Remember, you qualified infidelity as “Cheating on a spouse you’ve vowed fidelity to…” Perhaps a better comparison I could’ve made would be between the two statements: “Infidelity is wrong.” and “Open marriages are wrong.” The first assertion deals with a breach of trust, almost universally considered a bad thing. The second characterizes a matter of adult choices as absolutely immoral. Maybe it’s not so much “who decides” as it is “who would disagree?”
But when did I advocate that you practice moral relativism? If I’ve suggested you go down any path, it would be that of weak objectivism, as previously defined by flowbark.
Depending on what you believe about the nature of the world and ourselves, it can be argued that evil is an illusion, that what we call evil is nothing more than a different variety of experience, that it is simply something to make the play more interesting…but that is surely another thread. (oh Sppiiiirrrriiitus! Spiritus MUUUUUNdi! :D)
I love the list you posted, I love this question, and I love the answers we are getting. I hate that I can’t EVER get away from this goddamn place! ARG.
I’m gonna try to keep it short:
Jodi axes:
As for what * society * should judge as a whole, I think society should confine itself to judging actions which infringe upon others’ rights and freedoms. Beyond that, no. If my moral choices, which are not about hurting other people, don’t measure up to your moral belief, so? What good is there in you and everyone else ‘shaming" me? I am deeply offended by such an idea, I relish the modern world that the 60’s gave birth to. Apart from (for the third time, I hope I’m clear about this?) actions which infringe upon other people, it is no one’s business what a person’s moral choices are.
Now, certainly we each judge for ourselves those we personally like or dislike, respect or disrespect, but that’s personal, not society. If you want to be my friend, and I think you are a skank and have no respect for you, I’m not going to be your friend. But neither should I try to go around getting everyone else to agree with me in my opinion of you. It’s mine, I employed that opinion to help me determine whether you were going to be someone I wanted to be around or not. Having used the judgment for the only purpose necessary, that’s enough.
Now certainly, there is good to be had in group judgment when it is turned to a POSITIVE cause…meaning, it is good for society to collectively judge drug addiction as a bad thing…but it is NOT a good to judge the drug ADDICT a bad person. If we all agree that drug addiction or abuse is bad, it discourages a harmful, possibly deadly behavior. But we shouldn’t punish, shame, reject, dismiss or otherwise actu hurtfully towards those who are addicted. Same goes for smoking. Discouraging harmful behavior by our disapproval is good. Demonizing those who indulge is not.
I think that “shaming” is itself an evil concept. What is the good effect you imagine it will have?
Give some examples of the behavior you would like to see group shaming practiced on, please. I’m interested to know, and what result you think this would have or has that is preferable?
It was a play on words. I pun, sometimes. It was also intended to call attention to the importance of the process: determining right from wrong should be an active practice not a passive reception.
I care not at all for moral consensus. I find public opinion and ethics often make poor bedfellows. I do think, though, that I have been clear in advocating the necessity of individual ethical judgments.
I don’t know. My point was not that a probability analysis is necessary before making a judgment. I simply noted that a one sentence description of an action might not be sufficient grounds from which to draw a secure judgment.
Of course we can. We can even use that probability statement to decide that someone who comits such an act probably deserves censure.
That does not absolve us of the responsibility to understand the individual act before passing judgment upon the individual perpetrator.
Yes. But I would probably phrase it, “until you have sufficiently understood the context of the act.”[sup]1[/sup]
I would hope so. In fact, it is this very element of punitive consequences which obligates us from witholding judgment (or at least withholding action upon our judgment) until we have sufficient confidence in our evaluation. I find the idea of applying societal penalties based upon probability analyses abhorent. I find the idea of applying a penalty before we are certain a wrong has been commited unethical.
One punishes the innocent. The other values justice over social dictates. For me, it is not a difficult choice.
I disagree, though, that failing to rush to judgment implies that “anything goes”.
This wasn’t directed at me, but I am curious. What do you see as the basis for considering extenuating circumstances when judging an action?
