- Recon Number 54
- |
- Master Forum Ninja
- gamertag: [none]
- user homepage:
Well, here we are. I guess that it was destined to come to this.
Posted by: Master Chef
Posted by: Recon Number 54
I am not copping out to a relativistic stance because it is easy. I am saying that social organizations and rules are subjective and can't help but be arbitrary.
Personally, if someone is unable or unwilling to conform or comply with a social norm and presents themselves as a clear and mortal danger to that society? Humanity has had no problem with eliminating such "threats to order" in the past and I doubt that any major change to that is soon to come.
I disagree that social organizations are arbitrary. They follow contrasting channels, and lead to distinctly different cultures, but they are constructed on exceedingly similar individual behaviors. You might see an example of this point in our abilities to rationalize our own culture as normal, while another is bizarre, despite how inherently bizarre our own might be. What I am getting at is that there isn't pure, objective truth in justice or culture, but by applying modern (and fundamental) scientific study of animal behavior, the human brain, and sociology, a set of agreeable principles can be reached, and some boundaries can be drawn.
These principles would be those that agree on a progressive stance for our species. Cannibalism could be a norm, but it isn't a stable one, since a species that eats itself, in large quantities, isn't going to make the existential cut. Similarly, other behaviors and cultural norms in societies may exist, but are not inherently stable. They should be recognized as untenable, and dealt with.
And yet (in one form or another) the ownership of other human beings has persisted and survives to this very day, despite all of our recent (historically speaking) collective statements of how "wrong and immoral and why didn't we know better?"