545 Comments on “Open Thread”
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Arie Brand says:
The point I am making is that not all reform is good. As you have pointed out, when we look back at history we often find things that are appalling by contemporary standards. But you are ignoring the fact that these things may have been seen as progressive improvements in morality, at the time. You seem to be assuming the moral high ground, but history and evidence is not on your side.
I never claimed that all reform is good but I do believe that there has been such a thing as moral progress.
Let me illustrate this. In the diary of John Evelyn, a well educated gentleman of the seventeenth century, we find a passage in which he describes a torture session he attended in France. These were then regular judicial proceedings that one could witness, as public entertainment, for a small fee. The case involved a fellow who was suspected of theft and who was being “stretched” on the rack because he didn’t want to confess. What is remarkable in Evelyn’s description is its relative clinical detachment. He describes for instance how the body of this fellow got quite awfully long. Only when the torturer proposed even “sharper examination” did he opt out.
Now was Evelyn a specifically inhumane man? There is no evidence for that. He was probably more enlightened than the average person of his background and class. Was he insensitive to suffering? I don’t believe so. One can be pretty sure that if his son had been on that rack he would have felt quite differently.
So what is the difference between him and a person of similar background today? I believe that the latter’s capacity for empathy has been enlarged; it is no longer constricted by nationality, religion, race and social class to the same extent.
And it is this capacity for empathy, for compassion with other people’s suffering, that provides the ground for a criterion of moral progress – the criterion that has been implicitly proposed by negative utilitarianism. Since many more of us can agree on what suffering is rather than on what constitutes happiness, said Karl Popper, we should make the overall decrease of suffering the criterion for progress. It follows that the enlargement of the capacity for empathy provides a criterion for moral progress.
So from this point of view totalitarian projects to make all of us happy should, be regarded with suspicion from the start. Experience has taught us that they are far more likely to increase suffering.
An absurd consequence of negative utilitarianism is of course that one might come to recommend collective euthanasia as the most effective remedy to end all suffering.
So I tend to ride two horses here: Popper’s negative utilitarianism and Albert Schweitzer’s “reverence for life”. Good consists in maintaining, assisting and enhancing life.
Now there can be an interesting dialectic between these two principles, for instance when it comes to a case like abortion.
So did earlier generations think that what they were doing was morally right? As long as they persisted in their ‘dogmatic slumber’ they by and large thought that they were. But the remarkable thing is that they were taught that they were wrong not by us, from our ‘superior vantage point’, but by contemporaries. Look for instance at the remarkably positive reaction of the British House of Commons to the revelations by the eighteenth century prison reformer John Howard. They were shown a world that they were not aware of but that they could to a certain extent have empathy with once they knew. Consciousness raising it is called in modern jargon.
Another point – my last: are the changes related to the American march to the police state, a matter of progress, seen from the vantage point of negatve utilitarianism.? Proponents of the police state will of course argue that it is because it allegedly prevents the suffering caused by terrorism. I think there is room for very serious doubt here. The state and its servants habitually abuse the power given to them – and when they are extravagant powers the abuse is correspondingly extravagant. In other words: they are far more likely to increase suffering than to prevent it. Not in the least because American practices function for many countries as an example.
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ET says:
BB
Conservatives won the economic argument, the left won all the rest.
That sums it up very nicely. They (the left) must have understood after the downfall of the SU that the left economic paradigm simply wasn’t feasible. Thus in order to subsist they had to redirect their focus to ‘the rest’.
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stevo says:
Phew !!! A typically wordy and thorough response Arie. After reading it, I think we agree with the central idea, if not the exact details of how to acheive those changes.
I liked this bit:
Since many more of us can agree on what suffering is rather than on what constitutes happiness, said Karl Popper, we should make the overall decrease of suffering the criterion for progress. It follows that the enlargement of the capacity for empathy provides a criterion for moral progress.
There are a few traps with that approach however. There is a danger of appealing to emotion rather than reason. This can prevent people doing what is best long term, in order to avoid short term suffering. As a simple example; A drug addict may suffer terribly if denied their drugs, but long term would be better off, as would the wider society. This appeal to the feel-good factor is behind alot of bad decision making and social policy in the Western World.
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Indeed not Stevie, that is making the assumption that I take you seriously. As I have pointed out you provide mild amusement on slow days and this is not one of them.
