On the Nature of Morality

I got to drive for a few hours today on business, and naturally, I spent most of the trip obsessing over one thing or another.

One of those "one thing"s was the topic of morality and how I would teach a class on ethics.

I'd actually been pretty excited when imagining the prospect. Ethics is just such a fascinating topic! You can't have a unified set of laws or principles for ethics; if you could, that's what we would be using to base our laws off of. We have to assume deontology misses the mark because the moral value of actions isn't absolute- it varies based on context. We also have to assume that moral relativism misses the mark since there would be little more than ethical anarchy if we were to admit that it was an acceptable proposition to suggest that all morals vary by culture. If the very notion of morality was malleable between societies, then one society could impose its moral rules on another society without worry of repercussions.

Is culture A allowed to attack culture B to take their land? What if the moral law for culture A is "the strongest is right"?

We're right to hesitate when confronted with a situation like that, since total moral relativism falls apart just as quickly as total moral absolutism.

Let's look at a comparison within the same realm and scope:

1. Is it acceptable to kill someone in order to save another person?
2. Is it acceptable to kill someone in order to save 100 people?
3. Is it acceptable to kill someone in order to save 99.999% of all people?
4. Is it acceptable to ensure the safety of two people at the cost of everyone else, if you're reasonably sure that the alternative was that everyone would die?

At what point does the responsibility to make that choice fall onto you?

An initial inclination might be to simply weigh all ethical issues in economic terms: The cost of one person to save one person is exactly equal. Anything exactly equal or better as far as trades go is golden.
But, then we get into the issue of relative worth. Can I really kill the scientist working on a cure for cancer in order to save the impoverished and uneducated boy who has roughly the same life expectancy?
While it's undoubtedly uncomfortable, we have to issue a cost-benefit-analysis at some point. Are the positives outweighing the negatives?
How do we measure such an abstract question?! This is the intent and function of utilitarianism. A problem occurs, however, when we replace innate human values with the quest for the greater good.

If we can measure the average worth and cost of a human being to society over the course of their life based solely on their first ten years (hypothetically speaking, of course. This calculation would be difficult), then we can, on average, provide for the greater good by killing people who will, on average, "bring society down."
This is problematic in a whole 'nother ballpark. Moral absolutism leaves no gray areas in the middle to be explored by humans.
Utilitarianism forces all situations into the gray area in such a way that people become mere parts of a whole mechanism. Cogs in a wheel. Moreover, utilitarianism ignores the subjective nature of worth. Different people value different things/experiences/ideas to varying degrees respectively.
While the experience of love might be worth a great amount to you, it may be worth far less to Jane Doe, who is more concerned with personal gain.

To avoid breaching too far back into territory I've already covered on The Suffering Tax, I'll hold myself here and just say that ethics is a really interesting and nuanced topic. I kinda' love it.

-
Waddles

The Fading Times

So, I recently had a bit of an odd revelation. I came to understand where my roommate was coming from in his desire to flee from his current life and start over.
I've always had some inkling of that emotional desire, but it was never something that I'd felt particularly strongly. However, I've been doing a lot of mulling (read: obsessing) about my life and my relationships lately, and it occurred to me that the size of my friendgroup is diminishing (as would be expected after college), and the number of people I see on a consistent basis is continuing to decrease as well. Soon, my roommate will be gone. Without him, it's entirely possible that the weekly ritual of pizza night will falter, if not fall altogether. That may be a rather pessimistic approach by me though. I often downplay the successes I've helped to create and the effort I put into systems that I want to see function.

Still, there's a part of me that is concerned that, piece by piece, my social life here will stagnate and disappear save for two or three lights.
Moreover, I realize that Lexington is running to the end of its natural course in my life. I have graduate school to think about for next year (or possibly the year after), finding a way to live the dream with my brother sometime down the road, and figuring out where I want to end up settling down.

I can't say how much time I have left here... At least a year and a half. Maybe a little more? It probably depends on what happens between now and then.
But I am happy. And it's strange to think that finally being happy for the first time in as many years as I can remember, I would want to start over somewhere new. It's almost twistedly cruel to the people I love to have them experience me mired in depression, only to flee when I've finally started to rise out of it.

But I don't intend on shutting anyone out. I don't intend on letting the lines of communication slip and wither no matter how assured I get of a desire/destination to move. Further, I intend to be a worthwhile friend to those around me until I leave and long after. I've actually noticed lately that I've been deliberately acting selflessly with the expectation that no one will either know or thank me for it. Everyone seems to be struggling in their own ways, and it makes me happy to grease the wheels of their wagon while their back is turned. People don't like to ask for help directly; just hint that they're in trouble.
That's what I went through for years. If I can ease the troubles of the people I care about even a little, then it's worth the effort, right? But is that empathy? Or guilt..? I'm a straight, white, college-educated male from a solidly middle class family. I've had every opportunity, and I've yawned my way past most of them. I've skirted by in life, barely trying, doing just enough work to get a 'B' in life.

