Humans - musing on morality and social constructs

I read an interesting thing online, which has led me to a philosophical line of thought, which then led me to thinking that I should write my ideas down and remembering that I have a blog. :)

What I read was a condemnation of ideals as social constructs and of moral relativism in general. While it didn't say so, at the core of the argument was a call for Universal Morality. 

I would argue that the idea of Universal Morality presupposes that the Universe gives a damn about morality. I don't think it does. The universe cares about physics and what is moral to the wolf is immoral to the sheep. 

Humans are neither wolves nor sheep. We are humans. 

So, if we can't talk about universal morality, can we talk about human morality and arrive at any meaningful absolutes?

Firstly, I think "absolute" is the wrong goal. By common usage and understanding it again harkens back to this idea of Universality and, as I said, the universe does not care about morality. Still, I think we can examine the human experience and explore whether or not there are behaviors and ideals that seem to be foundational to humans. 

So, what is it to be foundationally human?

Humans are primates. With a few exceptions, we are a social species. We naturally form what I'll call tribal groups. We tend to be hierarchical, but not absolutely so. Individuals tend to lead, but the same individual in all circumstances. We tend to be cooperative, at least within our tribe, sharing tasks with the goals of supporting and preserving the tribe and ourselves. We form strong emotional bonds, usually along the lines of shared experiences, shared work, sexual play and childbearing. Those emotional bonds can be so strong as to override an individual's drive for self-preservation, leading humans to sometimes put the needs of others, or of the group, over their own. At other times, our individual desires and impulses of self-preservation override those emotional bonds.

In short, humans are a mess of contradictory impulses. We are driven by both self-interest and the needs of the group. 

Most human ethical frameworks focus on the group. We form social contracts, collective agreements that most often place the needs to the group above our own self-interest, usually in the belief that the individual self-interest is best served by a strong, stable society. At the same time, many social contracts, especially in our modern cultures, also support the importance of the individual, and their needs, against the primacy of society's needs, usually in the belief that society is best served by strong, stable individuals.

Our self-interest is at odds with our social need... except that our social need is part of our self-interest. An individual is best served by a strong, stable society and a society is best served by strong, stable individuals! 

Again, humans are a mess of contradictory impulses. 

This is why I both love and hate humans. :)

So, can we arrive at absolute human morality? Probably not. At least not a simple one. After all, we've been trying for tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of years and we haven't worked it out yet. 

If we can get close, I think it falls in the need to find a balance between selflessness and self-interest, between society and individual, and ultimately to embrace the idea that humans are messy, confusing, horrible, wonderful, fascinating creatures. 

Onward

Week Ending 6/8

Quiet week. 

Looking back over things, my mornings were mostly dedicated to either playing or working on the tabletop rpg Juno and I are playing. So, that was fun.

A lot of the rest of the week involved resting, dozing and occasionally napping.

Yeah, on the whole, a quiet week. 

Onward.

Week Ending 6/1

Well, I'm doing a bit better this week than I was last week. No big highs or lows, just making it through.

Did a little painting. Did a little writing. Got in an interesting game of Age of Sigmar with Juno... Stormcast Eternals (golden armored demi-god heroes) play very differently than my usual Beastmen or Barbarians. 

Mostly, I lay around a watched stuff on streaming. I finished watching Amazon's Rings of Power... which I think deserves some comment.

So, I grew reading the Hobbit. I've read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, though I confess I was much older when finally got through the whole thing. So, I like Tolkien's Middle Earth, but I'm not a Tolkien fanatic. I can't recite the Ring spell from memory, and I don't know the Aragorn's lineage back to the Second Age. I've only read some of the Silmarillion and that only very recently. I know that film adaptations of novels are going to be different. I enjoyed Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. I even enjoyed the first of the Hobbit movies, though I hated the other two. 

I feel similarly about Frank Herbert's Dune. I consider Dune to be the Middle Earth of science fiction. I have watched various adaptations of Dune from the David Lynch film in the '80s (it has Sting... the singer, not the elven dagger), the SciFi Channel miniseries (the best adaptation IMO) and the modern Denis Villeneuve film duology (liked the first one, hated the second). 

So, all that by way of saying, I was willing to give Rings of Power a chance despite (or maybe because of) having heard bad things about it online. 

