"the notion that the group, as a whole, is as smart, strong, and moral as the sum of its parts."
I'm not sure this is entirely true. I added the words to the graphic to illustrate a balance between the individual and the group. Society can set "rules of thumb" that say we generally shouldn't kill, cause pain, deprive of pleasure, or restrict freedom-- but everybody's different. Some of us want us to do these things to them, and "one size fits all" doesn't apply. The thing about reciprocal morality is that, even though we can still use rules of thumb as a stop-gap measure for our ignorance, we need to listen to the unique people in our lives and observe evidence about them individually.
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Date: 2006-11-24 09:12 pm (UTC)I'm not sure this is entirely true. I added the words to the graphic to illustrate a balance between the individual and the group. Society can set "rules of thumb" that say we generally shouldn't kill, cause pain, deprive of pleasure, or restrict freedom-- but everybody's different. Some of us want us to do these things to them, and "one size fits all" doesn't apply. The thing about reciprocal morality is that, even though we can still use rules of thumb as a stop-gap measure for our ignorance, we need to listen to the unique people in our lives and observe evidence about them individually.