Heaven-sent morality and heedful meaning

Ordinarily, publics can distinguish between good and evil. Nonetheless, the world continues to be confounded about the events of October 7, 2023. There appears to be ongoing bewilderment over why Israel won’t accept the murder of more than 1,000 of her citizens, the kidnapping of more than 200 of her denizens, including the elderly, the disabled, and very young children, and the rape, mutilation, and other tortures of dozens of her beloveds. In fact, transnational caucuses have been calling for Israel to cease protecting herself. Instead, they want her to aid the groups that perpetrated the ghastly crimes against her.

As bonkers as sounds the aforementioned, it’s possible to cognize (albeit NOT to accept) this misguidedness. Global psychosis can be expounded upon as caused chiefly by the masses’ mindlessness in conjunction with their leaders’ ludicrousness. After all, there are many mechanisms that steer visions of propriety.

As dogmata are a type of categorization that’s won over by the degree to which and the way in which we rank, designate, and produce premises, it’s our mindsets, alongside our urgencies, that enable us to demarcate the universe. Ergo, we’re best steered by a combination of discrete compasses and joint truisms (Greenberg, “Conclusion,” 201).

That is, like lemmings, men and women often champion dangerous, stupid philosophies. Regrettably, worldwide rhetoric opposing Israel’s self-defense against her genocidal enemies evidences this outcome. Even an entertainment venue, Eurovision, audaciously insisted that Israel cease protesting the large scale brutalization of her people (Spiro). That international music competition refused to admit Israel’s representative to the contest unless that contender agreed to present a watered-down version of her patriotic song (Mouriquand).

Discerning individuals have deconstructed this species of mess. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality, noted philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre elucidates why one realm might, at best, receive flippant treatment from other territories, and, at worse and more typically, be subjected to embarked upon annihilation.

[t]o be an adherent of a tradition[, one has] to enact some further stage in the development of one’s tradition; to understand another tradition is to attempt to supply, in the best terms imaginatively and conceptually available to one…the kind of account which an adherent would give…the narrative task itself generally involves participation in conflict (9).

In other words, the boisterous voice of the West mistakenly assesses Hamas, Hezbollah, and all other Iranian proxies through a Eurocentric lens. That engine erroneously adjudicates the motives and consequences of iniquitousness’ actions via its own perspective.

Lamentably, this sort of arbitration will always be unsuccessful whenever cultures’ foundations clash. Hence, responses to goings-on that might seem fitting retorts for particular powers e.g., for ones arisen from Judeo-Christian morality, are not in a position to influence entities whose starting points are completely disparate from theirs. Simply, villainousness takes advantage of other states’ shortsightedness. Even after orchestrated pauses, it renews its rampage because such behavior is in line with its mores.

Resolving tensions, for penalizing parties, requires their traditions to share certain postulates, i.e., to share some logic of theories and practices and to possess a common “language” with which to dispute (MacIntyre, 351). True peace, unlike any would-be externally imposed truce between malevolence and Israel, entails commensurate existential purposes.

[F]ragmentation appears in divided moral attitudes expressed in inconsistent moral and political principles, in a tolerance of different rationalities in different milieus, in protective compartmentalization of the self, and in uses of language which move from fragments of one language-in-use through the idioms of internationalized modernity to fragments of another (MacIntyre, 397).

Basically, wickedness values death whereas Israel and, allegedly, “everyone else” values life. In view of that, measuring the deeds of malice per benevolence’s scale will never work. A copy paste approach can’t adjust individual and collective tenets; to some extent, this approach is devoid of any awareness of its proffered ethos.

Amazingly, the interminable inaccuracy of our status quo’s gauge for determining right and wrong doesn’t trouble most factions. While many communities accept that “meaning” is relative, the same number don’t comprehend that “morality,” too, is a qualifiable construct. Namely, the “traditional distinction…still considers as branches of philosophy the three [‘]normative[’] sciences of logic, ethics, and aesthetics, concerned with standards, methods and tests of thinking[;] conduct[;] and art, respectively” (Randall and Buchler, 8). In truth, certain domains differentiate “ethics” from “morality,” i.e., separate “the business of having an action guide (Frankena, 2) from actual action. It’s no wonder that entire populations are bamboozled.

Global citizenry are perplexed in terms of marking overall importance, too. Given that the Third Estate, historically, has let others decree its norms, there exists perpetual linguistic folly. Worse, this brand of madness might not end.

Reflect on the elite’s knowledge, and their subsequent actions based on this knowledge, that

[b]y controlling your attention, what you focus on, notice, or look at, social media can control its users, and by controlling its users [can] thereby potentially disrespect and interfere with [civilizations. Plus, f]ake news portrays misinformation and inaccurate information about the world in the form of legitimate news” (Sahebi and Formosa).

