Everything rhymes

Something that bothers me is that it seems like deontological ethics are consequentialist at their core. It seems like it’s not really a question of ends vs. means, it’s a question of which means and which ends. It seems like for everyone, there is some x that could be sacrificed for y purpose, and there is some other x that is non-negotiable. It seems like the arguments are really about the order of priorities, what takes precedence over what.

It seems like under the explicit priorities (treating people as ends in themselves, maximizing happiness, etc.) there are implicit priorities that may not even be conscious. What do you really want, when you say “That’s right” or “That’s wrong”? For the world to be the way you want it to be? To believe in your own virtue? To demonstrate your “goodness” to others? How do you disentangle morality from psychology? It often seems like human moral instincts are not very moral at all – the desire to punish perceived wrongdoing may have evolved because it increases a group’s chances of survival, but that doesn’t make it right – what is right in the desire to see people get what they “deserve”? How much is the idea of justice tainted by the desire to believe that we’re the good guys?
(It often seems to me that there must be something very, very wrong with the human sense of justice, since most cruelty is done in the belief that the victim “deserves” it.)

Is there any moral principle that isn’t in some way tainted by the desire to feel virtuous*?

It often seems to me that the ground of morality should be the recognition that the one thing that unites all conscious beings is the capacity for suffering. What morality is about is other living beings with nerve endings and vulnerable bodies and feelings and needs and desires and subjective experience and the capacity to suffer. Morality shouldn’t come from my desire to be good, it should come from our shared vulnerability. But I don’t have any idea how one would make a philosophical argument for that.

(I have an inordinate fondness for Nagel's “What is it like to be a bat?” - for it’s ethical implications. I guess it’s sort of the intersection of ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind? If morality comes from our shared vulnerability, and yet we never KNOW other minds, there is an essential unknowability in the subjective experience of others, we can try to imagine across the gap but we can’t ever truly know what it’s like to be another.)


*This is one reason why Aziraphale is just as morally ambiguous as Crowley: not only is he complicit in Heaven's cruelty, but he very much desires to have the moral high ground. “I am a great deal holier than thou.” “I’m the nice one, you can’t expect me to do the dirty work.”

(We are all morally ambiguous. We are all complicit. We are all guilty. What can we do but forgive each other?)

Title: “I didn’t mean to become a father, I just fell in with the right angel”
Summary: Kids ask questions. Crowley grumbles. Aziraphale has an idea.
Word Count: 450
On AO3 here

( I didn’t mean to become a father, I just fell in with the right angel )

astrogirl has written a must-read ficlet: Evil May Triumph When Good Angels Do Nothing.

Aziraphale is complicit in Heaven’s cruelty.

One of the things I find most interesting about Good Omens is that both Aziraphale and Crowley are morally compromised. They both have moral feelings; they’re both kind and compassionate. But both of them work for organizations that cause suffering. Crowley’s complicity is more obvious, but Aziraphale is complicit too (“I was just obeying orders” is not a moral justification, as the past century has taught us too well) – as this fic illustrates so powerfully. Both Aziraphale and Crowley are kinder than their job descriptions – but both are still complicit.

(As are we are all, of course.)

Good Omens is so many fascinating things – that’s why it’s so wonderful – but one of those fascinating things is a study in the dynamics of complicity.

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ETA: Not just complicit - trapped, too, of course - trapped in the system in which they're complicit. (As are we all, of course.)

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What is work for?

Work can indeed give us a sense of purpose. Work can fulfill many human needs: for challenge, for community, for connection, for competence, for mastery, for meaning, for purpose, for recognition, for respect.

But paid work is not the only way to have those things. USians often talk about "the dignity of work" as though the dignity comes from a paycheck. All a paycheck means is that what you're doing is valuable to an entity with the power and resources to pay you; it doesn't say anything about the actual value of your work. Caring for a baby is far more valuable than most paid jobs, but the baby doesn't have power or resources to pay. The dignity of work doesn't come from the paycheck, it comes from the real value of the task - doing something that is GOOD for others and for the world.

