Which is worst? (Gallup poll of Americans' pissy, punitive and bodily-obsessed moral sentiments)

do you mean which of those things is the worst, or do you mean which of americans' perceptions of those things is the worst perception to have

http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=10&q=201

probably gonna vote 'death penalty' as a stand-in for our justice system as a whole, but suicide is probably the worst thing an individual can do on the list.

i don't have any real problem with the rest, except for polygamy, which is all well and good on a contractual level if you're a commenter on a libertarian blog but let's face it, the shit is creepy and based on abuse.

xp del i don't care! i'm a freewheeling guy.

the only one of these things I'm completely against is the death penalty

yeah likewise, i was gonna say most of these are great. or have no bearing on my conception of morality. but death penalty is an easy worst here for me.

I said the death penalty. Next for me would probably be fur. Not sure where to place suicide. It's not good, for sure.
I think polygamy is okay in theory but not in practice in the majority of the cases.

Pornography more than twice as "bad" as death penalty wtf.

So I only just noticed that this message board will tell you if other messages have been posted while you were in the process of writing yours, and give you the option of changing it. That's a neat feature I wish my other message boards had.

i think the number of suicides who weigh up the moral implications of their act is probly on a par with the number of lions who think about becoming vegan

Death penalty's gonna run this, no? That's certainly my vote.

I don't think affairs (straight or gay) are morally permissible, & I'm pretty ambiguous about abortion (at least as a personal thing---I'm with the consensus about choice, because of the ambiguity). I don't have strong views about the others: certainly I think doctor-assisted suicide is morally permissible, & thus it would be weird to think otherwise about suicide simpliciter.

Death penalty.

xpost we r #1 awsum messig bored

it seems like what with moral relativity and all you could argue that for each act there are cases where it could be moral or immoral depending on the circumstances. cloning humans seems awesome, I can;t wait to make more of me

I'm voting polygamy because the people involved are always ugly

I wonder how these could be combined? ie> Cloning, pr0n, gambling, polgamy,Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos.. seems like you could do that all in one strange act

Euler do you think affairs are impermissible because they break a bond of trust, because i can see an argument against suicide could be made in the same direction. Except as i say i think it generally takes place somewhere beyond moral agency.

Yeah it's about the promise of fidelity that married couples make to each other. Hah: is there a similar argument against suicide for married couples but not for the unmarried? i.e. how far do the promises of marriage go?

I think a lot of Americans love to love the death penalty. It makes them feel "tough."

its not much of a punishment - it would be worse to be banished to the arctic

xxp

well without visiting dark places i would say that in my most depressed moments nowadays i am aware that suicide cannot be an option for me because i have a responsibility to my children, and by extension my wider family and my friends. maybe suicide could be immoral if it broke certain kinds of trust or responsibility - and working backwards, maybe adultery is only immoral within the context of other aspects of marriage vows (including unwritten ones?) being inviolate?

like there's an assumption underlying marriage vows that neither partner will become radically more unpleasant to their spouse than they were when they sealed the deal?

"Having an affair" doesn't necessarily, to me, carry the same implications as "cheating." For all we know the married person is "allowed" to have an affair. To me "cheating" suggests going against the agreement made in marriage (or other committed relationship) whereas "having an affair" doesn't, necessarily.
I guess it's not a hugely important distinction, since monogamy is an expectation of most marriages at least as far the people polled are concerned.

yeah NV that sounds right re. suicide, which is interesting since it poses (for me at least) questions about what else is impermissible in marriage. Is staying pleasant to your partner part of the promise? Or at least as pleasant as you were when you married? Or when you became engaged?

& yes I don't know about what to say when one partner fails to live up to their part of the marriage deal, does that make the deal null & void? how badly do they have to fail? I guess this is the thought behind annulment but I thought that was just for failure to put out.

IIRC you can only annul if you haven't had sex; if you have, the marriage happened and you have to divorce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annulment#Reasons_for_annulment

here you go

btw surprised no one has yelled at me for my polygamy joke

I think the Church has had a pretty broad understanding of what it is to haven't had sex in order to get an annulment. The "deception" part, in particular, gives a lot of leeway.

i thought yr polygamy joke was funny and also v. tru but was too busy unpicking the threads of the other stuff. god imagine falling out with 3 ugly spouses all at once.

