Are Safe Spaces for Religious Millennials Justified?

[pbrower2a]

(10-17-2021, 04:23 PM)AspieMillennial Wrote:

(10-17-2021, 11:50 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...You know as I do that we share positions on the autistic spectrum. We both must live lies to survive in our system. We must often conform to expectations that are contrary to our nature. When we are honest we can say or write unsettling things. Maybe our overall society needs to accept that some unsettling things are vital. As such we both need to express ourselves rationality or to create some entertaining fantasy as a diversion from the troublesome reality that most of us know without being crazy about it. We also need some morality. In general, Lawrence Kohlberg offers a hierarchy of potential criteria for discerning Right from Wrong:



This relates to the question of whether a compounding pharmacist has an inherent right to create a sure cure for a horrific disease (the specific case is cancer) and price a man out of getting it for his wife who will surely die a horrible death without it. (OK, that makes an unlikely scenario). Preconventional morality isn't very high, and it gets little support. Wild animals and small children usually operate on this level (stage 2), and adults don't get away with predatory behavior unless extremely cunning or under protection. The perception that one will not be caught (so you took two half-dollars from your parents' coin collection and traded them in for a soda) is something to suppress because it it is an extremely-bad habit. Crude self interest (2) is fine for people who live as hermits or lone castaways, but it is not good for forming and maintaining complex societies and organizations that make life more satisfying.

Raw conformity (stage 3) allows one to go along with the crowd. Of course someone leads the crowd on, whether that crowd is the Girl Scouts of America or the infamous Bund Deutscher Mädel, the only permitted organization for girls in the Third Reich. Going along in the Girl Scouts is innocuous. IN the Nazi parody it was good for pushing the ideology of the Party and even recruiting girls to grow up to be monstrous guards in the camps. To be sure, blind rebellion is itself risky. Stage 4 implies obedience in the assumption that disobedience tears at a good society (thus ratting out a black person who drinks from a "WHITES ONLY" fountain in "Kukluxistan" is a good idea) but personal loyalties matter.

At the Social Contract position (Stage 5) one has some advanced ability to discern right from wrong and the reliability of those in power to act morally. This is the position at which one can protest gross injustice, perhaps by showing that it fails to serve law and order (that segregation rips at the assumption of freedom and democracy, persecution of ethnic or religious minorities is unconscionable, or the denial of basic dignity to pariahs is ultimately dangerous to us all).

Here is my scenario: I have been threatened with gay-bashing. The problem isn't that someone thinks that I am gay, as morally-mature people draw no conclusions about the validity of my existence even if they misjudge me on that. I wasn't going to do something nasty to someone I think is gay for being gay. The problem is that someone thinks that it beating people up for being gay is acceptable because they see gays as dangerous perverts. At this point I can formulate arguments for gay rights. Maybe if people recognize that LGBT people are peers (a woman who shares the same attitudes toward men as I do would be a lesbian) and merit equal protection under the law and a community standard that accepts homosexuality that is not a personal choice. So long as it precludes pedophile behavior and sexual exploitation (which I cannot accept when such is heterosexual) I can live with it. Acceptance of LGBT rights makes the world safer, and a safer world is a better world.

So I can tailor an appeal on Law and Order to people who may not quite accept my reasoning on basic human rights, but even at that, Law and Order is essential to making basic human rights possible. The question is who determines what laws are statutes and which ones are to be enforced.  I prefer that the police go after drug dealers and not after flagrant homosexuals. I can't excuse heroin and cocaine but I must accept homosexuality. Attacks on homosexuals are thus inexcusable and rightly subject to police repression and to official prosecution. People who might have free-floating anger must be convinced that attacking homosexuals is unacceptable and intolerable. We do not need people being made pariahs without them having done something inexcusable. Laws can establish the patterns toward which we conform lest we get burned by the legal system and penal administration.

Stage 6 is for people who are as adept at making moral judgments as Fritz Kreisler was at playing a violin. This is the realm of jurisprudence and moral prophecy at its best. It is parallel to Abraham Maslow's "self-actualization", and people at this level have clearly attained transcendence. (Neither of us, as Aspies, can ever approach self-actualization. We have terrible gaps of personality that we must at best synthesize because such does not come naturally).

Level 1 is for the psychopath. It is primitive and animalistic, and it usually leads to prison or the gallows. Level 2 allows one to see oneself as Master over victims less cunning than oneself. At best it serves the sell-out, and at worst a criminal fairly good at deflecting attention from himself or getting away from the scene of the crime. Mobsters are generally at this level, as were pirates and are serial killers, rapists, and thieves. Maybe they evade judgment for some time, as was so with a Ted Bundy, John Dillinger, or Osama bin Laden.  Level 3 ensures that one is no better or worse than the crowd or clique. At the worst the group might be a genocidal gang, and going along allows the very worst in human conduct. If one follows a leader at this moral level mindlessly (as such people demand) one might be following a Charles Manson or Adolf Hitler. Level 3 cannot judge, and it is amenable to the appeal of fakes and frauds. That is where I see the Trump cult.  

At Level 4 one is no better than the formal structure. One can become an enforcer of the cruelties built into the system such as segregation and religious bigotry. When the formal structure of society improves, so does the result of recognizing the validity of law and order.  Level 4 can accept that there are good reasons for not using illicit drugs or participating in scams. It is also perfect in the service of the old KGB or the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.

