Veritas Aequitas wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2020 3:58 am
Scott Mayers wrote: ↑Sat Feb 15, 2020 11:34 pm
Sure. I understand your sentiment.
I disagree with 'universal' morality as existing or shared among all people. The term, 'slavery', itself is a derogatory word implying that it exists, existed, or can be pointed to with clarity. Given the U.N. Declaration is made up by those who believe intrinsically in culturally biased definitions, it tends to presume some significance of this as some means to disclude some 'Nations' to play a role by some imposed authoritarian understanding of what slavery looks like....and thus is not 'universal'.
For instance, is Israel, as a member state, not itself enslaving the Palestinians by setting intentional settlements in clever ways to prevent the Palestinians and their Muslim religion from free movement, communications among them? Does Communist countries impose 'slavery' on its citizens when it creates laws that limit individual couples to have as many children as they deem fit of their own independent accord? Are "women"
enslaved if they wear religious garb of a religion that defines women on cultural lines? Is prostitution 'slavery'?
Words such as "slavery" and "freedom" are too fuzzy and are relative to one's perspective. The U.N. is about GROUPS of people and often treat inclusion of the word, "Nation" to imply
cultural signficance, such as when speaking about conserving "Aboriginal" interests, or treating the class, "women" or "men" as unified by some
cultural identity shared in kind.
Nature itself doesn't care for what is "free" and is in fact dependent upon the necessity of "slavery" if one considers we
enslave at least some other living being if only to survive. The best that a declaration of common moral interest can do is to speak in terms of RELATIVE agreements, like the
classical "liberal" definition that defines optimal significance to the individual to have as much 'freedom' for each other as long as such freedom doesn't impose upon another of the same.
I prefer the words on morality to speak in
relative terms rather than as
absolutes. Otherwise, such declarations about "human rights" are bound to be defined in
cultural classifications rather than
logical ones.
When you prefer "relative" then you are playing with a moving goal post, i.e. moving all the time, especially when you are right on target, it moves away and you shoot blank.
If you understand the need for efficiency in problem solving, you will understand there is a need for something fixed to work with from the start.
In the case of morality we need to start with the
highest possible good as a guide, as a
guide only.
Then we rely on the highest good to work on practical ethics.
In the case of slavery, I have justified why 'slavery is absolute wrong' as a highest good to act as a guide to reduce all forms of slavery within humanity.
The test is whether adopting 'slavery is absolutely wrong' as an absolute moral law works or not.
Note the UN is not insisting 'slavery is wrong' as a moral law within any specified moral framework.
I claimed 'slavery is morally wrong' as an absolute moral law but it has to be embedded as a GUIDE in an efficient Framework and System of Morality and Ethics - not discussed here.
You seem to have a personal dislike for 'slavery is morally wrong' but have no basis, justifications nor hypothesis on how you would resolve the problem of slavery.
I am first and foremost in distaste of the way culture is used to define what is or is not 'good'. And your own assumption of something 'universal' is logically reduced to, "No one should be permitted to accept bad behavior imposed upon themselves by others." This is no doubt agreeable but is still dependent upon what one means by 'bad behavior'. This is subjective and would only act as a 'preable' etiquette asserting the obvious but makes you question why it needs to be said at all.
It reminds me of how I once opted to fight a tresspassing fine in court and had to 'swear' to "tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth". The only functioning means of this is for the sake of the judge (or potential jury) to learn of whether one is a 'good Christian' given we can either opt to swear on the bible or not. The act of choosing not to accept the ettiquette of using some magical spell that binds me to cooperation has a hidden agenda of more specificity than it appears to be on the surface of the act.
That morality IS relative by default of how you might interpret something as being '
absolutely good' begs the need for saying it at all. Since it IS relative regardless, asserting some preconditioning statements that require official interpretation of words that SEEM agreeable is just as suspect of some intentional agenda of interest. Then those who happen to get the power to be the ones declaring such statements get the precedence of intepreting what it actually means in practice by all potential newcomers.
It would be more sincere and safe to merely assert that nature has no moral preferences but that those of such a commitee are in hope of finding some minimal common grounds of appeal that is understood as 'tentative' and dependent upon some negotiating criteria of its members.
Note that the United States first amendment was designed by its founders in a way that spoke of 'freedom of speech' to assure that emotional censorship by those with absolute beliefs about morality don't take precedence in the making of laws. Their choice of wording to this was to exclude the power of law making to be in respect of any specific religion. A belief in any absolute moral is itself a form of religion in that old sense. Today, the evolved term for this is "culture". In essence, these are just any '
artificial" conceptions based upon one's emotional sense of pride.
Thus, the U.N. Declaration, as preferentially unbiased as you might think it is, it is biased to the Western ideals that include Capitalism as its founding principles and so interprets things like 'slavery' as being limited in ways that don't override it. I also think it is biased knowing that its particular Canadian author comes from a system that believes in intrinsic censorship by cultural terms. People aren't slaves because they are merely 'poor' but if they are poor AND belong to some heritage classification, whether that be something privileged to be passed on as a benefit in terms of economics or to something presumed to be genetically linked instead.
The best that a declaration of common moral interest can do is to speak in terms of RELATIVE agreements, like the classical "liberal" definition that defines optimal significance to the individual to have as much 'freedom' for each other as long as such freedom doesn't impose upon another of the same.
How can you measure what is optimal within relative agreements, where there are so many subjective views per person or per group.
As I had suggested we need to start with the highest or the ideal good as a guide and manage its gap from reality and the practical.
You define them tentatively within the actions of the convention without constitutionalizing anything. If the U.N. was sincere, shouldn't all countries be admitted by default, regardless of their differences of opinion about what is or is not 'moral'? The mere dismissal of certain member countries suffice to prove that some bias exists that makes those who first create the organization and define its constitution as hiding some secret agenda.
If this is not merely about the U.N., then such statements don't constitute anything external to some pre-designated idea of what 'slavery' means.
May I also point out something about the Judao-Christian book of Genesis that actually derived a similar meaning without religious connotations in its origin? When "God" created the Earth, the Heavens, and each set of distinct things as a prequel to reality, it keeps saying at the end of each 'creation' that he saw that it was "good'. Now I believe the originators were likely being inclusive an secular. Thus "God" would actually be interpreted something like, "the Source" or "Nature". The added 'good' to each statement was constituting that the people DID believe in some common idea of Nature as being biased in favor of something understood to be ONLY 'good'. But it begged why this needed to be stated unless they had some alternate belief and motive of expected compliance that others thought differently about any moral virtue of Nature as being.
And though the original meaning of 'good' in that document (which is where the evolved word, "God", comes from later) seemed universal, it actually went against those who believed in a prior diestic*, dual, 'two' or more sided moral source of humanity, interpretating that morality was merely 'relative' and people had to negotiate what it means in context to specific contracts and laws.
* Diest == Theist but was pronounced differently. Oddly, the term "theist" now refers to a human-centric being or essence that defines even the monotheistic 'go(o)d'. That was why Akhenaten, Tut(moses) father, was interpreted as being intolerant as he attempted to consolidate virtue of interpretation to be absolutely of ONE unified morality. That he symbolized as the nature of the perfect 'solid' as representing a unified container and source of all things as represented by the sun, he assumed moral distinctions have to also be of ONE ethical origin. Note the name "Solomon" as coming from "sol" as in
solar and shows where 'solo' evolved similarly. The original title that became a personified literal person is actually, "Sol amen" ....the single final word on creation and its assignment to being ONLY 'good' rather than a relative virtue.