Tahar Joblis wrote:Camicon wrote:That's not at all what I'm saying.
I'm saying that morals, ethics, and values, are all social constructions. The ones that are given primacy in society are the ones which society largely agrees upon. By extension, if your personal morals, values, and ethics do not coincide with those that are socially agreed upon, they become secondary. You don't get to dictate your own personal beliefs onto other people, because they are socially created and socially enforced. So in a way, yes, "everything goes", but only in the sense that human society defines what is moral, ethical, and holds value. So there is right and wrong, but right and wrong are fluid concepts, and are socially defined.
I'm not enforcing my beliefs on URSS any more than I would be by saying that evolution occurs, and the Earth isn't six-thousand years old; it's a statement of fact, not my opinion. Moral, ethics, and values are social constructs. Trying to make people follow a set of morals, ethics, and values that are contrary to what has been socially agreed upon isn't something you get to do, because they must be socially agreed upon to have any sort of power or meaning.
If you don't like Elsa, then whatever, you're entitled to your opinion. But if you were to say that you don't like Elsa because she's a "lesbian femi-nazi", then I could call you out and say that no, she is not a "lesbian femi-nazi", because she never does anything to suggest as much. You get your own opinion, I'd never challenge that, but you don't get your own facts and you don't get to make other people follow your version of the "facts". Do you follow?
I follow this argument.
It is an argumentum ad populum applied to ethics. It is an incorrect argument. You're saying that society creates a consensus of what is and is not moral and ethical, and that if you disagree, you should not attempt to impose ("you don't get to dictate") that disagreement on the larger part of society.
It is true that societies create a set of norms that reflect, more or less, the mores and ethics agreeable to the population at large. This does not mean, however, that they are right, or that they should not be challenged, which is what you stated (I hope your intentions are otherwise). For example, the mores socially agreed upon in Charleston, SC in, say, November of 1860 (to pick a particular time and place) are not simply separated from those of today by time and place; and there were people then and there who judged those social mores to be flawed.
Those people had every right to speak up, even if they were being overruled by the majority, who were willing to go so far as to step away from several generations of association with the rest of the United States in order to preserve some of the peculiarities of those mores.
Your conclusion about the facts of the film (Elsa is not a "lesbian feminazi") may be true, but your argument on the subject has drifted into territory that is very dangerously wrong.
I, mostly, agree with you on this. I hate norms and those who base their views upon them.
However, an opinion has to be as factual as possible. Now THAT gives to an opinion legitimacy.
