On Morals
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Polling firm UMR has just released New Zealanders’ Opinions On Moral Issues, from divorce to human cloning. Other blog readers are having their say: what does the Public Address community think?
98 Responses
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Intrigued by the huge gap between doctor-assisted suicide and just suicide (+18% vs - 48%)
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Close to half (47%) of men in the sample support the death penalty. That's the surprise for me.
And I'm not surprised by this, but interested to see it spelt out:
homosexual relations [are] seen as morally acceptable by 69% of women but only 53% of men.
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I think the most disturbing thing in the results is the high level of support for the death penalty.... 43% is a lot of people agreeing the death penalty is morally acceptable
And polygamy really takes a hit, but unlike affairs of married people it's not a breach of any contract, just a lifestyle choice between consenting adults. I'm unmarried (but partnered) and have no desire to be in a marriage or civil union but I do see it a binding contract - especially if you put that forsake all others but in so can see that affairs are considered by many to be wrong, but polygamy, 2nd most morally wrong? really?
oh just saw they later refined polygamy to mean a man with more than one wife.... that's a pretty narrow view, I would have thought it meant any relationship that has three or more members regardless of sex
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Surprised by the number thinking the death penalty is acceptable.
But overall it just shows that morality is diverse.
Because of that diversity of opinion it is very difficult to define what New Zealanders believe is "moral" and even more difficult to use democracy or public opinion to guide law making.
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Intrigued by the huge gap between doctor-assisted suicide and just suicide (+18% vs - 48%)
I'm not surprised at all....
a doctor is only going to assist someone with a terminal illness with no possibility of improvement in their very real suffering... someone already so ill they cant get the job done by themselves.
Helping such a person could go either way depending on your moral compass.
the vast majority of people who succeed or attempt suicide are either in a temporary funk due to some failed love relationship, or in need of medical help for a mental health issue, and any doctor will refuse to assist, and possibly even get the actual help required. Typically their need to "end it all" will pass, and they will be grateful to be alive afterward.
Most people would see helping that person kill themselves as stupid at the very least, ranging all the way to positively evil.
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I think the most disturbing thing in the results is the high level of support for the death penalty.... 43% is a lot of people agreeing the death penalty is morally acceptable.
It's actually not that unusual, although it has been lower in some polls here. And it's still below the world opinion average (52%) cited by Gallup in 2000. Americans still love their judicial killing though -- polls there usually find 60%+ in favour.
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OTOH, Roy Morgan has just found the lowest support ever for the death penalty amongst Australians -- just 23% -- although the context was different, and I suspect the Roy Morgan questions would get a lower result in NZ than UMR's.
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Just how uniform is NZ society anyway? I realise that these surveys go to great lengths to balance their polling, but there is a sense in which those lengths are based on presumptions about social place which may well have shifted. Rural NZ is vastly different from urban NZ as we know. But I am starting to suspect not only that there are major differences between the urban areas, but also wildly diverse differences within urban areas. So I wonder how well opinions from say Ponsonby correlate with Parnell, or Hamilton with Dunedin? Just how much has Auckland's significant influx of people from Asia (and there are many variants between these, both on ethnic origin and generation) moved its perceptions relative to those of Wellington, which generally sees itself as the cosmopolitan capital on NZ? What with the often polarised opinions within the limited confines of my own family, I wonder how well a mere 750 people can reflect the whole country.
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Close to half (47%) of men in the sample support the death penalty. That's the surprise for me.
Not really a surprise for me. Men tend on the whole to be more in favour of confrontational ways of resolving problems Which isn't to get all John Gray - the difference, 39/47 is significant but not huge.
It also manifests in political choices. Men favour National and ACT by significant margins, whereas Labour has stronger support among women.
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oh just saw they later refined polygamy to mean a man with more than one wife.
Indeed polygamy is a marriage with more than one spouse of any sex. What this survey refers to is polygyny (a man with multiple wives). The other option is polyandry (a woman with multiple husbands).
