Is there a moral obligation to observe social norms?

Is there a moral obligation to observe social norms? I have a few questions that bother me about social norms. The questions that bother me about social norms are :  Are they natural law? Or are they legal positivism? They seem to be neither, but occupy some middle ground. These questions bother me  because I was born in America at a time in which the major goal and value was self reliance and individuality. Even though the hippies were attacking social norms,  but they just elevated these values beyond their usually accepted level. In Southern California to be independently minded was the  given prime value. No one debated this. [Unlike in the USSR where individualism was attacked.]
But as for what values one would come up with? Clearly Nietzsche was the big thing in those days and also Ann Rand. (She held from agent based values). [Marxism was the economic theory  the philosophy of the hippies.] So the American value of self reliance was swallowed by other value systems. To Nietzsche the Ubermensch creates his own values. To Marx, moral values are an invention of the ruling monied class to exploit the workers. It is a form of moral relativism like Nietzsche. Still the hippies were attacking authority and emphasized the need to be your own person.
Later when I leaned Talmud I discovered that it was very similar to Spinoza in that it holds from an objective moral system than does not depend on the observer.

  Talmud was very different than science because in science you could not start to do your own research until you finished and knew the subject. In Talmud each area stands by itself. So you can in theory open up one Tosphot and understand it without having to have gone through the whole Talmud. [Science is like a pyramid.]

  The Rambam (Maimonides) holds from two axioms that are prime values in his mind. One that there is no difference between the laws of the Torah and the Talmud. That seems simple enough. In general the law of  Talmud is  connected and supported by Biblical law. The Sages of the Talmud sure spend enough time and effort to defend this. However you can't see how successful they were without Tosphot.
The other thing that occupied the attention of Maimonides was to show that the system of law based on the Law  is  rigorous. He succeed in this. No one before or after him ever did.


  However like Von Mises' critique of communism,  any system of human beings that controls people from the top is doomed to failure. The first reason is the reason of Von Mises. Lack of information. While Maimonides showed the logical rigor of the Law,  if you look in any one area, the basic questions of application come fast and heavy until you realize that  in spite of how simple it looks you really don't know the law. The other thing is concept of an all knowing judge (of Ronald Dworkin). Even if he know all the details of the law and all the details of everyone's life--it is still a system being administered from the top to the bottom. There is still no self reliance or independence.

  What is bothering me is social norms. These are clearly very important to people trying to create a super-organism. But do they have any moral value?



Three things bother me. First that the social norms  are considered authoritative, not the Talmud or Rambam, nor Shulchan Aruch. Mere social norms are elevated to Divine status. This bothers me because it was not how I understood the Talmud. The whole idea of the Talmud was that God gave men laws to keep. These laws are objective. They do not depend on what people think of them. This is certainly how Maimonides understood the Talmud.  If not for this, the leaders at the desert of  Sinai could simply have decided that worshiping the Golden calf was perfectly permitted, and you go by a majority vote.

  Social norms gained status after the Middle Ages. Very little of what came after the Middle Ages impresses me except for Mathematics and  the  natural sciences. Even getting rid of kings bothers me. (Large portions of the populace vote themselves money and various carve-outs out of the public coffers. These groups vote monolithically as ethnic blocs to do achieve these takings.Who needs dumb voters?)

  This lead me to the third thing that bothers me more than any of the above. The difference between esoteric doctrine and exoteric doctrine. Once a community is stating public doctrines that are meant to entice people to join the movement, but holding from esoteric doctrines  in which the real norms of behavior are different and often directly opposed to the exoteric doctrines--then I define this community as an cult with all of the negative connotations that go along with that noun. What bothers me is the rationalization of crime when the criminals  in authority and the use of social norms to justify this.

  As for me, I think Reason can know objective moral values . Moral values are based on Nature,-not the will of men. This can also be called Divine Law. The Torah is to tell us what we ought to be able to perceive on out own if not for the evil inclination. This is my own approach to moral issues based large on the Torah and the medieval thought of Maimonides.
 
  This approach is somewhere in between the Kant approach that reason can perceive ''the thing in itself'' though he does not say how, and the intuitionists like H.A. Prichard  and say that reason perceives universals, and morals are universals applied to human affairs. {In this way the intuitionists are like Hegel.} [This is directly opposed to the so called neo-Kant school which is not like Kant at all. To Kant the existence of the ''thing in itself'' does not depend on the perception of the subject.]

