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Long take I wrote on what sustains a cultures values and the dream of a "Dark Bill of Rights" that could be unalterable and untarnish-able, like the 1400 year long tradition of Sharia.
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Notes -
I have to say I’m on board with this, which is why I think the elites are so opposed to the idea of revelation and deontology as systems. People who have hard lines that will not be crossed are incredibly hard to manipulate into complying with things they disagree with. Religion is one way this happens and because of the firm belief in the Book (whichever book it happens to be) gives people lines that will not be crossed. A vague deism (or poly-deism) in which nothing about the religion is taken seriously (see liberal Christianity and gay rights despite the Bible) cannot do that because they don’t hold the text as inviolable or inflexible on those points. So when the state does something they don’t object.
It’s a huge point of respect I have for the Abrahamic Book Religions. They simply won’t give up on the main tenets. Jews and Muslims won’t accept the idea of compromise or shirk because they have the book and therefore you simply cannot violate the book and be a good believer.
Elites are opposed to deontology because from the outside, it looks like a stupid, close-minded reason to reject what should be a good deal. This is not specific to elites. It is the normal response of anyone outside a given deontology.
Resistance to manipulation is a subset of resistance to negotiation. In the abstract, great—one can respect that as a signal of belief. Practically speaking, that respect buys a certain level of tolerance. And such tolerance is inversely proportional to how much one is personally affected.
Well are you using "deontology" to mean "weird superstitious beliefs" or are you using deontology to mean "non-utilitarian thinking[1]"? If it's the latter, I don't see why that should be "stupid and closed-minded". There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of utilitarian ethics.
Torture vs. Dust Specks is one such case. But for a more practical example: statistically speaking, you're probably not an Effective Altruist, and if you are, you probably don't commit yourself to it as much as you could (please correct me if I'm wrong!). Unqualified utilitarianism places extreme demands on all of us to work to increase global utility (or preference satisfaction, or however you want to formalize it). If you think that people have any sort of right to choose their own life project, independent of the consideration of starving people on other continents, then you're using deontological reasoning. It's difficult to see how utilitarianism can account for a concept of rights or freedoms.
Maybe you would describe your own position as consequentialist but not utilitarian? But, that already seems like a sort of hybrid position to me. If you accept that there are counterexamples to strict utilitarianism, then you're committed to the idea that some things just matter independent of what the math tells you about net global utility. The only argument at that point is over specifically what things just matter, and how much.
[1] (Virtue ethicists might say that their position is neither utilitarian nor deontological but I think we can ignore that for now)
I’m using it in the same sense as M’aiq. Perhaps “revelatory” was the load-bearing word.
Insofar as “elites are so opposed” to, say, Islam? It’s not because they’re afraid of ubermenschen who can’t be manipulated. Rather, it’s because working with an opposing deontology is a pain. This is true whether or not one’s own ethics are utilitarian or even deontological. Deus Vult.
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