"two wives are allowed in the army but one's too many for me"

In any case, there are many factors to consider when judging a married person having an affair. What if the person has been terribly mistreated or neglected?
Rather than making a blanket judgement of people who have affairs I'd rather consider a broader spectrum of marital misbehavior. But that's not so easy to put in a simple poll such as this.

is pr0n considered polygamy?

depends on if you marry it

It does seem that many people express their morality largely through policing others, rather than taking stock of themselves.

contrariwise, do you think there's anybody out there who remains faithful to one porn actor anytime they engage with porn?

Are you talking about viewers or performers, banter?

"Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin."
-- Ambrose Bierce

I don't have any problem recommending that ugly polygamists kill themselves.

I'm pretty sure I could come up with a scenario where any of these is at least justifiable and also pretty sure I could come with scenarios where any of these is reprehensible.

wonder how these could be combined? ie> Cloning, pr0n, gambling, polgamy,Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos..

Cloned man bets his third wife she can't fuck his clone three times in a row with her stem-cell derived penis
; winner gets proceeds from pron site downloads.

:o

her stem-cell derived penis

my world is a little bit darker now

What's the friggin' point of doing stem cell research if you can't add a cock to your third wife?!

Note: I didn't even say where.

btw surprised no one has yelled at me for my polygamy joke

― Tom Skerritt Mustache Ride (DJP), Tuesday, May 31, 2011 3:47 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

idk I've seen some OK looking polygamists on TV and stuff but this does seem true of a large majority of people into polyamory.

i think it's disgusting, all this immorality

lool DJP

tom skerrit moustache ride otm

yay

anyway i live in a genital-free household so i suspect it's silly of me to weigh in on this question

you know what's really "hot"? family values, that's what

mmm my stem cell-created penis just hard thinking about them.

all of these are basically a-ok except the death penalty which obv is always wrong and having an affair. suicide is weird and it's tough/problematic to judge someone who decides to take his own life

i think acc. to gallup all of these questions are 'controversies' ie there are signif. numbers of americans supporting the yes and no positions

cloning humans could be problematic too yeah depending on what they're being cloned for

oh and wearing fur isn't very cool either i guess

They could've prob polled drug laws too.

there's a TNG episode where Riker goes around phasering these in vitro Riker clones because they infringed his Riker copyright
-- that was his total moral objection to cloning -- they were cramping his style.
But the clone society needed the clones to keep going, so the solution was polygamy with shanty Irish.
That's weird how many of these poll-options were violated in a single episode.

you have just written
the #1 post of all time

Haha Riker was such a tool.

Riker is probably the best argument against human cloning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck-VIA1GUCY

LOL

voted 'cloning humans' because i think thats probably the most morally/philosophical problematic & also brr the one that bothers me the most instinctually

but i think lots of these are 'wrong' on some level even stuff like pornography or adultery

I don't see anything wrong with human cloning. Twins are pretty creepy and evil though.

it seems like the general attitude toward people who have attempted (or are about to attempt) suicide is that they are ill & that they need the immediate support of loved ones and doctors. and the same idea dominates discourse about specific people who have already killed themselves: they should have gotten help, and why wasn't it provided?

only when the discussion turns philosophical does the "suicide is the most selfish act" argument surface & the dead are berated in the abstract for their lack of compassion for those they left behind

In my limited experience of the issue, I don't think that's true at all. Berating the suicide survivor and stressing the selfishness of the act is definitely a thing that is done, and I think it's possibly a valid and useful response.

v depressing that a great majority think death penalty is morally ok but hey! Abortion is a no no.

one poll i've been interested in starting for awhile would ask: Is there such thing as a moral failing?

xp internally consistent at least. if the fetus is actually a baby, then abortion is killing an innocent. death penalty presumably reserved for the guilty. the better question is (imo) if they really believed abortion is murder than isn't their reaction totally inappropriate? if i thought widespread genocide was occurring I wouldn't just donate money to Jerry Falwell and take a nap.

second than then*

people who believe in the death penalty should be forced to go through a simulated scenario where they're wrongfully accused of 1st degree murder and see just how hilarious it is!

