6 ms·

Something happened over the years that caused, at least in my experience living in America, people to incredibly deeply associate legality with morality. I susp

Something happened over the years that caused, at least in my experience living in America, people to incredibly deeply associate legality with morality. I suspect this is universal to some degree in societies around the world and in history. But how prevalent it is in my lived experience feels deeply Orwellian. As long as Big Brother approves your in the right, right?

CompelTechnic 8y ago
If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? Or to put it another way, assuming that I share a common moral sense with my fellow citizens, I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not. If your objection is that the law feels to retributive, then that is a separate issue.
- zajd 8y ago
  > If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? To maintain existing power structures
  - V-2 8y ago
    The more the law diverges from the morality (as commonly understood in a given society), the more oppressive power structures you need in order to maintain it.
- notheguyouthink 8y ago
  > If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? Perhaps it's meaningful the other way around, too. So many people I see don't want more rigid tax laws, because morals are enough. I argue that morals guiding tax laws only cause to harm those good enough to have morals following the tax laws. It would seem morals should perhaps guide the desired end result of the law, like no killing your neighbor, but the laws to get to that end state might be counter intuitive. Something Americans suffer greatly from grasping.
- cmiles74 8y ago
  I think the idea that "law and order" is an approximation of morality is giving to much credit to the law, it enforcement, and all of things that have grown up around it. For sure, some laws clearly have some basis in someone's idea of what moral behavior might be, for instance the prohibition of alcohol. But there's also a lot in there that's really just keeping society's machinery churning in a practical sense (parking tickets, speeding, small claims court), or in the case of finance there's bits in there to preserve clearly immoral behavior (tax "loopholes", etc.)
- Nadya 8y ago
  >I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not. The issue with morality based laws is that morals are subjective. I would prefer a legal system with absolutely no morality - instead being based off of reason and logical conclusions. Being explained well enough in layman terms that people can see why the law is the way it is. "Pay your taxes for schools and roads. Don't kill you neighbor because you wouldn't want to be killed. Don't steal because you wouldn't want to be stolen from." Morality based laws is how you end up with "It's criminal to be a homosexual. Skirts must pass the knee. Cannabis and alcohol are only for bad people. You must be [religion] to be moral, because only immoral people aren't part of [religion]".
  - CompelTechnic 8y ago
    The reason cannabis is being legalized in several states is people's changing moral intuitions leading to public action to change the law. The law has not stopped being an approximation of morality in that regard. Reason and logical conclusions are not contradictory to a citizenry's moral intuitions, but are orthogonal to them.
    - Nadya 8y ago
      >The reason cannabis is being legalized in several states is people's changing moral intuitions leading to public action to change the law. Existing laws in the US are largely based on protestant morals. That's kind of the point I was going for: morality based laws can change on a whim once the publicly held views of what is moral changes and that should be seen as a bad thing and it is unfortunate our current laws are so heavily rooted in morality instead of reason. Also, the two can overlap! I'm not saying they never can, I'm saying they sometimes don't. And the times in history where they don't overlap is where you'll see many of the largest crimes against humanity committed simply because it was "legal (and by extension: moral)" to do so.
drewmol 8y ago
Through our (USofA) short history, at least half of the federal congress persons & presidents who've served have came from a prior held legal profession, most of those credentialed attorneys. I suspect this has been greatly impactful on the deep assosiation you describe.
J-dawg 8y ago
I'm aware of the same thing in the UK. I don't know whether something has happened over the years or if it's always been that way. So many people seem content in their assumption that the state is essentially benevolent and wise and on their side. Even with the recent spate of ridiculous arrests and prosecutions we've had over freedom-of-speech issues (which some of us find terrifying), you get this attitude of "well, it seems a bit harsh, but he did break the law!" I like to remind people that you don't need to look very far back for examples of when the state got it very, very wrong (by modern standards of morality). The illegality of homosexuality, and the cruel punishment inflicted on people like Alan Turing, is the most obvious example of this.
- kaybe 8y ago
  As a German I am very very aware of the distinction, and our school system puts emphasis on this too. Just following the rules is no excuse.
Spooky23 8y ago
The US has always been a land of paradox. We have a narrative/ethos of personal freedom, but the details are a little different.
- pdfernhout 8y ago
  Growing up in the USA I was taught in public school in the 1960s and 1970s that we lived in a better version of Ancient Athens. It took years to realize (e.g. reading Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Smedley Butler) that in several ways we instead live in a version of Ancient Sparta instead. Perhaps the Athenian ideal was indeed more true when those teachers themselves grew up (in the 1920s and 1930s). But in any case, as Manuel De Landa says, all real systems are combinations of both meshwork (associative freedom) and hierarchy (imposed structure) -- that often transform into each other. http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm
noxToken 8y ago
I don't think this is the last few years. I am but one data point, but morality and law have always been closely linked in the United States. I would further claim that for many Christians, morality and law are also closely linked with religion. Southern political ads[0] will surely back this up. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiqcZVujRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiqcZVujRc
yardie 8y ago
I’d say the 24 hour news channel. Crime has been dropping since it peaked in the mid 90s. You wouldn’t think so if your constantly bombarded with crime reports all around the country and world at all hours of the day. This manifests itself in viewers electing politicians who are more tough on crime than the last election.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
petra 8y ago
I remember reading a research telling that the internet/smartphones caused a significant decrease in empathy. Without empathy, and very little attention to the matter , could you expect any different result ?
mmirate 8y ago
Consider some action to be taken. The action is under consideration because it causes some benefit, worth $A. The action may cause some public-relations fallout, which in turn will cause some amount of lost business (or analogous malus). The total losses caused by public-relations effects are a continuous random variable; and a complicated one, because the causality chain between action and the final losses involves multiple random events. But, it has some expected value, $B > $0. (Disregard outliers, so as to better approximate the median outcome rather than the mean outcome.) Finally, the action will inevitably cost some resources to implement, worth a total of $C. (Again, all three quantities $A, $B and $C are nonnegative.) We can then evaluate whether the action may be taken. That question is equivalent to the following: "Is it legal? And if so, then does it hold that $A > $B + $C?" (In the larger context, then, if multiple actions may be taken, then choosing which single one should be taken is a matter of maximizing that same inequality rather than truth-testing it.) * * * * * Why should we use any decision-making process other than the above? Equivalently: why should we take into account any further "morality", beyond merely legality plus long-term expected-value for oneself?
- facetube 8y ago
  "A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." That's why.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    I don't see how that answers my question. That logic is exactly the rational thing to do, provided that settlements are the only consequence of that flaw. If, on the other hand, this being the real world, there is some probability that customers will discover this flaw (e.g. reading a news article about such a crash-and-burn) and thereby demand fewer cars, causing fewer or cheaper sales ... then that also affects the calculation. So, aside from this quote representing some degree of sloppiness, which can't be solved with "morality" ... I don't see the problem here.
V-2 8y ago
Quite the opposite. Anchoring the law in morality works like a safeguard against the dystopian scenarios. Laws can be changed overnight - but permanently altering societal views on morality takes considerably longer. This process is still achievable (called 'perekovka' by the Soviets), but it can take whole generations, and a great deal of power. Besides, when the law isn't anchored in commonly shared sense of morality, you'll basically have no other option but a politically oppressive system (to balance this factor out).

