Beatz Rant: Moral Superiority
7 years ago
✧✦ REQUIEM BEATZ! ✦✧
got somethin' to say!
To those who rush to demonize me and my viewpoints and correct my "error":
A bit of advice. If you plan to approach me and tell me that I am wrong, have an actual, objective, observable reason to justify it.
As I've gotten more active on twitter, I get a decent amount of people online who tell me I'm a monster, callous, heartless, close minded, arrogant, etc etc.
And I have the same response nearly every time:
"Why?"
And more often than not, by a longshot, the responses are along the lines of:
"You just are!"
"Well if you don't get it then that's just proof of how awful you are."
"I don't have to explain shit to you."
Frankly, it's pretty reminiscent of a childhood drowned in "because I said so."
And let me tell you about "because I said so." If I had listened to every single "because I said so" I was exposed to in my life, I would believe:
-In a cruel God that would condemn people for "sins" that he naturally inherited them with.
-Violence is, in fact, always the answer. If you don't like it, punch it or shoot it until it either changes or is gone.
-Art as a profession is doomed to end in failure no matter what you do. It's fine as a hobby but don't even try making that your income.
-The only way to be successful and happy is to go to university. If you don't get straight A's and get scholarships to attend university for 4 years, you WILL end up flipping burgers at McDonalds.
-I am inferior to anyone given authority.
-I am superior if I am given authority.
-Authority is always right! Even if they're wrong!
-The best way to raise a child is to deprive them of resources and knowledge to keep them in control.
-I cannot choose my family.
And a long list of other bullshit, you prolly get the idea.
And these ideas were all given to me by people who considered their values so sacred that they felt they did not need to justify them.
So I hate to break it to you if you thought that telling me I'm wrong because "you feel" a certain way would change my mind, but I've lived a life that would've corrupted the SHIT out of me if I just adopted people's values because they believed in them.
This seems hard for most people to grasp, but almost every person you will ever meet considers their personal values just as sacred as you consider yours. If you're gonna try and change the mind of someone who spent their whole life arriving at a certain morality, it's probably gonna take a lot more than a claim of superiority and a follow-up command to change.
And something I wholeheartedly disagree with is that somebody is a bad person because they want reasons to do things. This is one I get specifically accused of a LOT. If living creatures kept doing things without a positive change to them or the world around them, they'd be dead pretty fast.
For example, I've stated on numerous occasions that the only people I want to give things to are people who I see are willing to give things themselves. If I see that a flat broke person is still willing to be kind and offer things they can (like emotional support) and are trying their hardest to support their children, then I want to give them money to help out.
Conversely, if I see a flat broke person that's cruel to the people around them and refuses put anything forth because they feel that others owe them something and let their children starve as they use the money they do get to indulge themselves, I feel near zero desire to help them.
And my reasoning for this morality? Because I want the world to be a place where people receive rewards and positive reinforcement for whatever good things they put into it, and also consequences and negative reinforcement for the bad things they put into it. The first person is doing part of this equation by putting forth positivity and effort, and I'm generally more than happy to be the second part of the equation to make sure they're rewarded. The second person, however, not contributing, or even worse, outright attacking attempts at positivity, would be detrimental to the world I would like to see if they were rewarded for their behavior.
And I have quite literally been told to die, fix myself, and go seek therapy because I don't want to give things to people who aren't doing anything or I see being outright rude or cruel to other people.
But these messages don't really hit too deep because, the way I see it, I'm watering the sprouts of fruit trees and flowers instead of watering the weeds. If you like the weeds and want to water them that's cool. But you're gonna have a hard time trying to convince me that your fruitless garden is the superior one.
Develop your reasoning, think critically. If your reasoning comes down to "because I say so", you're gonna have a shit time in the information age. If you have tangible evidence that your morality is effective/your opponents morality is ineffective then you're gonna have at least a foothold.
Now, I wouldn't recommend this if I was unwilling to be receptive to the behavior. Like I said, I want to reward people who put forth positivity, and if people present me with viewpoints that differ from my own in a constructed effort, I'm generally a lot more receptive to them. As specific examples, I've actually recently had some changes in view regarding minority reparations and Universally Based Income, both of which happened because of people willing to take the time and effort to gather evidence and backing as to why they believe in it.
