From Teddy's blog: "Hunting, Service, Necessity -- I was thinking about Silliman's idea of the moral imperative to educate ourselves on the plight of others and help when we can in connection to the neccessity defense some hunters evoke. Obviously, in country like ours, it is not neccesary for the vast majority of people to hunt to survive. This is true of developed countries all around the world. If we can agree that eating animals is morally wrong, do we have some sort of obligation to help those who eat meat to survive to find alternatives?"
DKJ responded: "I think we do. Principled opposition to morally suspect practices (meat-eating, hunting, FGM, etc.) obliges us to educate and assist others who might not be fully aware of or have access to other options."
I responded: " But isn't such a move 'interrupting' their moral development? If their culture is not to the point that it's developed a language for morality, then our words will have no meaning. Providing food, period, would mean more than shifting their culture so dramatically."
One of the discussions that we had in Moral Relativism was about the language of morality -- if one society does not have a language about morality, then to tell them that this or that action is morally wrong will, in effect, fall on deaf ears. So wouldn't it behoove those of us who have this language to let the other societies develop one on their own? (If we push the point of morality, and the language thereof, at what point does it stop being a moral act and become an tyrannical one?)
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3 comments:
Good questions. (I didn't mean to leave the discussion prematurely; I simply lost track of that particular blog/thread.)
You write:
"But isn't such a move 'interrupting' their moral development? If their culture is not to the point that it's developed a language for morality, then our words will have no meaning."
I question whether any such culture exists. However, assuming that we find one (and recognize it as a human culture), I suppose we might try nonlinguistic forms of communication.
You also write:
"(If we push the point of morality, and the language thereof, at what point does it stop being a moral act and become an tyrannical one?)"
Though it will not doubt depend in part on contextual detail, I would say generally when we graduate from persuasion to coercion, and often from suggestion to (physical) force.
dkj
You write: "I question whether any such culture exists. However, assuming that we find one (and recognize it as a human culture), I suppose we might try nonlinguistic forms of communication."
What do you mean by 'recognize it as a human culture'?
I shall ponder the move from persuasion to coercion some more. There's something that isn't sitting right with me, but I can't put it to words.
*thinking*
*light bulb flickers*
...my dissonance is a product of my cultural upbringing. Morality cannot be shoved down people's throats, because it will not be accepted, nor fully digested. And yet, we do not understand any other way of getting people to act correctly, other than a system of legalistic morality. Do this, or else. We know that it's wrong, or at least not the most correct way of going about things... but, at least they're (ostensibly) acting correctly. <--- Virtue in appearances.
So if the 'hands on' approach is wrong, why is the 'hands off' approach just as wrong? What's the right method -- one hand on, one hand off?
I mean only to reinforce my conviction that no human culture exists entirely lacking a language of morality. (Therefore, if I'm wrong and such a beast were to exist, it may not be recognizably human.)
The literal "hands-off" approach; that is, persuasion free of physical coercion, is not wrong (in fact, obligatory). Of course, I understand that persuasion can be vigorous or robust, bordering on either coercion or what might resemble a "hands-on" approach to ethics. Perhaps in life or death situations that is permissable or even obligatory as well.
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