And maybe Nietzsche was right. Maybe the conscious does distort the real truth

 Ignoring the vast subcontinent of the Id does not make it go away. And maybe Nietzsche was right. Maybe the conscious does distort the real truth.


  So what are the implications of this?

My advice about sex is to be in a Lithuanian yeshiva and learn Torah until you are offered a shiduch.
That seems to be the best idea because outside of the world of Torah,  girls aren't very good.

For a good marriage it is best that the girl have two characteristics: (1) Jewish, (2) daughter of someone who learns Torah. The guy--should  learn Torah. Now in Israel there are learners, and guys who learn half and work half, and guys who work. My approach was to learn and do a bit of science on the side, but at this point I might agree that half Torah and half work is better. I admit I am not sure. It is hard to say which path is better.

Rav Shach held -learn until marriage and then if one needs to work then fine. My parents held one should go to university and prepare for a honest vocation.
It is hard to know what to do as a rule. I was myself in Mir in NY before I was married and after that also. And later I went to Israel when Rav Ernster invited me to join his kollel in Safed. Learning Torah is important but there is something about the way the system is set up in Israel that annoyed me. It was like it was considered a 9-5 business and it was run in such a way. I did not want any part of a system that was making Torah into a money making factory so I left that kollel for all the seven years I was in Safed. The way I see it is accepting charity to learn Torah is an argument. The other rishonim disagreed with the Rambam on that point. They said it is allowed. But to have  a situation where one says if you come in at 9 to 5 and learn we will pay you-that makes Torah into a business. And I never heard of any Rishon that allows such a thing. So I threw myself on God's mercy and hoped he would support me without my doing something I thought was against the Torah. And he did help me until I left Israel.



After I left Israel and my wife left, I was no longer socially accepted and could not even walk into any yeshiva or kollel without being thrown out from either the first moment or a day or two.

Now I see most teachers of virtue (Torah) as being in it for the money,- because there is the problem that the students of teachers of virtue are unjust and not virtuous. So there must be something wrong with the system. [That is if the students turn out bad, that must say something about the teachers. Virtue and Torah I think are being betrayed.]



So unless we are talking about Ponovitch or the great Litvak yeshivas in NY, I have come to think of the whole system as terrible and not loyal to Torah. I see the Orthodox world as being organized around Compulsive Obsessive Schizoid leaders that are excellent at doing rituals and not connected with Torah except in appearance alone.

Since then I hope to merit someday to learn Torah. And I contemplate, "What went wrong?"
The answer of Nietzsche seems best: "Consciousness distorts Truth."

That means Nietzsche thought the Id has special access to the truth but it gets distorted as it gets to the surface of consciousness. The consciousness it to him just an phenomenon of the representation--not even of the Id. And clearly this is what Reb Israel Salanter was saying in his Igeret HaMusar. Learn Musar strong an long enough and it will penetrate into the Id and that will allow the Id to bring forth the un-distorted truth.

So what we have is apparently an argument between Rav Shach and my parents. But I think we can minimize the area of the argument to a small space. No one is disagreeing with the Rambam about the importance of learning Torah, Physics and Metaphysics as these last two were understood by Aristotle and the Rambam. And Rav Shach is agreeing also with the idea of  a vocation. I think for all practical purposes the area of disagreement approaches zero if we consider these facts.

I had in mind a great theme to discuss --Sin.

I had in mind a great theme to discuss --Sin.
Sometimes I have one major thesis in mind that I want to defend. But today I just wanted to bring up different aspects of this very fascinating subject.
First of all let me just be straight and upfront. I think the concept of sin is a great idea. The ancient Greeks certainly had this in a powerful way. But for them a sin for Aphrodite was a mitzvah for Venus. You just could not win them all. And even the gods were subject to the Fates. And all together, even the Fates, were subject to the meta-Divine realm. When God gave the Torah, this changed. In the Torah, the concept of sin is very  well defined. The Torah reveals an amazing fact. That there is only one God that we will have to give a reckoning to. And that day of reckoning will come.


But because people are sinful, they like to excuse  sin in different ways. One is by defining sin out of existence. Another is to make the social norms of the social group to be the definition of virtue, and deviation from social norms they define as sin. Philosophers get out of the problem of sin by coming up with some nice sounding abstract principle. When you first hear it, it sounds reasonable. But then they use it to justify out things which people know by common sense are wrong  In fact, this is the major occupation of philosophers in this generation. [Examples: Principle of Double Effect of Anscombe. or for example people know it is wrong to steal. But Marx comes up with a whole theory that property is theft and you get  Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Stalinist Russia and Enver Hoxha's  atheistic Albania. Not beacons in the darkness.]