And when the work that pays is work that does not provide those basic, universal human needs, and when it leaves people no time or energy to engage in activities that do provide those basic human needs - then work isn't working.

Human beings are amazingly resilient, and sometimes human beings can find meaning in situations where it might seem impossible. Dan and Kira both find meaning and purpose in their work. Dan does it to pay for his daughter's education so she won't have to do a job like his. Kira thinks of the customers' joy when they open their packages. Dan and Kira are beautiful testaments to the human ability to make meaning. But they are making the best of terrible situations. That people are able to make meaning in a terrible situation doesn't mean that the situation is acceptable.

That is particularly true when it is so obvious that the situation doesn't have to be like this. Yes, technology is neutral; yes, it's the uses to which we put it that make it good or bad. But then what excuse do we have for not using it to make people's lives better instead of worse? If technology can be put to any use, then why do we use it to enrich the few instead of using it to enable the many to flourish? It's not the technology's fault, it's OUR fault. WE need to use our resources to create a system where the human spirit can thrive.

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(Thank you to elisi for the icon!!!)

It's raining today, a steady, gentle spring rain. There are pools and channels and streams everywhere. The brilliant green grass and the brilliant yellow daffodils and forsythia seem to glow.

I love the sound of the rain.

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Each day the sun shone, the birds lingered, though the trees were turning, purely out of habit, and their rose and yellow and rust looked strange and beautiful above the brilliant green grass. It was a wonderful time: almost better than spring, really, because it was rarer. Each golden day was cherished to the full, for one had the feeling that each must be the last. Tomorrow it would be winter.

-Elizabeth Enright, The Four-Story Mistake, the second book in the Melendy Quartet, copyright 1942.

We all have strong feelings about the stories we love. If we didn't, we wouldn't be in fandom.

If your feelings about a story are very deep and powerful, then someone else saying something that you strongly disagree with can feel like an unbearable assault on your very soul.

That feeling is real.

But that feeling is not necessarily providing you with accurate information about the external world.

If you feel hurt, you feel hurt.

But that you feel hurt - even deeply, profoundly hurt - does not necessarily mean that someone else has done something wrong.

‘What I think is,’ said Duncan suddenly but quietly, ‘that even if Aunt Janet told the little girl about the ferret in Miss Tulloch’s shop, it would be different to her from what it was to us. This little girl was from England, you said, and she has never seen a shop like Miss Tulloch’s or even a ferret likely. The person that hears the story makes it different.’

I looked at the boy with admiration. ‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘I think that Duncan is the only one in this family who has any real sense. Of course the person who hears the story or reads the story contributes just as much to it as the person who tells it or writes it.’

-My Friends George and Tom by Jane Duncan


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If you read enough, and C.S. Lewis certainly did that, you come to see that every great story contains elements--talking beasts and brave orphans, lonely girls and dying gods, trackless forests and perilous cities--that can and have been used and reused over and over again, without becoming exhausted. If anything, they grow denser, richer, more potent, with each new telling. Every great storyteller contributes a little to this patina, but storytellers are human, and inevitably those contributions have flaws. Myths and stories are repositories of human desires and fears, which means that they contain our sexual anxieties, our preoccupations with status, and our xenophobia as well as our heroism, our generosity, and our curiosity. A perfect story is no more interesting or possible than a perfect human being.

A long time ago, I opened a book, and this is what I found inside: a whole new world. It isn't the world I live in, although sometimes it looks a lot like it. Sometimes, though, it feels closest to my world when it doesn't look like it at all. This world is enormous, yet it all fits inside an everyday object. I don't have to keep everything I find there, but what I choose to take with me is more precious than anything I own, and there is always more where that came from. The world I found was inside a book, and then that world turned out to be made of even more books, each of which led to yet another world. It goes on forever and ever. At nine I thought I must get to Narnia or die. It would be a long time before I understood that I was already there.

-The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller