California had listed CO2 as a pollutant a while ago (exactly when eludes me, but it has been a few months, I believe), and this is perhaps the most asinine move the state has made in a long time. Thank God that Gray Davis never got his way - he tried to recategorize both CO2 and H2O as pollutants if they came out of a car - emissions are too low, and the state has to have something to regulate. If your party has to get the green vote, and we are doing well in environmental policies, you must create more and more extreme positions to define your politics. Silly, but it seems to be the way of the world - especially as politics is more and more a substitute for religion.
The really dumb thing about CO2 as a pollutant is this - it is a naturally occurring compound with no environmental effect (unlike say SO2 which is very clearly detrimental - naturally occurring as well, but not a part of our ordinary atmosphere, nor a part of the carbon cycle, for example). Despite best efforts on the part of a shrill movement, there is little to no proof that carbon dioxide is a cause of anthropogenic warming. I can go more into that at another time, but let us simply say that you believe in CO2 as an anthropogenic warming nightmare. This is still a horrible idea.
Case in point - cement is the leading single producer of CO2 worldwide. There are a number of cement plants in California. The reason it is so carbon intensive is that you have to coal fire silicates to get them to have cementatious properties (so all those cement block homes are an environmental disaster as well). Our plants run on the clean burning low-sulfur coal that the US has and so are very low on the pollution scale. They do produce a lot of carbon dioxide, however. They have been ordered to reduce the production of CO2 by 12%; California says it will cost a certain plant 20 million dollars, the plant says 250 million is a more realistic cost. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, but the plant would probably have to shut down because it could not absorb those kinds of costs. "Hurrah," says the environmentalist, "we have struck a blow for mother earth. Either they clean up or they shut down, either way the world is a bit better."
WRONG!!! Right now, because of high labor costs and manufacturing expense, we import 40% of our cement from Mexico and China who have much weaker to no environmental restrictions (carbon, sulfur, or anything else), so the plant would close or lose business because of the expense, and more cement would be shipped in from environmental nightmare countries. The net effect would be a worse impact on people and the world, but because it is not in my backyard and because I took the proper symbolic stance, that is what is important. So for a symbolic gesture that might be completely erroneous anyway, we damaged the economy, lost jobs, increased pollution, and increased CO2. If you actually think that the environment is a big issue, you should figure out how to keep more manufacturing in the states, not close down our businesses to favor polluters in other countries. So even if you buy the global warming hype, this is a horrendous idea. In fact it is especially egregious if you do, because the carbon used in shipping the cement here coupled with the less efficient plants in China and Mexico mean much more carbon pushed into the environment.
But our politicians would actually have to think rather than focus on reelection by a panic-stricken and green-rhetoric-loving electorate to actually assess this. Then they would actually have to educate the electorate, but they wouldn't want that because it might reduce the stranglehold they have on California politics. It is much more about personal power and elitism than it is about actually doing anything right - I wish that was cynical, but I don't think it is, because I do not think that this is any great insight, and most people could follow this logic if it was explained to them, just the few in charge are trying to keep the rest of us stupid, because that is the nature of democracy when people without principles are in charge. That is why Plato favored a republic - of course he experienced a democratic lynching of his mentor, so perhaps he was a bit biased.
And before you mention it, I know we are a representative republic, but we have many of the trappings of democracy, and lean further and further towards this precipice of tyranny of the masses every election. Okay, that may be cynical.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Thursday, April 23, 2009
James Joyce's "The Dead" (part 1 - from memory)
This story is, in my humble opinion, one of the finest short stories or novellas ever written. I am about to reread it one more time, both for the enjoyment, but also to write a sort of literary analysis of it. I will do a brief overview of it now, if anyone is interested.
The basic framework of the story is that the main character, a fellow named Gabriel, is going to a dinner party. Gabriel considers himself a well-educated man, and resents most of the people with whom he is forced to associate in this party. The fact that they are related to him chagrins him to no end, and a number of awkward situations ensue throughout the party. It is narrated in third person, with a limited omniscience - we are sometimes able to tell how Gabriel is thinking and feeling.
