This feels like exactly the kind of justification you accuse others of undertaking. "We do things because we want to do them. There’s no point in attempting to find a consistent morality. So whatever I want to do is ok, as long as I can get away with it. "
It’s an excuse to wallow in self-indulgence and nihilism. The society that brought you forth has a claim on you as well—it birthed you, provided the framework that allowed you to grow, thrive, and receive pod training. That debt means that the kind of self-indulgent ‘do what I want to do’ you’re espousing is itself an attempt to dodge responsibility. And society’s claim is one of the lenses through which we can view ‘morality’: actions which achieve the most good for the most people while inflicting the least suffering, depredation, and oppression.
Is that really how it is these days? Way back during the first burns it certainly wasn’t, the casualties in people were much higher. Crews on bumped freighters would simply panic and didn’t know what to do, running for it when the freighter itself was hit, which is way too late.
It was, you know, one of the selling points of the event - the panic, the reactions of everyone when they realized that this is really happening. The conspiracies they came up with to justify why it is happening were glorious.
A lot of people did not accept that we were doing it to just do it. They had to slap a label on it - it was a crusade against HiSec. It was to manipulate the markets so the Cabal would get filthy rich.
Your right, it is exactly the same justification, my sense of morality is subject to the exact same failings as any other, I simply recognize and acknowledge that fact.
You also provided me with some fairly good examples of why a universal morality cannot possibly exist.
You claim that the society that birthed me has some sort of claim on me, or that some obligation is owed. while I dispute that fact, since while you are correct that I am who I am today as a result of the society I was raised in, for every person who turned out like me, there are billions who did not.
This means that, assuming for a moment that some obligation may exist. Either I am an intentional consequence of society, in which case it is also terrifyingly ineffecient at achieving those goals, and my obligation should be to continue exactly as I am doing in order to not waste whatever conflux of events created me.
Or I am an unintended consequence of society, in which case why should I hold any obligation if I came about by pure accident.
As for your other point, i never said that we are motivated by pure self-indulgence, or that the wellbeing of others can never factor into our decisions. Simply that morality should not be used to create an obligation to behave in a certain way. If an evil act committed under duress does not make you an evil person, then how can a good act done out of obligation ever make you a good person? This means that any system of morality that forces you to behave in a prescribed manner can only strip away the meaning from anything beneficial, and create room for atrocities to be committed and justified.
I advocate for choice, as free from moral constraints as possible, yes I do good things but I do them because I choose to, not because I need to. I’ve also done some pretty horrible things as well, but those where also my choice, I was not compelled to do them, and I am responsible for whatever consequences may come from those.
yes, that is a moral stance, yes it has all the same failings as any other, and yes I recognize that it can never be applied universally, which makes it ultimately exactly as pointless as any other.
So, if we leave aside the little stuff, it seems like you’re not wrong, Mr. Tyrson.
So, I guess, welcome to the abyss. Most cultures and even individual people try very hard to stay out of it. And, it’s hard to blame them: it’s not a very pleasant place to be, is it?
A couple of questions to maybe ask:
“Do I want to suffer?”
“How can I avoid suffering?”
(@Diana_Kim I did notice who you were addressing your remarks to, mostly, and I’m not ignoring you. Mr. Tyrson’s comments just make a good jumping-off point.)
If there were a war, a great war, a war so great that only 100 humans were left alive at the end of it, then that war would be the most positively moral thing in all of history — if only all of those 100 people were Amarr and all subhumans everywhere were wiped off the universe. God’s will, perfectly triumphant; evil, utterly defeated.
There is only one moral compass, and that is the will of God. Body count by itself means nothing.
and then those 100 who remain would quickly fracture into various sects, and wage war upon each other for being less righteous than them, until in the end only 1 would remain. but I suppose, when all other life in the universe has been extinguished, the last remaining being could claim to have the one and only true morality.
It’s a function of time, Trii. These things have been going on for the better part of a decade. Miniluv uses the exact same ‘Mach-bumper to keep the freighter from escaping while the fleet forms’ tactics all year 'round.
If, by now, freighter crews aren’t being trained to GTFO when the bumping starts… that’s not on us.
That’s true, billions didn’t. So what? Those billions were influenced in different ways by subtly different conditions, including ‘are they genetically compatible?’ To think that you weren’t formed by your environment just because other people were formed differently by their subtly different environment (example: YOU didn’t have a you in your environment. The people around you did) is just more self-serving arrogance—insisting that you have to be different and special because you’re you.
If we are an intentional consequence of society, we’re certainly not the only consequence society intends. To say that it’s terrifyingly inefficient at achieving… us… would imply that producing us is what the whole rest of society exists to do. That’s just patently absurd. Society, like life, primarily exists to continue its own existence. And most of society’s efforts go in that direction. We are just one of countless additional potential ‘intentions’. So why should society be striving for efficiency in producing what amounts to disposable trash?
And even if we’re not intentional, if we’re an unintended consequence… that doesn’t mean you were any less dependent upon society for your existence. Everything you were came from them. It’d be like saying a child was conceived without the parents expressly trying somehow doesn’t owe those parents for its very existence. Just because they weren’t specifically trying to have a child doesn’t mean they didn’t bear that child, rear that child, provide for that child.