And I'm not naive, not everyone is going to be receptive, even if you're trying, and that's probably why so many of us have stopped trying to reason altogether. But you at least have more of a chance of spreading your values if you know why you have them.
Claiming your morals are superior simply because they are yours is a faulty practice. There's over 7.3 billion other people on this planet that are just as valid of an existence, and they can also claim that their morals are also one's they hold dear.
A bit of advice. If you plan to approach me and tell me that I am wrong, have an actual, objective, observable reason to justify it.
As I've gotten more active on twitter, I get a decent amount of people online who tell me I'm a monster, callous, heartless, close minded, arrogant, etc etc.
And I have the same response nearly every time:
"Why?"
And more often than not, by a longshot, the responses are along the lines of:
"You just are!"
"Well if you don't get it then that's just proof of how awful you are."
"I don't have to explain shit to you."
Frankly, it's pretty reminiscent of a childhood drowned in "because I said so."
And let me tell you about "because I said so." If I had listened to every single "because I said so" I was exposed to in my life, I would believe:
-In a cruel God that would condemn people for "sins" that he naturally inherited them with.
-Violence is, in fact, always the answer. If you don't like it, punch it or shoot it until it either changes or is gone.
-Art as a profession is doomed to end in failure no matter what you do. It's fine as a hobby but don't even try making that your income.
-The only way to be successful and happy is to go to university. If you don't get straight A's and get scholarships to attend university for 4 years, you WILL end up flipping burgers at McDonalds.
-I am inferior to anyone given authority.
-I am superior if I am given authority.
-Authority is always right! Even if they're wrong!
-The best way to raise a child is to deprive them of resources and knowledge to keep them in control.
-I cannot choose my family.
And a long list of other bullshit, you prolly get the idea.
And these ideas were all given to me by people who considered their values so sacred that they felt they did not need to justify them.
So I hate to break it to you if you thought that telling me I'm wrong because "you feel" a certain way would change my mind, but I've lived a life that would've corrupted the SHIT out of me if I just adopted people's values because they believed in them.
This seems hard for most people to grasp, but almost every person you will ever meet considers their personal values just as sacred as you consider yours. If you're gonna try and change the mind of someone who spent their whole life arriving at a certain morality, it's probably gonna take a lot more than a claim of superiority and a follow-up command to change.
And something I wholeheartedly disagree with is that somebody is a bad person because they want reasons to do things. This is one I get specifically accused of a LOT. If living creatures kept doing things without a positive change to them or the world around them, they'd be dead pretty fast.
For example, I've stated on numerous occasions that the only people I want to give things to are people who I see are willing to give things themselves. If I see that a flat broke person is still willing to be kind and offer things they can (like emotional support) and are trying their hardest to support their children, then I want to give them money to help out.
Conversely, if I see a flat broke person that's cruel to the people around them and refuses put anything forth because they feel that others owe them something and let their children starve as they use the money they do get to indulge themselves, I feel near zero desire to help them.
And my reasoning for this morality? Because I want the world to be a place where people receive rewards and positive reinforcement for whatever good things they put into it, and also consequences and negative reinforcement for the bad things they put into it. The first person is doing part of this equation by putting forth positivity and effort, and I'm generally more than happy to be the second part of the equation to make sure they're rewarded. The second person, however, not contributing, or even worse, outright attacking attempts at positivity, would be detrimental to the world I would like to see if they were rewarded for their behavior.
And I have quite literally been told to die, fix myself, and go seek therapy because I don't want to give things to people who aren't doing anything or I see being outright rude or cruel to other people.
But these messages don't really hit too deep because, the way I see it, I'm watering the sprouts of fruit trees and flowers instead of watering the weeds. If you like the weeds and want to water them that's cool. But you're gonna have a hard time trying to convince me that your fruitless garden is the superior one.
Develop your reasoning, think critically. If your reasoning comes down to "because I say so", you're gonna have a shit time in the information age. If you have tangible evidence that your morality is effective/your opponents morality is ineffective then you're gonna have at least a foothold.
