Tolerant / Intolerant

[Rachel Swirsky]

I don't really want to vear off and go there, but both of those things have a direct and relevant impact on society as a whole and on each person in it.  (In the case of abortion, for instance, we have about 45 million fewer people under 30 in the US than we would have had without it.  Quite an impact, on everyone.)

This is false. In every thread about abortion I've ever seen come up on blogs where women are able to actually talk about theier experiences, they talk about the kids they had later *because* of their abortion. Plenty of people are able to talk about only being born because of abortion -- because their mother didn't have a kid with person X that they were dating when they were 20, the mother was able to get into a more stable situation and have two or three kids that wouldn't otherwise have been born with the man she eventually married.

Abortion rates have been relatively static through time. When abortion was illegal, it was still practiced at about the same rate as before Roe v. Wade. The pattern of abortion was different -- women were more likely to have the kids they wanted, and then start aborting later fetuses, rather than aborting first and having the kids later -- but the rate of abortion has remained relatively stable. It just used to be more likely to kill the woman.

So, if anything, the effect on the population is to have is more living and non-mutilated women.

[Rachel Swirsky]

If there are no victims, there is no crime.

I actually don't believe they should be prosecuted either.

However, I doubt this statement of reasoning would hold up as an absolute.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong -- I really think I may be -- but when you say socialism doesn't work, don't you mean communism doesn't work? Democratic socialism certainly seems to work. Sweden = works.

[ClintMemo]

If there are no victims, there is no crime.

I actually don't believe they should be prosecuted either.

However, I doubt this statement of reasoning would hold up as an absolute.

For an example of a crime with no victim: attempted murder.  I tried to shoot someone, but my aim was bad.  I would say that I still committed a crime.

[DKT]

But in that case, trauma (at least of a psychological nature) is still being inflicted (or attempted) on an actual person. 

I don't like the situation in Germany but I can see where Steve and palimpsest are coming from.  I'm not sure I completely agree but the arguement they make is pretty compelling if there's no victim.  It still makes my stomach clutch up, though.

[Mr. Tweedy]

Too many posts here to respond to everything, but here's a try:

In fact, I'd love to get your opinion on Steven Levitt's research correlating Roe vs. Wade with a precipitious drop in nationwide urban crime in the past 30 years.  Statistics indicate that access to legal abortion has likely made the country much safer.   (It sounds extraordinarily callous, but the demographics are pretty clear: all of those people who don't exist?  The vast majority of them would have been racial minorities, in poverty, undereducated, with very little opportunity for advancement.  And that means crime and violence.)

I think you should really take a step back and consider what you're saying here.  Do you really think that arbitarily eliminating whole demographic groups is a good way to control crime?  By that logic, the safest street is one with no people at all.  You should also consider the nature of the judgement you are making by saying that these missing people wouldn't have ammounted to anything anyway.  Do you really think it's right to make such an extreme and sweeping judgement on the value and potential of a life based upon race or the circumstances of birth?  Think about the implications here.

You can only tolerate that which you dislike or disapprove of. If you enjoy or approve of something, then terms "tolerant" and "intolerant" have no application.

Right on.   An important point, and well made with your examples.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." What does that mean, exactly?
Literally it means that if I want someone to give me $1000, I should give out $1000. That would be morally correct.
It means that if I want someone to compliment me, I should compliment them. That would also be morally correct.
It means if I like beer, I should buy one for my friend, even if he doesn't like beer or doesn't want to buy me one. Still morally correct.
It means that if I want to see my wife have sex with my best friend, I should have sex with my best friend's wife. Still morally correct.
The golden rule, taken as an absolute, is not black and white. The golden rule does nothing to consider the desires of others and can swiftly become a very selfish ideal.

This is really kind of silly.  This is the same kind of logic that says, "Mom told me not to punch or slap my sister, but I can still kick her."  Applying any rule or principle requires intelligent analysis of the situation and adaptation to it.  It requires an active mind.  The person in your examples is acting like a thoughtless computer that blindly follows a program in useless loops.

If we are to apply the Golden Rule, then we must use our intelligence to determine what specific actions are required.  I enjoy having generosity shown to me, therefore I should be generous.  I like people to be honest with me, therefore I should be honest with others.  A legalistic, tit-for-tat approach like the one you outline is both impossible and foolish, and it isn't what the Golden Rule means.

That said, I maintain that it is black and white.  The person is your examples is in the wrong: He is subjecting those around to irritating and injurious behaviors for the sake of his own egotism.  He wouldn't want someone else to treat him that way.  To follow the Golden Rule, he should buy his buddy a beverage the buddy actually wants.  He needs to use his intelligence to determine how the Rule applies in the unique situations he finds himself in, just as with any rule or principle.

How is morality relative?

What one person thinks is immoral may not be what another person thinks is immoral

But isn't that the whole idea of morality?  Different people have different opinions, but morality transcend those opinions and gives everyone a common standard.  If morality is merely a matter of individual opinions, then "morality" means nothing at all.  Morality that does not apply objectively is not morality at all.

-------

Leaving it there.  (In theory, I'm at work right now.)

[DKT]

*snip*
If we are to apply the Golden Rule, then we must use our intelligence to determine what specific actions are required.  I enjoy having generosity shown to me, therefore I should be generous.  I like people to be honest with me, therefore I should be honest with others.  A legalistic, tit-for-tat approach like the one you outline is both impossible and foolish, and it isn't what the Golden Rule means.

That said, I maintain that it is black and white.  The person is your examples is in the wrong: He is subjecting those around to irritating and injurious behaviors for the sake of his own egotism.  He wouldn't want someone else to treat him that way.  To follow the Golden Rule, he should buy his buddy a beverage the buddy actually wants.  He needs to use his intelligence to determine how the Rule applies in the unique situations he finds himself in, just as with any rule or principle.

How is morality relative?

What one person thinks is immoral may not be what another person thinks is immoral

But isn't that the whole idea of morality?  Different people have different opinions, but morality transcend those opinions and gives everyone a common standard.  If morality is merely a matter of individual opinions, then "morality" means nothing at all.  Morality that does not apply objectively is not morality at all.
*Snip*

I think the issue is the "black and white" comment.  I don't think we can agree 100% on morality the way we can on mathematics.  That's the problem.  Maybe, we can come to a majority consensus on killing, rape, etc (and there are some cultures that don't necessarily except these morals, I might add).  But the real problems with calling morality black and white comes when we get to other issues like abortion or gay marriage.  One person believes one thing  and another disagrees.  That's why these are hot topics.  Therefore I don't think it's black and white, because there is no absolute consensus the way there is for 2+2=4.  And I don't think there will ever be, not in this life anyway. 

[Mr. Tweedy]

In every thread about abortion I've ever seen come up on blogs where women are able to actually talk about theier experiences, they talk about the kids they had later *because* of their abortion. Plenty of people are able to talk about only being born because of abortion -- because their mother didn't have a kid with person X that they were dating when they were 20, the mother was able to get into a more stable situation and have two or three kids that wouldn't otherwise have been born with the man she eventually married.

I hate to be dismissive, but that is pure speculation.  There is no way to accurately tell what would have happened if an abortion (or any other event) had not taken place.  45 million missing people is not speculation: It's a fact.

[ClintMemo]

I hate to be dismissive, but that is pure speculation.  There is no way to accurately tell what would have happened if an abortion (or any other event) had not taken place.  45 million missing people is not speculation: It's a fact.

Assuming that 45 million abortions = a population of 45 million less is a massive oversimplification - by your own statement.

[ClintMemo]

How is morality relative?

What one person thinks is immoral may not be what another person thinks is immoral

But isn't that the whole idea of morality?  Different people have different opinions, but morality transcend those opinions and gives everyone a common standard.  If morality is merely a matter of individual opinions, then "morality" means nothing at all.  Morality that does not apply objectively is not morality at all.

