Applying the subjective, Part II

[Gary Wassner]

If every morality is a recipe for a certain type of man, an explication of a vision of what man might be, then is morality aesthetics after all?

[Fung Koo]

So why are there three of these threads?

[Gary Wassner]

Not sure what you mean.

[KatG]

Because this is Gary's favorite subject.

Okay, morality and subjectivity. This is not my area of expertise. I can only go by my own thoughts on the matter. Which is that morality is not aesthetic. It is a matter of many different factors -- biology, threat levels, emotions, comprehension of context, time pressures, culture and religious belief, personal experience, etc., that all effect how we see things but are not all subjective.

[Hereford Eye]

Isn't morality more prescriptive than ruminative?
Having identified a morality, a person attempts to act out that morality. It works even better when lots of people agree with the man's identified morality. See the Tale of the Bagelman in Freakonomics. Evidently, in our culture, there is a high level of agreement.

Why were there three threads? The Quester had the flu which weakened his iron will enough to allow his other personalities freedom to ask questions. In an illustrative case of shared morality, they alll came up with the same question.

[Gary Wassner]

The real question is, is morality just a matter of taste, are the definitions we come up with for good and bad arbitrary, just a matter or taste? Once again we're dealing with qualitative issues. How different is it really to claim something is good or bad from claiming it's beautiful or ugly?

[Fung Koo]

Yeah I'd go for morality as principally aesthetic. Most people mean Law, Order, and Justice when they say Morality.

If you compare morality and justice as being part of the same system, it's no wonder our current relativistic state has come up with this retarded notion of "hate crimes."

Who cares why you committed the crime, it's the action that's supposed to be punished. What's next -- "hungry theft"? If you're starving because you're a crazy homeless person, by all means rob a grocery store. The theft wasn't so good, but your reasoning is valid. You're special and the rules don't apply because you're crazy homeless and hungry.

Good and bad motivation?

Eff that.