CompelTechnic 8y ago

If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? Or to put it another way, assuming that I share a common moral sense with my fellow citizens, I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not. If your objection is that the law feels to retributive, then that is a separate issue.

zajd 8y ago
> If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? To maintain existing power structures
- V-2 8y ago
  The more the law diverges from the morality (as commonly understood in a given society), the more oppressive power structures you need in order to maintain it.
notheguyouthink 8y ago
> If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose? Perhaps it's meaningful the other way around, too. So many people I see don't want more rigid tax laws, because morals are enough. I argue that morals guiding tax laws only cause to harm those good enough to have morals following the tax laws. It would seem morals should perhaps guide the desired end result of the law, like no killing your neighbor, but the laws to get to that end state might be counter intuitive. Something Americans suffer greatly from grasping.
cmiles74 8y ago
I think the idea that "law and order" is an approximation of morality is giving to much credit to the law, it enforcement, and all of things that have grown up around it. For sure, some laws clearly have some basis in someone's idea of what moral behavior might be, for instance the prohibition of alcohol. But there's also a lot in there that's really just keeping society's machinery churning in a practical sense (parking tickets, speeding, small claims court), or in the case of finance there's bits in there to preserve clearly immoral behavior (tax "loopholes", etc.)
Nadya 8y ago
>I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not. The issue with morality based laws is that morals are subjective. I would prefer a legal system with absolutely no morality - instead being based off of reason and logical conclusions. Being explained well enough in layman terms that people can see why the law is the way it is. "Pay your taxes for schools and roads. Don't kill you neighbor because you wouldn't want to be killed. Don't steal because you wouldn't want to be stolen from." Morality based laws is how you end up with "It's criminal to be a homosexual. Skirts must pass the knee. Cannabis and alcohol are only for bad people. You must be [religion] to be moral, because only immoral people aren't part of [religion]".
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  The reason cannabis is being legalized in several states is people's changing moral intuitions leading to public action to change the law. The law has not stopped being an approximation of morality in that regard. Reason and logical conclusions are not contradictory to a citizenry's moral intuitions, but are orthogonal to them.
  - Nadya 8y ago
    >The reason cannabis is being legalized in several states is people's changing moral intuitions leading to public action to change the law. Existing laws in the US are largely based on protestant morals. That's kind of the point I was going for: morality based laws can change on a whim once the publicly held views of what is moral changes and that should be seen as a bad thing and it is unfortunate our current laws are so heavily rooted in morality instead of reason. Also, the two can overlap! I'm not saying they never can, I'm saying they sometimes don't. And the times in history where they don't overlap is where you'll see many of the largest crimes against humanity committed simply because it was "legal (and by extension: moral)" to do so.

