Morality versus Niceness: Winner Take All

[Purple Knight]

Question for Debate: Does morality provide any advantage whatsoever over niceness?

This is something I'm posting in the Christianity rather than ethics section because I've thought quite a lot about it and decided that the religiosos are right and any useful morality absolutely has to come from God (or some other moral authority) no bones about it.

Morality here meaning the sort of codified rules that tell you that you can't (for example) murder people. Without absolute morality you absolutely can kill people, though of course you can still choose not to. Morality for the purposes of this discussion means you absolutely may not (for example) kill people under any circumstances it's wrong no room for discussion and that's that. Yes, you need an absolute moral authority for non-relative morality. That's inescapable.

And people are generally fallible so choosing a person gets you nowhere and choosing a government gets you Nazis. Besides, you may say this person is an absolute moral authority and someone else may simply disagree, so yes, it pretty much has to be God, and God pretty much has to have been imbued with that moral authority as a function of the universe. Also unfortunately if there is no such being, absolute morality doesn't exist, because nobody has that authority and people thus may always disagree.

But let's abandon morality for a moment and talk about niceness. In other words, doing what the other person wants you to and not what he doesn't, just to be nice to him. This has problems because perhaps he wants something unreasonable like both your kidneys, but this is already knowable and absolute because this other fellow exists and if you're trying to be nice to him, and he lies, he's only hurting himself.

Morality can solve the problem of people being unreasonable, but only because morality is a codified system that tells you when you may permissibly hurt someone and that's the bloody problem with it! If you may never hurt anyone, you're stuck doing what they want and that's a problem if they're unreasonable, but this problem isn't really a problem unless there's a moral rule that tells you that you have to be nice. And there obviously isn't.

So doesn't niceness have the same problem as relative morality in that it's useless? No. Niceness is still useful because two people may agree to be nice to one another, and as long as they abide by that agreement, and are both reasonable, they both benefit. I would argue they benefit more than if they're both pouring over a holy book trying to find permissible ways to hurt one another, or delighting in making complicated agreements and castigating the other person when they break them.

Remember, agreements aren't morally binding in this system; they are a tool to facilitate niceness and should be discarded when they cease to serve that purpose. The person who breaks the agreement is not automatically wrong and the person who kept it is not automatically righteous. If we're trying to be nice it's about avoiding hurting the other person. If someone always cries that they're hurt by you no matter what you do, well, you can't avoid hurting them, but again, nobody said you had to. Niceness isn't like morality: It's not mandatory. It's just something we do to make our lives easier.

But what about the problem of knowing what you may, and may not do? Shouldn't that be consistent? Well, if there's no morality there's nothing stopping a government from making good laws that benefit the society and there's nothing stopping people from following them. In other words, without morality, laws - if they help a society rather than hurt it - are by default legitimate. You don't have to follow them but if you break them, it's not wrong when you get punished. And we can even be nice by punishing people if the actions we're punishing are hurting others. In other words, it may not be nice to the murderer, but it's nice to future potential victims to lock up or even put the murderer to death.

So TL;DR: I don't see what advantage morality has that niceness can't go above and beyond. Niceness doesn't define people into wrongness on technicalities. Niceness doesn't castigate people who are trying. And if niceness fails, well then, don't be nice. It's a tool, so stop using it when it doesn't work.

[TRANSPONDER]

If I get the thought correctly it seems to be looking at a workable morality and ethics as distinct from the Biblical nonsense about turning the other cheek. Or at least I can see how that might work with someone who has a bit of shame, but not with someone who just loves a submissive target.

And never mind the idea of giving the mugger who steals your smartphone you car keys a credit card as well. Historically (like many a religion) when Christianity got power it dealt out some hearty stuff and didn't bother whether or not the targets turned their cheek as they got burned, pulled apart or cut down by cross - dressing...I mean cross wearing...cavalry.

The problem of making people toe the line for everyone's good has always been a tricky one. Draconian law and legalism has been tried. Has it worked? Hellthreat or getting brownie points from Jesus has been tried, Has that worked?

"All these horrors are no good; people will still get themselves into trouble, notwithstanding" (Van Gulik, the haunted monastery)

I would like to try educating people to see that everyone would be better off by co-operation rather than looking to rip the others off, but I can't help feeling that the instinct to grab your cloak and ruin will be too strong.

"He shouldn't have run off; I was about to give him me boots, too".

[Purple Knight]

If I get the thought correctly it seems to be looking at a workable morality and ethics as distinct from the Biblical nonsense about turning the other cheek. Or at least I can see how that might work with someone who has a bit of shame, but not with someone who just loves a submissive target.