Meanwhile, the people around me care more, try harder, have more passion, and are still succeeding less than I am with fair regularity. Not because I'm better or doing anything more "correct" than they are. But because I got luckier than they did. I'm about as close to the top of the pyramid as you can get without being born incredibly wealthy. So maybe I do feel some sense of guilt or shame with my state in life. What have I done to really deserve this? Haven't the people around me done more? And aren't there people around them that have done even more, ad infinitum? This is somewhat fascinating, because I feel a sense of obligation towards those I love who are not as well off as me, but for everyone else in the world, I have little more than my pity to hand out.
I cannot tell if this is simply pragmatism keeping me from spending all of my time and money on a problem I'll never even scratch, or if it's self-preservation? Or maybe greed? Who will look out for those people who have so little, but have tried so hard? Because I cannot help them all, is it acceptable to help none of them? Or is that simply cowardice?
Is it thoughts like these that tears holes in my stomach lining?
Is it the obsessing over whether or not I'm doing enough?
Or is it the guilt of knowing that I don't do enough?

More likely, it's a combination of many factors, and the logician in me is giving my emotional center a nasty glare for being too "intense."

Hey, cool, so I totally rambled from topic A to topic G without spending much transitional time.
Oopsies.

-
Waddles

My Life's Music

Because anyone else cares, I'm going to wax nostalgic here for a bit. I've been in a very musical mood the last few weeks as my emotions continue to punch me like the guy who's had a few too many and won't leave the party.

My entire life from middle school onward has had a soundtrack. Not just music that I happened to love at the time, but music that my mind associates so strongly with that time that I can feel myself transported back when I listen to them. Although, I suppose this is how it is for everyone. Still, it's somewhat fascinating to sit and listen to three different songs in a row and feel profoundly changed.

All American Rejects and Something Corporate from early middle school.
Ragnarok Online's soundtrack fits in from here and extends through college, but the most prominent memories are middle school.
Assemblage 23 and VNV Nation from early high school.
Assemblage 23's album Meta for my Junior year of high school specifically.
Blue Stone was senior year of high school.
Freshman year of college beckoned my discovery of independently composed orchestra pieces. This is about the time/music for which I have the most fervent WoW nostalgia.
The summer of Freshman year also heralded the only mix tape I've ever been made that has a lot of very specific memories attached to it.
Code Geass soundtrack for Sophomore year.
Interpol and Distant Worlds were Junior year of college.
Cave Story's soundtrack is the week where I took my vow of silence.
Homestuck and Harmony of a Hunter were senior year up until the present.
I have associated Marie Mai with my run through of Fallout 3 particularly for some dumb reason.
My collection of desert songs is associated with a few obstinate memories of a woman recently.


From before that, a few lingering memories of childhood and The Cranberries along with Michael Nyman's "The Promise" are tied together.

Music has managed to leak through my soul and function as an adhesive, effectively fixing certain feelings, memories, and ideas to my heart. I've been classically conditioned to flow hither and thither on the emotional spectrum with just a few sounds.

I have become ILL! So I will not write more than this.
Sorrytimes.

The Suffering Tax - A Philosopher's Take

Hokay- so...

I've been having this beautiful argument with a fella who supports the use of Pigovian Tax in determining how to account for societal pain and suffering caused by the individualistic use of products or actions that cause human suffering or societal/environmental damage.

Pigovian Tax system is the direct translation of pain/suffering/damage into monetary reimbursement, either to an individual or to the state, or what have you. Taxes on cigarettes, high emission vehicles, etc.

Now, to be clear, I don't think this system is something we can afford to get rid of at this time. We have no means of replacing psychological/physical health, happiness, or environmental stability. As such, we have to do something in terms of reparations and retribution. In lieu of a better, more human system, handing out money like candy isn't the worst backup plan.

With that said, holy crap, the concept of estimating such subjective values and diminishing their worth to mere dollars and cents is one of the most arrogant and flawed concepts I could ever begin to think of. (Fun story, I actually tried to do this junior year of college)

First off; your money to happiness ratio caps out at $75,000. Like... You can't buy happiness after that point. Your basic human needs and highest human wants have more or less been met. After that point, it comes down to experiences, psychological state, relationships, health and well-being.

