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.
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Morality is:
- subjective - it depends on a set of moral premises that each individual adopts. None of those premises are epistemically true/false, at most they might be seen as moral/immoral by other people holding other moral premises.
- scalar - an action can be heavily moral, weakly moral, ammoral, weakly immoral, or heavily immoral
Among Atheists (like you and me), common moral premises that I see are stuff like
- human life is valuable +> causing loss of human life is immoral
- knowledge is good +> striving to become more knowledgeable is moral
- suffering is bad +> causing suffering to another human being is bad
If we adopt that “suffering is bad” premise, I don’t think that your actions in this fake story were immoral, as you had no way to meaningfully alleviate the suffering of the hypothetical woman. But that’s heavily contextual, the fact that she would have a lot of other people consoling her plays a role.
Bonus question:
That depends on the weight that one gives to “free will” (whatever it means) vs. lack of suffering.
A lot of it distills down to whether or not someone has been hurt by your actions. Even tangentially.
That certainly a strong theme in many moral systems although it’s not a universality, as evidenced by the number of justifications people have come up with over human history to hurt other people
For me I think about the damage my choice will do. In your case I think ignoring the women and going on with your day is fine because there are already people helping and one more isn’t going to change things.
If she was standing on the trainline the moral thing to do is drag her off. I think this because you are stopping her from dying, stopping a train driver and everyone around from witnessing a death. She can suck up the fact that her free will was denied.
Society.
and yeah and most of the times it’s right. What’s your point? Do you believe there is any distinction between moral and immoral, right and wrong and how do you think it’s decided?
As someone whose done a lot of bad in their life, morality is about survival and not having to spend the latter half of your life in constant regret over every time you let your core values slip and gotten someone hurt because of it. Doing bad things puts you in company of people who do bad things, and often put your life in jeopardy. Standing up for what you believe in regardless of the consequences is the right thing to do, even though it might really hurt at times. I don’t use an external source of morality, but rather consider the impacts of my actions. If you can’t justify why you should or shouldn’t do something you need to look into why that’s the case and be ready for an answer you don’t want to hear. That’s how you grow.
Ultimately, you should decide a set of core beliefs and CONSTANTLY challenge them for contradictions. You’re going to be wrong on some of them, last thing you need is to deathspiral into a world that doesn’t make sense just to protect something that never really applied to you anyway. My advice is not to hurt people because hurt people hurt people and by proximity, it’s going to be you.
In summary there’s not really “right” or “wrong” so much as “does this contradict with who I am as a person”
“…And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?” [asked Granny Weatherwax.]
“Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin, for example.” [answered Mightily Oats.]
“And what do they think? Against it, are they?”
“It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.”
“Nope.”
“Pardon?”
“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that–”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
—from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.
What makes something moral or immoral?
If you get a universal answer please let me know. Brilliant philosophers have argued about this for thousands of years. It’s probably the most important question in philosophy. A universally satisfying answer would be like Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
I think in reality people usually decide what’s moral based on intuitions learnt/taught in childhood.
Philosophers disagree about if the same (in)action made with different intents has the same moral value. Ie it’s not agreed that “doing nothing because you’re too busy” is morally different than “doing nothing because you’re trying to be sensitive to her wants”.
If you felt like your presence wasn’t wanted you were probably right. Is there a reason to think the people already attending her wouldn’t have thought to suggest a rape kit?
What impacts did your inaction really have?
Okay enough consoling you. This isn’t really about you, it’s about her and people that might be in a situation like hers in the future.
Regardless of whether or not you should have done things differently then, is there anything you can do right now? There are probably lots of things you could do to reduce the chance of something like this happening again in that neighborhood. Think of 3 yourself then get 2 more from people that know the situation better. Pick one of the 5 and do it.
Morality is subjective. We each decide for ourselves what we consider good and bad. You can still construct a useful ethical system, though. Personally, I don’t want to be murdered. Therefore, I want to live in a society where murdering people is outlawed. Some people might want to murder, and I want to live in a society where they are segregated from the public if they do so, i.e. jail. You can extend this to much of the social contract we live under, in this case rape.
From your description, I don’t think what you did was wrong. The bystander effect is very real and just human nature. Seeing that she was being taken care of by someone was enough IMO.
You seem to also have an underlying moral code that the same rules should apply to everyone. But you could also say “I don’t want a society where people murder me or my friends and family. As for the rest, who cares.”
I wouldn’t call that an underlying moral code. You could call it laziness, I guess. I don’t want to live in a society where I have to worry “Will I get murdered today?”. If the entire state of Alabama starts getting murder happy it won’t affect me directly, but I’m sure going to start worrying that it’ll spread to other states where it does affect me.
I also would worry about the citizens of Alabama, don’t get me wrong. But that’s not from foundational philosophical reasoning, that’s just because of a human emotional response. If, for some inscrutable reason, Alabama collectively decided that they all loved murdering each other and only each other (excepting people unable to consent), I guess I’d just shrug and accept it? There’s some food for thought there, but it’s very similar to the willing cannibalism case.
Suffering worsened vs lessened.
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”:
New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient Good uncouth
We must upwards, still, and onwards, who would keep abreast of of TruthIsn’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.
