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Aswad -> RE: Abortion and Religion (4/20/2012 8:24:15 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
There is a strong argument that morally-inspired prohibitions cause, rather than cure, most of the problems associated with drug consumption.
Hardly.
The problem, as usual, is neither morality nor religion; it's immature thought processes.
When a person has immature thought processes, their intentions will be implemented in a manner that may be downright counterproductive and fail to accomplish their goals, even accomplishing the exact opposite of those goals. Similarly, if perceptions are skewed, whatever process does exist will reach an outcome whose wrongness is directly porportional to the correctness of the thought process' mapping of perceptions to deeds. You need a mind to work correctly, and be fed the correct input, in order for it to arrive at the correct conclusion.
For reflection: fundamentalism and Kohlberg stage 4.
Any bias to the decision making process is an internalism. Those that deal with value assessment or assignment are moralisms. Morality is the set of moralisms. Kohlberg failed to make any clear and coherent theory to describe it, but what he's pointing at is the evolving nature of the process by which this set of biases will be applied, and the amount of data that will be used in evaluating options and concerns.
Some sets of biases aren't very compatible, but most of the time, it's the application that fails, just as with laws (which are inherently tied to the reinforcement pattern workings of morality at preconventional development stages, and the fundamentalist incarnation of stage 4 prior to the accumulation of adequate jurisprudence to emulate the higher levels).
In the jurisprudence of Iran, women are punished after assaultive rape by a stranger, because they were necessarily with a man they did not know. Similarly, since you can't execute virgins, they have to get a temporary marriage to one of their jailors the day before the execution, which is consummated the usual way. Neither of these are the intent of the law. It's just people bending the law to suit what they wanted to do anyway.
In the jurisprudence of the USA, a child can be tried as an adult if the crime is considered severe enough, or given a suspended execution sentence that is carried out when they are old enough. It should be pretty clear that the law doesn't intend for children to be executed. It's just people that cry out for blood and bend the law to give it to them.
Laws, moralities and religions are usually quite positive things, but not all humans are good at understanding them, or abiding by them. Most of the time, we twist what is there to suit what we're looking for, or we ignore what is there, or coopt it, or whatever. The nature of the beast.
Principles, moralities, religions, rights, laws and so forth are ideas that generally derive from a person that has the ability to see something most people do not. Then that person realizes (in some cases, at least) that most people do not have the ability to grasp the whole thing. And so they try to break it down into manageable terms that J. Doe can live by. And people forget to update it, because they adhere to the letter and know not the spirit, so the whole shebang just collapses under its own weight after a while.
E.g.: every Norwegian "knows" that freedom of speech is precious and inviolate.
Most don't get that it applies first and foremost to the rotten piece of shit currently standing trial for mass murder and terrorism in room 250 of the Oslo district court. If we fail to let him spew his bile, then we have no freedom of speech worth a dime. But most are very concerned with stopping him from doing just that, even to the point of sacrificing the transparency of the court system and fundamental rights of the court code to prevent him from exercising this important right. In short, most Norwegians know fuck all about freedom of speech, and couldn't care less about it.
That's because it's a principle. A thing well beyond the average person in practice, if not actually in ability. Our laws try to provide a "how-to" guide to upholding the principle, but those laws are only a shadow of the principle (cf. Plato's cave) and so fall short of the goal. When the times are changing, it is crucial to update it to make sure the essential principle is as closely described as possible, so we don't live only with the fossilized shadow of how it looked when that shadow landed on a T-Rex instead of an iPad.
It's not the moral basis (the principle of free speech) which is at fault.
It's the immature thought processes dealing with that moral basis.
Bit all over the place here (my thoughts are focused on analyzing the proceedings, how we as a society deal with them, and how our institutions deal with them, etc.; sorry), but I hope I got the gist of it across in a way that made some sense.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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