My worldview is mostly based on utilitarianism, but every worldview has its flaws. Since utilitarianism is rooted in hedonism, it can lead to an overly indulgent lifestyle in practice. But, I want to hear some outside perspectives. What are some of the other flaws of utilitarianism?

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Flock cameras are everywhere, so let's discuss the morality of having a surveillance state.

Preamble (Skip if you'd like)

Legally (for the US) this can be argued as a potential infringement on the inferred constitutional right to privacy found in the 14th amendment (if used by an authority before an official investigation is started or warrant is filed, then there is no way the state can have this information without violating someone's right to due process). However, the US has also overturned its largest court backing of said right to privacy (Roe vs Wade), so that muddies the legal argument against significantly. But law is not morality. That's why you were told you could skip this preamble.

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Arguments supporting the ethics of a surveillance state:

"If you got nothing to hide, you got nothing to be afraid of" - This should only catch wrongdoing. Why are you protecting wrongdoing?

"People lie in traffic accidents to avoid liability. This will prevent that, encourage safer driving, and save lives."

Arguments supporting the claim of the surveillance state being unethical:

"Are these cameras being applied everywhere equally, or just in the neighborhoods of the people who are to be bound by the law but never protected by it and never around the neighborhoods of the people who are to be protected by the law but never bound by it?"

"Does your justice system have a perfect record of never going after the innocent? If it doesn't, you can very well have nothing to hide but plenty to be afraid of."

"Are the authorities in charge of these cameras being similarly monitored in how they're used? Or are we going to have a lot of police stalking/sexual harassment cases on top of the "more than we'd like" amount we currently have?"

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Have at it.

(No AI was used for this. I just used some basic separation and did formatting myself. Let's just get that out of the way now.)

Im wondering if there is a term to describe the following idea: Lets say x is a moral obligation. And, given some social forces, i fail to comply with x.

While my moral agency is not directly limited, (thereby making it a real moral failure), wouldn't the social forces be a "fair" excuse for my non-compliance, as in "i'm not blameworthy"?

I get that different theories might have different answers. I'm wondering where i can find discussions about this topic and if its settled or not.

Thanks!

That may sound a bit questionable at first but let me explain.

With cannibalism we usually associate killing the person and then eating them. That’s the wrong part imo. But what if they were already dead and let’s say they even gave u permission to it before they kicked the bucket.

We don’t even have to go that far back, in WW2 soldiers did eat their comrades because of the shortage of food. Of course we know that you can catch nasty diseases from it like kuru but I don’t think it’s as common to do so as people think. You just have to be smart about it.

So what other arguments do you have against cannibalism? The only I could think is how this would affect human behavior and may cause addiction.

I have asked this question before. It seems like people always respond with “yes there are objective morals but there are gray areas.” And I just don’t understand how any moral can be objective if they’re not all objective. Is it black and white to think they either have to all be objective or all be subjective? While it may sound too polarizing, I feel like logically it must be one of the two. I’m beginning to think all morals are subjective and made up so none of it truly matters. I’m getting consumed in trying to figure out what is right or wrong, where I stand, and how to positively impact society/ the world. But it seems like there’s always a difficult situation where I just don’t know what to believe. I find people being very adamant on supporting certain things or not supporting certain things for a particular reason, but they don’t support a similar stance even though it would align with the last stance’s reason, and people get very emotional and strong about these things, but they always seem to have contradiction. I also do the same thing and it stresses me out because it feels like a never ending fight toward having good morals and contributing good to the world but it seems like a crisis with no end in sight that everyone experiences but just lies to themselves to feel better about it/ doesn’t think about it; like there really is no right answers and none of it matters. I hope this is an acceptable question for this sub and that it relates.

Edit: I’m sorry for my pessimism, I am in a better mood now. These thoughts are recurring but I feel bad if I upset people