So, to belabor the point of what I was discussing last night, I wanted to discuss objective and subjective morality, especially in regard to voting.
Does objective morality exist?
If you go by the Christian definition, not really. I mean, Hobbes' state of nature basically discusses how the worst fears Christians talk about actually does come true and is pretty common. Morality is largely "subjective" and comes from humans.
However, I will say this. If we believe morality is, essentially, a practice of making rules and governing behavior to ensure relatively preferable outcomes for humans, then yes, some ideas are objectively better at doing that than not.
The ultimate goal of morality is preserving life and reducing harm. However, these concerns should be balanced with the natural state of liberty and the pursuit of happiness so the state should not overstep its bounds there.
If harm reduction is the goal of morality, than the centrists are right! Voting for democrats objectively reduces harm!
Not so far. Yes, it does reduce harm by a specific calculus for reducing harm in the form of focusing on the immediate outcome. However, morality largely exists within the realm of theory, and people have different approaches toward what's the best way to go about maximizing well being and reducing harm in the long term.
The centrists who see themselves as above the fray focus only on the immediate and the practical. They try to act as if they have no ideology, and in a sense, I guess they don't, but that isn't always a good thing. Morals and ideology often establish ideas of what "the good life" looks like, and if one simply operates within the reality that we have with no guidance about where we should go, is that always the best approach to morality that we can take? I would argue no.
As a political science guy, it's essentially the debate we have between the rational planning model and the muddle through model. "Pragmatists" are muddlers. They don't have a grand end goal, they don't plan ahead, they don't really think. They just focus on operating in the reality they find themselves in to make short term gains that are often quite incremental. But because they don't think, they have no real idea of where they're going and how the system works. And in my calculus, they ignore things. Like, they talk about trolley problems all the time but don't stop to think about who is putting these people on the tracks in the first place. This makes them open to manipulation by bad faith actors who use their empathy and immediate term focus to keep forcing flawed dilemmas on them that ensure that they never actually make real progress. It's a legitimate flaw of this system.
Meanwhile, I'm more of a rational planner. I try to develop an idea of where I want to go, and how I want to get there, and then I measure progress against the standards that I establish. And I tend to vote for the party that most conforms with my standards. Even I recognize I'm never gonna get everything I want. I mean, to some extent push comes to shove you sometimes have to muddle through at least a little. But I am more driven by my own ideology, and I feel comfortable, if the parties that be fail to represent my ideals, to look for other options.
"Pragmatists" focus only on "well can they win?" As a rational planner, I focus on "does this take me where I want to go?" Ultimately, I'm gonna vote for SOMEONE. But who that person is depends. If I feel like the democrats aren't always looking out for my interests, I believe in using the system to pressure them to get what I want, even if it means voting for someone who "cant win." And trust me, I just did an election update, I know EXACTLY how bad Stein's odds are, for example. Functionally 0%. But, again, it depends, does a vote for Harris lead to the outcome that I want? Would a Stein vote lead to a better outcome long term, even if it doesn't short term?
And then I have to consider the theories of elections themselves. The idea that the politicians are responsible for their actions and accountable to the voters. If politicians are no longer accountable to voters and just do what they want and constantly force trolley problems on us every 4 years, then are our greater interests being served? Even if we win this time, will we ever get where we want to go? Doesn't the fact that we guarantee a vote for these guys ensure us that we will never progress in a better direction?
And that's where morality stops being objective. There are different, conflicting moral systems. We can dispute the best system to get to where we want to go, but the fact is, these systems DO differ in their methods and outcomes, and the matter of which is best is really dependent on how we do our calculus.
We can all agree that harm reduction is a good thing? But is the greater good really served by voting for a lesser evil every election? That isn't something that I can properly answer in an objective way. This is, in fact, a subjective question, and people will disagree.
If you care about the bombing of Palestinian kids, it might not be a good idea to vote democrat if they're still gonna bomb Palestinian kids. Even if Trump will also bomb those kids worse. Evil is evil. Asking people to sign off on evil is a questionable ask.
