Comments on: Let’s get rid of the ‘virtuous society’

By: Sharanga Ratnayake

Sharanga Ratnayake — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 07:22:00 +0000

In reply to Srilal Perera. Thank You

By: MR.khan

MR.khan — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 23:03:00 +0000

Involve in pornography as mush as u can, what is the guarantee that one will not go beyond their control by getting addicted to lustful desires i,e they may try to approach a woman with foxy mind to spoil her life in fact it happening sadly.. porn is like a drug “the more u have the more u want..” what should control them is virtue. it is said in article “if u act like violent or immoral that we will put in jail” Virtue is something like “prevention is better than cure”
ex. in every school, company rules and regulations are set for what? nothing but to make it better, and we know in reality collage and company with correct strict rules perform well. rules in the sense not just stopping somthing but there should be an alternative to keep anything balanced. I mean society. we can discuss many thing to keep a society or country peaceful. rather than let people do what they think bcoz everybody wil not be in the same thinking.

By: Srilal Perera

Srilal Perera — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 14:17:00 +0000

Well Done Sharanga. This is the BEST essay I have come across.
Agree with it 100%. Brilliant !

By: Sharanga Ratnayake

Sharanga Ratnayake — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 04:48:00 +0000

In reply to Ranga Kalugampitiya.

It’s really hard say, isn’t it? Part of the reason is that a liberal society cannot be created with a top down approach. You can’t make a plan and execute it. It seems to be a combination of large number of factors that develop organically. In Western countries, the rise of progressivism is often said to be the result of the Protestant Reformation. It basically broke Roman Catholicism and created a new religion out of it that was personal. The religion was no more a social affair, but a personal one. I don’t know how something like that can happen in a country like ours. It is in theory a personal religion, but in practice it is a big part of the society as a whole.

But I’d say more urbanization (mainly because it really breaks down traditional family structures), more education (actual education that makes it easy for people to see the obvious questions the theory of evolution raises about all religions for example), a gender equality movement, and more and more people writing that virtuous society is nonsense like I do here, would help.

Unfortunately, a truly forceful secular movement in this country can only come from the left, and they are far too leftist to make the liberal democracy we want to make.

By: Sharanga Ratnayake

Sharanga Ratnayake — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 03:02:00 +0000

In reply to Happy Heathen. Yes, this has been heavily simplified. As a person with Libertarian leanings, I'm sceptical of these social justice movements like feminism and social liberalism, because they have gone beyond the principle of harm and try to restrict other people's behaviour because they can't stomach certain things. But you would agree that even a social justice movement is a huge improvement over what we have now which tries to enforce virtue upon everyone?

By: Ranga Kalugampitiya

Ranga Kalugampitiya — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 02:52:00 +0000

A very interesting read! Your proposition sounds good. What I’m not sure is if we, as a society, have attained the maturity that is necessary for the kind of liberalism that you advocate to thrive. I wonder what kind of groundwork is necessary in order to ensure that the departure from the virtuous society results in a smooth transition to a liberal society and not to a system that is more disastrous than the virtuous society.

By: Happy Heathen

Happy Heathen — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 02:17:00 +0000

An Interesting and thought provoking article.

I do agree with the basic premise of the article, however it is not simple and/or straightforward as you have claimed.

For example take pornography.

The feminists have long argued that given the gender/power imbalance, heterosexual pornography is demeaning to women.

Furthermore, it will be interesting to investigate on the historical roots of such puritanical values. I for one believe that Sri Lanka was a relatively permissive society before the British introduced Victorian values….