Forcing Kindness
Day 2,012, 14:04
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Published in Austria 
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by
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by Rangeley
Many consider the government to be a tool to enforce their particular views of morality on others. Some apply this to social issues: views of religion, views of marriage. Others apply this to economic issues: views on charity, views on profit. But is behavior truly moral or good, if you have no choice in the matter? Can you be forced to be kind? Ultimately, you can't be: the behavior would be like an empty shell. Only when there is true choice, can behavior be truly good.
Free Will
This is a question raised when considering the broader question of free will. It is the ability to do wrong, that gives value to the times that doing right is chosen - just like dark gives value to light. We all have the ability to choose the path we follow; which path we choose is a reflection of who we really are.
You aren't just born knowing perfectly how to behave - you have instincts sure, but a lot comes too from experience. You do bad things, come to regret it, and try to not repeat those same mistakes. You can grow and learn as a person this way - you learn not just that you should behave in a good way, but why you should behave in a good way.
Force
Some see it as much cleaner to simply have a "good and moral" government enforce behavior on others. But this is harmful in several ways: one, if you simply "behave good" because you are forced into it, this becomes the "why" instead of the reasons inherent in the actions themselves. Rather than helping a neighbor in need because they need help, you help them to get a tax deduction, or because you want a promotion. Like a muscle that does not get used, the true reasons behind why actions are good can be forgotten or just never considered, leaving only an empty miming of actions.
This leaves a people vulnerable to being led astray: if morality is simply something that is forced upon you, and not willingly chosen, it is shallow and can be swept away by a different force later. It becomes like a house with no foundation, resting only on sand, waiting for the next hurricane.
Secondly, if we cannot be trusted to be moral on our own, why should people in the government be trusted to be moral on their own? Who will watch over them to ensure they behave in good ways? Here is where things truly breakdown. People in the government are no more capable than anyone else at being moral - plus, they have all the temptations of power on top of those everyone else faces. Many who speak loudest about “family values” find themselves embroiled in scandals - many who speak loudest about “wealth redistribution” are themselves using hidden bank accounts and among the wealthiest in their nations. Not only is forced morality more shallow by definition, but to trust that they would somehow be better at dictating moral behavior to you, then you could yourself, is misplaced trust.
Morality
Ultimately, there is not only more reward from moral behavior that is willingly chosen, but there is more moral behavior itself, when it is left to people - and not dictated from the government. A society becomes stronger when it is able to freely address challenging questions, whether it is darker issues of intolerance and racism, or lighter issues of how best to help others.
The answer to societal issues is not to grant more and more power to a government that falls prey to these very societal issues - hoping morality can be found in dark smoke filled rooms. It’s to push these issues into the open, so they can be rigorously examined by the light of day.
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V+S, lucky to be on our irc!
voted, rangeley.
i like your anarchistic point of view 🙂
Well I believe there are proper roles for government, but this is not one of them : P
V+S. I love a good article that doesn't have completely to do with military chest-thumping or political posturing.
V!
good read.
Rangie, it's nice that you want to understand us on the other side of statism. \o/
Still, a real fascist would beg to differ. You can't force people to be kind, that's silly.
You meld their minds with your religious doctrines so they become and act like one, whenever the conditioning kicks in. That's how you get loyal agents that won't desert the Cause even when it'd be in their best interest.
And that's how you get nice people out of meanies. Or you know... an army of killer robots. Leader's choice.
It's not that you can't force behaviors out of people, you can, it is just a question of the inherent motivations behind these actions. If you only do "good things" because you must do good things, you would no longer just be doing them for the sake of doing good. For instance, it is good to help the poor, but if a certain percent is passively taken from your paychecks automatically and given to a government program, this is not really an example of compassion.
In many cases this would be a moot criticism on its own, because the aim wasn't a moral people anyways. But even if you are after the behavior alone, in the long term, behavior that is forced is less stable than behavior which is willingly chosen and reasoned towards.
What you call reasoning is in fact quite arbitrary. A very big part of the fundamental 'moral values' and axioms are based on the cultural heritage and religious doctrines. Even most atheist people live by a moral code based on some kind of a semi-religion (of course without a deity) consisting arbitrary doctrines like a general/scientific positivism about the future of the human race or 'The Golden Rule'.
They accept it because they were raised in a very specific environment, shaped by certain impulses throughout their lives and thus they have a unique personality. And they will choose what they will feel 'right'.
So you can either accept that people are what they are, or you can try to change them. You can change their behavior, like you said.
Or you can try to change their minds. You can emotionally and spiritually train people (the terms are: indoctrination, conditioning, brainwash) to shape their _minds_. And if you do it from a very young age, and you have a consistent and realistic system (so you don't actually lie to them, and thus you don't have to fear that they might one day face the reality and lose their 'faith') you will get your own culture your own philosophy and loyal followers.
That's the real social engineering. Changing people like reprogramming machines. And it's not even particularly rare nowadays.
Nurture is very significant, but so is nature - they both play roles. Humans are a social species - whether you want to hold that this is the end result of an arbitrary set of mutations that led here, or something divinely inspired or led, this is still the outcome. As a social species, distant cultures have come up with some similar core ideals about how it is best to deal with others. There is something fundamental involved.
This reminds me a bit of debates about central economic planning. In economics, some want to create a reasonable facsimile of a true market, while subtly guiding it (or maybe not so subtly) in the right direction. To take your “central ideas planning” example, the hope would be to create a realistic system as you say, but presumably it would have some subtle changes and focuses.
But in neither case are they actually operating in a vacuum - a centrally planned economy still deals with actual market forces, and this has tended to be their eventual undoing. Whether it is death by a thousand paper cuts - little moments where a central planners imagination just does not match the dynamism of spontaneous order - or more significant errors from other motivations (perhaps selfish), they are undone.
In a similar way, a centrally planned “ideas system” would come under the strain of underlying human nature. It would be less capable in the long term of adapting, learning, growing. At the same time, it would also have other limitations: namely, those who are steering it are flawed and human, yet are being granted such a huge power.
Its really interesting to consider how, over history, people have tried to “order what can’t be ordered,” and fell short - and yet, how order can emerge naturally and on its own, when things are allowed to develop. Although the system you describe is a more subtle way of trying to force an outcome than the force described in the article itself, it still is an artificial one which would be less capable in the long run.
Perfect article, with perfect last sentence.
talked half the night with rangeley on rizon - a very inspiring talk, one of the better ones i had on the internet.
II. Jemby read some nietzsche? i like that 🙂
http://www.erepublik.com/en/article/for-rangeley-leadership-and-innervisions-2267086/1/20