'Morality is an immensely dangerous and destructive force, which must be restrained by the strongest human passions and sympathies if it is not to break all the bonds of society.'
There was something liberating in the paradox implicit in this statement. i think if one added the word 'absolute' in front, it would be a good cautionary motto for these times.
Teresa, your description of realising where you were going at 32 fps gave me a wry chuckle. It's like that exactly!
It also seems to me that the 'appeal to heaven' is a euphemism for a gritty, unsentimental (i.e. maybe gun-toting) compassion (for the downtrodden victims of injustice whose plight is not aided by 'peaceniks'), followed by a cheap, buzzword-loaded sneer at people who on principle wouldn't pick up a gun to blow away a babykiller, feeling it is never right to add more violence to a situation, no matter how provocative the scenario.
Personally i believe it is impossible to know in advance how one would act in a moral dilemna of that intensity. I hope whatever impulse took command would be the lightest one to bear on one's conscience, possibly revealing itself as the wisest choice in the consequent safety of hindsight.
I do however believe that the examples of non-violent courage (nuns pouring blood over nuclear weapons, Ghandi in his loincloth) suggest an ideology superior to the idea that brute force can resolve a bad situation, i.e. sending in soldiers to bring democracy and womens' rights to countries who haven't evolved to the point of seeing their own self-interest in doing so themselves: the blowback is too great.
Thankyou Carlos for parsing the text so well, and all of you for such a rich thread.
No-one will ever be able to fire many hearts to passion under a banner of 'Vote for the Relative Morality Party' which is why it will probably win the philosophy race, as a slow turtle, after all the hares have collapsed in frothing exstacy or jihadded themselves into early extinction.
Definition of 'relative morality'?
Mmmm..
To each his own, don't cast the first stone
There's a golden rule, good for wise or fool.
Michael
i liked the post about playing guitar. it has been the deciding factor in my choice to prefer my own definition of sanity, to THEIR definition of my state of mind almost 40 years ago.
i believe it has something to do with the disproportionate number of nerve endings in the fingertips. any fine-motor skill probably hooks up all kinds of neural pathways to and in the brain, music is my favourite, because spoken language rarely encodes as much emotion as the multiplicity of sounds that have not been englished, on even 'languaged'.
programmers know all sound is code, musicians are learning to master wordless languages.
massage is another art to which i have given a large chunk of my life, and it too excels in releasing originality in a framework that is largely paraverbal, with the soft sounds of relaxed breathing as soundtrack.
i always amazes me how fast you feel you're getting to what's important in your connection with people, when silence can intermingle with sound, and deepen contact.
this thread reminds me of how isolated and alienated much of modern living has reduced us to feeling, and how the simple act of doing something productive and peaceful together is the solvent for many of the invisible and imaginary barriers that block us from accessing human joy, instead of reaching for ever-stronger jolts to the endocrine system to compensate for the lack of basic fellowship and shared labour, that does not dehumanize us.
in other words it was fun to catch up on gossip while shelling peas, whittling, spinning etc.
for these allowed us to be useful and educate ourselves by listening to wiser heads chatter, and asking the right questions.
working on a factory line, becoming cogs, dwarfed our natures. the industrial revolution has been a huge, if necessary, evolutionary sidetrack. it seems many of us are heading back to the real purpose of being here, namely to enjoy the fruits of living in harmony with our environment.
dominion, not domination. education, not instruction.
ecologically grounded technology can do much to bring solar power, wells, hospitals etc.. to developing nations, spreading good-will intead of the false respect accorded to brute power and mercenary imperialism.
these sources for lore-building and cultural exchange have been shattered by the irruption of big media (like big hair, but just as imp-probably nasty!)
so now the central existential anger (stemming from loss) that life has been so banalised, so disennobled, is temporarily anesthetized by trivia and lowest-common-denominator distractions, and meanwhile festers below the shallow rituals that rule modern materialistic life: fast food, fast sex, s-l-o-w, langourously slow lapping at the kool-aid, and ever more unnattainable total oblivion of conscience or criticism.
just a happy meal away from hell.......
how many bruce willis explosions has the average kid sucked up?
how many times has he seen might be right, terminating problems the american way?
explosion experts, catastrophe conoisseurs.
itecs easy to see why kids run around like headless chickens. they're trying to tell us adults what we all suspected as childern, before ungentle disabuse:
adults have messed up big time running the show. for centuries, the only difference being that now the stakes are as high as they can get, with self-extinction rearing its pretty head. if you were told as a kid about the nuclear threat, the gap between the haves and the rest of the 4/5 of the world on $2 a day, MK-ULTRA, the amounts spent on arms, and that he was going to be the one paying for it, complete with interest, wouldn't you need a little ritalin to cut you some slack, while you tried to get your head around your invitation to this deeply dysfunctional pursuit of liberty and happiness?
at the same time as taking on board that your civilisation was genocidal, and best of all wanted you to love to lipserve ideals and act the opposite?
my own lack of intestinal fortitude trying to stomach such a menu of contradictions was seen as inability to cope with 'reality'
that's what got them wanting to institutionalise me at 15.
god bless ronald laing and 'the politics of experience!
hypocrisy is about preserving interests in slime.
it is so gratifying to find so many signs of human intelligence on the web.
maybe reading blogs like yours is not so different from stoning cherries all together, in the dark, long distance.
whatever, it works!
every surf is knowledge-enhancing and the larder is filling up with some tasty preserves, as the hard drive spins late into the night.
fingertip community?
not quite as much fun as a good music jam round a fire, but a great substitute till the real thing comes along!
quliting is similar to music, as no-one knows in advance what the shared outcome will be...
and it's not a loner's art, like writing novels, or painting.
cheers,
m
(and furthermore, why would anyone go to all that trouble to smuggle 42 euros into the States?)
because the way things are going, that would be a fortune in d'oillars.
could this almanac affair be due to spelling issues?
perhaps they meant 'allah-maniac'!
now someone chip in to tell me that there really is a connection......
in italian the word for anger is 'rabbia'; we can all see the easy etymological link to rabies, but there is another one that comes to mind, especially when i see footage of mullah-whipped crowds frothing for the head of salman rushdie, or denouncing the great satan.....
to be angry is to be 'arrabiato', or in other words: 'arabed'
is the rage genetic?
arab horses are jumpier and more nervous than other breeds.
not PC to think this way, i know, but i can't help it.
it's scary sometimes to think of so many people who hate you that you don't even know.
discaimer: i know i'm not racist, (bin there, bin laden) and have to hope that others do not misunderstand my tongue-in-cheek attempts at humour..
newbie to your site, very enjoyable. muchos gracias.
i noticed on your blogroll that the black commentator was not mentioned. i highly recommend it, if you don't know about it already. some of the best writing around, imnsvhi.
happy.....fill in the blank!
cheers,
michael
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