Weakness and stupidity as moral failings?

I'm beginning to realize that some tropers consider emotional, spiritual, and intellectual weaknesses to be equivalent to moral weaknesses, and treat deaths or other forms of harm resultant from those weaknesses as karmic. (This includes, but is not limited to, depression and lack of education.) Taken at face value, this sounds . . . well, kind of appalling to me. However, the argument at hand here leads directly or indirectly into many other arguments on this forum, so I feel like I ought to make a thread on the subject (and I hope that I'm not making a huge mistake.)

Would anyone like to start by arguing why one or more emotional, spiritual, or intellectual weaknesses are or should be treated equivalently to moral failings?

Edit: To be more specific, one common instance of this is when suicide from depression is treated as a positive or neutral outcome, since those who commit suicide are weak and deserve to die. Another is when someone decides to ignore safety precautions, and their death is treated as positive or neutral, since they wouldn't have died if they hadn't been so stupid. A third is when someone who's addicted to drugs is treated as deserving any consequences of their failure to quit (though granted, they're at least culpable for the first time they took the drugs.)

edited 14th Sep '11 4:04:29 AM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

edited 10th Jan '13 9:26:28 AM by JosefBugman

The weaknesses that you mention are not moral failings, in themselves.

However, not trying to overcome them, as far as the person's abilities and the circumstances allow, is so. Striving to improve oneself is not a luxury, it's a duty.

This said, the examples you mention are appalling. Depression is a serious illness, and deriding one because he or she cannot "get over it" makes about as much sense as deriding a malaria patient because they cannot just heal on their own. The universe just does not work in that way.

And in any case, "moral failing" is not the same as "the person deserves the bad things that happened to them". Nobody truly deserves bad things to happen to them, no matter how bad their own decisions were. If I did something monumentally stupid (let's say, driving under influence) and ended up dying, I would have been a dumbass, true. But it would not mean that people would be justified in saying that I had it coming, or that I deserved to die. Nobody does.

edited 14th Sep '11 4:41:03 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

It's.. true? I won't say they deserve to die, but, to be perfectly frank, they were the ones who choose to do it. Or, you can blame their upbringing, their lack of support, their environment, or any other myriad amount of reasons, but I believe that everyone has to be responsible for their own actions. They chose to be weak, or they chose not to educate themselves, and so they must bear the consequences.

edited 10th Jan '13 9:29:03 AM by JosefBugman

Hmmm. Interesting question.

I think that in some cases it is a moral failing. If you know that you are weak or stupid, and you also know that your weakness and stupidity is endangering others, then it is either laziness or selfishness if you don't try to improve yourself. The laziness and selfishness are the moral failings, not so much the weakness itself, which you presumably couldn't help. .

Be not afraid...

No, it's not the person's fault for getting depression. But if the person chose to kill himself/herself, yes, it's the person's own fault. Not that I consider suicide morally wrong.

edited 10th Jan '13 9:30:47 AM by JosefBugman

If you have a problem and make no effort to try and fix it, then I don't have any room for sympathy.

I appreciate effort from those who have issues. So long as you are trying to resolve them, then at least you're moving forward.

edited 10th Jan '13 9:32:33 AM by JosefBugman

I'm all about recognizing your problems and asking for help or therapy if needed, it's wallowing in self-pity and inaction that I can't stand.

edited 10th Jan '13 9:36:31 AM by JosefBugman

I don't get it at all. Moral "weakness" (whatever that is) has no relation to other weakness.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

Hmm, that is an interesting question.

This one admits that, while she does not see stupidity as specifically moral failing, it is tied closely to the worth of person for her. Which is, technically, not right, because physical weakness - or even emotional one - does not impact her perception of people.

It might have something to do with the fact that below-average intelligence often does make one a threat to others. It might be because stupidity does not, technically, absolves one from responsibility. Or it might be because this one is unhealthily fixated on verbal expression.

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common

Jauce, this statement makes no sense to me. Suicide is a symptom which sometimes presents itself in people who have certain mental illnesses - and is generally the result of the brain chemistry being off-balance. Suicidal impulses are, in many cases, the equivalent to an OCD person's routines - while it is physically their choice, the brain that is making the choice is not working properly as it should. It's adding 1 + 1 and getting 5.

Also for the record, the majority of people who commit suicide have previously sought help.

