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PaperclipPerfector  3yr ago (text post)   30237 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 29, 2023

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Meantime we have learned the doctrine that evil means pain, and the revolt against pain in all its forms has grown more and more marked. From societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals up to socialism, we express in numberless ways the notion that suffering is a wrong which can be and ought to be prevented,

In fact vivisecting animals (one of the causes of the early SPCAs) is wrong and can be prevented. There's more to morality than "the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must".

Anything deviating from the obvious principle of

"the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must"

would do better to justify itself very well.

Would you rather live in a world where people make some effort to avoid unnecessary suffering, or one in which they don't? Not going to complain if you disagree, but I find this is more than enough justification.

That was a quote from (the dramatization of) Athens' treatment of the neutral Melos during the Peloponnesian War. The war ended with Athens' grand expedition destroyed, its fleets obliterated, its city sieged into starvation and disease, and its government replaced by the Thirty Tyrants.

One difficulty with acting like "the strong" is that it's easy to be wrong about that, and hard to learn you're wrong about it until too late.

Well, yes. I've read old Thuk, and I agree with the Athenians there and with your note regarding this stance. But it's my opinion that the quote requires no justification, being very obviously true, whereas anything running counter to it does require justification, since it contradicts something obviously true.

The point is that a banal statement about animal interaction doesn't necessarily allow you to deduce every human moral precept, many of which run directly contrary to the 'laws of nature'.

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