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Marcus Scribonius Curio wrote:Draco: This is because there has been a shift in moral behaviour. It was common among some reptilian species to cannibalise on sickly young or the crippled or old (The Deinonychus, for example). 2000 years ago, it was common practice in some areas to expose unwanted babies at birth. In some Inuit tribes, it was common to push a no-longer-useful member of the community out to sea and let them die alone.
Nowadays, however, it is common knowledge that the welfare state, good healthcare and pensions are all essential for the growth of the modern population.
Marcus Scribonius Curio wrote:This is both a cause of and a result of increasing liberalisation, and the moral pendulum has swung the other way. This is why we might feel morally compelled to do things that, on reflection, have little effect on the survival of the species; because the desire to increase the population of our species has resulted in the use of moral justifications for actions that do so, and this has resulted in a certain sympathy towards members of the same species, most especially those who no longer pose a direct threat to you; (hence a person at their deathbed).
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:Purely biologically, this is not the case. For example, one of my two grandmothers is unemployed, mentally ill and totally useless to society. Her productive relatives would be better off if she died and her money and possessions passed on to them, yet this doesn't happen.
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:Purely biologically, this is not the case. For example, one of my two grandmothers is unemployed, mentally ill and totally useless to society. Her productive relatives would be better off if she died and her money and possessions passed on to them, yet this doesn't happen.
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:Your first paragraph seems to corroborate more with what Piscinus and I are saying (ie that morality has changed over time), rather than going in against us. Or wasn't that the point?
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:If I may,
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:I find this argument rather weak. If you stay at a person's deathbed as in the case I described, you will most likely feel genuine compassion. Again, this can only come from within, it cannot be imposed. Although a person may be molded into moral behaviour by both social pressure and genetic coding, the morality I've described goes well beyond that and as such, I find it hard to accept that as an excess or justification of a system. Human beings don't usually go at great pains to do this.
Gnæus Dionysius Draco wrote:Still, the morality I describe is not completely useless. True compassion flows forth from understanding how the human psyche works, or just seeing through an individual. This is the result of the fact that knowledge is power - and anything you know about someone, increases your potential power over them. But perversely, as you emotionally get through to the core of another human being, compassion will inevitably grow, because you know that you and 'that other person' are more the same than you are different. And as such, this at once fits nicely into this whole genetic fate theory and at the same time goes beyond it.
Marcus Pomponius Lupus wrote: If you would have picked me up at birth and switched me with an Inuit baby, then, following your earlier example, I would now find it normal to push old men and women out to sea. My Inuit counterpart, however, being raised here, would not be very fond of the idea. So I don't think DNA has much to do with it.
Marcus Pomponius Lupus wrote: However, what I think Price seems to be claiming (if I understood it correctly of course), is that the need for morality (in whatever form) comes from our DNA. And, realizing that the form of morality is ever changing, he was disappointed that there was no universal, higher morality.
Marcus Scribonius Curio wrote:
As I said to Piscinus, I'm not denying that morality itself has changed, I'm merely suggesting ... that the moral imperative itself will remain unchangeable, and that imperative will be the need to survive as a species.
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