That was never the question. The question is what you think of my argument. The (in)equality of man and woman is just an example.
In other words, our resistance to natural instinct creates more problems than solutions. Counterinstinctive values are inferior because they only combat what lies beneath.
But we can change what lies beneath, right? At least in our descendants. We can breed people with different instincts.
Why is what is natural good? First, let us suppose sexuals roles—for example!—have naturally evolved. In certain conditions, then, that role division was advantageous to reproduction. But now those conditions have changed (suppose). Should we wait until evolution changes our instincts? Or should we breed different instincts? And even if we should not necessarily do the latter, may we not? If not, why not?
Second, and more fundamental: why is reproduction good?..
People choose to eat tasty food because they are naturally and instinctively better than non-tasty food, and people prefer pleasure over pain because it is natural and instinctive to do so. If these values are natural, then they can only change through conscious effort. You can prefer to eat non-tasty food over tasty food but it will take conscious effort. Why would someone prefer non-tasty food over tasty food and subvert the natural instinct, or value, of preferring the tasty food? Reasons can vary, but one good reason could be to lose weight. The same thing can apply to the equality of women. In Islamic societies maybe it is written or implied via religion that women should be treated inferiorly, and therefore the natural, instinctive value of equality is subverted for this very reason. So yes, I believe your argument is a good one. Values can rise naturally, such as tasty food is pleasurable and preferred, or by reason, such as tasty food is bad because of its fat content.
Thank you. You have completely understood and probably formulated it better than I. Read this, people!
Oh sure. It’s because he has a penis, isn’t it? Mhm.
Since when? And what instincts are these?
Whether our natural instinct is good according to our judgement or not is irrelevant; it stills creeps up on us, and we must fight against it to maintain ‘civil’ or in accordance with our religion or law.
Because nothing has changed our instincts in the thousands of years we’ve been trying to ignore them.
It’s not for everyone 
Since different people have different instincts. And it doesn’t matter what instincts they are, as far as the argument is considered. But think dogs. Different breeds of dog have different instincts. This one is great with children, that one isn’t.
Yes, but you seemed to prefer the former over the latter before.
So the amount of time it takes is decisive? But I was precisely suggesting to speed up the process! To give it a push!
So you don’t think natural-instinctive values are morally superior to anti-natural, counterinstinctive ones… What, then, did you mean by “superior” before? Superior in power? Might makes right? So if I can rationally resist my instincts, my rationality is superior to my instincts?
I think the constructs ‘inferior’ vs. ‘superior’ and ‘natural’ vs. ‘anti-natural’ are somewhat problematic because they’re subject to interpretation. (Just as I think it’s more accurate to refer to equality of rights regardless of gender than equality of the genders themselves.) Although I’ll accept that inferior and superior are common assessments we use to distinguish between groups or ourselves and those we perceive as ‘others’. What is superior or inferior depends upon what a culture values more, of course, such as when acquiring property or wealth is valued higher than caring for children. However, perhaps freedom is the most superior value of all, because that’s usually the first thing that suffers when one group seeks to gain control over another.
And ‘anti-natural’ could describe any sort of societal control that one group establishes in order to get and keep what they value. One of those controls can be men assuring that they have the exclusive voice when it comes to determining what is ‘instinctual behavior’ for women. In the past, the technology wasn’t available to diminish the difference in physical strength between males and females or, equally important, to give women control over when they produce children, if at all. The patriarchal societal structures that men developed over millenia still prevailed in modern Western culture, really until the industrial revolution and world wars, and the technological advances that resulted from these major events.
I thought Echo offered good insight into how you can see the workings of the instinctual drive for men to maintain reproductive certainty by looking at a long list of ways that women’s behavior has been controlled in patriarchal societies. And how there’s a seesaw effect when women’s freedom increases and male happiness decreases. Generally speaking, anyway. Instinct does have substantial influence on behavior in that sense. It’s in the actual living of lives grouped into societies where that natural instinct drives men to construct the artificial (or ‘anti-natural’) barriers that necessarily are in conflict with the women’s freedoms. For example, if it’s true that education is valued as a means of increasing one’s odds of gaining wealth (‘lifting oneself up’)-- and let’s call it a supercultural value because our experience is that it just about always works that way-- then it’s likely the women in patriarchal cultures will be barred from going to school. That’s why the Taliban destroys girls’ schools on a regular basis. And it’s a key reason that they remain economically backwards.
Usually because they’re over domesticated. Throw them out in the wild and see how instinctually docile and friendly they are. They will act according to their environment, or die.
In some ways, in others natural instinct can be a nuisance, but it still serves a purpose.
Yes, and I’m saying there’s only so much push you can give before the levee breaks.
Natural instinct is superior in that it overrides its counter. (At least for any healthy individual)
Your rationality can only go so far, and this is good for survival reasons, because ‘rationality’ can be a terrible enemy to instinct and survival.
In a Nietzschean vein, it is once gender inequality has become removed from the development of a particular type of “man” that matters of gender equality/inequality become decadent concerns.
The “correctness” of gender equality or inequality to whatever degree is irrelevant compared to what empowers any given society that practices whatever degree of gender equality/inequality. The decadence of appealing to any “correct truth” is the religious nature at work. An example of this appeal to “correct truth” is the deliberation over what degree of gender equality/inequality a society ought to take on.