And this is part of the true brilliance and craftsmanship of this novella - the narrative distance. While technically third person, the distance of the narrator from the character of Gabriel gets fuzzy at times - deliberately so. As we, the readers, get closer in to what Gabriel feels and thinks, the narrator gets less and less reliable. In essence, as we start to think like Gabriel, the narrator is very close to being Gabriel's own internal monologue and loses any sense of objectivity that a third person narrator should have.
This is a striking point of interest for me in this work, as it lends itself to a depth of reading that is provocative and fascinating (and for those of you who know me, you know I love puzzles - and this is one of the finest puzzles ever written - you can uncover something new on each reading).
What we really have is Gabriel, a puffed up buffoon of a man who is most remarkable for his pathos, self-absorption, and high degree of esteem for himself while eschewing contact with people who are not on par with him. The real problem is that he is a pathetic fool, who is neither smart nor witty - he is essentially a bad English teacher. What I mean by this is that he is an idiot with an education, and he gains some sense of self-importance from that and lords it over other people. If you have ever had an English teacher who is not that smart but who believes that he is, that is Gabriel. In a way, it is Joyce's ultimate joke on us - he places as a main character a man who is embodies all of the worst qualities of an erudite person, without any of the scholarship to back it up. This ends up as a joke on us if we take the piece seriously but miss those bits of humor, or a joke for us, as we get to laugh a little bit at ourselves for taking anything like this so seriously, and we get to see where our own foibles might dovetail with Gabriel's.
All in all, I think Joyce crafted a piece where he could make fun of people who didn't understand him but claimed to, all the while giving those of us with a hint of what might be going on a little bit of a laugh. Of course, this is all my opinion, and I have no scholarly research to bear it out. I know a bit about Joyce, Ireland, history, and context of the work, but I mainly rely on interpretation of the text, so take this for what it is worth - one person's opinion on an interesting piece of literature.
And if you think, perhaps, that I am giving Joyce to much credit for painstaking craftsmanship of literature, lets not forget that this is the man who said of his masterwork, Ulysses, that "it took me ten years to write it, I do not see why it shouldn't take you ten years to read it". I don't know if that is the exact quote, but it is pretty darn close.
Anyway, just from what I remember, the setup for this character and his contempt for others is started very early. (Forgive me, I do not have the text with me, and it has been three years since my last read, so some of my quotes are probably a bit off. I will fix them in a later post, but these are still useful, because I do remember some very particular statements). Almost the first line (if not the first) that we hear from Gabriel sets us up to dislike him if we pay close enough attention. He and his wife are late for the party, this makes him very frustrated, and when he is greeted at the door, he says something to his aunt of his wife; "You know it takes my wife three mortal hours to get dressed."
This one sentence tells us so much about the relationship between Gabriel and his wife. He has nothing but contempt for her. It is easy to write this off as a surface statement of frustration - he is angry at being late, and expresses it to his hostess. But dig a little further and really read the implications here. He is badmouthing his wife to his relatives when she is right there with him. The use of the word "mortal" certainly was not for use in polite company - it would almost be the equivalent of swearing - as you enter an elegant dinner party. And look at the verb tense. He did not use past tense. He is not merely upset at one incident - in his mind, this is a pattern of behavior, and he is the victim of it - he has little to no regard for his wife, and clearly this is a typical response from him. Interestingly enough, she bears it with good natured aplomb, and mostly laughs it off, although she does have a barb or two in return. She mentions about Gabriel's insistence that she wear galoshes - nasty rubber things that she does not like - she is a country girl and grew up tromping around in Irish weather - galoshes are an affectation for city folk - Britons and repressed people who are not in touch with their roots. Gabriel's insistence that she wear them asserts both a sense of the controlling type of relationship that he has, and also speaks to a degree of sexual repression as well - the rubber galoshes are not so far removed from the rubber condoms of the time - and the sexual imagery here is not much of a stretch.
