I want to post my thoughts on morality and see what ya'll think.
Essentially, my viewpoints are ones of determinism and the morality side of that. I'm against punishment, as I don't believe people to be good or evil, just misguided and without knowledge and experience. Good and evil acts exist, such as murder and manipulation or acceptance and honesty, but good and evil people don't, as the way they are is due to their minds (just as some can be inherently obsessed with sex and have an addictive personality, others can feel the same way about children and can't get help because they're hated, even if they haven't acted upon their birth-given feelings). I don't believe in punishment, and feel that rehabilitation is the right way to go with everything, where people are helped rather than punished, as punishment gets people nowhere other than satisfying feelings of revenge. I believe that the worst of crimes should be dealt with by locking the person away, but not to punish them, to teach them and help them get the attention they need to acknowledge and understand morality and/or helped to control feelings and urges.
Crimes are committed due to instinctive behaviour, heightened emotion, lack of knowledge/control for a dopamine high (a sense of reward and satisfaction; what drives everything in life). By punishing a person, you're being exactly the same, acting out of rage and other toxic emotions and attempting to feel satisfied at the outcome. All it does is cause pain for someone that society deems deserving of it. In contrast, giving help and attention to the person, who is the way they are for a reason, always, creates another functional member of society, nobody is hurt and the intoxicating cycle of animalistic behaviour and heightened emotions comes to a halt.
No, because if you were brought up without learning these morals, how can you know any differently as an adult to as a child. Some children have parents that give them free range of the Internet and news sources, while others have their child focus only on Nazi propaganda. Some parents raise their child by hitting them and hitting their pets to make the shut up while others are brought up with parents that are so laid back that they don't even know when they're doing something wrong. The human mind is SO fragile. So unbelievably fragile. So easy for people to be manipulated and conditioned a certain way, and melded into a certain person. And some people have an addictive personality with no impulse control. People are so quick to play judge and jury, saying that people are good or bad. I think it's truly naive to think that way, and part of me feels that it's behind thinking, as I once felt that way too until I put a little thought into it. People saying murderers and paedophiles should be executed and that philanthropists and people who give and care are martyrs. It's just how people have been melded, and one trait does not define a person. Negative traits should be helped, and if said person is a danger to society they should be imprisoned, but not as a punishment and instead as a way to psychologically help and change said person.
Some people aren't privileged enough to get education on morals, and others have feelings that they can't talk about in fear of being shunned by society even though they were born into it. Take a sex addict. Can't stop thinking about sex. If they don't get help, they'll keep being a harm to themselves and others. We accept this. Now, and this is where many struggle, a paedophile. Never touched a child in their life, but has EXTREME urges to that's only understandable if you've ever been addicted to something. They can't talk to people about it or get help as they would be shunned and hated.
This got deep, but I sincerely believe that everyone is equal, and the mental state they've been cursed with or gifted with should not define them, and nor should the way they've been conditioned to be as a child. People are so quick to say 'IT'S NEVER THE DOG IT'S ALWAYS THE OWNER', so why is it such a hard concept to believe that humans are very much the same.
Personally, I completely stand by Galen Strawson, who believes:
1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. In order to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental aspects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all.
4. So you can’t be ultimately responsible for what you do.
My argument is that nobody is good or bad, but the choices they make are.
14 Mar 2017, 8:00 pm