[sub]1. We might need to clarify whether we wish to focus upon an ideal system for ethical judgment or a practical model for behavior. Practically, we often must express an opinion before we have a full understanding of an action. In those situations, I would argue that we are obligated both to make the tenative nature of our judgment clear and to minimize the consequences of our judgment upon the individual(s) in question. If we are not “sure”, then we have no ethical authority to punish.
Stoid on the existence of evil: “Actually, this in itself is debatable.”
Yup, and it’s a debate that I will postpone until later. I’m even going to assume that we’re all weak objectivists.
Shaming: it’s certainly relevant here, but ditto.
(Great topics for new threads, methinks.)
Jodi says:
Difficult. In my experience, those 99% cases are pretty rare; when they occur, I expect that moral censure is sort of redundant. But what if the action appears egregious, does not involve the law, and you think you lack the full story in significant ways? eg. Ted and Thnia, The Hot Number In Accounting. You know Ted is married and has kids. His fling with Thnia has been going on for a couple of months now. You don’t definitively whether Ted and his wife are polyamorous or whether their relationship is all but done for.
If you’re judgmental, you may be unfair. If you’re not, you are likely to be condoning dishonest or inappropriate behavior. That’s problematic as well, particularly in cases where there is no legal sanction.
IMHO, qualified judgmentalism may be in order. Something like, “Gee, Ted has two kids.” (Hey, just making an observation.) Or sketch a scenario where the pair’s behavior is acceptable: it’s improbability may speak for itself. The point is to at least allow for the possibility that the behavior is different than it appears. That’s part of being fair minded.
I think the above approach may fall short of Spiritus’ standards though, since the following might also qualify as fair minded: “Assuming that his wife doesn’t approve of this fling and if she’s as nice as she seems, then Ted appears to be pond scum.”
Not much respect for the individual or empathy there. But I might allow it, although I would hope that a more compassionate point of view might at least be considered as well.
Hard to set a hard and fast rule. Every person must judge the particular circumstances. How certain are they that they fully understand the situation? How evil is the person? How difficult is it for them to participate in the “societal censure”?
I didn’t mean to agree with his opinion regarding this specific instance. I meant merely that his actions must be considered in this context - that you cannot lump personal opinion together with leadership action and consider them as one topic.
On the whole, I do agree with your main point - that belief that X is right can require a belief that Y is wrong. And this will remain constant even with regards to someone else. In fact, one of my first exchanges on this board concerned this very topic.
First, I draw the distinction between me as an individual and any social role I may have. If I were a teacher, I would have to judge my students’ work; as a state attorney, you are presented with judgment calls on what I imagine is a daily basis. If I were a Montana citizen and you were running for judge, I’d gladly vote for you – and be exercising a judgment call in doing so. And I voted in the last election, and have some strong feelings about candidates (bypassing the Presidential race, which could lead to an entirely different thread, I voted for our incumbent Democratic congressman and against his Republican opponent who was playing the “I’m a good Christian opposed to all the decline in moral standards due to those gays and atheists in public office” game).
I honestly and sincerely try not to judge my fellow man. I think I’ve told you the story about the boy we took in who was a child molester. (We did this after he was arrested for molesting his neice.) Long and involved story, but he and his younger sister was molested as a child, by an older brother and sister who were in turn molested by an uncle. He bottled up his sexual conflict until finally he sneaked some whiskey and got drunk on it, and when the little girl wandered in to see what her unka was doing, things happened. His family threw him out (and had played ostrich to the ongoing molestation before that, refusing to believe it); we as neighbors took him in.
I, obviously, do not condone what he did. But to stand in judgment over him like his family did would accomplish nothing. I tried to understand, to get inside his mind. And when he realized that he was not evil for having sexual desires, and that what had happened to him was equally wrong to what he had done, he was on the road to recovery. Prayer, loving, and the fortuitous meeting of a young woman who had had a spell of running wild and had gotten pregnant by a walk-away-Joe and was not prepared to condemn him for his past if he wouldn’t condemn her for hers took him the rest of the way. (And he was there at the first birth, and they have four beautiful children for whom he’s a loving if strict father, one of whom knows him as Daddy and the other guy as his father – but he’s clear about the difference: “Aw, he’s just my father – but he (pointing to the guy I’m talking about) is my Daddy!”
