Livin' It Right
Two quickies. If this is stilted, bear in mind it's going on 2:30am and I don't have Ben's insomnia to help me.
When geeks chat:
On the other hand, something does seem good and right about loyalty to a worthy cause or person. Loyalty, in my thinking, implies something beyond normal service. Of course you'll do your job; loyalty comes in when you are called on to cover for someone, to stretch the bounds of ethics, or at least to act in an unusually selfless way. Other than soldiers who have each other's backs in combat, I can't bring to mind many instances in which one might do that, and it would be commendable.
But! It does makes sense in light of my attempt at a negative definition of morality: "Acting immorally consists in making a decision other than the one that one believes one will regret least. The more one expects to regret a choice, the less moral the choice is."
Regret is a function, finally, of the id. You can't stem regret by following the prescriptions of ethologists. You can only do it by doing what your conscience tells you is right, which won't always be the same as what is morally right. You have the chance to save the life of your soulmate, or a group of a million people. Which does an objective observer choose? Which will cause more regret? And which is right? Yeah.
When geeks chat:
Q: "Growing up is a process of consolidation" was our mantra at the end of college ...And on loyalty. (This has nothing to do explicitly with anything going on in my life.) Loyalty is not inherently virtuous. Some of the worst human beings in history were also some of the most loyal; it was their loyalty that set them above the rest. Yet loyalty in itself is extolled as a virtue, and this is taken as a given that I never hear debunked.
Ben: It's pretty much the truth, I would say.
Q: Yeah, it's remained a Thing, a haunting Thing. ...
Ben: It's strange, the stuff that haunts, sometimes, I think.
Q: Did you mean to write that in iambic pentameter?
On the other hand, something does seem good and right about loyalty to a worthy cause or person. Loyalty, in my thinking, implies something beyond normal service. Of course you'll do your job; loyalty comes in when you are called on to cover for someone, to stretch the bounds of ethics, or at least to act in an unusually selfless way. Other than soldiers who have each other's backs in combat, I can't bring to mind many instances in which one might do that, and it would be commendable.
But! It does makes sense in light of my attempt at a negative definition of morality: "Acting immorally consists in making a decision other than the one that one believes one will regret least. The more one expects to regret a choice, the less moral the choice is."
Regret is a function, finally, of the id. You can't stem regret by following the prescriptions of ethologists. You can only do it by doing what your conscience tells you is right, which won't always be the same as what is morally right. You have the chance to save the life of your soulmate, or a group of a million people. Which does an objective observer choose? Which will cause more regret? And which is right? Yeah.
posted by Q at 2:25 AM
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