All in all, I think Rings of Power is a little like David Lunch's Dune. It's visually stunning. It's a good story. It has some character names, place names and broad story arcs in common with the original work and is otherwise its own thing. In short, I think Rings of Power is a pretty good fantasy show. Is it Middle Earth? Well, not the one Tolkien wrote. It's not even as close to it as Peter Jackson's movies (which took their own share of liberties). Still, it was fun to watch.

Yeah, that was pretty much my week.

Onward

Week Ending 5/25

5-25-25... mom would have loved that. She always loved numbers.

I'm exhausted. Didn't post yesterday because I was too tired and not really doing much better today. I think I overdid it last week, though it's hard to say doing what exactly. 

Resting now. Might have something coherent to say later.

Onward

Week Ending 5/18

Anyone remember how I said that what I felt I needed was a good cry... then I said, no, I'm actually OK.

So, new flash... whenever I say "no, I'm actually OK" it's a big hint that I am NOT OK. 

The good news, I finally had that good cry. Four months and seven days my mom died, I finally cried. I can thank Juno for doing the right thing to get me there. 

Am I OK now, you ask. 

Were you paying attention a couple paragraphs ago? Of course, I'm not OK... but that's actually good. I shouldn't be OK. What I am is a little less numb inside. That's something, and something is better than nothing.

Now if I could just sleep...

Ah well.

Onward

Week Ending 5/11

Well, that was a week. 

I think I overdid it, and I've come down with a cold by the end, but the week started OK. 

I managed to get some minis painted. Here's a picture of them... a trio of Tzaangor Enlightened, oracular bird-men who whisper their foes secrets. I'm rather pleased with the way they came out.

Juno and I managed to get our first successful game of Warcry - a skirmish game based in the same setting of Age of Sigmar, but different enough in terms of game mechanics that our previous tries didn't go well. All in all, now that we have a better grasp of the mechanics, it was fun and we managed to play a whole game in a morning.

After that, the week kind of went downhill. Having overdone it, I was pretty tired the next day and managed to stumble and twist up my toes. You know that thing where your toes get caught on the floor and end up facing the wrong direction? Ouch. My toes turned black, which I found rather impressive. I ended up spending a couple of days with my feet up but that was OK.

So, a couple of days in bed, healing and catching on my streaming shows.

I watched the first seasons of Amazon's Wheel of Time series. As a fan of the books, I tried to go in without too many expectations. I know from long experience that adaptations of novels can be somewhere between "close but different" to "mostly the same names but otherwise completely different." I accept that. I enjoyed David Lynch's 1984 version of Dune, which is certainly in the second category and I enjoyed Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, which is pretty much the former. 

I felt like Amazon's Wheel of Time started out as "close but different" and the season ends at "mostly the same names but otherwise completely different" ... and unfortunately different enough that I'm just not interested in watching the next seasons. So, that was disappointing. 

Now, I'm watching the first season of NCIS: New Orleans, which is not bad so far (better when they stop doing crossovers with the parent series).

Otherwise, resting. 

Onward

Week Ending 5/4

OK, well... that was a week.

Worked with Juno to send out invitations for mom's memorial service in June. Juno did most of the actual work. I just wrote the invitations. I also talked to the church about what I want for the service, which is "not much." I really liked Gramma Cathy's memorial. It was simple. The family said a few words about her memory. I think the priest said something, but I didn't pay attention and didn't care. They put her ashes in the ground. That was it. That's pretty much my vision for mom's service, so we'll see how that goes when the time comes.

In other news, I sent angry letters to all my congress-critters. Evidently, defunding PBS and NPR was my personal Trump red-line. Not that I support anything he's done, but that was it. That was the line. 

Weird. 

Talked to Juno about it. She's worried that ICE agents are going to show up in her classroom, demanding to drag out a student (or students) and wondered what would happen when she stopped them. I pointed out that they would throw her in jail, and I actually can't take care of myself if she ends up locked up for any length of time. That was a chilling moment. 

We want to stand up for what's right but the simple fear that we could lose everything if we do. Like I said - chilling. We settled on her asking VU what the correct procedure is for an instructor if ICE shows up in the classroom. Because it could happen. It really could happen. 

That leaving aside the worry the Indiana is defunding education and what does that mean for her job. 

It's getting dangerous here.

All we can do is what we can do.

Onward