i think your post makes the assumption that people who believe in the death penalty think it's hilarious.

you can both believe in it and think that it's a solemn, grave decision that requires deliberation and certainty

...except most people I know that believe in it not only get some kind of visceral thrill when they read about a guilty party being executed, but also believe that these guilty scum shouldn't get these silly attempts at appeals and should be executed immediately after capture

i agree that ppl who treat life callously should be less thoughtless and learn some empathy

"you can both believe in it and think that it's a solemn, grave decision that requires deliberation and certainty"
I think the people that did believe in it, and were for the deliberation and certainty, now no longer believe in it, like that republican governor who put a moratorium on it.

one poll i've been interested in starting for awhile would ask: Is there such thing as a moral failing?

― Mordy, Wednesday, 1 June 2011 04:01 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

would participate in these moral polls

yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice.

ok this could go either way for me - boring semantic argument, basically. But, if they are considered the same, then I have no time for that conception of justice. Punishment qua punishment achieves nothing - except to slake people's desire for vengeance which, although natural, should be encouraged as little as possible. My ideal penal system would be thoroughly focussed on reform, with a side order of protection, perhaps a splash of deterrence, but no consideration for retribution.

worst to less worse:

death penalty - the only one of these that seems genuinely wrong to me. an almost entirely immoral thing, imo.
medical testing on animals - a difficult judgment, because while it seems terribly immoral (and certainly is just that at its cruelest extremes), the benefits are great.

suicide - i would agree that suicide is a right, but it's also a terrible tragedy. seems so often the product of psychological anguish that (i imagine) could be treated.
doctor-assisted suicide - another terrible moral teeter-totter, like animal testing, but worse. something that should be available, but that could allow appalling abuses.

abortion - i'm entirely pro-choice, but i'm not going to say that the moral calculus here is simple, or that i haven't fudged the numbers somewhere.

pornography - a fine thing supported by an awfully shady industry, reeks of desperation, often sad
gambling - similar

poll needed prostitution and capitalism/communism options

Cloning in the real world isn't like the comedy movies. Cloning non-human animals (so far) is a pretty hit and miss process with respect to health outcomes, and as human biological development is near identical at the biochemical/cellular level, cloning a human would at present be akin to knowingly passing on the gene for Huntington's chorea.

Dolly the sheep was euthanized at half her expected lifespan suffering from debilitating arthritis and lung disease. I suspect great difficulty in somatic cell clones with mental retardation, early onset degenerative disease, and numerous details like getting the telemerase activity right (too little: progeria, too much: rampant neoplasms).

yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice.

Back in the days of wergild, the line was blurred. Now, if you commit murder, while you mnay still be liable to civil penalties to a close relative of your victim, the crime is an offense against the state, a kind of republican stand-in for a breach of the Kin's peace. It's basically how the common law got past blood feuds.

"yeah i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice."

This is really stupid. If a guy steals $1000 from me, and is required by the court to pay me $1000 in restitution and do some time, it has nothing to do with vengeance. I just want my fucking money back. Plus the time he serves deters (hopefully) others from doing the same.

i don't see any difference between vengeance and justice. i think they help society work...

― hippy borthday, free wings for u (Matt P), Tuesday, May 31, 2011 7:46 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

to take the vengeance vs. justice thing a little farther, they are quite similar when viewed from a sufficient distance. the basic idea in both cases is that unacceptable behavior must carry punitive consequences. "punitive consequences," however, are the entire substance of vengeance: "you have stolen from me, so now i must kill you." vengeance is personal and exists only in the satisfaction of an emotional need. it is thus chaotic, unpredictable and socially destabilizing. that's a key point: pure, personal vengeance is very bad at helping society work. it causes at least as many problems as it solves. one man's proper vengeance is another's unforgivable transgression, and so on into sophocles.

justice is a depersonalized version of this, where responsibility for judgment and punishment fall not to a wronged individual or subgroup, but to the social body as a whole. it's an attempt (only partially successful, of course) to drain the chaos of personal passion, such as the burning desire for vengeful satisfaction, from ourpursuit of "the just." this allows for more predictable/fair decision making, which protects social harmony. it also allows, in the long run, for the development of alternative aims in the administration of justice, such as rehabilitation, arbitration, settlement, etc. where vengeance boils down to, "you did wrong, now you must pay," justice can concern itself with the complex needs of the larger social body and with the responsible management of perceived threats.

