From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jun 08 2004 - 07:54:58 BST
Hi Mark, thanks for these good questions.
>On 7 Jun 2004 at 17:49, johnny moral wrote:
>
>Let's digress into the morality of polling, a subject that interests
>me greatly. I've long championed the original and still to my mind
>correct definition of morality as being "whatever most people do".
>As in "the mores" of a society. ... There's usually no conflict
>between what we think is good and what is moral, though these days a
>cynicism pervades which regularly insists that most people would not
>do what is good, an attitude which in itself is a contributing factor
>to a lowered standard of ethical behavior.
>
>msh asks:
>So, IYO, this cynicism, if it exists, is unwarranted, even self-
>contradictory, given your definition of morality. Do you think this
>is Pirsig's sense of morality, as developed in Lila?
It's not self-contradictory, it's just cynical. It might even be correct,
but it isn't good. It's good to believe that most people are good.
I'm not sure if Pirisg ever said that morality is what most people do, or
connected t with the mores of a culture. But he did equate morality with
patterns and reality and experience, and that can only mean a probability of
what will happen based on experience and reality and patterns, if you think
about it.
>jm:
>How this relates to polling is very interesting, because in reality,
>what we feel is moral is not necessarily an accurate sampling of what
>most people do, but is only what we think most people do. Our
>standards of morality are usually a notch or two above what actually
>happens, because we usually never hear about unethical behavior. It
>used to be that if a student cheated, he kept it to himself. Now,
>because of the prevelance of polling, we all "know" that 90% of
>students cheat, or whatevr the number is. If we think most people
>cheat, then we think it is moral, it is the expected behavior, and we
>are MUCH more likely to cheat ourselves. The ethics and good are
>subjective, after all, what matters is fitting in and doing what is
>expected, not being an ethical fool.
msh asks:
>Then what ethical judgment is in play for the few who would not
>cheat, even if they know that 90% do? In other words, who's this
>"we", and what makes the others different?
Well, not everyone is moral all the time. They may not cheat for any number
of reasons, maybe they don't believe that it is moral to cheat, or they have
a stubborn insistence on maintaining old standards, or they believe that it
will classically build their character and challenge their intellect better
if they don't cheat. The "we" is any one of us, you and me and our family
and neighbors, our classmates, everyone. Speaking for myself, I am much
more likely to cheat if I think most people cheat, but I am not speaking for
myself, you are much more likely to cheat also. Do you acknowledge cultural
attitudes, or culture in general? How does it form, if not from people
behaving according to the culture's standards?
>jm:
>This polling-pushing-immoral-behavior phenomenon also is responsible
>for todays sexual attitudes, a la Kinsey's (flawed) "sex studies" of
>the fifties, which ushered in a new morality of sexual behavior.
>Even if they weren't flawed, they would have had a similar effect
>over time, because the very nature of anonymous polling pretty much
>breaks the mechanism of maintaining morality. People aren't supposed
>to admit to immoral behavior, but these days there is exactly the
>opposite exhortation - people are encouraged to be "honest" and admit
>to all their transgressions, on Jerry Springer and in newspapers.
>People do have a need to confess their sins, but there was a reason
>that sins were confessed only to the priest in private, and the
>priest did not reveal them to the whole congregation.
>
>msh asks:
>What is this reason?
Because the priests realized that a civil society, where people didn't
breach the law and try to be good people, requires a stern exageration of
how rare such breaches were, and how good most people were and how bad it
was to be bad. Those words were invented, manufactured, like eveything.
They aren't objectively true. A civil society was nurtured out of unruly
nature through lies, basically. The leaders just had higher aspirations for
society than what it actually was, which was a brutal, uncivil society.
Everyone being good is a lie, a fabrication, but it is a good lie, as it is
so fabricated to be.
>jm:
>To digress even further, this is exactly what is "liberal" about the
>media. By its very nature, the media only reports the "news", the
>transgressions, the anomolies, the titilating, and the interesting.
>A truly 'conservative" media would not report the news at all, the
>television shows would be very boring, showing characters going about
>their public-faced lives, not admitting to any affairs or ethical
>lapses on camera.
>
>msh says:
>Of couse no one uses the terms "liberal" and "conservative" in this
>way in regards to the media, except you, here. What purpose is
>served my changing the meanings of these words? And do you see any
>connection between profit-maximization in the commercial media and
>what they offer for public consumption?
You've never heard of the "liberal media?" I don't think I've changed any
meaning of those words, I'm just trying to show that it isn't just political
bias, but rather is intrinsic to media. Pushing for change and promoting
deviance is liberal, isnt it?
>jm:
>Putting "DQ" on a pedestal and excoriating existing patterns of
>course is also immoral, though those here who believe that DQ is the
>source of morality and all that is good will of course object. And
>they aren't immoral in being totally wrong about that, btw, most
>people believe that "moral" is something that only a few enlightened
>people understand.
>
>msh asks:
>So, by your own definition of morality, the moral thing to believe is
>that only a few enlightened people understand morality?
Yeah, that paragraph had some bad logic in it, but you got it. The moral
thing is whatyou think most people would do. I think most people believe
that most other people don't understand morality and are stupid, and they
are the among the few who know what is moral. So it is moral to think that
understanding morality is not very common.
>Thanks for any thoughtful answers to my questions.
>
>Best,
>msh
Thanks, these were pretty quick late-night responses, I might wish I had
thought more fully. Please reply so that I get another chance to clarify.
What are your thoughts about polls pushing immoral behavior and consequently
chaiging morality? Do you agree or disagree that morality is what most
people do? (Or, more generally, that morality is what we expect?)
johnny
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