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Your thinking seems self-contradictory to me. On the one hand, you seem to acknowledge the existence of evil in some objective sense, saying that such evil is

Your thinking seems self-contradictory to me. On the one hand, you seem to acknowledge the existence of evil in some objective sense, saying that such evil is rampant in the present time, yet you rule out the use of objective morality to evaluate our past actions. Do I have that right? If so, then I think you'll find that you have little in common with most commenters here. If you reject the premise that Britain's treatment of Turing was objectively wrong, then the rest of debate will be unfruitful.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago
You're asking me about the existence of ultimate truth. That's a little above my pay grade (although it doesn't stop lots of folks from attempting it!) I'd rather put it like this: according to the best I know, Turing was treated unfairly. I do not believe it is moral to treat somebody this way. (Morals, to me, are inherently personal) Looking at my own life, I find things that I feel are immoral to me yet I allow them to happen anyway: modern slavery, the narcotizing of our youth with technology, or genocide. When I see things in the past that I find reprehensible or immoral, the interesting question to me is: how did moral and ethical people at time feel about this? Why was it allowed? It seems that understanding these people for who they were -- warts in all -- is to respect them and try to understand them. The moment I step back and start applying my values totally to another age, I stop individualizing the people who lived there. They become puppets or cartoons for me to lionize or demonize depending on my personal values. Take Jefferson and slavery. Jefferson is one of my heroes -- he lived very close to my house, and I admire his thoughts and works. He was the brilliant author of the DOI, and more importantly, the Virginia Declaration of Human Rights. Yet at the same time he allowed slavery -- kept slaves, in fact. There's even proof that he sired children by his slaves. What to make of that? Was he a genius? An evil slave-holder? The truth is that he was person, who lived in his times and did the best he could. He knew slavery had to go yet couldn't figure out for the life of him how things would change eventually. He once compared slavery to holding a rabid wolf by the ears: you don't dare hold on to him, but you don't dare let him go, either. Looking at these conflicts in people is how we identify and learn from what happened. It gives history depth, and it give us a little humility. Looking back through history, and applying just a little bit of that humility, it seems totally obvious to me that a hundred years from now people are going to be doing the same to our generation. And I don't like it. The things I've done that are immoral I did for what I thought to be good reasons, likewise these folks with Turing. The people of this age, both good and bad, deserve our respect because that's the way we want to be treated by future generations. It's not a matter of being right or wrong. It's a matter of all of us being human, and respecting each other for it.
- nate_meurer 17y ago
  So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I submit that there's a much greater cultural distance from modern England to modern Pashtun Afghanistan than to England of fifty years ago. Would you say that we should withhold judgement when an Afghan woman is beaten or murdered for leaving her house alone? You say that Jefferson was "doing his best". I think you chose Jefferson to make such a statement as easy as possible for yourself. I don't believe that the people most responsible for Turing's fate were "doing their best". I think they knew they were doing something wrong. I think that the Taliban know that blowing up girls' schools (and the girls) is wrong. This is why I say you lack a common moral foundation with supporter of an official apology to Turing. I say that it's wrong, always and everywhere, for a man to be hounded to suicide for his sexual orientation. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? (that's largely a rhetorical question; I'm well aware that there have been two millennia of debate over absolute ethics, but for me this issue is clear as day). EDIT: Grammar-- damn this vanity.
  - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
    So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I think you've reached exactly the opposite conclusion from what I am trying to say. I'm saying that we have a obligation to apply our standards as a group to other cultures in the present age -- much more so than to people who aren't around to defend themselves. If you believe that Jefferson knew he was wrong then I envy you -- you live in an age where you understand what is truly moral and those in ages past did not. It must feel good (and I'm only being a bit sarcastic here) to feel so free of ambiguity and nuance when it comes to reviewing other people's lives. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? If you truly are interested in preventing immoral things from happening in the future, wouldn't your best course of action be to identify and confront those things you find immoral in the present day that nobody does anything about? Why go beating up folks who aren't around? There's so much actual bad stuff, does it make you feel better to lionize Turing and demonize his tormentors than to actually stand up against, say, the violence against Tibetians? Or slavery in the Arab world? Or genital mutilation in Africa? When you start dealing with modern morals, you find that it gets tricky very quickly: to make a difference you have to navigate all of this stuff between you and effective action. Yet to deal with some historical injustice it's very easy: find the good guy, find the bad guy, and make some kind of symbolic statement. Odd that you can't see that the very difficulties you face today in being moral were also faced by those in the past. No matter how right or wrong you are about things, unless you're actually changing something it's all so much whining. Turing is a good example of somebody we can rally around and feel good about supporting -- he had a great mind and was treated terribly. But our reaction is all just so much fluff. It's modern morals: change your lightbulbs to CFI, write a check to a charity and leave the heavy-lifting to somebody else. Just not my cup of tea. I think if they want to Knight the guy that's a completely different thing, and it sounds like a great idea. Just not so much the navel-gazing and symbolic and empty self-flaggelation.

