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Jun. 11th, 2006 10:50 pmWhere was I going with that?
Altruism as a rule vs. altruism as a direction, and the problems with each, that was it. If it's a direction how far do you go in it? A little bit at a time, as needed, with one's conscience receiving sufficient assuagement from the day's one good deed, five good deeds? There might be something to that but presumably we're all doing it anyway--unless we require further education to know just what inner pangs are related to ethics rather than digestion. That's put facetiously but I mean it: ethical exhortations can only be lessons in self-awareness, where principles are absent.
Where altruism's a principle it's the 1=1 thing, in my experience; utilitarians and religious people seem to agree here. And no one, barring stray, annoying exceptions I'm committed to ignoring, has ever lived up to that. It's one of the many cases where a principle is set up at a distance--to indicate direction, or increase speed or something.
Short of that there are laws...and if these were enforced strenuously enough, via strict, unavoidable punishments or ubiquitous peer pressure, I guess it would pay to internalize them.
But these are lacking, the 1:1 principle stuff's a joke, rationalization is much wealthier and higher-tech than guilt...
Altruism as a rule vs. altruism as a direction, and the problems with each, that was it. If it's a direction how far do you go in it? A little bit at a time, as needed, with one's conscience receiving sufficient assuagement from the day's one good deed, five good deeds? There might be something to that but presumably we're all doing it anyway--unless we require further education to know just what inner pangs are related to ethics rather than digestion. That's put facetiously but I mean it: ethical exhortations can only be lessons in self-awareness, where principles are absent.
Where altruism's a principle it's the 1=1 thing, in my experience; utilitarians and religious people seem to agree here. And no one, barring stray, annoying exceptions I'm committed to ignoring, has ever lived up to that. It's one of the many cases where a principle is set up at a distance--to indicate direction, or increase speed or something.
Short of that there are laws...and if these were enforced strenuously enough, via strict, unavoidable punishments or ubiquitous peer pressure, I guess it would pay to internalize them.
But these are lacking, the 1:1 principle stuff's a joke, rationalization is much wealthier and higher-tech than guilt...