Level 5 is risky. If one's thoughts are mostly benign and one has some self-restraint and intellectual one can operate here. This is where one decides the distinction between Good and Evil and can make that distinction stick if in authority. One can explain what one believes it and formulate it as law and principle. If one is smart and conventional, then one can operate at this level as a political leader, judge, police chief, diplomat, journalist, or college professor.  It can still be pragmatic and not quite be stuck in some ivory tower. Mikhail Gorbachev and Angela Merkel seem to operate at this level. American Presidents? Gerald Ford and Barack Obama fit. For high-visibility divines one might find Billy Graham and Fulton Sheen.  

Level 6 is that of the Prophet and Saint. Human nature craves this, but it is far easier to come up with counterfeit prophets and saints than with real ones. Cranks and crooks often exploit people as fakes here.  For the fakes it is best that most people operate around Level 3, willing to follow but incapable of making moral judgments. I can see Abraham Lincoln or Mohandas Gandhi at this level.

True we have to fit in to some extent but why bother hanging around people who disrespect your beliefs or what you think? Many of them are very hostile and don't seem worth the bother. If you're at work or a place you need to get along then fine but why not form your own spaces that help you?

Sometimes we must choose between accommodation and exit. To be sure, some religious expressions create fewer problems to outsiders than do others. If you can't get along with Roman Catholics because they are Roman Catholics, then you have a big problem. I can assure you that if you insist that you are not going to work near that (insert ethnic, religious, racial, or sexual slur) then you will get a dressing-down from your boss and probably lose your job. That's only fair. People who can't get along with others are the people with the shortest tenures on the job short of those who get caught in wrongdoing, disobedience, dishonesty, or incompetence.

May I suggest a book for you?



The book at Amazon.com

It is old and simple, and even shallow. It can help people who have trouble getting along with others. Getting along with others is not rocket science; it might even be more difficult. You can change some of your ways to better fit into an organization that can pay you better than can a job that is best described as raw labor. Getting along with others is one way of getting access to experiences that might enrich your personal life. Everybody must make compromises of his nature as a person if he is not to end up bored, broke, and lonely. Nobody will get you out of that situation (gee, Bored, Broke and Lonely sounds like a great title for a country song... if only I could wrote the lyrics!) for your sake without getting something in return.

Very rarely does anyone get anything, including gratification, without giving something in return or making some investment. Learning something about gardening (if that person is deep into gardening) or the favorite sports teams  of someone else is an easy compromise.



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In many institutional settings (including work) it is often necessary to keep silent about things that can create trouble. If you have a sexual fetish, then that would be wise to leave in the "unmentionable" zone. Explicit discussion of sexuality is a bad idea except in appropriate contexts (such as medicine). I've taught as a substitute teacher and have made statements that chastity is best, and "safe sex" is second best. There's not much to say about chastity, and "safe sex" is entirely clinical. Extremist politics is also troublesome. If I am on the job, do not try to convince me that "Trump actually won" or that the Democrats are a cabal of pedophiles.

Quote:I've read the hierarchy of morality. Conventional morality is harder for me to grasp than the higher forms or lower forms. Maybe this is why secularism makes no sense to me.

It could be that you understand the lower two levels of morality, then it might be that those are so inadequate that you would reject them on the spot. Avoiding punishment and self-gratification are not high levels of ethical behavior.  "Everybody for himself" creates a lonely and impoverished world. Anyone in a desperate situation finds no aid in getting out of a bad situation. At that level there isn't even a fire brigade to keep a house fire from becoming a conflagration.

Moral development may not be an exact parallel to intellectual development, but you well know that infants are extremely selfish and demanding. At some point one expects them to grow up and do certain things. Rather early that includes toilet training. A little later that includes some table manners and refraining from saying obnoxious things.

Stage 3 means going along with the crowd, which is fine if the crowd does innocuous things. A bucket brigade is a good thing and a lynch mob is bad, and I doubt that I can go into more detail on my judgment of such. Stage 3 cannot judge the crowd. Someone might join the crowd, as I would in a bucket brigade, but for reasons other than conformity. Armies make much of parades and marches as means of creating identity with the group so that when it faces danger it can achieve its purpose with lesser cost of time and casualties. But is the fighting force the United States Marine Corps (the best way to deal with the United States Marine Corps is to raise your hands high, drop your weapons, and surrender because you will be treated humanely as a prisoner) or the Totenkopf-SS which had a high proclivity of executing prisoners.

Stage 4 recognizes that civil strife and institutional disobedience are big trouble. Overt crime is unacceptable. Law is to be obeyed without judging whether the laws are themselves just. We can all accept that speed laws and regulatory signs on highways are to be obeyed. As an example, I typically drive the speed limit if possible and drive slower if conditions mandate or faster under what I consider rare cases in which the speed limit gets in the way of safety. I consider tailgating more dangerous than speeding. I stop for stop signs and lights. I know that the criminal code exists for good reason.

Can the law be wrong? Sure. The Inquisition was wrong. The Fugitive Slave Laws were wrong. The Nuremberg Laws were wrong. Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code (basically making just about anything that one does a crime) was wrong. Laws enforcing Apartheid or Jim Crow practice were wrong. There are deeds that are abominable under any circumstances, such as murder, rape, arson, enslavement, theft, false testimony and fraudulent oaths, abandonment of the helpless, drug-dealing, drunk driving... I think we get the general idea. Some don't. Our prisons are full of people who broke laws and got caught for such.

Maybe it is simply too obvious that being out for oneself alone is futility at best and great harm at worst. Conformity and obedience have their place when the consequences of conformity and obedience are benign but not when the consequences are gross wrong against people.

I would figure this: that if you can see the potential inadequacy of any particular level of moral development, then you operate on a higher level. I see few problems with anyone acting on the social-contract level.  This was obviously impossible in the Third Reich, Stalin's Soviet Union, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, Syria or Iraq under Ba'ath-fascist regimes, or ISIS.