Life in Moo Town
Concerning Matters Moral
As I biked home from Shields library where I spent the afternoon reading the works of Salman Rushdie and commentaries on them, I took a few minutes to ponder the problem of morality again. The conclusion I reached was that Kant was right to a large extent. By this I mean that an individual's goodness or evilness is dependent upon the said individual's intentions. It is hard to label a well meaning fool as evil if he/she has good intentions but manages to cause great harm. The deed may be evil, but the label doesn't really transfer to the agent. The connection between these thoughts and reading Rushdie may not be readily apparent to those who aren't sickeningly familiar with my my convoluted brain so I'll try to fill some gaps. Rushdie was extremely left-leaning and as a polemic he attacked Islam and the West as well as just about everything else (except the Sandinistas but that's irrelevant here). This got me wondering who is really right and how we can trust a government (any government) when it seems that a government's interests nearly always run counter to those of the governed. The end I arrived at was that governments as entire entities may bring about goods or evils for their citizens and the world but they don't have any real moral character in and of themselves, the moral agents are the politicians. Good politicians would be those who have the interests of their constituents and any others they may affect in mind while bad politicians are those who hold office for selfish benefit. Of course, the morality of a politician is far from the only consideration when deciding who to elect because morally upstanding individuals can ruin a country and morally bankrupt villains can on occasion be saviours. (Examples include Carter and...I won't fill in the other blank to save my hide). The bottom line as I saw it biking along on this beautiful summer afternoon was that John Stuart Mill's conception of utilitarianism fails to take into account the beliefs that a moral agent holds and the agent's integrity to these beliefs or values, and for this reason seems to have a serious lacking. The relative moral values of different beliefs may be addressed by utilitarianism, but one must really stretch to tie some necessity for adhering to good values or any other sort of integrity into the theory.
Disclaimer: This small entry does not represent my entire thought process, which only took as long as the distance between Briggs Hall and La Rue by bike (about 1-2 minutes). I may decide in the near future on further introspection that I was utterly mistaken in my analysis. Good Day.
A "Normal" Journal Entry
This is a request from one of my loyal readers. The reader in question wanted me to put up a "normal" journal entry. I would have thought it apparent from all my previous posts that "normal" is outside my repertoire but I'll give it a shot.
I woke up this morning to my roomate banging on the door. He was insistent so I took him to the gym. First I got dressed, washed my face, and drank a glass of orange juice. When I got back from the ARC I took a shower and shaved (I'd been getting shaggy). I dealt with some email and then made a malt/peanut butter/chocolate smoothie. I attempted to swipe the rest of the leftover chinese food from the fridge without being detected by my roomate but he caught me. A short fight over the food then ensued and I was forced to concede three morsels of sweet and sour chicken in the end to resolve the conflict. It was a small price to pay, a mere token. His victory was pyrrhic but i digress. I then proceeded to trounce my aforementioned roomate at worms (the computer game) for a couple hours. Then I helped a neighbor move some boxes and ran into another neighbor who was having a luao and invited me in. I'm not one to turn down a luao invitation so I went and had fun and this is a really boring entry and I just can't take it anymore so I'm going to stop.
Creationism Rears its Ugly Head
If you read the Ergo Sum you'll notice that the last article advocates simple creationism. The article was ironically enough written by a student who, like myself, is a double major in NPB and Philosophy. The student's argument is basically that while evolution works, the original structures that evolution has been improving must have been created intentionally by an intelligent being. There are myriad flaws in the argument that I'd rather not go into here (because I have a real paper to write for a grade and I don't have the time to write two papers today) but one point I will address is the claim that evolution passes on only useful traits. This may or may not be true depending on how you define evolution, but what is not true is that everything passed on from generation to generation is useful. Handicaps are occasionally passed on genetically, even for multiple generations, though they have absolutely no selective advantage. The same could have happened to flagella or eye precursor structures. Unless there is a strong selective pressure, it may take many generations for a useless characteristic to be winnowed out. This provides ample time for additional mutations to change the otherwise useless structure into something functional, vis a vis a means of locomotion or vision. Random mutation is quite capable of explaining the modification of organisms over time and selection's power should not be underestimated. A mouse bred selectively for large size could theoretically produce decendents the size of elephants within a milenium. That's a sobering thought for those who see a necessity for intelligent design or creationism.
