Morality and technology.

morality and technology.
Due to my inability to sleep I’ll add on to the social politics of Internet communication. I have a lot to say so I suppose I’ll start at what feels appropriate. In a writing sometime back I wrote about morality from an emotional perspective. The point being made was that natural morality versus synthetic morality is more potent, embedded, and realistic, where synthetic is more of an extension of the moral through religious scripture. In other words, natural morality is created through confrontation like the kind seen in the prisoner’s dilemma. It’s only by earning respect by giving rewards when we’re getting what we want that we’ll get what we want back in return or move onto another person who may be more willing to meet at the same level as us. It can be seen as social market competition. I’d argue that synthetic morality in scripture was originally written to represent the struggles that took place at the time of their writings, so people could have the answers about how to live right in the temporal cultures they were created in. This would let the following generation avoid the prisoner dilemma by teaching the struggle that took place in the generation prior, and in turn wouldn’t have to continue being acted out to reach the same state of morality. Morality could then transcend into the following generation and by living properly we could have a stable civilization. It’s obvious religion and laws played a vital role in the structuring of the boundaries of how we are taught to live proper. I’d argue however that when these concepts try to transcend over time and culture two things happen. The first is over time the object of prior physical struggle of daily life changes, but the words from prior contexts stay within a language of a culture itself. The objects of the subjects no longer exists or is so far removed from the numerous transitions over time that the subjects align differently with newly evolved objects of action (people’s lifestyles). There can also be epiphenomenalism of objects of action that arise next to subjects tied to different objects, but the words of one object are transferred in meaning onto another. An example could be the rise of capitalism and the protestant work ethic. Capitalism was in conflict with the protestant way of life, so words like ambition in business had to be neutralized by giving them positive connotation, so ambition could also be something Christian like being ambitious in our faith. At the same time positive words already in protestant mentality could be transferred onto business making the act seem more righteous and less greedy. Different cultures have epiphenomenalism to one another and the transfer of the meanings of the way we live in a culture that has a scripture or law written one way that can then be applied to how we live to today in a different culture. I’d argue however, that the temporal/cultural changes in ways of life and meanings of words have changed so much that we tend to act out of our favor and since technology is causing the way of life to change faster to point that even within generations the rules are different, we have no choice but to play out the prisoner dilemma more frequently and keep rewriting the rules of how to live moral and proper to constant changing words, new words, and new objective human actions.

The question may be, what do morals and religion have to do with social technology and how it elevates politics? I’d say that social technology changes to rules of interaction on a level so frequent that the written rules of how to live proper are constantly changing with it. That means the only proper way to live is through conflict of social interaction on these constant new horizons. At this point I’ll address another issue that helps relate this complexity to our everyday lives. I’d argue there is a lexical language and my version of a metalanguage. The lexical language is the natural language that transcends time and space. It can be seen as holistic in a sense. These are possible because some objects don’t change fast enough over time for there not to always be words to represent them. It’s because of these universals that all the partials that overlap into the whole have partials in common with each other. This means I can communicate with someone from another culture and language simply by pointing out the objects (signified things) and labeling them with the subjects (signifier). Then someone else can point to the same object and place their signifier different than mine on it so we understand each other. Objects like the sun, earth, rocks, and even emotional expressions on faces are all natural and part of the natural language. Some objects are manmade, but even these can transcend in some cultures, such as industrial cultures can have similar objects like skyscrapers and video games that other parts of the world don’t. The metalanguage on the other hand signifies things that have no objects and the partials are more subjective, because we can buy into or invent their meaning. When I say god, everyone gets a different idea in his or her head. When we say someone is prejudice we’re claiming an idea that can’t be seen. These metawords can change meaning much more quickly over time. These I would argue are the words of scripture and law. Many of the objects still exist in writings that we can relate to because they lexical, but they’re tied into metawords that mean new things more frequently. It’s because technology expands boundaries of cultural possibility that more and more sub genres of lifestyle can be created from the original norms, and it’s this that makes the written morality from the age before that keeps becoming outdated faster ever before from old way of interacting. In other words, morality that isn’t defined through conflict is morality for the weak. This is because the conquering of the old horizon may still be lived out as proper while new horizon is eclipsing it. Everyone who can’t change from the old way of doing things are the first to be dominated by the new way. I’d argue that if Christian morals can’t adapt to the constant changes by changing its meaning of scripture in the church quickly enough, it will be eclipsed by a new religion. Even if it does change quickly enough it will only be called Christian in name, but practice may be very different.

The problem is they teach giving oneself to another in hopes that they will give the same back out of righteousness, but this is only true today within a sub genre of a cultural group that have identified with each other on an emotional level that they will treat each other right out of respect in order to maintain the existence of the unit or group. The human self-interest is only overcome when the individuals collect into a group that seeks strength through solidarity within the greater society of other sub genres. At this point it becomes the group interest, and the groups are partials that overlap have the societal interest. However, since the boundaries of society are always shifting faster with technology, we keep creating more new partials or cutting the pie slices thinner of society. Eventually old partial groups become obsolete and are absorbed into new partials to compete once again. It’s the constant changing of subcultures within greater culture that change the groups and the rules of morality, so that being giving is giving to new strangers who have self interests that don’t coincide with ours, and the objects of reality and lifestyle change so quick that the set way of living right and moral can never apply beyond a handful of people we’ve bonded to within our own lifetime. The reason strangers interests don’t coincide with ours the way they did in early societies is because the objective way of life changed much slower. Being giving within a community kept that community stable, the way giving in a church keeps the church community stable. If everyone in the community is giving we have a good community. The numerous institutions in the greater community at larger are constantly changing though and since they overlap each other we have spillover of people from one institution into another. The philosophy of morals therefore is not to give, but to take, and when we make sure we don’t change the meaning of what we want to take we won’t get screwed over. When two people want to take the same thing from each other at a given point, then it’s reverse giving, and two negatives make a positive. If we both want to get sex from each other, we are both giving each other sex to each other from the inverse perspective. This inverse of giving is only created after two people take from each other enough over the long term that appears reciprocal and we’ve developed emotions for each other that make us want to uphold the unit of us instead of you and I.