Anyway, I’m telling this story to make the distinction between two forms of judging. To have some standards and say that child molestation is wrong is one thing; to say that child molesters are evil is quite different. Only God and the county judge who sentenced him (to probation and counseling) had any right to judge him as a person. What was needed was not the righteousness of Sister Bertha-better-than-thou but the embracing of lepers of St. Francis. And, being human and with a little ego involved, I gotta say I’m proud we took the second course.
I guess at bottom what I’m saying is that there’s a big difference between judging actions and judging people – and that without God’s knowledge of everything that has contributed to a situation, it’s nigh onto impossible to make a complete judgment on either, though one can and must regularly make judgments about actions.
This of course has a great deal to do with the Pit threads that Stoid and I have started over the last week.
Finally, I don’t find my stance anywhere in the Taxonomy of Ethics. I’ll have to describe it quickly by analogy:
In relativistic physics, almost nothing is absolute: mass, length, duration all vary with speed. But one thing is absolute: the value of c – the speed of light in a vacuum. Everything else then falls into place as mediated by its relative velocity to c and its “rest” properties.
My ethics are an exact parallel. Jesus’s Summary of the Law is the absolute; everything else is relative to it. But everything falls into place when measured by it. And a piece of this says that what it is my responsibility to judge is the morality of my intended actions – not of anyone else’s. Towards them, I am to show the love that I wish for myself – which may involve making tentative judgments on the ethicity of their actions and helping them towards a “better” course, but had better involve much more learning than judging, because I have not walked in their moccasins up to that point, and I’d better see how my feet feel in them before I condemn them for bemoaning their bunions, or limping, or doing a Pit rant about how you can’t get good foot liniment anymore, or whatever.
This is confusing, or at least I’m mildly disappointed I haven’t won you, of all people, to my point of view. Why do you think there should be two judges? How many lords/rulers do you feel are legitimate? Just because we don’t live in a monarchy does the phrase “we have no king but Caesar” lose its meaning? If 50.01% of people appoint someone to mete out judgement against people on their behalf, you really mean not that just that one person has the right, but that effectively, everyone and anyone has the right and merely delegate it and wash their hands of it. So what are you saying?
Your stance seems quite close to my own, actually, though I do not share your absolute standard. Within my framework, I would say yhat you did indeed judge that boy. You judged him to be a boy who had suffered damage and acted inappropriately. You also judged him to be a human being whose potential for moral advancement and ethical behavior was still alive. You made both of thoes judgments by seeking understanding and practicing empathy.
Bravo.
You then stood behind your judgment to take actions at a not insignificant personal/emotional risk.
Aw, gawrsh, ‘twarn’t nothin’.
Joel – the apposite verse does not say, “Render unto God what is God’s, and unto Caesar a salad.” Though how one interprets what Jesus meant is ambiguous – as I think He intended.
If you want my bottom line on this, it would be that only God has the knowledge to make valid judgments, and only He has the authority to make licit ones. However…
Albeit we are told to “return good for evil” I believe you would see the right of self-defense as valid. And further, we constitute a society which IMHO has that right as the composite of its members’ rights.
Let’s set up an Ozzie-and-Harriet scenario. The Widow Brown lives alone, on a pension. She’s old and feeble, has to use a walker. Joe is a successful salesman, who lives next door with his wife Beth and two small kids. Joe is a big man, strong and decent, and with quite enough power to overcome any intruder. But his sales territory is large, and covering it keeps him away from home a lot of the time. So the Town taxes Widow Brown a little, and Joe a lot, to cover its expenses, one of which is to hire Tom the Policeman to keep watch over the Widow Brown and Beth and the kids, so that the Evil Criminal Band cannot break in and harm them or steal from them. And when ECB member Pete does in fact do so, Tom the Policeman arrests him and hales him before Judge Murphy (a retired probability analyst, famous for his formulation of a law of probability ;)), who deems that he should be sent to the county jail for a year, in the self-defense of the Town against those who violate its laws.
