[MD] Flying Spagetti Monsters

[Ben Golden]

I'm going to do some clarification of language, which I apologize for, 
because it's annoying, but I see it as the only way to set this discussion 
on a track towards consensus.

Morality is a word that I've had great difficulty understanding in general.  
It's generally defined by philosophers as a field that answers the question 
"what ought I to do?" and is the same thing as ethics.  The problem appears 
when people start to (blindly) assume that it's universally agreed that 
certain things are moral/immoral.  Behaviors like rape, murder, theft, 
prostitution, gambling, etc. are just said to be immoral and anyone who 
disagrees is said to be an immoral person.

Now Pirsig defines doesn't make these assumptions; he says that morality is 
the same as quality and his explanation of quality is so broad as to make 
any of these acts, if analyzed from a certain perspective, perfectly moral.  
The decision to murder is often a good/moral one from a biological 
framework, though rarely from a social or intellectual one.

The principle I most often identify with the popular definition of morality 
is the intellectual pattern of altruism.  Rape, murder and theft are easily 
shown to be inaltruistic.  With prostitution and gambling, the case is 
slightly weaker, which fits with the fact there's greater ambiguity these 
days as to whether these behaviors are immoral.

So for Arlo's claim that blindly following a social instituion will lead to 
immoral behavior, I'd like to replace immoral with inaltruistic.  I'd like 
to free up the word immoral to mean low quality, but I can't do this if it 
means something else.  As an example, I believe it's immoral to burn 
cookies.  It's not that it's inaltruistic--no great harm comes from burning 
cookies the way it does from murder or stealing a car--but it's immoral in 
that it's a low quality thing to do.  Now I can say that blindly following a 
social institution is itself often an immoral action.  Not because of the 
consequences of following any given order, but because by blindly following, 
I cut off my ability to find dynamic quality, which is a high-quality thing 
to do.  But blindly following is not inaltruistic, unless I'm following 
inaltruistic orders.

I'm not trying to distinguish between altruism and morality so as to attack 
altruism.  Altruism is a dominant part of modern morality and has been so 
since the rise of Judeo-Christian values.  I'm not going to argue, as Platt 
or Ayn Rand might, that altruism is wrong.  (I'll address this below)  But I 
also don't think it's the whole of morality and I think it's important to 
distinguish between the two.

[Arlo]
Should soldiers obey orders they find immoral?  If no, how can they do this 
and still be "blindly obedient"?

[Ben]
Without any definition or morality, or of value, I'd say that soldiers who 
value highly the army they serve will follow the orders, but soldiers who 
place greater value on other patterns, be they intellectual or biological, 
will disobey orders.
Now if you replace immoral with altruistic, which is a reasonable 
perspective from which to gauge the morality of an action, I'd argue that 
soldiers should obey orders that ARE altruistic, not orders they think are 
altruistic.  When a soldier obeys an order to commit suicide or rape a 
village girl, I don't care what he thinks, he's acting inaltruistically and 
I, as an altruist, condemn his action.

[Arlo]
If you want people to "blindly" obey the law "do not rape", what happens 
when/if the law changes? How will they know to disobey? Or should they 
continue being "blindly obedient"?

[Ben]
Now this becomes easy.  An sufficiently altruistic soldier would not rape 
regardless of orders.  Likewise, a soldier who blindly follows orders would 
not rape so long as his commander is sufficiently altruistic.  Arlo seems to 
argue that case 1 is the only viable way to prevent inaltruism.  Platt and I 
seem to think case 2 is a more easily achieved alternative.

[Arlo]
Has any nation ever existed that has NOT issued an immoral order?

[Ben]
Again, I'd like to replace immoral with inaltruistic.  Otherwise, my answer 
is a quick no, since there are a great many things I consider immoral but 
not inaltruistic.  Now as to whether any nation has never issued 
inaltruistic orders, I'd also answer no, although I'm really not too sure 
about the Federated States of Micronesia.  If you're asking about Rome and 
Greece and the Ottoman Empire, they were highly inaltruistic.  They didn't 
even value altruism.  I believe that in Book II of the Iliad, Nestor makes a 
long speech about how the Greeks should not go to war, which resonates as an 
altruistic argument.  All the other soldiers laugh at him.

But your argument seems to extend so as to say that so long as blind 
obedience occurs, inaltruistic behavior will take place.  You point out that 
this has occured in nations A,B and C and that therefore it's bound to 
happen in nation D.  But if nations A,B and C didn't value altruism, while 
nation D does, it's not really a fair assessment.  Put specifically, the 
United States is a country that values altruism much more highly than 
ancient Greece or Rome or 17th century France or England or Nazi Germany.  
Blind allegiance was present in all these places, but they also lack 
altruistic values, at least to the extent they appear in the United States 
(or other modern Western nations).  So blind allegiance has a much lower 
likelihood of leading to inaltruistic action today in the States than it did 
in Nazi Germany.

[Arlo]
You appear to be suggesting that people "blindly obey" laws/orders YOU 
believe are "moral", but suddenly become disobedient if ordered to do 
something you also find immoral. On what basis should they make that 
determination? Why should they, in other words, "blindly obey" an order "not 
to rape", but suddenly possess the critical awareness to say "no" when 
ordered "TO rape"?

[Ben]
This analysis is almost identical (though opposite) to what I saw as your 
position.  You seemed to suggest that by encouraging people to not "blindly 
obey", they would become disobedient if ordered to do something you found 
immoral (ie inaltruistic).  But that they would continue to obey laws/orders 
you believe are "moral" (ie altruistic).  I just meant to illustrate that it 
cuts both ways.

[Platt]
As you probably know, Ayn Rand presented a number of arguments to show that 
altruism is anything but intellectually defensible.

[Ben]
I've read Atlas, which I thought was a brilliant book.  Rand condemns 
altrusim, which I thought was the weakest part of her argument, although she 
may be defining altruism differently than how I would.  Rand condemns 
certain behaviors that are justified as being altruistic (such as wealth 
redistribution) but I believe her to be quite an altruist herself.  The 
whole point of her book is that by disrespecting the industrialists--the 
movers and the shakers--politicans and bureaucrats destroy society.  But if 
altruism isn't a value, why should politicians and bureaucrats care about 
anyone else?  Why not steal all that they can?  Rand supports a government 
that enforces strong property rights and low taxes, thus allowing the movers 
and shakers the freedom to make life better for everyone.  This is an 
altruistic aim.

[Platt]
American's experience with the "War on Poverty" supports her view.

[Ben]
I don't understand what you mean by this; feel free to elaborate.

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