The Philosophy
The Nahua’s maintain a community-based morality, where if one’s actions are rooted the community, those actions are perceived as good. Although Purcell (“Eudaimonia and Neltiliztli: Aristotle and the Aztecs on the Good Life“, 2017) never defined what a community to the Nahuas is, it seems that people must satisfactorily serve their social roles in order to be good.
“If one looks to [the Nahua’s] analysis of good and bad performance of social roles, one sees that they justify assessment by appealing to a harm or help rendered”
Purcell 2017: 15
In the Nahuas’ eyes, every person in a community has social roles that they must participate in, and the effect of a social role on other people is the measurement of its goodness or badness. So, if a person feels helped by another community member, it is perceived as a good fulfillment of a social role, while if a person feels harmed by another’s actions, this is a bad fulfillment of a social role.
Girlfriend vs. Parents
tl;dr: Do you often find yourself having to choose between your parents’ wishes and your partner’s? Tom (not real name) struggles with these things too, here is his dilemma: Tom brings over his British girlfriend for dinner, but his parents act minorly hostile during dinner and promptly rush her out of the house following the completion of the meal. When Tom talks to his parents, they only yell at him that he should not be dating her because she is a whore, tell him to break up with her, and make it clear that she is no longer welcome in their home. So, Tom must decide if he should try to make his parents accept her, or if he should just drop the matter and never bring her over again.
Based on the morality system of the Nahuas, our group decided that, while the parents need to adjust their actions, Tom should attempt to balance the worlds of being a good boyfriend and being a good son. Tom has a social obligation to both his girlfriend and his parents, so he must try to please both. Breaking up with his girlfriend would result in a bad social role fulfillment because it causes harm, while at the same time bringing the girlfriend over more often would represent a bad social role fulfillment with the parents because she is unpleasant to them. So, Tom should attempt to maintain his relationship with his girlfriend while also subtly seeking to have his parents warm up to her. While this could cause minor disappointments in both the parents and girlfriend, this harm is less than it would be if either of the other extremes (breaking up / forcing them to get to know her) were acted upon.
Fiance vs. Family
tl;dr: Have your friends ever blamed you for their marriage? If they have, this post is for you! Meet a girl (the protagonist) whose family adamantly believes in arranged marriages. The protagonist is engaged to her fiancé, whom she chose, and knows her family would hate her and be hostile to her fiancé if she were to tell them. So, she acts like she is having an arranged marriage to assuage her family. Her uncle is perhaps the most adamant about arranged marriages, and he forces his daughter into one, telling her that the protagonist is also in an arranged marriage. But, as the protagonist and her fiancé are not in an arranged marriage, she ends up telling her cousin the truth after she is married. The cousin was so mad that the protagonist was not in an arranged marriage that she refuses to talk to her and blames her for her own arranged marriage, claiming that if she had known that her cousin had chosen her husband, she would have rebelled against her uncle’s wishes and not gotten married. So, the protagonist feels horrible and does not know what to do about her cousin who is unhappily in an arranged marriage.
Applying the Nahua’s morality to this situation, it becomes clear that the girl should dump her chosen fiancé and align with her family’s wishes of arranged marriage. The girl has already performed badly in her social roles, and if she tries to maintain the lie that her fiancé is arranged, she will only hurt more people around her. Both her uncle and her cousin are harmed by her decision to not be in an arranged marriage, and once the secret gets out, her whole family will be outraged. She must try to please her family because they are her community and the majority of her social roles are with them. Therefore, she should dump her boyfriend and tell her family that she wishes to have an arranged marriage.