moralities

certainly, any particular morality is entirely arbitrary. appeals to nature, or even more absurd, appeals to the metaphysical, are so laughable that I will not waste metaphorical breath to ridicule them. simply imagine this ridicule in your lovely and powerful mind, capable of constructing hypotheticals.

the concept of morality itself perhaps refers to the internalization of societal expectations, what is decried or punished. differing social contexts beget differing moralities. some believe that it is immoral to eat pork. some believe that it is immoral to drink alcohol or view pornography. this does not arise from cosmic background radiation unpredictably affecting their brain chemistry; it arises from internalization of preëxisting social expectations. these actions when performed beget a reaction that induces shame or pain. the pain or threat thereof begins externally imposed, and then entrains over time a pain from the inside, autonomously regulating behavior.

how can morality in the abstract be measured? is it useful? it seems to serve some purpose. there is some level of decorum that morality seems to beget. on the other hand, morality is easily rationalized. any action may be justified moralistically by adjusting the morals, or by caveats or loopholes in its tremendous vagueness and underspecificity.

if you ask a given person why they don’t murder, they will likely give a moral justification. but isn’t this actually absurd on its face? this implies that if their morals were changed, they would murder, that if you took the mental ledger that defines the internal laws by which they abide, and erased “murder is wrong”, they would suddenly go on a killing spree. I would argue that no, this is not the case. the idea that morality is what prevents murder is poked through with ease by considering those who by all accounts had very strong moral convictions, but murdered anyway. “they seemed like such a normal, moral person”. the supposition is that this morality was entirely a farce or that they changed somehow. I think that this is a more contrived explanation than simply that morality does not prevent murder.

the reason that people do not often murder, in my estimation, is because it is often pointless, difficult, disturbing, gross, and with social consequences. when killing gains a purpose, becomes easy, and/or one becomes disconnected from the visceral details, suddenly it becomes a lot more plausible for it to occur. people join police forces or militaries and are afforded immense disconnection from the act of killing. when a landlord evicts a tenant, and they die on the street, they have killed someone but in an advantageous and extraordinarily convenient way. a particularly modern and convenient means of killing someone is by mass internet harassment.

this is not to dispute that morality inhibits such actions whatsoever, but the idea that morality is the predominant preventative force seems quite unjustified.

there are many things that I don’t like. I want a world which aligns to my preferences, and I hope that other people like and dislike many of the things I like and dislike, belonging to a certain category. when others' preferences do not align with my own, and they attempt to effect their preferences with actions, I am inclined to act against them, to subdue and subvert them. this is admittedly based in morality to a certain extent, but I attempt to derive these preferences from a basic and more fundamental starting point of things which I value and disvalue. I am wont to use the language of morality because these things are of emotional worth to me. however, I also want to be open to critique and revise these preferences based on observations of reality. the point is that I am not entirely above morality, but I am critical and aware of it, and I believe that is important.

“strong moral convictions” are typically valued, but I think this is fundamental to a very real sense that morality is deleterious. there are certainly things that I believe should never be compromised on, but being “uncompromising” is not abstractly valuable to me. whereas morality demonstrably does not prevent murder, it demonstrably and in a very real sense justifies various negative things, including murder.

the most real sense in which racism, homophobia, or transphobia exist is systemic, legal and economic. these are the true conduit for these social forces. however, “bigotry” could be considered the interpersonal reification of this, and it would seem to be entirely morally justified. without the force of morality, these problems would still exist, but without morality, perhaps, there would be no motivation for the visceral prejudice experienced by a racialized or queer person in their everyday life. morality comprises the main justification for the attacks and harassment. it is morally wrong, they say, to allow the homosexual to exist undisturbed in public, and so they will not allow it.

socially progressive agendas work to unravel this unfalteringness, which is a laborious and often sisyphean process, as reactionary movements reinvigorate normative moral sensibilities and undo this social progress.

as was observed previously, moral phenomena do not arise from nowhere, they are entrained by the existing punitive forces in society. and so, moral sensibilities would seem to be the surface-visual portion of something larger to be understood. attempting to alter moral sensibilities without interrogating what lies below is like picking weeds without pulling up their roots, quite limited in effectiveness.