An that is just from a couple of lines on the first page. I could go on and on and on. There is a wonderful scene where Gabriel's wife is on the balcony and he does not recognize her immediately - she is transfigured by an epiphany which she is experiencing (this is a very classic interpretation - I somewhat agree with it, but I digress from much of popular opinion in other of my interpretations) and I think that Gabriel is just smart enough to recognize that his wife is experiencing something that he never can. But because he is the well-educated one and she is just an Irish peasant, he cannot abide this, and forces an epiphany on himself. This is one of the most brilliant written parts of the work, because it is so deliberately trite. Gabriel analytically goes through a process of a very generic epiphany - the kind that a bad English teacher would write. He is not even self-aware enough to understand what he is doing, he just does it out of jealousy of his wife. We are left with a horrible feeling - he is so pathetic and self-deluded that he is The Dead while his wife is growing and going to surpass him. They are all covered by snow, and many people erroneously interpret it as death - but snow is commonplace for the Irish - it is only death for the foolish - Gretta will clearly survive and blossom in the Spring, while Gabriel will die, or at least be paralyzed in an eternal rime from which there is no escape.
Anyway, that is just scratching the surface; I need to read it again and write a much more serious piece about it. More forthcoming :)
The basic framework of the story is that the main character, a fellow named Gabriel, is going to a dinner party. Gabriel considers himself a well-educated man, and resents most of the people with whom he is forced to associate in this party. The fact that they are related to him chagrins him to no end, and a number of awkward situations ensue throughout the party. It is narrated in third person, with a limited omniscience - we are sometimes able to tell how Gabriel is thinking and feeling.
And this is part of the true brilliance and craftsmanship of this novella - the narrative distance. While technically third person, the distance of the narrator from the character of Gabriel gets fuzzy at times - deliberately so. As we, the readers, get closer in to what Gabriel feels and thinks, the narrator gets less and less reliable. In essence, as we start to think like Gabriel, the narrator is very close to being Gabriel's own internal monologue and loses any sense of objectivity that a third person narrator should have.
This is a striking point of interest for me in this work, as it lends itself to a depth of reading that is provocative and fascinating (and for those of you who know me, you know I love puzzles - and this is one of the finest puzzles ever written - you can uncover something new on each reading).
What we really have is Gabriel, a puffed up buffoon of a man who is most remarkable for his pathos, self-absorption, and high degree of esteem for himself while eschewing contact with people who are not on par with him. The real problem is that he is a pathetic fool, who is neither smart nor witty - he is essentially a bad English teacher. What I mean by this is that he is an idiot with an education, and he gains some sense of self-importance from that and lords it over other people. If you have ever had an English teacher who is not that smart but who believes that he is, that is Gabriel. In a way, it is Joyce's ultimate joke on us - he places as a main character a man who is embodies all of the worst qualities of an erudite person, without any of the scholarship to back it up. This ends up as a joke on us if we take the piece seriously but miss those bits of humor, or a joke for us, as we get to laugh a little bit at ourselves for taking anything like this so seriously, and we get to see where our own foibles might dovetail with Gabriel's.
All in all, I think Joyce crafted a piece where he could make fun of people who didn't understand him but claimed to, all the while giving those of us with a hint of what might be going on a little bit of a laugh. Of course, this is all my opinion, and I have no scholarly research to bear it out. I know a bit about Joyce, Ireland, history, and context of the work, but I mainly rely on interpretation of the text, so take this for what it is worth - one person's opinion on an interesting piece of literature.
And if you think, perhaps, that I am giving Joyce to much credit for painstaking craftsmanship of literature, lets not forget that this is the man who said of his masterwork, Ulysses, that "it took me ten years to write it, I do not see why it shouldn't take you ten years to read it". I don't know if that is the exact quote, but it is pretty darn close.
Anyway, just from what I remember, the setup for this character and his contempt for others is started very early. (Forgive me, I do not have the text with me, and it has been three years since my last read, so some of my quotes are probably a bit off. I will fix them in a later post, but these are still useful, because I do remember some very particular statements). Almost the first line (if not the first) that we hear from Gabriel sets us up to dislike him if we pay close enough attention. He and his wife are late for the party, this makes him very frustrated, and when he is greeted at the door, he says something to his aunt of his wife; "You know it takes my wife three mortal hours to get dressed."
