I wrote a response below to another person's post, and think I may have been a tad clearer in it if you're interested

Yes, well two things.

Firstly I purposely avoided the merits of, and origins of god and religion etc so as not to deviate from the main thought i was exploring - society post religion or order.

Secondly I take your point but I think the crucial element that I have failed to explain properly is that I'm considering these things in a society that was, prior to its secular state, heavily reliant on religion for guidance. So the transition that society would experience from the simplicity of being offerred clearly defined answers to a world of uncertainty and no answers is the factor i'm considering.


Our society becoming more secular is often only seen as a result of progress, and evolution (within academic circles). But aside from the debate of the pros and cons of that actuality, there's also another thing worth considering. Whether we arrived at this secular society through beliefs or by enforced dogma

- A secular environment could have, as one example, evolved to serve a political or social elite, with dogma, trend, academic biases filtering into systems of education, or distractions (entertainment) etc creating a societal acceptence that religion or faith has been all but disproved.

So just because a society is secular in disposition, it doesn't mean it arrived there by slick mastery of the great philisophical questions. With that in mind, if we continued with the same level of

. In varying degrees we have emotional responses to acts committed upon our fellows. — charleton

Yes, that is the individual's morality. The collective morality is built on cross sections of experience, history, increased intelligence, local and globalised needs, protecting a society's progress and order, to name a few. The collective morality is far more vague, and in a constant state of flux. But it is there. For example I don't think there's a reasonable argument within any fraction of humanity that disputes that killing innocent people for fun is morally sound. Nor would I think there's any fraction that would contest that helping another person for the sole purpose of improving that person's life, with no harmful consequences arising from the action, is morally sound.

So there is, albeit murky in the middle, a frame of collective morality, however it came to be. So there are examples of actions that can be universally agreed upon that are moral or immoral, even if my above ones have holes I failed to see. This range, this spectrum is what I would see as shifting without religion in the mix. And the baseline of what's morally abhorrent could drop in a world jolted into a state of anomie. And this would be a real possibility if reliigion and meaning waned at a faster rate than we could evolve to understand a world without it.

I

The invention of god was nothing more than a system to codify behaviour. We still have the law of the land which places our rewards and punishments to a more immediate and pragmatic level. And it is here that our 'collective morality' resides. No different from any time since the invention of god, except that the law of the land do not involve the lie of the supernatural. — charleton

Whether you believe in god or not, and whether the world will be better or worse without religion is not pertinent to my points. I'm exploring the implications of how a transition from a world with religion to one without would have on the range within our universal moral code would sit.

If there was a wave of secularism across the educated population, and the trickle down effects reached the disadvantaged majority of humanity, who may accept their fate based on the assumption of order, then (and this was my original assumption) people who developed their individual moral code with respect to the collective moral code, could grow less loyal to a collective morality. Without the optimism or hope of there being reason for a person's pain, there lays the foundation for asking questions that lead to nonacceptance of the status quo (enter the central point I found interesting)

This happening at an individual level then affecting the collective's response to the status quo. We can look at how this could lead to every man for himself, and the lowering of the baseline of what is considered unacceptable, and I thought that this was the mainly represent outcome.

But optimistically I looked at the flip side, and thought about ways this could be a positive change.(remember i'm not talking about a circumstance where we are all living in equality and that we became civilized and efficient and secular as a result. I'm considering the not so distant future where the inequality of the world weighs heavily on the larger percentage of people.)

And one potential positive by product of the change in our understanding of order or meaning is that we could realize that the "reason" or "order" we relied on to accept our place in the world have been shackles as well as anchors, and that we don't have a reason to live half lives, or accept dictatorial classes etc .. People of all parts of society questioning their surroundings and why they should accept the way of things could then affect how we question our own actions. This could then reveal the abundance of hypocrisy and contradiction in our moral codes, and as people see this of their individual morality, the collective morality could improve. So an example of collective morality being addressed as a result- justifying homelessness in cities where there's an allocated budget for entertainment events that exceeds the money needed to minimize the homelessness. An individual accepts this and the collective does so. The little lies we use to accept and explain such things collectively could become highlighted in the shift of our perception of order, and in the pursuit of a better personal existence, the collective may see the unacceptability of suffering that is within our power to eradicate. That without the excuse of saying there's a reason for this beyond our own lack of action, we could develop an inerrant societal obligation in raising the baseline of the collective moral code to a level that universally perceives all suffering endured by all people unacceptable wherever we have the power to eradicate it. This could be tied in with an understanding of the merits of this to the individual as well.

God I hope that makes sense (pun intended).

Thanks. I'll check it out.