Polygyny might seem fairly innocuous (albeit a little weird) but when you have a society where it's common, then this alters the ratio of single men to single women. You end up with all these single men who can't find themselves a wife, and this in turn leads to other social problems.
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But I am starting to suspect not only that there are major differences between the urban areas, but also wildly diverse differences within urban areas.
My favourite anecdote around this is an interview with the Chief Censor, where he revealed that they'd stopped using Wellingtonians for test audiences because they were just too different to the rest of NZ. Auckland, however, was varied enough.
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I'm quite stunned by the 47% of blokes favouring the death penalty - and equally bemused by the Aussies' 23% (total) in favour. Massive drop in the Aussie figure from 1995 to 2005, from 53% to 25% - I wonder why?
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Nice to see that my relationships are marginally more moral than doctor assisted suicide, abortion, gambling or testing on animals.
Since when the fuck do my relationships become the subject of a stupid shitty small-minded marketing company full of guys with weeny dicks running a poll on morality??
Fuck that.
Here's the real moral question: Are heterosexual relationships moral?
No. Course not. What were you thinking? That they were? Don't be silly.
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I'm just refraining from joining in the litigation of divine command theory on kiwiblog.
Here, I'll add that it's probably unfortunately that 'polygamy' will as likely bring to mind 'having-a-wife-in-every-town'.
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It would be interesting to read about correlations between responses. How many of those who believe in the death penalty think that suicide is morally wrong, for instance?
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3410,
Here's the real moral question: Are heterosexual relationships moral?
Yeah. The big question here is, who decided (and how) what constitutes a "moral issue"?
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I remember Judy Bailey reading a news item about 10 years ago which cited the results for a public opinion poll on the death penalty. It was something like 49% in favour and she looked suitably grim. However, a veteran of the campaign to get rid of the death penalty several decades earlier was very happy as it was apparently the first time it had ever gone under 50%.
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Indeed polygamy is a marriage with more than one spouse of any sex. What this survey refers to is polygyny (a man with multiple wives). The other option is polyandry (a woman with multiple husbands).
There is another option, where more than one female and more than one male are involved. That I believe is technically known as a "clusterfuck".
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That I believe is technically known as a "clusterfuck".
How dreadfully uncomfortable.
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clusterfuck
I think you'll find a lot of it depends on whether the participants know about each other or not.
Interesting to see some polling on "moral" matters. Frankly, I'd like to see some polling on meta-ethics: how many people prefer Kant's categorical imperative to Benthamite utilitarianism, for instance.
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Hmmm: makes note to self -"update of vocab; 'orgy' is now 'clusterfuck.' "
Dunedin is my favourite city, but the tension between town & gown has been there since the University was established - the students were seen as an uncontrollable element (remember Dunedin's deep Presbytarian roots) from the beginning.
Hoons and idiots and people ' very vilely drunken' have been part of the student scene since forever - mainly because of the age group. And, as Kerry Weston wrote, stuff that has caught the rabid attention of today's media, has really always gone on - it just wasnt instantly transmittable.
Some of the stuff - crimes committed- like bottlethrowing- is just irresponsible & nasty wankery: I'm unsure about cough-burning (except for the pollution aspect.) But a lot of it was a clash between town (police) and gown...and, as also been already pointed out, the Toga Party was truly asshat nasty this year.
Declaration of non-involvment: failed Law honours student(Canterbury - became a v. good fishnchip cook instead); ersatz (i.e one-term) Burns Fellow, and single-go summer-school student (also Dn.) I cannot speak for my Uof C nephew who, I suspect, took part in adjunct tea-party...
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Ooooh!
Nau mai welcome edity function! -
Ur, I could use that to pop this over on TOT but (shrug.)
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Posts can be edited for 15 minutes after they are submitted.
Oooh!
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Russell, somewhere in the update a bug has been introduced. The front page says 24 posts for this topic, but there's no page 1 link here.
Likewise the undie wankers thread says 84 posts, but only shows 24 (a page 1 and 4 on a page 2).
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