DanielBMarkham 17y ago

You're asking me about the existence of ultimate truth. That's a little above my pay grade (although it doesn't stop lots of folks from attempting it!) I'd rather put it like this: according to the best I know, Turing was treated unfairly. I do not believe it is moral to treat somebody this way. (Morals, to me, are inherently personal) Looking at my own life, I find things that I feel are immoral to me yet I allow them to happen anyway: modern slavery, the narcotizing of our youth with technology, or genocide. When I see things in the past that I find reprehensible or immoral, the interesting question to me is: how did moral and ethical people at time feel about this? Why was it allowed? It seems that understanding these people for who they were -- warts in all -- is to respect them and try to understand them. The moment I step back and start applying my values totally to another age, I stop individualizing the people who lived there. They become puppets or cartoons for me to lionize or demonize depending on my personal values. Take Jefferson and slavery. Jefferson is one of my heroes -- he lived very close to my house, and I admire his thoughts and works. He was the brilliant author of the DOI, and more importantly, the Virginia Declaration of Human Rights. Yet at the same time he allowed slavery -- kept slaves, in fact. There's even proof that he sired children by his slaves. What to make of that? Was he a genius? An evil slave-holder? The truth is that he was person, who lived in his times and did the best he could. He knew slavery had to go yet couldn't figure out for the life of him how things would change eventually. He once compared slavery to holding a rabid wolf by the ears: you don't dare hold on to him, but you don't dare let him go, either. Looking at these conflicts in people is how we identify and learn from what happened. It gives history depth, and it give us a little humility. Looking back through history, and applying just a little bit of that humility, it seems totally obvious to me that a hundred years from now people are going to be doing the same to our generation. And I don't like it. The things I've done that are immoral I did for what I thought to be good reasons, likewise these folks with Turing. The people of this age, both good and bad, deserve our respect because that's the way we want to be treated by future generations. It's not a matter of being right or wrong. It's a matter of all of us being human, and respecting each other for it.

nate_meurer 17y ago
So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I submit that there's a much greater cultural distance from modern England to modern Pashtun Afghanistan than to England of fifty years ago. Would you say that we should withhold judgement when an Afghan woman is beaten or murdered for leaving her house alone? You say that Jefferson was "doing his best". I think you chose Jefferson to make such a statement as easy as possible for yourself. I don't believe that the people most responsible for Turing's fate were "doing their best". I think they knew they were doing something wrong. I think that the Taliban know that blowing up girls' schools (and the girls) is wrong. This is why I say you lack a common moral foundation with supporter of an official apology to Turing. I say that it's wrong, always and everywhere, for a man to be hounded to suicide for his sexual orientation. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? (that's largely a rhetorical question; I'm well aware that there have been two millennia of debate over absolute ethics, but for me this issue is clear as day). EDIT: Grammar-- damn this vanity.
- DanielBMarkham 17y ago
  So are you the kind of person who says we shouldn't try to apply objective moral/ethical standards to other cultures in the present age? I think you've reached exactly the opposite conclusion from what I am trying to say. I'm saying that we have a obligation to apply our standards as a group to other cultures in the present age -- much more so than to people who aren't around to defend themselves. If you believe that Jefferson knew he was wrong then I envy you -- you live in an age where you understand what is truly moral and those in ages past did not. It must feel good (and I'm only being a bit sarcastic here) to feel so free of ambiguity and nuance when it comes to reviewing other people's lives. If we can't have any kind of objective foundation, what hope do we have of stopping this from happening in the future? If you truly are interested in preventing immoral things from happening in the future, wouldn't your best course of action be to identify and confront those things you find immoral in the present day that nobody does anything about? Why go beating up folks who aren't around? There's so much actual bad stuff, does it make you feel better to lionize Turing and demonize his tormentors than to actually stand up against, say, the violence against Tibetians? Or slavery in the Arab world? Or genital mutilation in Africa? When you start dealing with modern morals, you find that it gets tricky very quickly: to make a difference you have to navigate all of this stuff between you and effective action. Yet to deal with some historical injustice it's very easy: find the good guy, find the bad guy, and make some kind of symbolic statement. Odd that you can't see that the very difficulties you face today in being moral were also faced by those in the past. No matter how right or wrong you are about things, unless you're actually changing something it's all so much whining. Turing is a good example of somebody we can rally around and feel good about supporting -- he had a great mind and was treated terribly. But our reaction is all just so much fluff. It's modern morals: change your lightbulbs to CFI, write a check to a charity and leave the heavy-lifting to somebody else. Just not my cup of tea. I think if they want to Knight the guy that's a completely different thing, and it sounds like a great idea. Just not so much the navel-gazing and symbolic and empty self-flaggelation.