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DOING THE RIGHT THING ISNT EASY
Restrictions during the pandemic have tested people’s obedience and resolve. It has resulted when groups with opposing value systems have clashed. When people are forced to adopt values against their beliefs, they feel dishonest and fearful, especially when their views are ignored.
Individuals relate their views to others’. Those who believe in a religion have often have a ready-made morality but there has been a decline in divine faith. With belief in the rational laws of physics growing, the philosopher Kant was torn between religion and rationality. He compromised, wanted people to do only what they would allow others to do, calling it the ‘categorical imperative’. The philosopher John Stuart Mill wanted personal liberty to be constrained by laws that had been agreed.. Rousseau propagated a social contract of liberte’, egalite’ and fratenite’ to control individual behaviour. All this made ‘the right thing’ harder for individuals to do.
Doing the right thing and benefitting others does not come to animals naturally. Charles Darwin had individuals seeking to survive in nature, helping kin sometimes, by selfish actions and by exploiting others. In evolution theory, altruism with individuals sacrificing their genetic inheritance to benefit others’ genes and volunteering to make sacrifices for others’ benefit, was confined to group selection, or kin. Our concern here is with ‘doing the right thing’ by strangers.
Humans have used politics to compromise and reconcile differences with strangers. Where one group is requested to help another, some individuals in both groups may regard the help proffered as a social control, causing frustration, passive resistance, protests, anger, civil disobedience and even insurrection. Venting does little to appease differences in core beliefs and rebels may strive to overthrow the system by force.
Large groups of humans exhibit The Matthew Effect, with individuals trying to join the most numerous groups. When a herd is spooked, it may be intolerant of those who don’t do what to them is the right thing. There is a sizeable industry of media trying to instigate groups to lemming-like rushes, inevitably towards cliffs with unpleasant outcomes.
A difficulty is to distinguish the voices of reason from false prophecy. There may be differences of principle that can only be solved by debating. Instead of productive discourse, the sides may engage in identity politics, which increases hostility. Some groups may think they know best and if they can get the upper hand, they will impose their solution on everyone. It could be that those people who extol the virtue of ‘doing the right thing’, without saying what it is, nor why everyone has to do it, are the problem.
I have applied the above in adopting a moral position on climate science in my satirical novel Animal Farm 2
ON USA ELECTION EVE IS SELFISHNESS WORSE THAN LEVELLING?
ON USA ELECTION EVE IS SELFISHNESS WORSE THAN LEVELLING?
Not according to philosophers Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson. They regard self-responsibility for family, kith and kin as paramount. It does not deny the need to care for others but opposes collective responsibility, socialist levelling and altruism. Attitudes are entrenched, for example in Britain’s class system, illustrated in the photo from a Montepython skit.
It has taken a long time and many social experiments to forge minds of modern men and women. Aristotle regarded our ultimate end as happiness, by virtuous living, which existed in a mean state between excess and deficiency. Prodigality was excessive, stinginess deficient, but liberality was virtuous. Selfishness would have been excessive.
John Stuart Mill acknowledged that individual freedom, of which selfishness is an aspect, has to be limited in the interests of the community. Nietzsche saw individual achievement as daring to oppose and endure hardships, such as social inhibitions, by the exercise of an iron will. It was the apotheosis of selfishness and when demonstrated by Hitler and Stalin, wilful selfishness lost popularity.
Simone de Beauvoir regarded freedom as requiring respect for others’ freedom, as if selfishness had a responsibility to others. The notion of ‘selfishness’ encapsulates a priori individualism and opposes collectivism without implying a dearth of social responsibility.
Individualism has levelling as a secondary concern, with the social problem being the have nots, rather than the haves, who are derided as selfish. Selfishness, in these terms, is therefore better than levelling, because self-care does not make claims on others’ responsibility and care.
This issue could be resolved by individuals taking responsibility for and helping disadvantaged persons, rather than by labelling others’ behaviour as selfish or needing to be levelled.
What is your view?
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ELDERLY SUICIDE BOMBERS
Different animal communities have evolved sharing between age groups of different responses to external threats. Elderly individuals commonly oppose attacks with their deaths.
Termites live in mounds and can be invaded by other termites or encounter infections. There are castes that perform different tasks for the community: queens and drones for reproduction; soldiers for defence; water carriers; workers. Generally, younger individuals do lower risk tasks, protected in underground chambers, feeding larvae and tending fungi gardens, where wood is digested in some species.
Older individuals are not as effective at nurturing larvae or nest maintenance and work outside defending against foreign species in high risk situations. Their mandibles have worn with age and cannot be sharpened by moulting. They carry toxic swollen pouches in their abdomens, like backpacks, holding copper-containing blue crystals. When attacked they explode and the enemy is showered with toxic chemical excrement. After grooming to remove harmful organisms, they cannibalise cadavers, unless they are infectious and buried.
https://www.nature.com/news/termites-explode-to-defend-their-colonies-1.11074
http://www.martinknox.wordpress.com
Elderly Termites are sent into Battle.
ELDERLY SUICIDE BOMBERS
Different animal communities have evolved sharing between different age groups of responses to external threats. Elderly individuals commonly oppose attacks with their deaths.
Termites live in mounds and can be invaded by other termites or encounter infections. There are castes that perform different tasks for the community: queens and drones for reproduction; soldiers for defence; water carriers; workers. Generally, younger individuals do lower risk tasks, protected in underground chambers, feeding larvae and tending fungi gardens, where wood is digested in some species.
Older individuals are not as effective at nurturing larvae or nest maintenance and work outside defending against foreign species in high risk situations. Their mandibles have worn with age and cannot be sharpened by moulting. They carry toxic swollen pouches in their abdomens, like backpacks, holding copper-containing blue crystals. When attacked they explode and the enemy is showered with toxic chemical excrement. After grooming to remove harmful organisms, they cannibalise cadavers, unless they are infectious and buried.
https://www.nature.com/news/termites-explode-to-defend-their-colonies-1.11074
http://www.martinknox.wordpress.com
