Devil’s advocate (literally) on xmas day, here we go:
Premise 1: The Bible contains some useful guidelines regarding interpersonal ethics. Premise 2: SOME people may not adhere to such guidelines absent metaphysical threats (e.g. damnation) or a public shaming (for going against doctrine).
In other words, I’m not convinced that widespread indoctrination MUST always yield worse results (in terms of the ethical behaviors within a group) than a widespread ‘understanding’ that all people are to think for themselves.
Say we come up with a (more or less comprehensive, easily interpretable) list of ethical guidelines that must be respected to maintain a stable, basically peaceful culture. Can we expect everyone to understand the reasoning behind the list, to comprehend how it functions to maintain prosperity? That neglecting it is actually perilous, in the long run (i.e. can they see past the immediate payoff of defection)? I don’t know for sure, but I tend to think that such philosophy eludes Joe Everydude. In that case, is it still a mistake to propagate some crazy, blatantly false beliefs if it helps to maintain a baseline ethical, umm, equilibrium?
Incidentally, I’m not saying that this is how Christianity functions; most of it lost sight of the proverbial forest long ago. I AM saying that I don’t see an argument against mind control via cults for those who would eschew ethics, in the absence of any indoctrination programme. Is it possible that vanilla-flavored justice isn’t enough to deter some people?
This is not a cultural argument per se.
Say x and y come from, respectively: a tribe of quasaieugenicists that settle distributions based on “fitness” rankings (using something like IQ—probably largely arbitrary—but that doesn’t matter), and a tribe of equal-sharers (that subscribe to y’s conclusion is in the dialog). Within each culture the relevant version of “fairness” (or the ‘core distributive principle’) is intuitive, much like y’s system is for us. In the x culture people with low rankings intuit that their superiors are ‘entitled’ to their larger share, and in fact this reinforces a strictly tiered society with little to no concept(s) of equality (sure there would be squabbles between the closely ranked—but the distinction between low and high would be clear). Their philosophers do speculate on other systems—but, barring the occasional sociopath, people typically retreat to the same intuition. Thus both societies largely avoid the recursion problem. So now what happens when x and y stumble upon the sylvan pastry?
Of course y might not signal the relevant information pertaining to an xish fitness ranking, especially if the ranking system doesn’t have anything to do with appearance. So x might be momentarily confused. But, applying his intuitions, he will probably attempt to recreate whatever routines and evaluations the xers use to establish distribution (just as y applies his familiar calculus). The point is: there will be an argument. And as long as this isn’t a survival situation, its difficult to see any variety of bedrock within walking distance.
The Xers and Yers are radically different—but similar enough, I think, to be included within the space of possible human cultures (history is replete with every flavor of hierarchy). I think the reality is that we depend precariously on a very sloppy overlapping of billions of similar but clearly distinct conceptions of morality. The more you venture beyond your social bubble the less you overlap with those adjacent to you, and eventually you start getting into situations like x and y’s (so you best mind your ps and qs). Of course the knitting gets progressively tighter as we move closer to the preferred world of Marginal Revolution and OB.