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    GenerationExile: Hacking Morality

    Supporting human dignity by refactoring our values.

    Started by: Pseudonym Raves:8 Badge Winner! Longbroading

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    Jonathan Haidt identified five foundations of moral society:

    1. Harm vs care. We believe it to be moral to care for people and our environment and to avoid or minimise harm. The value is compassion.

    2. The "golden rule": Do unto others what you would have them do unto you. What you do will be returned thrice. Karma. We believe that by doing good to others, we encourage others to do good to us. The value is fairness.

    3. Ingroup adherence. We believe that we should take care of those we love. The value is loyalty.

    4. Authority. We believe that we should defer to those who carry some authority or expertise, and consent to be governed or persuaded by them, not necessarily out of power or brutality, but out of love. The value is respect.

    5. Sanctity. We believe it is virtuous to control what you do with your body. The value is purity.

    Note that there is a difference between the people we usually call "liberals" and "conservatives" in that conservatives hold all five values equally, but liberals usually emphasise the first two and de-emphasise the last three. However, everyone holds all five values, just to differing emphases. Haidt pointed out, for example, that while "conservatives" stereotypically emphasise sexual purity, many "liberals" do invoke the idea of food-as-sacred; things that are not healthy or environmentally sustainable are subconsciously seen as "unclean".

    So the question is: How can we use our natural moral sense to address the problems facing our planet?

    To kick things off: One obvious example which is relevant to the spread of ReDS and the inevitable problems associated with large numbers of refugees in one place is the idea of hygeine-as-sanctity. Humans have been doing this for milennia before the development of antibiotics and refrigeration, so there\\\'s no reason why we couldn\\\'t press this into service.

    Generally I think I agree with the 5 moral values you list here. I\\\'d contest you differences between liberals and conservatives though. I\\\'ve been trying to identify and surmise, in a succinct way, the differences between liberals and conservatives and I would suggest that the more defining characteristic is that Conservatives hold a greater emotional attachment to the past whilst liberals hold the greater emotional attachment to the future. Both \\\"liberal\\\" and \\\"conservative\\\" can be considered modes of thought and as such are abstractions of reality, and thus must be flawed to some degree. The claim that liberals tend to de-emphasize the last three would, to my mind, be better expressed by suggesting that the semantic understanding of 1 and 2 differs little between the liberal and conservative mindset whilst values 3 through 5 are less semantically concrete concepts and thus more prone to causing friction between people of liberal and conservative mindsets. In thinking about \\\"Hacking morality\\\" the first place to start, is perhaps, with the semantics. Thanks for the discussion, Thom B.

    Here\\\'s Jonathan Haidt\\\'s TED talk, which discusses some of \\\\these issues.

    Sorry, here\\\'s the URL: http://blog.ted.com/2008/09/the_physical_di.php

    Generally, when I hear the word morality I start to twitch and foam at the mouth, but you\\\'ve framed it very well. We (most people) believe some of those things to be moral. That said, sometimes we don\\\'t. An example of that would be a group of polyamorists who are constantly hopped up on peyote. They\\\'re open, caring, controlling their bodies by doing what they want with them, loyal to a fault, but still might be considered immoral, or to be engaging in immoral practices. Moral is one of those loaded words that too often just means \\\"I don\\\'t like what you\\\'re doing.\\\" It roots itself in another claim though, the claim of a higher authority like god, nature, or state. All that aside, you\\\'ve still made a good point, which is that these are good ethics to have within the criteria we\\\'re working inside, and would be very useful to have as commonly held precepts. Speaking as a bastard, incorporating these as morals either within a new ideological structure or an old one would lend them strength and make them more binding, because it doesn\\\'t really matter if they actually are attached to some cosmic array of morality as long as people believe they are.

    We need to rethink our entire moral structure because, as it stands now, it is based around the notion of property (and of course, this goes for laws, too). We need to rework morality and base it on the moral value of humanity, in that property does not supersede a person. Which means, your right to unfettered use and control of acres and acres of land does not supersede my right to squat or grow food on it if it's unused, etc.

    well i guess situational ethics comes into paly or do we just keep our values




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