@7666 another argument is that should be delegated to a king or something and regular people should not be responsible for politics. I believe that if you are living under a law you should have a voice in how it operates but when I think about strict moral culpability, if you are part of a democratic system you are basically just damned. in some reckoning it makes sense to take all those really hard moral decisions and delegate them to one or a few people and normal people are responsible for just their interpersonal relationships
@7666 like I have been thinking about how there's your personal choices with definite moral rights and wrongs. but politics is filled with choices that require tons of specialized information and you still might only have morally ambiguous choices. mingling those two and making everyone morally responsible more and more seems like a bad system. my thinking on this isn't definite, I haven't fully fleshed it out yet and I don't even necessarily think it's true, it's just something I'm thinking through and testing
@7666 as an example: I am morally commanded to take in the stranger, to offer comfort to the immigrant. but if you scale that obligation to how do you vote on immigration policy the reasons typically don't work and there are a bunch of other state consideration to balance etc, but someone will still call you immoral if you say immigration needs to be limited because aid the stranger commandment
@coolboymew@7666 before I read the article my tentative statement is yes if you vote for a candidate you are morally responsible for what the country does. to some extent if you are just a citizen in a democratic country and it does immoral things but you didn't vote for the guy you are still responsible.
@coolboymew@7666 so I gave good odds to myself that, by the conclusion of reading the article one could (without the author's intent) leverage the writer's argument to justify terrorism against the United States because you could argue that EVERY major candidate perpetuates America's broader policies. And I was not disappointed.
@sun I think the delegation of authority does not separate you from the choice of delegation you made. Same concept as hiring contractors to do a job and then you go "Well shucks my house is ruined!" because you hired Shady Renovators LLC.
The issue with personal moral choices and moral choices that apply to all is scale. There will always be answers that are more correct depending on the level they are applied, whether it be individual, local, state, or federal, as examples of stratifications. It is acceptable to have different answers at each and every level.
I see this operate in reality as part of a "federated" company which operates somewhat like this model, where we make local decisions that work for us (and may not necessarily work for others) while interpreting and complying with standards set for the entire business.
@7666@coolboymew I also find it the title and the fact that this philosopher didn't explicitly address what you do when all your choices come with drastic moral consequences suspicious.
@sun If you want to live an unambiguously moral life you have to become a monk, and even then, you have to strive to do better than the poorly disciplined monks at the monastery.
There is no version of career life, or married life, or political life, or civilian life at all that is unambiguously good.
"Can I watch a great film knowing the actresses in it were terrorized and mistreated the entire time? Can I watch a football game knowing that the players are getting brain injuries right before my eyes? Can I listen to my favorite albums anymore knowing that the singers were all beating their wives in between studio sessions? Can I eat at the new fancy taco place knowing when the building that used to be there got bulldozed eight families got kicked out of their homes so they could be replaced with condos and a chain restaurant? Can I wear the affordable clothes I bought downtown that were probably assembled in a sweatshop with child labor? Can I eat quinoa? Can I eat this burger? Can I drink this bottled water? Can I buy a car and drive to work because I’m sick of taking an hour each way on the subway? Whose bones do I stand on? Whose bones am I standing on right now?"
We do what we can, and our first obligation is ourselves.
As long as there is sin there will be those who are tempted by it. Expecting to live a perfect moral ideal when we ourselves are flawed is naive and will just make you depressed and unable TO make a change in the first place.