Ditto Oigal………… I just wish you come up with some new material. It should not be difficult, given that you are not restrianed by the actual content of my posts. With such a flimsy grip on reality I would expect something more creative.
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berlian biru says:
They (the left) must have understood after the downfall of the SU that the left economic paradigm simply wasn’t feasible. Thus in order to subsist they had to redirect their focus to ‘the rest’.
Of course they did, hence the emergence of the New Left.
The strategy was quite clearly laid out by left wing thinkers throughout the twentieth century and involved the reorientation from the economic argument to cultural and social arguments.
It was achieved by small, select groups of left wing ideologues taking control of establishment organizations (churches, media groups, charities, public institutions, schools and universities etc) which could easily be hollowed out from within by determined individuals against apathetic and often unaware leadership. It has been summarised quite well by the concept of “the long march through the institutions”.
It was staggeringly successful, so much so that left wing ideologues, Arie among them, simply deny it ever happened and pretend that the orchestrators of this amazing achievement never existed, weren’t relevant or completely made up out of whole cloth by deranged right wingers. This despite the fact that it is so blindingly obvious and well documented.
Who are you going to believe, Arie or your lying eyes?
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The state and its servants habitually abuse the power given to them – and when they are extravagant powers the abuse is correspondingly extravagant.
I have to comment on this. Appealing to the State to “do something” is very much a left leaning thing. To the extent they want the State to prevent people having their say and talking about their true feelings through so called, hate speech, type laws. They appeal to the State to socially engineer the population, by force if required.
I am very suspicious of those that look to politicians for guidence on morality. Even more suspicious when they require an armed State to enforce that morality, in order to ensure they do things such as; treat women decently & be nice to folk who look different. Its a bit like religion and the threat of enternal torture, if your not nice enough.
I don’t know about you, but I dont need the threat of imprisonment to force me into treating people properly.
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Now there can be an interesting dialectic between these two principles, for instance when it comes to a case like abortion.
Here we come to the heart of the matter. There will never be common ground, regardless of religious conviction, between those who are ‘pro-life’ and only accept abortion in circumstances of extreme necessity and those who are ‘pro-choice’ and sacralize abortion as a woman’s absolute right under any circumstances.
This issue will never be solved and will continue to exacerbate the distrust between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’. -
The reformers who got slavery abolished were white, English, conservative, devout Christian men, and in those five defining characteristics you get the perfect summation of all that is most rejected by the left today.
Ah BB, you want to compare Wilberforce with Santorum? You obviously are not very well acquainted with either man. To be a Christian today is quite a different proposition than it was some two hundred years ago. In that earlier period it was still compatible with a certain degree of intelligence and relatively ample information. This is obviously far less so today (though I hasten to add not altogether impossible).
J
ust for the record the people who most opposed slavery are almost exactly the same type of people today who loathe abortion, euthanasia and other such “reforms” of the left, and are despised in exactly the same way as the anti-slavery lobby was despised back then.
They are not the same “type of people” – see above
B
ut Arie wants to contend that opposing public funded obscenity, the promotion of abortion, teaching condom use to elementary schoolers, forcing religious organisations to close because the government dislikes their moral teaching, supporting the break up of traditional families, the mass importation of unassimilated foreigners into a society without thought for the future, liberalising the laws on dangerous narcotics, continually lowering the age of sexual consent, limiting freedom of speech and association to only those the government approves of etc is exactly the same as supporting disembowelling people then frankly he’s gone so far off the deep end that there’s little I can do to help.
Ghee, I didn’t know that I contended all that. Let me prune this list a bit. When it comes to opposing the governmental closure of religious organizations because of their moral teaching I am right with you – only I don’t know any examples. Equally so when it comes to resisting ‘limiting freedom of speech and association to only those the government approves of’ – aspects of the march to the police state that for the rest doesn’t seem to worry you. What else? “The mass importation of unassimilated foreigners”- living in Australia that doesn’t worry me a bit. I have over the almost half a century that I have known this country only seen it becoming more lively and liveable. The rest of your worries seem to originate in the ethics of the average Irish village priest. Trivial compared to what is really going on in the world.
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About abortion:
This issue will never be solved and will continue to exacerbate the distrust between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’.
ET, aren’t you generalising a bit from the situation in the US. I can’t see it being much of an issue here or in my country of origin.
