The Blog That Shall Not Be Named

Why is one thing good and another evil? Is there an objective Good and Evil at all, or is morality a sea of gray area wherein each action or thought, each bike lock to the face or political figure calling for incivility and violence, is only good or evil relative to the individual committing them?

Are Social Justice Warriors waging a righteous war against evil fascists, or are they, in an ironic twist, the very fascists they claim to oppose?

How do you engage in conversation with irrational people whose best arguments amount to name-calling, repeating unsubstantiated defamatory claims, or downright bold-faced lying?

All good questions.

This is a long one, kids but, if you stick it out, we'll hit all these points and more.

In the absence of any other benefits, I can promise you this will help you get to sleep.

Start Here

This blog entry is a bit of #ComicsGate-inspired pop-philosophy. “Pop” because I am writing it at the popular level rather than attempting a scholarly paper. As such, there will be no walls of text in which I quote Aristotle, Kierkegaard, or Jesus, and I will do my best to explain any term that may not be in the vernacular of those who don’t study philosophy.

Now, as to what inspired this entry… I’ve been reading and participating in an unhealthy amount of the “conversation” on Twitter concerning the #ComicsGate movement, which oftentimes crosses over into the political war between conservatives and liberals, and have noticed one glaring hole in logic. This hole could be broadly categorized as one of epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy concerned with how we decide between what is justifiable belief and what is mere subjective opinion. More specifically, it is a question of how we decide what is actually virtuous, and what is truly evil.

A lot of the arguments in which an individual on one side portrays a member of—or the entirety of—the other side as evil, mostly from the SJW crowd, are devoid of any kind of objective moral foundation. This being the case, every one of these arguments should be classified as opinion and every ounce of moral outrage surrounding said argument should be converted on a one-to-one basis to, perhaps, passionate disagreement, but hatred as a response to a difference of opinion with no moral ramifications is absurd.

As an example, you may enjoy chocolate ice cream the most, while my preference is vanilla. These are morally neutral opinions. There is no moral weight to the statement: “I like vanilla the most.” Now, you and I may have a bit of fun jabbing one another over our perceived superiority for favoring the “correct” flavor, but it would all be tongue-in-cheek. No sane person could hate another person over a disagreement concerning the best flavor of ice cream, but that is exactly what is happening in the war between SJWs and ComicsGate people so much of the time.

I’m going to do my best to not reference any particular statement, or even tackle the conversation directly. In this entry, my one goal is to present my problem with most of what the SJW side is saying and provide a relatively simple way to determine if your argument has moral weight or if you’re argument doesn’t have a moral leg to support the weight of a cotton ball.

I will be—aside from this paragraph—ignoring the entirety of the subject of the nonmoral factual versus irrational dogmatism. This would include subjects like the clear decline of the comics industry under the current leadership. It is a fact that the mainstream comics industry is declining, possibly dying, as evidenced by the closing of a large percentage of local comic shops and the analysis of earnings statements by intelligent people like YouTuber, ThatUmbrellaGuy. It is also a fact that the prioritizing of “progressive” social issues, virtue signaling in general, and specifically hiring based on politics, has—much of the time—replaced the prioritizing of telling good stories, pleasing the larger fanbase, and hiring based on merit, as evidenced by reading almost any freaking comic book from Marvel or IDW. Ockham’s Razor easily and quickly lops off any other explanation, such as digital comics sales (which are also abysmally low), in favor of the simplest explanation, which is that the comics industry has largely decided to ignore its largest fanbase and cater to a microscopic minority, in hopes of replacing their fanbase with one that is more “woke.” These are easily discoverable facts and putting them together is as simple and logical as arriving at “4” when adding “2+2.” You are free to deny the clear facts here, but you would be doing so by blind faith—irrational dogmatism.

He Said/They Said

Now, let’s look at the basic argument of each side.

ComicsGate says: “We want better comics with fun, well-written stories and dialogue and great art, and with organic, statistically believable diversity. We don’t want forced diversity; political propaganda replacing good story; terrible dialogue; narratives with none of the elements of a true story; protagonists who are sociopathic stereotypes based on nationality/skin color, gender identity/sex, or religion; or awful art. If a comic company fails to provide a product we want and instead gives us a product we don’t want, we will support creators who do give us the kind of product we want, and/or become those creators ourselves.”

SJWs say: “You’re a bunch of alt-right, fascist, racist, bigoted, omniphobic, sexist, #traitortrump-supporting, CIS white male Nazis who need to just shut up if you don’t like our comics or else we’re going to do our level best to ruin your lives, from your reputation with the public, to your livelihood, to your relationships with family and friends, and, though we only occasionally admit it, we kind of wish you would just die.”

I am not exaggerating here. This is not a straw man.

