raghu wrote:
> Thats what I said. "Moralistic" is pejorative, "moral" need not be. So
> anyone who criticizes anything can be accused of being moralistic.
> Nothing productive ever comes out of such accusations.
Nothing? that's not true. If someone is moralistic (as I use this
term), then we can learn a lot from the conditions of people's lives
that he or she is ignoring while trying to impose moral standards on
them. Even if one accepts the idea that abortion is bad, anti-abortion
absolutists reveal their lack of concern about real women by
dismissing the roles of rape, poverty, and so forth that make any
abortion ban extremely hard and damaging. This tells us that even
though the moralist's standards may _sound_ good in theory, they can
be immoral in practice, treating people as mere underlings to order
around.
If someone imposes his or her morality in a way that insults them
("motherfucker") and totally ignores both their humanity ("stop eating
so much!") and the practical issues of making sure that one person's
abstinence from eating actually helps those who are starving, that
indicates an unthinking approach. More importantly, there's a
contradiction between the seeming morality of the theory and the
immorality in practice.
In any event, if you want to help starving peasants, it is better to
teach them how to produce more crops (and, more importantly, to help
provide an institutional framework that ensures that they get more of
the fruits of their labor) instead of simply giving them food,
especially if it's simply taken from someone else (the alleged
over-eaters of the "first" world).
--
Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own
way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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