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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I think it's too much to ask that anarchists talking to other anarchists in anarchist spaces should have to define their terms every time they use them.

I also think it's a plenty helpful critique of morality or I wouldn't have wasted hours writing it. If my argument is poorly conceived, you haven't demonstrated that in any way in your rejection of it.

The terms are only fudged if you're somehow attached to the idea of a moral left, which is as ridiculous as being attached to the notion of a 'civilized' left in that it adapts oppressive terminology with a brutal colonialist legacy and calls it radical - for no good reason.

how philosophers use the term "morality"

I don't think that's relevant to any of my arguments since I'm talking about the common usage of the word and specifically the way it's used to control us by our oppressors and reinforce their hierarchies.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

if you're using this terminology in a way that diverges hugely from how it is traditionally used, and your whole point here is to educate people and clarify your ethics, then i don't actually think it's too much to ask in this case

Well I've pretty much definitively defined the terms with this piece (which I'm surprised I needed to do since it's commonly accepted terminology among post-leftists, individualist anarchists and even the half-baked stirner-meme anarchists on reddit) so there's no excuse for misunderstanding it now.

I still think it's too much to ask that anarchists explain basic anarchist concepts to long time anarchists every time they use them. It's not like I go around blatantly misunderstanding collectivist-anarchist terminology and then accusing people of being monsters based on my misunderstanding.

i say they're fudged because i don't think you're actually rejecting morality in any meaningful sense here

I made a pretty detailed distinction between collectivist one-size-fits-all blame-game always-black/white morality and individualist highly-adaptable usually-grey-area ethics. But ok.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ziq OP wrote

standard, which can be misleading and i'd rather nobody get the wrong idea about what these terms usually mean

See the first line of my OP:

This is a major misunderstanding leftists have of post-left politics.

I don't know how much clearer I can make it.

and i'm telling you the distinction doesn't bare much scrutiny for reasons i explained

Your argument is that some unnamed philosophers define ethics as 'moral philosophy', while my argument is that anarchists make a distinction between moralism and amoralist ethics. I'm not sure why your establishment philosophers are being allowed a monopoly on terminology or why their ideas are more important than the ideas of post-leftists. There's nothing sacred about their musings.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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ziq OP wrote

I don't think there's anything mainstream about philosophy and since this is a political forum I'm not even sure philosophical definitions are relevant. I only really care how the word is used in real life.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I also went into how people that praise themselves as being 'moral' are usually anything but, which could be your main take-away from this if you reject the rest of my argument. Moral posturing doesn't make people better than other people.

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edmund_the_destroyer wrote

But to Dumal's point, you're not fitting the terms 'morality' and 'ethics' to their common usage. If some person says, "All Latino people are inherently unethical and we white people are inherently more ethical", it's no different from saying "All Latino people are inherently immoral and we white people are inherently more moral."

So you're using the two terms to try to make a distinction that doesn't exist. I do agree with part of your fundamental point, which is that each side at best believes it is the side of good and at worst adopts the rhetoric of pretending to be the side of good and demonizes opposition. But that's universal.

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