RugbyRebels

Nuremburg is coming out, and the press tour is in full swing. Parallels have been drawn, not least because of one quote, that Hitler "made us feel German again", and its parallels to a certain political movement...

But I just watched the trailer and there is another quote that also stands out.

"I'm in prison because you won and we lost, not because you're morally superior".

And the truth is...that is possibly the biggest point about everything that is happening now, everything that happened then...and pretty much everything.

With the world in the state it is in now, can we really, truly moralise about what is happening, or should we be looking at how any changes, anything we do differently could literally make lives better?

Zack Polanski got up and said he was pleased that Mamdani was able to win while talking about trans people, about migrants and other prejudiced communities. He did this while wearing a white poppy, clearly signalling his moral highground.

Now, whether or not we agree with his sentiments...the simple facts are that morality is our own construct, and is a societal construct, and so can differ widely not just between people of different nationalities, creeds, or religions, but by different cultures within the same society.

In Hungary right now, the new main opposition are campaigning on purely "factual" basis. There is zero morality in their literature, it is all about how the government has failed because of X, Y, Z, and they want to make the country better by A, B, and C.

And of all the new oppositions to fascists around the world, they seem to be the ones with the largest support group. Because us moral creatures on the liberal side will vote for them to get rid of the fascists quite happily.

But would the less liberal people, with a different view of morality, one shaped perhaps by a modern Christianity formed by alt-right influencers, be happy to vote for a candidate who campaigned on morality? A morality they do not share?

In the interview for the film, Michael Shannon ties it into 2025 America: America is a nightmare right now. The country is mentally ill. It needs help. There seem to be delusions of grandeur and self-loathing in equal measure. It gets grimmer every day. I’ve never seen such dysfunction in my life. It’s really embarrassing.”

And then he remarks: “I’m sure anybody who’s associated with promoting and selling this movie to the world is going to be horrified by everything I’ve said in this interview,”

Because...this is about morality. It's not about facts.

We are consistently fed lies. And these lies are made palatable by dressing them up in morality. In dressing them up in shared fears and prejudices. "Why should someone live off my tax money when they refuse to work?" "Why do I have to pay for these asylum seekers coming into our country and given free housing?"

And how do we dress up the response? In morality. In calling the people racist, in saying that we have a moral imperative to look after these people after what we have done. We are better off than them, so we SHOULD take care of them.

Should we? It's not a fact, it's a moral decision. It's up for debate. It's not black and white.

And while most of us should believe in treating our fellow humans as, well, humans, is that the way we make friends and influence people? Or is that the way we take the moral highground and lose control over our society to Nazi salute throwing, child abusing technocrats?

Facts are what are, morality is what should be.. Without morality (or values) we have no reason to prefer one state of the world (ie one set of facts) over another. You can't get an ought from an is.

So every argument about how things ought to be relies explicitly or implicitly on some moral assumptions, what is right or wrong, what is better or worse. This is why we must make sure our moral assumptions are extremely well justified and tested. They must tell us why one outcome is better than another. They must be logically consistent.

Although the above doesn't distinguish between 'good' or 'evil' (or any other) morality, we are not in the dark. Morality is not, at base, a human construct. Other animals have been shown to possess it. It's clearly something that has arisen from evolution, most likely as a useful adaptation for social species. We cannot get rid of it (unless we're psychopaths) and be fully human, and we need it to make our societies and lives function properly.

However, religion and the various conflicting moralities that flow from that are human constructs and we are free to discard them (we have to discard almost all of them anyway, since they contradict each other).


I strongly argue for a utilitarian-based morality at base, ie to provide the thing we 'ought' to do, that is to maximize wellbeing for people overall. However, in order to achieve this goal, rules are needed, rules which usually lead to the best overall outcomes. Obeying the rule is not the reason to do something, maximizing wellbeing is, however rules are more clear and practically enforceable. Morality must be practical - if it doesn't work in practice it is no use as a morality, therefore it is not actually moral.

Due to diminishing returns or diminishing marginal utility - ie every extra thing one owns brings less pleasure than the previous one (I need 1 TV, 2 would be useful, 3 nice to have, 4 what would I do with that?) - it is more efficient to share the assets of society fairly evenly. This will give the maximum overall wellbeing for society as a whole. Therefore I argue that our morality and our rules should be those which bring about high levels of equality (not necessarily exact equality as some differences are probably needed as incentives). This is why I am strongly left-wing.

Some things are a little easier to argue for, such as the end to genocide and occupation in Palestine. The increased wellbeing for the average person in the area is obvious, once you forget who is Israeli and who is Palestinian and think of them all as equal human beings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem