Philosophy - Crisis - The Serpent's Dilemma

[gordonliddy]

Biologists say about young snakes that they use too much venom when they bite. A baby snake hasn't learned to assess the gravity of situations, so it overreacts and treats every threat as serious.

Are moral threat's serious, or not? What I wonder is are we as Western humans like baby snakes overreacting and trying to bite everything. Next we inject it with overmuch venom. Then, having spent all our venom, we flop around impotently and slither to safety.

Are we right to behave this way, or should we indeed be preoccupied with our great fight against moral threats?

 

[skipjames]

I think that we overreact because we are scared of everything, like Chihuahuas, they bark at everything because they perceive almost everything as a menace. More generally, we have the tendency both as individuals and as a society to spend a lot of energy on complete BS while ignoring the real issues.

Are moral threat's serious, or not?

I guess it depends from the moral threat , how serious it is etc That s why I like Aristotelian -Thomistic Ethics, overreacting is as wrong as not acting at all, 2 of the 4 Cardinal Virtues are the Golden Mean between two extremes equally wrong, excess and deficiency ( Courage is the middle ground between cowardice and recklessness , Temperance the middle ground between self denial and intemperance).
The appropriate course of action in a situation x is not necessarily appropriate in a situation y, that s why the virtue of Prudence (right judgement of action) and Justice are as important as the other 2.
Obviously this is purely theoretical for me as I m shit at Prudence, let alone on Temperance, I hope to at least get a pass on Courage and maybe Justice....

 

[Foreigner]

Biologists say about young snakes that they use too much venom when they bite. A baby snake hasn't learned to assess the gravity of situations, so it overreacts and treats every threat as serious.

Are moral threat's serious, or not? What I wonder is are we as Western humans like baby snakes overreacting and trying to bite everything. Next we inject it with overmuch venom. Then, having spent all our venom, we flop around impotently and slither to safety.

Are we right to behave this way, or should we indeed be preoccupied with our great fight against moral threats?

I think what you're describing is the direct result of privilege and decadence. As in, western society has not had many real existential threats. People have lived in relative safety for a long time, mostly insulated from the threats of external invaders + the forces of nature. This has skewed people's ability to assess threats properly. The connection between the baby snake and the humans I'm talking about is that both lack adequate development, such that they are missing a step.

Humans are sectarian, tribal, and naturally competitive. When these traits are not channeled correctly, civilizations create internalized divisions that cannibalize themselves. They are then in a weakened state and subject to outside invasion. Then that external force gives the society a reality check and they realign their values to be more realistic once more. But without those outside forces, or at least an internal force (like teachers/histories) that maintain an awareness of the real threats, the society decays into nihilism and there is no collective value driving the common trust.

The babies these days who are offended by everything and codify their personal offense into rules like censorship and hate laws are a prime example of how a stagnant society that has reached peak decadence will still create internal conflict to exorcise basic human natures. I think ultimately these babies act the way they do because they have very little real-life experience due to how social media and other technology has insulated them from reality, within ideological bubbles. If society crumbled or got invaded tomorrow, they would be the first to fall.