Yeah, you did. You maybe just don’t realize that that is exactly what ‘We do things because we want to do them’ means when you follow it down. Why do you do ‘selfless’ things? Because you want to do them. You’re indulging your desire to maintain a positive self-image. It’s all self-indulgence. You do good things because you choose to… which means doing them is an inherently self-serving action. You’re doing it because you want something. You want to like you.
You still have to choose to follow that system, each and every time you do. That choice, then, carries all of the weight and meaning that you choose to ascribe to it. There is no greater meaning, no higher purpose. And atrocities happen more readily when the only system you acknowledge is ‘I do things because I want to do them’.
I sort of consider it in the Capsuleer era that humans are just ants to us. Everyday in real life, you probably walk to your mailbox and who knows how many creatures you stepped on in your way. Maybe you notice the one or two and you’re either the guy that goes out of his way to step on it or go around but you might inadvertently crush insects along the way.
I would caution against looking down at our fellow man simply because they lack our aftermarket hardware. Our technology may make us feel as God to baseline men and women, but that is all it is, technology. We are not bettered as men and women by it, if anything, we have lost by its implantation.
Elsewhere in the cluster, trillions upon trillions go about their daily lives. Children are born, the old inevitably die, couples love and separate, work is done, work is avoided, and sometimes no further than the very town in which they were born. Yet theirs is often a vibrancy of life we can forget when we begin to think of our lives as a renewable resource. Perhaps they are not blessed with our perceived immortality, but our society as capsuleers actively erodes that love of life which we were blessed with on our birth.
I would not pity them so completely, certainly I would not ignore them. I would walk among them, and though some might call that an incredible risk, through them we regain the sense of what makes us human to begin with, and recall with humility our fragility. How piteous we would be, to feel we had ascended to godhood when we are naught but more efficient and durable processors hiding from ‘ants’ in the lonely shells of our ships.
To be clear, Mr. Tyrson, I am actually interested in your answer to those questions I asked. They’re not rhetorical in the traditional sense, though of course I do have some answers in mind.
And this is one of those big reasons why the delusion that we are anything but disposable copies of dead people, each replaced in turn by another, fresh out of the box, is so dangerous. We’re not immortals. We not greater than or above baseliners.
We’re their trash. Mass-produced, generic, and easy to replace. Rich Darine’s dead? Get another Rich Darine out of the vat, he’s too stupid to even know he’s not the same one.
Except I don’t think i’m anything special, I’m just one of a billion who happened to get lucky, through being in the right place at the right time, having the right pressures placed on me, a little bit of genetic lottery, and here I am. same as everyone else in society ending up where they are, through good luck or bad. So again, that brings us back round to the point, why should we have any obligation to that society, if the end results are by and large, completely random as to where we might end up?
And if this is the case, and society isn’t pro-actively trying to create anything out of us as individuals, why should us as individuals have any particular obligation to that society. note, i am not saying that we should never try and better that society or that we should tear it down or anything stupid like that. simply that our choice to engage with and improve whatever societies we live in, should be based on our personal choice to do so, regardless of our reasons why. not some rather arbitrary moral obligation.
yes… everything we do, at the end of the day, is for some form of self gratification, regardless of if you want to admit it or not. You clearly feel very strongly about your role in society, likely because by performing that role you feel a sense of fulfillment, meaning, and belonging. that itself is self-gratification, regardless of how you try and dress it up.
That does not however mean that the wellbeing of others can’t also be important to us, the two things are not mutually exclusive, even going beyond the sense of altruism that helping people can generate. The wellbeing of others both directly, and indirectly impacts our own wellbeing.
Yes, precisely, so if ultimately it just comes down to you making a choice to do something or not, based on your judgement in the moment, then what purpose does some sort of greater morality actually serve other than to over-complicate matters with technicalities and debates about relative good etc. or to discount the actions of others based on nothing more than their perceived motive?
Sorry for missing it, they really did seem quite rhetorical.
For the first one, it seems fairly obvious, of course not, I don’t think anyone TRULY wants to suffer, even those followers of some more extreme religous beliefs or people who enjoy a bit TOO much slap and tickle in the bedroom. They are still getting more out of it than what they are enduring.
Which I should probably clarify, suffering, at least in my mind, is not merely pain, or struggle, or effort expended. but the measure by which through your pain and effort you can see a positive return.
As to the second question, the avoidance of suffering. by and large I think that may be out of our hands, since suffering is something we rarely inflict upon ourselves, well aside from mental and emotional suffering, but those are your own damn demons to fight, i got enough of my own, but i’ll let you know if I figure out any tricks.
external suffering though is something most often inflicted upon us. So i’d say the best way to avoid suffering, is to position yourself in such a way that no one else ever has the opportunity to inflict it upon you.
Hee. Well … I won’t quibble with your definition at least right now. Suffering’s one of those things that probably doesn’t need to be broken down into specifics; it seems like kind of a cardinal direction, experientially. (It pretty much defines “negative.”)
