Re: Mind's Eye Towards a modern morality

There are women in history who beat the patriarchal game/system and
others who have succeeded as head of household/family- afterall, what
happened to all those war widows?//Yes- the super-rich and powerful
have a great stake in keeping to the status quo but one could also
argue that there is a huge class of people dependent on entitlements
who are not anxious to change either.//China's one child policy will
run into problems with their increased elder population and late stage
care but that is also a problem in the West.

On May 18, 1:33 am, Francis Hunt <francis.h...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Great post, Neil!
>
> I suspect that much of the emphasis on sex in traditional
> religious/cultural morality has more to do with questions of possessions
> and inheritance in patriarchal societies than the high-falutin
> religio-philosophical views of "the human person" as offered *a
> posteriori *today,
> for example, by such institutions as the Catholic Church. For a man to
> bequeath his property he had to know who his sons were and that they were
> his. The position of women as housekeeping breeding machines flows from
> this, as do such questions as societally enforced marital fidelity and the
> prohibition of sex before marriage and promiscuity generally.
>
> I think one of your key insights is that we are social beings. The
> consequence of this basic fact would be a morality based on concepts such
> as solidarity and responsibility and not on the primacy of possessions,
> above all property, which is still the lodestone of most of our moral and
> legal systems - and the root of the idolising of economics which is the
> cause of most of the problems or modern world society is facing.
>
> You and I are not alone in having these kinds of ideas - but the real
> question, in my view, is how to effect a paradigm shift. Those with the
> wealth and the power have no interest in change, quite the opposite.
> History unfortunately shows that fundamental change usually takes place
> only after system collapse, massive chaos and conflict, with the
> concomitant suffering and death of millions. In our interconnected
> networked world, such a process might well lead to a complete crash.
>
> There are no easy answers, but if substantial change does not come in the
> next two decades or so then the crash may be unavoidable anyway.
>
> On 18 May 2012 06:13, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > My stance towards most moralising is one of incredulity, yet I'm a
> > moraliser and believe most of our problems lie in our lack of personal
> > and collective morality.  Economics as our political and business
> > class practice it is fundamentally immoral against a scientific world-
> > view,  My view of science is that it is full of values and the notion
> > of it as value-free is a total and totalising dud.  Only lay people
> > with no experience of doing science hold the "value-free" notion of
> > science.
>
> > You can explore some of the moral issues arising in modern science in
> > a lengthy book review at London Review of Books -
> >http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n10/malcolm-bull/what-is-the-rational-response.
> > The book's topic is climate change.
>
> > Coming up to 60 I regard the world as a abject failure against the
> > promises I thought were being made in politics.  I'm a world-weary old
> > fart now, tending to see the generations coming up as narcissist
> > wastrels who don't know what hard work is (etc.) though I think the
> > blame is ours, not theirs.  I think the problem is our attitude
> > towards morality.  The tendency in history is to focus on religion for
> > moral advice - this is utterly corrupt and we have forgotten that much
> > religious morality is actually a reaction against unfairness and the
> > wicked control of our lives by the rich.  It is this latter factor
> > that is repeating itself.
>
> > Much moralising concerns sex.  This all largely based in old fables
> > for population control we can still find in primitive societies such
> > as 'sperm control by fellatio' (Sambians) and non-penetrative youth
> > sex (Kikuyu) etc. - and stuff like 'the silver ring thing'.  The
> > modern issue is population control and that we can achieve this
> > without sexual moralising - the moral issues are about quality of
> > life, women as other than child-bearing vessels and so on.  We have
> > failed almost entirely except in developed countries - to such an
> > extent the world population has trebled in my lifetime despite
> > economic factors driving down birth-rates in developed countries
> > without the kind of restrictions such as China enforced.
>
> > We are still at war.
>
> > Our economics is still based in "growth" and "consumption" and notions
> > human beings should work hard - when in fact the amount of work we
> > need to do probably equates to 3 days a week for 6 months of a year.
> > 75% of GDP is in services and only 6% in really hard work like
> > agriculture.  We could have a great deal more through doing less and
> > doing what we do with more regard for conservation and very different
> > scientific advance.  My view is it's immoral that we won't take
> > responsibility for this and review our failures.  I believe this
> > failure inhibits our spiritual growth and renders us simply animal.
>
> > Human life may be much less than I value it at and just a purposeless
> > farce.  The first step in a new attitude towards morality is to
> > consider living with a scientific world-view.  The implications of
> > this are complex and probably entail shaking ourselves from a false-
> > consciousness to be able to see what is being done in our name.  We
> > need a modern morality not based in the creation of fear and demons to
> > enforce it, or the feeble existential view of the individual.  We are
> > social animals and need to get back to some basics developed with
> > modern knowledge, not in past religious and empire disasters.
>
> > Religion has a role in this in my view - religion we might recapture
> > from sensible history - I'd recommend David Graeber's 'Debt: the first
> > 5000 years' as a read here.
>
> --
> Francis Hunt
>
> *francishunt.blogspot.com*- Hide quoted text -
>
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