This is clearly distinct from the judgment over a person as a whole – it’s an act taken by a community in its own defense. And if the jail has appropriate rehabilitative programs, it may even be a case of “returning good for evil” in enabling Pete the Evil Criminal to amend his ways and turn to a better life. Perhaps he fell into this lifestyle for reasons of poverty, or something, and having a trade he can practice seems better to him than running the risk of doing more jail time. I don’t want to overdo the metaphor, but I trust you can see the distinction I feel can be made.
Yes, I understand this is the common libertarian view.
This, to me, is one of the sticking points. Things that “hurt people” are not the same as “rights and freedoms.” In fact, rights and freedoms include, very often, the ability to act in ways that others would consider unsavory, offensive, and hurtful. A woman who cheats on her husband is breaking no laws and is excercising her ‘rights’ and ‘freedoms;’ she may well also be hurting her husband very badly. If a person’s moral choice is to have sex with animals, for example, does no one else have the right to say “well, that just doesn’t measure up to my moral belief, but to each his own?”
The context of this debate aside, I would think that it is pretty obviously the business of the family and friends of the individual – the ones who are likely to be hurt by his or her choices. And it seems to me (though this is more arguable) that it is also the business of society to the extent that the person is likely to pass on questionable moral choices (it’s okay to steal; it’s okay to hurt people to get what you want) to his or her kids.
This is not what I’m talking about.
You also draw the distinction between judging the act and judging the actor, which I will address in the context of POLY’s post.
Sigh. I suggest you read my post again. I did not advocate “shaming,” so I do not feel constrained to provide concrete examples of when I think it would be appropriate or not. It does seem to me, however, that shaming has the obvious effect of inhibiting activity that society has collectively decided is unacceptable. I have no problem with this in theory. I have a problem with it when society as a whole makes collective decisions that appear morally indefensible and shame on that basis – i.e., “that white woman lives with a black man, so we’ll shame them.” My question is whether simply because it can be misused – as people and acts can be misjudged – is that enough to suspect social censure and suspend judgment altogether?
I have made it as clear as I can that I have no particular position to advocate in this thread, and that I started it to solicit opinions and clarify my own thinking. I’m sorry if you have not understood that, but there it is.
SPIRITUS MUNDI –
But if each incident must be judged individually, even at the social (as opposed to the legal) level, does this mean that we are constrained not to generalize morally at all? That we cannot say (or teach) “stealing is wrong” or “killing is wrong” unless we qualify it with “unless you have a really good excuse”?
??? I’m not sure what you’re asking. The basis for considering extenuating circumstances is the societal understanding that some actions can be justified in whole or in part, or excused in whole or in part, by other circumstances. That, to me, is not the same as empathy, which is the ability to relate to feelings, not to motivations.
FLOWBARK –
I agree. My problem is when the situation is pretty clear and people still say that no one has the right to judge. Or they decide that any judgment they might be inclined to make must be off-set by extenuating circumstances, no matter how weak. One well-known case in my state involved a worker at an institution who sexually assaulted a woman who was so profoundly impaired as to be in a near-vegetative state. The only way they ever knew the assault took place was because the woman turned up pregnant. But his defense, in part, included “he was lonely” and “he had a hard childhood” and “he wasn’t raised to believe that something was wrong if you didn’t get caught.” Why do I have to try to put myself in his shoes, awful childhood and all, before I can say that what he did was reprehensible and, more than that, that he was reprehesible for doing it?
This is where I’m at, usually, and what I hear is “you’re so judgmental” as if, the assumptions above proving to be true, we still have no right to judge the action as wrong.
IZZY –
I think this is probably going to be the bottom line, at least for me. I mean, there obviously is no “Big Book O’ Judgments” and each situation should be individually evaluated before a judgment is made. But that doesn’t mean that no judgment should ever be made, or that no judgment can ever be valid.
