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Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments

383 points by kawera 11y ago

Xcelerate 11y ago
I believe the author's hypothesis is probably correct. It seems the only way to avoid the "well my case is different; violence is justified in this situation because..."-bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". It's the only way you can be sure that you're not falling into the same biases that our "enemies" have fallen into. The more I learn about cognitive biases, the more I think they're probably the cause of almost all interpersonal conflict in modern society (unfortunately, awareness of this fact doesn't make you immune to the phenomenon).
- js8 11y ago
  > It seems the only way to avoid the "well my case is different; violence is justified in this situation because..."-bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". It's the only way you can be sure that you're not falling into the same biases that our "enemies" have fallen into. I agree. I love how this point is made by O'Brien in Orwell's 1984. On the surface, the book is pretty morally clear; but if you look deeper, it's full of moral ambiguities like that (another example is that Winston is himself a party member). Just like in life.
- gutnor 11y ago
  > promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever" I guess that's generally was is tried in the Western world. Especially (marginally more) in Europe, where even being in the army is not as regarded as in the US, and there is nowhere the same support for the troops even when deployed. But then all of that is drown in a sea of entertainment, the majority of which not only promote virtuous violent reaction, but also show that non-violence generally lead to ridicule or painful death.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - allengeorge 11y ago
    It's easy to believe that violence is not the answer if you can outsource the application of it (to police, other governments, etc.)
- paganel 11y ago
  > -bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". I haven't read it, to be honest, but that's what Kant was saying in his "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophical_Sketch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophic...). I'd say that even though we're not there yet, we have been getting closer and closer to that ideal in the last 200 years, with the well-known hiccups along the way.
  - Neputys 11y ago
    Maybe that's just me, but latest hiccups sometimes look suspiciously like an attempt to turn this trend around. Nice nickname btw. Is it from Captain Grant's Children?
    - paganel 11y ago
      > Nice nickname btw. Is it from Captain Grant's Children Yeap :)
- sridca 11y ago
  > The more I learn about cognitive biases, the more I think they're probably the cause of almost all interpersonal conflict in modern society Whereas the more I understand about affective impulses, the more I think they're definitely the root cause of all interpersonal conflicts in any society. There is no doubt that cognitive biases play a part, but they ultimately hinge on -- and stem from -- the affective impulses.
- kbutler 11y ago
  And when confronted with someone violently harming defenseless children in your care? Some believe violence is wrong even then, others believe pacifism is wrong then.
  - Xcelerate 11y ago
    My morals don't necessarily match up with what I would do in certain situations.
    - Retra 11y ago
      That's like saying you don't believe in monsters, yet refusing to open the closet. Your morals match exactly what you would do. What you say about your morals doesn't. What you are is what you do, after all, not what you imagine yourself to be.
      - kbutler 11y ago
        Our morals guide what we hope to become, but aren't always reflected by what we are today.
      - ionised 11y ago
        Your morals and your instincts are two different things.
        Retra 11y ago
        Instinct is just an innate morality.
        ionised 11y ago
        I can't say I agree fully. We have instinctual behaviour that leads us to group cooperation, avoiding theft and murder etc. A lot of our morality and legal systems stem from this. On the other hand instinct can lead people to do some seriously shitty things and we try to suppress it in those cases. Morality is a code or system of conduct that you aspire to in order to become a better or more virtuous person. We derive some of it from instinct and some from philosphy.
dnautics 11y ago
What is the opposing hypothesis here? That violence happens in a morally neutral setting? How would you define morally neutral? Could you make a claim, for example, that a bank robber is motivated by morality (the bank robber believes that robbing the bank is the morally correct thing to do - to redistribute wealth to himself?) Under what circumstances would that NOT be the case? Would the bank robber have to say, "well I know this is wrong, but..." (and how would we characterize that "but..." as not just another dimension of morality)?
- wavefunction 11y ago
  I have to laugh when I read your post because you use "redistribute wealth" to refer to bank robbery. I have to imagine you have likely referred to taxation as "theft" at least once.
  - kej 11y ago
    I'm gonna guess that PhDs working on non-profit public domain cancer research probably don't overlap all that much with the taxation-is-theft crowd.
    - wavefunction 11y ago
      Which part is supposed to convince me otherwise? The PhD? Non-profit public domain cancer research? There's nothing inherent in either of those personal qualities to suggest such. I have never heard anyone refer to theft as "redistributing wealth" without corresponding usages of "taxation = theft."
      - talmand 11y ago
        I can see theft being excused as redistributing wealth and I don't necessarily think taxation is theft. But I also say I can see a situation where redistributing wealth is not theft and in some cases I can think that taxation is, in fact, theft. It all depends on context.
      - 11y ago
fein 11y ago
> because most gun violence is not committed by people with mental health problems. Rather, it is committed by people who feel they are morally right in committing that act. Is there a reason that delusions of morality don't count as a mental health issue? I don't see these things being mutually exclusive.
- js8 11y ago
  > Is there a reason that delusions of morality don't count as a mental health issue? Yes. It's a dangerous line to cross. For example, in some communist countries, people who were dissidents were considered to be mentally ill (and put into institutions), because who in their right mind would oppose communism? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest pretty much deals with a similar dilemma.
- thatswrong0 11y ago
  Let's say you grow up in a poor community where murders happen often but are not often solved. You don't trust the police to serve justice to those who have wronged you. You notice that many of your neighbors solve their problems themselves - by fighting, threatening, killing. People often heckle you because you try to not fight back when people pick on you - there's a culture of toughness and honor all around you. Now someone wrongs you - let's say they hurt your significant other. Are you mentally ill for wanting to serve what you think is justice?
  - zatkin 11y ago
    Doesn't that classify as self-defense?
    - nostrademons 11y ago
      IIUC self-defense does not extend to the defense of others, and it applies only when there's an imminent threat to your person. If somebody hurts you and then next week you go over to their house and shoot them dead, it's 1st-degree premeditated murder. Beyond the legal issues, you can get into all sorts of moral issues once you consider uncertainty, culture, and history. Say your sister is in an abusive relationship, and has been beaten severely enough on multiple occasions that you fear for her life. She refuses to go to the police, as many domestic violence victims do. Are you justified in going over to their house and shooting her husband dead? What if you happen to be visiting, but arrive to find him with her hands on her throat, choking her to death? Both scenarios are highly illegal and will get you charged with murder, but morally, many people would have a lot of sympathy for someone in that situation.
russnewcomer 11y ago
A pastor of mine once talked about this in context of Martin Luther and Zwingli ( in context of the Kappel Wars ), and talked about how violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of their righteousness (in a Christian context) that they felt they could not sin by committing violence. He pointed to Matthew 5:21-26 and 5:38-47 (The Sermon on the Mount) to bolster his argument against violence by Christians, and I feel that it is generally a correct one. (Further strengthened by Romans 12:9-21) Thus, the case laid out in this article is one that I agree with, generally. It's a case long laid out by a succession of Christian Theologians, albeit using different language.
- mgmeyers 11y ago
  > violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of their righteousness I like that. This idea is also present in Buddhism, though they take it a step further and say that all suffering (everything from external violence to internal dissatisfaction with life) is caused by some form of judgment. They say the same thing that you mentioned above: violence is caused by the judgment, "I am right, you are wrong".