You can't reduce a mental health issue like depression to a monetary figure. By the virtue of being an element of human experience, each person will go through it differently, each person would pay a different amount to be rid of it, and each person will have a different level of permanent impairment as a result of it; and this is true with any mental or physical disorder of any kind.

And yet, everyone thinks that they can throw a number at it to make the problem go away.



Now, I'd like to pause here to reinforce the purpose of this post and my intent here. I do not believe that philosophy has the appropriate resources to actually solve problems. I believe it can offer some guidance and underlying logic/principles to our thoughts, but it cannot actually address most of the more complex questions in life. Instead, it offers perspective.
I have taken this to mean that the place of philosophy is to halt movement in any direction, and to get those moving to re-evaluate where they are, the direction they're headed, and how they're doing it. Philosophy offers criticism, because nothing is without fault. (One of the many criticisms of philosophy being that we're useless without a bunch of practical people around to actually act.)

If, at any point, we forget why any idea or movement is problematic in its own right, we start to neglect the problems; we forge ahead, reinforcing the status quo.
In this case, the longer we go forward without challenging this Pigovian Taxation notion, the more ingrained it becomes in society that money is a universal language, capable of being translated into experiences, potentiality, health, relationships, and happiness.
Even if it's the only system we have to go by, we have to stop it and remind ourselves of how woefully inadequate it is at addressing the problems it attempts to address.

Moreover, our entire society is predicated on the idea that money is happiness, despite studies like the famous one I referenced earlier. This, along with other factors that reinforce materialism, function as a positive feedback loop in on the status quo. Money drives our thoughts and actions, so we set out to make more money, at which point we are convinced we don't have enough, so we work even harder; a never-ending ladder into the universe. When everyone who's successful is someone who has money, they're the ones who are in the spotlight, making them the people we try to model our lives after. So, our only conceptions of success and happiness revolve around physical currency. As a result, that's the only model we pursue, thus reinforcing the cultural status quo.

Even if it's the best system we have to go by currently, it's a spiraling system that will eventually implode in on itself when it reaches a critical threshold of suffering caused. Unfortunately, that's some time away, and will take an exorbitant amount of work to correct once it has gotten that bad. Hence, my attempt to give pause to the practice and at least re-indicate the unsustainable nature of the beast.

Life. She is complicated.

-Waddles

Existentially Bonkers

So I'd like everyone to follow me through an exercise for the day.

Sit back, relax, feel your breath and become aware of each of your senses one by one.

Clear your mind of today's troubles for a few seconds.

And remember:



You exist. Somehow, in all the random chance and in an infinite and uncomprehendably vast universe, through some bizarre scientific magic that we have only just scratched the surface to understand- there is a you. One. There is one you in the world. You control a set of limbs. These are your choices. Your eyes transmit data to your brain.
These experiences you have are your memories, individually tailored to the way that you lived through them. The opinions and position you have are constructed of your experiences and your knowledge of the world. No one else's.

There is a you.

There is a me.

Each human being that you come across in your life has this same sense of me. Each human being has experiences, memories, sensory perceptions, and thoughts, just as complicated and conflicting as yours. Just as complicated as mine.

There are 7 billion yous. There are 7 billion mes.

Just stop. For one minute. And marvel at how your individual consciousness came to be out of pure luck. What's more wild is that the concept of me is completely inexplicable. By what magic was it decided that I would get control over a body and mind?

It is a complete goddamned mystery and no one has come even close to answering it without relying on guesswork and gods.

Do you feel the sense of pure, raw awe reminding yourself that you exist, and that everyone else is their own me as well?
Unfathomable.

Absolutely unfathomable.

Another Week

Sunrise, sunset.

Thoughts for the week:

Holy crap, I'm talking to the University of Washington professor in two hours... It's entirely informal, but I'm still crazy excited/stressed.

Seeing ex for the first time in some moons at Pizza Night, hopefully resolving an anxiety issue I've been having (more on this later).

I've chewed two of my fingers raw. It's become apparent that, with all Buspar did for me that sucked, it was toning down my nervous habits.

I'm ridiculously excited about the weather. Like, I couldn't be a whole lot more enthusiastic about being able to go on a walk and really enjoy it.

My game design has lulled. Largely because I'm at the point I like to call "guessing and checking," wherein I pick arbitrary numbers for pertinent stats in-game, test them out, watch things go horribly wrong, and then fine tune.

I hate fine tuning. I'm all about ideas, concepts, mechanics, and general workings. And I'm detail-oriented enough to catch a number of small things with a quick glance. Anything further than that bores me to tears. Suffice it to say, I'm procrastinating the real work on my games.

