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Aswad -> RE: Socialism (2/13/2008 9:00:02 PM)
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ORIGINAL: CuriousLord
I wanted to write this while I'm good and pissed off, and too tired to give a damn for my inhabitions or reason.
I'll bite, since I'm arrogant, broody, tired, and have a quarter bottle of whisky left that I intend to see gone shortly. [:D]
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I can feel my morality snapping.
I was waiting for that to happen. Take that as a compliment.
It happens to seekers sooner or later, if they value integrity and reject complacency.
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That concern for every human life as holding an intrinsic value is falling away.
Time to get orthogonal. The value of a life is a complex number. One part is what you call intrinsic. The other is subjective- assigned by yourself- and depends on context. The latter is amenable to squaring without changing sign. Like in certain other contexts, both of them should be kept in mind, but the latter of them is more relevant for most situations than the other is. Of course, other adjustments follow from that, in the interest of integrity and growth, but sometimes the working model has to go, right?
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Values can not stand in contradiction, and it seems that my value for life was a contradiction to itself.
Incorrect. Values can stand in contradiction in a multitude of ways. The property you are looking for is integrity and it is not a common one. Many will say that is as it should be, that humans have no need for integrity. That may be the case, generally speaking, but it is not always the case. Some will go so far as to say that humans cannot have integrity. I disagree. And for some of us, it is a quality that we'll respect and/or admire, even when the person possessing it has values otherwise contrary to our own. A universal metric, whose value is perversely embedded in the systems (or instances thereof) that this quality is a property of.
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The existence of lives which burden and demean the efforts of others strikes me as a contradiction to the ideal of all life having value; afterall, how can something with a positive value maintain its positive value if it does more damage to other positive values of equal stature?
Two diifferent axes. Along one axis, every bacteria in your gut has a positive value. Along the R axis, there are humans whose value may be zero or less. If you raise the number of axes, you can get some pretty interesting calculations, and also resolve a lot of things. Realizing that the value of a life is not a scalar quantity is essential to moral and mental health, if one is inclined toward rational inquiry and driven to moral integrity. Otherwise, of course, one can simplify it down to whatever one pleases. Or just say "God said so," as many do. Deferral. Contentment.
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Yet, still, I post this for the sake of the sentiment and not the particular logic behind it. I'm sure that once I've had seem and the room stops spinning, my sanity would bar me from concern and I'd never say anything about it. I'd just dismiss it as a fact of life and never rant.
Sometimes, it goes away. Other times, there is tweaking to be done. Sometimes, you need to refactor. Other times, it's back to the drawing board. I purposefully left some spaces blank; you can connect the dots with no difficulty. I did not deal with the subject of your frustrations directly; you can do that when you've slept. But it strikes me as a crossroads you're likely to visit at some junction, sleep or no sleep. Refactoring is the structured mind's approach to these things. Anyway, take it for what it is, and with some levity.
Libations are, of course, optional. [;)]
Health,
al-Aswad.
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