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Exactly. Morality rises and falls. It's not an inevitable progress toward "better". Some new moral "innovations" lead to horrible moral outcomes, like when John
by monoideism 6y ago
Exactly. Morality rises and falls. It's not an inevitable progress toward "better". Some new moral "innovations" lead to horrible moral outcomes, like when John Punch was turned from an indentured servant into a lifetime slave, presumably on the basis on his skin color.
And how to describe Nazism except as a moral abberation? That wasn't moral progress after the (already declining) morality of the Weimar republic.
And I'm getting weird dystopian vibes from a significant % of the present left. The moral crusading. The authoritarianism. The absolutism. The shaming. The religious ferver of its movements.
- landryraccoon 6y agoI don't mean to start a flame war, but how is the left more authoritarian? I don't really get it. Conservative leaders, at least in the US, seem far more authoritarian and xenophobic than left leaning leaders. I'm curious what you see as authoritarian about the modern left. Also, it is interesting that you associate shaming with authoritarianism. Shaming is intrinsically a grass roots thing - it's the people, not some autocrat, that shames people. Authoritarian governments don't need to shame people, they simply imprison them or take other direct coercive measures. Societies shame people because they cannot physically do anything to them. That's a huge distinction.
- monoideism 6y agoI never said the left was more authoritarian than the right. That's your tribal brain making that assumption. I belong to neither your tribe, nor the other. The right has its own problems. But as for all the others I insist that they are primarily left-wing phenomena. And regarding your argument for shaming, what happens when the folks who do the shaming gain power? I suspect we'll find out in the coming years.