Not only do our caretakers hold fast to their media-sourced clout but they further compromise their answerability for their deeds by kowtowing to the most contemporary of frontrunners, viz, influencers. Persons who value supremacy over scruples look to those persuaders to help them increase reach, enhance their authenticity and credibility, and build their levels of engagement (AIContentfy). Consequently, it looks as though humankind is ill-fated concerning its rectitude. What’s more, the human race shows signs of an impaired ability to communicate about its collective conscience as well as signs of an impaired ability to be concerned about this omissions.

Senseless multitudes’

type of self…has too many half-convictions and too few settled coherent convictions, too many partly formulated alternatives and too few opportunities to evaluate them systematically[. It] brings to its encounters with the claims of rival traditions a fundamental incoherence which is too disturbing to be admitted to self-conscious awareness except on the rarest of occasions (MacIntyre, 397).

Nevertheless, we can alter our course. As Rabbi Eliyahu Mitterhoff writes, in “Are the Jews Blessed or Cursed—Pressure and Free Will,” “kol she ken,” if a rooster can know the difference between day and night, surely we can know the difference between good and bad.”

Have in mind that we can ground our choices in spiritual canons. “[Q]uestions that involve mind, heart and the process of decision-making are, by their very nature, nuanced” (Gorelick, 8). As such, they are workable through divinely-sourced points of departure. Religious rudiments ought not to be rationale for trying to slaughter an entire people but fundamentals from which we can infuse empires with civility.

As for coordinating the making of “meaning,” it’s similarly possible for us to evolve.

In the same way that our future media gatekeepers have been latently educated to enter their field to fulfill their own expectations, they could be patently educated to enter their field to live up to social expectations. Novice media managers could embrace dual preparations. We could change deceptive formulae via the modes of core and peripheral communication and metacommunication (Greenberg, “Becoming Accountable,” 167).

Essentially, when we fail to be responsible for the progression of our dictates or for the expectations undergirding our endeavors to convey our viewpoints, we trip over incongruent taxonomies. The results of such breakdowns range from misunderstanding to largescale, indiscriminate carnage. We cannot afford to prolong this privation. We must embrace appropriate pictures of “morality” and “meaning.”

Sources:

AIContentfy team [sic]. “The Power of Influencer-Promoted Content for Increased Reach.”  AIContentfy. 6 Nov. 2023. aicontentfy.com/en/blog/power-of-influencer-promoted-content-for-increased-reach.  Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.

Frankena, William K. Ethics. 2^nd ed. Prentice-Hall, 1973. Eds. Rosenthal, M., and P. Yudin. Eds. Trans. Richard D. Dixon and Murad Saifulin. “Ethics.” A Dictionary of Philosophy. Moscow: Progress, 1967, 149-150.

Gorelick, Rabbo Chaim Tzvi. “Chatbots and Us: A perspective on AI and chatbot technology” [sic]. Hamodia. Aug 2, 2023. 5-9.

Greenberg, KJ Hannah. “Becoming Accountable for Mediated Ethics’ Rhetoric.” Granny Does It III: Morality and Meaning. Seashell Books, 2023. 162-169.

_____. “Conclusion: The Juncture of Wisdom and Words.” Granny Does It III: Morality and Meaning. Seashell Books, 2023. 201-205. 

MacIntyre, Alasdair. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? U Notre Dame P, 1988.

Mitterhoff, Rabbi Eliyahu. “Are the Jews Blessed or Cursed- Pressure and Free Will.” Global Yeshiva. 14 Aug. 2015. globalyeshiva.com/069-jews-blessed-cursed-pressure-free-will. Accessed 20 Jul. 2023.

Mouriquand, David. “Eurovision 2024: Israel agrees to change lyrics to its controversial entry ‘October Rain’ [sic]. euronews.culture [sic]. 4 Mar. 2024. euronews.com/culture/2024/03/04/eurovision-2024-israel-agrees-to-change-lyrics-to-its-controversial-entry-october-rain. Accessed 5 Mar. 2024.

Randall, John Herman Jr., and Justus Buchler. Philosophy: An Introduction. Barnes and Noble, 1942.

Sahebi, Siavosh, and Formosa, Paul. “Social Media and its Negative Impacts on Autonomy.” Philosophy & Technology. 35.70. Jul. 2022. doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00567-7. Accessed 9 Jan. 2024.

Spiro, Amy. “Israel says it will edit song lyrics to avoid being disqualified from Eurovision” [sic]. Times of Israel. 3 Mar. 2024. timesofisrael.com/israel-says-it-will-edit-song-lyrics-to-avoid-being-disqualified-from-eurovision. Accessed 3 Mar. 2024.