Submitted by ziq in Anarchism (edited )

**Update: The below text is out of date.

Completed version is twice as long: /w/morality_vs_ethics **



This is a major misunderstanding leftists have of post-left politics. Most leftists are unable to grasp the difference between morality and ethics.

'Moral' is a label applied by people to themselves and their group so they can be perceived as a righteous being capable of doing no 'wrong'.

The 'moral' person sees themselves as fighting a universal battle between good and evil. They are the righteous crusader for good; incapable of straying from the 'moral code' that enshrines them in sanctified goodness.

The label 'immoral' is applied to whoever the 'moral' group decides is counter to their notions of goodness. They do this so they can maintain 'moral' superiority over the out-group and thus justify any action they take to marginalise these undesirables without feeling remorse or having to justify their behaviour to anyone.

The immoral villains can never be forgiven for their perceived crimes against morality because morality is definitive and final. The despicable villains must be forever shunned by the altruistic heroes in order to maintain their pious morals.

Racial segregation was considered morally righteous in the US South. As was cleansing the land of 'savages' during colonisation. Lynching bi-racial children for being 'impure'. Denying women equality by reasoning that it would lead to 'moral decadence'.

The recent government massacres of drug users in the Philippines were justified by creating a moral panic. The tyrant leading the massacres appointing himself as the one and only arbiter of virtue, that all moral people should blindly follow.

Perhaps the most deadly moral panic of the last century was spurred by Mao's cultural revolution in China. His Little Red Book of quotes; a virtual moral blueprint, was used by the party-faithful to purge scores of random people for having morally-objectionable... haircuts or fashion sense. Likewise, Stalin and his supporters in the USSR forced homosexuals into gulags where they were worked to death for 'crimes against morality'.

And of course the prototypical moral blueprint; the Christian Bible, was used to lead brutal moral crusades across the world; mass slaughters, land seizures and forced conversions of non-Christians.

Moral systems are designed to oppress and marginalise anyone the system deems undesirable. They are based on transcendent rules that are forcibly applied to all people from all backgrounds, in all situations; regardless of each individual's desires and values.

Unlike reactionary universal 'morals', ethics are decided on a case-by-case basis by the individual based on their own values and desires. Ethics are tangible and tied to real cause and effect outcomes.

A moralist opposition to violence is: violence is universally wrong, immoral, bad.

You might be daring enough to ask "Why?"

...Simply because the moralist says so. Requesting justification for such an abstract statement would be scoffed at because morality is seen by the moralist as some kind of divine truth that can't be questioned. The simple act of questioning it would be enough to render you immoral.

On the other hand, a measured ethical opposition to violence can be made by an amoralist... They can see that in many cases violence begets more violence, fosters systems based on the dominance of the strong, and can lead to deep-seated multi-generational divisions. But in other cases, they could see violence as ethically just. Because the alternative (e.g. fascism) would likely be worse.

A moralist forces their reactionary and irrational will on everyone else. An amoralist isn't concerned with forcing their personal perspective onto everyone, or with maintaining that perspective in every situation as if were unquestionable dogma.

Morality places paint-by-the-numbers judgement on every action, positing that all actions in column A are inherently 'wrong' and unacceptable, while all actions in column B are inherently 'right' and necessary. Regardless of the experiences of the people involved, their personal convictions and motivations, and the conditions that are present in that place and time.

Post-leftists aren't 'monsters' for rejecting morality. We're rejecting an incredibly flawed and reactionary concept that directly leads to untold misery.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

In the past I would have filled the comments section here with a heated back and forth between Chomskyist and Defasher to illustrate the deficiencies of a moralist position in an easily digestible and entertaining format.

I can't do that any more so just use your imagination to see how that conversation would have unfolded.

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retiredshared2 wrote

You could still, just write it like a play.

enter CHOMSKYIST, DEFASHER

CHOMSKYIST: blah blah blah

DEFASHER: not blah blah blah

exit CHOMSKYIST

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retiredshared2 wrote

In the past I would have filled the comments section here with a heated back and forth between Chomskyist and Defasher to illustrate the deficiencies of a moralist position in an easily digestible and entertaining format.

Making a faux debate makes it very open to strawmen and is just a bad idea overall. Don't recommend.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

But this also serves to demonstrate how we are controlled and limited by others 'morality'.

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RosaReborn wrote

I agree with you. I may still use "morality" in normal speech even I am talking about ethics however.

