Whatever happened to honesty?

S.A.M. said:
I remember a time when you could shake hands over a deal and your word was considered good enough collateral.

Now we need lawyers and "terms and conditions" in fine print to cover your ass.

There was a time when vows meant you could trust the other person. Now we need to decide on prenuptial agreements and consider separate bank accounts before we agree to love and cherish "forever".

So what happened to honesty? Why is it so difficult not only to trust people but also to uphold the trust that people have in you?
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in short, distrusting others is the logical consequence of communities that slip from their obligational duty. A band aid response to this is to focus more on an individuals rights rather than their obligational duties
(IOW "what you can do when you get screwed" takes more holding over "what you can do to avoid screwing others)

(this probably sounds old fashioned, but ....) This slip from obligational duty is catalyzed by selfishness and progresses at the rate of one poorly raised generation after another.

By one's own introspective analysis (in this environment of "morals without goalposts"), one tends to see one values the older generation as too conservative, the younger generation as too radical, and one's own generation as the "really" moderate.

This makes for a slippery slope.
 
So what do the elders say about this? [I'm sure 100% they have some opinions]
 
S.A.M. said:
So what do the elders say about this? [I'm sure 100% they have some opinions]
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the same thing

one tends to see one values the older generation as too conservative, the younger generation as too radical, and one's own generation as the "really" moderate.

each generation has the tendency to take something away from the validity of obligational duty in the name of "moderation"
 
lightgigantic said:
in short, distrusting others is the logical consequence of communities that slip from their obligational duty. A band aid response to this is to focus more on an individuals rights rather than their obligational duties
(IOW "what you can do when you get screwed" takes more holding over "what you can do to avoid screwing others)

(this probably sounds old fashioned, but ....) This slip from obligational duty is catalyzed by selfishness and progresses at the rate of one poorly raised generation after another.

By one's own introspective analysis (in this environment of "morals without goalposts"), one tends to see one values the older generation as too conservative, the younger generation as too radical, and one's own generation as the "really" moderate.

This makes for a slippery slope.
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I couldn't have said it better myself! And I think you're exactly right ...people have completely lost the ideals of community and society. That's all lost to the selfishness and arrogance of individuality that's so prevalent in modern western societies today.

Baron Max
 
But is that always true? Aren't some children rebellious in the reverse direction? Don't they become more conservative in values than their parents?
 
S.A.M. said:
But is that always true? Aren't some children rebellious in the reverse direction? Don't they become more conservative in values than their parents?
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Yes, there are some, but very few. And the society tends to call them "extremists" or "radicals" rather than anything good.

Baron Max
 
for instance you can read accounts of cavalry waiting until the enemy artillery reloaded before charging them (since it was considered dishonest to fight an unarmed opponent).
You can just imagine their opinions on slaying a civilian.

Someone more moderately minded came up with a "better" moral code and now we have a military where such notions of chivalry and courage are not highly valued since they are likely to get you killed. (IOW during military engagements, much involves diving for cover, ambush, picking them off from a safe distance etc)

(of course technological advancement has also played a part in demolishing this value, since in the language of swords and shields, courage and heroism can insure survival, whereas nowadays a 9mm in the hands of a nerd can finish off a trained solider caught unaware for .25 of a second ..... what to speak of planes, drones, missiles, etc)


IOW its the nature of our modern (aka "kali yuga") age to make the upholdment of values appear impractical and outdated.
 
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S.A.M. said:
But is that always true? Aren't some children rebellious in the reverse direction? Don't they become more conservative in values than their parents?
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sometimes

when things get too weird you tend to find a recall to some sort of social fundamentalism.

But such revivals are often contextualized by a larger picture of decline due to their short lived nature
 
But is it always short term? Haven't we gone back from the hippie generation?
 
S.A.M. said:
But is it always short term? Haven't we gone back from the hippie generation?
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The 60's was certainly a big cultural revolution but it never really presented itself as a do-able paradigm (Hippies either died or evolved into yuppies)

perhaps we have returned to part of the issues of material prosperity of the 50's (now we are so serious about holding down a job) but certainly not a moral code of the era.

