Thou Shalt Do No Harm
Moral relativism, does that equal moral ambiguity? Is that somewhat like terming the act of murder to be an innocuous act? Is vicious belligerence ever acceptable? Is unchecked anger against others resulting in violent confrontation perfectly all right? Is unfounded vituperation against those whom one does not understand or relate to part of the social debate? Is a deliberate act of anarchy resulting in social destabilization understandably innocent? Is the decision to take unto oneself that which belongs to others conducive to social stability? Is the gathering together of a group of like-minded sociopaths for the express purpose of causing havoc in a community and undermining its authority a good thing?Are acts of true social antipathy toward others excusable at any time, under any circumstances? Is an act of criminal intent exculpable by reason of differing cultural values? Can one overlook crimes against social cohesion and compatibility, any more than one can overlook deliberate crimes against humanity on a grand scale? If right and wrong are immutable, as secular philosophers and religions have taught over the millennia, how can excuses be made for "understanding" in the light of current events, cross-cultural impulses, traditional lifestyles in a clash with a host culture?
Some elements of human nature are by their very deleterious natures, held by social communities to be noxious in their performance, having no value in the search for social cohesion, detrimental in the extreme to the success of communal living. These impulses toward anti-social behaviours in the extreme, to lash out heedlessly at others, to take a human life, to abandon all inner constraints and kidnap, torture, hold in captivity, rape, plunder, are rightly condemned as being beyond the pale of acceptance. These behaviours must be recognized as morally unacceptable and fall into the category of forbidden acts: moral absolutes.
Ancient wisdom recognized socially deviant behaviour of an extreme variety, unsettling to the community at large, and if unchecked capable of destabilizing and destroying the culture, tradition and environments of civil collectives, creating in the wake chaos and anarchy from the order of well-governed communities where people lived together in an unspoken covenant of acceptance, sharing and tolerance. Moses' gift from Jehovah is but the best-known instance of that recognition and a well-intentioned deliberation to foster a socially salubrious environment, ensuring mutual respect and due regard for common law. Common law, is in fact a communal agreement to uphold the concept and values of a set of moral absolutes.
These moral obligations to the collective are fairly basic in character; instilling regard and empathy for others around us and in the process protecting our rights and freedoms. The guarantees inherent in this collective agreement that all are enjoined to agree with and to work toward accomplishing result in safety and security of persons and possessions. Interests in the public trust. Resulting in the safeguarding of personal trust, and the success of the common weal.
Some elements of moral integrity are beyond argument, immutable, such as prohibitions against the planning and executing of acts of murder. Envy, greed, thievery, adultery, property pillage or destruction, vicious behaviour resulting in harm to another's good name or reputation, encouragement to others to do harm: all these acts are anti-social in the extreme, all geared to unsettling societal structures of mutual trust. Compassion and empathy for others, a willingness to accept and to offer assistance are the foundations of successful societies.
Distrust, suspicion, enmity, jealousy, deliberate acts of social sabotage, if left unchecked by the constraints of societal expectations and norms inevitably lead to a faltering society. There are moral certitudes which all members of society must subscribe to, believe in and act upon in good conscience for any society to succeed. Acceptance of anti-social behaviour leads to social dysfunction. We all know this, it is bred in the bone, and honed through constant repetition.
Moral relativism is not a new construct by any means, but newly bandied about and made respectable in our newly-troubled times by New Left arbiters of socially-acceptable "correctness". This "freedom of thought and action" acceptability plays fast and loose with ethics and morals, providing ready excuses for acts of social misdemeanors through deviation from accepted normals of behaviour through pleadings of "consider the source".
From mere misdemeanors we can move forward to criminal felonies of a more serious nature, then drop all pretences altogether and find reasons to "understand" why viciously disaffected members of a society will plan and execute horrendous acts of violence against other members of their own society or another society whose collective acts are understood by the New Left to have been the "cause" of disasters visited upon them.
So when the World Trade Towers in New York were felled by fanatical Islamists resulting in thousands of innocent lives annihilated in a horrendous attack, the New Left felt justified in stating this was just retribution for perceived faults in the country's administrative decisions impacting on other countries.
So murderers can be "understood" and their actions deemed exculpable on the basis that they had no other choice, were goaded into the act, further complicated by their traumatic experiences, were behaving in this manner as a protest, in the name of God, and for the good of mankind.
Savagely violent people, sociopaths among us intimidate others on the street, in the workplace, on the international scene, because they can, having learned through experience that intimidation works for them. Rational people who mean no harm to anyone, shrug their shoulders, tend not to become involved, cannot in any event, take seriously the irrational rants of those whose hatred is so intense it is beyond the scrutiny or understanding of normal people. These normal people prefer to go about their business, ignore the inscrutable, and hope for the best. Perhaps the lunatics will simply disperse, go away and bother someone else. Which they most certainly will do, until they achieve some kind of satisfaction - and then go on to repeat their violence elsewhere.
On a micro-level, people commit crimes to bypass the tough slog of earning a living to provide the wherewithal to acquire goods they feel entitled to, be it through white collar crimes at a high socio/economic level, or wielding a gun in the commission of a crime of robbery. Easy gains, too tantalizing to resist; victims of their own ideas of wordly success. Odd that property crimes are so often treated more seriously than crimes against persons. As though we hold economics to have more substance in the world order than the lives of human beings.
On the macro-level there are those who invoke the spirit of moral relevance when self-proclaimed liberators commit mass murder in the service of their religion, or their understanding of a version of said religion, and if they declare war on a decadent West, their western apologists on the New Left trumpet their condemnation not of the terrorist-Jihadists, but the Imperialist ambitions and past of the West as third-world exploiters.
Generally speaking, it seems as though those who adhere to the concept of forgivability or "understanding" of the motives behind Islamists are ardent self-haters, clasping doom to their bosoms as expiation of the perceived sins of commission or omission of those whose of their peers and countrymen whose values they eschew. Sociopaths, in other words, in their own inimitable way.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, September 10, 2006
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