  - russnewcomer 11y ago
    I'm not sure that I expressed myself the best above based on your response, but partly that's because of the difficulty in discussing topics like this across religious traditions. I would disagree that violence is caused by the judgement, 'you are right, I am wrong'. I think that violence is ultimately caused by sin, vis a vis Augustinian total depravity. But the justification for violence, often among Christians, is self-righteousness (or put another way, pride). But again, this is a difficult issue to discuss between religions because the basic assumptions are different and terminology has slightly different meanings.
    - pekk 11y ago
      Where "sin" means essentially not being Christian enough, I am skeptical that the correct diagnosis for violence is "sin" when people who identify as Christian do not seem especially less likely to commit violence than people who identify as adhering to some other worldview with moral entailments. Frankly, if you want everyone else to believe that Christians are less violent than people of other religions, you have to bring data rather than just saying that "sin" (non-Christianness) is the cause.
hackuser 11y ago
Some personal philosophy (as if the Internet needs more): I always watch out for the dogmatic idealogues, the ones without moderation. You can identify them when they say that the welfare of others, often including their lives, should be sacrificed to the idealogue's cause - and of course the others should have no say in it. Pragmatism and humility are the wisest forms of morality. There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals, either the ideal of other people's lives and welfare, or their self-determination (whether or not you agree with their opinions), or your humility: Unless you are God, you should hesitate to sacrifice others based on your judgement. For me, that's also the philosophical foundation of democracy.
- Retra 11y ago
  That doesn't make any sense. "There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is a contradiction; if there were something higher, it'd become your ideal or goal. It seems especially incongruous to suggest that I should be putting other people's ideals over my own. Just how would you propose anybody accomplish such a thing? How is anybody supposed to make the best possible decisions when they are to assume that only someone else could make better decisions? That's idiotic. And why would you ask anyone to place self-determination above their own ideals? Despite the fact that this is a contradiction as I mentioned above, it isn't a thing worthy of intrinsic praise. Self determination isn't good unless you're determined to do good, and determined enough to actually do what it takes to achieve your ideals. So it can't be above your ideals. >Unless you are God, you should hesitate to sacrifice others based on your judgement. Most of those that do will hesitate. But they'll end up sacrificing them anyway, and you'll still be lambasting them for their short-sightedness, because you can't understand the scope of that hesitation from atop your pedestal. Of course, you can see just fine in hind-sight. That's not really a talent. All in all, you're just saying "People are morally corrupt unless they do what I think is right," which is exactly the same thing they'd say about you. What you offer isn't a solution, it's a complete failure to understand the conflict.
  - tedks 11y ago
    Well said. The implicit assumption in "There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is that the status quo should always be maintained. Any goal or idea that disrupts business-as-usual is obviously wrong because changing anything, taking any action is wrong, not because the result of the action is bad but because nobody save the invisible maintainers of control should be agents of change. This is top-down, hierarchical society at its finest.
guscost 11y ago
An important clarification: Most violence among humans is motivated by morality. Sounds plausible.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  Much violence among (other) animals is also motivated by morality, it's a pretty common trait in social species.
slr555 11y ago
When I was a theatre student a thousand years ago my teachers used to say every character you play feels like they have the gods on their side. Bad guys (with the possible exception of Iago) generally don't go around thinking "today I'm going to be particularly evil". They think what they are doing is right and will make the world better in some way. That is the challenge with moral relativism, people are very good at rationalizing their violence.
- Neputys 11y ago
  Yes, this is an old completely classical idea. No one can psychologically bare the thought that they are doing something really wrong and get motivated by it. We are defined by what we think is right. That's why true sadism always requires a layer of sentimentality. It's a little strange to see this so "rediscovered".
- oska 11y ago
  Since you referenced one of Shakespeare's plays, I think this is one of the great lessons to be taken from Hamlet. Hamlet finds himself caught up in a moral drama — Did his uncle murder his father? Did his mother knowingly condone the act or is just wrong to marry her husband's brother? Is his love interest betraying him by reporting on his behaviour? etc, etc. Hamlet eventually determines he will endeavour to step outside it, but unfortunately doesn't succeed and gets drawn back in, resulting in more violence and his own death. The best answer to moral drama is often to try to rise above it, not by ignoring it but by addressing it from a higher moral level. But that higher level has to be real and not faked and there's the great challenge.
paulgayham 11y ago
Personal morality is bad, in my opinion.
CM30 11y ago
I wonder how much of the percentage comes from dicators motivated by said 'moral sentiments' and the wars they seem to like getting into. Those are some of the worst examples of ideologues wanting to force their views on others and sacrifice others based on their 'judgement'.
wpietri 11y ago
This is where the article goes wrong for me: > The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral. This means that the perpetrators of violence felt like what they are doing was morally right. The first sentence is about motivation. The second is about justification. As an example, I think back to when I was a little kid and fought with my younger brother. My motivations for hitting him would be things like feelings of anger, shame, or urge to establish dominance. My justification would be something like "he hit me first" or "he deserved it" or "he can't talk to me like that". The motivation was primary, and something I didn't choose. (I did choose to indulge it, of course.) The justification was secondary and situational, constructed to avoid accountability (both internal and parental). Sometimes it was true and sometimes it wasn't, but it was always secondary. As an adult, the justification (and critical examination of it) is part of my gatekeeping of what motivations I indulge, but it's not the motivator. I think this matters because fixing the claimed justification won't always change the behavior. This quote from a Jon Ronson article gets at why: "I once interviewed a prison psychiatrist, James Gilligan, who told me that every murderer he treated was harbouring a central secret – which was that they felt humiliated. 'I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed,' he said. His conclusion: 'All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.'"
d_t_w 11y ago
That's an extremely broad title. If an individual soldier is motivated by their moral sentiment that they are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and so that Afghan girls can get an education that is meaningless, the motivation of the leaders who took that decision is the primary cause of the violence. My belief is that Western nations fight wars for economic reasons, but uses a moral argument to assuage the population and provide exculpation to the troops. We simply do not put boots on the ground or bombs in the air for moral reasons, no matter how it's cloaked.
nostrademons 11y ago
One of the most perennially popular courses at my alma mater was entitled "Murder". It was an exploration of the moral justification behind state-sponsored violence, from capital punishment to war to genocide. The realization that most violence is morally motivated comes with interesting quandaries when you consider what the response to such violence should be. Say that society successfully develops the norm that violence is never acceptable. What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you justified in using force against them? Does the state ever have a right to put people to death for what they believe, even if what they believe is that large classes of people deserve to die? What if it's just the threat that someone may wish to do another harm? Are police officers justified in shooting a suspect if it appears that he might have a gun and is reaching for it? There are also interesting questions about whether you should respect moral norms that are part of your moral code but not part of anothers'. For example, many Native American tribes did not believe in property rights, instead believing that the land and everything grown from it was communal property for the benefit of all; European settlers took this to mean that it was all theirs for the taking. Several of Ayn Rand's books extoll the virtue of selfishness, holding that the only bounds to your conduct should be freely agreed-upon contracts with others: knowing that other people do not hold to this moral code, is it moral to behave selfishly to them until they explicitly defend their rights, or do you have an obligation to consider what's commonly held to be moral amongst people unlike yourself when dealing with them? There are plenty of implications for startups too, many of whom would not exist without a different conception of social norms than mainstream society.
