The greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing us that there is no objective morality. He did this by playing to our appetites: lust, greed, gluttony and above all pride. No one can tell me what to do, that’s just your opinion man.
What that means in practice is that truth is the opinion of powerful.
The truth about moral good, as that truth is declared in the law of reason, is practically and concretely recognized by the judgment of conscience, which leads one to take responsibility for the good or the evil one has done. If man does evil, the just judgment of his conscience remains within him as a witness to the universal truth of the good, as well as to the malice of his particular choice. But the verdict of conscience remains in him also as a pledge of hope and mercy: while bearing witness to the evil he has done, it also reminds him of his need, with the help of God's grace, to ask forgiveness, to do good and to cultivate virtue constantly.
Consequently in the practical judgment of conscience, which imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act, the link between freedom and truth is made manifest. Precisely for this reason conscience expresses itself in acts of "judgment" which reflect the truth about the good, and not in arbitrary "decisions". The maturity and responsibility of these judgments — and, when all is said and done, of the individual who is their subject — are not measured by the liberation of the conscience from objective truth, in favour of an alleged autonomy in personal decisions, but, on the contrary, by an insistent search for truth and by allowing oneself to be guided by that truth in one's actions.
Violence is the most effective behavior modification because it leverages pain. Every moral good has to be anchored to pain and its avoidance. Tit for tat is rational violence allocation. The golden rule has some "contrapositive" version right? I'll harm you in the way I should be harmed for bad actions.
Violence is an effective temporary behavior modification tool, people will in fact change their behavior in order to not get beaten by the stick. But the flip side is as soon as they get a bigger stick, the old behavior will be back with a vengeance. So the solution here is overwhelming violence. But then there’s clearly limits to that modifying behavior too (look at the Middle East for example).
Domestically, even with the threat of state violence (imprisonment), most offenders are repeat offenders, so how effective is violence really?
violence is a signal to offenders and non offenders. you cant only assess the effect on the direct targets of violence. if i spank my eldest, my youngest behaves better
I’m curious about your age. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person that was grateful to their parents for their beatings, and that was in any way close to them. I’m not claiming in any way that you beat your kids - but violence never creates virtue. Maybe public-facing good behavior at best, but below the surface is a lot of pain looking for a way out.
"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."
It's a long-standing trait of adulthood to be able to reflect and integrate the sometimes painful training of childhood as being necessary for producing the mindsets and behaviors of to function in society.
"most effective" requires a lot of justification. I think it's empirically false, personally. A system that uses violence to establish norms is fundamentally unstable because it lets whoever can muster the most violence set the rules---meaning people have an incentive to change the system for their benefit and everyone's incentivizes are pointing in different directions. Whereas a system whose behaviors are enforced by overall prosociality will find equilibria that are also generally prosocial and therefore will be defended by everyone, so their incentives point in the same direction, making it more stable.
Nor do I feel the need to, since my goal was only to present the obvious refutation to the (basically fascist) argument I was replying to.
Anyway both are self-evident: prosocial enforcement exists because we see it around us every day and stable prosocial systems are good because people pick them, given the choice.
In the above clip, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia mentioned the exact same example that the article mentions. That the Soviet Union’s constitution guaranteed many rights that the Soviet Union never actually gave to the people. He says this is because the Soviet Union had no mechanism to prevent the centralization of power. And when power was centralized into one man (Stalin) or one committee (the Politburo) then the true constitution was really whatever that man said or what that committee said.
So a good mechanism to guarantee freedom, liberty, human rights…is to ensure power remains decentralized and separated into various different groups
That Soviet constitution (like all communist movements that I know of) sounds utopian and unrealistic.
The American Framers, many coming from a worldview that saw humans as inherently sinful and corruptable, built as many safeguards into the system as possible to prevent that human nature from running unchecked.
A thought-provoking piece, albeit a depressing one, because we've been cooking for decades in the fetid juices of compassion-destroying propaganda (largely to support unfettered capitalism), and the diagnosis here suggests that trying to "uncook" society is impossible; some kind of lightning bolt would be the only salvation and I cannot imagine what that would look like.
I think the only thing that really works is to appeal from one's person. Had Mr L said: the flag is important to me, and draping it over yourself like that is something I find disrespectful, given how many peoples' lives were lost in defending it, please do not do that again---then it might have worked to change the child's opinions on the matter. Maybe not right away, cause kids are slow on picking up lessons, but I believe it would have made the opposite long-term impression.[^1]
Whereas the mis-use of shame just turns the child against the teacher and their whole system of values, even if momentarily 'corrects' the behavior. It would have worked if the child already shared Mr L's values, but they didn't, and shaming someone on the basis of a value they don't hold themselves doesn't work at all. And I think that usually the way ones learns values from others is by seeing them exemplified, since they can naturally identify the value of those values and how they benefit everyone. Being threatened does not work. Being admonished because you're hurting someone you didn't mean to hurt does.