It paints an alternative to morality that simply isn't mandatory. Even that nasty fellow who just beats on others, you have the choice to be nice to him, or not. And if he literally can't treat you worse, the right choice is clearly, not.

Morality is rule-based. Don't kill, don't steal, don't rape. And it's the coin of the realm, which is very very bad, because how - by what method - do people tend to beat on others? Well, they use morality. "Here is this rule, you violated it, I followed it. I'm polite, you're rude." Nevermind how being constantly told how rude they are makes them feel. This rigid, mandatory, rule-based system is what causes the beatings because it totally ignores the other person and whether or not they were hurt and just focuses on rules and technicalities.

Niceness isn't mandatory and if it's the coin of the realm instead, screw the person who's trying to beat on me by telling me I'm rude. I don't have to be polite to him. I should probably try, but if he finds another faux pas and another, and another and another, clearly I'm not getting anywhere by trying. Morality is not negotiable, so I just have to keep trying. But niceness is a tool, so if it doesn't work, I may put it away. And if niceness becomes coin of the realm, he knows I will put it away, so if he wants what's best for him (me to continue being nice) he'll allow it to work and provide some benefit to me.

The problem of making people toe the line for everyone's good has always been a tricky one. Draconian law and legalism has been tried. Has it worked? Hellthreat or getting brownie points from Jesus has been tried, Has that worked?

A little bit, yes. And I think it would work much, much better if the thread was allowed to snap when the backs had been broken, because nobody was under any delusions that niceness was mandatory. Your government oppressing you? Rebel. We need more people who think this is permissible, not less.

We need the thread to snap when it ought to snap, not people holding it together or ripping it apart because morality.

[TRANSPONDER]

A little bit, perhaps. There may be a case that religion has wagged about the best aspirations of human ethics, as well as, it has to be said, the worst.

Maybe the point here is that we are talking morality and ethics rather than religion, and while religion - any religion - can point to best behaviour as well as a superior moral code, it doesn't have the monopoly on it and its' ethical models (shorn of divine authority claims which I for one do not credit) are as open to criticism and indeed borrowings as any other.

[nobspeople]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #1]

To me, morality is a more extreme level than niceness.
To be nice, you simply aren't rude, you're polite, you don't say things purposefully to hurt someone and try to avoid saying the wrong thing, etc.
To be moral, you act on a higher level, where you live your life a certain way, even if it offends others, you do everything possible not to hurt someone or something, etc.
In a way, you could equate it with: nice is to happy what moral is to ecstatic, in a way.
Who 'wins'?
I suppose that depends on the person and situation.

[theophile]

Morality here meaning the sort of codified rules that tell you that you can't (for example) murder people.

If we take this narrow view of morality (i.e., morality = the law or a set of codified rules), then I agree, better to have something less rigid. But is this a fair representation of morality? Or even biblical morality?

Philosophy 101 and the major schools of thought may be instructive. Aristotle's ethics, for instance, is virtue-based and a constant act of finding a balance between extremes (definitely not rules-based). Mill's utilitarianism would have us do whatever results in the greatest good, so it's a fresh calculation each time (using a single rule) versus a rigid application of pre-existing rules. Kant's deontology is probably the closest to what you describe, aiming for a set of 'universal' statements that as such meet the requirement of rule / law.

I actually think Kant has a number of biblical parallels, and that biblical law works in a very similar way as his categorical imperative. i.e., the hundreds of rules (/laws) you're rightly pushing back against are the result of universalizing a deeper first principle or fundamental value... Not of reason, as is the case with Kant, but of the Word, which I would suggest is all about the affirmation of life.

(As a bit of fun to see what I mean, take "Thou shalt not kill" for example. Following Kant's method, we should ask what would happen if we universalized the action, killing in this case, such that everyone acted in that way. Would the result be contrary to life? Yes, it would. Hence the law. Or take homosexual relations as a less obvious example. What if everyone acted in that way? Would it be contrary to life? It would mean the end of future generations, at least without some advanced biomedical engineering. So yes, it would. Hence the law.)

But fun aside, there is another importance difference that I think bears noting, which is that the bible never intended us to operate under the law, as if a set of universalized statements could ever (to your point) hold for the singular moments we face in life. The law is rather for a time of immaturity, or distance from the Word, and was always meant to be rendered inoperative once that distance was resolved. (Just as a child eventually grows up and no longer needs the rules that were meant to keep them safe.)

