Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Thought Experiment: Good Fences Make Good Morals?

Goodness, it's hard to keep track of what I want to write about sometimes.  There'll be thought experiments late at night, or while driving, and there's no guarantee it'll pop up later.

Regardless, this is one I had, and it is based on how children in a playground don't make full use of the playground unless there is a fence.  If there's no fence, they clump up in the middle, as they are unsure of boundaries.*

Moral relativism removes that fence around right and wrong, and you know what I see happening?  I see a very, very vicious in-group policing whenever someone dares set foot outside the inner group.  If you disagree with your peers on a topic, you will be heavily pressured to censor yourself.

Contrast that with Christianity even within a denomination.  There can be a rather wide ranging degree of opinions on basic to very complex theology, but as long as the predefined boundaries are not crossed then you won't be expelled or branded a heretic.  And even then during the history of the Church, potential heretics are approached first and are attempted to be reasoned with, so it's not an immediate excommunication for misspeaking during a sermon.

If those without defined morals (i.e. SJWs and those of the like) step out of line, the guilty party has to excoriate themselves immediately, no excuses.  There is a single-minded direction which is almost unnatural to the observing outsider.

*Unfortunately I can't find a specific name of whichever study determined this as everyone who recounted it was as vague as I was just there, but that's fine as I'm using it as a metaphor anyway.

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