Where do you get the idea that a uniquely defining factor of Christian morality is that it's objective and universal? — Echarmion

It's a offshoot of judaïsm, To belong to Judaïsm you had to be ethnically a jew, the rest were gentiles. Christiany broke that open and made it universal by allowing everybody in the religion and making it appicable to everybody. Even pagans go to hell if they disobey a God they don't believe in.

The other unusual feature, which they inhererited from Judaïsm, is monotheism, there is only one God (one set of values and morals). Pagan religion in the Roman empire used to allow a whole panteon of Gods, where every city has some different particular God or Gods they were allowed to worship. They didn't shun or exclude other religions, but incorporated them into their pantheon.

Christianity also was instrumental in colonising the world. Judaïsm for example never had this same religious conversion fervour.

It does not follow though that it did not also foster actual liberal values and actual democracy. — Echarmion

No that's right, but then that is only a good thing if you already assume that liberal values and democracy are the values one should aspire to, which other societies clearly do not.

Let's just spell it out as clear as possible so anyone who wants to see it can see.

Liberal democracy has been the ideological underpinning of the expansion of the US empire. It is uniquely suited for that because it's an offshoot of Christian morality that holds that morality is objective and universal. That means that any country not adhering to those values is objectively wrong, and can therefore justifiably be undermined and fought until they do adhere to those values. And that's essentially what the US has been doing the past 70 years, toppling regimes left and right, and invading countries because women can't wear miniskirts.... usually leaving a huge mess in their wake.

Thrasymachus was allways right folks, justice is the interest of the stronger... the liberal democratic world order was there to serve our interests.

Alas it's hard to convince true believers.

Deus vult!

I'm really fed up with references to "the war" as if the Ukrainians had any choice in the matter. This is not a two-sided conflict: they were attacked and have been defending themselves. The "stability of the region" was not endangered by Zelensky or his people and they are not responsible for restoring it by letting themselves be subsumed in Putin's empire. — Vera Mont

But it is a US-Russia proxy war. Regime change has been a standard practice of the CIA and policy especially of the democratic party for decades all over the world. Without the supplies and military assistance of the US and Europe Ukraine wouldn't have stood a chance... we can hardly be more involved, and yet here we are pretending like this is just a matter of Ukraine defending itself.

Of course nobody will hear this, because if you say something that doesn't conform to the Western mainstream narrative it must be Russian propaganda.

Shall we ask the Palestinians to seek refugee status in Greenland in order to maintain Nyetenyahu's 'stability'? Who's next to be required to give up their freedom and their home for stability in some region? — Vera Mont

Russia has 6000 nuclear bombs, but sure let's just brush away the stability of the region like it's a nothing burger.

Yeah I don't agree with that, it's also about the stability of the entire region.

And if he decides it's a good idea to stay in the war, do we just support him no matter what, effectively delegating our foreign policy to him?

Do you think Zelenskyy should return home to the Ukrainians and the Rada with "Trump's peace"? — jorndoe

Do you think it would be better to send thousands of Ukranians more to the grave for nothing?

Do we have to think about consequences at all, or do we just have to rush in whatever the consequences because it's a just cause?

What, if anything, would convince you that it's a bad idea eventhough it's a just cause?

Well, maybe it's time for democracy to concede or give way to aggressive-regressive authoritarianism? — jorndoe

That's not what i'm getting at. I think one should pick their battles a bit more carefully. The war was going nowhere, and not likely to go anywhere without the US, at some point you have to deal with the reality on the ground.

The world is indeed changing, dramatically. I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
Who is this 'outside world', who is 'we'? — Amity

The ouside world are the ones not caught in the mainstream western information bubble. 'We' are the ones in the bubble. Maybe an example can help :

In the western media: Russia has invaded Ukraine in an unprovoked act of aggression because Putin is an evil dictator.

Ouside of it: Russia has invaded Ukraine as a reaction to the US pushing it to far in trying to expand its sphere of influence.

It doesn't just look like there is a pact with Putin, it is obvious from Putin's positive reactions that there is a deal going on... — Amity

I was referring to a more formal alliance. I'm sure they make personal deals, but that doesn't mean they can formally commit their countries.

