Aswad
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Joined: 4/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Aynne88
I guess I don't understand something basic about what you said, although it seems rational. For me, I would act on all of these cases only out of emotion, be it anger, justice, compassion, rage, I don't even think morality comes into play for me. They are just wrong. I would act on them even if unable to stop them, because by my very nature I don't care if I am unable to stop it, watching it happen and dong nothing is to me compliance.
Gladly. I hope it's clearer this way:
We start with a situation. In this situation, I can act. Morality- in brief- tells me whether an action is required, prohibited, or allowed. In the example of an adult beating up a child, I will desire to stop it. If my morals allow me to interfere, I will, because that is what I wish to do. If my morals require me to interfere, such as from obligation to the community, then again I will, because it is what is right (for me) to do. If my morals prohibit me from interfering, presumably due to a more important moral directive, then I will restrain my desire to act. The degree of success in exercising restraint when I wish to do something, or compelling action when I do not, is the degree to which I am able to comply with my morality.
Again in the same example of an adult beating up a child, the desire to act stems from several sources, most notably a sense of contempt for the adult, as directing excessive violence against an essentially defenseless person will register on me as a sort of malignant cowardice. I will also empathize with the child, but the prime motivator to act will be how I feel about the attacker. This also influences the response. For instance, if a stranger were beating up a child in the neighbourhood, my reaction to the stranger would be in full force, and the sense of communal loyalty to the child ("our" child) would strengthen the reaction, and chances are the stranger would end up in the ER or morgue. However, if a friend were beating up a child I had never seen before, I would probably attempt to restrain him/her instead, and ask what the hell was going on. Absent a satisfactory answer, that friendship would likely end as a result. (And it's kind of hard to picture a satisfactory answer outside a wartime situation, cf. kamikaze bomb kids in Vietnam, etc.)
I am more concerned with what is tolerable vs intolerable than with right vs wrong, though.
And, yes, I consider failure preferrable to not making the attempt to act.
Short of it: beating up a little kid just rubs me the wrong way.
Morality determines how and if I get to rub back.
Does that explain it well enough?
Health,
al-Aswad.
_____________________________
"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind.
From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way.
We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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