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Принесло фейсбуком
Aug. 16th, 2017 03:50 pmХорошо мужик пишет, складно. Только мне от этого уже совсем не по себе.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Guide to False Equivalences:
Ethics can be a confusing mess at times. It's like quantum mechanics, where what seems mildly confusing at first just gets worse the deeper you delve. Some big stories in the news lately highlight how twisted up we can get trying to defend the indefensible.
A concept that helps me is known as the Moral Sphere. Whoever breaks the Moral Sphere first no longer enjoys the same rights and protections that existed before the Moral Sphere was broken. The Moral Sphere is a fragile contract based on the Golden Rule. If you wouldn't like it done to you, don't do it to others.
The concept of the Moral Sphere explains why it's okay to shoot someone who is about to shoot an innocent. Even though the outcome is the same -- one person shot and killed -- the ethical considerations are completely reversed. Instead of a crime, you have an act of heroism. The intention of the first actor in breaking the Moral Sphere didn't just mean it was okay to do the previously unthinkable; it meant that it was morally imperative to do so.
Another easy example: You don't have the right to go around raping people. If you try, it's morally imperative for others to use violence and coercion to make you stop. Violence and coercion are not good things when the Moral Sphere is intact. But once it's broken, these are sometimes necessary tools to put the Moral Sphere back together.
World War II is often called the last justified war. Millions of people died, and a lot of treasure was expended, to stop a madman and the Holocaust. No war since so readily justifies itself. Again, it was good and right to do the unthinkable: To draft our youth and send them to horrific slaughter and to slaughter others in order to stop one of the worst ever instances of the breaking of the Moral Sphere. Even war can be justified in the most extreme of cases.
If your philosophy is to honor and worship icons who fought against their fellow man to uphold institutional slavery, or you believe in the celebration of "white power," or you adorn yourself with iconography with a hateful past, or you act in a way that makes others feel unsafe, you are shattering the Moral Sphere. You are doing something that you would not enjoy being done to you, and you are forfeiting your rights.
There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. You can't incite violence with your speech, or cause a panic where people might be injured, or libel and slander, or use certain profanity in public, or mislabel products, or make false promises, or say things that are likely to get you punched in the nose.
These things should be common sense. Unfortunately, there are those who don't have much common sense, and so we need laws and Supreme Court decisions to sort it all out. These recent cases are easier than all that.
If you take up torches and swastikas and make people of color feel unsafe, you are in the wrong. Objectively. Because of this, it is okay to deny you the right to voice your opinions, because your opinions are a call for exclusion and violence. It is okay to deny you the right to make others feel unsafe. It is morally imperative to maintain the feeling of safety in those others.
If you write memos making colleagues feel unwelcome, or like they don’t deserve equal pay, or equal membership, or their self-doubts at work are justified while male self-doubts are misplaced humility, then it is okay to remove you from the premises. It is okay to shut you up. You have broken the Moral Sphere, and it must be repaired.
The idea that diversity means we need a heaping dose of assholes in the world does not fly. We can have a diversity of good and decent people who want to uphold the Moral Sphere, who want to be good to each other. Nazis, the alt-right, white power morons, misogynists, and those who sympathize and apologize for them are in the wrong. There is no equivocating here. People want the freedom to not be punched in the nose, raped, yelled at, threatened, discriminated against.
It is okay to stop people from doing these things with the minimal amount of violence and restrictions possible, with as much humanity and compassion as possible, in order to repair the Moral Sphere and resume our vigilance over its every crack and chip.
Your Friendly Neighborhood Guide to False Equivalences:
Ethics can be a confusing mess at times. It's like quantum mechanics, where what seems mildly confusing at first just gets worse the deeper you delve. Some big stories in the news lately highlight how twisted up we can get trying to defend the indefensible.
A concept that helps me is known as the Moral Sphere. Whoever breaks the Moral Sphere first no longer enjoys the same rights and protections that existed before the Moral Sphere was broken. The Moral Sphere is a fragile contract based on the Golden Rule. If you wouldn't like it done to you, don't do it to others.
The concept of the Moral Sphere explains why it's okay to shoot someone who is about to shoot an innocent. Even though the outcome is the same -- one person shot and killed -- the ethical considerations are completely reversed. Instead of a crime, you have an act of heroism. The intention of the first actor in breaking the Moral Sphere didn't just mean it was okay to do the previously unthinkable; it meant that it was morally imperative to do so.
Another easy example: You don't have the right to go around raping people. If you try, it's morally imperative for others to use violence and coercion to make you stop. Violence and coercion are not good things when the Moral Sphere is intact. But once it's broken, these are sometimes necessary tools to put the Moral Sphere back together.
World War II is often called the last justified war. Millions of people died, and a lot of treasure was expended, to stop a madman and the Holocaust. No war since so readily justifies itself. Again, it was good and right to do the unthinkable: To draft our youth and send them to horrific slaughter and to slaughter others in order to stop one of the worst ever instances of the breaking of the Moral Sphere. Even war can be justified in the most extreme of cases.
If your philosophy is to honor and worship icons who fought against their fellow man to uphold institutional slavery, or you believe in the celebration of "white power," or you adorn yourself with iconography with a hateful past, or you act in a way that makes others feel unsafe, you are shattering the Moral Sphere. You are doing something that you would not enjoy being done to you, and you are forfeiting your rights.
There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech. You can't incite violence with your speech, or cause a panic where people might be injured, or libel and slander, or use certain profanity in public, or mislabel products, or make false promises, or say things that are likely to get you punched in the nose.
These things should be common sense. Unfortunately, there are those who don't have much common sense, and so we need laws and Supreme Court decisions to sort it all out. These recent cases are easier than all that.
If you take up torches and swastikas and make people of color feel unsafe, you are in the wrong. Objectively. Because of this, it is okay to deny you the right to voice your opinions, because your opinions are a call for exclusion and violence. It is okay to deny you the right to make others feel unsafe. It is morally imperative to maintain the feeling of safety in those others.
If you write memos making colleagues feel unwelcome, or like they don’t deserve equal pay, or equal membership, or their self-doubts at work are justified while male self-doubts are misplaced humility, then it is okay to remove you from the premises. It is okay to shut you up. You have broken the Moral Sphere, and it must be repaired.
The idea that diversity means we need a heaping dose of assholes in the world does not fly. We can have a diversity of good and decent people who want to uphold the Moral Sphere, who want to be good to each other. Nazis, the alt-right, white power morons, misogynists, and those who sympathize and apologize for them are in the wrong. There is no equivocating here. People want the freedom to not be punched in the nose, raped, yelled at, threatened, discriminated against.
It is okay to stop people from doing these things with the minimal amount of violence and restrictions possible, with as much humanity and compassion as possible, in order to repair the Moral Sphere and resume our vigilance over its every crack and chip.