For what purpose?

Overall, the actions taken are not those of a peace-maker. A deal-maker and breaker, perhaps. But only for the benefit of himself, the oligarchs and authoritarians, not for the people. He couldn't care less. — Amity

Isn't the fact that we get peace more important that what the motivations are?

Who are we trying to convince and why? — Amity

I'm trying to convince fellow Europeans so Europe doesn't make what I think would be the biggest strategic blunder in recent memory. It isn't going that great.

Don't listen to what he says, but look at what he does.

Usually his words aren't meant to convey literal meaning, but rather to ellicit some effect.

Likely Trump doesn't understand just how against this goes his allies, if we can call them those, who aren't for this kind of decision making. Above all, any meeting of this kind would be either a nonevent or at worst, a total disastrous for the US as Trump is really a bad negotiator. If he would have written himself the Art of the Deal, he maybe a negotiator, but he isn't. Everything from surrender deal made to the Taleban to the castigation of Zelenskyi shows this. — ssu

I don't think I agree entirely. He's not a good diplomat in the sense of fostering good long term relations maybe, but I think he does have a very good sense of where the leverage is, and he's using it to get what he wants. And I think that is the problem for Europe, he has a lot of leverage on us because we have let ourselves become dependant on the US... and so i don't think he's particulary worried about alienating Europe because of that.

With Russia I think he knows there isn't much leverage considering how the war is going. If he wants out and end the war, he probably needs to get closer to their position to get it done.

It's not a question of pragmatism, it's a question how close Russia is to you. Let's remember that Russia wants NATO to withdraw from the Baltics, from Sweden and Finland, from Poland, from Romania. So for a lot of NATO countries the support for Ukraine and spending more on defense is quite pragmatic and logical approach. Not perhaps for Portugal.

You already are seeing how closely is the UK and Norway working with EU countries, so what is forming here is a "coalition of the willing". Likely the UK with France and Germany and Northern Europe, the Baltic States and Poland. Naturally all these countries want to keep the US in NATO, but you never know what agent Trumpov will do. — ssu

Here's a question for you ssu, wouldn't a normalisation of relations with Russia be better in the long term for the states close to Russia too? What are we trying to accomplish with fighting Russia untill the bitter end? Do we really want to keep playing this game until the end of time... hate breeds hate.

How about a synthesis: an unstable World were bunch of illiberal autocrats try carving up the World and others desperately trying to hold on to a rules based order. — ssu

Problem is the autocrats have most of the power. A rules based order only holds if you have the power to enforce it... the sheriff left town.

We aren't drowning, even Ukraine isn't yet. Those who think the MAGA-movement is the new geo-political wave might be the ones that will do the drowning, thanks to the wisdom of their awesome leaders like Musk, Trump and Vance. — ssu

I would agree that it's far from certain that the MAGA-movement will stay in power indefinitely, it can just as well swing back in the other direction. But there is damage that can't be undone, it has now become clear that no country should want to bet its security and future on a wildly oscillating 4 year election cycle... the gene is out of the bottle.

People really should wake up to see how insane these morons are. I can easily agree with Friedrich Merz that NATO won't last to it's next summit in the summer. Or perhaps there Trump walks out of it. Something that is totally possible. — ssu

NATO probably gets dissolved, as maybe it should have been a while ago. Russia isn't the same superpower anymore that needs a special alliance to contain. A European security arrangement where the biggest country in Europe is excluded from and its concern aren't taken into account, will allways lead to more tension. Maybe we should try to actually talk to them and see where we can accomodate each others security concerns?

Do you think he'll continue to have enough domestic support?
At the moment, it seems to be going down among the general population and officials.
When asked, some of Trump's voters wanted a cultural revolution in the US, "anti-woke", against homosexual marriage, etc, not an alliance with Putin.
Some fans don't care much either way about much of anything, but just want Trump; I'm guessing they're a (small) minority.

Maybe there's also a question of what Vance might do, and/or Johnson/others. — jorndoe

Yeah I think foreign policy isn't exactly what most American are worried about. The domestic policies musk is trying to implement at home seem a lot more problematic on that account.

It looks like he's making an alliance with Putin from our point of view because he's moved so much towards Russia's position, has similar authoritarian values etc etc... but I don't think that's actually what's going on. I think he really wants to make a peace deal, and realises that he will need to make these concessions to Russia to get it done. He would probably like more cooperation with Russia for economical reasons and maybe to drive a wedge between Russia and China, but that doesn't happen overnight because of geo-political realities. If he gets a peace deal I think the Americans will mostly be fine with that eventhough it was a loss and 'betrayal' of Ukraine... he can allways say all of this was Bidens fault (which it to a large extend was).

Vance is much more ideologically driven, but reduced US intervention in the world fits perfectly within that frame of regionalism, multi-polar world etc.

The piece is still written from within the liberal democratic paradigm we had been living in up to the beginning of the year until Donald burst the bubble.

It's important to realise we too have been living in a propaganda bubbel... both sides had their propaganda. A lot of the things that have been dismissed as Russian propaganda were actually true. This was a war instigated by the US trying to expand its sphere of influence, it was the US and Europe that have made negotiations and a peace deal impossible, Zelenski has been cultivating or at least using "blood and soil" nationalism to gather troops, etc etc...

So it's not that world has changed per se, it was allways clear to the outside world that what we were doing was not what we said we were doing... it just wasn't clear to us.

Liberal democracy had become the only viable alternative with the idea of 'nimmer weider' in mind, and that entailed exclusion of the far left and far right from political dialogue because that were the forces that let us to all these attrocities. So the natural tendency is to view violations of our values in these terms, i.e. Putin or Trump are the second coming of Hilter. But this isn't the thirties of last century, Putin will not conquerer Europe if only because he can't. That's not to say we shouldn't be vigilant, there was a certain reasoning behind the exclusion of the extremes, it could devolve into that again, but I don't think it necessarily allways does.

Yet it's always the ineptness of Trump that will backfire here. I gather that there's not going to be the Trump peace in Ukraine, just as the new shared friendship with Russia won't become the success story that Trump think it will be. Trump has already started the smear campaign against Ukraine. — ssu

I think Trump will organize a yalta-like moment where he sits down with Putin and maybe XI and/or Modi too, to settle the war, come up with the beginnings of a new plan for Europa and the middle east with less involvement of the US, so they can re-locate forces to the pacific to where the balance of power has shifted.

They will leave the war, whether Europe agrees with it or not. And then Europe will be faced with a decision to either continue the war, and face possible consequence of twarting Trump, or go along with it and agree to peace on his terms.

Now there's a lot of support for continuing the war, but I don't expect that to last when the consequences of it start to dawn on the more pragmatic elites in Europe.

And really you can look at it in two ways, 1) a bunch of illiberal autocrats carving up the world that must be opposed at all cost, or 2) the beginnings of a more stable organisation of the region without the US.

I think we should stop fighting the geo-political wave lest we drown, and try to ride it in a direction that actually has some potential.

A country at war is never pretty NOS.

But to answer your question, some have their own interest, a lot have Russofobia, and most really believe our own propaganda.

Here's the real issue though, and it hasn't a whole lot to do with Urkraine being Nazi's or some such, because Europe has outsourced its foreign policy and defence to the US the past 70 years, most strategic thinking in Europe has been lost... they've mostly just been following the line set out by the alliance, i.e. the US.

Europe is absolutely capable of defeating Russia in terms of war-making capacity. Russia, even at its more rapid pace of gains in recent months, would have to spend over a millennia at war to conquer all of Ukraine. They are down to sending out men to conduct frontal assaults with golf carts and passenger cars instead of armored vehicles. Their artillery advantage has shrunk dramatically, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I would agree that it probably could defeat Russia given enough time, but it's not like we would be able to conquer back the territory to force the conditions we want any time soon. Maybe more important is the why of all of this. It's a war instigated by the US we initially didn't want (Merkel and Hollande were against it), and ultimately it isn't really in our long term strategic interest. What is most important is a stable European security system (without the US so they don't have to come bail us out every 10 or so years) which would have to include some arrangement with Russia if it wants to succeed. Fighting a bitter war until the end probably makes the prospect for that a lot more dubious.

And let's not forget the elephant in the room, they have a lot of nukes. Do we really want to see how far we can go before they use them?

What Europe lacks is the political will and courage to defeat Russia, and make the sacrifices that would come with actual wartime defense spending and actually cutting off Russian energy sales. German defense spending remains below half of pre-1990 levels, as does French spending. The more comparable situation, given an active war in Europe, would be the 50s and 60s and spending to GDP now is about 25-33% of those rates, which are more in line with active deterrence. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There's a lot of political will at the moment, but yes the question is how much are people really willing to give up for it. The issue here is that there are a lot of issues that need to be dealt with. You have an aging population and low fertility rate, which means you probably need more immigration to get enough active working population to keep the economy somewhat going. But then immigration is allready causing massive political frictions all over Europe. This is the way this whole thing can really spiral out of control i.e. a drawn out war, more budget for the army, less budget for welfare and other nice things, which in turn creates more discontent, etc etc.

What is Michel Houellebecq's phrase on mainstream secular French culture, "a civilization that has lost its will to live?" — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the culture has become to negative or negating in that it has come to consist mostly of things not to do. A lot of mores, regulation and social distribution that keeps an open and diverse society reasonably ordered and sufficiently affluent. But it doesn't really inspire much.

They say culturally we're 5 years or so behind the US. I think we can expect something similar like what is happening now in the US. The particular thing in Europe is that those far right voices allways have been "contained" by keeping them out of governement, societal dialogue and media, which has left issues like immigration and identity undealt with. Now these parties have found their way to the young voters via social media and its changing the entire dynamic.

Any new stable security arrangement for Europe will have to involve some kind of agreement with Russia. If we keep making this a holy war against the big bad, effectively preventing diplomacy with Russia, then this will never end. We are in no position to defeat Russia anytime soon without the US, so the war will drag on, costing a lot of lives... and you end up essentially in the same place having the negotiate with Russia.

What's worse is that, we don't have the military industry to supply the war in the short term, so we will have to look to the US for that, no doubt on bad terms given the position we are in,... and that will make us effectively technologically dependant on them for decades to come.

The US instigated the war by pushing Russia into a corner, now they turn their backs on it, and we are just going to take up the crusaders mantle in an attempt to crush Russia like a bunch of zealots... it's all so dumb.

Russia isn't in the same position as Germany. It doesn't have the technological and economical dominance to conquer Europe like the Nazi's did.

I'll stop chattering if you stop beating the wardrums.

Right, so you agree.

If they don't stand up to Russia now, and exhaust its military and economic capability, all of Europe will be salami-sliced. More quickly, if Russia is allowed to gobble up the Ukraine's resources. — Vera Mont

Let's not overrate Russia's strenght, they have managed to take a small part of Urkraine in 3 years of war where everyone expected it to be over in weeks. Russia will have to recover from this. Europe should use this time to build up strenght, which is the only thing Putin will respect. Time is what Europe needs because it is weak now but has the potential to be stronger.

How it could go wrong is if Europe goes in unprepared without the US in a foolish attempt to become the champion of the free world. A bad economy together with dis-information efforts from all sides will divide or even flip a lot of European countries... there won't be a salami anymore to slice.

And here's another potential reason Echarmion. If China's biggest enemy, the US is befriending next door neightbour Russia as it seems to be doing now, China might start getting a bit worried... . Maybe China would like some counter-balance. The geo-political balance is changing.

Soevereignity doesn't mean a whole lot in a world without a police to enforce it.

The US and NATO are separate entities. Why do you think the US wars of aggression required a coalition of consenting nations? Only four of the thirty-two NATO members were involved in Iraq and six in Afghanistan - nowhere near two thirds. — Vera Mont

2/3 in terms of military/power. And I don't think the current US administration is all that worried about forming coalitions.

So, you can understand why Ukraine wanted to join NATO. They've been under threat from Russia their whole lives.

Ofcourse I understand it from the perspective of the Ukranians. But that's what I mean with not making it about morality. Europa had just been told to take care of it's own security after been asleep for 70 years. The economy isn't doing to hot, and you have the US waving with tariffs and supporting pro-Russian Far-right parties all over Europe. Should Europe have to carry a drawn out war against Russia, and devote a lot of its allready strained budget to the military, where do you think this is going? It's a trap strategically, and would make sure Europe will become technologically dependant on the US for decades to come because that's where it would be forced to buy its weapons.

In terms of market, a disunited and splintered EU offers much the same market and the nations can be played against each other to avoid moves that threaten China's interests. — Echarmion

They will try to play nations against eachother, but now that the US has forfaited its role as garantor, a European security is what make the most sense for Europe in this kind of world. Geo-political forces are driving it in that direction.

My problem with that is that multi-polar worlds aren't stable and degenerate into imperial spheres of influence, usually in the course of wars. — Echarmion

Maybe you could be right. Big imperial powers tend to become unstable too over time and split or dissolve, it's not certain for example that the US will still be there in a few decades the way they are going at the moment.

Of course they feel threathened by the loss of controle over Ukraine to a pro-western government. It's a country on their border and so that massively alters the balance of power. What's your point?

The present US government wouldn't recognize morality if it was rotting chained upside-down in its dungeon. None of this BS is about morality.

Poor little Russia was not shaking in its boots at the prospect of NATO, whicyh has never waged a war of aggression, getting one more member - that had been next door all along. But the countries were under Russian occupation not so long ago, especially Ukraine where Stalin perpetrated his greatest atrocity, have plenty to fear from Russia. Putin didn't attack Ukraine out of fear: he wants the grain and the minerals, as well as the territory.
All the oligarchs are out to eat as much of the world's wealth as possible before closing time. — Vera Mont

The US has waged wars of aggression, and that's 2/3 of the NATO. Not wanting an alliance specifically designed to keep your country in check, on your border, seems pretty reasonable to me.

Europe is still one of their biggest markets, a stable continent could integrate further via the belt and road they are already building. China doesn't want a world war, it wants to sell its products. And China is serious about climate change, at some point there will need to be coöperation to avoid a mutual assured destruction type of scenario...

If Europe builds up a unified European security and foreign policy to replace Nato it could become one of the powers in a multi-polar world. It's not going to be easy, but with an economy 10 or more times the size of Russia it shouldn't be impossible either.

We don't need further escalting conflicts at this moment. Russia doesn't need it either. What it needed was to not have a US-vasal state on its border. So open up diplomacy with Russia, agree to neutrality of Ukraine and end the war. If the US leaves Europe as it plans to do, a lot of the tension will go away... Russia felt threathend by the US, not that much by Europe itself.

Build up European security and foreign policy apart from the US, and try to normalise relations with Russia and China. This is the only way forward long term. We will need them (and they need us) to keep the continent stable, we need them economically, and we might need them to stop the US from derailing the world into a downward spiral.

We should defend our values, but stop trying to impose them on others... if we keep making geo-politics about morality we won't get anywhere.

Would it be a bad thing is the liberal world order ended Frank?

What's your goal? Reducing harm? Ok. Good goal. Lets discuss how to get there and hash-out the theoretics of X or Y course of action/policy.... This base-line is almost never set down and so the arguments proceed from one another's bias about how the motiviations (even though unknown) are somehow evil. There is no point talking about policies and actions unless you can hold them up to a stated goal and point out that either A. the goal is unwarranted, or B. the policies/actions wont achieve the goal. Even if this is purely practical, and its just that no ones going to listen to you when you can't even stop yourself from pretending to know their mind, that's totally valid imo. Don't do that.

I think their goal is to overthrow the liberal democratic world order we have had the past 75 years. This is not about some policy change left or right, but about a total system change based on core values that are not the same.

If this is indeed their goal, then what they are doing kindof makes sense.

Maybe from climate change? — frank

Yes that would be one of the main ones.