One opinion "transcending" another sounds like a euphemism for "forcing it on those who disagree."

Everything outside of mathematic is subjective in some way because everything not mathematical is based on someone's views, values or opinions.
Therefore, morality is subjective.

[ClintMemo]

Applying any rule or principle requires intelligent analysis of the situation and adaptation to it.  It requires an active mind. 

so to misquote a movie - "it's not really a rule, more like a guideline."

That said, I maintain that it is black and white.

A black and white rule that requires my active mind to properly interpret based on the situation? That's about as self-contradictory as you are likely to get.

[SFEley]

I hate to be dismissive, but that is pure speculation.  There is no way to accurately tell what would have happened if an abortion (or any other event) had not taken place.  45 million missing people is not speculation: It's a fact.

Name your source, please.

[SFEley]

I think you should really take a step back and consider what you're saying here.  Do you really think that arbitarily eliminating whole demographic groups is a good way to control crime?

I'm not suggesting it as an action plan people should discuss and then adopt.  I'm saying that there is statistical evidence that it happened, as an unintended consequence of a large number of individual decisions.  No single woman said "I'm going to have an abortion to control crime."  But many women had abortions as an alternative to having children they didn't have the resources to care for, and as a side effect, urban crime has been on the decrease.

I'm not advocating abortion here.  I happen to consider it weakly unethical.  (I explained my theory of "strong" vs. "weak" ethics in a different post some while back; I don't have the energy to go into it again.)  But if you're going to argue against it on pragmatic social grounds, as you attempted, there's a more complex picture painted than a simple "It's devastating society."  Very little in this world has consequences that are purely good or purely bad.

But isn't that the whole idea of morality?  Different people have different opinions, but morality transcend those opinions and gives everyone a common standard.  If morality is merely a matter of individual opinions, then "morality" means nothing at all.  Morality that does not apply objectively is not morality at all.

My main observation here is that you seem to be using a definition of "objective" that is awfully...  Well, I was going to say "subjective" just to be symmetrical, but "selective" is probably more like it.  What is this objective source that should, in theory, be keeping the entire human race on the same page?

And please don't say "the Bible."  It cannot possibly have escaped your notice that different people have different ideas of what the Bible means (there have been wars and movies about that too), nor that there are moral creeds in it that nobody takes seriously anymore.  There's plenty of death and slavery and racism and sexism and sheer bloody-mindedness in the Bible, alongside the love and the goodness and the wisdom.  Not to mention that the contents of the Bible itself were decided by committee in a highly political process many centuries ago.  To say, "Yeah, but we've picked these good bits as the ones that are important" -- is that really being objective?

(If that's not where you intended to go, then my apologies for the presumption.  I was just hoping to save some time.)

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not anti-religion, at least as a generality, and I'm certainly not anti-morality.  I like people with strong ideas of morality.  I like people with strong ideas of good behavior, who live by those ideas and are good toward other people, regardless of where those ideas came from.  The danger is when that conviction leads to hubris, and to believing that one has all the answers for everyone.

[Mr. Tweedy]

Name your source, please.

Centers for Disease Control.  Here's a graph from Wikipedia showing CDC statistics:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Number_of_Abortions_in_US.jpg

Average a little more than 1 million legal abortions per year since Roe v. Wade, which was 35 years ago, makes a little over 35 million abortions.  So, to be more accurate, I will ammend my statement and say "between 35 and 45 million missing people."  (Pardon if I engaged in a slight exageration.)

[Mr. Tweedy]

Replying to SFEley (I don't want to waste space quoting everything from his last post),

I had not gone so far as to advocate a particular source of moral authority or even a specific system of morality.  What I said was that if morality does not apply objectively to everyone in every situation, then is meaningless and there's no point even having a word in the dictionary for it.

Take a moral principle like "be tolerant."  If it is a moral principle, then everyone must be tollerant all the time, and if they are not they are acting immorally.  If one is free to be tollerant or not as one pleases on any given day, then it isn't a moral principal at all and it doesn't make any sense to talk about violating it.