Ya, kinda what i mean but even at every level, not just "suffering of millions"
Like how people don't help each other as an instinctive reaction at every opportunity. That choosing not to help people that need help is a conscious decision often made acceptable by rationalizing the significance of that person to you, to your other priorities, to your own experiences, or to your tribe. All could arguably be traced back to the individuals inner barometer of what matters, and how much.

the limitations implied by stalins quote = the limitations being that there's a ceiling on how much we can measurably care about one thing at one time. That there's a limit to how much we can not only take, but comprehend at an emotional level.

So when I say "we are free from the limitations implied by Stalin's quote" what I mean to get at is how we there is in every human a threshold of how much they can feel about something. So in the case of an individual person (tom) who helps the homeless. they cannot feel 1000 times more sympathy for 1000 homeless people than the sympathy they feel for one homeless person. The increased suffering cannot be directly proportional to increase in sympathy indefinitely. But one story may be enough to drive him to help 1000's or alternatively he may see a documentary about the life of homeless people, and the prevelance of it. Seeing the scale of the issue he cares deeply, more profoundly that seeing one story, or even 20. So his ressolve to help isn't directly equal to how he feels about individuals, but rather in his feelings about wanting to do something himself.

But when we are talking about society collectively, it's a different animal to the individual. The collective moral code which causes society to react to things, and create laws etc, is something that has less autonomy that Tom. Society is reactionary and my idea was that if society lost religion and spirituality, then society as a whole would fall in danger of having no adhesive to stick together a moral code. But my above argument was that if society evolved with no offerings of meaning or order for living, then while it would lack a lot of what drives us forward, it could also free us from feeling like we have to tune out stuff (the extreme version of this mentality that I've never understood of being devoted to the people you know, but seeing the rest of world as not my problem.) where racism or tribalism or indifference to suffering experienced by strangers all can be traced to in some form.

While you say some people dedicate their lives to helping homeless etc, that's an individual decision. When talking about a collective moral code there's the larger issue of how all the individuals from altruistic to sinister, collectively produce an administered (expected) moral compass which we refer to as guidance. If society collectively doesn't measure one suffering as meaning more or less than an other, then the individual living in that societty can be free to use intelligence, humanity and progress as reasons to care about all incidents of suffering which occur within society, irrespective of the proximity or scale of the particular suffering. IE people can care infinitely without a cap on their feelings, when the zeitgeist they are reared in puts no significance on meaning.

(probably totally waffling but i promise i have a point - just don't think Ive the linguistic or cognitive prowess to get it accross!)

Does it then make sense to say that ultimately all knowledge is predicated on a belief in the physical universe. Therefore knowledge requires belief?

I attempted to lay out an objective response to this a while back, and hope I made somewhat of a contribution, and I was wondering where you (tree falls) stand on the issue now, having had so much participation in the discussion?

Have you found any reccurring points that ring true, or have you developed a clearer idea of where you stand morally on the questions you first put forward? I'm very interested to know how the whole process has affected your perspective, and whether any particular post gave you a "eureka!" moment? The psychologist in me is very curious about the efficacy of asking a philisophically minded group for assistance in reaching a philisophical position, and then implementing it in real life! - That's not alluding to a propensity for indecisiveness among philosophers :) more to do with examining how minds can synthesize individual ideas to form higher levels of understanding (or whether strongly developed contrasting ideas grow more nuanced in opposing directions). I'm waffling, sorry - just curious to see how these posts influence the person who starts the discussion.

Also, has the visit past, and how did it go? What decisions did you make (if you don't mind me asking?)

Thanks @Tree Falls

1) What do you think the age of consent should be?
I don't know enough about the psychological development in adolescence to give a direct answer, but it would seem that it is most protective of our young to come to an answer from a psycho social analysis, rather than an emotional instinct. The emotional instinct is yours, as an adult outsider, and not necessarily representative of what is experienced by the subject.


2) Do you think my brother's behavior is wrong?
I do, but I think his wrong is more complex than that of a predator taking indiscriminate victims in the pursuit of pleasure. I don't know how he engages with these women. But take the most optimistic assumption, that the girl is aware, and that the experience is something she profited from and has no regrets. Even in this scenario I think he is in the wrong. Society puts the legal age of consent at a point where it protects as many young people as possible and allows them a window where the less mature can catch up with their already mature equals (in age). If your brother is strictly pursuing women who have just passed that point of security, then he is working against a social convention that is in place to protect slower developers. It is legal at a given age because that's as far as society deemed it necessary to provide security for slower developers, without depriving the larger percentage of that population from something that is a natural part of their development. He could therefore be more heinous to social order, than to the women (assuming the best case scenario where the girl takes value from the experience). But then there are the abundance of factors that may arise from serial sexual encounters of this kind. The more women he has sex with, the higher the probability that one will be totally unprepared for the experience, or will not understand the implications of the encounter, or will even be afraid throughout but too ashamed to speak out.

