rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (05/02/86)
>>My fundamental example is Hitler's Germany. If more people had >>been trained to think logically, my theory is that Hitler's >>irrational doctrines would not have had such an impact. [Tedrick] > Of course, then Hitler would have been more logical, too. Whether > that would have made him more dangerous is another question. It is my > contention that Hitler's Germany lacked morality, not logic. [ELLIS] If Hitler had been more logical, perhaps he wouldn't have held the rather bizarre and damaging beliefs he held, and perhaps he wouldn't have had an overwhelming interest in his personal power and domination over a country and the world. The logic leads to the morality (though you disagree below...) > Many very logical people consider "self-interest" theories of morality > to be the most rational ones. Presumably, it is in one's self-interest > to avoid causing harm to others for fear of possible retaliation. But > what if it appears to be in the majority's self-interest to suppress the > minority and all possibility of their retaliation? IS such a thing ever in anyone's self-interest? If it appears to be in the majority's self-interest to suppress one minority today, mightn't it be believed to be in the interest of the majority some other day to suppress some other minority, potentially one that's ill-defined today that you might fall into? Have you ever heard of Pastor Niemoller, Michael? And his lament over his own failure to see this? (I always keep losing the exact text; it would be appreciated if someone would mail/post.) > Given Hitler's basic assumptions, his actions followed logically enough. > And Germany has had relatively high standards of education for a long > time. Personally, I do not think that Hitler's doctrines were vastly > more irrational than those I prefer. For example, I believe: > 1: All people are equal > 2: Only those points of view which advocate harming or suppressing > other people should be suppressed > Clearly, (1) is ridiculous in any scientific sense. (2) is blatantly > self contradictory. Yet I believe them, although I cannot support them > rationally. First of all, this only shows your failure to carry through with your efforts to support your doctrines. Actually, I disagree with the exact phrasing, though the sentiments reflect in general my own "doctrines". All people are not "equal", in any sense of the word "equal" that I understand, but all people should be able to expect fair treatment, wherein fair means that irrational prejudices and stereotypes or baseless emotional reactions should not be the basis for diminishing the way anyone is treated. And I don't consider the second to be self-contradictory. Assuming you are talking about "my views involve my right to harm other people, but your interfering with me is harmful, therefore you cannot suppress me", we have someone who asserts that interfering with their (admittedly?) harmful actions is an act of harm and should not be tolerated. I don't see where the self-contradiction comes in. Is this interference or suppression actually harming this person? "Don't do that, it's harmful to other people." "I WANT TO DO IT ANYWAY." "If you do, you will be stopped from doing so." "GO AHEAD, MAKE MY DAY!" I feel that someone who deliberately interferes in or harms other people's lives is consciously forfeiting his "rights". Can he expect others to respect him where he doesn't respect others? My whole point is that you say that your own assumptions/doctrines are no more or less rational than Hitler's, and that's blatantly false. I would hope you'd have sense enough to see that your doctrines have more basis than that. > When I say that Hitler's Germany suffered from lack of morality, it is > not my intent to support authoritarian morality dictated by government or > religious institutions. On the contrary, it is clear that a population > whose morality is dictated by father figures is prone to Hitleresque > abuse. > Traditional religious morality is equivalent to a self-interest morality > with an authoritarian God figure to mete out reward and punishment. My > theory is that the Germans of the 1930's, an intelligent and highly > authoritarian people for whom religion was rapidly becoming a thing of > the past, were highly susceptible to total moral corruption. I think your evaluation of traditional religious morality is way off base. I don't see at all how your conclusion follows, and it could be interpreted as a strangely bigoted remark, though I don't think you intended it that way. Religious morality is a very warped version of "self-interest morality" that places a society's needs over and above the needs of the individual. (I could repeat my comment that the simple proof that the needs of the individual supercede the needs of the larger society because the "needs of society" might at some point include getting of some or all of us---we humans just get in the way of the smooth running of the machinery of society, haven't you ever noticed that? Without us around, things would flow much more smoothly. The question would then be "To what end are these things flowing smoothly?" Without us, society would be purposeless. Its needs are superceded by our own.) Not only has such morality traditionally placed the needs of *a* society above those of people, but often the "holy books" into which those presumed needs were encoded are left unchanged even though society and ITS needs AND the needs of its people HAVE changed. For me, that's one of the biggest problems with autocratic religious morality. -- "Some people don't realize that there's there's this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything, ... it's all part of the cosmic unconsciousness." "Did you do a lot of acid, Miller, back in the hippie days?" Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr