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Relativistic Morality

Half-n-Half

先輩
17 Jul 2007
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This is sort of branching off from this thread here:
Is this evil girl really Japanese?

As stated by Derfel:
I both detest and adore human cruelty instinctively. If I was assaulted, my feelings would be different based on the identity of my assailant. If he was a poor, starving kid, I would want to disarm him and hand him over to the authorities inflicting as little pain as possible. If my assailant was a drug addict trying to rob me for his daily dose, my urges would tell me to ravage, to stab, to slash, to tear and to rip.

How can I explain this difference in terms of morality? I can't and I don't want to. My urges are irrational and illogical. It is pointless to describe and analyse, in terms of logic, something which does not observe logic in the abstract sense we have created.

Hopefully this thread can serve to explain this difference in morality.

This is a bit off base of what Derfel was referring to with the starving kid, but why do we tend to adopt separate moral codes for children? For example, all things equal, if a child assaulted you would you defend yourself in the same way as if it was a grown person? Would you be more tolerant of the child? What if that same child attempted to kill you, would you still treat him/her the same? Are children somehow innately more "pure" or "innocent" than adults?

I personally believe our brains have been hardwired to protect and be more tolerant of children than adults because they are the future of our species. If they die off so does our species. That's not to say I don't have an emotional response if I see a child being beaten. One can in fact argue those very emotions are the triggers evolution put in our brains to protect our young. Again I am borrowing from Derfel (Hey he makes some good points 😊) when I say that our emotions are designed to override logic and reasoning. This is what drives people to sacrifice themselves for others even if logic and statistics say their chance of survival is slim. It's a risk that keeps the species going, in my opinion.
 
Not that I'm too logical about that, but it would be the same if the assailant was a children, an adult, woman or elder. If anyone attacks me, and if I see I've a fighting chance, I'll be kicking the crap out of them on the next minutes. If I don't think I've a chance, I'll probably run like hell. That's instinct I guess. And I doubt I would sacrifice myself for anything or anyone.

I guess I'm just a bad person. :|

Am I alone?
 
For me if I get attacked on the street, I would want to take down that person with as little harm as possible. However I'm not stupid, it does depend on the person attacking me, if some big huge bald dude with tattoos lunges for me I will proberly be alot more aggressive then say to a woman, maybe that is being sexist but I don't care that's just how I am, but kids? I proberly would just grapple them to the ground or something, maybe give them a slap lol.

P.S.
I would only try to inflict more damage if I couldn't get out of the area easily, otherwise I'd just kick their knee or groin and duck it.
 
Not that I'm too logical about that, but it would be the same if the assailant was a children, an adult, woman or elder. If anyone attacks me, and if I see I've a fighting chance, I'll be kicking the crap out of them on the next minutes. If I don't think I've a chance, I'll probably run like hell. That's instinct I guess. And I doubt I would sacrifice myself for anything or anyone.

I guess I'm just a bad person. :|

Am I alone?

Nope, fighting to stay alive is only natural. I've seen videos of kids mugging tourist with knives. Wanting to make it out in one piece doesn't make you a bad person.

I won't lie if a child tryed to attack me I would defend myself, but I won't try and break him or her into pieces. One quick attack to knock them out.
 
Of course everyone would defend him or herself, but that doesn't mean that the emotions experienced and the actions once one is safe, would not differ from case to case.

I agree that this willingness to sacrifice oneself for the greater good drives us ahead, but for the individual its a burden. I'm somewhat sick of the idea that 'mother nature' (instincts) is engaged in social engineering on such a high level. We wouldn't have to participate in long, long discussions and debates in a number of spheres if we could just get rid of our irrational selves. I guess one could say we'd become infinitely boring, but hell, I say it'd be worth it.
 
This is a bit off base of what Derfel was referring to with the starving kid, but why do we tend to adopt separate moral codes for children? For example, all things equal, if a child assaulted you would you defend yourself in the same way as if it was a grown person? Would you be more tolerant of the child? What if that same child attempted to kill you, would you still treat him/her the same? Are children somehow innately more "pure" or "innocent" than adults?

I personally believe our brains have been hardwired to protect and be more tolerant of children than adults because they are the future of our species. If they die off so does our species.

If we are more tolerant of children it might because we are hardwired to protect them. But I rather think it's because we tend to assume that children are not morally responsible for their actions. If a child attacks us we would tend to doubt that he is fully aware that his actions are wrong, so our response would probably be just to disable him, rather than to exact revenge. Also, I think we would tend to assume that the child lacks the physical strength to be able to do us serious harm, so we would probably feel that we don't need to use excessive force to defend ourselves.
 
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