

 

hypothetical:

if you were a patriot, and you blamed a certain condition for the ruin of your country, would it not be "good" behavioral intent to rid said country of said condition?

in my case, i might be unhappy about pollution and such things as that

of course, while i see pollution as evil, those whose livelihoods depended on producing might disagree

in another case . . . hmm . . . jews ruining germany, anyone?

and despite your defense of the average german, i guarantee that anti-semitic messages fell lightly upon the kopfen of the volk

and had been falling lightly for hundreds of years . . .

[apologies for bad deutsch, and glad the germans seem to be moving forward since 1945]

 

You're exploring the boundaries of definitions. In fact patriotism as a moral drive refers to loyalty to the community of people of one's nation, particularly in times of conflict with other nations. I know environmentalists have hijacked the notion of "patriotism" and that's cool, but let's be clear.


Those causing the pollution oppose environmentalism but that is not a moral position.

Indeed Hitler's position against the Jews, if he believed they were ruining Germany, can be said to be a moral position. But in following that particular moral drive he overrode the most important moral drive at all: compassion and care, -lack of which is one of the hallmarks of fascists. He undoubtedly lacked the capacity for empathy.

I wasn't so much trying to defend the Germans as debunking your use of the Nazi example to try and show moral relativity. I tried to show moral universality by showing Germans in the Nazi period were innately no different.

And you are quite wrong. Germany was no more anti semitic than the rest of Europe before Hitler, in fact much less than in Eastern Europe where progroms and organised plots against Jews were rife. (Remember the Pale. And the Protocols of the Elders of Zion hoax.)

 

i'm lost, what are we discussing again?

 

You're making this way more complicated than it really is.

When the Tiger gets hungry, it's nice to belong to a group. Natural Man evolved into a social being by need and circumstances; those who were not social and went out alone were eaten and didn't procreate, therefore we evolved an innate desire to belong to the group, to have a companion. This drive will sometimes allow us to make some pretty awesome sacrifices in our lives.

Moral values are the rules of the group, a tacit agreement for certain behaviors in exchange for group acceptance.

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