I agree that it's a cope, or at least it feels like it is. Part of it is probably rooted in the way people process information about mortality of others (as opposed to competence): one of the key differences between those categories can be summarised as "doing something smart makes you a smart person even if you also do dumb …
I agree that it's a cope, or at least it feels like it is. Part of it is probably rooted in the way people process information about mortality of others (as opposed to competence): one of the key differences between those categories can be summarised as "doing something smart makes you a smart person even if you also do dumb things, but stealing once makes you a thief". This asymmetric attribution of traits arguably makes sense from the point of view of protecting small groups from bad/immoral behaviour while allowing more trial and error with competence, but it stops making sense in the world of abstract, graduated, large scale ethical decisions precisely because it leads to defensive copes.
Personally I'm always surprised by how many people seem unable to accept that they do stuff that's not morally optimal, and even more surprised that they seem thrown or offended by my stating that I accept that I do immoral things (for example, while I think it's ok to eat "hunted" meat eg non farmed fish and wild or very lightly framed game, I also eat farmed poultry, tho I do aim for free range if I have a bit more money; I do use up scarce state resources via getting it to finance my completely useless and self indulgent extra degree I'm pursuing in my dotage which will benefit absolutely no-one else but provides me with some entertainment and structure and interest, and again people act almost offended when I acknowledge it's ethically sketchy).
Great stuff.
I agree that it's a cope, or at least it feels like it is. Part of it is probably rooted in the way people process information about mortality of others (as opposed to competence): one of the key differences between those categories can be summarised as "doing something smart makes you a smart person even if you also do dumb things, but stealing once makes you a thief". This asymmetric attribution of traits arguably makes sense from the point of view of protecting small groups from bad/immoral behaviour while allowing more trial and error with competence, but it stops making sense in the world of abstract, graduated, large scale ethical decisions precisely because it leads to defensive copes.
Personally I'm always surprised by how many people seem unable to accept that they do stuff that's not morally optimal, and even more surprised that they seem thrown or offended by my stating that I accept that I do immoral things (for example, while I think it's ok to eat "hunted" meat eg non farmed fish and wild or very lightly framed game, I also eat farmed poultry, tho I do aim for free range if I have a bit more money; I do use up scarce state resources via getting it to finance my completely useless and self indulgent extra degree I'm pursuing in my dotage which will benefit absolutely no-one else but provides me with some entertainment and structure and interest, and again people act almost offended when I acknowledge it's ethically sketchy).