Odd Feeling
So I was biking to Rite Aid this morning to pick up some pictures they developed for the JSU and I realized something didn't feel right. The sun was shining. There was a cool pleasant breeze. I just found out I got two articles published in the Ergo Sum. There were no more JSU events for the year. Yup. There it was. The feeling was happiness. Not the sort of jump for joy elation that comes after winning a big football game or anything like that. Just a sort of placid, soothing contentment. Maybe there's hope for me yet.
Anywayz, since I have all this free advertising space...go get a copy of the Ergo Sum Journal of Bioethics and Philosophy of Science. AS Papers is distributing it around various boxes on campus. There are two articles in it that I wrote, "Why the Supreme Court Should Uphold the Ban on Physician Assisted Suicide," and, "On the Issue of Human Essence." Neither paper was one I'd consider my best, they were just the ones that the Ergo Sum staff wanted. They were written a couple years ago and my position has changed somewhat since so feel free to argue the issues with me if you want. Also blame the editors for the typos, I checked and they weren't in the originals I sent them ;-)
Thoughts on Retirement
I'm very glad to be done with the last JSU event of the year. It really wasn't my job to deal with the JSU BBQ anyway, but for some reason I still felt obligated. I guess it's just force of habbit. Hard to believe it's been a whole year since I first took office. I guess moving away to NY will be a good thing insofar as I won't feel a nagging guilt when I'm not spending every waking minute doing something with Hillel or JSU. On the other hand I'll miss the power I used to wield as the mighty JSU president. Oh wait, that was in my dreams :-P
Seriously though, I'll miss knowing everybody and being known by everybody. It was a nice feeling for a while. I hope at least for this one year the JSU board didn't seem cliquey and unapproachable. It seems that's the usual trend around Davis Hillel and if I broke the tradition for even one year I'll consider it a year well spent. Eh, who am I kidding? I'm sure there were people who felt left out. Such is life I suppose. This is just my feeble attempt at convincing the world I tried I guess.
On a related note, having now gone from having no life, to having a life, to giving up the life again, I've determined having a life is a superior state of affairs. I gave up all my weekends for JSU stuff this year instead of the cozy little get togethers and dinners I grew so fond of last year. I think I probably did more for the community last year than this year in spite of the presidency. Ok. I learned my lesson. But now what? I have to figure out how to get my life back again. And I've made quite a mess of it over the last year. Oh well. Maybe I'll get things straightened out this summer. Or maybe I'll die in a car accident like one of my friends dreamed would happen. That would be quite a miracle though since my car doesn't even run right now. I'm going to definitely miss all the people *sigh*.
By the way, I've gone totally senile. I got a phone call a few minutes ago and by the end (it was a 2 min call) I forgot why I'd been called.
I wonder if I should take down my blog. It's having an ill-effect on certain freshman lives. Of course I'm also a bad influence in general, so hiding myself away in a basement might be more effective at rectifying the situation, but one can only do so much. Since ignorance is bliss I really don't know that I'm doing anyone a favor by spewing this garbage onto the internet. Maybe I should just keep a diary. Then no one, myself included, will ever have to bother reading this junk. To quote a prominent figure in the neighborhood, "eh". By the way (and this is directed at the afforementioned figure in particular and all readers in general), I don't use anyone's specific name on my blog or write in depth about people because I'm not trying to run a gossip column. People get hurt that way. I'll see if I can think of a way around it.
Introspection leads me to believe that a simple life of peace would gratify me far more than the accolades of high achievement, the adoration of the masses. Yet I don't believe I can allow the world to continue on a faulty course when it lies within my power to correct it. Yet another reason happiness will continue to elude me. And don't mistake it for altruism. Altruism is an illusion.
While I don't believe in altruism, it is in society's best interest to honor the achievements of those who appear to be acting for the good of the community (though in reality the deeds are done for selfish personal glory). Honoring service to the community encourages others to pursue a similar course, thereby benefitting society further. It also provides the glory that was originally sought (perhaps, I'm still not convinced such desires may be slaked so easily) reinforcing the positive behavior. An honorable sham.
