8.1 KiB
[D] People are violent because their morality demands it – Tage Rai – Aeon
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 15
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Created: 2015-06-20T18:28:55
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Comments:
u/None [+5] (23 hours later)
My years studying Criminology have made me wary of theories that try to give a universal explanation for complex human behavior.
I'm fully willing to grant that some violence happens because people believe it is needed to make the world better, but that doesn't mean that no-one ever uses violence because they think it's the best way to reach a certain goal.
u/Nepene [+3] (a day later)
That was a weakness of the article. They mentioned they did a vast examination of numerous sources but didn't mention what they saw in much depth. Perhaps they could have proven that most violence is moralistic- perhaps people don't beat up others for money unless they have first justified it to themselves as just and good. They certainly didn't present any evidence to support such a theory though.
u/Tirran [+2] (a day later)
I feel like the problem with attempting to make an objection to the theory is that it's so vague that every objection can just be molded back into the theory. Your objection, that people take violent actions for material goals, is actually a part of the theory because one can just say that they are pursuing the material goal because of a moral motivation.
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (a day later)
Not really. Material goals can go beyond morality. If I'm starving to death, and the only viable way for me to gain something to eat is by violence, I will enact violence. This is a scenario rarely encountered in the parts of the world with easy access to the internet.
u/Tirran [+2] (18 days later)
That... that isn't an immoral action, unless you're talking about murdering another person for food. Even then, I wouldn't say that that's necessarily immoral as long as you can justify your own worth over the other person, which shouldn't be hard because humans are great at self-deception. What it is is a violation of typical societal ethical injunctions, which is totally separate from legitimate morality.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (18 days later)
I didn't say that it was an immoral action. I was saying that violence can be driven by simple survival needs, as opposed to only morality, like the article suggests.
u/Tirran [+1] (25 days later)
But... it isn't. We aren't living in an abstract universe where every character acts and behaves like a secondary character in a dime novel. We're humans, and the centers of our own universes. There are no villains, and everyone's a protagonist. We don't act just on base urges, because every time we act there's that small voice, that voice of humanity, in the back of our heads trying to fit our behavior into a greater narrative. It asks, "Is this really me?" or "Why am I doing this?" while simultaneously justifying our behavior because we can't tell the extent of other people's narratives. I don't think we as humans can really take a purposeful aggressive action without believing that we're justified on some level, because justification is so deeply ingrained in our world view.
I understand where you're coming from. You're saying that there's some idealized imagined situation where you think you could initiate force without needing moral justification. But I don't think you have, and I don't think you could.
u/Farmerbob1 [+1] Level 1 author (25 days later)
I have experienced a situation where I struck out blindly. Thirty-something years ago, I was sucker punched in the kidney on a bus. I turned around and punched the guy standing behind me. I did not think. I did it. There was no internal justification before I hit him. I did not try to figure out if the person had somehow done it by accident.
If you push the right buttons, humans will react with no consideration of morals in any way, shape, or form. We're still wired for survival, even if that wiring is a bit rusty.
The concept that humanity is fully in control of our inner primates is complete bunk. It's attractive bunk if you don't like to imagine that inner primate having any control over you, but in reality that inner primate is in there and in the right circumstances, it will come out.
u/None [+3] (a day later)
You could fold it back, but the simpler explanation here can be a simple cost-benefit analysis. This is also what professional criminals say when asked about their motivations
A unified theory for complex social phenomena (such as violence or crime) can probably exist at one point, but currently I think competing theories should rather be considered complementing theories.
u/None [+2] (3 days later)
My years studying Criminology
On a not-really-related topic, from your studying of criminology, would you agree, or disagree, with the statement "increasing the punishment for a crime (longer jail time, bigger fine, etc) has little direct effect in deterring people from committing crimes"?
For that matter, what are the biggest public misconceptions on what is effective at reducing crime (that are embodied in some sort of law that you could theoretically change to more optimally reduce crime)?
u/None [+3] (4 days later)
I'm not an expert and it's been a while (not a lot of job opportunities in this field), so take this with a grain of salt.
It really depends on the crime and why people commit it. Speeding (and most other traffic-related stuff) is heavily impacted by the penalties and the chance of getting caught. People do make cost-benefit analyses (even if they don't do it consciously).
But this doesn't hold for most crimes. For the most part, harsher sentencing doesn't really impact anything. People committing murder either they can get away with it or do it in a surge of emotion. People dealing drugs do so because it's the easiest (or most lucrative) job around.
For that matter, what are the biggest public misconceptions on what is effective at reducing crime (that are embodied in some sort of law that you could theoretically change to more optimally reduce crime)?
Here in Belgium someone recently data-mined court documents to check recidivism. Turns out that recidivism is really high (okay, that was predictable) and that most people who are convicted have priors. Impacting this could easily bring down crime significantly and the best way to do this is to keep monitoring and helping people after their sentence. Keeping a thief in prison isn't going to prevent them stealing when they get out if stealing is their only marketable skill. Them having more skills and jobs available could help a lot.
Another thing I'd do is to use prison as little as possible. We know it doesn't really help and in a lot of cases it makes things worse. Alternative sentencing and things like re-integrative shaming could be used a lot more and they give both the victim and the offender more agency in the whole procedure which seems to help a lot.
u/Zeikos [+5] Communist Transhumanism (15 hours later)
I cannot give enought upvotes.
I always frown when people say that human beings are inherently evil. It's just counterfactual : We are a social species , we evolved to be empathic with our close social group . Hate and violence come from a defense mechanism when we see ourselves or our social circle threatened in any way. It might be a misinterpretation or a delusion...
It has also been shown that racist are such because they have low ammount of empathy in regards of other races , and also that when they start to empathize with them their ideas usually change.
u/Farmerbob1 [+3] Level 1 author (a day later)
While the article is fascinating, and seems to hold together rationally on the surface, I am very disturbed by the lack of consideration of need and resources (or perceived need and perceived lack of resources) in this article's assessment of violence.