- clock_tower 11y ago
  > What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you justified in using force against them? Annoyingly enough, the Quakers -- despite being doctrinaire pacifists in all other areas -- answered this question with a resounding "yes". Flogging, stocks, and various other brutalities (I don't remember if they used capital punishment, but I think they did) were routine in colonial Pennsylvania...
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    Setting aside the question of specific methods (flogging and stocks), I don't see why you consider the idea of force being justified only in cases of retaliating against an attacker to be "annoying". Hard pacifists are extremely rare (Jainists are an exception) and more often than not set up as straw men to promote an agenda. Capital punishment's issues primarily stem from the fact that you're using an exogenous body of collective action (the state) as a proxy to put people to death, with all the problems of public choice that come as a result.
deleted 11y ago
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33a 11y ago
Maybe for high profile terrorism, but what about the more common petty street crime like muggings? I don't buy that is motivated by some high minded morality. Rather it seems like a rational and greedy calculation made by those with not much to lose.
kelukelugames 11y ago
This is what I ask myself whenever I feel upset, "Am I over reacting? Am I being overly sensitive?" This is what I ask when someone else is upset at me, "What did I do wrong?" Hopefully, these questions prevent me from being too self-righteous. The downsides are that it takes me a while to understand my mistakes, and I don't get to be smug and self-satisfied.
muddyrivers 11y ago
"Cross-culturally, I looked at why it is incomprehensible to Westerners to kill women for sexual infidelity, yet other parts of the world encourage this practice." Could the author be more "Westerners"-centric? It is incomprehensible for all the human beings except the fundamentalists from those religious sects.
DominikR 11y ago
I always held the belief that almost no one (except maybe for some persons with mental health problems) could cope with consistently acting "evil" according to his/her own internal moral compass. There's always an excuse or twisted moral justification, which boils down to: Someone acts against my interest so I am right in doing X. Doesn't matter if that someone is a person, the society, the state, culture or the economic system, there's always something you could come up with to direct your hatred against when life didn't work out the way you wanted it.
laotzu 11y ago
Marshall McLuhan suggests an alternative theory as to the primary motivation of violence. He claims that violence is a quest for identity: >"All forms of violence are a quest for identity. When you live out on the frontier you have no identity, you're a nobody. Therefore you get very tough. You have to prove that you are somebody. And so you become very violent. And so identity is always accompanied by violence. Ordinary people find the need for violence as they lose their identities. And so it is only the threat to peoples identities that makes them violent. Terrorists, hijackers, these are people minus identity. They are determined to make it somehow. To get coverage, to get noticed." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg McLuhan defines violence very broadly, in the sense that violence means to violate boundaries. Thus he describes giving birth as violence in which the original identity is given to the individual. Whether it is a political party, nation-state, or terrorist who uses violence, in some way or another they are seeking to establish or defend their identity. The electric media being a catalyst in all of this: >"Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction." -Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975. So, the nation-state that has a nostalgia for the "old days" and "standing for freedom" (implying a lack thereof) seeks identity through violence by invading countries "for freedom" and commits other acts of violence to "make country x great again". Likewise the terrorist who feels their identity threatened, be it religious or sociopolitical, may seek to reestablish their identity through violence. McLuhan also notes the major role mass media outlets play in awarding terrorists and mass murders the identity they so desperately seek via 24/7 coverage and rumination. >"Terrorism is an invention in which any two-armed people can take over an entire industry, namely television, with the eager cooperation of its owners. Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity." -Marshall McLuhan, as quoted by Tom Wolfe
p4wnc6 11y ago
It could also be possible that most of the time violence is avoided, it is also due to moral sentiments.
- Sealy 11y ago
  Thats my thought. What if you are morally opposed to violence? ...
rcthompson 11y ago
I have to wonder whether morality is the motivation for violence, or just the rationalization of an act that was actually motivated by something else. This would probably be really hard to distinguish, since all we have to go on is why people said they did things, which could just as easily be their true motivation or their post-hoc rationalization. If two people are stranded on a desert island with only enough food for one person, one of them is going to die one way or another, and they're probably not going to wait and see who starves first. But when the lone survivor is finally rescued, there's a pretty good chance they'll have convinced themselves that the other one deserved what they got. That doesn't make it an act of morally justified violence. (Yes, this is an obviously idealized and unrealistic scenario, but you get the point.)
Uhhrrr 11y ago
Is there a peer reviewed paper showing their findings? The author is an academic who says he has studied this, but there is no link to such a paper. I would also note that police usually investigate people who knew the victim, rather than people who were morally opposed to them. But I don't have a peer reviewed study either.
- icc97 11y ago
  Tage Rai, the author of the article has written a book 'Virtuous Violence' [0] published in December 2014. I'm guessing the article is taken from that. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing-Relationships/dp/1107458919 http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing-Rela...
wangii 11y ago
This article is flawed while the original paper might not, if it does exist. In this article, the author didn't mention the core methodology of how he managed to find out the reason behind each violence, by interview, court record, or newspaper? How he interpreted the description of motivation from his sources? How he distinguished motivation and excuse (or self justification)? I think it's meaningless just to state his hypothesis.
- cortesoft 11y ago
  If he put all of that in the article, then the article would just BE their paper.
zth 11y ago
This is going to be an especially hard problem to tackle, because you have liberals that want to say morality is just a social construct, and you can't say anything is good or bad, while you have conservatives that want their morality channeled through a doctrine that's hundreds of years old. We need to pick ourselves up from our bootstraps and say morality is tied to the well-being of any conscious system and there's a landscape where you can navigate more 'right' or 'wrong'.
stcredzero 11y ago
I find that the most anti-intellectualism, cheap-shot emotional abuse, and stereotyping on the Internet is motivated by moral sentiments through online pseudo "activists" who are really working out their anger and self-esteem issues under the supposed imprimatur of one cause or another. This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue. Attention is the currency of the Internet, and outrage is the easiest way to get it. Underlying most forms of injustice, especially systemic injustice, is the psychology of "othering." Any group that says it is furthering a cause of justice, but which does not go to careful lengths to check the natural tendency of groups to out-group outsiders, is a corrupt doppleganger, buying online social currency with the coin of outrage. Such groups do not heal society, but harm it, regardless of the ideology or cause they espouse. There is no major cause which is free of such intellectually malformed pseudo-activisism. Neither are there any significant causes that are entirely formed of such. Calling out such hateivism should not be seen as taking or opposing a particular side. Activism worthy of the name should fight such hateivism done in its name. Those who would knowingly exploit such tendencies for more social currency and expanded membership are not worthy of the name activism.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  "The Toxoplasma Of Rage", an excellent essay[0] by Scott Alexander, points out that sadly there are only two choices for activists today - behave nicely, gather universal agreement to their cause and then get completely ignored, or draw attention to their cause by being so hated by everyone, that half of the audience starts working against the cause just in spite. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
