sj_zero on Nostr: One of the elements of postmodernism is moral relativism. It permeates our thinking ...
One of the elements of postmodernism is moral relativism. It permeates our thinking and our storytelling in the west, but it's a luxury of a safe and rich society. Contrast the demons in frieren who are depicted as totally evil. Some people regardless claim they are not evil.
In the Graysonian Ethic I wrote a lot about what we could consider to be evil or good, and I considered hypotheticals of creatures that were completely unlike humans. For example, a black widow who is sentient. For them, the idea of our pro-social morality would be completely alien, and to us ideas like eating your meat after copulation would be considered horrendous.
So does that mean that morality doesn't exist and something can only be considered evil if it allows itself to accept within itself the concept that it is doing evil?
I think that it's beyond any reasonable question, if you are in a human society, and you act in ways that are evil to humans, then you are evil.
For the demons in frieren, they are intentionally duplicitous, they exist solely to eat humans, they have nothing to protect with themselves, the only social contacts that they have with other demons are based on fear and dominance, and even the way that they look is solely intended to deceive humans. The human metrics, demons are of course evil. You can say that they aren't evil because they don't think that they're evil, that sort of moral relativism is the sort of thing that people can do when they are safe and not under threat of being eaten by demons. The reality is that they are unrequitedly evil, and that's why narratively there's no problem with Freiren doing what she does.
In our ancient stories, often animals are considered evil if they intentionally go after human communities whether they are doing so I would have hunger or malice or whatever. They are evil because they exist to harm us or will harm us. In some cases that extends to creatures that are clearly not out to harm us in any way such as rats, those rats represent filth and unclean conditions, and so they represent evil because we know what will happen if they are around, people will get sick and die. We can afford not to see animals in this way today because we have largely tamed the natural world as we see it, but to a human, even the mindless and thoughtless force of entropy can be considered evil because eventually it will mean the end of everything, and it is the force against which we toil at all times.
Now, if our stories were not meant for us but were meant for someone else, then maybe you could make an argument that within the frame of that story nothing and nobody was evil. But the thing is, everyone who is going to read a story that we are aware of on planet Earth is a human, and so the inherent lens of any story that is written for us and by us will be us, even if we are trying not to.
It is interesting that the posterchildren of postmodernism, globalist neoliberals, have found their moral absolutism for example in the war in Ukraine. The Trudeaus of the world who saw every moral position as equally acceptable just a few years ago magically found their moral foundations again once a powerful country started invading their puppe-- I mean once a big country was attacking a small country and that's bad. They also seemed to find a use for moral absolutism during covid -- they sounded like George W. Bush, "you're either with us or you're with the virus!"
In the Graysonian Ethic I wrote a lot about what we could consider to be evil or good, and I considered hypotheticals of creatures that were completely unlike humans. For example, a black widow who is sentient. For them, the idea of our pro-social morality would be completely alien, and to us ideas like eating your meat after copulation would be considered horrendous.
So does that mean that morality doesn't exist and something can only be considered evil if it allows itself to accept within itself the concept that it is doing evil?
I think that it's beyond any reasonable question, if you are in a human society, and you act in ways that are evil to humans, then you are evil.
For the demons in frieren, they are intentionally duplicitous, they exist solely to eat humans, they have nothing to protect with themselves, the only social contacts that they have with other demons are based on fear and dominance, and even the way that they look is solely intended to deceive humans. The human metrics, demons are of course evil. You can say that they aren't evil because they don't think that they're evil, that sort of moral relativism is the sort of thing that people can do when they are safe and not under threat of being eaten by demons. The reality is that they are unrequitedly evil, and that's why narratively there's no problem with Freiren doing what she does.
In our ancient stories, often animals are considered evil if they intentionally go after human communities whether they are doing so I would have hunger or malice or whatever. They are evil because they exist to harm us or will harm us. In some cases that extends to creatures that are clearly not out to harm us in any way such as rats, those rats represent filth and unclean conditions, and so they represent evil because we know what will happen if they are around, people will get sick and die. We can afford not to see animals in this way today because we have largely tamed the natural world as we see it, but to a human, even the mindless and thoughtless force of entropy can be considered evil because eventually it will mean the end of everything, and it is the force against which we toil at all times.
Now, if our stories were not meant for us but were meant for someone else, then maybe you could make an argument that within the frame of that story nothing and nobody was evil. But the thing is, everyone who is going to read a story that we are aware of on planet Earth is a human, and so the inherent lens of any story that is written for us and by us will be us, even if we are trying not to.
It is interesting that the posterchildren of postmodernism, globalist neoliberals, have found their moral absolutism for example in the war in Ukraine. The Trudeaus of the world who saw every moral position as equally acceptable just a few years ago magically found their moral foundations again once a powerful country started invading their puppe-- I mean once a big country was attacking a small country and that's bad. They also seemed to find a use for moral absolutism during covid -- they sounded like George W. Bush, "you're either with us or you're with the virus!"