Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK Message Board

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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK

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To: one_less who wrote (14687)	11/12/1998 7:04:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (3) of 67261

>If you ask the same person if it is nice and kind and good to give someone who is hungry food, they will look at you like your insulting them and say, yes. < The interesting part comes not from asking an unqualified question, but when you ask if act A is more nice or kind or meritorious than act B. If you ask "is giving food to the hungry more important than spending the money on crop research" (and we assume there is a pot of resources being contested) you won't get such a monolithic answer. I think the interesting discussion here lies at the place where there are differences, controversies which affect very real social policy. It is the way we order or prioritize the common sense rights and wrongs which mark a social policy. For that policy to succeed, it needs popular approval. Consensus. In this light - whether or not you really do know the purpose of life becomes unimportant. More to the point is the nature of the policies which are formed from the moral ideas which devolve from this knowledge of life's purpose. Do these policies find a mirror in enough voters to become nationally important? And what of those whose own wisdom about life, the Universe and everything lead them to an implacably opposed set of values? A morally neutral mechanism needs to exist to forge consensus and a sense of social identity from this living chaos. >I know the purpose of life.< The danger I see here is that this leads to a logically compelling moral framework - but one which does not have an evolutionary provision. (If you know the purpose of life - then all you know, learn, see... must be subordinated to that principle. It is all-consuming. To change the framework, even minutely, is to change the core principle.) I worry that this leads to rigidity - the kind we see in Saudi Arabia or North Korea. I would not voluntarily choose citizenship in either place - because I would not want to be placed at a clear disadvantage for dissenting from the state religion.

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