I just came to know of a woman who was raped. i.e., not on TV but in real life, I saw her sobbing face. I didn’t have a clue what to do. I believe the right thing to tell her would have been to say, go to the police right now and give a rape exam, this would at least make sure there is a small chance that the scumbags who committed the crime would be caught for good.
Now, I didn’t muster up enough courage to do it. Instead I thought “Well, why should I care about her? I am pretty sure lots of women get raped every day, why should I care about her? I am late for something and I should get going” and I did get going. Moreover, she was swarmed by a ton of women consoling her and I doubt if she wanted to talk to man right now. And moreover, I can’t imagine it being an easy job to convince her to do anything in that stage. So, I just left her be to the mercy of women gathered there and I just came to know that the good rowdies of the street offered the woman to freshen up at their house, thus most likely erasing all trace of the crime from her body. Now, their mothers and sisters live there and I made sure that she left their bloody house (i.e., Ik, I didn’t drag her out) because I think the rowdies of the street are beyond doing the horrible act themselves.
But yeah, I did a morally reprehensible thing where one needed moral courage, just because I didn’t want to do the hard work and sacrifice my own time for the betterment of an other.
- And the man/men who committed that act on her, did it most probably because they were resentful and they liked doing it. So, how does one decide what is moral and immoral?
I did it because I liked it doesn’t really to seem to have worked out in this situation. I didn’t do it because I didn’t like it (i.e., me) doesn’t seem to be a stellar option either.
This didn’t happen but,
Bonus question: If that victim was say standing on a train line here, what should one do? What should a man do? Should he make sure to use his force to remove her from the spot and thus “saving her” but in the process exerting control and taking away the one act of free will she has done since the horrible incident? Who says saving her is the “right” thing to do?
Again, putting myself as the first priority, I am not going to reply until I am free.
These issues need to be probed much deeper than a post on lemmy, so are there any books on moral questions relating to what I am asking here which you know of, in which case please mention it.
The will of God. Actions that align with the will of God are moral; actions that work against the will of God are immoral.
The problem is, the will of God is interpreted by us feeble humans with our own biases and limited understanding. I don't trust anyone who says she knows the will of God and neither should you. Certainty in one's own morality is a quick path to evil, as history has shown time and again. We must do our best and hope, be open to correction, and never become complacent.
I like the stanza from abolitionist poet Rev. James Russel Lowell's "The Present Crisis":
Isn't the will of God basically irrelevant, since no other than the God themselve can know it?
Not at all. Perfection is impossible to achieve, but still worth working towards, yeah? We'll never know everything, but we can always know more. We'll never master morality, but we should always pursue it.
Sure, but since nobody can know the will of God, then why does that even have to be taken into account? Isn't it like trying to do math, but you don't know and can't know what X is? You just got to find your way by some other means and forget X ever even existed.
As a math teacher, I have significant concerns about your analogy.
I'm a plumber. Just let it slide this time, okay?
You wouldn't say, "This drain is clogged and we don't know why so let's just move on and live our lives without worrying about this drain." Plumbers are problem-solvers. You figure out what's clogging the drain, remove it, and assess to see if it's likely to clog again and if so, what can be done to prevent it. Right?
Everything we know about the world we know because someone or several people, together or separately, figured it out. This is true of things we can directly observe, like pipes, and things we cannot, like mathematics and morality.
It's a bad analogy, but my argument isn't against our search of greater morality. Rather, it's about the relevance of God in that pursuit. Morality is a challenge that we, as humans, must figure out by ourselves. Even if there exists an all-knowing God with a specific set of moral rules in mind, if we cannot know/understand them, and God chooses not to reveal them, then, by definition, those rules are inaccessible to us. In such a scenario, morality as defined by God becomes irrelevant to our human experience. Instead, we should rely on reason, science, and evidence-based research to find what behaviour promotes the thriving of our species.
Well, that presupposes that the thriving of our species is a moral good; but I agree with you on that, so let's continue.
I agree as well that reason and evidentiary research are key to discovering moral principles. But the original question isn't "How do we discover moral principles?", it was "What makes something moral or immoral?"