>Only God has the authority to be so arbitrary. We must be tolerant of those things which are harder to reach a determination about, but we are foolish to act as if we have no right to further our own values because we cannot prove that they are absolute.<
Indeed, and this is what we have always done. But we have done it because we were furthering our values and not objective values. All this time we have been trying to make the world a bit more comfortable for ourselves, while hopefully benefiting others. I have no problems with this at all. I instead have a problem with certain people assaulting my right to hunt a deer or a chimpanzee or whale because they live in a harebrained fantasy wherein these critters are our ancestors.
And this is the issue. I will concede there is something a bit unnerving about a group of people who after seventy years decide to kill a whale for cultural reasons, but when I distil the thing to its essentials I can find little difference between this and my killing an elk. I do not need to kill elk to survive, yet I very much enjoy doing it. Why? Perhaps you must be a hunter to understand. It is not so much the killing that is enticing, although the rush of adrenaline is tremendous as one nears the moment of truth, it is everything – every single thing about hunting-- everything from planning the trip to packing for it to checking equipment to getting in the woods to finally bagging the game and eating it. None of this I do of necessity, I do it because of culture, just as do the whale hunters.
In autumn and early spring my wife and I very much enjoy hiking into the mountains to spend a handful of days camping. There is really nothing like it—no children, no nothing, just nature, my wife and I. We do not of necessity live in those Spartan conditions. Why do we do it? In a word, culture. We do it because our history calls us back to a simpler time where phones and aeroplanes do not exist. We very much resent people of other “cultures” attempting to deny us this wonderful experience because they think we harm “The Environment” when in our view we do no such thing.
Perhaps my eating a chimp or whale is repugnant to you (I have never eaten them, mind you, but perhaps I would if given the chance), but there is nothing to which you might refer to demand I myself be repulsed by it. You may assert your values by Might of persuasion or weaponry, but this will simply support my point that ultimately there is no such thing as barbarism, but only that which certain people like and dislike, and these likes and dislikes are informed by culture.
>The ground of many of these things is discernible, and therefore they are at least properly matters of opinion, in the sense that they are disputable, but not arbitrary.<
Why are they not arbitrary?
>To the extent that they are disputable, we should be careful of undue imposition; to the extent that we can legitimately entertain beliefs about them, we have a right to act on them to some degree, especially through persuasion...<
Well of course I would agree. The problem here is made manifest when we consider my good friend lorrie coey and those like her (by the way, I do not here mention lorrie disparagingly.) lorrie apparently believes whales are her ancestors and so she takes umbrage with the notion of killing them. I on the other hand think there exists no reasonable amount of evidence to even begin to approach compelling anyone to think whales are our ancestors and that I should therefore be free to chew dem suckas right down! There is a serious imposition in the making here, and if either of us is forced to compromise our beliefs, then the imposition will be realised. |
