Spiritual Musings on a Chemical World

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Morally Right vs. Socially Acceptable

Yesterday I got a little caught up thinking. I was thinking about how people judge people based on things they do because they deem them socially unacceptable. I was thinking about how what's socially acceptable doesn't always line up with what's morally right. And I was thinking back to my Moral Relativism post, in which I talked about how I read an article about moral relativism. The example the article gave was that there are two people from different cultures, and one person thinks hitting people is morally wrong and the other thinks it's an acceptable way of asserting dominance, and both are morally right because morals depend on the culture. That's moral relativism I guess. And I was thinking about how stupid some people must be, to think that something being morally right or wrong depends on if it's socially acceptable or unacceptable. Yeah, that's all morality is. How stupid some people must be. So I called up my dad and told him that I wondered why some people are so stupid.

Anyway, the thing that got me started was I was thinking about my sister, and how she called a certain unnamed person a loser because they did something kind of strange. Now, I can remember one occasion when I did something similar in the past, because I knew someone who did something that was just so lame and I knew that most people would consider it lame so I called that person a loser. The point is, I have since realized that that was wrong. So anyway, what I don't understand is why certain people feel the need to shun people who do things that might be considered socially unacceptable. These are things you rise above. You feel the desire in your heart to be good and be the better person. So I guess these people don't feel the desire in their hearts to be good. Either that or they are ignorant, and they think that when people do certain things they are indications that the person has a wicked heart and deserves punishment. Not only that, but it is their responsiblity to punish them. Anyway, when I was writing this I got thinking about something else so I don't know if that was coherent.

As for myself personally, I don't hold things against other people unless I take something they did personally. And I know it's not right to take things personally, and for the most part I don't, but I'm not perfect and sometimes I find it hard. I'm kind of going off topic here, this was supposed to be a post about what's socially acceptable versus what's morally right.

So an example of this is promiscuity in women. There is nothing morally wrong about a girl messing around with a lot of guys, as long as there is no infidelity going on. At least, as far as I can tell there's not, if the girl is okay with it she can do what she wants to. But then there's the issue of respect. You have to control yourself or else people thing negatively about you. That said, you throw the word slut at me and it is the most meaningless insult. When someone says that, it says more about them then it does about me. For girls in particular it means they are insecure. For other people, it means they are conformists not just with their actions but with their minds. Because in my opinion, it's okay to conform somewhat to society's standards in order to be respected, but it's not okay to judge people who haven't. And that's what I think.

No comments:

Post a Comment