Tom Toles- Sermonette!

[n2doc]

By Tom Toles
People are born with an internal moral compass, or very occasionally without one. Some guidance and example help shape it, but those rarely fundamentally change it.

Everything else is just arguing. There has been a (VERY!) strong tendency throughout history for powerful people to codify THEIR compass or interests and tell you it came straight from God. This has had the effects of unifying groups and structuring a stable social order, and also warfare and persecution and butchery. Occasionally, a persuasive person will gather followers who voluntarily embrace a set of compelling beliefs and they are often set upon savagely as heretics until they become established enough to start punishing others.

The assertion that morality derives solely from some part of this system is insulting. A free and just society is one in which people of varied moral systems attempt to work with each other, both on moral issues and practical ones. People know this, but it’s WAY more satisfying to cater only to your own sense of what’s right. Will we ever work this out? God help us.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tom-toles/post/sermonette/2011/06/28/AGyvPCpH_blog.html

[Silent3]

1. Of course, wanting a free society, and how one actually defines "free"...

...can be said to be an expression of one's moral compass too.

Wanting people to "work with each other, both on moral issues and practical ones" is itself a moral goal.

I agree with that goal, I hope for the kind of society Toles seems to be hoping for here. My only disagreement is if Toles thinks he's achieving the feat of stepping outside of his own morality by promoting the kind of free society he describes.

[SpiralHawk]

2. For your contemplation: photo of Republicon Family Values Moral Compass

[PATRICK]

3. Two magnetic poles

One is money, an imposed rational order for material possession/power, the other is eternal human values that do last like love, compassion, hunger for justice, reason, progress. Maybe both are mad or fantastic because one is death and other seems a fruitless, materially unrewarding quest against death. These opposites repel so something is out of whack with the directional charge analogy.