Given that sort of a conflict can occur, exactly where does this moral obligation stem from?
that's somewhere between loyalty and patronage. A moral obligation is to speak the truth, regardless if someone treated you well or not.
Have loyalty for individuals, and sometimes even teams, but never ever ever ever feel loyalty for a corporation.
>Have loyalty for individuals, and sometimes even teams, but never ever ever ever feel loyalty for a corporation.
That's exactly what an individual would say!
Is it OK to feel loyalty for a nation, then? Considering membership in one is involuntary - and that corporations don't, as a rule, exercise a monopoly on violence against their employees?
>Corporations are not people [...] from a "conscious being" perspective.
>If it helped you in some way, it wasn't intentionally; it just happened that its own interests overlapped with your own for a blip in time.
That depends on your perspective on consciousness and intentionality. I understand that the subject is not open to debate for the majority of individuals here, so I won't bore you with elaborations.
Suffice to say, if you weren't aware of the varying opinions on those, you could start by googling the "Chinese brain" thought experiment.
>But the nanosecond that its interests run contrary to yours, it will swiftly trample you into the ground and will be incapable of feeling sorry about it.
This can be said for sufficiently many individuals that we have a designation for them: psychopaths.
When an individual acts like this, we go out of our way to reproach them. When a corporation does this, it's normal value maximization. A double standard, maybe?
Moreover, humans have kept their place on top of the food pyramid for so long because corporations didn't have nanosecond-scale temporal resolution. However, thanks to the IT community's efforts, this is subject to change.
Einstein had some rather famous words on the topic in (his 1931 essay, Mein Weltbild)[https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/37851/did-einst...]:
> “He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
Einstein's political and social views evolved throughout his life, something he had in common with many highly intelligent people. As a result, it is possible to quote-mine Einstein to back up almost any point you care to make. This is a perfect example.
Yes, and the people who do so tend to presume just that.
But if you're being honest about the man and his legacy, I think one should probably stick with his latter-life views.
Sure. But my point is that the quote in question was from 1931, only one year before he was forced to flee Germany with a price on his head. Einstein found that while it was easy enough to dismiss national loyalty as an unpleasant artifact of the past, national governments weren't willing to dismiss racism and prejudice in the bargain. Once he understood that whoever got the Bomb first was going to win the war, it was necessary for him to pick a side, and he did just that.
After the war was won by the good guys, there was plenty of time for second-guessing and self-flagellation, and he did his share of that, too. He had the luxury of pacifism in 1951 just as he did in 1931.
...insofar as gratitude and goodwill are interchangeable. Hmm, I wonder what the exchange-rate is...
Weirdly, I do feel some sense of loyalty to some companies and brands - usually stemming from a positive childhood experience. This extends to my first employer: Microsoft. Even though I haven’t worked there for 5 years I still feel as though I owe them for launching my career (making connections, great resume material, etc) and because (all things considered) I think they treated me right - that’s got to be worth something, surely?