  - rustynails 11y ago
    I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or divide. A few (repeated examples) to highlight my point. Matt Taylor bullied by large numbers of feminists for wearing a shirt designed by a woman, showing women wearing bikinis. Do women wear bikinis? Yes. Yet, he was mercilessly attacked by at least 10,000 radicals. Domestic violence. It's repeatedly reported as a man thing (note: someone close to me was stabbed by his wife while she was high on drugs - but it wasn't domestic violence.. As the media says, that's only a man thing). Also note the absence of mental abuse that goes almost ignored. Code.org who didn't bother to put a link to encourage boys, but explicitly put one to encourage girls on their main page. This was no accident - they have a quota to meet, apparently at any cost. Mind you, this could equally be attributed to political correctness. I greatly respect how the LGBT community has embraced most people to support their cause without alienating anyone or demanding ridiculous quotas. I am totally gay friendly. Yet, I strongly oppose feminism. I believe in equality, but not equality for one gender or skin colour or sexual orientation. I respect movements that embrace differences rather than reject them. Bullying is not required.
swayvil 11y ago
Nah, it's just justified by moral sentiments.
ilaksh 11y ago
Propaganda is used to create the moral outrage needed to rationalize the violence needed to acquire the resources. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/oilandwar.html https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/oilandwa... https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/nativeamerican.html https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/nativeam...
Animats 11y ago
This reads like the abstract of a paper. Is there a more detailed paper behind it? This author may be on to something, but there's not enough there to tell.
jeffdavis 11y ago
So many things are arbitrarily framed in a moral context that it seems hard to agree or disagree with this thesis. For instance, we typically think of gang shootings as violence caused by greed or desire for power. But it's also common to frame it as a moral issue, such as "they shouldn't have been operating in my territory without paying" or "they were going to double-cross me". Why do we take the moral explanation at face value? Just because the ostensible reason is morality doesn't mean that's the real reason. They may have already decided what they were going to do, and rationalized it with morality later.
ftwynn 11y ago
They say we are all the heroes of our own stories... maybe that should be more strongly considered in the context of these shootings.
xupybd 11y ago
I liked this article, it went straight to the heart of the issue. Many take a cheap shot at religion (in most cases Muslims) when they talk about this sort of stuff. But this article talks about morality as the factor. While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions and even criminal organisations. To me this seems to fly in the face of "the world would be so much better if this group didn't exist" thinking. By not focusing on a particular group, but isolating the mechanism through which this violence happens, I believe this paves the way for a far more constructive dialogue.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  > While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions and even criminal organisations. Very true indeed, but I think that religion still deserves particular attention because it's the most prominent institution that promotes believing claims without evidence as a virtue, in particular in the area of morality, which paves the way for others promoting their equally insupportable claims. Religion is the major obstacle that prevents people from understanding that what is moral is a scientific question that has just as much an objectively correct answer as the question whether jumping from a tall building will increase your well-being or not.
  - Brendinooo 11y ago
    > claims without evidence I think there is plenty of evidence. I don't feel like I'd change your mind in an Internet comment by laying out particulars, but I just wanted to note that plenty of people of faith don't ascribe to the idea of blind faith. > what is moral is a scientific question What evidence do you have to support this statement? I can see how you could start with that assumption and find ways to justify it, but I don't see how you can conclusively prove the initial premise. My point is that it seems like you have a moral code that states that all things can be proven within the bounds of science and what is observable by humans, no?
    - 11y ago
deleted 11y ago
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tomaskazemekas 11y ago
One of the main problems with violence inspired by morality is that many moral systems accept the use of force and thus violence as main course of action to improve the status of the world. This makes moral systems that propagate principles of non violence, like Ahimsa, worth spreading.
- kuschku 11y ago
  Indeed. "We fight for peace" is the best newspeak that could ever exist.
legulere 11y ago
> The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral. I'm not so sure about this. Humans tend to act first and then construct a reason why they do it. This is used to rationalize the actions through some seemingly higher cause when the behaviour was done because of very mundane things. Humans certainly always act in a way that they think is best for an extended version of themselves (good for me, good for my family, good for my clique, good for my country, good for humankind, good for the world). But I doubt that this judgement of what is best to do is so often moral. Most of the time it's actually just satisfying urges by our bodies.
infinity0 11y ago
The points in the article are all reasonable and better than dismissive attitudes that "[something] is evil" but - where is his actual data and research? He should point to it!
reh03jeene 11y ago
Moral Values and teachings should start in the Family.
drstrangevibes 11y ago
this is disturbingly reassuring....
gepiti 11y ago
Moral Sentiments are used to justify violence by the perpetrators. That does now mean their morality is really the driving force of their actions.
alvarosm 11y ago
Yeah, well... easy to blame morals when you have none and wouldn't know moral if it hit you in the face. ISIS jihadists have no morals, for example. The article is ridiculous
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  They very much have. Actually, that is pretty much the only thing that drives them. It's not your kind of morals, I assume. But they do what they do because they consider it the morally right thing to do, and that is what this article is trying to tell you.
galfarragem 11y ago
Most peacefullness in the world is motivated by moral sentiments. Isn't this valid also? Moral (of majorities) -> Law -> Peacefullness (status quo)
puppetmaster3 11y ago
It would be sad that if most of the violence is because someone is stronger and someone else is weaker. Such as: someone has a weapon, the other side does not.
lintiness 11y ago
broadcast access is as cheap as the outrage it feeds.
squozzer 11y ago
A more fundamental question is why morality - especially the kind that allows for violence against non-followers - exists at all. I hypothesize that morality was initially invented to subdue the masses into servitude - obey the alpha male, and slay those who do not. The logical next step would be to consider outsiders as disobedient to the alpha male until they accept his rule. Religions are essentially this principle, with supernatural being(s) as the ultimate alphas, and prophets as their messengers. Ideologies do away with supernatural beings, maybe replacing anthropomorphic gods with "forces of history", e.g. Dialectical Materialism or Manifest Destiny, and replace prophets with destined / enlightened rulers.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  > I hypothesize that morality was initially invented to subdue the masses into servitude [...] I would suggest that nothing was invented, it just happened. It's something between a necessity for and a side effect of the evolution of social structures in a species. In order to reap the benefits of social cooperation in a species, evolution has to find a solution to the free rider problem as cooperation isn't stable otherwise, and morality is that solution, which also can be found in species other than humans.
VOYD 11y ago
Duh.
breischl 11y ago
>> [mental health checks] will not significantly decrease gun violence because most gun violence is not committed by people with mental health problems. Rather, it is committed by people who feel they are morally right in committing that act. That strikes me as a non-sequitur. Aren't morality and mental health orthogonal? For example, if someone believed that his refrigerator is God and it speaks to him via the expiration dates on the milk, that would be barking mad. If he based a system of morality on those messages and it told him that bald people are evil and need to die, then he's got moral justification and motivation in his own mind. But he's still barking mad, and a mental health check would show that, right?

