Ethics Gradient

[nameandnature]

lisekit has a discussion on novels, religion and relativism in religion. She says that, where religion is concerned, she doesn't like to say that anyone's views are more or less valuable than anyone else's. This set me thinking about the idea of relativism in general (which lisekit isn't advocating, lest I accuse her of it, as she mentions respect and tolerance as moral virtues).

I seem to have been brainwashed by Neal Stephenson into believing that strict relativism is undesirable because it does not work. If you cannot say one thing is better than another, the only sin left is hypocrisy (and, perhaps, intolerance :-) In a sense I'm a relativist, since I don't believe in absolutes imposed by a deity, but in another sense, that of refusing to say that one thing is better than another, I am not. In morality, say, I advocate things which I believe will lead to a society which I hope will be a good one for myself and people I care for. In religion, I would like to see well-reasoned disagreement between people who do think their viewpoint is the right one but are prepared to learn from others. Better that than the pop-culture spirituality which accepts everything that feels good (poor Greg Egan's disgust for that sort of thing in Silver Fire makes me think he's forgotten what G.K. Chesterton said happens to people who stop believing in God). Stephenson again:

The only real problem is that anyone who has no culture, other than this global monoculture, is completely screwed. Anyone who grows up watching TV, never sees any religion or philosophy, is raised in an atmosphere of moral relativism, learns about civics from watching bimbo eruptions on network TV news, and attends a university where postmodernists vie to outdo each other in demolishing traditional notions of truth and quality, is going to come out into the world as one pretty feckless human being. And--again--perhaps the goal of all this is to make us feckless so we won't nuke each other.

On the other hand, if you are raised within some specific culture, you end up with a basic set of tools that you can use to think about and understand the world. You might use those tools to reject the culture you were raised in, but at least you've got some tools.

In this country, the people who run things--who populate major law firms and corporate boards--understand all of this at some level. They pay lip service to multiculturalism and diversity and non-judgmentalness, but they don't raise their own children that way. I have highly educated, technically sophisticated friends who have moved to small towns in Iowa to live and raise their children, and there are Hasidic Jewish enclaves in New York where large numbers of kids are being brought up according to traditional beliefs. Any suburban community might be thought of as a place where people who hold certain (mostly implicit) beliefs go to live among others who think the same way.
-- In the Beginning was the Command Line

(The rest of Stephenson's essay is a huge digression on technology and culture, seen through the lens of the Windows/Unix clash: it's well worth reading if you've an hour to spare).

I suppose I'm back to morality as enlightened self-interest again: the reason these people are inculcating their children in their particular culture is because those cultures work, and they want their children to be happy, fulfilled and all that stuff. There are cultures which don't, and I'll gladly preach the superiority of those which work over those which don't, as it's in my own interest to do so.

Comments

[lisekit.livejournal.com]

I suppose I'm back to morality as enlightened self-interest again: the reason these people are inculating their children in their particular culture is because those cultures work, and they want their children to be happy, fulfilled and all that stuff.

Yeah, that makes sese to me. Fluffity-lah.

I think the relativism only came into the discussion latterly - it began as one about tolerance. And it specifically began as an idea about how some people seem to be prepared to show tolerance and cultural sensitivity towards more foreign systems of tradition and belief - my suggestion was that people feel they absolutely don't understand and can't offer an op[inion - but appear to feel happy offering opinions left, right and right-of centre on religion at home in the (perhaps mistaken) belief that they understand this better.

Of course, then someone showed up on the thread to denounce all belief, which I is different to the case I had in mind, and I suppose shows a certain degree of internal consistency, but I don't think is a particularly engaging way to deal with other people.

And, as I commented at the very end, I'm not comfortable hierarchising one set of beliefs over another, although I accept that there are people who do.

[ex-robhu.livejournal.com]

I believe we should be tolerant of other peoples beliefs in the sense of not trying to forcibly change them (perhaps unless those beliefs lead to actions which have a strong negative effect on others [although I'm not sure about this]).

Toleration does not prevent us from trying to debate / argue with / convert those people to our own particular beliefs and way of thinking however. If we believe we have the truth and someone else does not then (depending on the scale of consequence of them not being 'right' in our view) if we really care about them we should try to debate / argue with / convert them.

Of course there are two sides to this - I know of (Christian) people who try to convert people in part because they care about them and don't want them to burn in hell but also because their church / denomination / cu has put a lot of social pressure on them to 'be evangelistic'; this I think is a bit of a shame.

I'm still hopefully that there is a truth out there which can be discovered, something that we can be certain of.

[andrewducker]

You can rationalise the whole 'better than' thing by remembering that "better than" has to be for a purpouse.

Word is better than LaTex for quickly knocking up a letter.
LaTex is better than Word for producing properly formatted large documents.

I am better than my friend Ed at maths.

But I'm not better than anyone in a general sense, because the phrase doesn't make any sense.