I’ll give a shiny quarter to anyone who can make sense out of this gem of post-modern ethics from Steven “Emergence” Johnson: Just because something’s morally right doesn’t always make it the right thing to do. Huh? What? Are you on drugs? Retarded? Demented? A tenured professor? A Ba’ath Party regular? That’s exactly what it … Continue reading “Do the wrong thing”
I’ll give a shiny quarter to anyone who can make sense out of this gem of post-modern ethics from Steven “Emergence” Johnson:
Just because something’s morally right doesn’t always make it the right thing to do.
Huh? What? Are you on drugs? Retarded? Demented? A tenured professor? A Ba’ath Party regular? That’s exactly what it means, nothing more and nothing less. Slap, slap, slap.
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If Hitler was drowning, it would be morally right to rescue him, but not the right thing to do.
Oh come on, Richard. It’s not post-modern ethics, it’s Enlightenment-era, Founding Fathers ethics. I think it’s morally wrong to imprison hundreds of thousands of people for absurd drug-war related charges, and I think it would be morally right to liberate them. But that still doesn’t make it right for me to overthrow our democratically established legal/penal system in the pursuit of that moral principle. As I said in my original post, we have democracies to deal with the fundamental problem that reasonable people will disagree about moral rights. The same should go for international conflicts. That’s not post-modernism at all. It’s democracy.
If Hitler was drowning, it would be morally right to rescue him, but not the right thing to do.
In what code of “morality” would it be right to contribute to the mass-murder of millions by rescuing a drowning Hitler, Barn? I missed the memo on that one.
I think it would be morally right to liberate them. But that still doesn’t make it right for me to overthrow our democratically established legal/penal system in the pursuit of that moral principle.
You have an alternative, lobbying the Congress to change drug laws, that was not available to the Iraqi people under Saddam.
The point is that not all forms of national government are created equal, and some don’t deserve to continue. Ask the Iraqi people today if bombing them to freedom was the right and moral thing to do, and I’ll betcha they’re down with it.
“In what code of “morality” would it be right…”
That would be the one in the Bible, Richard.
Romans 12:19, Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.