We don’t often do posts just for the purpose of linking other stories, but today we’re making an exception because Ian Welsh just nails it.
Go. Read. This. Now. It’s the right thing to do.
Related posts (automated):
- “The Right Thing,” by Theodore Roethke
- Cuban: “the most patriotic thing you can do”
- A Thing Of Beauty
- Even better than the real thing: mass media and manufactured beauty
- Yet another great and wonderful thing about the BBC
Print This Post
Thank goodness every human being knows instinctively what is absolutely morally right and we all agree on the whole shebang. Otherwise, things might get a bit complicated.
He presents quite a variety of specifics. Any interest in addressing some of them, or are you just going to go with the snark?
Call it what you want. I call it my own continuing, conscious effort at detribalization, as per Joseph Campbell.
Long-term thinking? Great. Recognizing the good of the community as a whole as good for individuals too? Great. A belief in an innate moral “certainty” that we “should” all share? Simplistic at best; at worst, the unconscious underpinnings of every kind of tyranny. I don’t see the point of arguing specifics when the underlying philosophy, such as it is, is so completely removed from my own.
Which, of course, is a long-winded way of saying the exact same thing expressed in my first comment, if you take the time to think about it. So next time, perhaps I will just stick with the snark.
Can’t think of any traditional moral system which doesn’t say war is bad, murder is bad, torture is bad, looking after each other is good, greed is bad, and so on. The question is whether they extend it to the out group and how big the in group is.
The sort of radical relativism that argues such things aren’t universals underpinned a variety of extremely nasty regimes in the 20th century who killed hundreds of millions.
But, of course, you know better.
Which is why so many lefties are worthless in moral combat.