Now, I wouldn't recommend this if I was unwilling to be receptive to the behavior. Like I said, I want to reward people who put forth positivity, and if people present me with viewpoints that differ from my own in a constructed effort, I'm generally a lot more receptive to them. As specific examples, I've actually recently had some changes in view regarding minority reparations and Universally Based Income, both of which happened because of people willing to take the time and effort to gather evidence and backing as to why they believe in it.
And I'm not naive, not everyone is going to be receptive, even if you're trying, and that's probably why so many of us have stopped trying to reason altogether. But you at least have more of a chance of spreading your values if you know why you have them.
Claiming your morals are superior simply because they are yours is a faulty practice. There's over 7.3 billion other people on this planet that are just as valid of an existence, and they can also claim that their morals are also one's they hold dear.
Sniderman(1985) found that people could predict the political preferences of different social groups simply by guessing that the groups they don't like must belong to the other party, and were remarkably sucessful in correctly guessing this way. Achens and Bartels(2017) found that people tend to think their parties agree with them more than they actually do. If people are unable to systematically understand politics, it would be difficult to assume that they would be able to figure why other groups might support one thing over another. It would make more sense for the smarter people to rationalize the group interest into ideology. Especially when Sniderman also finds that the more educated are more partisan and exagerate how extreme each side is more than normal.
So when you go argue about morals with someone, you will find that they are impervious to reason unless they already agreed with you. They have a strong emotional motivation to defy you any way they can, and if you actually do go into reason, you will eventually realize you have axiomatic core values with nothing behind them. Both your beliefs are logical structures based on nothing, but they help summarize the collective worldview of your social groups. It will always boil down to "because I say so".
So the more you poke at their beliefs and thus their groups, the more you'll antagonize them and the angrier they'll get. If you're convinced you can change their mind because you have reason on your side, the more blind you'll be to how this is just an outlet for conflict. It's not because I dislike this group you see, it's because of this belief system has a logical structure and this core value is obvious to everybody, and if I just keep pushing and pushing, those neanderthals will finally get it. But I don't dislike their group, just the things that identify them as group.
And then you get dragged into 4 days of arguing and writing pages and pages, but not because you're an angry person. It was because by making the world more rational in their beliefs I am slowly making the world a better place. That's why they should be banned from this platform, because they're poisoning the discussion. But you didn't do this out of hate, even though your blood pressure is rising and you're furiously tapping at the keyboard
Converse, P. E. (2006). The nature of belief systems in mass publics (1964). Critical review, 18(1-3), 1-74.
Brady, H. E., & Sniderman, P. M. (1985). Attitude attribution: A group basis for political reasoning. American Political Science Review, 79(4), 1061-1078.
Achen, C. H., & Bartels, L. M. (2017). Democracy for realists: Why elections do not produce responsive government. Princeton University Press.
I've acknowledge it, and that's why I specifically addressed there being nothing wrong with wanting a reason to do things.
Because I agree, if you just tell somebody they're wrong and slam them with logic to prove only that, then you're not going to get anywhere. But giving somebody a reason as to why your morality would benefit them (and their social group), which is why my point stands true, you need to know the reasoning behind your morals in order to have any chance of your opponent deeming them valuable.
There's a reason I specified that instead of investing in why your opponent is wrong. So no, I don't have it backwards, you made an assumption that I was suggesting tearing down the beliefs of the opposition with logic when all the practices and examples I presented were related to having a logical foundation in your own beliefs.
I'm suggesting that the power to influence morality in others is having your own morals having "fruit" to show before you present them to people, rather than just adamantly suggesting that someone else is wrong because you believe you are morally superior.
You're not going to get somebody to crawl out of their shack that's been protecting them from the elements their whole life by telling them that their shack is bad. But if you show them your stable house with luxuries and show that has also protected you, they may be inclined to make changes to their house.
But it's not gonna work at all if you're a in shack that's just as dingy as theirs and go "see! Maybe make your shack like this!"
Also, morals are not necessarily defined in regards to what most benefits the group alone.