This strikes me as totally incoherent. They aren't related(on my first reading.. This isn't an impugning). the "philosophy of staying together" as a species? What thinker has broached this outside of sci fi? Real question, and not one I think is a gotcha. I'd like to know who to read on that, because its clearly a prima facie conservative line of thinking. — AmadeusD

Nick Land influenced a lot of MAGA ideology. They want closed borders, de-globalisation, multi-polar world, protectionism, less immigration etc etc.... as opposed to liberal democrats wanting open borders, globalisation, uni-polar world, free trade, more immigration. It's not necessarily about the stated goals of said ideologies, but about the policies they tend to support and the implications of those.

Yes or in socio-economic terms globalism vs localism/regionalism.

Purely in evolutionary terms diversity is more adaptive because you have a wider range of attributes that can fit changing circumstances.

We used to be a lot more genetically and culturally diverse in the past, but we generally went in the other direction the past 12.000 years culminating in the globalised world we have now.

The general arc historically has been towards more integration. But I don't think this is necessarily the direction we should expect the future to go.

For splitting apart of a species you need seperation and evolutionary bottlenecks. Maybe we will get seperation and evolutionary bottlenecks.

What's interesting to me about his tone is that the Enlightenment was supposed to be about freedom from the dark grip of religion. It was supposed to be about seeing the truth for the first time, and being able to speak about it: 'we aren't this way because God ordained it, we made it this way!." Land appears to be trying to crawl out from under what he sees as a rotten corpse of Leftism. But what I see when we push this corpse aside is a history of intolerance and nationalist bloodshed. The original Enlightenment didn't have that problem. — frank

What I think this comes down to is a 'Blood and soil'-type of reasoning. Historically different cultures arose from various peoples living over the world in different circumstances. Values are not reasoned out by some dialectical process, but evolve out of communities of people living in a certain place, tied to the land as it where.

The enlightenment as an outgrowth of universalist Christianity (and platonism before) sees morality rather as something objective and universal springing from (pure) reason or something like that.

If reason or ideal forms is the presumed origin of morality, then there is no apparent link to place or particular events anymore, and notions of seperate traditions of peoples connected to their land suddenly don't make a whole lot of sense.

If you believe however that any culture or morality worth its salt comes not from abstract universals, but from real historical traditions of people living their lives in certain places, then it starts to make more sense why you wouldn't want to much immigration.

Dark enlightenment seems something like the realisation that ideal forms or 'reason' is merely another justification for a people that has forgotten that its beliefs are really only the particular beliefs of a certain tribe from a certain place in time.

This is maybe overly generous, but I think there's way to read this as being about culture and ethnicity rather than race ultimately.

And of course it leads to conflict and bloodshed if you have various peoples with diverging interests and values. If you are to have a defined 'we', a group of people uniting to work together for a common goal, then you also have an 'other', otherwise the 'we' isn't delineating anything.

The question is what do you lose if you try to do away with the other? An all-inclusive 'we' that doesn't really mean anything anymore and nobody really cares for? Atomised individuals feeling like they don't belong to anything? Nihilism?

He thinks tensions, conflicting forces in ones 'soul' will keep us going forward yes. The word opposites threw me off, because he doesn't believe in opposites, that's one of the ways language can fool us...

I probably agree with you here about what he's getting at, I just wouldn't describe it as 'overcoming oneselves in ones opposite'.

The morality system "Good and Bad" keeps this intact, the morality system "Good and Evil" breaks this cycle of overcoming in ones opposite. — DifferentiatingEgg

Overcoming in ones opposite sounds rather Hegelian, something Nietzsche was not. The problem with 'Good and Evil' isn't only that it flips the valuation of world based 'Good and bad' on its head, and are thus world and life-denying, but also that it distorts them in the process... it moralises them.

If your point would be that human beings have a certain telos (or design), and therefor morally (the way humans should act) is objective, I would disagree with that for a specific reason.

Evolution did not design human beings like we design basketball. But maybe you could say that biological lifeforms do have evolved a kind of telos. The point I would make is that while that is true generally for most life, humans are a special case because part of our telos as eu-social language using beings, is to develop culture. Because culture is not something that is set in stone, but changes over time and from place to place, there is an inherently indeterminate element in our telos… an element that I would argue gets filled in with the intersubjective.

