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I read an interesting article recently related to this, which posted the following problem: that in recent times, moralism has become hijacked by the financial

I read an interesting article recently related to this, which posted the following problem: that in recent times, moralism has become hijacked by the financial elite. For instance, to protect our environment you should eat local and organic food, which unfortunately tends to be more expensive than its mass produced alternatives. When you earn enough, you can live the 'right' way and telll all your friends; people who have to save money and buy cheaper mass produced foods are 'worse' not just because they are poor, but because they live their lifes the 'wrong' way. When you have a good job and live in a good neighbourhood, you might welcome immigrants and want to give them a new home in your country so they can escape all the sufferings from where they are coming from. But when you are poor, you might also have worries that those immigrants compete with you in your job or might overwhelm your neighbourhood. But again, morally this worry is 'wrong'; until recently, bringing this out in the open would make you a racist or worse. So lower classes see themselves pushed in a corner where they are not only the losers in a financial way, but more than that, they are 'bad' people because they dare to have second thoughts about all those morally right choices above. As a result, there is a growing movement to let go of morals altogether, which is the cretinism from the article.

pjc50 8y ago
These aren't the same kind of thing at all, though. "Ethical consumption" is a bit of a mess and I would agree that it's vulnerable to becoming just another form of conspicuous consumption unless people are diligently self-critical about their moralising. Migration, on the other hand, involves key elements of human dignity. The right not to be subject to racial discrimination (e.g. the bad old days of "no dogs, no blacks no irish" signs). The right to family life: to live with your spouse and children even if they weren't born in the same country as you. People who are worried about e.g. people moving from Mexico to California but not Ohio to California need to take a look at themselves. Are we really saying that to avoid overcrowding and ensure access to jobs for locals, that countries would be better off with internal migration control? You'd need a visa to move to the big city?
- brobdingnagians 8y ago
  I think his point is that when morality gets co-opted and redefined to be a mind-control tactic of the wealthy to get the poor to do relatively meaningless things for the agenda of the wealthy, the poor stop caring about morality. That would go quite well with the point of the article about cretinism being a disregard of morality in political process; though it would also turn part of the blame from the poor to the rich. I don't necessarily agree with him, but it is a valid point connected to the article.

pjc50 8y ago

These aren't the same kind of thing at all, though. "Ethical consumption" is a bit of a mess and I would agree that it's vulnerable to becoming just another form of conspicuous consumption unless people are diligently self-critical about their moralising. Migration, on the other hand, involves key elements of human dignity. The right not to be subject to racial discrimination (e.g. the bad old days of "no dogs, no blacks no irish" signs). The right to family life: to live with your spouse and children even if they weren't born in the same country as you. People who are worried about e.g. people moving from Mexico to California but not Ohio to California need to take a look at themselves. Are we really saying that to avoid overcrowding and ensure access to jobs for locals, that countries would be better off with internal migration control? You'd need a visa to move to the big city?

brobdingnagians 8y ago
I think his point is that when morality gets co-opted and redefined to be a mind-control tactic of the wealthy to get the poor to do relatively meaningless things for the agenda of the wealthy, the poor stop caring about morality. That would go quite well with the point of the article about cretinism being a disregard of morality in political process; though it would also turn part of the blame from the poor to the rich. I don't necessarily agree with him, but it is a valid point connected to the article.