I anticipate two answers to this question.
(1). The act of writing down the fantasy converts it from a morally neutral entity to an immoral one.
(2). You shouldn’t be worried if your friend tells you “Oh, it’s only a fantasy, I honestly don’t mean to do it, in fact, I wouldn’t even enjoy doing it.”
I personally agree with you, and consider those answers inadequate. But, still, everyone thinks in a different way.
It would worry me. The problem with the discussion is that we can say, “This over here is a fantasy that the person would abhor in real life. This on the other hand is a wish that the person would like to come true.” Etc.
In real life, I can’t know from your diary which it is. If I could somehow read your mind, I might be put entirely at ease or might be calling the cops (though I think I’d have a tough time getting any charges to stick).
In the example I gave, I know that I would be horrified if a meteorite, or hell, even a bus, struck my coworker. But if she found out about the fantasy, she wouldn’t have any way of knowing that part.
That’s why I find it uncomfortable to judge other people too much for what they’re thinking. I can’t see all of the workings. I can judge their actions. I can say that certain thoughts are mean, in theory. But I can’t read their minds.
I can judge myself, though. I can go with my best ideas about what is a horrible fantasy and what is a genuine wish and laugh at myself or castigate myself appropriately.
I see what you’re saying, and I can absolutely understand not wanting to associate with that person, or being uncomfortable around him… but that’s not the same thing as morality. Finding something like that might make me not want to be friends with the guy, but then, I wouldn’t want to be friends with a guy who made a habit of picking his nosein public and wiping it on his shirt. There’s certainly nothing immoral about that, but that doesn’t mean I have to hang around the guy and watch him do it.
See, my personal metric for determining the morality of something is harm. If something harms another person, it’s immoral. If it doesn’t harm anyone, it’s not. Thinking about killing someone isn’t immoral, because it doesn’t harm them. Plotting out how to murder someone, with the intent to execute the plot, isn’t immoral, although I believe it can (and probably should) be illegal. Actually murdering someone is completely immoral, because at that point you’ve finally started causing harm to someone.
I don’t think it works to define the morality of an act by its results. Otherwise, driving drunk at high speed through a school zone would be immoral only if you happened to hit someone.
More relevant to this thread, I believe a case could be made that an act—including plotting, writing a description, or indulging a fantasy—is immoral if, as a result of that act, someone is more likely to do actual harm to someone else at some point in the future.
Between (1) the kind of things we do and (2) the kind of person we are, which is the cause and which is the effect? I believe it’s circular: each influences the other.
In Amazon Floozy Goddess’s example, I’d be concerned both that the kind of person who could write such a fantasy might be someone who’d actually do something like that, and that by writing the fantasy down, you’re actually making it more normal or acceptable to think about and, thus, becoming more likely to actually do something like that.
It’s immoral, to me, only if you have the possibility of hitting someone. Putting others at risk is its own action. It is, in fact, the act of putting others at risk that is the immoral one, not the hitting someone else with a car. Hitting them with the car is bad luck.
Rather like shooting at someone but missing is the same action, morally, as shooting at them and hitting.
Would you agree that the writing isn’t an essential part of the process? Just by encouraging the fantasy, even if they don’t share it with anyone, the person might be becoming more likely to commit the act?
That’s not to say that everyone who encourages their immoral fantasies is at risk of carrying them out. But, because some people might, they’re therefore not morally neutral. IMO.
I just deleted three sizable paragraphs that said exactly the same thing. Even down to the shooting analogy!
The problem I have with this, and it’s a bit of a tangent, is where to draw the line between the intent of the author and the message received by whoever carries out the act? Timothy McVeigh said the Oklahoma City bombing was inspired by a novel called The Turner Diaries, which advocated a race war in the US. Charles Manson said his cult’s murders were inspired by the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter,” which (acording to him) advocated a race war in the US.
Obviously, Manson was much further off in his interpretation of his source material than McVeigh, but there’s a hell of a lot of middle ground between the two examples. How do we interpret claims that, say, the game Doom inspired the killing spree at Columbine? Or that Black Sabbath songs encourged a teenager to attempt suicide? At what point do we seperate the actions of an artist from the actions of his fanbase? My instict is to draw that line pretty far back, but I’m not entirely certain of how to draw it to leave stuff like The Turner Diaries or Mein Kampf on one side, and the stuff I like on the other.
I think this comes down to speech being an act, again. I can’t have perfect judgment about the morality of someone else’s speech, but I can make a guess, just as I do with any other act.
I’m not talking law, here, just to be clear.
I’ve been reading this thread, mulling it over, and there seems to be two things missing in this discussion. All thoughts, including mental fantasies, are NOT created in a vacuum, thus:
The INTENTION of the thinker in question. All thoughts can be rationally motivated or challenged by intentions, known consequences, self-knowledge, education, knowledge of cultural morality, internal morality, and religious/philosophical ethics.
