Stuff worth reading —
Chris Hayes: Bring on the upper-middle-class revolution!
Morality study finds conservatives show a ‘general insensitivity to consequences’
6 Mind-Blowing Stats on How 1 Percent of the 1 Percent Now Dominate Our Elections
The Mahablog
Politics. Society. Group Therapy.
The morality study was interesting, if unsurprising. I liked this, for instance:
“…religious individuals and political conservatives tended to say that lying was never acceptable under any circumstances…”
So why did they vote for Mitt Romney? More seriously, haven’t these people ever heard of the classic example where the Nazis come to your door and ask if you’re hiding any Jews? (No, of course they haven’t. They don’t study ethics, they just read the Bible.) The only moral thing to do in that case is to lie.
But that’s the problem with divine command morality, which is what the deontoligical ethics of religious individuals and political conservatives realy comes down to–it leads to all kinds of grotesque outcomes.
And it’s incredibly primitive, too. Socrates exploded the whole idea of divine command morality in the Euthyphro 2,400 years ago. And I really don’t think Jesus was being deontological when he said things like “Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.”
The Tao Teh Ching, ca. 500 BCE —
When the Way (Tao) is lost, mankind falls back on virtue.
When virtue is lost, mankind falls back on humanity.
When humanity is lost, mankind falls back on morality.
When morality is lost, mankind falls back on [translations vary; etiquette, propriety, ceremony, religion]
“No, of course they haven’t. They don’t study ethics, they just read the Bible”
Yes that is how the modern dimwittedteabagger operates. They will accept all manner of mental gymnastics as long as it comports with the right wing drool they have been fed by right wing media for the last two decades. Once they are confronted with an argument that falls outside the propaganda lines they have drawn they fall back to the Bible as reference, that’s how they deny Climate Change, Marriage equality etc………In the end they are really no different than the Taliban!