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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   30443 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 18, 2024

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Society has to pick and choose whose safety to prioritize in this instance

Prioritise the safety of whoever is in more danger.

it should come down hard on the side that's doing what its supposed to do.

And where will you stand when the leopards eat your face? When someone bigger and stronger than you decides that something about your life, that contravenes no legal code in the jurisdiction, is 'not doing what you are supposed to do', and that he is entitled to suppress it by force?

Consider Thomas More:

And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – Man’s laws, not God’s – and, if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

A transwoman, in existing publicly while appearing as the gender opposite that associated with her genitals at birth, has broken no law of Man (at least in North America or Western Europe); do not cut down Man's laws against assault, lest you call up that which you cannot put down.

Prioritise the safety of whoever is in more danger.

This is just slave morality.

The strongest argument for it, actually. If the only proposition made by Sklavenmoral were that 'the weak ought to be protected from the strong', and the only proposition made by Herrenmoral were that 'the strong ought to be able to do to the weak whatever they feel like', the former would be called 'morality' and the latter by the sort of words discussed in the 'Taboo vocabulary' category on Language Log.

The strongest argument in the other direction, on the other hand, is their respective attitudes towards those who Accomplish things, such as ending the almost-nine-year gap during which America Could Not Into Space.

(cf. Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman, Astral Codex Ten, July 2024).

I don't find the proposition that the argument in favor of the the weak is self justifying convincing at all.

There have been plenty of successful societies throughout history that considered such a principle to actually be evil. And I don't see their arguments as any less self serving.

Why should we acquiesce to ressentiment? Why ought the weak be protected from the strong.

Divine command maybe the only argument I can actually contenance for this position, and even then God (the one of Abraham) is weary of weakness as an animating principle and gives not a command to submit all ressources and efforts towards it but demands the weak be shepherded by the strong. Establishing a specific subsidiary position where the weak's concern may not jeopardize the operation of all of society.

Calling it "just slave morality" is not enough to be able to dismiss the argument out of hand.

I feel like invoking the name of a well known characterization of this position from one of the most influential philosophers of all time, one that explicitly explains why it's vacuous, self serving, and ultimately ill fated for both its advocates and targets; if feel like that's enough to dismiss the argument actually.

Which is to say. Self serving moralism of this kind has never and will never be an argument. And in as much as it is, it can be easily refuted by opposing to it the no less vacuous statement that the weak should fear the strong.

Now when can we move past these childish power games and attempt to integrate people in a mutually beneficial compact?

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