Post-leftists aren't 'monsters' for rejecting morality. We're rejecting an incredibly flawed and reactionary concept that directly leads to untold misery.

This is incredibly important. We must always question our own ethics and justify their reasoning. In doing so we uncover conditioning of society that we never see before, things that lie outside the scope of moral/immoral or somewhere in between. Especially true for individualist anarchist thinking

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ziq OP wrote

uncover conditioning of society that we never see before

it's weird just how much we have to deprogram ourselves to reclaim our uniqueness

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

We can't expect others to understand our personal ethics when they're informed by our own unique experiences and desires.

My decision to remove an ML from a position of power using my defasher account to shine a light on her actions before removing her with my admin account was an attempt to minimize backlash against raddle from what I knew was a vengeful clique.

Admins are always treated by collectivists as if they are synonymous with the entire site, and anything an admin does that people don't like is used to destroy the site.

My actions were considered immoral by most of this community. I'm still chastised for it constantly, with people even going as far as to call me a sociopath.

But to me; my decision was completely justifiable under my own ethical standards. My realization that her politics; her words and actions as a mod presented an imminent danger to raddle, led to me performing what I saw as the only viable solution to safeguard the integrity of the site.

I did a 'bad' thing in service of what I saw as being far more important concerns. I was guided by an informed fear of MLs historically hijacking leftist spaces and destroying them.

I wasn't trying to hurt anyone. It was a wholly ethical decision in my head, and I don't expect anyone else to understand that when their experiences with the user in question, MLs in general, and their personal ethics may be wholly different from my own.

After 4 months of constant fury, doxxing, hijacking of chat rooms and attempts to hack raddle to take it offline coming mainly from her clique of friends after I came clean - I think I've shown myself i was justified in my 'immoral' action to separate my true feelings from my admin account. To use proxies to voice my concerns about real problems. Everything I feared would happen happened after I came clean. My only solace after having to step down as admin is knowing that the current admins are both anarchists and I don't have to worry about a genocide-denying ML constantly trying to make rules to ban criticism of Stalin.

I'm not a sociopath or a villain. I can only follow my own ethical convictions. My every instinct tells me I made the right choice.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

There was no vote to mod or demod her. I appointed her as an emergency measure when we were under heavy brigade without consulting anyone other than emma. I removed her privileges the same way. I wasn't going to ask anyone's permission to take away temporary privs, I'm the one who was legally liable for all the kiddie porn the spammers were posting (site is registered in my name) and I added her to handle the night shift during the brigade to protect myself both legally and health-wise from not being able to sleep because I had to stay up to deal with the constant porn spam. It was really no one else's decision and I never claimed appointing admins was a democracy.

I never banned her.

This thread is addressed to the user that said earlier I have no conscience and their moral code makes them better than me

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

I don't think giving her devoted friends the opportunity to enshrine her permanently as an admin would have been a good idea. They would have won any vote I triggered to remove her powers and it would have legitimized her position and resulted in the site being destroyed like every site MLs take over. I tried to handle it by shifting the 'blame' for removing her powers to my non admin account to avoid the drama. I don't really care if it was underhanded, I have no faith in people to be able to handle being stripped of their power. They've tried real hard to destroy this site for months and it wouldn't have been any different if I had asked their permission to remove her and then done it anyway after all her friends said no.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Making the right choice for me isn't moralistic. If you don't do what you think is best for yourself and your site then what are you doing exactly? Should I make my choices for the 'common good' or whatever? No thanks. I don't even like most people.

I don't need to justify my actions to anyone, that's not what this is about and I should have never fallen into the "forgive me for betraying your impossible moral standards please" trap.

And you're one to talk about moralizing when it's all you do here and all you did on reddit. At least I'm honest that I do what I do because it suits me best and don't try to wrap it up in abusive moralist bullshit like your "I have to protect everyone from you, you evil manipulative sociopath literally Trump you worthless trash destroyer of anarchy so I'm going to follow you around and rant about you for 2 years to protect your innocent brocialist victims" shtick.

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rot wrote

I think the concept of what you consider best for yourself is informed by moralistic values and could be considered a type of morality. Self-sacrifice for the "greater good" is held as a moral stance by some. Similarly, individualism is considered a moral value.

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ziq OP wrote (edited )

Deliberate self interest isn't moral values or literally everything anyone ever does can be described as moral values. It's only moralizing when you pretend you're doing it for pious reasons.

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