moral values- irrelavant today?

Some of the posts recently on DM are making me wonder if moral values are of any relevance today or are they obsolete   Do those age old values serve any purpose ?

I take it that you opened this thread because of the other thread on legalisation of prostitution.

To answer your questions in short, yes there is relevance of morals and irrespective of the time and era, there has to be some moral values. There are some universal morals like stealing, rape, murder, etc. are immoral acts.
It's also good to lead your life according to some principles or morals which might differ from person to person.
But in that thread we were not discussing how people should lead their individual life, it was a question of on what basis should a law be formed for or against something. When it's a question of legislation, there should be something more than just personal morality and individual choices.


Edited by souro - 30 November 2010 at 10:44am

Traditional morality is inestimably important. Without it, all kinds of injustices and oppressions against individual persons are sanctioned.

The abandonment of traditional morality leads to expropriation of private property, heavy taxation, theft, waste, compulsory association, totalitarian thought control, sexual exploitation, homeless children, fraud and dishonesty, disloyalty to family, ever increasing government power and control, envy, indiscipline, laziness, individual irresponsibility, indecency, rudeness, impoliteness, social engineering and genocide, not to mention impiety.

Edited by angie.4u - 30 November 2010 at 11:43am

The important aspect is goal. What is our societal goal? What can be done to achieve it?

We have to take into consideration that we are in a diverse society, so the goals of each person are different. People should live and let live, ie, live uninhibited,but at the same time, the general goal should be not to ruin anyone elses life in society.

Old world values are good in theory, they have to be made flexible in todays current world.


Edited by old-black-joe - 30 November 2010 at 1:20pm

Sometimes, I have to say you surprise me. Most of the time you post, one can expect a somewhat on topic, but very off-beat and weird OBJ-esque comment. But every now and then you post something that is thoughtful and sensible. 

The question is what do you define as family - a traditional blood related mother, father & children structure, or people essentially coming together, living and working together to form and interwoven structure that functions like a family would.

Family and social dynamics has changed over time. It is not just the traditional parents and children structure we see. There are a variety of different families out there. We have single parents, raising children. We have uncles, aunts, grandparents, cousins even siblings raising young children in the family when parents are deceased or absent for a reason. We have homosexual parents raising children. We have families choosing to have no children. There are families who choose to adopt and raise children of multiple ethnicities. We have families who take in foster children in and out until they are placed in permanent homes. In tough economic times we have groups of friends living together long term and sharing cost of living. Many people even in the states are choosing a commune system where multiple families share one dwelling unit. Actually now even in the states some people are reverting to joint family systems to share costs and opening a whole new world.

In the seventies Diff'rent strokes showed a new family where a single older father was raising a multiracial family. In the eighties we saw Full House with three friends raising a family. In the nineties there was Who's the Boss where two single parents lived together raising their own families. Today we have Modern Family, Raising Hope, Two & Half Men, all showing so many different - sometimes messed up relationships - but one things for certain - family.

If we have a very rigid stringent perspective of family, then it will appear that family in essence has disappeared and so have family values. However, if we accept a dynamic family model then our society has evolved to have so many different forms of families with people coming together to form so many beautiful and intricate relationships and social dynamics.

In my opinion traditional virtue ethics where we classify everything as black and white, follow rigid notions of morality are outdated.

Personally I subscribe to the moral perspective of relativist utilitarianism. Moral values are relative to the situation, time, people, background and culture. There is no black or white answer, and we have to view things in a pragmatic perspective for greater good. We don't view the world from the same lenses are the generation before and the next generation will for sure have a new set of lenses.

I somewhat agree with the rest of the post but not this part. Progressive people didn't encourage decay of discipline in schools, over indulging parents did. Progressive would be to embrace new things but only the good ones, not vandalism, crime, drugs and alcohol. Something like introducing computer in school work, just when computer is emerging as the next hot thing, is what one can call progressive.


Edited by souro - 30 November 2010 at 12:18pm