Edit: The term intersubjective is maybe not entirely the correct term for it. It's more something akin to cultural materialism, where the intersubjective/cultural is also in part determined by the specific material circumstances a group finds itself in.

The problem you are noting is that we invented basketball, but this doesn’t make the internal goods to basketball subjective—that’s the key you are missing. These internal goods are relative to the design, irregardless if that design was imbued by a subject or subjects.

If it were subjectively the case that Lebron is a good basketball player, then I would be equally right to say right now that he is a terrible basketball and you wouldn’t be able to say I am wrong—because no one is actually right or wrong about it. — Bob Ross

I agree with all of this, never disagreed about this really.... but that is I think besides the point for the OP.

The point is that different societies have invented different designs, to use your terminology here. It isn't "subjective" what is right or wrong, because it objectively follows from the design, indeed. But what is right or wrong will differ from society to society because they have invented different designs. Maybe it's a bit like american football and soccer (i.e. real football), there is a different design, so a good football player will be something different depending on what design we are talking about.

That is why I argue that it isn't these 'in-group' moral standards that should be used to determine how one acts geopolitically, because they are particular to a certain society, but instead the standards that follow from what is agreed upon in the "internalional community" or in diplomatic dialogue between states.

I'm not sure this will come across because I have been restating basically the same point since the beginning.

No, no. A moral judgment is expressing something objective if its truth is independent of non-objective dispositions; and whether or not someone is good at some form of farming, chess, playing basketball, etc. is objective. E.g., it is not relative to anyone’s beliefs or desires that Lebron is a good basketball player—and, in principle, it couldn’t be the case. — Bob Ross

I don't disagree that Lebron is objectively a good basketball player, I'm saying that we have decided what constitutes a good basketballplayer collectively (or intersubjectively)... and then we can go comparing a specific player like Lebron to that conventional standard, and conclude on the basis of objective facts that he is indeed objectively a good player.

As an Aristotelian, I would say that there are objective, internal goods to things when those things have a Telos. E.g., a good farmer, a bad chess player, a good watch, a bad human, etc. — Bob Ross

I'm not sure what you mean with a Telos or internal good, because we invented farming, chess and clocks. These concept did not exist until we invented them... so how does one make sense of them having an internal good aside from the subjective values and goals we had in mind when devising them. I mean sure, good farming practices for instance will also be informed by objective things in the world, by how plants grow, or how weather fluctuates between seasons, but what it ultimately depends on is on what we decided farming should do for us (i.e. producing food, without to much work, in sustainable ways maybe etc etc).

If there is no actual badness, like you claim, then there is no such thing as a bad farmer. A bad farmer is a farmer that is actually bad at farming—this is not relative to anyone’s beliefs or desires about it. — Bob Ross

I'm saying there is no objective badness, and you're turning that into actual badness... as matter of definition it seems.

What is considered good or bad farming is subjective, in that you do have different ways of farming that have different values in mind (like say conventional, organic, permaculture etc etc...), where the one only is concerned with producing the most food, and other may be concerned more with doing it in an enviromentally healthy way. Once we agree on the cirteria good farming must meet (the standard of judgement is not objective), then we can go and look if a specific farmer meets those criteria (and that does depend on objective factors). I think you are confused between the standard of measurement and the measurement itself in relation to that standard.

Survival doesn’t actually matter under your view: the best you can say is that if you value surviving then you should care about your society. — Bob

That’s what it means: I don’t think you understand what actual goodness entails—it is objective goodness: those are synonyms.

If you say something actual matters, then you are claiming to know at least some moral facts.

That you actually value something, is not the same as that something actually mattering. In other words, that you actually believe or desire for something to matter does not entail that it actually matters. For something to actual matter, it must matter independently of non-objective dispositions. — Bob

That you actually value something, is not the same as that something actually mattering. In other words, that you actually believe or desire for something to matter does not entail that it actually matters. For something to actual matter, it must matter independently of non-objective dispositions. — Bob Ross

That is true for facts about the world, but not for morality because those are not about "truth" in the sense of corresponding to some objective state of the world.

I just don't agree with what you seem to think follows from definition/is axiomatically true. I don't get what an objective value could mean, how do you find these in the world?