[getnormality]

I grew up with a very strong sentimental sense of moral universalism. I loved Beethoven's Ode to Joy and the romantic idea of universal brotherhood.

But as I bank years in the adult world, as a worker and a neighbor, I've been progressively disillusioned. I don't find universalism to be a common viewpoint. I've found it to be very rare that anyone wants to be my "brother" or "sister". And sometimes those that seem to, end up being exploitative, callous, or strictly fair-weather.

I'm not resentful or anything. I have a happy family and a few close-ish friends, and life feels full. But I can understand how the loneliness and coldness of the world makes people more particularist. People may think: "if the world acts like it owes me nothing, then what do I owe the world?"

[js8]

But isn't it just a failure to communicate it? What if almost all other people are similarly disillusioned?

Also, according to psychologists, one negative experience outweighs roughly five positive experiences of the same magnitude. So, as we get older, we might have tendency to accumulate negative experiences, and as a result become more cynical and less idealistic. And so it kind of perpetuates.

[lazide]

That…. Just provides more evidence their world view is likely more objectively true?

[nancyminusone]

As an ideal, I have little doubt that most people believe this, it's just that it's something that's very easy to exploit, and you stand to gain a massive amount if you do. Its a real tragedy of the commons scenerio. With millions and billions of people and just one commons, there's plenty of tragedy to go around.

It's still worth it to try - I find it difficult to give up completely. Most people I meet are not evil, and it's not like you're going to make it out alive at the end regardless.

[kgwxd]

No need for the romance. We don't have to be "brothers". That outlook is divisive in nature anyway, and a weapon for abusers: "I thought we were brothers. Now, put aside your hesitations, and help me hurt these 'other' people."

We can just be people. Don't hurt anyone, no one gets a pass to hurt you. Hurt someone, someone gets a pass to hurt you. Just you, not your "brothers". No matter the status of anyone involved.

Severity, intent, and priors must play a factor in the level of returned hurt, but should never end with none, and death should be a last resort, but never completely off the table.

That's the good-faith interpretation of the golden rule. Instead of the popular abuser and enabler (turn the other cheek) interpretations. They both call anyone who dares hold anyone accountable, a hypocrite for supposedly not following the golden rule.

I don't care what story book it's in, or who said it, or when. It's a good rule on it's own merits. Doesn't mean everything that comes form the same source is equally valid.

[getnormality]

Yeah, that's why I'm not really resentful or disappointed, exactly. Life is still good without it. You have your actual family, maybe some other people you really share life with, and everyone else is just doing their own thing, and you're existing together without causing problems for each other. That's not a bad way for things to work.

[cassepipe]

> But I can understand how the loneliness and coldness of the world makes people more particularist

I am like that, I stand more on the disillusioned/disappointed side but on the other hand let's not for forget that individuals diverge quite a lot from one another and that for some "Everyone's in it for themselves" has not been a sad conclusion but happy justification for their behavior.

[lo_zamoyski]

Sounds like the farce of modern liberté, égalité, fraternité, as in fraternité ou la mort. Just try not to be my brother!

Moral sentimentalism is a fool's errand, because it isn't morality. It's a superficial emotional ersatz, not something rooted in sound reason and reality. And so "universal brotherhood of Man" was always farcical. It's like those people who "love humanity", but can't be bothered to feed the homeless guy on the corner, or treat his wife decently and with due care. It always has to be something "grand" and "out there". It replaces authentic, concrete local allegiances - all relationships are local - with abstract, impersonal "brotherhood", which ultimately destroys real social cohesion.

Yes, there is a "human family". But family and community are not some undifferentiated, homogeneous mass. Society is ordered and composite. While we can love all as a matter of general disposition and wishing them well, love as such is manifested in the concrete and the active, not mere affect or the abstract. Our priorities and duties of love must concern concrete persons. They radiate outward and diminish with distance (by nature, but obviously there is an obvious impracticality to "loving everyone" in any meaningful and substantive way). Your duties toward your wife are greater than those toward your brother; toward your brother greater than your cousin; toward your neighborhood than the next one over. This priority is not either/or, and they do not preclude aiding more distant siblings in an hour of need. Loving one person more than another does not mean hating the other or some kind of license to disrespect the dignity as that person. It does not give permission for jingoism or chauvinism.

In the hyperindividualistic, consumerist liberal developed world, the trouble is that we've become atomized. We have denied our intrinsically social nature (just as collectivism warps it and denies our individuality). In doing so, the social order has been thrown into chaos. That's the chief reason for our social ills. In our misguided desire for "liberty", we have throw away objective morality and the notion of pre-consensual duties. We live to consume, and even our relationships are reduced to transactional conduits of consumption. Our culture is nihilistic; all it knows is consumption. There is no greater horizon. It cannot understand the social truly and in a healthy way, only according to the language of consumption. And all that obstructs unbridled consumption is taken to be opposed to "liberty" and therefore something that must be destroyed.

It's the revolutionary ethos of destruction.

[getnormality]

I agree. One way to sum up what you've said: love in any substantial sense is a commitment of effort, and all such commitments are economic in nature - that is, inherently limited and subject to tradeoffs. And these commitments will follow a natural order favoring family and kin, according to our nature as evolved organisms.

The key here is that favoring doesn't need to mean excluding anything else!

[WarmWash]

I realized as I got older that the ambient air of socialist/collectivist virtues that filled the all young people spaces wasn't because of some kind of special enlightenment achieved by the contemporary youth (as I deeply believed as a millennial riding high on the rise of the internet), but instead was just an easy ideology for a group of people with little to lose and a lot to gain.

Underneath, people are overwhelmingly just in it for themselves, and judge others by how closely they align with their personal set of "whats best for me" ideals.

[rayiner]

As someone from a constitutionally socialist and culturally collectivist society, the idea of American millennials embodying either seems to me like cosplay. You guys are so allergic to imposed social obligation you won’t even care for your own parents in their old age. What kind of “collectivism” could you possibly practice?

Collectivism means the subordination of individual autonomy to the governance of the collective according to the needs of the collective. You’re a cog in a machine and your purpose is to serve the collective—starting with your family and radiating in rings out from there. I’m not sure Americans can even understand the collective mindset, much less practice it.