I was talking to my roommate last night about why it is that he hates on people who conform to pop culture so much, and through the half hour discourse or so it became obvious that while his justification for it was reasonable enough, but there was a big discrepancy between what he thought and what he did. Upon further inspection, it seemed to result from some flaws in his argument that didn't become clearer until further poking and prodding. As I was asking him questions to get him to clarify what it was that he meant, I couldn't help but feel like I was cheating, and really sort of mentally bullying him because it's so much easier to poke at the holes and flaws of an argument than it is to construct a good argument.
It seems the solution, then, is to construct a system where it is flawless by design, rather than trying to mold a somewhat punctured argument into a useful tool by patching it here and there (because even if you somehow manage to patch up all the holes, at the end you'll have such a patchworked mess with exceptions and by-laws and subclauses and fine print that it's hardly functional anymore). Of course, if you subscribe to systems theory, then you'll probably retort and say that even if it does indeed work then it will work poorly at best. You might even add further that reality has this curious tendency to not quite meet up with what should be, and there's always a discrepancy between theoretical performance and actual performance. But we've all seen this and have grown used to it, and little by little give up the ideals as realistic goals because we know it can't be (but it's nice to have ideals so you have something to aim for).
Alternatively, you could take up Heinlein's stance and say that the problem with our modern ethics is founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that humanity is, which leads to an incorrect set of morals. And so it's not until we become properly aware of what exactly it is to be human that we can construct for ourselves a correct set of morals. So we'll just ignore the problem of deciding what it is it means to be human (to reproduce, to be a logical rational being, to be a creature of senses, an alien experiment gone haywire, a servant of God, a servant of Satan, a meat puppet dancing to invisible strings, or so on so forth ad nauseum) for a moment and go on living our lives the way we've grown accustomed to because it's familiar, it's known to us, and really despite all our complaints, deep down we rather like it...or at least don't dislike it so much that we're willing to change. Because change is effort. Effort is, well, effort. And to hell with that!
But you shouldn't wish for something that's in your power to obtain. That's just being wishy washy, whiny, and generally rather irritating. And then this is the part where everyone runs in and points fingers saying I'm only saying that because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be human and so my set of morals are wrong wrong wrong!...and that's okay, it doesn't seem to me that anyone's really got a perfect answer yet. You can always bring up degenerate cases or extremes or all sorts of other messy things that twist systems into all kinds of knots they can't get out of. And so it seems that until you limit your system and say that it operates within specifications so long as you keep within it's operating boundaries you'll always run into people who will poke holes at what it is you say and do (because really, it's a pretty easy thing to do compared to constructing the system).
And it's easy to be negative and fall into despair over what happens in life. It's almost as if it's a natural reaction. But you just lead yourself to a downward spiral then, and it's much more useful to try to keep a positive light on things. The pragmatists and self proclaimed realists come in and tell you that you're just lying to yourself and refuse to see things for what they really are when really you can almost always say the same thing about them as well, because we're all just taking our own perspective of what is.
I wonder what a world where the optimists are the majority and look at the pessimists and say "You're fools for not seeing things for what they really are" would be like.
Posted by aoshi at February 22, 2004 03:11 PM