I  would like the defend the idea of sin as a simple concept. It is things that God says in the Bible not to do. Or it is ignoring things that you are supposed to do. And someday you and I will have to give an account for why we ignored this.
Now I know that some people use the Talmud to over define sin. I agree that this is bad. (Some people take obscure statements from the Talmud and make it look ridiculous.) But based on the Torah and Talmud, I think I can come up with a short list of things that can define for every person the idea of sin. In fact, I don't even have to do it. There already is this short list. It is called the Ten Commandments. But since this list has been clichéd out of existence maybe I still need to state plainly what sin is.
Sin is: disobeying your parents. Sin is to lie or even say an non truth with no malicious intention. Sin is to cheat in business. I could go on, but you get the idea. Well, maybe I should go on.  Sin is coveting that which belongs to your neighbor, or using your voting power to get possession of what belongs to your neighbor. Sin is adultery (sex with a married woman. Not sex out of marriage.).--which has a specific definition--but I would include all the relations mentioned in Leviticus.

But every groups has it own norms that differ from these that they try to make into the level of the Ten Commandments. In some groups it is the greatest sin to support the Jewish state. In other it is a sin to wear the wrong clothing. I agree that these things are taken with great seriousness. I just hold that the social norms that religious cults or political movements  to promote do not have the benefit of Divine approval.
Now I need to get to the second idea about sin.I don't hold that it is wrong because God commands us not to do it. I don't think it is wrong and so God commands us not to do it. Rather i believe that God made people in a certain way.A nature way, and also made hidden paths to his divine Light.the things that God commands us are just telling us about an existing road map.Not being the road map is wrong because it leads one off the cliff. It is not wrong simply because it is written in the road map. there is a reason it is there.
I hope this does not sound like religious fanaticism. If it does I apologize. I know some people even in this subject do go a bit overboard. I have heard of people that in fact know than sin is wrong. But then they are aware of an alternative religion science-ism--the belief that only what science says is true , and these people starting from Kierkegaard wanted to defend the Bible from the onslaught of Hegel and philosophy. They said science is wrong and goodbye. This I feel is wrong. I grew up in a Jewish home in which there was a place fro Torah and science together with zero contradictions I feel that Torah and Talmud can hold their own ground in any competition with any philosopher. But I don't think they could win a war against philosophy and science. They just deal with different issues. When I go to town is see there are stores which sell clothing and others which sell food. I don't see that there is any conflict. Clothing and food are different things which I value. No conflict.

Conformity is valued in all groups. But in some non conformity is punished in worse ways.

There is a whole science of the super-organism that waits to be discovered.when one joins a group he thinks it is from his own free will and thinks he can leave of his own free will. but this is not the case. Once inside a group the rules change. There are for example social norms that if one violates the groups has a way of punishing. this does not happen by any particular individual in the group by by the power and energy of the group itself. This gets to be problematic if the stated norms of the groups are different from the actual norms.

Conformity is valued in all groups. But in some non conformity is punished in worse ways. Growing up in Anglo American society one gets used the idea of individuality being tolerated and sometimes even respected (if one can prove his merit). (It was considered an ideal to aspire to to be your own self in the 1960's) But in many groups individuality is harshly punished. Sometimes  because the group is just a small religious group there is not much they can do legally. But still they tend to label anyone that  deviates from the norms as a kook; and because of the power of the super-organism, this label can in fact stick. This problem is impassible for all human beings.
For being part a of a group is no different than a cell that is part of a human body. Though it seems self sufficient. Taken away from the larger body it decays and dies. So again if one does not want this to happen to him or her he should be careful what kind of group he joins.



At any rate I am pretty sure that the fact that being part of a social organism is so essential to the human being that this must be the reason Habermas [who some people consider the greatest philosopher of this generation] is not as against Marxist theory as most serious philosophers are. He must see it as a kind of social paste.--and who knows maybe it is. But my complain is that once a long time ago the Constitution of the USA was a marvelous social glue. But the effect of the socialist policies introduced in the 1960's did what socialist entitlement policies generally do--they create interest groups who have no sense of identity with the general society, and instead try to suck the life out of the larger society. This has happened in America.

super-groups and super organisms.

super-groups and super organisms.

