On Wednesday, we had a discussion on the topic of being offended by religion and cultural practices.
It was a varied discussion and a number of interesting points came up which also triggered other thoughts afterwards.
1. We do not "respect" other people's religious believes so much as we tolerate them. In a liberal society, we are all free to believe and practice what we like so long as it does not interfere with others. Therefore, we respect other people's right to their believes and we tolerate it even if we disagree with them.
2. The difficulty comes when one person's believes interferes with the activities of other members of society. The current matter of a Canadian christian university wanting to have a law school only for those who will take a heterosexual vow is an example of that conflict. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/trinity-western-blasts-n-s-ontario-law-societies-1.2622913
3. There are always members in society who are powerless to act. Children brought up in a particular religious belief have no choice or ability to decide. Should other members of society be offended by how some children are being raised? Should we be offended by religious and cultural practices in other parts of the world?
4. Being offended is largely an emotional response and logic tends to be called in afterwards to justify this emotional response. Should cooler heads prevail, we likely see other nuances of the situation, other situations that we should be more offended by, and perhaps a better more constructive response than the confrontation likely coming out of being offended. Perhaps a typical anger management tactic of counting to ten, take a deep breath to relax, may allow us to have time to think and formulate a better response.
5. Part of being emotionally responding to confrontation is to automatically demonize the other side and separating the argument into simple good guys bad guys and black and white arguments. This leads to further alienation with the other side, preventing progress towards understanding and resolution.
6. There is also a definite element of loyalty to one camp or the other in taking offense from a statement or action by others. The typical partisan response by the left or right wing is very often more showing allegiance to one's community and not wanting to be proven wrong then plain listening or understanding what was said or had happened. Again, we need to leave our pride and emotional baggage to get more productive action together with the other side.
7. There are groups that are easily offended because of their believes and strict rules of conduct. They view toleration of other believes as wrong, or even unprincipled. This strikes at the heart of the liberal society. It is difficult to tolerate a group that will not tolerate other groups. The result is either the dominance of the intolerant group and disappearance of the tolerant group. Controlling the intolerant group before it gets dominance is essential to the future of a tolerant society.
8. Should Islamic countries be offended by the relative nudity displayed in western countries? Should the western countries be offended by women not being able to drive in some of the Islamic countries? These are manifestations of the underlying different values of the two systems.
9. The so called western liberal democracies actually need to be very intolerant of some things. Discrimination on the basis of gender, race, (yes, even religious believes) is one of the principles a tolerant society cannot give up and still be a tolerant society.
10. The big difference seems to be whether this intolerance is based on some crowd based commonly held ethic or sourced by dogma from a holy book or a totalitarian source.
The chaos of group decision making versus the dependence of a single source (believed to be perfect but maybe not!)
Questions for moral scientists. But does anyone see the difference between morality and ethics?
ReplyDeleteNot too many societies are based on enlightenment or something wishy washy like that. A long time ago, in the dark ages, the people made up laws for things, and stoned to death any KING who upset them too much. But does anybody know what types of laws they made up? One was to protect the land from Industrial Equipment or toxins. Other laws were made by the people, to protect the people too. But that was the last time a democracy had any good impact.
I think forcing people to be tolerant isn't enough. There is a reason why toleration is important and necessary for a peaceful society. Suppose that's part of the difference between moral minded folks and people who work at thinking soundly, and in a whole way, or without this idea of morality being about good and bad or absolute right or wrong.
Again I think of Neitzche, and Beyound Good and Evil. My prof had lots to say about the title of that book not being about Beyond Good and Bad. It was a philosophy joke that took me a while to truly understand. But some people really don't want to understand 'cause they think it'll change things too much, or something like that. People generally scoff at Neitzche or thinkers like him, as he had a lot of radical views against religion, politics, morality.
Mostly I liked him for his literal voice, and because he questioned the truth constantly.
VTS