ethical relativism

"but that is just an excuse for ethical relativism!"

i have heard that phrase, and variations there of, a million times since i first became interested in philosophy. it never ceases to amaze me.

first of all, the word "excuse." the phrase is unceasingly used in response to something that does indeed suggest the relativity of morals. why it is an excuse is not at all clear. it seems like saying that the fact that my children need an education, is just an excuse to send them to school. come again? it isn't an excuse, it is a reason, and a valid one at that. it is also reality. just a thought, but if these people are hungry, isn't that just an excuse to eat?

then there is the issue of ethical relativism. there is a particular section of the population that sees this an evil, a wrong, a terrible misleading leftist communist plot. this is the kind of thing that will rot your teeth, give you bad posture, make you blind if you stay up thinking about it, and make the country lose the war. it will infest your being and rot your soul and send you to hell. their hell, not mine. i don't have a hell, so i guess it is all relative.

lets look at that a second. there are two contrasting views at work here. one view is that there is a universal set of values, and collection of ethics that nobody can deny, that we can discover, the way that we discover a new planet, or a great place to eat, that is to say you just look around, and if you look hard enough, there they are! the overwhelming majority of people who buy into this way of thinking are religious. and by some coincidence, their particular invisible man has already told his believers the truth! in fact, generally, the rules are created by their god. these are the people that argue that if people didn't believe in god, there would be no morals.

the second view is that people make up rules, and that they always have. plain and simple.

so how is your history? how is your knowledge of religion? if you look back on the history of religion, and how it relates to morals, there is one thing you can find, with very little effort. they change.

oh many people claim that ethical values are laid out by a god or gods, but if so, it would seem these gods are indecisive. the rules keep changing. why is that? is it because the already existing and unchanging rules of conduct that define a moral person can change? why no they can't (we are told) can they? so what happens? perhaps we misunderstood, and the new rules are the real rules? reflects poorly on god, doesn't it? can't even get his own rules right?

so what is really happening? simple, people change the rules, and then they change god to allow their new system to have authority. how convenient.

but ethical relativism is bad and we need excuses for it.

got that?

good.

the real issue, to me at least, is simply people who are cowards. some people have the conviction of themselves, rather than their beliefs.

i know that i am not always right. i know that i am not always correct. i know that i am as able to be misled, confused, bewildered, and lost as anyone. but i also know that if i keep working at it, i can arrive at the answer. the key is to keep looking at the assumptions, and to never accept an answer as final (sorry "who wants to be a millionaire fans) no matter how good it may seem at any given time.

but other people don't have the courage to believe in themselves. no, it is far too easy to put their belief in a father figure, and let the work, the thinking, and the responsibility be someone else's. it is simply a matter of cowardly people with lazy attitudes. that simple.

now the danger is that people will assume that all people who have religious beliefs are lazy cowards. ah but that is not what said. look again.

Galileo said, "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."

Jefferson said, "Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear."

religion is not the determining factor. failing to think about it is. blind acceptance is not belief, it is not faith, it is not intelligent, and most of all, it is not right.

"the most powerful person on earth"

here is an odd idea from a TV show. just a fast thought.

my wife watches "commander in chief" and i watched it with her the other night. in it, Geena Davis comments at the end of the show about the thrill of being the most powerful person in the world.

...the thing is, during that episode, her character does everything in her power to de-escalate a conflict. there is a radical idea. the thrill of power combined with the desire to not use that power, but to involve all parties and allow consensus.

it is only a TV show, and only a character, and only a writers idea. but i would still like to see it in the real world. i would like to see what i think of (the taoist in me sees it this way) as a more feminine approach to power. let me say that i don't phrase it so because i think that all women would take that path, or because i think men won't, only that in the taoist framework i am comfortable with it would be seen as "feminine" as opposed to a "masculine" view stating that "power should be used to force others to your view point." the actual gender of the person is not important, the attitude is.

Why We Fight

i just watched an interview with Eugene Jarecki about his film "Why We Fight." have to say that i am looking forward to seeing it...

the official site is at sonyclassics and flash is needed.

the film is reportedly inspired by Eisenhower's farewell speech, and is intended to look at the way in which the industry of war influences american life. i haven't looked into it deeply yet.

so why am i looking forward to seeing it?

there is a quote in the tao te ching, verse 46 i think, that basically says "when a country has the tao, horses haul fertilizer in the fields. when a nation loses the way, horses carry soldiers beyond the city walls."

when we look at the things our country acts upon, and cares about, it is clear that the war horses are marching beyond the walls. we spend more on our war machine that the rest of the world combined. we cut funding for schools. we do away with food stamps, and buy bombers worth several billion dollars each. we lose scientific, support, teaching, programing, production, creation, invention... hell every type of job, millions a day, to other countries. but we have a shit load of bombers. we can't rebuild our towns when a disaster strikes, can't fix our schools, can't build a better car, or fridge, or TV, or computer, or VCR. but you know what we can do? we can bomb the shit outta your country!

we struggle with health care. we struggle with medicine. we struggle with equality. we struggle with education. and as much as people like to scream about class warfare, we have gone past that, to engage in class occupation and terrorism.

but we got nukes.

someone once told me that you could see what was important in a city by looking at the skyline. that once in america the church in a town was the most prominent object on the skyline, but today it will be a skyscraper with a company name on it. i am not sure about that. i wonder, what percentage of Americans work for a defense related company? how directly? i foresee a new version of the six degrees of separation game. or the four degrees. two?

how large can a system like that become before it controls the ecosystem it arose from? if we looked at a small town, totally dominated by a single large employer, we would no doubt find numerous problems. this has been done many times. looks at the steel and coal industry for example. yet it seems we have a single industry of comparable size and influence, but over an entire nation. why do we not see the risk?

i can't help but think of the USSR, and their never ending military budget. their attempts to bury America. the way in which they neglected the internal structure of their nation for an external protection. and here we are walking in their footsteps.

if the primary economic power in a nation is the military, what happens if the military fails?

so we can't let it fail then, can we. instead we keep using it. we keep starting wars. we are the primary cause of instability in the world. we are the axis of war. we have to be, our lively hood is built on it.

how long do we think this can last?

