What do you think that morals are, if not societal expectations? Lots of cultures disagree about what is moral and what isn’t, and people from those cultures have adopted those morals by being raised in those cultures.
If people in those cultures stop caring if others within their own culture perceive their actions as moral, then society devolves into chaos. Maybe sociopathy would have been a better word than narcissism (although I am not a psychologist); a society of primarily sociopaths cannot survive.
I’m not sure I’d agree that morals are societal expectations, cuz imo you could still have a moral system in a vacuum and it’s relatively common to have a set of morals that disagrees (sometimes strongly) with what your own culture dictates as norms.
Like in my eyes my actions don’t need to be perceived to be subject to my own morality, and my culture’s perception of my actions also don’t affect their morality. As an extreme example, a citizen of nazi germany might have been perceived as immoral in their own culture for sabotaging nazis by assisting holocaust victims in hiding or escapes, but I don’t think most people would argue that makes that person immoral (probably the opposite). Obviously I’m not saying that’s your position in this, I know you already mentioned exceptions and that would def be one, just trying to show that a person’s morals can exist outside their culture’s perception of them.
IMO your morals are shaped by your culture the same way you’re shaped by your environment, but I definitely wouldn’t conflate them with societal expectations - I see them as a Venn diagram, where some expectations are based on morals but others are unrelated and aspects of a moral code can be independent of social expectations. Like I mentioned before, there’s social expectations around the way we dress that clearly have no moral basis, and examples of people morally dissenting from their culture’s norms are all thru history.
I definitely agree with your last point that a society where people don’t care about being moral can’t survive - but I’d argue like above that it’s not the outside perception (and resulting shame factor) that enforces morality but an individual sense of right and wrong that most people have and at least attempt to live by. There’s always gonna be people who simply don’t have or attempt to follow their own morals or sense of empathy ofc, but imo that’s what laws are for and trying to enforce norms with shame as well is unlikely to work on people who don’t have those things. Like you can’t shame a sociopath (also not a psychologist so using the colloquial meaning) into doing or not doing things - it’s just not a productive way to convince them to act pro-socially. IMO we should just enforce reasonable laws, stick to the tolerance contract, and ignore societal expectations as irrelevant- let people dress as they want and get up to whatever weird harmless shit all this pointless shame is repressing.
I think thats too pedantic of an interpretation (surprising, considering my name lol).
I don’t really agree that something we’d recognize as a moral system could form in a vacuum.
If someone’s morals diverge significantly from the culture they’re embedded in, I see three avenues for them:
Find a subculture or external culture to join to help galvanize the shame into resolve
Adjust your moral system to align with the culture
Sociopathy
Even in your extreme example, I think that only sociopaths could “go it alone”, and that the people who did disagree with their culture often did so knowing that they weren’t alone in that belief.
But really you’re putting way to much thought into a shitpost.
What do you think that morals are, if not societal expectations? Lots of cultures disagree about what is moral and what isn’t, and people from those cultures have adopted those morals by being raised in those cultures.
If people in those cultures stop caring if others within their own culture perceive their actions as moral, then society devolves into chaos. Maybe sociopathy would have been a better word than narcissism (although I am not a psychologist); a society of primarily sociopaths cannot survive.
I’m not sure I’d agree that morals are societal expectations, cuz imo you could still have a moral system in a vacuum and it’s relatively common to have a set of morals that disagrees (sometimes strongly) with what your own culture dictates as norms.
Like in my eyes my actions don’t need to be perceived to be subject to my own morality, and my culture’s perception of my actions also don’t affect their morality. As an extreme example, a citizen of nazi germany might have been perceived as immoral in their own culture for sabotaging nazis by assisting holocaust victims in hiding or escapes, but I don’t think most people would argue that makes that person immoral (probably the opposite). Obviously I’m not saying that’s your position in this, I know you already mentioned exceptions and that would def be one, just trying to show that a person’s morals can exist outside their culture’s perception of them.
IMO your morals are shaped by your culture the same way you’re shaped by your environment, but I definitely wouldn’t conflate them with societal expectations - I see them as a Venn diagram, where some expectations are based on morals but others are unrelated and aspects of a moral code can be independent of social expectations. Like I mentioned before, there’s social expectations around the way we dress that clearly have no moral basis, and examples of people morally dissenting from their culture’s norms are all thru history.
I definitely agree with your last point that a society where people don’t care about being moral can’t survive - but I’d argue like above that it’s not the outside perception (and resulting shame factor) that enforces morality but an individual sense of right and wrong that most people have and at least attempt to live by. There’s always gonna be people who simply don’t have or attempt to follow their own morals or sense of empathy ofc, but imo that’s what laws are for and trying to enforce norms with shame as well is unlikely to work on people who don’t have those things. Like you can’t shame a sociopath (also not a psychologist so using the colloquial meaning) into doing or not doing things - it’s just not a productive way to convince them to act pro-socially. IMO we should just enforce reasonable laws, stick to the tolerance contract, and ignore societal expectations as irrelevant- let people dress as they want and get up to whatever weird harmless shit all this pointless shame is repressing.
I think thats too pedantic of an interpretation (surprising, considering my name lol).
I don’t really agree that something we’d recognize as a moral system could form in a vacuum.
If someone’s morals diverge significantly from the culture they’re embedded in, I see three avenues for them:
Even in your extreme example, I think that only sociopaths could “go it alone”, and that the people who did disagree with their culture often did so knowing that they weren’t alone in that belief.
But really you’re putting way to much thought into a shitpost.