- 10 Dec 2015 21:21
#14631310
There's a common default position in tort (personal injury) law. It says that if someone needs your help and you walk away from them, they can’t sue you for it. You can however be sued for trying to help them and doing a bad job of it.
To many people this sounds like a horrible policy. Let's envision some of the competing policies:
Policy 1: You are legally required to help a person in need. You can also be sued for negligence if you help incompetently.
Outcome 1: The court has to decide the following things. When is a person in need? What constitutes competent help? Can a court do this fairly when there is little evidence?
Dilemma 1: Every time someone is in need, they become a legal threat to other people who are nearby. This makes being in need shameful. It could promote frivolous lawsuits. If large numbers of people try to help at the same time (or pretend to be helping so that they can't be sued) it could actually make some problems worse.
Conclusion 1: It is better to leave this up to the public's judgment. A healthy society should not lack for people who want to help each other anyway.
Policy 2: You are legally required to help a person in need. You cannot be sued for negligence if you help them incompetently.
Outcome 2: Some people help frantically because the only thing that can go wrong for them is an accusation that they did not try to help. This potentially (maybe even likely) makes any given problem worse.
Dilemma 2: People are afraid to admit they are in need because they don't want to get mobbed by fools. It makes being in need dangerous.
Conclusion 2: The same as conclusion 1, it is better to leave these things up to the public.
Argument: Legally Requiring Morality is a Paradox
If morality is one person helping another for no reward, legally requiring morality is a paradox because the avoidance of punishment is an obscured form of a reward. To not require that people help each other seems unsatisfying and wrong, yet requiring it does not work well in practice. From a communal standpoint, morality makes perfect sense. From an individualistic standpoint it makes no sense because the moral person stands only to lose; he has nothing to gain.
My conclusion regarding this argument is two fold. First, communal ethics are the only real form of ethics; helping yourself is not deserving of the word morality. Second, communal ethics cannot be justified individually. They exist only within a form of a superego or group consciousness which itself is usually manifested as a religion. Without any coherent manifestation of this communal consciousness, communal ethics cannot be articulated and this causes a state of decline in real morality. One of the first responses to this state of decline is the attempt to legally require moral behavior from citizens but these efforts never seem to work.
To many people this sounds like a horrible policy. Let's envision some of the competing policies:
Policy 1: You are legally required to help a person in need. You can also be sued for negligence if you help incompetently.
Outcome 1: The court has to decide the following things. When is a person in need? What constitutes competent help? Can a court do this fairly when there is little evidence?
Dilemma 1: Every time someone is in need, they become a legal threat to other people who are nearby. This makes being in need shameful. It could promote frivolous lawsuits. If large numbers of people try to help at the same time (or pretend to be helping so that they can't be sued) it could actually make some problems worse.
Conclusion 1: It is better to leave this up to the public's judgment. A healthy society should not lack for people who want to help each other anyway.
Policy 2: You are legally required to help a person in need. You cannot be sued for negligence if you help them incompetently.
Outcome 2: Some people help frantically because the only thing that can go wrong for them is an accusation that they did not try to help. This potentially (maybe even likely) makes any given problem worse.
Dilemma 2: People are afraid to admit they are in need because they don't want to get mobbed by fools. It makes being in need dangerous.
Conclusion 2: The same as conclusion 1, it is better to leave these things up to the public.
Argument: Legally Requiring Morality is a Paradox
If morality is one person helping another for no reward, legally requiring morality is a paradox because the avoidance of punishment is an obscured form of a reward. To not require that people help each other seems unsatisfying and wrong, yet requiring it does not work well in practice. From a communal standpoint, morality makes perfect sense. From an individualistic standpoint it makes no sense because the moral person stands only to lose; he has nothing to gain.
My conclusion regarding this argument is two fold. First, communal ethics are the only real form of ethics; helping yourself is not deserving of the word morality. Second, communal ethics cannot be justified individually. They exist only within a form of a superego or group consciousness which itself is usually manifested as a religion. Without any coherent manifestation of this communal consciousness, communal ethics cannot be articulated and this causes a state of decline in real morality. One of the first responses to this state of decline is the attempt to legally require moral behavior from citizens but these efforts never seem to work.
Orb Team Re-Assemble!