Subjectivity & Morality

I was having a dinner conversation with one of my flatmates the other day. He's a very environmentally conscious, vegetarian, Engineer that holds some very deep seated liberal values. We were talking about culture and he made the claim that no moral codes of a culture could ever be 'really wrong'.

He went on to explain that a culture criticizing another culture is arrogant because it doesn't account for the fact that the person making the criticism has been indoctrinated with moral ideas by his/her own culture. So for example, you may dislike the gender division culture in Saudi Arabia, but this is only because you have likely been indoctrinated in a progressive western culture where equality is the norm. There's nothing objectively wrong about gender division, it's just a difference between cultures which you mistakenly think is wrong because you've been indoctrinated into thinking your culture is objectively right.

I think this subjective moral philosophy is quite popular at the moment. In fact, I bet if you're reading this right now, you probably believe this is true too even if you haven't gone to deep into the philosophy of it all.

Well, I guess it comes as no surprise then, that I believe this view is not only wrong, but very very dangerous.

Before I let the dog off the leash, let me clarify that I largely respect the ideal of tolerating different cultures. I accept that all humans have a very deep xenophobic core and I think it's good that western societies remain open and tolerant, for the most part, of cultures that operate very differently.

Ok, now for the fun stuff. Let's take the moral subjectivity argument and take it to it's extremes. According to my Colombian ex flatmate, there is a micro culture of splashing acid in the faces of women adulterers. Now, you, as a Sydney resident may not like this, but who are you to say that this culture is 'really wrong'? What about throwing homosexuals off of roof tops? What about extremely strict internet censorship? When I bought these example up to my flatmate, he doubled down, and still claimed that there was nothing really wrong about these acts.

Now it's wroth mentioning that at an extremely deep level of philosophy, I actually agree with him. I don't think think any of these acts are 'really wrong' because I don't think an objective morality 'really exists'. But this is not the level of morality we're talking about. Ok, back to my flatmate.

I then proceeded to ask him about why he is vegetarian or why he is puts plastic in the plastic recycling multiple times per week. To me there was a glaring inconsistency in the way he thought about morality. It seemed like in his day to day life, his entire purpose would be to maximize wellbeing for himself and people around him, and yet when it came to this one specific moral issue about culture, he would switch gear and view morality in an entirely different way. How can you believe that no culture should be criticized on the basis of moral subjectivity, and yet simultaneously hold absolute conviction that your flatmate should pay an equal amount for the olive oil despite never using it.

This talk with my flatmate and several other friends of mine makes me realize that the vast majority of us are woefully unprepared to tackle the moral problems we will inevitably be facing in the near future. It terrifies me that very smart Engineers can maintain bat shit crazy moral ideas with enlightened-monk-level persistence.

Every day at University, I see science and technology reaching towards the stars and making discoveries that build on top of previous discoveries. Meanwhile, I see moral philosophy as a collection of creative lunatics with an annoyingly large vocabulary that are still struggling to even define what morality is.

Feminism & the Christchurch shooting

On the 15th March 2019, an Australian white supremacist murdered 50 innocent Muslims in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. Shortly before the massacre he sent a manifesto to the Government detailing his racist motivations. Perhaps the most sickening part of the whole event is that he proudly filmed the whole event with a go pro and streamed it live in the hope that it will inspire multiple other white supremacists on the fence.

There's no doubt this man was corrupted by a dangerous and contagious ideology. I'd love to write about how young people now are especially prone to this sort of indoctrination because of the internet and lack of purpose in Western societies - but that's worth a separate blog post. In this blog post, I just want to write about the New Zealand PM's (Jacinda) response to the attack by wearing a hijab out of respect to the victims.

Ok, first, some background. Anyone that has spent 5 or more minutes with me will know I'm an atheist, which means I don't believe a God exists. Inadvertently, I think this has made me pretty critical of many religions. One of the religions I am most critical of at this moment is Islam. I'm critical of Islam because I think it's a contagious, misogynistic and intolerant religion that is incompatible with several western values. Consequently, I think Islam is an ideology that should be challenged in the same way that any other bad ideology should be challenged: through healthy intellectual dialog.

Notice this is obviously extremely different from saying that I'm intolerant of Muslims. This is certainly not the case. It's a shame I even need to clarify this when I talk with my friends about this topic. Many of my friends (especially my New Zealand friends) tend to group the two together with an emotional lasso, which makes them think that a criticism of a misogynistic verse in the Quran is synonymous with hating individual Muslims. I find it painfully ironic that most of my friends who believe this also happen to consider themselves hardcore feminists. My flatmate in New Zealand was one of these people and she would have no hesitation in socially shaming a man for the slightest microaggression, and yet would remain perfectly indifferent about the views on women in the Quran at the risk of being labelled racist. Fun fact, Islam isn't a race, it's a religious ideology, and the people who follow the religion (Muslims), aren't a race either.

This is where Jacinda Ardern comes in. I've got mixed feelings about her wearing the hijab. On one side, I think wearing the hijab was a very important political move to diffuse tensions and console the Muslim community. Great! On the other hand, I think the hijab is a symbol of female oppression, and I think wearing the hijab has just created a more dense emotional cloud protecting valuable criticism of Islam. Let me explain.

Why do I think the hijab is a symbol of female oppression? Well, contrary to what right wing nut-jobs think, I don't believe Muslim women in western countries are forced to wear hijabs, in fact, I'm sure if you asked a Muslim girl why she wears the veil, she'd probably tell you that she chose to do it because she wanted to wear it out of modesty. However, from a psychological standpoint, I think our desires are decided for us based on our biology, culture and environment. Because of this I think wellbeing needs to be viewed in a broader context. For example, women in the 1950's may have been so brainwashed by societal norms that many wanted to become nothing more than housewives with no career ambitions, yet this doesn't undermine the importance of liberating these women to experience greater wellbeing. How do you free a prisoner that doesn't know she's in jail?

Once again, I applaud Jacinda for her compassionate speeches following the attack that are helping to reunite a community. I'm just angered that now it's going to be increasingly more difficult to have a candid talk about the true nature of Islam.

Me 2012 with cousin Scott trying to feed cows grass in a field full of grass

Deleting more files and storing them somewhere

Japan 19th lunchtime Jan 2014

Still cleaning my computer. More memories of the family skiing trip in Japan

Molly

I needed to clear some files from my computer and I found this gem. Love you Santoh.

A refugee's story

One of my flatmates, Mees, volunteers at a refugee center in Rotterdam. I've heard many stories about refugees second hand from him, but until recently I hadn't heard a first hand account of what it's like to be Syrian refugee crossing into Europe. This is a story told to me in a bar by Mohammad, a Syrian refugee and civil Engineer, who spent about a year trying to make it into Western Europe.

1) He did not travel with his family. He made the journey by himself to cross the boarder into Turkey. He found smugglers who were willing to show weak points in the boarder where there was either no wall, or a very easily climbable wall. He made large parts of the journey by car, but near the boarder he had to walk for long distances and hide behind bushes whenever he would see Turkish boarder patrol. 

2) On his first attempt, he got caught by the police crossing the boarder into Turkey. Since he was not a smuggler there was no punishment or fine. The Turkish police simply put all the refugees in a bus and dropped them back on the Syrian side of the boarder.

3) He then tried crossing again (duh) and succeeded without getting caught. He got a lift all the way to Istanbul and stayed there for several months. He didn't like it there because there was no work and a large anti-Syrian aura about the city. 

4) He then decided to make the crossing into Greece. He hired a smuggler to personally escort him and a friend into Athens. Along the Greece boarder, an undercover cop tried to pull them over. The smuggler knew that if he got caught he would have to face 10+ years in jail, so left the car running in neutral and barrel rolled out of the car and into the nearby bushes. The police didn't chase the smuggler and instead tried to stop the moving car with Mohammad and his friend inside. Amazingly, since Mohammad had already crossed the boarder, they took him to Athens instead of dropping him back in Turkey. 

5) Mohammad described Athens as city destroyed by drug addiction and vacant homes everywhere. He was keen to get out to another part of Western Europe. He payed someone to create a fake passport for him so he could fly to a country in Western Europe. After being rejected on 9 separate occasions at the airport with 9 fake passports, one of his fake Dutch passports finally fooled immigration. 

6) On arrival in Amsterdam, Mohammad immediately went to the police station and honestly admitted he was an illegal immigrant with a fake Dutch passport. Rather than deport him, they took his passport and sent him to the refugee center in Rotterdam where he gets free housing, and learns Dutch culture. 

Mah Few Char part 1

This blog has been a long time coming. I have approximately 5 months left of my thesis, and it's time to start organizing myself for post graduation. All of my friends at Tu Delft are super optimistic and passionate about their post graduate life - they're looking way ahead and deciding what path they want to travel. I'm a bit different. So far my tactic of walking through life by staring at my feet has worked ok - I've walked a pretty chaotic path, falling down slopes and rising up others, but at least I've never had to tilt my head up 90 degrees to look at the ominous horizon filled with question marks.

Tu Delft has been a crazy challenging and amazing experience for me. I've learned a lot of theoretical concepts and I've created a base of some really good friends here. I have no regrets whatsoever. But if I'm honest with myself, I think part of the reason I applied to Tu Delft 2 years ago was so that I could delay the choice of which door to open. Coming out of my crippling failure at AECOM, I could see many doors begin to close around me; one door was going back into the industry, another was entrepreneurship, and the last one was academia. In the end, I chose to keep the academia door ajar with my foot. 

Wow, I just realized my metaphors in this post are pretty detailed. I hope anyone reading this can understand what I'm talking about...

Where was I? Oh yeah, I'm leaving Delft soon. Even though I've had a blast here and have learned a lot, I still consider myself no more prepared for the industry than when I started. It's kinda like I'm a caterpillar that has cocooned itself for 2 years expecting to burst out as a beautiful butterfly, but in the end, I disappointingly ooze out as the same caterpillar.  

This problem is compounded with my current long distance relationship. It's been exactly 2 years and 2 days since I started dating Karen Algeo (you may know her by "Kafu" or "Kaz"). She's the first woman I can say I love, and it pains me that my style of living, which is essentially no different to a jellyfish being pushed along by the current, is going to cause some severe problems for her. She's anchored to Australia with 2 dogs, a lease, a job and a solid network of friends and family. Even though she has bravely said she'd move countries for me (and even surrender the dogs!!!!), I'm still scared. Even if we both find a job in some country somewhere, I'm still very concerned that I'll be either blatantly incompetent at my job or hate it in some way. From my past experiences, absorbing failure isn't easy, but it's always been manageable - I could simply move countries and start again. Now the stakes are higher. If I fail again, I'll be transferring all those problems to Kaz and replacing them with a whopping hit of guilt. So, what's the best way a jellyfish and an anchor can coexist? The most obvious answer is to move back to Australia and stay there for a while until I learn to life better.

Stay tuned! No doubt I'll be writing more about this in the months to come.