Some sources on this: [1], [2], [3], [4].

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Well ... they wouldn't. I don't think that qualifies as a moral failing, but it does help to be shown examples of "This guy was too stupid to follow safety precaution X and died for it." It makes some people, who would otherwise be comfy and blind in their sense of their own invulnerability, follow the safety precautions. Beating dumb people over the head with "Action X leads to Horrible Death Y" works better*

^{for the military, anyway}

than any other method when you want people to stop Action X. Now, this only applies when something really does fall in the realm of choice - depression does not; drug use I'm conflicted on*

^{because while the addiction may limit or remove their ability to choose in the now, they invariably did choose to start using drugs}

. In general, I have no sympathy for those who appear to indulge in willful stupidity.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

I think my attitude towards people dying or losing out due to insufficient intellectual capacity is because I've grown up, and spent all my life, in a culture that ascribes zero value to the intellect. So when I go like "Hah, he got darwinized!" it's a sort of counter-reaction. That doesn't mean I don't mean my "Hah!" or that I'm apologizing.

You know, one problem with depression is your inability to have a desire to do anything.

Its easy to say to someone "Well just go do something about it!"

The depression all but STOPS YOU from ever wanting to. I'm doing alot better than I used to but several times I've gone "I need get help/do something about this...but...eh..."

Well, it depends.

It all depends on how you define "weakness". For me, an emotional weakness could be someone with a lack of empathy, effectively a member of the minority and mostly classified as someone from the minority. But for another person, an emotional weakness could be someone who is "not a people person". You see, it all depends on perspective.

"Spiritual" weakness...? Well, that's even worse. How can somebody classify completely someone on their moral compass based on their beliefs? Sure, I get it, I'm not saying that I haven't done it, because I have. But values really vary according to religion, so it all gets fuzzy. Oh, and saying atheists and agnostics are evil is obviously a ridiculous statement.

on Intellectual ground, well, it's obviously a touchy subject here on TV Tropes, since most of us are young geeks (I refuse to be called a nerd!). Saying that you cannot be a good person because of your IQ or level of culture is preposterous, of course. But what about comprehending complicated philosophical viewpoints? You cannot hope to grasp how "morality" is such a loose term without a certain level of intelligence. It is an essential tool.

Bottom line, morals are prone to change with perspective, including what you call "moral failings". If someone decides to judge me based on their own moral compass, that's fine, but I would surely ask them to take in consideration all of the above. Morality cannot be dealt in absolutes. (Wether or not that last statement in an absolute in itself is up for debate).

Now, if you excuse me, I will continue listening to Black Sabbath's "Into The Void".

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

There's a bit of a self-reference problem. I mean, some people like to think of "effort" as this magical thing that everyone has in limitless quality, and if they just "use that effort!" then they can overcome the hurdles they have before them. But the fact of the matter is that your personality-and that includes your ability to exert effort-is determined by the sequence of events that led up to this moment. "Effort" is no more an infinite resource than mental processing power or physical body mass.

Does this mean we should abandon the notion of problem solving? Of course not. But it means people need to remember that solving problems-even problems as "simple" as chronic depression and apathy-is not as simple as saying "man up!"

I think moral is kind of the wrong term to be used here, I don't really see what either has to do with morality.

Oh, I'm sorry for the wall of text then. What is a moral failing, if not related to morality?

edited 14th Sep '11 6:15:43 PM by Polarity

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

He means that Weakness and Stupidity have little to do with moral failings and that morality is the wrong word in the context of this discussion.

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I think they're undesirable, certainly, but I wouldn't say they were moral failings in themselves. Rather, they are problematic because they hinder moral behaviour. To my mind, ideally, one should be kind to the weak but aim to be as strong as one possibly can.

For basically the reason given by Tomu, I regard lack of willpower as a form of weakness (and, in some cases, stupidity). However, as that same reasoning can be applied to any human behaviour, I don't think that actually precludes the lack of willpower to self-improve from being immoral. So I suppose, to my mind, weakness can be a moral failing, but isn't necessarily.

As for it being karmic or deserved when an unintelligent or physically weak person suffers as a result, I think that is nonsense, but then I don't think very highly of the concepts of karma or deservedness.

edited 14th Sep '11 6:55:31 PM by BobbyG

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Well-put

If we disagree, that much, at least, we have in common