383 points by kawera 11y ago

I believe the author's hypothesis is probably correct. It seems the only way to avoid the "well my case is different; violence is justified in this situation because..."-bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". It's the only way you can be sure that you're not falling into the same biases that our "enemies" have fallen into. The more I learn about cognitive biases, the more I think they're probably the cause of almost all interpersonal conflict in modern society (unfortunately, awareness of this fact doesn't make you immune to the phenomenon).

js8 11y ago
> It seems the only way to avoid the "well my case is different; violence is justified in this situation because..."-bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". It's the only way you can be sure that you're not falling into the same biases that our "enemies" have fallen into. I agree. I love how this point is made by O'Brien in Orwell's 1984. On the surface, the book is pretty morally clear; but if you look deeper, it's full of moral ambiguities like that (another example is that Winston is himself a party member). Just like in life.
gutnor 11y ago
> promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever" I guess that's generally was is tried in the Western world. Especially (marginally more) in Europe, where even being in the army is not as regarded as in the US, and there is nowhere the same support for the troops even when deployed. But then all of that is drown in a sea of entertainment, the majority of which not only promote virtuous violent reaction, but also show that non-violence generally lead to ridicule or painful death.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- allengeorge 11y ago
  It's easy to believe that violence is not the answer if you can outsource the application of it (to police, other governments, etc.)
paganel 11y ago
> -bias is to instill or promote a common moral that "violence is not okay – ever". I haven't read it, to be honest, but that's what Kant was saying in his "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophical_Sketch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Peace:_A_Philosophic...). I'd say that even though we're not there yet, we have been getting closer and closer to that ideal in the last 200 years, with the well-known hiccups along the way.
- Neputys 11y ago
  Maybe that's just me, but latest hiccups sometimes look suspiciously like an attempt to turn this trend around. Nice nickname btw. Is it from Captain Grant's Children?
  - paganel 11y ago
    > Nice nickname btw. Is it from Captain Grant's Children Yeap :)
sridca 11y ago
> The more I learn about cognitive biases, the more I think they're probably the cause of almost all interpersonal conflict in modern society Whereas the more I understand about affective impulses, the more I think they're definitely the root cause of all interpersonal conflicts in any society. There is no doubt that cognitive biases play a part, but they ultimately hinge on -- and stem from -- the affective impulses.
kbutler 11y ago
And when confronted with someone violently harming defenseless children in your care? Some believe violence is wrong even then, others believe pacifism is wrong then.
- Xcelerate 11y ago
  My morals don't necessarily match up with what I would do in certain situations.
  - Retra 11y ago
    That's like saying you don't believe in monsters, yet refusing to open the closet. Your morals match exactly what you would do. What you say about your morals doesn't. What you are is what you do, after all, not what you imagine yourself to be.
    - kbutler 11y ago
      Our morals guide what we hope to become, but aren't always reflected by what we are today.
    - ionised 11y ago
      Your morals and your instincts are two different things.
      - Retra 11y ago
        Instinct is just an innate morality.
        ionised 11y ago
        I can't say I agree fully. We have instinctual behaviour that leads us to group cooperation, avoiding theft and murder etc. A lot of our morality and legal systems stem from this. On the other hand instinct can lead people to do some seriously shitty things and we try to suppress it in those cases. Morality is a code or system of conduct that you aspire to in order to become a better or more virtuous person. We derive some of it from instinct and some from philosphy.

dnautics 11y ago

What is the opposing hypothesis here? That violence happens in a morally neutral setting? How would you define morally neutral? Could you make a claim, for example, that a bank robber is motivated by morality (the bank robber believes that robbing the bank is the morally correct thing to do - to redistribute wealth to himself?) Under what circumstances would that NOT be the case? Would the bank robber have to say, "well I know this is wrong, but..." (and how would we characterize that "but..." as not just another dimension of morality)?

wavefunction 11y ago
I have to laugh when I read your post because you use "redistribute wealth" to refer to bank robbery. I have to imagine you have likely referred to taxation as "theft" at least once.
- kej 11y ago
  I'm gonna guess that PhDs working on non-profit public domain cancer research probably don't overlap all that much with the taxation-is-theft crowd.
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    Which part is supposed to convince me otherwise? The PhD? Non-profit public domain cancer research? There's nothing inherent in either of those personal qualities to suggest such. I have never heard anyone refer to theft as "redistributing wealth" without corresponding usages of "taxation = theft."
    - talmand 11y ago
      I can see theft being excused as redistributing wealth and I don't necessarily think taxation is theft. But I also say I can see a situation where redistributing wealth is not theft and in some cases I can think that taxation is, in fact, theft. It all depends on context.
    - 11y ago

fein 11y ago

> because most gun violence is not committed by people with mental health problems. Rather, it is committed by people who feel they are morally right in committing that act. Is there a reason that delusions of morality don't count as a mental health issue? I don't see these things being mutually exclusive.

js8 11y ago
> Is there a reason that delusions of morality don't count as a mental health issue? Yes. It's a dangerous line to cross. For example, in some communist countries, people who were dissidents were considered to be mentally ill (and put into institutions), because who in their right mind would oppose communism? One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest pretty much deals with a similar dilemma.
thatswrong0 11y ago
Let's say you grow up in a poor community where murders happen often but are not often solved. You don't trust the police to serve justice to those who have wronged you. You notice that many of your neighbors solve their problems themselves - by fighting, threatening, killing. People often heckle you because you try to not fight back when people pick on you - there's a culture of toughness and honor all around you. Now someone wrongs you - let's say they hurt your significant other. Are you mentally ill for wanting to serve what you think is justice?
- zatkin 11y ago
  Doesn't that classify as self-defense?
  - nostrademons 11y ago
    IIUC self-defense does not extend to the defense of others, and it applies only when there's an imminent threat to your person. If somebody hurts you and then next week you go over to their house and shoot them dead, it's 1st-degree premeditated murder. Beyond the legal issues, you can get into all sorts of moral issues once you consider uncertainty, culture, and history. Say your sister is in an abusive relationship, and has been beaten severely enough on multiple occasions that you fear for her life. She refuses to go to the police, as many domestic violence victims do. Are you justified in going over to their house and shooting her husband dead? What if you happen to be visiting, but arrive to find him with her hands on her throat, choking her to death? Both scenarios are highly illegal and will get you charged with murder, but morally, many people would have a lot of sympathy for someone in that situation.

russnewcomer 11y ago

A pastor of mine once talked about this in context of Martin Luther and Zwingli ( in context of the Kappel Wars ), and talked about how violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of their righteousness (in a Christian context) that they felt they could not sin by committing violence. He pointed to Matthew 5:21-26 and 5:38-47 (The Sermon on the Mount) to bolster his argument against violence by Christians, and I feel that it is generally a correct one. (Further strengthened by Romans 12:9-21) Thus, the case laid out in this article is one that I agree with, generally. It's a case long laid out by a succession of Christian Theologians, albeit using different language.

