Deleted content Blue and Orange Morality

* Many times, differing cultures have regarded each other as having this. A particularly good (or at least obvious) example is the old stereotype of [[InscrutableOriental "inscrutable" Orientals]] and [[{{Eagleland}} "crazy" Western devils]].
* Ruth Benedict's ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' is an excellent account of just how incomprehensible the Americans and the Japanese were to each other during WWII: Americans thought the Japanese must be crazy for committing mass suicide attacks and finding death preferable to surrender, while the Japanese thought Americans must be crazy for being willing to dishonor themselves by surrendering. The best example is seppuku, the old Japanese practice of ritual suicide in order to regain one's honor. In western thought suicide is considered the ultimate act of cowardice (or in religious cases, a sin).
** Japan, and to a lesser extent the rest of the world, could not comprehend why America would frequently engage in expensive and often casualty-filled rescue missions. The Japanese didn't even know what to make of this practice, because it showed a great deal of courage and honor on the part of the rescuers, but they still didn't understand why they were risking and sacrificing their lives for cowards who couldn't be bothered to die honorably. Even America's allies didn't get the rationale behind endangering and outright sacrificing the lives of the many for the lives of the few. Really the United States as a whole was just uncomfortable with the idea of condemning anyone to die.
* Sometimes seen in schools in China where a Western teaches. If he catches them sharing answers on a test, say, his first thought is that they should be punished for being cheaters, while the students might just consider it collaboration on a task.
* Consider two sayings, one from the United States, and the other from Japan.
** "The squeaky wheel gets the grease" - American saying
** "The nail that stands up gets hammered down." -Japanese saying
** Both have a similar prompt, an individual that stands out from the rest. Where in the US, individualism is held in high esteem, and may warrant benefits, Japanese have more respect on the collective, and standing out will only bring trouble to the individual.
* Within contemporary normative ethics are three major types of ethical theory: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism Consequentialism]] (the morality of an action is dictated by its consequences), [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics Deontological ethics]] (the morality of an action is based on duty) and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_ethics virtue ethics]] (morality is based on virtues). The morality of a given decision will vary widely between them.
* Literature from all sorts of ancient cultures falls into this trope. Some of the stuff we take for granted in classical literature can be pretty bizarre for those unfamiliar with ancient Bronze Age customs. Far from being considered barbaric, it was probably just a description of "the status quo" back then. Advocates of more recognizably modern value systems were considered kooks.
* The Aztecs had a thing for human sacrifice. It was originally considered an honor to be sacrificed, so rival cities would host ball games; the captain of the winning team would be sacrificed. Changing mores (and the realization that their conquered neighbors didn't quite feel the same way) partially led to the downfall of the Aztec empire, since the invading Spanish were identified with Quetzalcoatl--a god that was opposed to human sacrifice.
** The whole sacrificing the winner thing makes perfect sense when you think about it: why wouldn't you give the gods the very best person as a sacrifice? For the same reason, some cultures would sacrifice their king in times of crisis to please the gods.
** The Aztecs had a rich history of Imperialism and enslaving people so that they could be used as unwilling human sacrifices, leading to their neighbors regarding them as an unholy mixture of TheEmpire and ReligionOfEvil.
** And they also ate the flesh of the people, which they had sacrificed, as a part of a holy ritual!
** The Mayans, on the other hand, were more big on self-sacrifice. They weren't averse to a little human sacrifice, but they were mainly concerned with body purification through bloodletting. Sexual stuff was considered relatively unclean, so the Mayans purified themselves by drawing barbed threads through their tongues and penises.
* James Bowman in ''Honor: A History'' traces the [[HonorBeforeReason honor codes]] of various times and civilizations and points out that they have universal similarities and striking differences. He also believes that the old style honor code is becoming Blue And Orange Morality to a number of modern people.
** An example he gives was of a [[IntrepidReporter Obviously Not Intrepid Reporter]] (whom he mercifully refuses to name) he heard of in Iraq who persuaded a female soldier to ride in his car to "use their chauvinism against them" so that no insurgents would shoot at him. The author points out that the honor code of Middle Eastern terrorists is not quite that of a QuintessentialBritishGentleman, the differences are as complex as the similarities, and in general they would have no problems shooting at a female soldier.
