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Morality vs Freedom


britwarlord

Morality vs Freedom  

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Simply what do you think is more important for an alliance or nation to have on Planet Bob.

By this I mean would you allow morality to get in the way of your ambitions or would you just ignore it and go ahead with doing whatever you need to do to progress.

Edited by britwarlord
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Morality imposes restrictions on the way people act, which is the antithesis of freedom.

"Freedom" places restrictions on the liberties of others, Morality (with a capital M) requires the protection of those freedoms.

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"Freedom" places restrictions on the liberties of others, Morality (with a capital M) requires the protection of those freedoms.

Actually Freedom and Liberty are linked at one of the highest points possible, general meaning.

Correction: you believe it is ethically wrong to restrict anything. I fail to see how this negates my point in any event.

Morality = Ethics, there is nothing in their definitions that disagrees with the others. It negates your point because you are saying Morality poses restrictions on peoples actions, making it not freedom, when if you have one, you have the other 50 words meaning the same thing.

Edited by Fort Pitt
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"Freedom" places restrictions on the liberties of others, Morality (with a capital M) requires the protection of those freedoms.

Then the only ethical rule is to protect and uphold freedom? Isn't that contradictory, because in order to uphold freedom you must impose your will on others?

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By this I mean would you allow morality to get in the way of your ambitions or would you just ignore it and go ahead with doing whatever you need to do to progress.

It would seem that the morality the OP is suggesting here (the morality of Planet Bob) has to do with exercising one's own freedom up to a point, while not encroaching on the freedoms of another. "Just ignore [morality] and go ahead with doing whatever you need to do to progress."

For instance, tech raiding obviously infringes on the freedom of the raided nation. But, on another note, to say that no one can tech raid is technically an infringement of the freedoms of the raider. Even though said freedoms contradict other freedoms.

Similarly, to note a more universal virtue here on Bob, we can look at treaties. It is generally considered the moral thing to do to defend a treaty partner against unjust aggression. However, it may be beneficial to the party not yet engaged to stay out of the war in spite of that morality - what Bob knows as "honor". Hence, exercising freedom by remaining neutral in the conflict (though no one would agree that this is moral).

Are you in fact asking whether or not the nations of Bob take others into consideration when acting, britwarlord? As opposed to doing whatever is in one's own interests without regard to the interests of another?

Edited by Richard VII
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Then the only ethical rule is to protect and uphold freedom? Isn't that contradictory, because in order to uphold freedom you must impose your will on others?

I'll make a quick note before we start this debate: Please read my posts and respond to them instead of something you wish you heard.

It's pretty basic. It's immoral to impose restrictions on the liberties of others by subjecting them to attack, threats, whatever. Thus, a proper understanding of morality would allow all parties to continue enjoying their own freedoms without imposing on others.

(And, seeing as we're about the engage in a hearty "freedom to" vs. "freedom from" debate, I'll get this clear right now: "Freedom to" is !@#$%^&*. There's no possible way you can justify taking aggressive actions against other people, which is what this comes down to, and expecting there to be no consequences for doing so. That's not how things work.)

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This has a lot to do with how exactly you define Morality or Freedom, and seeing as how they are both politically charged words, that is an almost impossible task to do.

Let's start with freedom. You can have "Absolute Freedom" - that is you can just wake up one day, go down the street and start shooting people, without any consequence to you whatsoever. This is of course an inherently impossible state - even in the absence of the rule of law, retaliation would occur - but it can be converted to more very day usage - Absolute Freedom would include being able to tech-raid others without allied retaliation due to some higher power (an alliance) making it so.

Of course, it readily becomes apparent that this kind of "Absolute Freedom" can only exist on an individual basis - if you have everyone trying to kill each other, they aren't free, they're dead. You can't really do anything you want when other people are also doing "anything they want" by putting a bullet in your head. Which is why "Absolute Freedom" merely ends up being a chaotic power contest where the strongest guy does what he wants, and the rest are anything but "free".

So, it becomes apparent that: 1) You can't have an "Absolute Freedom" for everyone where life is a video game and you can do anything you want, and 2) Freedom needs to include Freedom from the influence of outside forces (interference, retaliation, etc) as well as freedom to act. (Otherwise the forces of everyone else's freedom will become a restraining force of their own) This second trait is what requires the restriction of the actions of individuals - which means that while Absolute Freedom is denied to them, a more Conventional Freedom can exist. And something has to safeguard it in order to exist - which is where concepts such as laws and morality come in - they are what ensure a state of conventional freedom can exist.

In essence, this ironically means that in order for the people of society to be "free of restraints", those restraints have to be restrained.

I.E, the literal definition of freedom is a pipe dream, so everyone has to work in the shady gray area of a balance between restrictions imposed by morality/law/order and restrictions imposed by the unrestricted interference of other people.

Edited by Letum
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