alt Hacker NewsBut it all comes down to an expectation of some altruism. Yes you may vilify the out group but are the basic dynamics of helping your fellow person out really so different across space and time? I don't think so. Every culture has villages and relies upon others for mutual benefits. That is what I am talking about with this sort of universal baseline level of morality. Yes there could be a spectrum of acceptable cruelty but generally you have to think about these things in terms of a playground scenario vs the context that leads to a military operation involving poisoning a well. Would you play with someone who slapped you in the face and pulled your hair on the playground? No, and that is universal.
Replies
>Would you play with someone who slapped you in the face and pulled your hair on the playground?
Having made friends of enemies, I may or may not depending on the persons development in future, and that's my point. There are many people who would agree that just because someone had done something bad in the past does not warrant continued future negative engagement. But there are also people who will make a lifelong arch-nemesis when getting cut off in traffic.
In the same village model, you'll see villages who will excommunicate people over relatively minor things, some only in severe cases, and some who will offer paths to redemption in all but the most severe of cases. A church might give you a life time ban for skipping a meeting, wearing the wrong clothing, talking to the wrong people, or any of a list of what an average person might call small transgressions.
Homophobes will taunt and even shun their friends if their friends talk to queers, god forbid befriend a fag. Christians will admonish those who talk to declared Satanists, those who listen to satanic music, etc. Some christains are homophobic, some are not. Some Satanists are homophobic, some are not. Some Christains don't mind homophobia, some can't tolerate it. So what's the core good life shared between all of these match-ups? Does the one universal good life include gay people and communication with gay people? How is that there can be these groups of people who are happy to hate on gay people if the one universal good life does not include bigotry? And you can't say that the one universal good life includes bigotry because there are many people who cannot abide such a stance toward anyone.
Even if you abstract all the way to "all in groups are wary of their outgroups" you're still not saying anything entirely true because their are in fact groups of people who believe that all are genuinely equal in all things. Do I personally? No. I believe that there are bad people and that there are people that humanity would be better off without. But, I also know that there are people who do not believe that there are bad people, only bad actions - that everyone is elligible for equality at some point.
>Yes you may vilify the out group but are the basic dynamics of helping your fellow person out really so different across space and time?
I believe that the bible teaches the purpose of life is to glorify the God of the universe. If a religion's "purpose of life" is about "interacting with other humans, and not about God" then we have opposing "purposes". I saw something similar about Secular Humanists: they claimed they align with the bible "Love God and love your Neighbor"... but they don't believe God exists, so they - on a fundamental level - can't follow thay commandment.