* A literal example from Cold War days. Two power blocs that found it pretty difficult to understand each other's particular ethics and moralities - the capitalist and communist - were facing each other down over a divided German border for over forty years. When NATO had its annual maneuvers and field exercises in West Germany, rather than risk offence to the Russians by denoting the "invading from the East" faction the Red Army, and making it obvious by calling the "defending from the West" side the white Army, the convention evolved that called the two sides in NATO wargames "Blue" and "Orange". A whole generation of NATO officers passed through their countries' armed forces thinking of the Warsaw Pact as "Orange Army" and their own side as "Blue Army"...
** Watergate is the perfect example: The Russians couldn't believe Nixon, a powerful and effective national leader, was really brought down by the kind of things that were a matter of course in the USSR. The Russians thought it was some sort of coup, possibly because of Nixon's policy of détente with the USSR.
** The election of Pope John Paul II was another example. The Sovs considered this proof that the West had the College of Cardinals in their pocket.
** It's often been said that the United States represented freedom at the expense of equality while the Soviet Union represented equality at the expense of freedom. This can be seen in the propaganda of both sides, as American propaganda focused on portraying the U.S.S.R. as insufficiently free while Soviet propaganda focused on portraying the U.S. as insufficiently equal. For example, the Americans might attack the Soviets for not having things like freedom of speech, while the Soviets would consider the American level of unemployment to be a more important issue (the Soviets didn't believe Americans truly had freedom of speech in the first place, and thought raising that issue was just some weird kind of subterfuge).
*** The above is particularly evident in a common Russian joke/political satire of the 50's and 60's, where an American rakes a Russian over the coals about their economic freedom, usually ending with a pointed comment such as "How long does it take 'your' people to save the money to afford a car?" The Russian then responds "Well, yes, but you lynch negroes!" The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes Other Wiki]] has a page on this subject.
** Much has been made by historians of the deals made at the end of UsefulNotes/WWII between the two sides. For example, Stalin made a promise that he would allow free elections in Eastern Europe. Throughout the Cold War this was used by the West as propaganda and supposed proof of the Soviets' untrustworthiness. However, since the fall of the Soviet Union several historians have suggested that Stalin simply did not fully understand what the British and Americans meant by 'free elections'.

* This argument is occasionally used to justify (although not necessarily ''defend'') questionable business practices--why should a corporation operate based on ethics similar to interpersonal relationships when it only exists to make money as efficiently as possible?
** The relationship between a company and its shareholders can [[SubvertedTrope cast the maximization of profit in an understandable moral light]], however.
** Likewise, it's easy to forget that the view that corporations only exist to make money as efficiently as possible was not fully mainstream in culture until the 1980s. Looking back on past business ethics wouldn't be Blue and Orange Morality as much as culture shock.
*** Mainstream? No. But it was [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Company hard law]] [[OlderThanTelevision since 1919]]. Short version: a corporation ''must'' seek to maximize its profit for the shareholders, [[FridgeLogic even if the owner wishes to do otherwise with the money]]. (Later decisions have strayed from this somewhat.)
* The codes of conduct held by various criminal organizations--whether "old-school" organized crime or modern street gangs--and esoteric groups can often be incomprehensible to "outsiders".
* This can occur quite frequently between atheists and theists, given that the two groups have different precepts that they consider to be axiomatic (i.e. evident, obvious, requiring no proof). In essence, all philosophical debate narrows down to "If you agree to A, you also have to agree to B, because...". Theists and atheists have no A to agree on.
** A major example is the nature of what "right and wrong" means. In general (though there are exceptions to every rule), theists believe that right and wrong revolve around whether or not you obey the commands of God, Zeus, the nature spirits, etc. For example, if God makes it clear in the Bible that you're not supposed to "lie with mankind as with womankind", then a theist would argue that whether or not there's any rational reason for this command from a human perspective, you're still supposed to obey God's will because ultimately, God's will always works out for the best. However, atheists (though there are exceptions to every rule) believe that right and wrong revolve around the possible consequences, including the infliction of pain, that could happen as a result of some specific action you choose to take, regardless of whether or not a Godly commandment is violated. So an atheist, rather than taking exception to "lying with mankind", would take exception to the very punishment afforded those who do, because from the atheist's perspective, that punishment is essentially inflicting negative consequences on an innocent person, God's will or not. But since the theist believes that God is the ''source'' of morality, the theist could not understand why the atheist would consider the punishment immoral, and feel that the atheist is deliberately being stubborn and defiant. The atheist could not understand why the theist could inflict such a punishment without guilt, and would feel that the theist is deliberately being cruel.