Do ComicsGate people sometimes say stupid things? Of course. Do SJWs sometimes stumble into a bit of logical sense or actual morality? Maybe. But the above is an adequate summation of my experience observing both sides and, more recently, engaging them.

The truth is, if the SJWs are right about ComicsGaters being Nazis, racists, and a few of the other things they accuse us of, then there would be more justification for their vitriol. I mean, who could argue against fighting Nazis? Well, Nazis would, but that’s it!

The problem in their logic is that we are not Nazis. Nazis believed in and acted out the wholesale slaughter of anyone who didn’t fit their definition of what a human should be. They attacked with utter disdain anyone who opposed their ideology.

Sounds kind of like SJWs…

Anyway, the Nazis were defeated in World War II. There are Neo-Nazis, sure, but we aren’t those either.

We’re also not racists, bigots, sexists, or even fascists.

Fascism is characterized by “censorship by any means necessary.” We’re not asking for censorship. We’re utilizing our First Amendment right to free speech to ask for better stories, better art, better comics. The SJWs, on the other hand, spend a great many of their waking hours trying to silence us, to censor us through slander and insult, utilizing any tactic up to and including bold-faced-lying and creating imposter accounts to frame ComicsGate people for saying things they know we wouldn’t say, all to limit our free speech.

To remove our 1^st Amendment right.

…by any means necessary…

Sounds kind of like fascism…

Another aspect of Fascism is a totalitarian central government. Gatekeepers who blacklist anyone who disagrees with them politically, or even comes to the defense of those who disagree with them politically, are the closest thing the comics industry could ever have to a totalitarian regime.

Now, the above libelous claims are easily refuted. Sure, in many cases the damage has already been done, and otherwise normal folks find themselves siding with a group of people who truly are reprehensible because that group of people have done everything in their power to paint the other side as reprehensible.

Seems unjust, and it is.

My best friend and artist is a normal person like I described. A nice guy with a working brain who has fallen for the con. He has believed the deafening slanderous shouts of actual terrible people and so chosen, by default, to side with those bad people against actual good people, by refusing to even entertain the idea of creating in that community.

It’s sad.

It may be ruining our chances of being published as comic creators. I mean, who in the mainstream comics industry would publish a writer who is so vocal in his support of ComicsGate, and who in the ComicsGate community would back an artist who believes them to be the bad guys?

Moving on.

So, we’re not Nazis, obviously.

We can easily demonstrate that we are not racist, because many of the creators and supporters of ComicsGate are not white.

We’re also not sexist, as evidenced by the presence of a whole lot of ladies, both as supporters of and creators within the movement.

We’ve already shows that the SJWs are more akin to fascists than anyone on the ComicsGate team.

But what about those damning claims that we are supporters of treasonous traitor Trump?

This is the main issue a lot of the time. SJWs disagree with our politics. We’ve all seen what happens when a talented, genuinely nice person with a respectable head of hair comes out in favor of the president by creating a patriotic image of him and, God forbid, congratulating him and expressing his hope that he does good for ALL AMERICANS.

How intolerant! How racist! How sexist and fascist and Nazi of him! How dare he desire the president to do good for ALL Americans?! I mean, that includes people who aren’t lunatic far-left Socialist weirdos! Didn’t Mitch Breitweiser know that when he created that image and sent that message out into cyberspace? And how dare Elizabeth be married to such a monster! Doesn’t she know what a terrible person she’s married to?

Sarcasm aside, this is the issue, isn’t it? Who did you vote for? On which side of the political divide do you fall? Or, in many cases, who cares that you’re a Democrat or some form of leftist, do you think for yourself and come to your own conclusions? That’s not okay. You must blindly believe everything your SJW masters force-feed you.

But, are they right? Is it evil to support Trump?

That depends on what evil is, doesn’t it?

What is Truth Evil?

So, how do we decide what is evil? Do we go to majority vote?

Obviously not. Nazi Germany, Communist China, and plenty of cannibalistic tribes have taught us that. Just because the majority says it’s good, or says it’s evil, doesn’t make it so.

Do we rely on the situation to dictate if something is good or evil?

Similarly, not a sound method for determining if something is morally virtuous or wicked. If situational ethics worked then there would be certain situations in which even the worst possible thing imaginable could be defended as the “good” choice, and others in which the most altruistic act of charity would be considered the “evil” choice.

Nope, it’s not cultural relativism and it’s not situational ethics. What about bringing it down to the personal level? As long as you don’t harm another, then whatever you think, say, or do is okay.

Well, how would you feel about a timid racist sitting in his bedroom shouting the N-word at a dart-covered Obama “Hope” poster on his wall?

