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From: laura@utcsstat.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Catching up
Message-ID: <1561@utcsstat.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Dec-83 15:36:06 EST
Article-I.D.: utcsstat.1561
Posted: Thu Dec 15 15:36:06 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Dec-83 16:00:49 EST
References: <678@qubix.UUCP>, <6384@unc.UUCP>, <6304@watmath.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Toronto, Canada
Lines: 149

	Assuming we know can classify a controversy into terms of
	right/wong, should we refrain from imposing our morality
	because we are afraid that we could wind up under someone
	else's legislated morality ? Isn't this moral cowardice ? The
	downside of legislated morality has already been well
	represented, so I won't discuss it.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I think that you have missed the
whole point. Ideally one should know whether an action is right or
wrong -- but in practice it does not work out that way.  The set of
things that people can agree on as being morally wrong is very small --
murdering people, beating your kids, for example but on a day to day
basis moral decisions are rather tough.

It is not moral cowardice to allow someone to do something which you
think is not what it best for him. The effort required to trust that he
should be allowed the right to mess up his own life in his own way is
often very great.

What I do find cowardly is the infinite capacity which some people have
to take freedoms away from others in order to make themselves more
secure. I don't like snakes, so let us have a zoning law which will
keep my neighbours from having them as pets. I think prostitution is a
bad thing, so let's make a law against it. and so it goes...

What are you left with? A list of taboos and regulations which give the
illusion of security. You aren't secure, after all, since the laws do
not prevent crime, but rather give you something to do with the
criminals when you catch them.

You feed the insecurity of the people by giving them this phony sense
of security -- but deep down the people know that they are not secure,
and so they agitate for more laws since they believe that they will
make them more secure... The worm is trying to swallow his own tail
again.

The problem is that people are not secure. You can actually fix that
problem (for instance, a strong faith in the mercy of God can do this)
but not by forcing more laws. Indeed, this makes the situation worse,
where the object of the game becomes "do what I can do without getting
caught". Thus there are no laws against lying or gluttony or envy or
depression, though these are all personal and moral problems which need
addressing in certain individuals, while "cracking into systems is not
wrong because there is no law against it"... You see what happens?
People look to the laws for their morality, and for security, rather
than inward. But that is where you are going to find both security and
morality... We are thus teaching people not to be moral and to be
insecure through our insecure efforts at imposing a morality and
security on others.

The other underlying assumption is that "if it is moral for me to do X
then it is also moral for you to do X, conversely, if it is immoral for
me to do X then it is also immoral for you to do X". This is the myth
of one absolute justice, which is what our legal system pretends to.
The problem is that the immorality is not in the action itself 'as in
RAPE IS IMMORAL', but in the person who is so derranged that he would
commmit an immoral act. Absolute justice
is only a very crude approximation of the real world. Because
divorce is legal does not mean that everyone should get a divorce. It
may be immoral for certain people to drink alcohol (for instance if
they know that it makes them violent and liable to hurt someone) but
that does not mean that *everyone* should be prevented from drinking
alcohol. If you left this to personal choice, everything would have a
better chance of working out -- unless you believe that man is so
inherantly sinful and evil that they would not strive to do the right
thing as they muddle along through life.

If this is your conception, then the argument has to stop right here,
because there is nothing I can say to you which will convince you
otherwise. By the same token, there is nothing that you can do which
will convice me that this is the case. Stalemate.

	    To change the subject somewhat, a comment on how
	    governments give laws on a utilitarian basis: doesn't
	morality "work" ? If immorality affects the moral climate of
	our society, it will surely affect our actions towards each
	other.  Why shouldn't it be legislated ?

See above.

	It seems that there is a hidden presupposition behind the
	arguments to the contrary; namely that morality is relative,
	and undecidable.

This depends on what you mean by relative. It is clearly decidable,
since people make moral decisions all the time. You may question
whether they made the correct decsion or not, but that is the "what's
good for the goose" propostition, which I do not believe.

	I think the real issue on legislating morality vs traffic laws
	(a straw man if I ever saw one) is that of degree not a
	difference in kind.

Not a straw man. Why do you have traffic laws? Because it is more
convenient to drive if eveyone goes the same way. There is no question
of whether the US is right and England is wrong (except for fun in
net.misc).

In the same way, the set of useful laws are useful because they convey
basic information which people are wondering about. Don't kill people.
Don't steal from them. It is not as if all humanity is a mass of awful,
uncontollable, vice-ridden demons who would go out and rape and murder
and pillage unless there were laws.

of course, the usefulness is lost when you cannot read the laws because
they are in legalese and because they fill a book equal to the size of
the Toronto telephone book. Nobody is going to read it.

And having laws which keep people from gambling because they make other
people feel more secure, or which keep people from owning chickens and
keeping snakes in the city or doing a million other things is not a
difference in degree, but kind. Useful laws give people information
that they would like to have in order to make moral decisions. Bad laws
prevent people from making moral decisions because the moral thing for
them to do was not the moral thing for the law-maker at the time when
the law-maker thought that it would make a useful law.

	*Loving your neighbour* can be applied to legislation as well,
	along with teachings on respect for others, significance of
	human decisions and freedoms, etc.

Nope. You cannot force me to love you. This is a popular misconception
which ranges from "Thou shalt love your God with your whole heart" to
the poor man who keeps trying to do things for his sweetheart to make
him love her, through to the advertisers that claim that you will be
well loved by typical seductuous female if you buy product X. This is
just not feasible. The best you could hope for is to legislate the
appearance of love for one's neighbour. But then, this is a continent
that thrives on appearances rather than substance. We are not
materialistic, alas, we care not for the materials and build shabby
products that fall apart and cardboard tasting vegetables and fruits
which are WAXED to look delectible.

On the other hand, you could come up with a set of guidelines on what
most people are like and what is likely to be viewed as disrespectful,
with the caveat that all people are not like this.


	By the way, not only religions sacrifice victims. What about
	the sacrifice of the poor to economics, the technologically
	obsolete to the imperative of high-tech progress, young people
	to national prestige, or the unborn to freedom without
	responsibility ?

These are problems. Alas, I get the feeling that you think we need laws
to handle them. We are back to the worm swallowing his tail...

Laura Creighton
utzoo!utcsstat!laura