POLYCARP –
I understand the distinction you are between who are person is and what a person does, but it seems to me to be problematic. At some level, is not who we are dictated by the choices that we make? And if a person consistently makes bad or immoral choices, can’t we draw conclusions about who that person is from the things the person does? At what point of repeated doing of bad things can we conclude that someone is a bad person? Never? Put in the context of your taking in the kid who molested another kid – what if you had taken him in only to discover that he really was a child molester? Oh, he said he was sorry and cried over it every time, but he could not or would not control his sexual appetite for children. Can we judge such a person as a bad person? Or must we say “that’s just his appetite” as if that’s not a part of him, or “that’s just his lack of control” as if he’s not ultimately responsible for his own failure to control himself?
I should emphasize that I too found your actions very admirable, in part because they were so risky. I just wonder how if your position would be different if things had not turned out so well.
Well, you might recall that you can’t get blood from a turnip. You may have to go fishing for a cod with a coin in its mouth to pay certain fees to fulfill certain missions without offending society’s rules and this may be par for the course.
I believe it is immoral to resist, withstand, or oppose an evil person. You don’t think putting a gun to someone’s head and locking them in a dungeon is “resisting” them?
In what way?
If you think being in prison is a good thing, why don’t you lock yourself up?
I just relocated, and as I was driving to work this morning I noticed I’ll be passing by St. Polycarp’s church every day. I took this to be a good sign, but o well, what’s in a name?
Well, it means that when we teach “stealing is wrong” (or sometime later, if we are teaching children) we also teach that “the rules are not absolute. They need to be applied with empathy and understanding”. Unless, of course, we change our mind about that absolute rulebook.
Is it really so strange to think we should teach the morality we practice, or that we should seek to practice as a member of society the same morality we would practice as an individual?
Well, I am not certain how you divorce human motivations from human feelings, but other than that I thnik we are close to the same page. I would simply note that our judgment that an act can e justified by the individual circumstances is not usually framed in terms of cost benefit analysis, but rather springs from an ability to recognize in ourselves the forces which might compel such an action.
I can empathize, for example, with the immediate fear for one’s life that might drive a man to kill an armed intruder. From that empathic base, I can make the judgment that the kiling deserves no censure.
One thing I want to be clear about: I am not in any way saying that all acts are excusable if we can empathize with the perpetrator. I am simply saying that empathy provides the basis from which to evaluate the act.
To borrow Poly’s physics metaphor: empathy provides the frame of reference from which we can apply our ethical constructs to our moral observations.
but it seemed related, so I thought I would comment.
You have to put yourself in his shoes to securely decide that the trials of his childhood (or his present) are not sufficient to excuse his actions. Or else you need to write “sex with a profoundly impaired woman” in your book of absolute rules. That, of course, necessitates having a book of absolute rules.
Empathy and understanding also help guide us in our actions once we have made our judgment about someone else’s actions. I think Polycarp’s story provided a very nice example of that, too.
Perhaps. That “is” value is what I leave to God. The “does” one is susceptible to human evaluation (see my comments to Joel below).
Nope. What we can decide is that he is a threat to our well-being. This is not a moral judgment, but a practical one based on past performance and extrapolation (if he shows remorse and amendment of his ways, one extrapolates differently than if he accepts no responsibility for the consequences of his acts).
You miss the point. I understand what caused him to snap. I do not excuse his behavior on account of it. But I do not condemn him on account of his behavior. He was, is, and always will be a child molester (parallel: “Changing one pipe doesn’t make you a plumber, but sucking…”). I have been quite clearly aware, as now he is, of the obsessive-compulsive element to his behavior. The point to the story rests in his gaining self-knowledge and self-acceptance, and with them the ability to control his behavior.
And if he had gone on to a career of child molestation. I’d still love him. And visit him at his prison. And pray for him. And agree wholeheartedly he needs to be locked up, for the safety of the kids he might molest. And not feel I’m being inconsistent in doing all these things.
There’s a sequel to the story, though I’m not sure of the point it makes. All this happened, as is obvious from the four kids, some years ago.
The neice’s father was an abusive man, now thankfully out of her life. And she entered puberty young and rapidly; at 12 she looked a buxom 16. And used her body in an effort to get the love she had not felt from her father.