(To have any group you need law. No law-no group. And the law is always based on ideology. This is part and parcel of human beings.. You want to have a true ideology as opposed to a false one. But even among true principles there can be a lot of divergence. All animals seems to be organized around some basic principia. Super-organism are just  examples of this. (The U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. were good examples. The problem with Socialism is it forces people into rival interest groups, that try to suck the blood out of society to support their own group. But still there the you see the basic aspects of the human need to be part of a super-group or super organisms.
These super-groups have all the traits of a real life form.
They develop hooks that they stick into people that want to leave the group. Once part of a group one can never leave it without losing his life except by some miracle. But not all these groups are bad. Sometimes a person comes along that wants to found a movement or group based on some good principles.

E.g. the Madragat HaAdam (a disciple of Israel Salanter) that tried to start a movement based on trust in God. I tried to follow this path myself. I discovered a funny thing. It worked until I left it. But once I left it I could not make it work again. But as long as I stuck with it it worked.

Hegel thought individual conscious can only exist in connection with other peoples consciousness. 

Capitalism it is true does not reward virtue. So what does? Did the USSR reward virtue? Does Cuba reward virtue? Does the welfare system in America reward virtue?
Or does it reward laziness and covetousness?
Capitalism rewards greed. And Communism Does not? here is a anecdote that has a kernel of truth of how property far from being considered theft was actual worshiped in the USSR. a group of solders are standing watch around a perimeter before nuclear test. they are given instructions that if the yield of the Bomb is more than expected they should hold their rifles away from their bodies so that as the rifle is melting it should not drip onto their boots which are soviet state property.[It is hard to predict accurately neutron absorption. Also it is true there were a lot of nuclear related incidents and accidents that happened. People know about Chernobyl but not so many know about the K278 on April 7 1989.
However that was a very advanced model. It could dive more than twice as deep as a Los Angeles class or an Alpha ]



On 7 April 1989, while under the command of Captain 1st Rank Evgeny Vanin and running submerged at a depth of 335 metres (1,099 ft) about 180 kilometres (100 nmi) southwest of Bear Island (Norway)[1], fire broke out in the aft compartment, and even though watertight doors were shut, the resulting fire spread through bulkhead cable penetrations. The reactor scrammed and propulsion was lost. Electrical problems spread as cables burned through, and control of the boat was threatened. An emergency ballast tank blow was performed and the submarine surfaced eleven minutes after the fire began. Distress calls were made, and most of the crew abandoned ship.

The fire continued to burn, fed by the compressed air system. Several hours after the boat surfaced, it sank again in 1,680 metres (5,510 ft) of water. The commanding officer and four others who were still on board entered the escape capsule and ejected it. Only one of the five to reach the surface survived.

Rescue aircraft arrived quickly and dropped small rafts, but many men had already died from hypothermia in the 2 °C (36 °F) water of the Barents Sea. The floating fish factory B-64/10 Aleksey Khlobystov (Алексей Хлобыстов) arrived 81 minutes after K-278 sank, and took aboard 25 survivors and 5 fatalities. In total, 42 men died in the accident.

It has bothered me for some time why a great philosopher -Jurgen Habermas seems to like Marx.
The only explanation that I can see is he likes the idea that means of production {and apparently means and ways of making a living} determine people's morality and world view, instead of the world view determining their means of support like they claim. If this is the whole big deal about Marx--that people are irrational primates, then I don't see what the great news is. Original sin is a doctrine that I have heard of before. People are born into sin and then they excuse it with philosophy. Fine.
(Kelly Ross: "Karl Marx did not have a theory of morality; he had a theory of history. Thus, Marxism was not about right or wrong but about what will happen in history.
and what his theory predicted did not happen. The problem with Marxism was that it has never been willing to accept the discipline of falsification. The Marxist "high tide of prophecy," in Karl Popper's phrase, was perfectly willing to kill people by the millions rather than accept that "wreckers," spies, or some diabolical conspiracy were not responsible for the failure of Marxist economics.")

Maybe what is going on is the idea that desires determine perception--and especially the class one belongs to of better yet the social group. But this is saying the same thing. people desire to be upstanding member of a social group more than life.as the kamikaze pilots of WWII teach us.

OK you can say all I need to do is to read Habermas. But there is the trouble (besides the German language). At blowing Rawls (and the postmodern lunatics) out of the water he is great. But in building his own system he does not seem all that great.
Personally I would like to ask him why he does not spend more effort on John Locke and John Locke's state of Nature?