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There are a few traps with that approach however. There is a danger of appealing to emotion rather than reason. This can prevent people doing what is best long term, in order to avoid short term suffering.
Stevo, this makes me think of a German novel I had to read in high school: Stefan Zweig’s ”
Ungeduld des Herzens” (literally “impatience of the heart” but translated in English under the not altogether felicitous title “Beware of Pity”).The novel has a motto that can be found on the title page. I will translate it for you:
There are, however, two kinds of compassion. One kind , the weak and sentimental kind, that is actually only impatience of the heart, wants to liberate itself as quickly as possible from the painful involvement in alien misery, that compassion that is actually not compassion at all, but an instinctive defence of one’s own soul against other’s suffering. And then the other kind, the only one that counts – the unsentimental but creative compassion, that knows what it wants, and is decided to bear everything patiently until the end of its strength and even beyond that.
One can find the unsentimental kind in government offices – but for the rest of these characteristics one is dependent on certain individuals.
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Good quote Arie.
Please tell me you’re joking about the “government offices” bit though. I have had rather allot to do with them, and they are more about maintaining political office and empire building than helping people. Of course, there are many people who genuinely care and want the best, but they only succeed in spite of government, not because of it. A bit cynical maybe, but like I said, I speak from experience.
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When it comes to opposing the governmental closure of religious organizations because of their moral teaching I am right with you – only I don’t know any examples.
Not very well informed are you?
Equally so when it comes to resisting ‘limiting freedom of speech and association to only those the government approves of’
Ditto
“While agreeing that Boisson’s letter was not a criminal act, the government tribunal nevertheless ordered the Christian pastor to “cease publishing in newspapers, by email, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.”
Yes you can clearly see the treat to freedom comes from the right, can’t you?
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My apologies the linked items should read
and secondly
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Yes Stevo, concern in government offices, if it is there at all, is mostly programmatic and doesn’t involve the government officers executing the program personally very much. Nevertheless, programmatic concern is concern as well.
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“disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals.”
Is that what you have in mind when you talk about freedom of speech? Next thing you want the total removal of laws against libel and slander on “freedom of speech’ grounds.
And what were these closed church organisations I ought to have known about again?
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Those links are great examples of the lefts ideas of freedom, diversity and tolerance BB. All enforced by the armed State, naturally. The audacity of them referring to their views as “liberal” shows just how distorted their thinking is.
My personal view is that I am not troubled by homos or abortion and I am an atheist. But so what !!!. Who cares what I think. Its irrelevant to my point anyway. People should be free to choose their own morals. I can tolerate difference and object to the State being used to enforce one groups beliefs on another group.
As long as it is not adversely affecting anyone else, people should be left alone. The State should be there to protect our freedoms, not remove or restrict them. I have a fair lump of lefty social conscience myself, but this sort of dictorial approach pisses me off no end.
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Yes Stevo, concern in government offices, if it is there at all, is mostly programmatic and doesn’t involve the government officers executing the program personally very much. Nevertheless, programmatic concern is concern as well.
Programmatic is better than nothing I guess and at least there is some sort of system supporting things.
We can only speak of what we know, but I find the rank and file Government officers often have more genuine concern, as oppossed to those making policy. Government agencies are beholden to the Government of the day, so it gets more political the further up you go. Anyway I see your point, nit-picking aside.
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The ‘disparaging remarks’ were an utterly unremarkable letter in which, in no way inciting hate or violence, he put forward his opinion as a pastor of religion.
This was a shocking abuse of free speech. You might be comfortable with such violations of human rights but that hardly comes as a surprise, as a follower of the far left you believe in an ideology that has censored and abused human rights and civil liberties on an industrial scale for generations.
The threat to freedom today comes from the left (as it most often has done).
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The threat to freedom today comes from the left (as it most often has done).
Being wilfully blind I call it. The progress towards a police state started under Bush and is being continued under Obama (who from your vantage point, somewhere to the right of Santorum I gather, probably looks like a man of the left).
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/02/10/the-u-s-is-now-a-police-state/
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The progress towards a police state started under Bush and is being continued under Obama
That is the alarming thing. Both left (relatively speaking in Obama’s case) and right are busy making silly laws restricting peoples freedom. It leaves little choice for the people. I worry about the US and the fall out of its demise. Maybe they just need a war 🙁
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I dislike increases in state control over citizens’ lives no matter what government is in charge. The Left, who revere the state and distrust individuals, usually welcome such increments in state control when it suits their interests.
