- #106
Les Sleeth
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dschouten said:Les Sleuth . . . (s)he (gender unknown to me)
If you click on my name in any post you'll see my profile where there are a couple of clues about my gender .
dschouten said:However much this is true, it should be realized that, more often than not, the extent of the foundation for these preachers' morality is not the limited scope presented in this forum, but an even more foundational institution: religion. If you are to accept that God created the universe, and that God decrees certain standards of living, it would only seem completely natural for these "moralizers" to preach the divine decrees even in areas of personal freedom. "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial", and if the preachers believe something now permissible to be detrimental, preaching against it is the only moral thing to do.
I understand why the religious preach morals, but that doesn't mean they are serving the best interests of humanity to do so. I also think it's "natural" for a man to preach domination over others (given our hormones and evolutionary history), or for a communist to preach materialism, etc.
Also, I don't accept that God decrees certain standards of living. As far as I can tell, religous morality stems from men speaking for God, and that arrogance is another reason why morality preachers turn a lot of people off.
You might surmise I've had some contact with preachers, and you'd be right. I was raised in a fundamentalist family, and exposed to copius amounts of moralizing by some of the biggest hypocrites I've ever encountered. Now, among those religious was a very old woman who stood out as an exception to me. She didn't preach morality, but instead exhibited love. We had a talk when I was 11 years old after I decided I was going to hell because there was no way I could live up to all the commandments. Sher impressed me when she said, "if you live in the experience of love and sincerity, then you don't have to worry about the commandments . . . love and sincerity will make you perfect."
Today I look at people who preach morality, and mostly what I see are religious "behaviorists." They want to "behave" correctly, but too often without the heart of it present -- love and sincerity.
dschouten said:Besides, Mill's perspective - that in areas of purely individual concern each person is to be granted total autonomy - is in my view flawed in its very premise: there are no areas of purely individual concern. Consider, if one member of society corrupts him or herself, then society is itself corrupted. A healthy society is a society comprised of healthy individuals, and health here is not used in the purely physical sense.
Maybe so, but that doesn't mean people have the right to dictate personal morality to others, and it also doesn't mean that preaching it is going to do anything other than cause people to turn a deaf ear.
In my former professional life I used to work in a field called organization development. In team building (say with a manger and his/her team) we would, as expected, work on techniques which helped team members coordinate their actions. However, to create a strong team, even more important than learning the skills of teamwork was to get members voluntarily committed and even enthusiastic about team efforts. How is that done?
Well, you can't preach the "needs" of the team or the "rights" of the team, and get genuine, heartfelt commitment. The only way (except in emergency situations) to get true commitment is when participation in the team satisfies individual needs. People are not motivated long by "shoulds" or "should nots" or guilt or even high ideals if working toward them doesn't pay off with personal satisfaction fairly soon.
Consider another example. The question posed for this thread was if the morally right are most often victors in war. If we consider the trend of all of history, then at this point the answer is yes. But a big part of the reason we have cooperated with other countries, fought so hard, and believed so deeply in our cause (all of which we did better than our enemies) is because of how much we didn't want to return to the conditions of earlier times. In those times, it was the individual who was oppressed. If you compare life under any of the conquerors, dictators, etc., it was individual needs which were sacrificed for the goals of those in power. This is why communism does not and will never work. It is a system which doesn't understand the importance of satisfying individual psychological needs.
It might sound like I am agreeing with your statement, "A healthy society is a society comprised of healthy individuals." I do as an overall principle; what I disagree with is that morality is the way to psychological health. Moral philosophizing and mere behavior doesn't satisfy very deeply, and therefore will never (in my opinion) "work" to create a healthy society. Rather, it is when a person has opportunities to participate in self-empowering and beneficial activities that goodness is experienced, enjoyed, and which then entices a person back for more.