I'm currently bothered by how much I'd love to have someone to flirt with right now. I wish my brain would be okay with single life for a while. Not only is it healthy, but it would be practical to stay single for right now, since my foray into graduate school thoughts would almost certainly result in moving across the country (or out of it entirely). To that end, it would be irresponsible to start something right now.


So, on the "more on this later" topic, I've gotten advice from a number of people who are close to me who have recommended that it would be wise to cut my ex out of my life entirely, with the explanation that it's obvious she stresses me out. Which is not untrue. However, I fear that's just a symptom of the larger problem that is my propensity to obsess in general. Moreover, I don't want to be the kind of person who solves a problem by pushing it away and ignoring it. If I'm obsessing and stressed about this person, then there's some unresolved issue or some closure that needs to be addressed. Simply being in the same room might handle the problem or it might make it worse. At the very least, I think it's worth trying, since doing nothing is clearly simply leaving the tensions at a standstill.
Moreover, the overall good that would come of me sweeping the problem under a rug is far less than the overall good that would come of me confronting these anxieties face-to-face. Namely, I'd be giving her back a group of friends that she has otherwise been largely out of touch with.
So, while I do think it would be more healthy for me in the long-run to try to resolve these issues, the idea that it's just about me is a selfish one devoid of compassion and awareness. As such, my decision is to invite her back into my life so that I can hopefully gauge what her presence does to me and what my next step should be in order to overcome the demons I am faced with.

I am... tentatively concerned with my potential reactions to this meeting. I want to continue progressing towards the person that I would like to be. I don't want to get held up on silly or trivial things that my mind convinces me to ruminate on extensively.

Especially when I have real things to obsess over, like graduate school potentials!
Or, apparently, whether or not I smell really terrible and everyone is just too polite to tell me.

Words.
Words and syntax.

-Waddles

An Opponent

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Today's post will be romantically leaning, but will be about life in general and some changes I've experienced between my teenage years to my adult years.Yes, another reflection post, I apologize, please stop throwing tomatoes.

This is a sentiment that I'm not sure is translatable to the experiences and thoughts of others, but I'm interested in placing it in the open regardless.

All my life, I've grown up focused on winning. Having two older brothers and living in the house of a sports-minded father, competition was endless. My philosophy had become that all of life is a challenge, and I am to overcome it. To that end, I've strove to place myself into situations where I can prove my "worth" through victories. Two specific types of situations in particular:

Gaming; and
Argumentation

I did not do this because I relish winning insomuch as I wanted desperately to show people that I'm worth respecting because of my skill or my intellect. It was this need for outside affirmation that has given me much of my self-esteem issues over the years.
However, I'm not making this post to be a debbiedowny, as I completely realize that the only affirmation I need is from myself. So long as I respect my abilities and decisions, there is little else needed.

Rather, my aim is to highlight how I've transformed this somewhat consuming desire into something a little more... reasonable. Sometime in the last few years, I started caring a lot less about actually winning games, and I started really enjoying games that proved to be ridiculously difficult. See:
Cave Story
Dark Souls
Binding of Isaac
Risk of Rain
Smash Brothers
etc.

There's a unique sensation that I get from games like this; the adrenaline of everything going wrong at once. I cannot say why I've become so enamored with watching my progress grind to a screeching halt of frustration, but it's immensely rewarding to find something that is difficult without being arbitrarily so. Meaningfully arduous.

With this change game a profound boredom with games that are too easy.

Along this road, I've come to realize that I'm not interested in winning anymore. Winning is simply a potential outcome for the path I want to take for the path's sake.
I want an opponent. I want fiercely to have an opponent that is worth playing against. No matter how good or how bad I am at a game, I want someone who's as good or better than me to play against/with.
Not just in the realm of games, but in all of life. I want someone around me who beats me (not physically, preferably). Someone whose comebacks, insults, and teases lash with deadly wit that I cannot match on most days. Someone who forces me to second guess my thoughts. Someone who, if I'm to compete, forces me to play at the top of my game.

I do not want someone "better" than me per se. Better is not an apt word for it, since we are all better or worse in varying things. I do not want to hold someone back or use anyone else as a crutch. Rather, I want someone I need to keep up with- someone who's worth keeping up with to me. Someone that I can defeat on my best days, but someone against whom losing is simply inspiring.

This is what I want out of life, games, relationships: I want something difficult enough to pique my interest and thrash me, captivating enough to ensnare me, and wise enough to know that when it tries to give me assistance and I refuse, it's not because of anger, resentment, or jealousy- but just because I want to be worth that level of difficulty, whether I win or lose.


If you have someone that you love, sit them down, stop everything else, focus on each other, and tell that person how much they mean to you and why. Make it a memorable expression of your personal emotions and thoughts.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.