* Even though you might say current Western society is "descended" from them, the ancient Romans (among other past societies) sometimes might as well be aliens to the modern West, between the casual practice of infanticide, fights to the death being a celebrated form of entertainment, and suicide being a much more acceptable reaction to failure. It's part of why works like ''I, Claudius'' and ''Rome'' are so fascinating. Even Saint Augustine, writing "just" in the fifth century, couldn't understand why the legend of Lucretia made the suicide of a rape victim something heroic.
** There's also the fact that the Romans were ''cultural'' bigots, not racial or religious bigots. This is often gets lost in modern adaptations where Romans dismissing or torturing "barbarians" is treated as being racially or religiously motivated. In truth, you were considered a barbarian if you weren't Roman in culture, and many different ethnicities--even former enemies--who accepted Roman culture were mostly integrated into Roman society without much fuss or bother. They also had no problem with religion as long as you paid lip service to the imperial cult (which was done to declare your "Roman-ness"), and what religion they practiced was more for the form and philosophy than any real religious zeal. Their persecution of Christians came not from religious fanaticism but politics since the Christians' refusal to pay even lip service to the imperial cult was seen as heinous treason.
*** An example of the Romans' lack of racial prejudice: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septimius_Severus Septimius Severus]] was a successful and widely admired emperor who was African on his mother's side and grew up near the ruins of Rome's great enemy Carthage. Nobody cared; he had had a proper Roman education and MarcusAurelius had made him a senator, so he was perfectly acceptable. Contrast that with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximinus_Thrax Maximinus]] who was 100% white and grew up in Europe, but who was neither a senator nor an educated man, and in consequence was despised by the ruling class and eventually overthrown.
* Middle Ages Europe, despite being the direct ancestor to modern western society, had very different standards of morality.
* Until the end of UsefulNotes/WWI the British army still regularly used corporal punishments that would be considered barbaric to modern Westerners. Capital punishment for cowardice was common and during the 18th and 19th centuries a naval captain could be put to death if they didn't attack enemy shipping at any and every opportunity - unless there was an extremely good reason for doing so.
* Far from being proud of their historic buildings, Saudi Arabia has demolished many Islamic heritage sites on the grounds that they might encourage idolatry, including one of Muhammad's own houses, the house of one of his wives and the graves of his parents.
** This is an issue within ''one'' culture: Muslims not belonging to the Wahhabi/Salafi strain that is official in Saudi Arabia regard the sites as harmless and the defilement of the graves as being a higher crime. In particular, Sufis--who are all about shrines and tombs and so on--get really confused about why all this stuff is wrong in the Wahhabi view.
** The Saudi clerics give the impression that they would like to destroy Muhammad's tomb, too, but that particular shrine is very popular and is incorporated into the Great Mosque of Medina, to boot, so they satisfied themselves with stripping it of all decoration.
** The Afghan Taliban destroyed an age-old Buddhist shrine and World Heritage Site in Afghanistan for the same reasons. Seen by the wider world as wanton vandalism, this was perfectly explicable within Wahhabi Islamic thinking as a holy act and righteous in the eyes of God.
** Destruction of centuries-old tombs and monuments occurred when Islamists briefly took control of Timbuktu in Mali before they were driven back by French-backed government forces. This is more in line with differences within Islam - among the sites targeted were the tombs of Sufi saints.
** Christians used to do the same thing to the pagan monuments of Europe's past. In the year 426, for example, Byzantine emperor Theodosius II ordered the Temple of Zeus, one of the UsefulNotes/SevenWondersOfTheWorld, destroyed for this reason. In case you think atheists are immune, the Soviets had no qualms about destroying historic Russian churches as well as anything else which was seen to symbolize the czarist era. And another communist regime, Maoist China, took this even further with the CulturalRevolution.