I mentioned that the boy I took in had a younger sister. She married a young man of her age, with a brother ten years younger – four years older than the neice. He was one of the boys she threw herself at. And he is now serving probation, for a statutory sex offense as a result, owing to the difference in their ages. And he too looks to me as an older father figure/counselor to talk out his problems with. So it didn’t all “turn out so well” in the bigger picture.
Joel, the difference between us, and I say this not in judgment (considering the thread topic, thankfully!) but in honest evaluation, is that you appear to have taken quite literally some “hard sayings” of Jesus involving ideal, ultimate behavior, and appear to judge yourself harshly for not measuring up to them. I try to live out the consequences of the interpretations I put on Jesus’s teachings, and inevitably look for the practical application of them, which to you I feel sure seems to involve compromise, and interpretation that waters them down. (I do not feel that way, but that’s meat for another thread.)
I do not believe it is a good thing for anyone. It’s an offense against the freedom and dignity of the person sentenced to prison. It is, however, our defense – yours and mine and Jodi’s and Spiritus’s and 287 million others’ – against the person who opts to make choices contrary to standards we have collectively decided are the limits to proper social behavior and made available as defining such limits in public places. I do not consider it as ethically appropriate, but given our inability to enter each others’ minds and find out what causes such antisocial behavior and make corrections – which is perhaps a good thing, for who can be trusted to make such judgments!? – it is a pragmatic necessity that we do so.
Apropos taking scripture literally, a bit of black humor for you and others reading the thread:
A highly religious person was faced with a difficult decision regarding the rest of his life, and resorted to a bit of Bibliomancy. Taking his Bible, he closed his eyes, opened the Bible at random, and placed his finger on the page at random, expecting to find guidance as to what he should do. The text he was pointing to read:
“That can’t be right!” he exclaimed. “I’ll try again.” Same process, and this time he came up with:
a) You have ignored all my questions for two posts in a row. I don’t appreciate my arguments being ignored.
b) Although somewhat amused, I find your above statement patronizing. You are apparently trying to imply that I am too stupid to understand simple sentences because they are “hard” to understand – yet you do not explain by what secret knowledge you are able to understand them, and you follow with an ad hominem feint. This is clever since you manage to change the subject, not attack, and look like a nice guy by gushing unrequested off-topic sympathy – which leaves me to either ignore you hijack, restate my points for you to ignore them again, praise you for having some this secret and unshared wisdom you seem to feel I will somehow magically attain without any real help from you, or making clear that I can see what you are doing. For once, I’m choosing the later course though responding to such a sly ad hominem in kind makes me look like the bad guy. O well.
Aside from scripture, I have stated reasons on this thread – completely secular ones – as to why “an eye for an eye” is an unwise way of dealing with others. I’m reminded of the Taoist saying – the tallest tree around is the first one that gets cut down. That doesn’t mean it will get cut down, only that when the cutting starts it won’t escape the ax. What happens when the guy you sent to prison gets out, and his spirit is not yet broken? He may decide to seek revenge. Then you are in a worse condition than the one you started with.
I agree. My problem is the extent to which it at least appears that they are not applied at all, and that people who attempt to apply them are negatively tagged as “judgmental” – not because they have judged hastily or wrongly, but because they have judged at all.
Again, this may be a quibble, but I do not believe that I have to “put myself in his shoes” or empathize with him to decide that a bad childhood does not justify the rape of a profoundly handicapped woman. Indeed, if I truly “put myself in his shoes” then I would presumably conclude, as he does, that his actions are excusable. “His shoes” is not where I need to be when judging him, in either the personal or legal sense; I need to be in society’s shoes.
POLYCARP –
But, you see, I don’t see a significant difference between saying “this is a man who molests children” (does) and “this man is a child molester” (is). In other words, in human evaluation, who we are is, to a large extent, what we do. We all judge people this way – by external cues including how they dress and who they associate with and the things they do. Based on that, we decide who they are. If the “is” does not include the “do,” then what precisely is the “is”? If you are not the “you” expressed by the things you do, then who are you? And how could anyone tell? I know that only God can know the depths of a human heart – who a person truly is – but the rest of us can get a pretty good idea of who a person is in the secular here and now, can’t we? If yes, we get that idea from what we see people do, right? Because how else can we judge a person? Surely not on what they say; what value is that, if it conflicts with what they do?