mgmeyers 11y ago
> violence is often the moral outgrowth of those who have grown so assured of their righteousness I like that. This idea is also present in Buddhism, though they take it a step further and say that all suffering (everything from external violence to internal dissatisfaction with life) is caused by some form of judgment. They say the same thing that you mentioned above: violence is caused by the judgment, "I am right, you are wrong".
- russnewcomer 11y ago
  I'm not sure that I expressed myself the best above based on your response, but partly that's because of the difficulty in discussing topics like this across religious traditions. I would disagree that violence is caused by the judgement, 'you are right, I am wrong'. I think that violence is ultimately caused by sin, vis a vis Augustinian total depravity. But the justification for violence, often among Christians, is self-righteousness (or put another way, pride). But again, this is a difficult issue to discuss between religions because the basic assumptions are different and terminology has slightly different meanings.
  - pekk 11y ago
    Where "sin" means essentially not being Christian enough, I am skeptical that the correct diagnosis for violence is "sin" when people who identify as Christian do not seem especially less likely to commit violence than people who identify as adhering to some other worldview with moral entailments. Frankly, if you want everyone else to believe that Christians are less violent than people of other religions, you have to bring data rather than just saying that "sin" (non-Christianness) is the cause.

hackuser 11y ago

Some personal philosophy (as if the Internet needs more): I always watch out for the dogmatic idealogues, the ones without moderation. You can identify them when they say that the welfare of others, often including their lives, should be sacrificed to the idealogue's cause - and of course the others should have no say in it. Pragmatism and humility are the wisest forms of morality. There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals, either the ideal of other people's lives and welfare, or their self-determination (whether or not you agree with their opinions), or your humility: Unless you are God, you should hesitate to sacrifice others based on your judgement. For me, that's also the philosophical foundation of democracy.

Retra 11y ago
That doesn't make any sense. "There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is a contradiction; if there were something higher, it'd become your ideal or goal. It seems especially incongruous to suggest that I should be putting other people's ideals over my own. Just how would you propose anybody accomplish such a thing? How is anybody supposed to make the best possible decisions when they are to assume that only someone else could make better decisions? That's idiotic. And why would you ask anyone to place self-determination above their own ideals? Despite the fact that this is a contradiction as I mentioned above, it isn't a thing worthy of intrinsic praise. Self determination isn't good unless you're determined to do good, and determined enough to actually do what it takes to achieve your ideals. So it can't be above your ideals. >Unless you are God, you should hesitate to sacrifice others based on your judgement. Most of those that do will hesitate. But they'll end up sacrificing them anyway, and you'll still be lambasting them for their short-sightedness, because you can't understand the scope of that hesitation from atop your pedestal. Of course, you can see just fine in hind-sight. That's not really a talent. All in all, you're just saying "People are morally corrupt unless they do what I think is right," which is exactly the same thing they'd say about you. What you offer isn't a solution, it's a complete failure to understand the conflict.
- tedks 11y ago
  Well said. The implicit assumption in "There should always be something higher than your ideals and goals" is that the status quo should always be maintained. Any goal or idea that disrupts business-as-usual is obviously wrong because changing anything, taking any action is wrong, not because the result of the action is bad but because nobody save the invisible maintainers of control should be agents of change. This is top-down, hierarchical society at its finest.

guscost 11y ago

An important clarification: Most violence among humans is motivated by morality. Sounds plausible.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
Much violence among (other) animals is also motivated by morality, it's a pretty common trait in social species.

slr555 11y ago

When I was a theatre student a thousand years ago my teachers used to say every character you play feels like they have the gods on their side. Bad guys (with the possible exception of Iago) generally don't go around thinking "today I'm going to be particularly evil". They think what they are doing is right and will make the world better in some way. That is the challenge with moral relativism, people are very good at rationalizing their violence.

Neputys 11y ago
Yes, this is an old completely classical idea. No one can psychologically bare the thought that they are doing something really wrong and get motivated by it. We are defined by what we think is right. That's why true sadism always requires a layer of sentimentality. It's a little strange to see this so "rediscovered".
oska 11y ago
Since you referenced one of Shakespeare's plays, I think this is one of the great lessons to be taken from Hamlet. Hamlet finds himself caught up in a moral drama — Did his uncle murder his father? Did his mother knowingly condone the act or is just wrong to marry her husband's brother? Is his love interest betraying him by reporting on his behaviour? etc, etc. Hamlet eventually determines he will endeavour to step outside it, but unfortunately doesn't succeed and gets drawn back in, resulting in more violence and his own death. The best answer to moral drama is often to try to rise above it, not by ignoring it but by addressing it from a higher moral level. But that higher level has to be real and not faked and there's the great challenge.

paulgayham 11y ago

Personal morality is bad, in my opinion.

CM30 11y ago

I wonder how much of the percentage comes from dicators motivated by said 'moral sentiments' and the wars they seem to like getting into. Those are some of the worst examples of ideologues wanting to force their views on others and sacrifice others based on their 'judgement'.

wpietri 11y ago

This is where the article goes wrong for me: > The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral. This means that the perpetrators of violence felt like what they are doing was morally right. The first sentence is about motivation. The second is about justification. As an example, I think back to when I was a little kid and fought with my younger brother. My motivations for hitting him would be things like feelings of anger, shame, or urge to establish dominance. My justification would be something like "he hit me first" or "he deserved it" or "he can't talk to me like that". The motivation was primary, and something I didn't choose. (I did choose to indulge it, of course.) The justification was secondary and situational, constructed to avoid accountability (both internal and parental). Sometimes it was true and sometimes it wasn't, but it was always secondary. As an adult, the justification (and critical examination of it) is part of my gatekeeping of what motivations I indulge, but it's not the motivator. I think this matters because fixing the claimed justification won't always change the behavior. This quote from a Jon Ronson article gets at why: "I once interviewed a prison psychiatrist, James Gilligan, who told me that every murderer he treated was harbouring a central secret – which was that they felt humiliated. 'I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling shamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed,' he said. His conclusion: 'All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.'"

d_t_w 11y ago

That's an extremely broad title. If an individual soldier is motivated by their moral sentiment that they are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and so that Afghan girls can get an education that is meaningless, the motivation of the leaders who took that decision is the primary cause of the violence. My belief is that Western nations fight wars for economic reasons, but uses a moral argument to assuage the population and provide exculpation to the troops. We simply do not put boots on the ground or bombs in the air for moral reasons, no matter how it's cloaked.

nostrademons 11y ago

One of the most perennially popular courses at my alma mater was entitled "Murder". It was an exploration of the moral justification behind state-sponsored violence, from capital punishment to war to genocide. The realization that most violence is morally motivated comes with interesting quandaries when you consider what the response to such violence should be. Say that society successfully develops the norm that violence is never acceptable. What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you justified in using force against them? Does the state ever have a right to put people to death for what they believe, even if what they believe is that large classes of people deserve to die? What if it's just the threat that someone may wish to do another harm? Are police officers justified in shooting a suspect if it appears that he might have a gun and is reaching for it? There are also interesting questions about whether you should respect moral norms that are part of your moral code but not part of anothers'. For example, many Native American tribes did not believe in property rights, instead believing that the land and everything grown from it was communal property for the benefit of all; European settlers took this to mean that it was all theirs for the taking. Several of Ayn Rand's books extoll the virtue of selfishness, holding that the only bounds to your conduct should be freely agreed-upon contracts with others: knowing that other people do not hold to this moral code, is it moral to behave selfishly to them until they explicitly defend their rights, or do you have an obligation to consider what's commonly held to be moral amongst people unlike yourself when dealing with them? There are plenty of implications for startups too, many of whom would not exist without a different conception of social norms than mainstream society.

