Is it moral to act in a way that you know is ineffective about something that is important when you know that it is ineffective?

You are strongly implying that my recognizing that other people have different moralities than I do is the same as my saying that their moralities are just fine by me, and I am powerless to act. This is both untrue and unfair.

What is true is that I am aware of the possibility that my morality does not match that of the person that I am talking to, or even the majority of the people around me. In that case, appealing to the moral principle which I hold near and dear is not going to do any good. It does no good whether or not I happen to recognize that fact, but it is only when I recognize when that is happening that I can do anything about it.

What can I do about it? All that is certain is that it is pointless to vent my rage and frustration at people who will not agree. I might feel better for showing a little incoherent upset, but that is in. But often if I understand the other person's point of view I can find a way to convince them from what they believe. For instance a fundamentalist Christian may not directly accept that I have a right to not have Christianity shoved down my throat, but I might convince them that freedom of religion is good for religion, and then that freedom of religion needs to apply to me as well.

The recognition that they have different beliefs than I do is critical to my being able to figure out how to convince them. If you watch you will see lots of people who don't ever make that step. As a result they talk past each other because neither sees that a perfectly convincing argument isn't convincing because the other does not accept the premises.

Sometimes I can't convince them of what I want to convince them. In that case perhaps I can change my goal to one that is doable. For instance a good chunk of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights in particular lays out half-way goals, ones that nobody is really happy with, but lots of people of different beliefs can live with. For instance nobody really likes freedom of speech, oh you might like the principle, but it is easy to find applications of it that you don't appreciate. However lots of people can agree to live with freedom of speech, we accept when some use it in ways we hate so that it is there for us when we use it in ways that others don't like.

And no, I don't agree with all of the US Constitution. I accept it in the same way that I accept our legal system, as a flawed attempt to make things work out between people who don't see eye to eye. An attempt which for all its faults is the one that I can most easily get others to accept, and which I am most likely to be able to get enforced if need be.

And sometimes I simply can't find common ground. In that case I am not happy about it. But knowing when energy is wasted frees me to spend energy in more effective ways. Perhaps that means walking away. Perhaps it means attempting to take the situation into my own hands.

And finally to answer your question.

None of this in any way, shape, or form is a statement about what I think is right, fair, or what society is entitled to. It is about how I can use my recognition that people don't believe as I do to free myself to act as effectively as I can.

On morality. My personal belief is that most people are wired with the capacity for morality, and then aquire a sense of morality from some complex combination of genetics and environment. For me personally, where I got my morality from is neither here nor there. I have a sense of right and wrong, and my personal goal of acting in ways that I can feel satisfied with is best achieved by my acting in ways that I feel are right.

Cheers,
Ben

My belief is that people internally have systems of morality. This system doesn't always match what they say, or what they do, but when people see themselves acting in ways that don't match their internal morality, they feel emotions like guilt.

To me, therefore, moral behaviour means behaviour which I think is dictated by the internal sense of morality of the person acting. For instance I consider a lot of what Richard Stallman does to be moral behaviour, because it is motivated by his morality (or appears to be - read what he says) even if the issues involved don't match my sense of right and wrong. I don't consider similar choices on the part of Bob Young to be moral behaviour because his self-described morality is quite different. (He had at one point an excellent talk on why it was in Red Hat's marketing self-interest to act in ways that the FSF considered moral.)

By contrast "practical" means just that, courses of actions that might be indicated because they are doable and not necessarily for any other reason.

As for Polynesian cannibalism, I likewise cannot find any links to what I was thinking of online. My memory, however, is of a series of articles that I had to read once for a philosophy course, in it they described a Polynesian cult on a densely populated island which was highly promiscuous, and then killed the resulting infants as a form of birth control. As you might imagine, the appalling image stuck in my mind...

Cheers,
Ben