Or take the principles that guide our discussion here on this board.  We are to be repectful to one another and not insult and call names.  But if we acknowledge circumstances in which it is okay to call each other names, then the principle of respect is meaningless.  If I were to start tossing out racist epithets or saying everyone who disagrees with me is a Nazi, the moderators would be all over me for breaking the rules, and a plea that "the rules are subjective" would fall on deaf ears.  A law that can be broken at will is not a law in any relevant sense.

So I say that subjective morality is not morality.  We can argue for or against the validity of morality or of moral systems.  We can say "Religion-X has a bad moral system" and we can say "morality is bunk," but we can't say morality is subjective: That moots the concept.

[SFEley]

I had not gone so far as to advocate a particular source of moral authority or even a specific system of morality.  What I said was that if morality does not apply objectively to everyone in every situation, then is meaningless and there's no point even having a word in the dictionary for it.

I disagree with your basic premise, and I think you have failed to support it.  I think the tautology you present is a very naïve worldview, putting ideals ahead of utility.  Morality is not hard-edged and universal.  It is subjective and complex and fuzzy and murky and multi-pathed and occasionally barely there at all.  Yet it is still useful.  People can commit good in the world without agreeing with each other about what 'good' is.  They can commit good without even thinking about it.  We know this because it happens everywhere, all the time.  No one's ever come up with an absolute definition for good and evil behavior that can be universally understood and accepted without argument, yet somehow the human race muddles on, and even manages to moves forward more often than backward.

I respect that you want to act well.  I respect that you act upon your principles, even if I disagree with some of them.  But you are not presenting a real argument here.  Western philosophy is centuries ahead of you on this; I would suggest an overview.  (In your case I would recommend starting with Kierkegaard.  I think you'd like him.) 

Meanwhile, I for one am going to continue to use the word 'moral' without feeling like I have to be in agreement with every other human being about its usage.  I will make a best effort to use it -- and act upon it -- appropriately as I see fit.  My goal is to make the world better, as I see it, more often than I make it worse.  Not perfect, but better.

As an aside, but not a total non sequitur, this is also exactly the way I approach the word 'love.'  I don't have to agree with everyone else about what it means; I just have to make a best effort to use it properly as I see it, and to do good with it.  Love and morality have an awful lot to do with each other.

[Rachel Swirsky]

I happen to consider it weakly unethical.

Just FTR, I consider the belief that abortion is weakly or strongly unethical to be, itself, weakly unethical.

[Heradel]

Morality is probably the most personal thing a person has, because it is with that morality that they view the world. Now, that person could believe that their morality is a universal morality and that everyone should act according to theirs. But they don't.