What about one of these so-called “virtuous pedophiles” who have chosen not to act on their desires, but who also have chosen not to take measures to eliminate or suppress those desires, but rather to be included in the LGBTQ-alphabet soup, calling their mental disorder a “sexuality?” They can sit around fantasizing about your daughter, your granddaughter, your niece, all day long and that’s okay?

Because he’s not actually committing the act, there’s no reason to declare his thought life evil?

What about necrophilia? If no one knows, then is there any moral crime happening?

You can see the ethical quagmire one can fall into trying to find a way to determine what is moral or immoral without an objective standard.

So, what am I proposing as a standard?

I’ll get there, but I’ll do so logically, with some questions to inspire introspection and critical thinking. I’ll help you with the mechanism in which to reach the conclusion, rather than telling you what it is. In other words, I want people to learn how to think, not what to think. I provide the tools and the relevant information, but the conclusion you reach is your own.

Back to that question: How do we decide what is evil? We can all agree that rape is evil, but why is it evil? Because it violates the right of another person to choose their sexual partner, you say? Okay, but why is violating an individual’s rights evil?

Do you see what I’m getting at? It’s all too easy to see an injustice and call it evil, but it’s harder to place our finger on the “why” the further we move down the trail of reasons. To the man doing the raping, maybe it’s not evil. Chances are, most rapists know they are violating a moral law, but some may not. In the case of a man who believes rape is not inherently evil, if we’re using personal ethics, then, although the woman protests, the man is still justified as long as he sees nothing wrong with his actions.

But if we’re using cultural relativism, he would be justified under the law in a society that condones rape – they do exist RIGHT NOW (google it). I’m sure most sane people would find this concept unthinkable.

And, if we’re using situational ethics, if he were, say, being held at gun point and forced to commit the act rather than be shot and killed, he would just be acting on his most basic instinct to survive. Pure Darwinism. What’s wrong with that? It’s nature’s law, isn’t it? In other words, isn’t survival the higher law here, between one person’s freedom to choose who they sleep with and the death of the other? Doesn’t survival win? If not, then why not?

Every time you answer a question in your mind, like the ones I am posing, ask yourself why. What you’ll find is that you can only go down so far before you hit an ontological brick wall. At this point, most of the time we say, “well, it’s just evil,” or, “it’s just good.”

That’s actually not a bad thing. It’s a sign of another truth that I’ll get to soon…

So, why is something evil?

Don’t you have to first know what is good? It’s called a standard. We use standards to set goals all the time. In sales, we set a goal to hit X amount of dollars. That goal is based on a standard. Likely you’re trying to surpass a previous goal though, so the analogy isn’t perfect. We’re looking for an analog to a moral standard that is objective and immutable.

You’ll find that an objective, immutable standard is hard to find in anything but morality, but that shouldn’t cause you to resort to a view that there is no moral standard, and that everything is some shade of gray that may be seen as good at times and evil at others. We’ve already covered that territory.

So, let’s shift back to morality.

How about we just grab a historical figure as our moral standard.

The Standard

Let’s say… Mother Teresa is our absolute standard for what is morally good.

Not bad. She did a hell of a lot more good in her life than most of us will… put together. She was selfless by default, altruistic to the point of asceticism. If you were using her as a standard to set your goal for moral behavior, you’d probably do pretty well. But Mother Teresa was altruistic to the point of denying herself even the most basic of human pleasures. Is it “good” to make oneself miserable for the sake of others? I would call it the lesser of two evils; one being, ignoring the plights of the needy, and the other, ignoring your own desires for happiness and pleasure. But if that is the standard of moral goodness, then I have some tragic news: we are all terrible people.

But listen, as good as she was, there could always be someone better. That means she is not an immutable, objective moral standard. She was someone trying to hit a goal; a goal based on a standard that was greater than herself. See, before she existed, there were already all kinds of understandings of what is good. She chose one in the Catholic Church and the teachings of Jesus to help the needy, but that was just one choice. Another choice down the ascetic route would have been Hinduism. Now, some Hindus are tremendous humanitarians (see Gandhi) but there are a great many devout Hindus who believe that helping the less fortunate interferes with those people’s karma and stunts their cycle of samsara, thus making humanitarian aid, in essence, evil.

No, Mother Teresa is not the standard. She may be a standard because of her exemplary service to the human race, but she too was just aiming at a goal based on a standard greater than herself.

So, in order to decide what is evil, we must know what good is. We need an absolute standard. But how do we find that?

Well, we need a predetermined set of rules, or a moral law, so to speak. Like Mother Teresa, we need a goal based on a standard greater than ourselves. We need a transcendent standard; really, a timeless, immutable, objective moral law. The best place to look for transcendence, as illustrated in the lives of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and because morality is immaterial, and science cannot comment on the immaterial, is in the realm of religion.

Every law requires a lawgiver. Laws don’t pop into existence, and a government declaring something a law doesn’t make it a moral law, only a governmental law. Duh.