So I don't think the answer is 'niceness', but rather a reorientation to first principles / fundamental values, and acting in more direct accord with those versus any codification (/universalization) of them. In Kantian terms, it would mean being the voice of reason in every situation we face versus the non-rational obedience to some external rule (no matter how reasonable it is). Like Jesus, who came to deconstruct the law and reopen it (and us) to its deeper principle and objective.

[TRANSPONDER]

I think you are on the right lines. Rather than a set of rules to make people do the right when they are ignorant of it, try to have them understand the principle of the right action so they do it because it's for everyone's good, not because they will get jail if they don't.

It's why the lure of heaven and hellthreat are reprehensible even if the best ideals of religion may be admirable. One may certainly present it as putting morality above rules,though I see the Gospel message as a struggle between early Christianity and Judaism for who would be God's people, Jew or Greek.

For me, I could put the ethical arguments in terms of Star trek script ethical dilemmas and the Law of the prime directive, which I might argue is better and more relevant that the simplistic nice -guy ethics of the Gospels, much of which I look at with suspicion, when giving to the Poor means bankrolling the Meek, which is to say funding the Elect or the saints. In OW, give all your money to the Church and become a devotee and never ask for it back. At least the federation didn't demand a planet's total GDP to join.

[Purple Knight]

[Replying to Purple Knight in post #1]

To me, morality is a more extreme level than niceness.
To be nice, you simply aren't rude, you're polite, you don't say things purposefully to hurt someone and try to avoid saying the wrong thing, etc.
To be moral, you act on a higher level, where you live your life a certain way, even if it offends others, you do everything possible not to hurt someone or something, etc.

My concern is the area where they don't overlap, and where it's moral and permissible to hurt people because reasons.

There's a reason I picked these terms. Honestly I don't have a term for what I'm proposing and niceness is just the closest thing.

Morality states that we must behave in a certain way toward one another, but the focus is the rules, and God, not each other. It's not about what the other person wants; it's about what God (or the rules system) wants. You don't refrain from killing that fellow Bob because Bob doesn't want you to - you do it because God doesn't want you to. In essence, you completely ignore the other person and treat him as a mere object you are simply using to fulfill your completely selfish, Purple-Knight-level-of-narcissism desire to be moral. If Bob is suffering and begging you to kill him, too bad, God doesn't want it and I've got to obey God if I want to be moral, and all I care about is myself, so screw Bob.

And I am proposing that the focus be on each other.

This isn't morality. I have conceded that morality must come from some great moral authority and I really don't see anything but God that would fit. The reason it must is that there's an impasse when two people disagree about what the rules should be, and this can't be resolved without a greater moral authority.

But how about we discard the focus on the rules and make the focus each other? Who gets to decide? Well, the other guy. He gets to decide what counts as nice to him. And if he's unreasonable, you don't have to do it because niceness isn't mandatory.

[Purple Knight]

The law is rather for a time of immaturity, or distance from the Word, and was always meant to be rendered inoperative once that distance was resolved. (Just as a child eventually grows up and no longer needs the rules that were meant to keep them safe.)

If that's really what religious law is, then I agree with you, but I see (for example) the Commandments as very rigid. I see the rules against blasphemy as extremely rigid.

Now I do see a need for rigidity in rules so that we know what we may and may not do, but I think the arbiter of that should be government, provided they make laws that do not harm society.

[theophile]

I think you are on the right lines. Rather than a set of rules to make people do the right when they are ignorant of it, try to have them understand the principle of the right action so they do it because it's for everyone's good, not because they will get jail if they don't.

Yes, but the rules we are told to follow may not be the same as what the underlying principle demands. So following every letter of the law, even for the right motive, will not guarantee righteousness. Rules (/the law) are an attempt to codify what holds universally. But the situations we face are all singular in nature, causing any such attempts to necessarily break down.

To use another biblical maxim, there is a time for everything.

For me, I could put the ethical arguments in terms of Star trek script ethical dilemmas and the Law of the prime directive, which I might argue is better and more relevant that the simplistic nice -guy ethics of the Gospels, much of which I look at with suspicion, when giving to the Poor means bankrolling the Meek, which is to say funding the Elect or the saints. In OW, give all your money to the Church and become a devotee and never ask for it back. At least the federation didn't demand a planet's total GDP to join.

It may come across as "nice-guy ethics" in the gospels, but there's an OT legacy of fire and brimstone that needs to be accounted for. So if our construal of the biblical prime directive can't account for (/explain) both of these then I think we've missed something, and need to revaluate our position.