In its "finest" form, liberal morality is about identifying relevant facts, dispelling misconceptions, and ensuring that arbitrary beliefs are understood to be arbitrary. It's about polishing the living daylights out of the lens through which the human moral eye sees the universe.
If someone really has a good grasp of the situation, understands how people are hurt, recognizes their biases as biases, and still wants to tattoo a swastika on their forehead, that falls under the umbrella of liberal morality. But it never happens, not because of rules, but because humans are similar and predictable. (Fascism is actually a terrible example, because Western culture conspires to distort the rise of fascism as something utterly incomprehensible.)
Of course, that's a high bar. In the end, liberal morality creates a limited number of people who care about certain things, like environmental pollution. If you want to effect change, you don't hope and pray that enlightenment will dawn on the masses; you pursue more instrumental courses, harnessing various social dynamics to exert power for your cause. Of course, we're happier when this takes the form of education – liberal morality is one of the few value sets where education is likely to help your cause – but it's likely not enough.
So, yeah. It's arbitrary, but that doesn't mean there's parity. That doesn't mean the views of our opponents aren't fundamentally rooted in ignorance and co-option by powerful interests. People are so similar, biologically, that self-awareness and learning tend to create a surprising homogeneity of opinion. Does that imply objective truth? No. But it does give me a decent weapon with which to fight for the things I love. And so, we agree, but I think the caveats are important.
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Date: 2012-06-28 01:00 pm (UTC)If someone really has a good grasp of the situation, understands how people are hurt, recognizes their biases as biases, and still wants to tattoo a swastika on their forehead, that falls under the umbrella of liberal morality. But it never happens, not because of rules, but because humans are similar and predictable. (Fascism is actually a terrible example, because Western culture conspires to distort the rise of fascism as something utterly incomprehensible.)
Of course, that's a high bar. In the end, liberal morality creates a limited number of people who care about certain things, like environmental pollution. If you want to effect change, you don't hope and pray that enlightenment will dawn on the masses; you pursue more instrumental courses, harnessing various social dynamics to exert power for your cause. Of course, we're happier when this takes the form of education – liberal morality is one of the few value sets where education is likely to help your cause – but it's likely not enough.
So, yeah. It's arbitrary, but that doesn't mean there's parity. That doesn't mean the views of our opponents aren't fundamentally rooted in ignorance and co-option by powerful interests. People are so similar, biologically, that self-awareness and learning tend to create a surprising homogeneity of opinion. Does that imply objective truth? No. But it does give me a decent weapon with which to fight for the things I love. And so, we agree, but I think the caveats are important.