Wait a minute. So I can say that a person ought to be locked up because the molestation of children threatens society, but I can’t say, unequivocally, that the molestation of children is wrong – because to do so is a moral judgment? This would seem to argue that moral judgments can never be made – is that what you are saying? I guess I’m just not understanding the rationale for saying that though a person may repeatedly and unrepentantly do bad things, we can never say, based upon that, that he or she is a bad person. How else do we define a person who repeatedly, willfully and unrepentantly does profound wrong? Doesn’t this lead to the conclusion that no one, ever, no matter how henious their actions, has ever merited the appellation “bad person”?
Regarding the boy you helped –
Yes, I understood this. My question was how you would react if he had lacked the ability and/or willingness to gain that self-knowledge, -acceptance, and -control. Which I think you answered here:
But you would not, apparently, attempt to excuse his behavior on the grounds that he’s had a rough life, or accuse those who refused to do so of “judgmentalism.” So clearly you’re not the problem I’m talking about. (There’s no surprise.)
So is there a Latin term for this “judgementalism” defense? Twinkelus, twinklorem…?
There’s also ignorantia juris neminem excusat – “I didn’t know that was wrong.”
What about those people who use the defense – look, your honor, I just happened to give that girl a lift and $100 out of the goodness of my heart, and then we just happened to be having sex in the back seat of my car when the trooper stopped by? Is it ipso facto? Isn’t that one of the things Jodi is talking about?
I don’t have any idea what you are looking for with the “people who attempt to apply them are negatively tagged as judgmental,” discussion. Do I agree that not everyone in society follows the ethical standard I would prefer? Certainly. I thought you were asking how we flet things should be, though, not our opinions of how things are.
Well, you can certainly construct an ethos that subordinates everything to societal well-being. It seems to me that this will of necessity be a subset of pragmatism (since “society” has no individual will, emotion, perception or existence). Such a system will sufer from the classic weaknesses of pragmatic evaluation (as mine suffers from phenomenological limits).
I do not share your view, though. I do not think that placing the welfare of society above individual empathic understanding as a rule results in a better world. Human beings are social creatures, which means that societal concerns will always be a part of our evaluations. That does not grant me the right to reduce another human being to a lifeless element in my calculations. I remain obligated to relate to people as individual human beings; with individual hopes, weaknesses, tragedies, and value.
Perhaps one thing which might be hindering our discussion is our focus upon the perpetrator. I have not addressed it explicitely, but the need for empathy and understanding does not end at a single player. All people involved deserve the same respect and consideration. In fact, this is where I see concern for society (or rather, the larger community of individuals) entering the evaluation.
I think perhaps the word “empathy” might also be causing some confusion. I do not use it in the expanded, science-fiction sense. Human beings do not have the ability to experience directly the emotional life of our fellows. I use it with the simple meaning: Identification with and understanding of another’s situation, feelings, and motives.
Identifying with the molester and understanding his drives and motives is the best I can do at “putting myself in his shoes”. That does not lead inevitably to agreeing with, or excusing, his actions.
Joel, you have my sincerest apologies for in any way misrepresenting you and for what you consider ignoring your questions.
With regard to your:
I believed I had answered it to the best of my ability in the latter half of my 2/2/2001 1:34 PM post.
To summarize:
[li]God is the only judge of who someone is.[/li][li]As a society, we select competent people among us to judge certain acts that people do.[/li][li]To the extent that we live by the rule of law, we can and must surrender our obligation to deal with those acts to the people so selected.[/li]
You asked:
and
I directly responded:
I do accept the idea of self-defense, and the judicial system as a form of societal self-defense. We will, I guess, need to agree to differ on this.
