| | | Just because each person has two arms, two legs, two eyes etc.... and
shuffles about upright all over the place does not mean "ethics" and "morals" are absolutes by which we may judge them. One has to take context into account. That context includes, more than anything else, the myths and rituals of the culture the person was brought up in. This is not a simple subject and this is why uneducated and/or criminal leaders cannot solve problems involving disparate peoples. Indeed, they are destined to make things worse when thinking in terms of "we need a deal, we need trade, we need profits" etc., regardless of the motivation for this thinking (i.e., genuine or not).
Cultural inflexion, mythology, ritual, past ---- these are crucial when it comes to ethics and morals. When people from distinct cultures do not understand each other you see this at work.
The simplest illustrative example I can give is war. Observe how, prior to a war, one side *demonizes* the other side using its media. There is thorough disregard for the thought that we refer to human beings, as we turn a race of peoples from a "thou" to an "it". You see, when something is an "it", we can come up with a justification to destroy it. You see this on message boards too ....... messages filled with pus and vitriol, talking about Russians or Chinese or the enemy that is the flavor of the moment. Never mind that the attackers have little or no personal experience at the human level with that which they want to so easily destroy.
The next step is the war itself. A culture takes a young man and programs him from his youth to bow to the flag and defend the home country. Then the man is sent to war and does atrocious things which, in his programmed mind, is thoroughly justifiable. Not just that ...... these actions are aggrandized through stories and movies, and the vile part is filtered out. But even if you consider the vile part, you have to recognize that the ethics of your breakfast moment do not make sense in a war moment. Because of this one cannot really judge a man in peace-time for acts he may commit in war-time. We do it and it makes no sense. But even worse, war makes even less sense, because the people fighting it are not the ones making the decision to fight. Try to send Trump to a one-man real war in his boxer shorts and see how long before he retreats not just to his home continent but to the one behind it. When will people wake up to this recognition? Probably never.
But here is the main issue. We are racing headlong towards a future where the change has been and will continue to be *rapid*. So rapid is this change that, unlike in times past, our societies do not have the time or to tools to develop corresponding myths and rituals. These were things that instructed societies in past days ...... instructed in important ways. That instruction has been replaced by confusion and noise. As a result the disorder will only increase. The West tries to dump its "ethics" and "morals" onto the East along with its technology. Some of it may stick. We will get the same in return. In any case, both societies will eat each other from the inside out, because what was once available is no longer available. And as the elders die out, so will the ways to reach these things, along with the shamans and medicines of the old cultures.
Will algorithms and technology replace what we are losing and have lost? No. :) |
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