This one sentence tells us so much about the relationship between Gabriel and his wife. He has nothing but contempt for her. It is easy to write this off as a surface statement of frustration - he is angry at being late, and expresses it to his hostess. But dig a little further and really read the implications here. He is badmouthing his wife to his relatives when she is right there with him. The use of the word "mortal" certainly was not for use in polite company - it would almost be the equivalent of swearing - as you enter an elegant dinner party. And look at the verb tense. He did not use past tense. He is not merely upset at one incident - in his mind, this is a pattern of behavior, and he is the victim of it - he has little to no regard for his wife, and clearly this is a typical response from him. Interestingly enough, she bears it with good natured aplomb, and mostly laughs it off, although she does have a barb or two in return. She mentions about Gabriel's insistence that she wear galoshes - nasty rubber things that she does not like - she is a country girl and grew up tromping around in Irish weather - galoshes are an affectation for city folk - Britons and repressed people who are not in touch with their roots. Gabriel's insistence that she wear them asserts both a sense of the controlling type of relationship that he has, and also speaks to a degree of sexual repression as well - the rubber galoshes are not so far removed from the rubber condoms of the time - and the sexual imagery here is not much of a stretch.
An that is just from a couple of lines on the first page. I could go on and on and on. There is a wonderful scene where Gabriel's wife is on the balcony and he does not recognize her immediately - she is transfigured by an epiphany which she is experiencing (this is a very classic interpretation - I somewhat agree with it, but I digress from much of popular opinion in other of my interpretations) and I think that Gabriel is just smart enough to recognize that his wife is experiencing something that he never can. But because he is the well-educated one and she is just an Irish peasant, he cannot abide this, and forces an epiphany on himself. This is one of the most brilliant written parts of the work, because it is so deliberately trite. Gabriel analytically goes through a process of a very generic epiphany - the kind that a bad English teacher would write. He is not even self-aware enough to understand what he is doing, he just does it out of jealousy of his wife. We are left with a horrible feeling - he is so pathetic and self-deluded that he is The Dead while his wife is growing and going to surpass him. They are all covered by snow, and many people erroneously interpret it as death - but snow is commonplace for the Irish - it is only death for the foolish - Gretta will clearly survive and blossom in the Spring, while Gabriel will die, or at least be paralyzed in an eternal rime from which there is no escape.
Anyway, that is just scratching the surface; I need to read it again and write a much more serious piece about it. More forthcoming :)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
A Day Late, but not a buck short ...
Well, this little opinion is a day late, but I feel like I should write it down anyway. For those of you who care (and I believe that all of you should), yesterday, April 21, was Holocaust Remembrance Day. I don't know if my just mentioning this makes any difference at all, but it is really important that we keep this tragedy alive so that we can prevent anything like it from ever happening again.
And if you do not believe that it is possible for an evil like this to rise again, then you do not know human nature, or you consistently seek to deny it. Scapegoating is commonplace on the left and right politically, no one will ever blame themselves for their own inadequacies (GE), and so it is entirely possible that this level of crime against humanity could occur again.
I don't know who it might be against, but it has happened many times since the Holocaust, and it seems like we never learn. From Pol Pot, to Stalin's and Lenin's purges, to Sadam Hussein's near eradicationof the Kurds, to human rights abuses in Cuba, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, China, and all over the world. Yes we even have some here in America (but I believe that they pale in comparison to the rest of the world, and we work to try and stop them at home and abroad). This is one of the many reasons I bristle at people when they say that America acts too much the cop in the world and should mind its own business. There is a lot of evidence that America knew about much of the Holocaust before we went to war with Germany; we even denied entry into America to many Jewish refugees.
Had we "played the cop" a bit earlier, we might have spared the world a great part of one of the most monstrous evils ever committed, but we didn't. I think that human rights abuses do require us to take action - the more action we take, the less likely others are to follow suit with more abuses. All it takes is a few actions that show that we do not tolerate evil lightly, and others may start to fall into line because of fear of being acted against. This is why I will sometimes favor unilateral actions - if you know that something is wrong, should you wait for the rest of the world to get with the program, or should you do something about it when action is demanded.