Same with my own concerns. Will the democrats establish UBI, Medicare for all, and end wage slavery? No. Hell no. And they're very much opposed to those ideas. Harris will give us some progress, but she remains lacking on my top priorities. In theory, I could argue for voting third party, like I did in 2016 and 2020 here, if I wanted to.
But to be fair, I DO care about other concerns this time. I did make broader metrics that focused on a whole host of things and looked at the big picture, and Harris won that one. She earned my vote. Even if she's worse on some of my top concerns, she's also better on foreign policy than Stein. She's better on being experienced and able to do the job. She's still okay on some economic priorities, and let's face it, Donald Trump IS dangerous, and he's so dangerous he represents an overriding concern that breaks my normal metrics for judging such things. So I will vote for Harris and justify my Harris vote in those things.
But remember, even if you vote for "pragmatic" reasons, you're still voting your values. And that's been my point all along. The enlightened centrist likes to act like they're non ideological, ie, that they don't have an actual set of values and morals to guide them where they wanna go and they focus exclusively on the here and now, but in reality, that is their value system, that is their ideology. And they're not as above the fray as they think they are. They just think they're better than everyone else and that they wield the objectively correct answers, and, well, they largely don't. Maybe Donald Trump changes that for me at least a little bit, where I cant justify a Stein vote, but at the same time, that's also my values. Someone who really REALLY cares about palestinians might care about that even more than american democracy. We can criticize that decision as stupid and irresponsible, but let's not act like it isn't a moral decision as well. It totally is.
There is no "objectively" right way to vote, especially in ALL circumstances. Even if I yield to the short term pragmatic given how high the stakes are, that doesn't mean pragmatic voting as a way of life in every election is the way. keep in mind the same people crapping on Stein and bashing her voters are the same ones who did so in 2016, and did so to hawkins in 2020. They have this mentality that EVERY election should be approached through the same pragmatic lens, and that ever voting your values or demanding politicians conform to your moral system is wrong. And I find that very problematic. Dont get me wrong, I kind of get the mentality. But let's face it, they take it so such a dogmatic extreme, that the premises start to cave in on itself, where I can no longer say it's the most moral approach. Because if you have one candidate that's 99% bad and the other 100% bad, they think you're morally required to vote for Mr. 99% to avoid Mr. 100%. If you have Satan vs Hitler, and Satan is the epitome of evil, they'll say you should vote for funny mustache guy to avoid Satan. You know? it gets ridiculous after a while, and sadly, their way of thinking is what brought us to this point, if you ask me. If voters had standards, maybe we wouldnt get into a position where we had such flawed and terrible candidates in the first place, and such a flawed and horrible system that spawns such a dilemma arguably did so because the pragmatists didn't check the candidates before things got this bad.
Just like I'd argue centrist and "pragmatist" candidates arguably drove the country to Trump in the first place. And yes, now we have to stop them, but I still blame Hillary and the democrats for sucking as bad as they did for the orange crapstein ever getting elected in the first place. If they didn't pursue their exact electoral strategy that involved pissing off independents and lefties, maybe the dems wouldn't have lost. The blame ultimately is on them IMO, not the voters.
And again, that's another whole dimension of this whole mess. Who is really to blame? It depends on how you think democracy works. if youre like me and think the point is for people to actually vote for what they want, and to promote their values, pragmatic voting denotes to me, a lack of values, a lack of moral framework. It doesn't really, as that attitude leads to them thinking they're above the fray and superior to everyone else, but in a sense it does. They have no guiding star. No actual "moral compass", no idea of where they want things to go. They just operate in the system that's thrust on them and only make short term decisions with the limited options they're given. And don't get me wrong, that's their choice to make, and despite their lack of ideology, it still does denote a set of moral values, whether they like it or not. You're ALWAYS voting your values. Even if you denote you have none and think some vague concept of harm reduction based in short term immediate decisions is your values. Because those are still values. And in a sense, the non ideology is still an ideology, they just refuse to recognize it as such.
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