drewmol 8y ago

Through our (USofA) short history, at least half of the federal congress persons & presidents who've served have came from a prior held legal profession, most of those credentialed attorneys. I suspect this has been greatly impactful on the deep assosiation you describe.

J-dawg 8y ago

I'm aware of the same thing in the UK. I don't know whether something has happened over the years or if it's always been that way. So many people seem content in their assumption that the state is essentially benevolent and wise and on their side. Even with the recent spate of ridiculous arrests and prosecutions we've had over freedom-of-speech issues (which some of us find terrifying), you get this attitude of "well, it seems a bit harsh, but he did break the law!" I like to remind people that you don't need to look very far back for examples of when the state got it very, very wrong (by modern standards of morality). The illegality of homosexuality, and the cruel punishment inflicted on people like Alan Turing, is the most obvious example of this.

kaybe 8y ago
As a German I am very very aware of the distinction, and our school system puts emphasis on this too. Just following the rules is no excuse.

Spooky23 8y ago

The US has always been a land of paradox. We have a narrative/ethos of personal freedom, but the details are a little different.

pdfernhout 8y ago
Growing up in the USA I was taught in public school in the 1960s and 1970s that we lived in a better version of Ancient Athens. It took years to realize (e.g. reading Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Smedley Butler) that in several ways we instead live in a version of Ancient Sparta instead. Perhaps the Athenian ideal was indeed more true when those teachers themselves grew up (in the 1920s and 1930s). But in any case, as Manuel De Landa says, all real systems are combinations of both meshwork (associative freedom) and hierarchy (imposed structure) -- that often transform into each other. http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm

noxToken 8y ago

I don't think this is the last few years. I am but one data point, but morality and law have always been closely linked in the United States. I would further claim that for many Christians, morality and law are also closely linked with religion. Southern political ads[0] will surely back this up. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiqcZVujRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiqcZVujRc

yardie 8y ago

I’d say the 24 hour news channel. Crime has been dropping since it peaked in the mid 90s. You wouldn’t think so if your constantly bombarded with crime reports all around the country and world at all hours of the day. This manifests itself in viewers electing politicians who are more tough on crime than the last election.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

petra 8y ago

I remember reading a research telling that the internet/smartphones caused a significant decrease in empathy. Without empathy, and very little attention to the matter , could you expect any different result ?

mmirate 8y ago

Consider some action to be taken. The action is under consideration because it causes some benefit, worth $A. The action may cause some public-relations fallout, which in turn will cause some amount of lost business (or analogous malus). The total losses caused by public-relations effects are a continuous random variable; and a complicated one, because the causality chain between action and the final losses involves multiple random events. But, it has some expected value, $B > $0. (Disregard outliers, so as to better approximate the median outcome rather than the mean outcome.) Finally, the action will inevitably cost some resources to implement, worth a total of $C. (Again, all three quantities $A, $B and $C are nonnegative.) We can then evaluate whether the action may be taken. That question is equivalent to the following: "Is it legal? And if so, then does it hold that $A > $B + $C?" (In the larger context, then, if multiple actions may be taken, then choosing which single one should be taken is a matter of maximizing that same inequality rather than truth-testing it.) * * * * * Why should we use any decision-making process other than the above? Equivalently: why should we take into account any further "morality", beyond merely legality plus long-term expected-value for oneself?

facetube 8y ago
"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one." That's why.
- mmirate 8y ago
  I don't see how that answers my question. That logic is exactly the rational thing to do, provided that settlements are the only consequence of that flaw. If, on the other hand, this being the real world, there is some probability that customers will discover this flaw (e.g. reading a news article about such a crash-and-burn) and thereby demand fewer cars, causing fewer or cheaper sales ... then that also affects the calculation. So, aside from this quote representing some degree of sloppiness, which can't be solved with "morality" ... I don't see the problem here.

V-2 8y ago

Quite the opposite. Anchoring the law in morality works like a safeguard against the dystopian scenarios. Laws can be changed overnight - but permanently altering societal views on morality takes considerably longer. This process is still achievable (called 'perekovka' by the Soviets), but it can take whole generations, and a great deal of power. Besides, when the law isn't anchored in commonly shared sense of morality, you'll basically have no other option but a politically oppressive system (to balance this factor out).