From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 23:01:38 BST
Hi Steve,
>Steve:
>Do you really think that what is best is to do what most people would do in
>a given situation? I guess so, since you keep saying it. I just don't
>know
>how to respond to that. It doesn't fit my experience, and I can't imagine
>it's true for you either.
It's just the definition of moral, that's all. It's not so hard a target to
hit. You can certainly do a lot better than merely be moral, you can be
saintly, you can approach righteousness, etc. I too am not so proud of what
is moral in this country, with its SUV's and selfish narcissism and giddy
high-minded technological imperialism, but that's the morality. I don't
like
Plus, most people try to do what is best, and wouldn't follow a custom if
they thought that most people would also alter custom in that circumstance.
That is just something that we have to believe. Stating that most people
would try do what is best is essential for motivating people to follow suit.
If people have a low opinion about what others would do, then they
themselves will have less motivation to do good.
This is also why it's important to keep up appearances, to keep our
transgressions and crimes to ourselves, as well as those of other people we
witness. Rather than broadcast our own or others immoral slip-ups, we have
to remember that what is moral is a function of what people think other
people do. So if everyone starts hearing about lots of people who committed
adultery, it won't be immoral, it'll become expected behavior. The only
reason we consider it immoral is because we have to believe that NO ONE does
that!
Now, in general, if you have some inside information unavailable to most
people, and happen to know that it would be better to do something that most
people wouldn't do, go ahead and be immoral in our eyes. I'm not giving you
a free pass to do whatever you want, we still will disapprove of your
immorality, but that shouldn't bother you, you understand that we don't
understand, and maybe when we understand what you were trying to do, we will
decide it was moral afterall. We would agree that most of us would have
done the same thing. Maybe.
regards,
Johnny
_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Apr 01 2003 - 23:02:04 BST