For instance, in the training of school children, teachers are expected to prepare students for the possibility of having about a dozen occupations in their life (including unemployment) in career fields that are not even in existence yet

:eek:
(in short, more high school shootings forthcoming I guess)

I guess what I am trying to say is that technology places some very real influences on issues of morality .... not in the sense that technology is moral/immoral, but in the sense it enables (or indeed forces) social influences to be catalyzed very quickly .... and that socially we are not in a position to make strong moral decisions...... hence the world is what it is
 
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S.A.M. said:
I remember a time when you could shake hands over a deal and your word was considered good enough collateral.

Now we need lawyers and "terms and conditions" in fine print to cover your ass.

There was a time when vows meant you could trust the other person. Now we need to decide on prenuptial agreements and consider separate bank accounts before we agree to love and cherish "forever".

So what happened to honesty? Why is it so difficult not only to trust people but also to uphold the trust that people have in you?
Click to expand...


Mortgages (the ultimate form of posting collateral), "indentures" describing business arrangements and even pre-nuptial agreements are centuries old (pre-nups are actually millennia old).

What you buy when you get a lawyer involved is three things, assuming the lawyer is competent:

(i) The lawyer's role is to think of unlikely scenarios arising under the agreement that would be very bad for you, but that you may be unaware of of overlook. Often as not these are low probability events, but the wealthier society gets the more money we can spend on lawyers who save us from these low probability, but high impact events, like a business partner who goes bankrupt or the question of who bears the loss between a buyer and seller if the third-party shipping company fails to deliver the good purchased.

(ii) The legal way of writing (though not necessarily legalisms in and of themselves) tends to be more precise than everyday speech. When there are problems and the other contracting party is taking a herd line position, looking to a detailed and explicit written agreement is better than trying to read between the lines and think back to your original expectation regarding the deal. Even if the other side's hard line is right, at least you "know", so you can be sure he is not simply cheating you.

(iii) Lawyers play good cop, bad cop well and generally advocate well on your behalf, even in contractual settings. They can be either cop. One of you takes a hard line and the other adopts an easy going "we're all here to work together" demeanor. Now, if the other side also has a lawyer, the advantage is offset in accordance with their relative skill, but that is to say, iif the other side has a lawyer, then you'd have a strong incentive to not be without one yourself.

Legal agreements and the legal profession in private business is a luxury that we pay extra for to get those benefits. The reason people in the past used them less was "cost" in the broad economic sense. It wasn't worth it to them--not because they were more honest than the wealthy (who have been using lawyers for centuries...first year Contract and Property law classes in the U.S. often start out which cases that are centuries old and English)--but because those benefits weren't worth the a large proportion of their meager resources that it would have taken to obtain them.
 
S.A.M. said:
So what happened to honesty? Why is it so difficult not only to trust people but also to uphold the trust that people have in you?
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Looking past behavior and going straight into physical science, the reason is because anything that is not forbidden is compulsory. Dishonesty is not forbidden by the laws of physics therefore it's compuslory.
 
chris4355 said:
its very easy to screw over someone without getting punished for it. people are just being careful
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Well, wasn't that true back in the ol' days, too? And yet, back then, people could shake hands and it was as good as even the best legal contracts today.

What happened is the question ...not how easy it is.

Baron Max
 
Max, i think we tend to remember the positive things from the past. do you think that overall people are more civilized towards each other?

It is amazing how different people are when they are in a group of people as opposed to one on one. And that is not an act but a separate side to a persons personality.
 
Crunchy Cat said:
Looking past behavior and going straight into physical science, the reason is because anything that is not forbidden is compulsory. Dishonesty is not forbidden by the laws of physics therefore it's compuslory.
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That doesn't make any sense.
 
chris4355 said:
its very easy to screw over someone without getting punished for it. people are just being careful
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Goes to show you that most people will not act properly if they know they can't be held accountable for their actions.
 
S.A.M. said:
That doesn't make any sense.
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I'll paraphrase... lying, cheating, etc. are behaviors available to humans. Our genetic makeup doesn't forbid it and because it is not forbidden, it's compulsory (i.e. it will happen).
 
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