clock_tower 11y ago
> What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm? Are you justified in using force against them? Annoyingly enough, the Quakers -- despite being doctrinaire pacifists in all other areas -- answered this question with a resounding "yes". Flogging, stocks, and various other brutalities (I don't remember if they used capital punishment, but I think they did) were routine in colonial Pennsylvania...
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  Setting aside the question of specific methods (flogging and stocks), I don't see why you consider the idea of force being justified only in cases of retaliating against an attacker to be "annoying". Hard pacifists are extremely rare (Jainists are an exception) and more often than not set up as straw men to promote an agenda. Capital punishment's issues primarily stem from the fact that you're using an exogenous body of collective action (the state) as a proxy to put people to death, with all the problems of public choice that come as a result.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

33a 11y ago

Maybe for high profile terrorism, but what about the more common petty street crime like muggings? I don't buy that is motivated by some high minded morality. Rather it seems like a rational and greedy calculation made by those with not much to lose.

kelukelugames 11y ago

This is what I ask myself whenever I feel upset, "Am I over reacting? Am I being overly sensitive?" This is what I ask when someone else is upset at me, "What did I do wrong?" Hopefully, these questions prevent me from being too self-righteous. The downsides are that it takes me a while to understand my mistakes, and I don't get to be smug and self-satisfied.

muddyrivers 11y ago

"Cross-culturally, I looked at why it is incomprehensible to Westerners to kill women for sexual infidelity, yet other parts of the world encourage this practice." Could the author be more "Westerners"-centric? It is incomprehensible for all the human beings except the fundamentalists from those religious sects.

DominikR 11y ago

I always held the belief that almost no one (except maybe for some persons with mental health problems) could cope with consistently acting "evil" according to his/her own internal moral compass. There's always an excuse or twisted moral justification, which boils down to: Someone acts against my interest so I am right in doing X. Doesn't matter if that someone is a person, the society, the state, culture or the economic system, there's always something you could come up with to direct your hatred against when life didn't work out the way you wanted it.

laotzu 11y ago

Marshall McLuhan suggests an alternative theory as to the primary motivation of violence. He claims that violence is a quest for identity: >"All forms of violence are a quest for identity. When you live out on the frontier you have no identity, you're a nobody. Therefore you get very tough. You have to prove that you are somebody. And so you become very violent. And so identity is always accompanied by violence. Ordinary people find the need for violence as they lose their identities. And so it is only the threat to peoples identities that makes them violent. Terrorists, hijackers, these are people minus identity. They are determined to make it somehow. To get coverage, to get noticed." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvATW2nfYZg McLuhan defines violence very broadly, in the sense that violence means to violate boundaries. Thus he describes giving birth as violence in which the original identity is given to the individual. Whether it is a political party, nation-state, or terrorist who uses violence, in some way or another they are seeking to establish or defend their identity. The electric media being a catalyst in all of this: >"Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction." -Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975. So, the nation-state that has a nostalgia for the "old days" and "standing for freedom" (implying a lack thereof) seeks identity through violence by invading countries "for freedom" and commits other acts of violence to "make country x great again". Likewise the terrorist who feels their identity threatened, be it religious or sociopolitical, may seek to reestablish their identity through violence. McLuhan also notes the major role mass media outlets play in awarding terrorists and mass murders the identity they so desperately seek via 24/7 coverage and rumination. >"Terrorism is an invention in which any two-armed people can take over an entire industry, namely television, with the eager cooperation of its owners. Moral indignation is a standard strategy for endowing the idiot with dignity." -Marshall McLuhan, as quoted by Tom Wolfe

p4wnc6 11y ago

It could also be possible that most of the time violence is avoided, it is also due to moral sentiments.

Sealy 11y ago
Thats my thought. What if you are morally opposed to violence? ...

rcthompson 11y ago

I have to wonder whether morality is the motivation for violence, or just the rationalization of an act that was actually motivated by something else. This would probably be really hard to distinguish, since all we have to go on is why people said they did things, which could just as easily be their true motivation or their post-hoc rationalization. If two people are stranded on a desert island with only enough food for one person, one of them is going to die one way or another, and they're probably not going to wait and see who starves first. But when the lone survivor is finally rescued, there's a pretty good chance they'll have convinced themselves that the other one deserved what they got. That doesn't make it an act of morally justified violence. (Yes, this is an obviously idealized and unrealistic scenario, but you get the point.)

Uhhrrr 11y ago

Is there a peer reviewed paper showing their findings? The author is an academic who says he has studied this, but there is no link to such a paper. I would also note that police usually investigate people who knew the victim, rather than people who were morally opposed to them. But I don't have a peer reviewed study either.

icc97 11y ago
Tage Rai, the author of the article has written a book 'Virtuous Violence' [0] published in December 2014. I'm guessing the article is taken from that. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing-Relationships/dp/1107458919 http://www.amazon.com/Virtuous-Violence-Hurting-Killing-Rela...

wangii 11y ago

This article is flawed while the original paper might not, if it does exist. In this article, the author didn't mention the core methodology of how he managed to find out the reason behind each violence, by interview, court record, or newspaper? How he interpreted the description of motivation from his sources? How he distinguished motivation and excuse (or self justification)? I think it's meaningless just to state his hypothesis.

cortesoft 11y ago
If he put all of that in the article, then the article would just BE their paper.

zth 11y ago

This is going to be an especially hard problem to tackle, because you have liberals that want to say morality is just a social construct, and you can't say anything is good or bad, while you have conservatives that want their morality channeled through a doctrine that's hundreds of years old. We need to pick ourselves up from our bootstraps and say morality is tied to the well-being of any conscious system and there's a landscape where you can navigate more 'right' or 'wrong'.

stcredzero 11y ago

I find that the most anti-intellectualism, cheap-shot emotional abuse, and stereotyping on the Internet is motivated by moral sentiments through online pseudo "activists" who are really working out their anger and self-esteem issues under the supposed imprimatur of one cause or another. This goes for select subsets of both ends of the political spectrum, and select subgroups on both sides of any hot-button issue. Attention is the currency of the Internet, and outrage is the easiest way to get it. Underlying most forms of injustice, especially systemic injustice, is the psychology of "othering." Any group that says it is furthering a cause of justice, but which does not go to careful lengths to check the natural tendency of groups to out-group outsiders, is a corrupt doppleganger, buying online social currency with the coin of outrage. Such groups do not heal society, but harm it, regardless of the ideology or cause they espouse. There is no major cause which is free of such intellectually malformed pseudo-activisism. Neither are there any significant causes that are entirely formed of such. Calling out such hateivism should not be seen as taking or opposing a particular side. Activism worthy of the name should fight such hateivism done in its name. Those who would knowingly exploit such tendencies for more social currency and expanded membership are not worthy of the name activism.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
"The Toxoplasma Of Rage", an excellent essay[0] by Scott Alexander, points out that sadly there are only two choices for activists today - behave nicely, gather universal agreement to their cause and then get completely ignored, or draw attention to their cause by being so hated by everyone, that half of the audience starts working against the cause just in spite. [0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
- rustynails 11y ago
  I know what you're saying but it isn't true. Let's look at 2 examples, the LGBT community and Feminism. LGBT celebrates its differences. It welcomes everyone. It is open minded and tolerant. Feminism bullies, ridicules, excludes, creates us/them divides and is continually hypocritical. You could not have 2 more different different approaches. You don't need to be a bully. You don't need to threaten or ridicule or divide. A few (repeated examples) to highlight my point. Matt Taylor bullied by large numbers of feminists for wearing a shirt designed by a woman, showing women wearing bikinis. Do women wear bikinis? Yes. Yet, he was mercilessly attacked by at least 10,000 radicals. Domestic violence. It's repeatedly reported as a man thing (note: someone close to me was stabbed by his wife while she was high on drugs - but it wasn't domestic violence.. As the media says, that's only a man thing). Also note the absence of mental abuse that goes almost ignored. Code.org who didn't bother to put a link to encourage boys, but explicitly put one to encourage girls on their main page. This was no accident - they have a quota to meet, apparently at any cost. Mind you, this could equally be attributed to political correctness. I greatly respect how the LGBT community has embraced most people to support their cause without alienating anyone or demanding ridiculous quotas. I am totally gay friendly. Yet, I strongly oppose feminism. I believe in equality, but not equality for one gender or skin colour or sexual orientation. I respect movements that embrace differences rather than reject them. Bullying is not required.

