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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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So master morality in the end optimizes for the things you own, which means celebrating actions that we consider immoral. Because that is often the fastest way to own as much stuff as possible. Fair enough.

What I really want is not to bring that back then; What you describe seems like society would be regressing by centuries. Instead, I want to hold people and institutions to some kind of standard. Celebrate the people who put in effort, look down on those who do not. Surely that much is possible. In that case, what is needed is for society to agree on a new moral system. One that incentivizes effort and celebrates success and beauty, while still punishing those who gain wealth by trampling others.

So master morality in the end optimizes for the things you own, which means celebrating actions that we consider immoral. Because that is often the fastest way to own as much stuff as possible. Fair enough.

That is not what I said. Certainly master morality is not mostly about "stuff"; even "resources" are not merely about "stuff" -- time is a pretty major one as well, for instance. And you can't define "master morality" in terms of "actions we consider immoral" because that implies a shared morality. You can say that master morality celebrates some actions slave moralities would consider immoral, but that's not very informative.

In that case, what is needed is for society to agree on a new moral system. One that incentivizes effort and celebrates success and beauty, while still punishing those who gain wealth by trampling others.

This is certainly a common ideal of a moral system. Doesn't seem to be very popular in the real world though. It's attacked on one end by those who think some trampling is fine, and far more successfully on the other by those who argue that all wealth and beauty and success is gained by trampling others, and therefore success itself is immoral. And of course the relativists who deny the existence of objective, or even common standards of, beauty.