[edit] i owe this one to Sue on the walden list. if ever a picture was worth a thousand words...

common dreams page

what do you think, are we into building up our nation from the inside out? or are we interested in warfare? all the above page needs is a few pictures showing the armed forces budget for each nation.

age

i am old.

seriously, i am not, but i FEEL old.

i have just finished my first day back at the UNiversity of Utah, my original college. i have been away for 12 years. i took my time when i was there the first little while too. now, i am old. in a relative sort of way.

i sat down in a philosophy of existentialism class today, looked around, and realized that aside from the professor, i was the only one who could legally drink.

and that, my friends, makes you relatively old. which is to say, old, in a relative way.

or, to look at it another way, some of the students in that class where in kindergarden when i was teaching kindergarden.

at least it will be a few years before i am in classes with people young enough to be my own children.

...but not many.

silence

"why are you so petrified of silence?
here, can you handle this?....................................."
-Alanis Morrisette

a few weeks ago i got a revery. a break. a slight pause on the remote of life.

i had the house to myself. no wife. no kids. the cats had stopped chasing each other and where napping. it started to snow.

i packed myself into a coat and went out into the backyard and sat down. being december, and the height of the capitalism season, it seems that everyone was out and away from their homes. it was silent. very silent. i sat for almost 50 minutes listening to the sound of snowflakes landing on the grass, and in time, on snow.

to me, it was heaven. i didn't just sit, i completely emptied my head, did a little zazen, and enjoyed the silence. both inside and out. i find silence to be the most enjoyable, restful, and fulfilling times in my life. and by silence i mean both inside and out, though more inside than out.

i have come to recognize that this makes me a bit odd to many people. so many people seem to be frightened of silence.

now by this i don't mean that if you walk up to someone and ask them, out of the blue, "what scares you?" that they will turn to you, think a moment, and with fear in their eyes pass up on things like "spiders," or "drowning," or things like that, and say to you, in a shaking voice, "silence!" no, i mean that we show it by our actions.

a great deal of what we do seems to be an attempt to fill up silence, or stillness. how often to ask someone what they are watching on television, and they say that what they are watching isn't any good? so why are they watching it? how often, presented with a chance to do nothing, to rest, to grab a peaceful moment, do we find something to do? how often do we look for things to say to people, in the quiet spaces in life, not because we need to communicate those things, but because we are trying to fill up the silence?

why are we so petrified of silence?

what are we afraid will sneak into our lives if we don't fill it up?

if you think about it, i bet you know someone, likely more than one, who just can't take a moment of silence. someone who will say something, ANYTHING, to just hear the sound of a voice. someone who will turn on the radio if the silence lasts more than 5 seconds, someone who will do anything to avoid a little peace and quiet.

i know someone like that. i am related to someone like that. i will avoid the name, but i still do indeed know them. well.

i am talking about people so scared of a little quiet that they will turn on the TV, the radio AND have a conversation. all at once. all the time. never, ever is a moment allowed be unfilled. noise is what they crave. and the noise never really means anything.

there is a somewhat sarcastic comment made, from time to time, about the "signal to noise" ratio in various parts of daily life. i think it comes from both information theory and radio work. signal refers to the information content, the "important stuff" you might say, while noise simple refers to anything that blocks out the signal, and keeps you from hearing it. i have a sneaking suspicion that the average signal to noise ratio is going down, way down, in the average life. we are doing it to ourselves. on purpose. but why?

well, that is where i get all mystical on you all. i think that when you are silent, what you are really doing is giving your sub-conscious, your right brain, your connection to the collective unconscious, your line to the goddess, your what ever you want to call it, a chance to take over. you are, i think, tapping into a "larger truth." not necessarily because it is a more important truth, though it may be, but because it is a "big picture" kind of truth. a thing happening bit by bit, little by little, building up. the kind of thing that we simply don't notice in our daily lives, in the hustle of life.

but something we notice when we stop, and are quiet. when we listen. when we take the time to silence the laser like fine point part of brain, and let the wider lens of the other part of our minds to tell us what it has pieced together.

and the big picture is not all that rosy.

it is easier, far easier, to make small talk about "that show on the tube last night, did you see it? you know the one!" than to think about the bigger questions, about the meaning of life type of issues. about questions of existence, morality, justice, faith, belief, and truth. there is something in each of us that makes it easier to watch the ripples across the waters surface, than to let the water grow calm, and gaze into the depths, and think about who we really are, what we are really doing, where we are really going. the shallow issues, the surface ripples are so much easier to face. we know that they will be gone in a moment, and that they where of little import. but deeper matters... well, that matters, doesn't it.

...and what if we don't like what we see in the silence?