Relativistic Universalism, a moral synthesis.

[3blake7]

A Hegelian Dialectic is when you take two opposite and seemingly contradictory things and combine them to create something new, the thesis, the anti-thesis and the synthesis. I am attempting to come up with a compromise between Moral Universalism and Moral Relativism. While oversimplified, I will define each. Moral Universalism, people believe in a logically consistent morality, a morality that is intuitive, that transcends the subjectivity of culture. They believe right is right and wrong is wrong no matter where you live or what culture you were brought up in. While there is overlap, I believe most modern supporters of Moral Universalism believe all victimless acts should be legal and all victimizing acts should be illegal. Moral Relativism, people believe that the most relative culture's belief system is right. If they moved to a different culture then they would happily and easily change their existing belief system and adopt the new culture's. They believe that in one culture pre-martial sex is wrong and in another culture it is not, that morality is based on whatever the majority of the relative culture believe. Moral Relativists are very flexible and open-minded people, perhaps too open-minded sometimes.

 

How can you combine the two?

 

If you have a federal government that was Moral Universalist, all victimless acts legal and all victimizing acts illegal, then the federal government allowed local governments to illegalize victimless acts and legalize victimizing acts, with the stipulation that they must inform and gain consent from all residents and guests. So for example, if a local government and culture wanted to legalize bridenapping, the act of sometimes but not always pre-arranged kidnapping of a potential bride by a potential groom, to be verbally abused into submission and if the groom and his family failed to get submission, then returned to the potential bride's family where they pay a recompense. That is inherently victimizing since the potential bride was kidnapped, against her will and without her consent. However, there are cultures that still practice it, even though it's illegal in their country, it's a long-standing tradition and law enforcers look the other way. How can we make that victimless? We would have to have an age of consent, such as 16 years old and once a person comes of age they would have to be educated on the tradition and consent to the culture's tradition. To be on the safe side, the tradition could be modified to require the potential groom to inform the local law enforcement of intent, so that they can know the whereabouts of the potential bride and know that she was not kidnapped under some other motive. In that case, the potential bride consented so it's not victimizing but otherwise the tradition is relatively the same. There is also the psychological side, if the bride knew she consented to the tradition she won't feel like a victim so there will be less of a chance of her developing Rape Trauma Syndrome. Now if the local government and culture failed to inform a guest for example and a guest was kidnapped then the entire local government and culture would be held responsible. The federal government would charge the local government with victimization. This will help manipulate cultures to prevent them from becoming cults. I also thought about indoctrination, even we Americans are indoctrinated in our sense of morality. To prevent this, we might have to do like a mandatory exchange program the year before the age of consent for victimizing cultural traditions.

 

Another example is imprisonment. Technically if you are born into a country, have no means to leave, commit a social taboo like homosexual acts and are imprisoned, it's like the entire culture and government has victimized you. I believe at a certain age, the government should be required to educate every potential citizen on the laws and consequences, then give them a choice, to accept the laws and possible punishments or be excommunicated. Psychologically, just giving everyone the choice, regardless of the choice they make, could change the way criminals feel about incarceration. Just a thought.

 

Discuss!

Edited May 19, 2015 by 3blake7