@nowhereisnowhere,
nowhereisnowhere wrote:I think you're discounting the role of subjectivity here. To use the language of Gramsci it is the hegemonic social class which creates and maintains a community's ethical standards, but you must remember - an individual's capacity to change a community is contingent upon his ability to independently critique these socially imposed values.
I dont think you can say there is no individual morality. Humans are moral beings. Its true that most morals are only understandable when viewed in relation to other people, but I think really you're missing somthing here
Gramsci; who ever he was must have been raised by a dishwasher...People do not behave morally because of abstract relationships, but because of real relationships...
You must understand that community is older than man, so it represents a sort of perfection...No one can be truly objective about their community, nor has community for long been able to bear any sub-organizations within it...It is like old indians because of their survival and experience becoming shamen..They did not leave their community, nor did they form some other community within... They became what all old men became, half shrink, have holistic healer...
What we have is different than even five hundred years ago in America... Now we have nation states where diverse people have been brought together guided by law rather than morality... But we see it does not work, and we think the ideal of morality is wrong...It is instead the understanding of it that is wrong...If we cannot find a way to give people that emotional attachment to society then they tend to look at others as some sort of animal that they can bleed, milik, or slaughter as they see fit...And if you look at their behavior, they are abstract, and their commuities are insular, and they move to positions in government and law and finance because from those positions they can best prey upon the general society...They do not have that loving feeling, and no sort of abstraction of the idea of morality will ever give it to them... Law is an abstaction...It is a form of relationship as much morality is, but it is not a natural form as much morality is, but a construct; and the reason forms like law are embraced is the same reason they unltimately fail, because once they have trained some one to a certain form of behavior they can be exploited to no end...They know they are hurting, and they know what is happening to them is not just; but peace is the ultimate moral value even for the most savage of people; and it is a weakness...No one want to be the first to draw blood, so they are bled by drops and pennies of their lives...
For anyone in a natural community, the thought of changing the community never occurs...Survival is essential, and you cannot cahnge perfection, or even see it objectively...Can you judge your own family???Few can...Most forgive rather than judge, because they can see the relationship played out in time...Since they know how things got that way they see it as what it is rather than as what it might have been or could be...