From: johnny moral (johnnymoral@hotmail.com)
Date: Fri Jun 13 2003 - 20:35:51 BST
Hi Rick,
>RICK
>I agree that it is obvious that patterns should do what they should and
>that
>people would be moral if they behaved morally, but it's only obvious
>because
>it's an empty tautological formulation. It's like when Aristotle defined
>'justice' as the notion that similar things should be treated similarly.
>To
>his credit, he was quick to note that the formulation was only so valuable
>because it failed to state what things are similar or how they should be
>treated (something he went to great lengths to do in works like Nicomachian
>ethics). Of course people should do what they should do; the relevant
>question is *what* should they do?
This isn't actually tautological, but it is axiomatic. And this question
gets at the heart of my understanding of the MoQ, so I'll veer off the
current love and marriage subject for sec and try to explain what I mean by
that seeming tautology:
What people should do is what people should do. It is not a tautology
because the two instances of the word "should" are the same word, and have
the same full meaning, but, as I use them in that sentence, are each only
meaning half of that full meaning - I am trying to show how the two meanings
define each other and give the full meaning. The moral imperitive form of
"should" derives from the form of "should" referring to the probility, and
the probability meaning derives from the moral imperative. If it wasn't
moral for something to happen, it wouldn't usually happen. If it didn't
usually happen, it wouldn't be moral. Which of these came first? My
understanding is that the word "should" (or expectation, or morality) came
first, and it had both meanings undifferentiated at first. But its
self-definition as expectation required it to realize itself in a yin-yang
sort of oscillation of both meanings (the father and son), the son being the
empirical created reality that sets the expectation and the father being the
imperitive to actualize the expectation. We live in the Son (and eat the
Son and drink the Son) and try to know and follow the Son, the expectation.
Our moral imperative is the same as Gods is.
The central point is that we do pretty much know what we should do. It is
what we usually do, what most of us do, what we expect people would do, etc.
The blasphemy comes in when we think that what we should do is different
from what should do, ie, that what ought to be done is different from what
we probably will do. To my mind, this is the central message of
Christianity, of the sermon on the mount, to trust God like the lilys and
birds of the air do. It is fine to ask, "what should we do?" (we are
expected to try and do what's right, after all) as long as we remain
grounded in morality. But the blasphemy comes in when we hate the created
world around us and think we have a better idea of how it should be, when we
reject emperical morality and say that it is unrelated to true morality, and
that our ethical morality is superior. This assumes a direct line to a
ahistorical verities, it puts God in our service rather than putting
ourselves in God's service, it removes ourselves from common history.
Seperating the shoulds seperates the Father from the Son, when the whole
point of the created world is for the Father and Son to enjoy each other.
>You say, "...blasphemy is to deny or otherwise purposefully malign the
>moral
>imperative in general, to say that morality should be thwarted because it
>is
>bad." But I know of very few, if any, people who argue simply that
>"morality is bad" (maybe some extreme-anarchists?). Most everyone believes
>in behaving morally, the disagreements are about what is and isn't moral.
Many many people feel that static patterns should be thwarted because they
are repressive, morality itself is a big drag that we don't need anymore,
and has now been replaced by ethics. They celebrate change for its own
sake. What is and isn't moral is indeed the question, but it has emperical
answers. I'm not saying it is easy to know what is moral, only that there
IS something that is moral, and that we should respect that.
Johnny
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