Just in time for your Christmas shopping list!
It seems obvious today that people are operating on different principles for defining good and evil. Some people seem to believe that it’s virtuous to massacre Palestinian children, strangle homeless people on the subway, murder healthcare CEOs (or deprive people of health care), and oppress trans people. All those things would put you on my naughty list! What are the rules for ethics and morality anyway? Are there any?
How you treat spiders?
In my opinion, the Problem of Evil is not as bad as the Problem of Stupid. Because the PoS leads to people giving power to Evil.
Then there’s the curse that if someone supposedly ‘good’ points out someone who is known to be ‘bad’ is actually acting badly, that is somehow MORE ‘bad’ or ‘evil’.
Case in point, years ago this week, then NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called out a member of the conservative party there for being a complete and utter arse (my words, not hers). And the papers went nuts, not over what the conservative did to totally deserve it, but because she called him on it.
Conservative acts badly: expected, so it isn’t news.
Liberal actually calls a conservative out: unexpected, so ‘news’, and we have to make the point that it is SO out of character for a ‘liberal’ to do such a thing, so I guess that means liberals are ‘bad’.
This is the mainstream news’ reaction to EVERYTHING, and we saw it play out this past year yet again. Trump’s or other Republican shit would be mentioned, maybe, but not the opinion we were supposed to have on it…but damn right any time Harris did anything, the so-called “liberal” mainstream media was right on it for telling us HOW WE SHOULD FEEL about it. And it was never ‘good’.
This has been reality for decades now, and I am so sick of it, because as Mike the Mad Biologist would say, “this is why we can’t have nice things.”
America seems to be suffering of willful ignorance, of too many people who think that Trump is “Christ-like” and a “messager of god”, where greedy hucksters such as Joel Olsteen and Kenneth Copeland are seen as moral and righteous, and where Fox News is believed by more TV viewers than any other news source. The country is where it is because of where its been going for years, at a faster rate of where it had been going largely for decades.
I’m much more interested in how Santa gathers the data to put people on the “naughty” and “nice” lists in the first place. Cointelpro was by amateurs, for amateurs, compared to most chain-store loyalty apps…
As Calvin put it about forty years ago, “Santa Claus: Kindly old elf, or CIA spook?”
Hmmm…what role did the Babylonian captivity play in introducing the good vs evil dichotomy, given the Persian influence? And what various roles did future bad guy Satan play in the Tanakh? Can there be an objective good or evil or are those projections of human concepts onto nature?
As for rules I think Kant was too unidimensional with the categorical imperative, though treating people as ends and not means seems good on paper. Instrumental reason was criticized by early Critical Theory as it came out of Weber’s thought.
WD Ross offered a pluralistic alternative to Kant’s deontology with his prima facie duties, which offer more than the simplistic eudaemonism Sam Harris put forth in the terrible moral landscape avoidance of deeper moral philosophy.
Maybe try to draw a distinction between Hume and GE Moore on is-ought versus the overly analytical Naturalistic Fallacy which makes a Platonic Ideal out of Good. Hume pretty much breaks down to that facts may be necessary, but insufficient in making morally salient decisions. Too many people think Hume erected an impenetrable barrier between is and ought. Kant went the other way with his apt dictum that ought implies can.
I think Ross had expanded upon Moore with his notions of Right and Good.
What would Foucault or Bentham think of the infamous Christmas time panopticon imposed by parents with the elf on the shelf? How does that relate to Plato’s Ring of Gyges concept where someone could actually act with impunity, given the gift SCOTUS wrapped for Trump? How would a virtuous or vicious person act if made invisible as HG Wells did for Griffin in The Invisible Man ?
Is goodness just a mask worn for the benefit of others or does it stem from character (ie- cultivated virtues)?
Can morality be objective or is it more an evolving intersubjective consensus?
Oh and maybe touch on greatest good arguments when an evil must be done to an individual as in “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Le Guin. Socially constructed rights offset collective will arguments, but with evil consequences of their own when enough people opt out of receiving vaccines.
I’m a fan of Pratchett’s (or Granny Weatherwax’s) opinion that evil starts with treating people as things. I’d add that it’s a big deal how you react to evidence that you’ve made a mistake, which is a part of being human. Do you say, “Oh my bad,” and put it right as best you can? Do you stick your fingers in your ears and sing, “La la la I can’t hear you.”? Or do you silence the messenger by any means you can, including violence?
What’s the Bible’s answer for the problem of evil? Well, God is really, really powerful and that’s why he can kick your ass whenever he feels like for no higher reason. So the strong dominate the weak. No wonder the Abrahamic slop is such attractive fare for bullies of all kinds.