Moral relativism is just accepting the fact that Bob thinks that graffiti is art, Susan thinks it's all crime, and Roger thinks that it can be art (Banksy vs. the kid scrawling their name or a gang name on a wall).

~~~~~

As to the abortion sidebar: I've got a well-paged Freakonomics on my bookshelf, and the point is that the potential mothers know if they can raise a child well at the time, and if they don't think they can, or can't afford to, then they abort. So it's potential moms deciding if they could be good moms, and choosing to abort based on that measure. Some give the kids up for adoption, but if every woman/couple that got an abortion tried to do that... well, the state would probably go bankrupt.

Look, no one likes abortion. Making it so that less happen by teaching proper sexual education is a necessary and morally right thing to do. That doesn't mean abortion is morally wrong. I think it's a good tool and that needless pontificating over it's morality skips over the fact that it's often the best, or only, option. I certainly think it's better than having a child you can't take care of. Or end up abandoning.

[Rachel Swirsky]

Abortion is a moral good.

http://pandagon.net/2007/02/22/time-to-open-up-the-overton-window-some-more-abortion-is-a-moral-good/

[Michael]

There are three separate conversational threads here:

1. Tolerance, and it's evolution over time
2. Morality
3. Abortion

I think I could split the thread to separate Tolerance out from "morality and abortion" but I can't disentangle the messages between topics 2 and 3, which is a problem, as topic 3 never goes anywhere and just gets everyone upset. 

Could I suggest a reframing of the discussion to consider other aspects of morality besides abortion?  I fear if it continues down the path it is on this very interesting threads will degenerate and become locked.

[Mr. Tweedy]

I agree that this is getting convoluted and muddled.  Topic 2 I think would make a good start to a new thread, if anyone's still interested, and topic 3 was mostly a tangent, but I think this is a great place to get back to topic 1, because we now we have a good case study: This thread.

I think this thread has been a good illustration of (my idea) of tolerance.  There has been a lot of disagreement, and lot of opposing viewpoints, but everyone has been allowed to speak and everyone has been listened to.  We have not agreed.  We have not acknowledged that our viewpoints are all equal.  Far from it: SFEley thinks my viewpoints are “naive” and he “disagrees with [my] basic premise.”  He thinks I’m totally wrong, but he has allowed my to continue posting.  He hasn’t tried to get me kicked off or used mockery to shut me up.

To me, this is what tolerance looks like, and it’s great.  We disagree, but we respect each other enough to let each other speak, and we are not so arrogant as to refuse to listen.  And we don’t engage in the intellectual dishonesty of pretending to agree when we do not.

I think this whole discussion has been a demonstration of tolerance from all parties.

Any thoughts?

[SFEley]

I think this whole discussion has been a demonstration of tolerance from all parties.

Any thoughts?

I'll go with that.  Good point, Mr. Tweedy.

[Rachel Swirsky]

Yes, there are various points of view which, in themselves, are intolerant.

It is intolerant and bigoted even to believe that interracial couples should not get married. It's racist, pure and simple. Racism is not tolerant.

Men who believe that women just don't have a head for science are intolerant of women; whites who believe that black people just aren't as smart as whites are intolerant of minorities (and massively compensating); people who believe it's acceptable for homosexuals to be fired because of their orientation are intolerant of gays.

Don't confuse tolerance with civility. It is possible to say "All women are liars" without using swear words, but it's still a deeply offensive and intolerant statement. I am not required to respond to basic attacks on my humanity, or the humanity of others, with "tolerance."

[Anarkey]

I think this thread has been a good illustration of (my idea) of tolerance.  There has been a lot of disagreement, and lot of opposing viewpoints, but everyone has been allowed to speak and everyone has been listened to.

I don't know, taken as a statistical sample of the Escape Pod forum posters, there's an extremely narrow slice of people posting in this thread.  I would hardly jump up and say "Yay! Everyone's expressed their viewpoints! And we all listened! We're so tolerant and fabulous!"

Now, there can be any number of reasons why people didn't post on this thread:  maybe people don't have opinions, couldn't care less about the topic, don't come here to try to have discussions on the nature of morality, have had an exceptionally busy couple of weeks, etc.  It's even possible people felt their views would not be tolerated, and didn't express them for that reason.

Still, I find it troubling to have you stand up and announce, "Yay everyone who had an opinion expressed it," and move forward patting everyone who posted on the back because I don't buy the bulk of people on this board have no opinion on the topic, and the bulk of people have not expressed their point of view thus far.

So no, not going with this thread as a wondrous good example of tolerance just yet.

[ClintMemo]

Yes, this thread is an example of tolerance, but only because it is run by benevelent dictators. If this were a pure democracy, those with unpopular opinions would be voted out and their immoral opinions would be suppressed.   Ironically, that would leave the majority with no one to argue with.

Seriously,
You and I have equal ability to express our opinions in this forum.  That is a Good Thing.
Obviously, we disagree on some issues.
However, I don't feel as if I have to "hallow" or give "reverence and respect" to your position.  I don't feel I have to "change [my] beliefs to match [yours]." or "alter my morality, my religious beliefs and my view of my own sexuality in subservience to [yours]."





 

[Rachel Swirsky]

What Anarkey said.

Which is part of what I was suggesting in my comment, although not all of it.