As regards your other comment, I submit to you that we do seem to have a remarkable talent for rubbing each other the wrong way, and I am unsure why this is so. But I did not intend to be patronizing or do an ad hominem attack on you. Rather, I have read your posts where you have quoted:
and
with what appeared to me, and I believe others, to be an apparent intent to hear these as literal commands rather than hyperbolic statements of ideal behavior. If I have misinterpreted what you are saying, I sincerely regret having done so. I’ve tried to respond to your assertions in the spirit they were posted. I realize from the tone of your comments that you are not trolling, that what you say does mean a great deal to you. And for my lack of comprehension, I ask your forgiveness. I’d welcome further attempts to get to the bottom of what you are trying to express in such quotes. I promise to read with as much comprehension as is in me, and ask you to spell out your meaning in more detail than in past posts, so that I will not misinterpret what you say and cause another contretemps of this sort. And that “black humor” anecdote was posted for your amusement and that of others, not as a slam on you.
Jodi, I think we’re arguing at cross purposes. How does this sound:
I am morally responsible for my moral choices. As is everyone. The only other person who may judge them is God.
Abstract statements are not subject to moral evaluation. At best, they generalize a principle which each person may apply to his own choices.
As a society, we may prudentially judge behavior, and take action on those committing anti-social behavior. Further, we may as individuals intervene when, in our best judgment, a person needs help in dealing with his own moral behavior, couching that intervention and help in respect for that person’s integrity and dignity and offering guidance from our perspective. For example, confronting someone with a drinking problem with his or her alcoholism is showing love to them, in a tough-love sort of way. Never mind that that is not a criminal behavior suitable for society to intervene. It is something that needs doing for a friend by a friend.
I may not judge another’s integral self. I may judge his actions, in fact am required to by the command to show love for him.
And, with all due respect to your intellect and experience, I disagree with you on the premise that what someone does constitutes what he or she is. It represents only one small element of the potential in that person, that which is expressed at this time and place. And at another time and place, with different stimuli, that person may respond quite differently.
So, bottom line: "I can’t say, unequivocally, that the molestation of children is wrong " – yep. It’s a darn good general principle, and I would be hard put to find any exception to it. But it is, at bottom, a general principle, and the implications of it are in each individual’s behavior and life. It is for me to say, “If I molest a child, I am in the wrong” and you likewise. And for society to say, “The molestation of children harms those which we as a society are supposed to protect, so he who can be proven a child molester must be confined for the safety of other children, and possibly for his own rehabilitation.”
Mind you, I’m not saying that statements of general moral principle are incorrect. I’m merely saying that the only time they become moral evaluations is when they are applied to individuals.
Is adultery wrong? For me, yes, absolutely. For you, I would presume so. For Czarcasm, who is on record in other posts as with his wife having an open marriage in which they involve third parties whom they both have come to love, the question becomes one of how they judge it – and how God may judge it. But it’s not a case where the general principle may be used by you or me to stand in judgment over them.
I knew Hitler was gonna show up in this thread sooner or later! The answer is, at rock bottom, that’s for God to decide. But I’ll go along with you that Jeffrey Dahmer, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and a few other names we both could come up with were, in my estimation, “bad people.” But I keep in mind that they’re extremes on a spectrum that I too live on, and that only God knows the heart of an individual (along with him/herself), and that any person whom I might deem to be a “bad person” may not in fact be such. Even Fred Phelps has some redeeming qualities – though darn awful few IMHO! If you or I, I am sure, were known to the rest of this board only by the foulest of our qualities, we too would be considered “bad people.” But, in general, we avoid confessing the worst of our sins in public.
I could go on but I think I’ll wait and respond to your comments.
The answer is, at rock bottom, that’s for God to decide. But I’ll go along with you that Jeffrey Dahmer, Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and a few other names we both could come up with were, in my estimation, “bad people.” But I keep in mind that they’re extremes on a spectrum that I too live on, and that only God knows the heart of an individual (along with him/herself), and that any person whom I might deem to be a “bad person” may not in fact be such. Even Fred Phelps has some redeeming qualities – though darn awful few IMHO! If you or I, I am sure, were known to the rest of this board only by the foulest of our qualities, we too would be considered “bad people.” But, in general, we avoid confessing the worst of our sins in public.