If that is actually the distinction, you can't criticize the death penalty for being vengeance instead of justice. After all, it's the social body creating more predictable/fair decision making, etc.

Never looked at the other charts, but ...

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/388yfnwkm0qoldmnnniyqg.gif

... so the secondary finding in this survey is: old people hate sex and all things sex-related.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vengeance
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/justice?show=0&t=1307045959

These are related but distinctly different concepts; one is direct, blind retaliation while the other involves adherence to some standard of fairness.

xpost In other news, apparently I'm an old soul.

Old enough not to know how to embed images.

http://sas-origin.onstreammedia.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/388yfnwkm0qoldmnnniyqg.gif

If that is actually the distinction, you can't criticize the death penalty for being vengeance instead of justice. After all, it's the social body creating more predictable/fair decision making, etc.

― Mordy, Thursday, June 2, 2011 1:19 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

that's complex, though, because the distinction between vengeance and justice is never so clear as we might like to pretend. a individual's ostensibly personal sense of what constitutes "rightful vengeance" will probably reflect/enact their culture's values wr2 justice, and the state's administration of supposedly dispassionate justice obviously exists in large part to satisfy the public's baser needs. the trick is balance.

in my opinion, the death penalty is unacceptable because i think that the indulgence of blood-thirst is almost always a terrible social mistake. each barbarity gives license to another, and seemingly enlightened societies can slide quickly down that slope. i personally see no need for it, and the intentional infliction of needless death strikes me as criminal, as murderous.

the death penalty is unacceptable because i think that the indulgence of blood-thirst is almost always a terrible social mistake. each barbarity gives license to another, and seemingly enlightened societies can slide quickly down that slope.

^ similar to the argument i'd apply to tortue, btw, no matter what the circumstance. we become what we permit, and we're always looking towards what we'll become next. torture, otoh, is more easily justified in terms of basic need: "we must have the information, lives and the security of the state depend on it!" even so, i can't conscience the amoral barbarity. i think societies require idealistic standards, moral visions that they intend to live up to, even when they fail. absent a clear set of such standards, it's hard justify any moral position, everything becomes a matter of cold pragmatism, the mechanical interaction of desire, power and situational utility.

fwiw, abortion, suicide and euthanasia can be opposed on similar grounds. ethics is a bitch.

.. so the secondary finding in this survey is: old people hate sex and all things sex-related.

But the 35-54 year olds are the ones who hate divorce the most!

all of their loser boomer parents split up, is why!

Yeah, I figured it was along the lines of some people are still bitter about their parents divorcing.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Honestly, I'm really only against the death penalty because the criminal justice system is such a travesty. If we had Judges (a la Dredd) who obliterated violent criminals upon witnessing their violent crimes, I can't say as I'd have much of an issue with that whatsoever.

we do, though, right? american cops kill people with numbing regularity. can't say that their administration of "justice" is any more equitable than that of our courts though...

rob schneider was not the check and balance the founding fathers intended.

xpost

Yeah, it's true, and it's just an extension of the aforementioned totally fucked criminal justice system. I don't know that there's any regulatory system I'd legitimately support, but from a moral standpoint, I have no qualms with violent sociopaths being put to death. Violation of the social contract to that extent kinda means it no longer applies to you, AFAIC. Which I know isn't a terribly popular viewpoint in more liberal circles, but I don't expect others to agree with my stance.

but by being violent sociopaths, aren't they mentally ill? there's probably more justification for executing garden variety sociopaths,
like average joes who scrimp on construction materials for falling overpasses and such -- like they didn't exactly intend to kill anyone,
but on some level they pretty much did.

What I'm saying, basically, is you could make a pretty dece argument that lots of people need to die already. Ha ha.

But, yeah. This is why I can't imagine being okay with any actual implementation of the death penalty. I don't want to make that judgment call and I'm not really comfortable with anyone else making it, either.

The only thing in the list I can think of that I think of as always wrong is the death penalty.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

closer than i thought

Gay or lesbian relations 2

this is doing my head in

I forgot to put in my vote for pornography.