Rat & Swan wrote:
>
>
> Jonathan Ball wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
>> What you do is figure out how to do the ethically right thing, then do
>> it and keep your mouth shut about it.
>
>
> That may sound good, but it is both impossible and violates all the
> characteristics of human society.

Ipse dixit.

You *would* think it violates them, but you are a
narcissistic nag who has psychological flaw. You are
unable to resist a disgusting tendency to proclaim your
virtue, even though your criteria for virtue are
irrelevant to it.

>
> How would anyone "figure out" how to do the ethically "right" thing
> except by weighing philosophical ideas about what is right? And how
> to do so, unless one is a total hermit, except by learning from
> others what they feel is right behavior toward them and others? In
> any social species, members learn what is right action toward others by
> first learning what other beings need and want, then determining how
> one's own actions relate to that. A purely solipsistic morality is both
> uninformed, and usually immoral. Any morality or ethics is always
> based on the ethical opinion one has learned, either from one source,
> or from many sources.
>
>> You don't worry if your one little
>> action, which obviously has only symbolic value when there are over 6
>> billion other people in the world, is going to save the world or not.
>> If it's the right thing to do, you just do it, and content yourself
>> with the knowledge you're doing the right thing.
>
>
> But if one believes it really is the right thing, should they not
> try to convince others?

No.

> Why ignore wrong things being done to others
> all around you?

First, we're not necessarily talking about wrong things
being "done to" others. Second, a sensible and humble
person - that rules *you* out on both counts - should
think, first and foremost, that she might be wrong.
Third, in your particular case, your moral thinking has
been shown to be entirely in error.

> Do we not have an obligation to try to prevent genuine
> wrong done to others?

So - you *support* the war in Iraq, after all. Thank you.