It is just history that the “Islamic” gender inequality is still more rooted in tradition: gender inequality being part of their traditional empowerment as a type of “man”. The Western gender roles being relatively more equal is a departure from more traditional stances - at the moment, increased equality is where we find our empowerment.
I find this to be rooted in the Western removal of physical coercion and violence as a legitimate tool of power.
All other forms of power than physical force can be thwarted utterly by the ability and willingness to use physical force. If your physical body is destroyed, you cannot use any other form of power.
The strongest males always naturally exceeded any females in the ability and willingness to use physical force. Old societies HAD to use this male advantage to gain or retain dominance. Yet since then, the male has progressively, perhaps inadvertantly, emasculated himself by refining his ability to use physical force through the development of stronger and stronger weapons over time - to the point where they have become so strong that their use would wipe everybody out… the development of such big and powerful weapons renders them impotent.
Societies have also grown in size, crowding the battlefield and having willingness to use physical force turn inwards. Physical force has been outlawed in this way too.
Much of what made man dominant no longer makes him superior today. Increased gender equality is a reflection of this.
Multiculturalism is also a reflection of this, its decadent realisation that options have been opened up perhaps shows the age of Western civilisation compared to Islam civilisations that are only 1400 years old. Now it is possible to be so “equal” that it no longer matters where equality or inequality is adopted, as long as we have more numbers - apparently numbers currently trump concerns about gender for the West, so the emphasis has turned to man and woman getting along to either produce more children, or to bring up their children to peacefully infiltrate other societies with their values and acquire numbers that way.
It’s not a question of which attitude is right, or whether they’re incompatible or not - it’s now just irrelevant.
“Equal”, “Inferior” and “superior” are expressions of a dependence/power relationship or assessments of value for a purpose, not values in themselves.
What can be considered values are a desire to perpetuate a particular dependence/power relationship or the importance attached to certain traits (that make some inherently superior to others) or a desire to break an existing dependence/power relationship or change the importance attached to different traits.
I doubt there is anything natural/unnatural about a particular dependence/power relationship or the importance attached to certain traits except within a context.
Who can really say with any degree of certainty where nature ends and nurture begins? Or, for that matter, where rational ends and irrational begins?
Clearly, there is not a gene that predisposes women to wear burkas in Muslim countries. But human moral, political and religious values are ever rooted in the complex interaction of biological and cultural boundaries.
Some Muslim women embrace the dress code because they see it as a way to keep men from viewing them soley as sexual objects out in public. Or they embrace it because it is linked to their religion which grounds them emotionally and psychologically in The Way. The one true path to Salvation.
Personally, however, I believe there are some things all of us share in common:
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the need to subsist, to procure basic necessities like food and water
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the need to fend off the elements—procuring clothing and shelter from the inevitable storms
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the need to sustain communities such that reproduction is able to carry on with a minimal of dysfunction
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the need to defend ourselves against enemies—both internal and external.
Again, this is the fundamental foundation upon which all human cultures must build. It matters not whether they are primitive, feudal, capitalist, socialist…religous, secular…democracies, plutocracies or autocracies…thousands of years old or just having popped up on the scene.
Everything in the end comes back to how particular human communities choose to organize themselves in order to survive into the future.
And who is to say which sets of behavior are the most rational or ethical?
The tricky part here though is that, to greater or lesser degrees, folks become self-conscious regarding how this unfolds. Think, for example, of aboriginal or indigenous communities that still exist on the planet. People born into these tribes/villages live out their entire lives interacting, for the most part, only within the community itself. There are clearly designated roles to play and values to embrace and from the cradle to the grave. It is not something most “philosophize” about. They don’t read Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Camus and Rorty and think: “who am I?”
Even in contemporary cultures folks tend to live in and around particular kinds of communities. They may be able to sustain a sense of identity that is more or less coherent. But the fragmentation [and it is increasing all the time] is everywhere. Of what relevance then are philosophers who still largely embrace the “European logo-centric binary” approach to human interaction?
Either/or in today’s world?!!
In the film Witness, for example, you see this dramtic clash of “world views” and how human identity is merely a circumstantial/cultural construct. John Book is a Big City detective and his whole world revolves around complex contemporary social interactions profoundly at odds with Rachel’s—an Amish woman who fortuitously bumps into John when her son witnesses a murder in a Philadelphia train station. How these two characters view the world is particularly intrigung because they both have creeping doubts about “who” “I” “am” out in the world around them. There is, for example, the enormously evocative scene in which the Amish community all pitch in to build a new barn for a couple recently married. Here you see clearly how a religious/communal sense of identity is so tempting to a man like Book. At the same time, Rachel is being admonished by her father and others about how The Elders are perturbed by her increasingly willful and “inappropriate” behavior. There is talk of literally “shunning” her for not being “one of them”. For not being “plain” and “god-fearing”. The film’s ending [John goes back to the Urban Jungle and Rachel stays back home on the farm] shows how our “sense of self” [as dasein] always has strings attached. Strings attached to the inherent ambiguities and contingencies of human social interaction.
You cannot, in other words, resolve them philosophically.
So, again: How ought I to live my life in “the modern world”? Is there a more rational, ethical, philosophically coherent lifestyle? Is there a set of political and economic values that are “more just” than any other? How do we narrow our choices down to it? And what does that even mean anymore when you can log on to the Internet and be bombarded with endless alternative options?