I don't know if many of you remember the incident in the early eighties (I believe) where a woman was raped and killed in a courtyard where many people watched from their apartments above. No one took action, not even to call the police. All of them felt like someone else would do something. The same thing happens on the world stage, and millions of lives are crushed as a result. Sometimes we have to recognize that we have a duty to act.
I know that this seems like an extreme position, and many people might say, "How do you know that what you are doing is right?" This is a legitamite point, and can't be taken lightly - actions like these never can, but it is far better to take some risks than to risk consistent and depraved abuses against human rights. Others will say, "Who are we to act, when we have done so much wrong ourselves?" This is sophistry - merely acknowledging you have done wrong does not expiate your responsibility to act. If I admit to a mistake, and I know the mistake, that does not mean I cannot correct someone else. If we waited for perfection before tackling problems, no problems would ever get solved.
I know that I have wandered far afield, but I would like to conclude with this. There are very few Holocaust survivors left. We do not have much time to interact with firsthand observers of these atrocities. Help preserve their memories - if you know anyone, talk to them. This is not information that we can let die - trust me when I tell you that a firsthand source has much more power than you will ever encounter in a textbook. Every year there are fewer survivors around; soon there will be none, and we can't afford to let their experiences die with them. The phenomenon of Holocaust denial creeps a little closer with everyone who forgets; this view has an insidious way of worming its way into societies. 6 million Jews, 6 million other "undesirables" (including almost all European Gypsies) - people exterminated in the name of eugenics, "mercy killings", and other rationalizations; and we continue to give credence to those ideas, often dressed up or with substituted language to make them more palatable, but all coming down to that same reprehensible idea of "exterminating life not worthy of life".
Those are the words that I hear when I hear people making "quality of life" judgements on others, and I realize that we are closer to the brink than we might sometimes think. I hope that this is not too depressing, but just keep your eyes open and look around you, and be careful what you buy into - sometimes ideas can seem rational and reasonable but can actually contain a lot more...
And if you do not believe that it is possible for an evil like this to rise again, then you do not know human nature, or you consistently seek to deny it. Scapegoating is commonplace on the left and right politically, no one will ever blame themselves for their own inadequacies (GE), and so it is entirely possible that this level of crime against humanity could occur again.
I don't know who it might be against, but it has happened many times since the Holocaust, and it seems like we never learn. From Pol Pot, to Stalin's and Lenin's purges, to Sadam Hussein's near eradicationof the Kurds, to human rights abuses in Cuba, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, China, and all over the world. Yes we even have some here in America (but I believe that they pale in comparison to the rest of the world, and we work to try and stop them at home and abroad). This is one of the many reasons I bristle at people when they say that America acts too much the cop in the world and should mind its own business. There is a lot of evidence that America knew about much of the Holocaust before we went to war with Germany; we even denied entry into America to many Jewish refugees.
Had we "played the cop" a bit earlier, we might have spared the world a great part of one of the most monstrous evils ever committed, but we didn't. I think that human rights abuses do require us to take action - the more action we take, the less likely others are to follow suit with more abuses. All it takes is a few actions that show that we do not tolerate evil lightly, and others may start to fall into line because of fear of being acted against. This is why I will sometimes favor unilateral actions - if you know that something is wrong, should you wait for the rest of the world to get with the program, or should you do something about it when action is demanded.
I don't know if many of you remember the incident in the early eighties (I believe) where a woman was raped and killed in a courtyard where many people watched from their apartments above. No one took action, not even to call the police. All of them felt like someone else would do something. The same thing happens on the world stage, and millions of lives are crushed as a result. Sometimes we have to recognize that we have a duty to act.
I know that this seems like an extreme position, and many people might say, "How do you know that what you are doing is right?" This is a legitamite point, and can't be taken lightly - actions like these never can, but it is far better to take some risks than to risk consistent and depraved abuses against human rights. Others will say, "Who are we to act, when we have done so much wrong ourselves?" This is sophistry - merely acknowledging you have done wrong does not expiate your responsibility to act. If I admit to a mistake, and I know the mistake, that does not mean I cannot correct someone else. If we waited for perfection before tackling problems, no problems would ever get solved.