The EMOTIONS of the thinker in question. There are of course very strong emotional pulls, such as sexuality. Some though come from weak emotional pulls, such as bigotry. Feelings themselves are uncontrollable and therefore outside of moral judgement.
Now, for some specific examples. Let’s rule out people with extreme psychological or mental problems and just take a look at your average Joe or Jane.
Take the above duck-rapist, for instance. He (or she, take your pick) loves animals, but he finds himself strongly aroused by the idea of raping fuzzy lil’ duck chicks. Rationally he understands that this is wrong because he knows animals can’t give consent and would be physically harmed by such an act. He doesn’t spend long nights writing out duck-rape porn, but he does realize that his fantasies about duck-raping during masturbation takes the edge off his lust, so he does do that. He also makes a conscious effort to fantasize about less unusual sexual acts as well.
He understands that this is a fairly rare fetish, so he probably shouldn’t bring it up in casual conversation. However, he might want to talk about it in the context of a long-term relationship since he doesn’t want to freak out his partner, he wants to make sure that they’re at least sympathetic, even if they don’t want anything to do with this fantasy. Or he may decide not to tell anyone since it’s only his business as long as no one gets harmed. Perhaps he finds that furries make an OK substitute, he feels supported by the furry community, and while although it squicks out quite a few people, rubbing up against a stuffed duck doesn’t harm anything.
Is he moral or not? I’d say yes-- he’s dealing with some strong emotions in healthy ways. How about the person who wrote down the violent rape fantasy about his friend? Indeterminate-- perhaps he’s been a good friend for a long time, but that may or may not help someone scope out his complete thought processes around his fantasy unless they ask directly (preferably in a very, very public place).
Another example: A child was molested as a kid by a grown man. Growing up, he unconsciously transfers his anger, confusion and shame around this act to homosexuals. He becomes extremely homophobic and justifies his bigotry through religion. He doesn’t bash gays; he doesn’t believe in violence towards anyone. He just does not want to associate with homosexuals, nor does he feel that they deserve “special rights” so he actively supports anti-gay legislation.
Is he immoral? You could say no since he certainly could use some psychological help. Or you could say yes since he has made a conscious decision to open his mind and educate himself about lesbian and gay people and the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia. Same thing with a racist bigot-- in most cases the bigotry stems from some kind of fear (especially the fear of change), and the best way to deal with that type fear is by educating yourself. But the fear exists, and the fear itself is morally neutral-- your conscious self can’t control that. But it can realize where it is coming from and take steps to challenge the underlying assumptions that create this fear.
In short, I think you can’t take ANY thought out of context of the whole person and declare that particular thought moral or immoral. It completely depends on the mental capabilities of the person AND what Lissener posits as a person’s collective moral center. However, unlike Lissener, I don’t believe that there are such things as absolute “immoral thoughts”. You can take strong emotional urges that are considered “immoral” and contextualize them, realize that they can be dealt with in a manner consistent with morality. You can take weak emotional urges, analyze them, and take action to understand, counter or even change these emotions. In other words, morality is a process of creation, a continuing evolution on how to act upon feelings such that their impact on the world creates no harm, not a content-less abstract judgement on a specific thought
Some thoughts I’ve had the last couple days.
[ul]
[li]I was talking to a friend a while back about the difference between the personal and the political. Specifically, we were talking about movies. We agreed that the personal was about things specific, internal, to the narrator/protagonist/auteur/what have you, and that the political dealt with interactions between that persona and the people around him. Private versus social; personal versus political. We agreed that each of us wears a mask, figuratively speaking; that no matter how emotionally open and honest a person you are, the person you really are will always be slightly different from the person that other people know. That what takes place behind the mask is “the personal,” and what takes place beyond the mask is “the political.” (Specifically we were comparing *Showgirls *to Robocop: *Showgirls *is personal, because it’s about issues like sexuality and self identity and self judgment etc.—though it certainly has a political aspect—and *Robocop is political because its focus is more on relationships and exchanges of responsibility etc.; and The Birds *(personal) versus *Vertigo *(political). Obviously these films are not that binary and there’s more of a debate here than I’ll go into at present.)[/li]
There are aspects of that personal life that will never have any effect on another person. But they still have an effect on you, and they are not morally neutral.
[li]Saying that a person is defined entirely by his behavior and by his actions is exactly—but exactly—the same thing as saying that you’re not gay if you haven’t slept with a guy yet. It’s ignoring the reality of the inner life. Love does not have to be requited to be love; hate does not have to be acted upon to be immoral.[/li][/ul]