swayvil 11y ago

Nah, it's just justified by moral sentiments.

ilaksh 11y ago

Propaganda is used to create the moral outrage needed to rationalize the violence needed to acquire the resources. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/oilandwar.html https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/oilandwa... https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/nativeamerican.html https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~paul20i/classweb/AFP2008/nativeam...

Animats 11y ago

This reads like the abstract of a paper. Is there a more detailed paper behind it? This author may be on to something, but there's not enough there to tell.

jeffdavis 11y ago

So many things are arbitrarily framed in a moral context that it seems hard to agree or disagree with this thesis. For instance, we typically think of gang shootings as violence caused by greed or desire for power. But it's also common to frame it as a moral issue, such as "they shouldn't have been operating in my territory without paying" or "they were going to double-cross me". Why do we take the moral explanation at face value? Just because the ostensible reason is morality doesn't mean that's the real reason. They may have already decided what they were going to do, and rationalized it with morality later.

ftwynn 11y ago

They say we are all the heroes of our own stories... maybe that should be more strongly considered in the context of these shootings.

xupybd 11y ago

I liked this article, it went straight to the heart of the issue. Many take a cheap shot at religion (in most cases Muslims) when they talk about this sort of stuff. But this article talks about morality as the factor. While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions and even criminal organisations. To me this seems to fly in the face of "the world would be so much better if this group didn't exist" thinking. By not focusing on a particular group, but isolating the mechanism through which this violence happens, I believe this paves the way for a far more constructive dialogue.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
> While moral codes are often a huge part of religions they are also a huge part of other groups of society, such as animal rights groups, labour unions and even criminal organisations. Very true indeed, but I think that religion still deserves particular attention because it's the most prominent institution that promotes believing claims without evidence as a virtue, in particular in the area of morality, which paves the way for others promoting their equally insupportable claims. Religion is the major obstacle that prevents people from understanding that what is moral is a scientific question that has just as much an objectively correct answer as the question whether jumping from a tall building will increase your well-being or not.
- Brendinooo 11y ago
  > claims without evidence I think there is plenty of evidence. I don't feel like I'd change your mind in an Internet comment by laying out particulars, but I just wanted to note that plenty of people of faith don't ascribe to the idea of blind faith. > what is moral is a scientific question What evidence do you have to support this statement? I can see how you could start with that assumption and find ways to justify it, but I don't see how you can conclusively prove the initial premise. My point is that it seems like you have a moral code that states that all things can be proven within the bounds of science and what is observable by humans, no?
  - 11y ago

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tomaskazemekas 11y ago

One of the main problems with violence inspired by morality is that many moral systems accept the use of force and thus violence as main course of action to improve the status of the world. This makes moral systems that propagate principles of non violence, like Ahimsa, worth spreading.

kuschku 11y ago
Indeed. "We fight for peace" is the best newspeak that could ever exist.

legulere 11y ago

> The commonality was that the primary motivations were moral. I'm not so sure about this. Humans tend to act first and then construct a reason why they do it. This is used to rationalize the actions through some seemingly higher cause when the behaviour was done because of very mundane things. Humans certainly always act in a way that they think is best for an extended version of themselves (good for me, good for my family, good for my clique, good for my country, good for humankind, good for the world). But I doubt that this judgement of what is best to do is so often moral. Most of the time it's actually just satisfying urges by our bodies.

infinity0 11y ago

The points in the article are all reasonable and better than dismissive attitudes that "[something] is evil" but - where is his actual data and research? He should point to it!

reh03jeene 11y ago

Moral Values and teachings should start in the Family.

drstrangevibes 11y ago

this is disturbingly reassuring....

gepiti 11y ago

Moral Sentiments are used to justify violence by the perpetrators. That does now mean their morality is really the driving force of their actions.

alvarosm 11y ago

Yeah, well... easy to blame morals when you have none and wouldn't know moral if it hit you in the face. ISIS jihadists have no morals, for example. The article is ridiculous

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
They very much have. Actually, that is pretty much the only thing that drives them. It's not your kind of morals, I assume. But they do what they do because they consider it the morally right thing to do, and that is what this article is trying to tell you.

galfarragem 11y ago

Most peacefullness in the world is motivated by moral sentiments. Isn't this valid also? Moral (of majorities) -> Law -> Peacefullness (status quo)

puppetmaster3 11y ago

It would be sad that if most of the violence is because someone is stronger and someone else is weaker. Such as: someone has a weapon, the other side does not.

lintiness 11y ago

broadcast access is as cheap as the outrage it feeds.

squozzer 11y ago

A more fundamental question is why morality - especially the kind that allows for violence against non-followers - exists at all. I hypothesize that morality was initially invented to subdue the masses into servitude - obey the alpha male, and slay those who do not. The logical next step would be to consider outsiders as disobedient to the alpha male until they accept his rule. Religions are essentially this principle, with supernatural being(s) as the ultimate alphas, and prophets as their messengers. Ideologies do away with supernatural beings, maybe replacing anthropomorphic gods with "forces of history", e.g. Dialectical Materialism or Manifest Destiny, and replace prophets with destined / enlightened rulers.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
> I hypothesize that morality was initially invented to subdue the masses into servitude [...] I would suggest that nothing was invented, it just happened. It's something between a necessity for and a side effect of the evolution of social structures in a species. In order to reap the benefits of social cooperation in a species, evolution has to find a solution to the free rider problem as cooperation isn't stable otherwise, and morality is that solution, which also can be found in species other than humans.

VOYD 11y ago

Duh.

breischl 11y ago

>> [mental health checks] will not significantly decrease gun violence because most gun violence is not committed by people with mental health problems. Rather, it is committed by people who feel they are morally right in committing that act. That strikes me as a non-sequitur. Aren't morality and mental health orthogonal? For example, if someone believed that his refrigerator is God and it speaks to him via the expiration dates on the milk, that would be barking mad. If he based a system of morality on those messages and it told him that bald people are evil and need to die, then he's got moral justification and motivation in his own mind. But he's still barking mad, and a mental health check would show that, right?