The approach to avoiding it you suggest sounds a lot like the approach the Sabik generally take: become so strong as to be untouchable. But … it tends to treat people like we’re all necessarily in it for ourselves. Unless you’re someone who can really set yourself apart like that, it’ll always be possible to hurt you-- and trying to put yourself in that kind of untouchable position seems likely to create a lot of motivation to do just that.
But, what if we take it the other way?
As you noted, probably nobody really wants to suffer. So what if instead of trying to be untouchable and causing a lot of misery in the process, we approach the whole situation with a kind of existential courtesy? Try not to make others suffer more than we need to, in exchange for which we expect they’ll return the favor?
That’s kind of the root idea of stuff like community and civilization-- a network of connections, however strained they sometimes get, where people make a practice of not harming one another, and band together against those who don’t follow the rules.
Of course it gets messier than that, and probably nobody ever escapes suffering completely. But we can keep it to some kind of minimum by trying not to do worse to each other than the world will do to us.
Only …
… there are so many of us: people, not capsuleers necessarily. Interests don’t align very well; we keep getting in each other’s way. People have different ideas about how to live, how to think, what to believe, and the tensions between people can build terrible pressure and cause shockwaves.
… people get crushed.
But we can try not to be a cause of more, try to behave in ways that will smooth the tapestry of this world so that the suffering doesn’t get worse.
That’s my idea of moral behavior. It’s subjective, but it’s based on a shared condition: we’re alive, and can suffer. If I don’t want to suffer, I should have the courtesy not to make others suffer, either, lest they reflect their suffering back on me.
Easier said than done. I’m a capsuleer, a combat pilot, a killer. That’s my place in this society. I’m a source of a lot of misery, but there’s still stuff I can do. I try to be considerate of my crew; I try to understand my enemy’s perspective and see their humanity, so as not to hate them; I try not to be a source of more conflict. My idea of a perfect kill is one the target doesn’t have time to fear.
I try to cultivate stillness in myself, to move with the world and not against it. I try to be a consequence, not a cause.
There is no one morality in this world, nor justice, and the only true laws are the ones that can’t be broken. But what we do, what kind of world we build, will matter to us.
Because they’re not. They’re random within a range, and that range is largely determined by your society.
To have a clear framework you can use to inform your decisions in the moment. This minimizes the chance for an impulsive moment that works against the way you generally want to behave, and provides you with a lens through which you can examine complex decisions that aligns with your longer-term goals for yourself.
your not wrong here. and perhaps I should have been more clear.
When I say, put yourself in a position where it is difficult for anyone else to do you harm or bring suffering to you, I did not mean to imply that it was something you needed to do alone.
Societies and groups built upon mutual aid and support are perfectly fine, ideal even. although they are often difficult to form.
I am well supported by arguably one of the 3 most powerful coalitions of pilots in the cluster, and within that larger alliance I have a closer circle that I can rely on more. but I am under no illusions as to the fact that we are only held together so long as we are all gaining a benefit from it.
Acceptance that people are primarily driven by self interest, in one form or another, does not mean you cannot work together with other people, it simply means that if you want to gain some sort of benefit from someone else you should make sure that you can provide something in return. even if that is simply the sense of satisfaction they get from assisting you.
Getting back to the original topic though, our own personal moralities are exactly that, personal, there can never be any universal standard of morality even if some partial consensus can be reached among a relatively small group, As such, trying to project our personal moralities on other people is particularly useless at best, and potentially destructive at worst.
Once you really strip away all the trappings, all the morality, all the religion, we are all just people, making the choices we believe are best in that moment, for good or for ill. the reasoning behind those decisions are entirely personal. and each of us will either agree with, or disagree with the choices of others, based on equally personal and subjective factors, and base our response accordingly.
Trying to judge the actions of others, or even ourselves, by some arbitrary moral standard seems rather pointless
I can find absolutely nothing to disagree with here. that is your personal code, and I can respect that.
so… a mixture of self restraint, long term planning, critical thinking skills, and some cost-benefit analysis. not sure why you need to bring concepts such as right and wrong or morality into the equation.
and when circumstances change? what happens when the kind of person you aspire to be is no longer practical, or even desirable, do you shift your morality to match the new circumstances? or do you cling to them even at your own detriment?
if its the former, and your morality is mutable, then whats the point in even having it as opposed to simply trying to do the best that you can in any given circumstance?
if its the latter, then doesn’t it present more hindrance than benefit?
Then you owe it to yourself to think long and hard about whether you should remove yourself from those circumstances. But without that framework, it’s easy to not realize that your actions and reactions in the moment, are moving in a direction that you would not want them to, with some distance to consider your course.
then once some distance has been attained, and the circumstances have changed, you make different choices. I have never yet met a single person who ever makes the wrong choice intentionally, even if we later realize that there was a better course that we could have taken, for whatever reason at that exact moment we couldn’t see it, or where unable to capitalize on it. which means it was never ACTUALLY an option for us.
Setting up some artificial standard of what we “should” have done, or “could” have done, just seems like a good way to drive yourself mad with doubt and regret over choices made in the past when they don’t stack up.
or, even worse, to justify those mistakes so that we are more prone to making them in future.