(01-05-2017 03:41 PM)Barrett Wrote: Very good points, Rick. I agree with much of it. That said, I do think there are matters where someone can be truly wrong--as defined by logic, received principles, science, etc.--and it is difficult to not assign some moral agency to it. If someone were to outwardly say they felt that blacks were an inferior race, would it not be difficult to not make a moral judgment about that person?
Depends.
Why do they believe that? In some cases, the emotion/reaction might be pity. Someone who has been brought up in an environment that drills home a false belief can be a victim as well.
Did they develop that conclusion on their own?
How did they ACT on that belief? I oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, but reading Dylan Roof's statements about lacking remorse and a description of his murders, it's hard not to want to see it imposed.
If someone believes something you feel is wrong or in error, but in their actions towards people does the opposite, i.e., treats individuals fairly and with respect and/or compassion, are they deplorable if their beliefs are based on long-standing upbringing?
During the Civil War era, the South was full of people who believed things about race that today we know are incorrect and wrong. It was the culture and was indoctrinated. Some people believed wrongly, but still treated people fairly, some fought against slavery (if you think every one in the north believed in equality of the races, even those who fought slavery, you'd be wrong.)
What you believe is important, but ultimately that's between you and God (or you and you, if that offends anyone). Freedom of conscience is a fundamental human right.
With regard to treatment of others, what you say is even more important than what you believe.
Ultimately, what you do is even more important than what you say.
(As an off the cuff example, I may say that from a gut level, I want to see Dylan Roof get the death penalty. If I, due to moral conscience, vote to abolish the death penalty, or as a governor, grant clemency, my actions outweigh my stated feelings).
"Bad" people get where they are in life through a process. Some of that is on them, no doubt. I believe in free will. But expecting everyone to escape their environment unscathed, on their own, is wishful thinking.
And "wrong" beliefs, if they aren't accompanied by wrong actions, and if their words aren't directed at individuals or used to hurt others, are effectively just "wrong" beliefs.
Gene Hackman starred in two movies, in very different roles, but in both there were points where the concept of culturally engrained racism was examined.
In "Mississippi Burning", he was the Federal Marshal with southern roots who told the story of his father, a poor sharecropper, who he believed poisoned the mule of a neighboring black sharecropper who had just bought the animal to help him on his farm. He was attempting to explain how poverty drives people to act horribly, because no one wants to believe that they aren't 'better than someone' (paraphrased, because the actual phrase used was terrible). He wasn't justifying the crime, but was trying to explain to the northern-raised Marshal he was working with, that poverty wasn't just a blight on the black people they were down there to protect.
In "The Chamber", he played a bigot, on death row for a hate crime of which he had, at a minimum, foreknowledge, but didn't have the capacity to carry out on his own (and a crime that apparently he didn't expect to physically have victims). During the movie, it was revealed that he had been witness to a public lynching at a very young age (10, 12?). There's a lot of plot development, and ultimately there's obviously some remorse, as he turns in the ringleaders (25+ years late) . . . . shortly before he was executed.
The movie has one scene that evokes a sense of pity for the character for me.
Shortly before he is executed, he tells the black guard who has been around him often for years, and who has treated him fairly and with some levels of kindness or decency - - "you know, when I say the things I do about the races, I don't mean you."
On an individual basis, he could see that his beliefs were wrong. In the context of his upbringing, it was not a backhanded compliment, it was sincere at the basic level that he could muster. That scene probably angered some people. But for me, the sadness that the indoctrination and cultural racism of the era he grew up in had ruined his life, when he had the capacity within him for better, made me feel pity for the character.
Please don't take this post to mean that I think that what a person believes is unimportant. I believe it to be of significant importance.
And don't take this to mean that bigotry and racism are ever acceptable. They are not.
But ultimately, a person's beliefs, abstract, theoretical or otherwise, are not as important as what they say and do, to, or for, other people.
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Somebody gets it