There are some epicycles, also. The appeal to respect only works if the child is actually concerned with the teacher's feelings; it won't work if it takes place in an ambient culture of disrespect or apathy. And if the community insists that people be respectful to each other, then if the child continues to mistreat the flag, Mr L now has the legitimate grievance that the child is being disrespectful after knowing better, which is now personal, not in terms of an abstract and un-shared value, and is fair grounds for admonishment. I imagine that this always works a lot better for actually changing behavior and inducing people to treat each other well.
[^1]: I anticipate some people to react that this doesn't work at all in practice and is how we got to a culture of polarization, e.g. progressives moralized about being respected a lot and instead made enemies out of a lot of people who now don't want to respect them at all. I see this as different, because it was often actually using shame but under the trappings of asking for respect: instead of saying "please respect me because I am asking you to" it says "shame on you for not respecting me the way I demand", which is more like what Mr. L said in the story; the feeling that this is an unjust use of power triggers the recipient to turn against it. And anyway it would only work if you're in a respect-based society along with your counterpart; it's not going to work in anonymous unmoderated online discourse.
dionian | 13 hours ago
recursivedoubts | 12 hours ago
What that means in practice is that truth is the opinion of powerful.
And so we find it.
michaelsbradley | 12 hours ago
Consequently in the practical judgment of conscience, which imposes on the person the obligation to perform a given act, the link between freedom and truth is made manifest. Precisely for this reason conscience expresses itself in acts of "judgment" which reflect the truth about the good, and not in arbitrary "decisions". The maturity and responsibility of these judgments — and, when all is said and done, of the individual who is their subject — are not measured by the liberation of the conscience from objective truth, in favour of an alleged autonomy in personal decisions, but, on the contrary, by an insistent search for truth and by allowing oneself to be guided by that truth in one's actions.
— Veritatis splendor, 61, John Paul II, 6 Aug 1993, https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
overtone1000 | 12 hours ago
nh23423fefe | 12 hours ago
np- | 12 hours ago
Domestically, even with the threat of state violence (imprisonment), most offenders are repeat offenders, so how effective is violence really?
nh23423fefe | 9 hours ago
DougN7 | 4 hours ago
TrnsltLife | an hour ago
"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it."
It's a long-standing trait of adulthood to be able to reflect and integrate the sometimes painful training of childhood as being necessary for producing the mindsets and behaviors of to function in society.
ajkjk | 12 hours ago
nh23423fefe | 9 hours ago
ajkjk | 7 hours ago
Anyway both are self-evident: prosocial enforcement exists because we see it around us every day and stable prosocial systems are good because people pick them, given the choice.
nh23423fefe | 6 hours ago
ajkjk | an hour ago
ViktorRay | 12 hours ago
Separation of power.
https://www.c-span.org/clip/senate-committee/user-clip-scali...
In the above clip, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia mentioned the exact same example that the article mentions. That the Soviet Union’s constitution guaranteed many rights that the Soviet Union never actually gave to the people. He says this is because the Soviet Union had no mechanism to prevent the centralization of power. And when power was centralized into one man (Stalin) or one committee (the Politburo) then the true constitution was really whatever that man said or what that committee said.
So a good mechanism to guarantee freedom, liberty, human rights…is to ensure power remains decentralized and separated into various different groups
TrnsltLife | an hour ago
That Soviet constitution (like all communist movements that I know of) sounds utopian and unrealistic.
The American Framers, many coming from a worldview that saw humans as inherently sinful and corruptable, built as many safeguards into the system as possible to prevent that human nature from running unchecked.
peterclary | 12 hours ago
vkou | 12 hours ago
The project was... For the most part unsuccessful.
I don't think there is a cure. A society will be largely stuck in the rut that it's in.
ajkjk | 12 hours ago
Whereas the mis-use of shame just turns the child against the teacher and their whole system of values, even if momentarily 'corrects' the behavior. It would have worked if the child already shared Mr L's values, but they didn't, and shaming someone on the basis of a value they don't hold themselves doesn't work at all. And I think that usually the way ones learns values from others is by seeing them exemplified, since they can naturally identify the value of those values and how they benefit everyone. Being threatened does not work. Being admonished because you're hurting someone you didn't mean to hurt does.
There are some epicycles, also. The appeal to respect only works if the child is actually concerned with the teacher's feelings; it won't work if it takes place in an ambient culture of disrespect or apathy. And if the community insists that people be respectful to each other, then if the child continues to mistreat the flag, Mr L now has the legitimate grievance that the child is being disrespectful after knowing better, which is now personal, not in terms of an abstract and un-shared value, and is fair grounds for admonishment. I imagine that this always works a lot better for actually changing behavior and inducing people to treat each other well.
[^1]: I anticipate some people to react that this doesn't work at all in practice and is how we got to a culture of polarization, e.g. progressives moralized about being respected a lot and instead made enemies out of a lot of people who now don't want to respect them at all. I see this as different, because it was often actually using shame but under the trappings of asking for respect: instead of saying "please respect me because I am asking you to" it says "shame on you for not respecting me the way I demand", which is more like what Mr. L said in the story; the feeling that this is an unjust use of power triggers the recipient to turn against it. And anyway it would only work if you're in a respect-based society along with your counterpart; it's not going to work in anonymous unmoderated online discourse.