I can’t tell quite what you think you’re saying because “worse” and “morality” are such overloaded terms that the context doesn’t disambiguate well.
Seems to me like people calling it “evil” or “awful” are taking an adversarial frame where good vs evil is roughly orthogonal to strong vs weak, and classifying the crime as an impressive evil-aligned act that increases the prestige of evil, while people calling it disgusting are taking a mental-health frame where the crime is disordered behavior that doesn’t help the criminal. Which one is a more helpful or true perspective depends on what the crime is! I expect people who are disgusted to be less tempted to cooperate with the criminal or scapegoat a rando than people who are awed.
I think “awful” in its modern meaning is also compatible with a mental health frame. (But maybe I’m wrong because I’m ESL.) The distinction I see is that the person who thinks it’s awful might have in mind that assisting the criminal with fixing their life would stop them from doing further crimes, while the person who thinks it’s disgusting is first and foremost focused on avoiding the criminal.
I can’t tell quite what you think you’re saying because “worse” and “morality” are such overloaded terms that the context doesn’t disambiguate well.
Seems to me like people calling it “evil” or “awful” are taking an adversarial frame where good vs evil is roughly orthogonal to strong vs weak, and classifying the crime as an impressive evil-aligned act that increases the prestige of evil, while people calling it disgusting are taking a mental-health frame where the crime is disordered behavior that doesn’t help the criminal. Which one is a more helpful or true perspective depends on what the crime is! I expect people who are disgusted to be less tempted to cooperate with the criminal or scapegoat a rando than people who are awed.
I think “awful” in its modern meaning is also compatible with a mental health frame. (But maybe I’m wrong because I’m ESL.) The distinction I see is that the person who thinks it’s awful might have in mind that assisting the criminal with fixing their life would stop them from doing further crimes, while the person who thinks it’s disgusting is first and foremost focused on avoiding the criminal.