** In fact, until much later, Western culture didn't see value in old buildings simply for being old either. While the modern view of an ancient, abandoned stone structure is usually something like "What a magnificent example of ancient culture," for most of history the reaction would have been "What a handy source of already-quarried stone." (Ever wondered why the sides of the Pyramids of Giza aren't smooth? The stones were used to build UsefulNotes/{{Cairo}}, which is just across the river, in the Middle Ages.)
* A relatively minor example from UsefulNotes/WorldWarI - to German commanding officers at the time (many of whom were aristocratic in stock), the shotgun was a weapon reserved for hunting animals. On the other hand, the Americans had been using it for killing humans for decades - it's relatively cheap and easier to use compared to rifles, yet still packs a whallop (carriages in the Old West would often have a driver and a second man next to him armed with a shotgun for protection, hence the term "calling shotgun"). When the US entered the war and American soliders began using shotguns in assaulting trenches (shotguns turned out to be very useful in doing that), German officers were reportedly so aghast at the notion they threatened any American soldier captured using shotguns with execution for war crimes. Officially, Germany did file a diplomatic protest with the US over their use, which was rejected.
* Griefers and {{Troll}}s. (Mentioned a little in ''VideoGames''.) Some people might actually ''love'' pranking each other or pulling others... as long as it's to cause laughter. A lot of people see a {{Griefer}} or a {{Troll}} as a simple mindless organism devoted to nothing but trying to make others feel as miserable for one moment as they do all the time... but are promptly surprised to see a known {{Troll}} cuss out a fellow {{Troll}} for inflicting ''actual'' damage of some kind. Some {{Troll}}s might delight in causing internet chaos... but if somebody's actually been hurt, won't find it very funny any longer.
** [[ImageBoard Image boards]] have been seen as a couple of things... among them a WretchedHive, a meeting ground for the most sick people on earth, or a refuge for stupidity. They may roll on the floor laughing at whatever VideoGameCrueltyPotential they can come up with... yet at the same time there have been people posting images of them ''actually'' inflicting harm to someone or an animal and being promptly scolded DudeNotFunny or even having their IP tracked and the local police called.
** On the other hand, there are Trolls who ascribe to a variety of [[TheSocialDarwinist Social Darwinism]], who see themselves and their behavior as a positive force for "improving" the culture of the Internet. From their perspective, Trolling you is doing you a favor: either you toughen up or you leave. Either way, the overall Online Culture is improved, because there are fewer whiny babies hanging around. Which doesn't quite work [[FridgeLogic on several levels...]]
* According to George Lakoff, this is the main division in U.S. politics. In his view, conservatives are "strict parents" who want people to be [[EarnYourHappyEnding strong, disciplined and self-reliant, but most of all, white and Christian]]. Liberals are "nurturing parents" who want people to be taken care of. A more extreme example is the difference between conservatives and liberals on one hand and libertarians on the other, since libertarians object to the idea that government should assume a parental role at all.
* The concept of [[PatrioticFervor patriotism]] is a good example of this. Many Americans still view patriotism as a positive trait, while many citizens from other countries would view it as borderline ethnocentrism. In fact, what some Americans would consider to be an ''insufficiently'' acceptable level of patriotism is still higher than what many citizens of other countries would consider to ''exceed'' the acceptable level of patriotism. On the other hand, how patriotism is perceived can also be in the eyes of the beholder, given its different manifestations and interpretations in other countries. What would be considered a genuine love for country in one place could be considered either chauvinistic nationalism or social indifference in another, and vice versa.
** Sweden is a good example of a country where people have become increasingly suspicious of American-style patriotism, to the point where nationalism often is seen as the same thing as Neo-Nazism. It doesn't help that while Swedes still love their country, their national flag is also used by Neo-Nazis.
** The Germans post-WorldWarII are perhaps a clearer example of a people with a rather awkward relationship with patriotism and nationalism [[ThoseWackyNazis for fairly]] [[AdolfHitler obvious]] [[GodwinsLaw reasons]] such that at least for a time, nationalist sentiment tended to be associated with Neo-Nazis and fascism in general.