I know that I have wandered far afield, but I would like to conclude with this. There are very few Holocaust survivors left. We do not have much time to interact with firsthand observers of these atrocities. Help preserve their memories - if you know anyone, talk to them. This is not information that we can let die - trust me when I tell you that a firsthand source has much more power than you will ever encounter in a textbook. Every year there are fewer survivors around; soon there will be none, and we can't afford to let their experiences die with them. The phenomenon of Holocaust denial creeps a little closer with everyone who forgets; this view has an insidious way of worming its way into societies. 6 million Jews, 6 million other "undesirables" (including almost all European Gypsies) - people exterminated in the name of eugenics, "mercy killings", and other rationalizations; and we continue to give credence to those ideas, often dressed up or with substituted language to make them more palatable, but all coming down to that same reprehensible idea of "exterminating life not worthy of life".
Those are the words that I hear when I hear people making "quality of life" judgements on others, and I realize that we are closer to the brink than we might sometimes think. I hope that this is not too depressing, but just keep your eyes open and look around you, and be careful what you buy into - sometimes ideas can seem rational and reasonable but can actually contain a lot more...
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Rational Morality and the problems it generates...
I have had this discussion with a wide variety of people, but I suppose I am just going to throw some stuff out there, because I really want to write something to get in the habit, but I also really want to go to bed. Oh yeah, and sorry about the prolonged absence.
Many atheists make the claim that if we cannot construct a purely rational morality, then we do not deserve to exist as a species. That is, if we rely on the mythological/spiritual urge to undergird our sense of morality, we are selling ourselves short as a species. I have enumerated a few issues with this before, but I will now make an example of what it would be like to create morality from pure rationality - assuming that there is no soul, no spark of divinity, no creator - simply a random universe where a series of random events has lead to our creation and evolution.
Let us take a very simple moral principle; one should not kill other persons. Of course, one may argue that there are situations that arise that make the taking of a life necessary, but that does not make it good. Again, without splitting too many hairs, most moral theory has some sense of human life being important enough to preserve except in special cases (one might even use the word that human life is in some sense sacred, but we cannot use that in a purely rational argument).
So in the rational construction, we should look at a few different things - principally, what constitutes a person, and why is killing a person wrong. Assume that by person we mean human being - where does that lead us. What rationally is it that fundamentally distinguishes us from other animals. From a scientific perspective, the difference is genetics - 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. Of course, this means that anything with those chromosomes is human, anything else is not. Therefore a zygote should be preserved, but a person with Down's Syndrome might not qualify (Down's Syndrome is trisomy 13, I believe - that is an extra chromosome 13 due to chromosomal nondisjunction in the meiosis process). Of course, that is a distinction that is uncomfortable, so we should adjust it to having the 23 pairs that constitute homo sapien within deviations of normal chromosomal abnormalities. Still a very basic definition, that fits rationality very well, but it disrupts the whole pro-choice issue very badly.
A rational approach might not choose the scientific definition of humanity, even though it is the most hard and fast logical approach. The chromosomal issue forces someone who may want to be pro-choice into a pro-life stance, so most modern atheists would discard this and go for other ways of defining humanity. One big one is brain function/consciousness. The problem with this is that it gets very arbitrary. When does brain function start? We have certain medical devices that indicate levels of brain function, but what constitutes consciousness? If you stick with a very simple definition based on brain scans/brain activity, this justifies the abortion end, but could also justify destruction of significantly impaired adults. Again, this is not a big deal for many, but it may be a sticking point. The problem with the brain activity argument is that it is arbitrary. Since we cannot truly know (right now) what is going on inside a person's head, any threshold is arbitrary, which means that we could arbitrarily shift it up or down - I think below a certain level of intellect is "sub-human" therefore I could find a rational justification for defining "humanity" in that way. I could make a number of other examples, but the further away from the chromosomal distinction what gets, the muddier the waters get.