By the way the US is not becoming a police state Arie, catch a grip of yourself, what did I tell you before about your absurd hyperbole?
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what did I tell you before about your absurd hyperbole
That’s a bit rich isn’t it after stuff like this:
the governmental closure of religious organizations because of their moral teaching
If anything the ease at which any nutcase can declare a religion and start sucking the public teat would be a concern. Any examples of closure there BB?
small, select groups of left wing ideologues taking control of establishment organizations (churches, media groups, charities, public institutions, schools and universities etc)
Sorry the Vatican perhaps? Murdock is a left wing idealogue?
Mass immigration of unassimilated migrants
I assume we are talking non white, non christian here? Well I fail to see where 16000 people a year (and this year is an outrider) qaulifies as Mass except in the minds of the terminally fearful. I am always curious what makes an acceptable immigrant or refugee then as it always seems to get a vague. Muslims ok? or only some Muslims? or only Muslims from some countries? Or is it only white, black or bindle?
Then of course we are lamenting the loss of reasonable thought of only a generation ago. You remember those times. The White Australia Policy, Aborginals denied the vote, women having no choice over their bodies, forced adoption…ah yes those were the days.
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Oigal I gave the link to the closure of Catholic adoption agencies above.
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Indeed, BB a nonsense never the less hardly a widespread indication of systematic and wide spread closure of religious insitutions due to their moral teachings. I think we could agree a bit of hyperbole. In fact, even that case is drawing a very very long bow to your orginal piece, of course they could cease discriminating and continue operations.
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No not nonsense, I quite clearly linked the piece as the “thin end of the wedge” and it is.
Earlier this month there was a brouhaha about a Catholic college in the US not providing birth control tablets as part of its health insurance plan, clearly the opinion is that the Catholic college should be forced to do so against its moral teachings. Among the medications that the Catholic college is being called on to provide are “morning after” pills, abortifacients.
Now quite simply abortion is a deal breaker for the Catholic church, under no circumstances could they agree to that and like the Catholic adoption agencies the Catholic colleges and hospitals would close rather than submit to government diktats on abortion.
You might regard that as a good thing, you are cool with abortion, I however look on it as a gross infringement on freedom of conscience by the state. If you permit that, what is to stop the government of a president Cheney perhaps forcing Muslims to abjure their religious beliefs?
Look, you and Arie seem incapable of grasping my basic point. I am not arguing in favour one way or the other in selected political issues, there are pros and cons in both sides. What I am saying is that the left’s favourite issues have been transformed into the “middle ground” while the rights’ equally valid issues are demonised as barking mad and far right.
Here’s a good quote I picked up about Rick Santorum, demonised above by Arie. I don’t know much about the man and no doubt Arie will provide dozens of links on him in a jiffy, however he is a classic example, like Palin, like Bush, like Cheney, of a conservative who dares to propound beliefs that were regarded as mainstream only a few years ago being immediately branded as far right (you did the same to me incidentally by implying that I supported taking votes from Aborigines and confining women to the kitchen, neither of which I proposed).
Let’s take it as read that Rick Santorum is weird. After all, he believes in the sanctity of life, the primacy of the family, the traditional socio-religious understanding of a transcendent purpose to human existence. Once upon a time, back in the mists of, ooh, the mid–20th century, all these things were, if not entirely universal, sufficiently mainstream as to be barely worthy of discussion. Now they’re not. Isn’t the fact that conventional morality is now “weird” itself deeply weird? The instant weirdification of ideas taken for granted for millennia is surely mega-weird — unless you think that our generation is possessed of wisdom unique to human history. In which case, why are we broke?
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I am beginning to understand why Muslims hold on so fanatically to their belief system. At least their moral compass is intact. It may point to the wrong direction of Mecca but at least it provides a steady guidance while the West is adrift between the irreconcilable moral opposites of right and left or has sunken into mindnumbing lethargy.
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You might regard that as a good thing, you are cool with abortion, I however look on it as a gross infringement on freedom of conscience by the state. If you permit that, what is to stop the government of a president Cheney perhaps forcing Muslims to abjure their religious beliefs?
