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Mike2022 posted an update 2 years ago ·
How Relationships shapes Moral Judgement
In the first week of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Facebook allowed posts calling for violence against “Russian invaders”.
Did you ever realize, our judgments of whether an action is morally acceptable depends on who is involved and their relationship with us?
When our child runs around the store flinging his arms around everywhere and yelling, it is cute, but when someone else’s child does it, it’s a bloody nuisance and the parents don’t know how to control their child. Our relationship with the person or people involved influences the severity of moral judgments concerning the acceptability of actions that violate societal and community norms.
There is a term called “relational morality”, it is a sub-set of subjective morality. It refers to the specific patterns of moral judgments in relation to our relationship with the “actor” or “executor” of an action or behaviour. Perceived morality of actions depends not only on the actions themselves, but also on the “actors” relational context with us.
The very popular trolley problem where the participant is put in a situation of sacrificial dilemmas in which he or she must judge the permissibility of killing one person in order to save a greater number, always changes when the variable of adding one person who is related to the participant is thrown into the thought experiment.
Moral judgments about interactions between strangers will always differ from judgments about interactions between friends, family members, or other familiar individuals in the same situation.
We see this in politics, businesses and even in the judicial system. Why is this so? Are humans not capable of true unbiased objective morality? If this is so, does it all just come down to tribalism? One tribe against another, regardless of laws or rules?
As everyone knows FB closely controls what is being said on its platform, to “protect” its users from “hate speech”, “violence inciting speech”, “disinformation” …e.tc. but it seems, it gives a green light when it comes to people it deems as “evil doers”. I am not supporting Russia or it’s invasion of Ukraine in anyway, I of course do not agree with Russia’s unprovoked attack on a sovereign country, Ukraine. With that being said, can you see how morality morphs in accordance with who is “our guys” and “those guys”? It’s ok if our tribe does it, but not yours.
In the end, though we pride ourselves on the institution of laws, systems of governance and an “established” theological dogma which purportedly makes us more “elevated” beings compared to mammals and other species of the animal kingdom, when it comes to moral judgments regarding our fellow Homosapiens, we behave like the tribal Chimpanzees and the Bonobos of Congo.