The interpretation that conveys your brother as a master manipulator or sexual pervert is unhelpful, I would say. In discussions about sexual misconduct we are too often overly emotive and lump all perpetrators into one class of stigmatized outcasts. In my opinion your brother is behaving selfishly and his selfishness carries the potential to do harm to these women, harm which he has either downplayed or dismissed.

3) Should our family friends be told about my brother?
My simple answer is yes. Yes for many reasons. Firstly he stands by his actions, and doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. So then there should be no reason for him to expect secrecy. There's a difference between showing loyalty to family by helping them improve themselves, and showing loyalty by helping disguise their flaws. No service is done by masking a loved ones flaws. If he poses a risk to a 14 year old girl which you have the power to eliminate by talking, then shouldn't you speak? If there is adequate evidence that without telling her parents, he poses a real threat, then who benefits from you carrying that burden? If he was to act, then more harm would be created through your silence, assuming again that there is adequate evidence that telling them is the only preventative option. (I am trying to answer throughout in a manner that encompasses the entire spectrum of who your brother could be, and the range of harm that could arise from his actions.

4) If your answer to questions 2 and 3 are yes, what in general am I ethically obligated to do? I am thinking above and beyond notifying our friends. Should I create a website solely devoted to my brother's behavior and engage in SEO so that his name will be a top 10 hit if someone googles him?

I suggest that you are no more or less responsible for telling the world about your brother than you are of helping a homeless person that you encounter on the street. That being my opinion of your responsibility, my thoughts about whether you "should" create a website about your brother must take into consideration your relationship with him, your parents, and your community. You should consider ultimately what you believe your brother is capable of, but also acknowledge that false assumptions could ruin his life. I wouldn't think that you should publicly brand any person so severely unless you had irrefutable evidence that the threat is real and even then I'm not sure that ethically you are the person to do so. You are too close to be objective perhaps, and a better course of action for you to maximize ethical integrity could be to try to speak with him, learn the extremeness of his actions and whether he himself wants to change. If you reach a point where you evaluate he is a real threat then I would suggest unburdening it to people who are un-involved. Perhaps an ultimatum to him to speak to a counselor about it or you report what you know to be true. I hasten to mention that this is all conjecture and only examples of ethical approaches to various potential realities.

If you are seeking the highest moral position, then I think the starting point is to be honest with yourself about how clearly you can analyse the situation from such a close position. The matter about the 14 year old is a tangible and imminent circumstance which you can make a judgment call based on the knowledge you have. What your role is regarding your brother's actions in general is a much more complex issue which will take more careful consideration, in my opinion

Ya well the harnessing of social media is one example that I've considered, but the main thing I was contemplating was whether our idea of improving ourselves in order to improve the world isn't feasible under the time limits of our own self destructive potential. So to improve the way of life first, strateically, and then the improving of humanity will follow, within the structures we put in place to facilitate its evolution.

So we would have to look at human development as something that can't evolve altruistically in an environment that doesn't nurture said altruistic nature.


The 2017 being the best year in human history is clearly a positive thing. But the only hesitation I would have is that a key component in our development is the measure of the distance between A) The improvement seen in society and B) The resources to effect change.

So if the base standard of living globally is raised by 2 percent from 2016 to 2017, this statistic looks good on its own. But then if increases in technology, innovation etc are increased significantly more, then it can be seen that the world is improving but our efforts might not be. IE The changes in measurement of what we can do in relation to what we do do, is very important to look at.

Thanks, I'll check those out. Might straighten out a few of my wobbly ideas!

I agree that keeping people divided and obscuring the causes of our strife are means to maintaining the status quo. And that supressing altruism is not the tool to do this. But I am more looking at altruism from the perspective of its ability to grow in different environments, and examining ways to give its potential the space to breathe, rather than a release of dormant altruism within individuals.

"If people do not know who their true friends and true enemies are, their altruism cannot be marshalled optimally." - I believe this to be so, and it reinforces my point that the human condition is not the starting factor for improving the world, but will improve as the environment does. Take my example for the app idea of scoring companies by their interaction with society and social issues. This doesn't rely on any collective cohesion or even any intention of far reaching altruism, at an individual level. Each person will be biased to favour companies which are supportive of something personal to them. For example one man buys all his clothes at "clothes4bros". He has a disabled brother and this shop employs people with disabilities and has the highest score for equal opportunities in his city. He doesn't care about any other issues, but his commitment to "clothes4bros" contributes to the overall power, acceptence and importance of the app. So that will in turn strengthen all the other causes that are scored by the map. the individual's subjective morality is pooled in with the collectives, and the overall result forces corporations to factor social benefits into their shape and success. In effect, the compulsary altruism replaces marketing. The man's feelings towards other issues are irrelevent in the contribution he is making to the whole.

"Francis insists that members of human communities encounter one another first as persons, " - This is true, but if the first encounter is discouraged by divisive rhetoric then finding ways to extract altruism and pool it together is a potential way of bypassing the barriers put in place like ignorance and divisiveness.