For someone who accuses others of absurb hyberbole, you may perhaps to review some of your own stuff. Firstly it is a nonsense to suggest that anyone is “cool with abortion” and such flippant comments obviously indicates we have little to work with in the first place. Never the less, I would (and ultimately is not my decision or yours) dread the the return where desperate women are forced into the back streets and dark corners to get such a procedure done. Nor would I be so bloody minded to suggest there is never an reason for such a procedure. Secondly, whilst on the hyperbole lets get real no one I am aware of is “promoting abortion”.
Sorry the Catholic Health Plan? Correct me if I am wrong but was that not a tax payer part (or all) funded health plan? If so the decision is obvious, get off the public teat if you don’t like the rules. After all its not like the Vatican is short of a dollar (although you would not know that, the way it is avoding payouts to the victims of abuse)
I am not arguing in favour one way or the other in selected political issues, there are pros and cons in both sides
Oh please BB, Let’s assume we both have a modicum of intelligence. Lacing your comments with references to “reasonable people or reasonable postions” being some of your milder expansions leaves no one in any doubt of your position. That of course is fine but to pretend you are debating from a position of non-bias beggars belief. The same could be said for such comments
you are cool with abortion
well that remains just plain silly and the less said probably the better.
Notably we got a mishmash of the downfall of life as we know it thanks to gays, abortion, forced church closures, immigration but when pushed for some actual detail it is now not quite the end of the world thanks to decades of left SU takeovers but “thin end of the wedge” ?
As for implying what you support or otherwise you do that well enough despite your protestations of innocence. In fact, the point I was making is the laments of the far right that society is in terminal decay amuse me. Oh things were so much better a generation ago and in grand pappies time. Well perhaps for the chosen few, but pointed out not for many others. Yes somethings we may well lament but few could deny that for the vast majority society is a much nicer and inclusive place than it was a generation ago.
As for Rick..way too easy BB..if he is what you consider middle ground then I rest my case. Oh and no even Reagan and Goldwater would consider him anything but a right wing, religious nutcase.
It’s a very confused position to to suggest what a generation ago the world was full of “reasonable people” with reasonable positions of all sorts of social issues but then complain when someone points some of the key and yet repugant reasonable positions of yesterday.
Oh one last one, were you not recently debating with Arie that the world was a much safer and peaceful place than a generation ago? If that is still your position then it is curious as all the institutions are riddled with the cancer of the left, which means?? (BTW I don’t mean to support that left brings peace theory just to highlight a curious set of bookends)
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I agree ET. Probably why I don’t find myself having moral arguments with my Muslim friends, or even Christian ones, though they look at me with pity and belwilderment knowing I am an atheist. The worst by far are the “new age” thinkers and their moral relativity that informs so much of contemporary thinking. There are allot of parallels between the new age types and the so called left.
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Sorry Oigal, once again an epic fail, once again an attempt to debate selected issues rather than address my perfectly simple point that the left’s values have become what is regarded as mainstream at the same time as those of the conservative right have been successfully demonised as verging on fascism.
Nowhere do I pretend to be neutral, anyone who reads my posts knows where I stand, but I am studiously trying to avoid debating the rights and wrongs of particular issues, there are valid points to be made on both sides, to get to the broader point about how what was once regarded as really rather conventional and mainstream thought has now been marginalised as outlandish and beyond the pale.
I can accept that the left might have some valid points to make and respect their sincerity while at the same time believing they are completely deluded and wrong.
The left on the other hand simply refuse to accept that there is any merit whatsoever in the conservative viewpoint. They assume, as you do, that anyone who espouses conventional conservative talking points is some form of hatemonger, Neo-Nazi or deranged loon and resort to ad hominem attacks on the character of the person propounding the conservative viewpoint – as you constantly do above – rather than debating rationally.
This is because the left have convinced themselves that their left wing ideology is the norm, the moderate centre ground, and therefore anyone who disagrees with them must ipso facto be a dangerous extremist who must be abused and shouted down or silenced by the state.
Unfortunately you have utterly failed to grasp the broader point I am trying to make despite it being a rather simple concept in order to concentrate on debating selected issues and hurling abuse at me, but in doing so you actually prove my thesis to be correct.
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Indeed not Stevie, that is making the assumption that I take you seriously. As I have pointed out you provide mild amusement on slow days and this is not one of them.