For example, a very unpopular belief I have that nearly everyone I am friends with considers absolutely awful, is that businesses should be allowed to be discriminatory in who they hire and who they provide services to.
Now, I obviously don't have any direct gain by it. That would mean businesses are free to turn me away. Most of my friends (either a minority race, queer, or both) would have nothing to directly gain by it. So why would I hold the belief that would so obviously support the people that hate me and the people I love?
Because regardless of their motivations, I am not entitled to their service nor their property. They put forth the effort to obtain their goods, and it is within their power to decide what happens with said goods. If they don't want to give me that because I'm queer and hang with mexicans? Sucks for me, it's their stuff and their business, and I have no objective reason to be entitled to it.
Although, I also believe in letting negative consequences take place. If the businesses ethics don't keep up with an ever changing society, they will fail and falter, and in a capitalist society most notably, will be replaced by businesses that do keep up.
It'd be pretty convenient to decide my views here are "Well the business can't discriminate against minorities but I can tell a white supremacist to stay out of my business" because that would put me in a position of moral superiority where the people I agree with get things and the people I disagree with get nothing. But the basis for that morality wouldn't hold up at all if I ever tried talking to a white supremacist.
This is where avoiding hypocrisy comes in handy, because it's really, really common with group-specialized morality. As you say, it's very common for people to listen to something from their group, but not listen to the same message from somebody of another group. And this is usually very easy to do because a lot of people within another group will suggest things that if everyone did, they would lose their shit.
Consistency obviously will not completely override the very hardwired backfire effect, however, if you take your principles and also apply them equally to yourself and your opponent, it usually diffuses a lot of antagonism. It helps create at least a temporary sense that you're of the same "group". And this is something I manage to achieve with most people I disagree with.
Sentiment is more powerful than rules, and even with perfect compliance, sentiment wins out. And part of that is whether you antagonize people by continously pushing, or whether you drop the issue at some point and tolerate each other. It is the meek who actually talk to people from the other side. Political interest, knowledge, sophistication, education, conflict seeking, partisanship, and isolation from outsiders tends to go hand in hand(Mutz, 2006)
Mutz, D. C. (2006). Hearing the other side: Deliberative versus participatory democracy. Cambridge University Press.
Sentiment is more powerful than rule, but the two and not incompatible forces, quite the opposite actually, considering that rule spawns from sentiment, as you said earlier. There is a link between the two that can be utilized, and quite frankly, it is a utilization that's used very commonly. People going against their own morals for the sake of a job, or legal protection, for example.
Humans are undeniably complex creatures, and to say that a viewpoint cannot be changed once it's implemented and that morality is strictly a zero sum game is something that's proven incorrect repeatedly both historically and day to day life, by the fact that people adopt worldviews that were not exposed to them in developmental stages (on a fairly common basis now with the age of internet) and that many cultures have benefited in such a way that, while there's obviously "people at the top and people in the slums" the security of those societies as a whole is measurably up from when we starved to death if the crop was bad or we didn't catch our prey.
Also, this is my last round of replies here, gots to get work done, but thank you for sharing :3
People arent in the practice of acknowledging and examining multiple points of view at once (critically thinking) because its difficult to do, and actually requires effort. Its easier just to be simplistic and obtuse, and just go "youre wrong >:O" which is again, basic. People dont like to self examine, and considering various points of view inevitably requires this.
Anyways if people are being crappy to you I'd just make use of the block button lol xD You arent obligated to listen to people be rude ass hoes. If furries actually cared about social problems and morality they would have eradicated predatory behavior and literal freaking nazis in their subculture a long time ago. Take what they say worth a grain of salt.
And people really aren't in that practice, and that's something that honestly really confuses me. Cause in my head, I'm under the impression that if you find something valuable, you would seek to have it somewhat grounded in objective reality in addition to the subjective reality. And if it's super hard to find reasons for your morality, it might by a morality not worth clinging so hard to?
Also I'm pretty against block buttons unless somebody is an actual threat to my livelihood. I preach that people should be open to viewpoints they disagree with, and I think it'd be pretty hypocritical to silence people cause I don't like what they say.