Objective, transcendent, immutable, timeless moral laws are not created, they are discovered. But if they are not created, then where do they come from? Like I said, laws come from a lawgiver, and moral laws must proceed from the nature of their lawgiver. If it were otherwise, then those moral laws, even those created by a deity, would be arbitrary, because before there is a moral law, nothing would be good or evil, intrinsically.

It’s hard to wrap your head around, but imagine a god existing before time, space, and matter. Now, imagine that god chose to create the universe and populate at least one planet with sentient beings. Now, imagine this god wanted to instill these sentient beings with volition (free will). Free will is the ability to make one choice among multiple possible choices. Now, if that god wanted these sentient beings to make good choices rather than bad choices, that god would have to instill within them a conscience, an internal moral compass. Would that god just randomly pick murder, theft, adultery, etc., as the bad choices, before there had been even one murder, theft, or act of adultery? No one would even know what those things are, not even the god, because before creating that race of sentient beings, that god was all that existed. No one else to perpetrate a crime against, ya know?

What I’m getting at is, if the god was a truly “good” god, that god would not arbitrarily choose laws and tell the beings to “obey them or else.” There would have to be a good reason to obey them or else the god would just be a god-sized, self-absorbed, megalomaniacal dictator. No, the moral law would have to be something as timeless and immutable as the god itself. It would have to, rather than being created by that god, flow from that god’s very nature.

If that god were a “good” god, the law would look a lot like what our conscience tells us starting from the time we could think, reason, and feel.

It’s wrong to hurt people. It’ right to help people. It’s wrong to take what’s not ours. It’s right to honor those who gave us life (parents, God). And on and on.

Whether you believe in them or not, the Ten Commandments are the hard copy version of the digital version each human has hardwired into their consciousness. We are all born with a conscience, a conscience which is prescriptive, not reactive. What I mean is, as a child, you knew before you even put that toy in your pocket at the store, that you were going to do a bad thing. You began to sweat, your pulse began to race, you knew what you were about to do was not good.

Our conscience doesn’t tell us we just did a bad thing; it tells us we’re about to do a bad thing. It is prescriptive, which points to the fact that it was pre-programmed into our consciousness. I believe that was so that we would, from the time we could comprehend the concept of personal responsibility, know intrinsically the big bads and big goods.

Applical Practication

How does this all relate to ComicsGate, now that I have waxed philosophical for a few thousand words?

If we can grasp the concept of objective morality, and find the correct starting point for our ethics (which is the collection of values each person has that governs their moral decision-making), then we will be much more prepared for the kinds of “conversations” we find ourselves in concerning the comics industry, politics, etc.

If you know you’re right and you know why, and you can point back to an immutable, objective moral standard that backs up your belief, then you don’t even need to argue, because you’re the only one in the debate with such a founded confidence. All you need to do is to do what I have done here (in a much more abbreviated fashion) and ask questions.

Ask your unfriendly neighborhood SJW why they are against ComicsGate. When they answer that we’re all a bunch of you-know-whats, then ask them to give you their definition of said slander, and to show you either 1) why they think it’s “evil” (if you happen to disagree that it is), or 2) for evidence that you are, in fact, that thing (i.e., a Nazi, racist, fascist, etc. – in cases where you and the SJW seemingly agree that something is evil).

((As a side note, holding a religious belief that a lifestyle is not morally good is not the same as being afraid of or holding disdain for that person, as the term “____-phobia” would indicate))

That’s all. You just need to know why you believe what you believe in the realm of morality and then know how to ask questions of your intellectual opponents which cause them to realize that they do not, in fact, know why they believe what they believe. Then watch them either flounder, lie, insult, or block you. Or…. on those rare occasions, change their minds.

I mean, it seems obvious in retrospect. When you want to talk numbers, you’re going to look them up so that you don’t put your foot in your mouth and make yourself look stupid. It’s the same with any subject. You’ll want to know enough about any issue to prevent your embarrassment before you speak, so why would it be any different with morality and ethics?

Epilogue

Yes, I am a Christian. No, this is not an evangelistic piece. Like I said at the start, this is a philosophical piece. The thing about philosophy is, it can only get you so far. When you peek behind enough philosophical curtains, you’re going to eventually see the Guy behind it all staring back at you, saying, “I was expecting you.”

When I look at the world I see order being progressively thrown into disorder. It’s the same as when you look at the universe from the viewpoint of physics. According to the Laws of Thermodynamics, all matter and energy are in a perpetual state of entropy, which means that everything is becoming less ordered, all energy less usable, all heat less… hot.

Thank you for reading. Please comment if you have a comment. If you don’t, then just say hi 😊

Until next time,

Peace, love, and a third thing.