And all this is still defining "person" - and still not touching whether an animal can be a "person". If not, why not. There are tests that show that certain of the great apes have a number of different intellectual capabilities that put them on par with extremely developmentally disabled humans. But beyond that - if it is okay to kill an animal, what makes it not okay to kill a person? Of course, some may argue a distinction between animal and human, but this collapses with pure rationality, as there is nothing particularly special about us, we are just another link in an evolutionary chain. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a rational reason that killing is wrong. Try giving me one, and I bet I can come up with logical flaws.
Of course one might say that killing any animal is wrong, but provide a rational basis for that. What is special about life? Or, to put it more bluntly, is life sacred at all? There is no rational reason for it to be sacred - surely a random and disordered universe has no particular love of life - in fact, one might say that nature favors non-life over life given the abundance of non-living things as well as the tendency for living things to not remain so. But even attributing favorable status via nature verges on natural law arguments which presuppose some kind of deity (in my humble opinion).
Another major flaw with rational morality is the necessity of convincing the polity of its veracity. That is you must either convince enough people to buy into it, or you must have enough brute force to make people adhere to it. This either leads to tyranny or excessive plurality... an example that may chagrin one of my friends (I guess I'll call you the oregonian, since I don't know if supergoober dubbed you with a nickname. If he did, or if you want another one, just say the word and you can have it). The problem with tyranny is obvious, but rationally it is the most efficient system ever created for government - come up with a rationale for freedom, and perhaps we can get rid of tyranny. Of course, plurality could lead to the result that we saw here in California - convince enough people that something is wrong, pass a law, then it is wrong - that is where rationality gets you - and using enough sophistry to convince an ignorant mob, and your logical or rational morality doesn't even need to be sound, you just need to speak well - which is where we enter the realm of the Sophist, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, etc. Plurality is simply tyranny of the mob, and can easily turn a supposed democracy into tyranny very rapidly.
Rational morality always descends to one of two places - might makes right, or mob rule. Neither one is an acceptable solution for social difficulties, and try as you might I defy you to argue for those. Well, actually, they are very easy to argue for if you are truly committed to an atheist perspective. Most atheists do not like this so they actually have morality that either mirrors most conventional morality with pseudo logical rigor, or they just degenerate into agnosticism to cover up the gaps in rationality. The trap that most atheists fall into is that they think men and women will always act like they currently do, forgetting the centuries of moral structure that lead to where we all are today.
Does that mean all moral structure should remain rigid and unchanging? Of course not. That is the convenient thing about divinely inspired morality - as we become more sophisticated, we can come to terms with wrong acts in the past and reevaluate morality based on current interpretation of the so-called "natural law". To my mind this is why Voltaire went with the line, "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him."
Seriously, I know this is incomplete, but I am going to bed. If anyone wants to comment, feel free, but be really careful with your logic if you are going to argue this point from a truly atheist point of view. Ta-ta.
Many atheists make the claim that if we cannot construct a purely rational morality, then we do not deserve to exist as a species. That is, if we rely on the mythological/spiritual urge to undergird our sense of morality, we are selling ourselves short as a species. I have enumerated a few issues with this before, but I will now make an example of what it would be like to create morality from pure rationality - assuming that there is no soul, no spark of divinity, no creator - simply a random universe where a series of random events has lead to our creation and evolution.
Let us take a very simple moral principle; one should not kill other persons. Of course, one may argue that there are situations that arise that make the taking of a life necessary, but that does not make it good. Again, without splitting too many hairs, most moral theory has some sense of human life being important enough to preserve except in special cases (one might even use the word that human life is in some sense sacred, but we cannot use that in a purely rational argument).
So in the rational construction, we should look at a few different things - principally, what constitutes a person, and why is killing a person wrong. Assume that by person we mean human being - where does that lead us. What rationally is it that fundamentally distinguishes us from other animals. From a scientific perspective, the difference is genetics - 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. Of course, this means that anything with those chromosomes is human, anything else is not. Therefore a zygote should be preserved, but a person with Down's Syndrome might not qualify (Down's Syndrome is trisomy 13, I believe - that is an extra chromosome 13 due to chromosomal nondisjunction in the meiosis process). Of course, that is a distinction that is uncomfortable, so we should adjust it to having the 23 pairs that constitute homo sapien within deviations of normal chromosomal abnormalities. Still a very basic definition, that fits rationality very well, but it disrupts the whole pro-choice issue very badly.
