On Sat, 10 Mar 2001, John D. Giorgis wrote:
> 2) If individual A says privately to individual B "I am morally
> superior to you, individual B." - is individual A *by definition* not
> morally superior to individual B?
Not necessarily. Individual A may in fact be morally superior, but by
saying so, A is demonstrating that A is also a jerk. Which goes back to
the "holier than thou" attitude problem that several people have
expressed, and which I have pointed out compares to the hypocrites in
Matthew (can't remember which chapter) that Jesus warned against acting
like.
In an ideal world, those who are actually morally superior would have a
certain degree of humility about it, to where they wouldn't necessarily
brag about it.
If person C came along and told B, "A is morally superior to you, B," that
wouldn't reflect at all poorly on A; but A tooting A's own horn would.
> 4) If individual A privately condemns individual B, saying "You are an
> evil one, individual B" - is individual A *by definition* not morally
> superior to individual B?
A may be in fact morally superior, but I think it's a little extreme to
dismiss another individual as "evil", as a general rule. There are
exceptions; there are even exceptions among the general, non-famous
populace, but I haven't met enough of them to be comfortable around
someone who's slinging around accusations of others being "evil" right and
left. (I guess my thing is, if you're going to call someone "evil", you'd
better be sure they're evil to the core, or you're going to start using
that to label a lot more people than are probably actually truly evil,
which dilutes the impact of the label.)
> 6) Do you believe that it is possible for country X to be morally
> superior to country W?
My problem with this question is that the idea of "country" is not clearly
defined enough for me to answer one way or the other. The people
comprising the country probably run a spectrum similar to people in any
other country as far as moral superiority, but governing bodies show more
variation.
Please clarify your meaning as to what constitutes a "country", the people
or the system of government. If it's the people, then I don't think I
could really answer "yes" to your question.
> 10) If the leader of country X say publicly (for example, to the front
> page editor of the NY Times): "Country Y is an evil empire!" - is
> country X *by definition* not morally superior to country Y?"
No, but it's simplistic and dismissive and a jerkish thing to do.
Those are all the questions I'm going to address right now.
Basically, my attitude is that publicly celebrating one's moral
superiority undermines that superiority some. And by "publicly", I mean
that, depending on the circumstances, just one witness to the celebration
may make it so. Isn't gloating a sin? And don't sins undermine one's
moral superiority?
Julia