A rational approach might not choose the scientific definition of humanity, even though it is the most hard and fast logical approach. The chromosomal issue forces someone who may want to be pro-choice into a pro-life stance, so most modern atheists would discard this and go for other ways of defining humanity. One big one is brain function/consciousness. The problem with this is that it gets very arbitrary. When does brain function start? We have certain medical devices that indicate levels of brain function, but what constitutes consciousness? If you stick with a very simple definition based on brain scans/brain activity, this justifies the abortion end, but could also justify destruction of significantly impaired adults. Again, this is not a big deal for many, but it may be a sticking point. The problem with the brain activity argument is that it is arbitrary. Since we cannot truly know (right now) what is going on inside a person's head, any threshold is arbitrary, which means that we could arbitrarily shift it up or down - I think below a certain level of intellect is "sub-human" therefore I could find a rational justification for defining "humanity" in that way. I could make a number of other examples, but the further away from the chromosomal distinction what gets, the muddier the waters get.
And all this is still defining "person" - and still not touching whether an animal can be a "person". If not, why not. There are tests that show that certain of the great apes have a number of different intellectual capabilities that put them on par with extremely developmentally disabled humans. But beyond that - if it is okay to kill an animal, what makes it not okay to kill a person? Of course, some may argue a distinction between animal and human, but this collapses with pure rationality, as there is nothing particularly special about us, we are just another link in an evolutionary chain. In fact, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a rational reason that killing is wrong. Try giving me one, and I bet I can come up with logical flaws.
Of course one might say that killing any animal is wrong, but provide a rational basis for that. What is special about life? Or, to put it more bluntly, is life sacred at all? There is no rational reason for it to be sacred - surely a random and disordered universe has no particular love of life - in fact, one might say that nature favors non-life over life given the abundance of non-living things as well as the tendency for living things to not remain so. But even attributing favorable status via nature verges on natural law arguments which presuppose some kind of deity (in my humble opinion).
Another major flaw with rational morality is the necessity of convincing the polity of its veracity. That is you must either convince enough people to buy into it, or you must have enough brute force to make people adhere to it. This either leads to tyranny or excessive plurality... an example that may chagrin one of my friends (I guess I'll call you the oregonian, since I don't know if supergoober dubbed you with a nickname. If he did, or if you want another one, just say the word and you can have it). The problem with tyranny is obvious, but rationally it is the most efficient system ever created for government - come up with a rationale for freedom, and perhaps we can get rid of tyranny. Of course, plurality could lead to the result that we saw here in California - convince enough people that something is wrong, pass a law, then it is wrong - that is where rationality gets you - and using enough sophistry to convince an ignorant mob, and your logical or rational morality doesn't even need to be sound, you just need to speak well - which is where we enter the realm of the Sophist, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, etc. Plurality is simply tyranny of the mob, and can easily turn a supposed democracy into tyranny very rapidly.
Rational morality always descends to one of two places - might makes right, or mob rule. Neither one is an acceptable solution for social difficulties, and try as you might I defy you to argue for those. Well, actually, they are very easy to argue for if you are truly committed to an atheist perspective. Most atheists do not like this so they actually have morality that either mirrors most conventional morality with pseudo logical rigor, or they just degenerate into agnosticism to cover up the gaps in rationality. The trap that most atheists fall into is that they think men and women will always act like they currently do, forgetting the centuries of moral structure that lead to where we all are today.
Does that mean all moral structure should remain rigid and unchanging? Of course not. That is the convenient thing about divinely inspired morality - as we become more sophisticated, we can come to terms with wrong acts in the past and reevaluate morality based on current interpretation of the so-called "natural law". To my mind this is why Voltaire went with the line, "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary for us to invent him."
Seriously, I know this is incomplete, but I am going to bed. If anyone wants to comment, feel free, but be really careful with your logic if you are going to argue this point from a truly atheist point of view. Ta-ta.
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