Lest ye become one.

[Jasper]

I did nothing to merit or demerit this nation as my own.  I did not elect to be born an American.  Nobody did.  We all merely happened upon it, and so we are... Free?  Freedom is not a blank check though.  It is rather like a shovel.  You're just as free to dig as you are to build.  It just so happens it's easier to dig.  We are free to do with our circumstances as we see fit, until we stop thinking it is so.  Just as our warriors fight shadows and traps in the east, we fight our own monsters.  We fight lobbies and madmen whose wishes matter more because of the color of their money and the froth at their lips.  If they had their way, we would join our livestock in the feedlots,  Televisions set in front of the iron bars, bottom dollar slurry in our troughs, laced with medicine to make us more pliant.  We fight monsters.  There is no good news.  The forecast for this nation's well being is increasingly, inarguably, catastrophic.  There is only bad news and weird news.  Be careful what you ask, however.  Ask a scary question, and you will receive a scary answer.  Why can't the wars end?  What can the nation afford now?  When do we tend to our ill?  How do we adjust our consumption?  How do we reverse the oil spill damage?  What does the inter-party polarization, and the advent of the tea party mean for American policy making?  Is it still possible for a single nation to exist that satisfies the ideologies and standards of the majority?  Would any president, no matter how perfect, be able to set things right?  Should a nation as unstable and warlike as ours be allowed to possess nuclear warheads?  Just how deep is it, now?  Can we save ourselves?  If no, are we beyond the help of others?  Should we be trying to police the world at this point in our decline?   I shouldn't even have to ask. 

At this late hour it is not likely that a mainstream thinker would object that mass acts of terror are monstrous, and that such actions must have consequences,  Bombed buildings and suicide airplane crashes.  The "war on terror" is at least in principle a just cause, because to not fight it is to permit it.  It has not been a polite war, as polite as war ever gets,  But to not have fought it to begin with was equally unthinkable.  We could have fought it more economically perhaps, and we may, in time, be forgiven the judgment that made us undertake a second war on false premises in the name of fighting terror.  Our enemy is not like previous foes.  It does not require the good will of a people.  It does not need the funding of a government.  And it does not heed the conventions of warfare that exist to make wars bearable for noncombatants.  Make no mistake, they fight monsters.  And it is all too possible to fight monsters for too long.  To combat them, we have abridged our rights, spied on each other.  We have cultivated fear and hate to galvanize ourselves.  We have dealt with cynical corporate creatures to provide for the effort.  Now we have declared thought crime, as no lawyer may defend someone merely accused a terrorist.  All in the hope that these sacrifices will prove worth the price of final victory.  But how many more sacrifices can we make before becoming the very thing we fight?  Is this an enemy we can beat without descending to their abhorrent level?  If we are to defend justice, if we are to play at chivalry, let us not compromise our moral high ground.  If we are to fight in the name of peace, let it be with a clear conscience.  But it is too late for that, isn't it?  Every division was deployed with bad intentions.  Every campaign promise was made with the intent to renege if need be.  Every goal was set with invidious motives.  We no longer have claim to morality, or even practicality, in this war.

[Remington]

Damn.

The "moral high ground" you're talking about? It's getting smaller and smaller every day, and people are starting to fall off. Although, it's not so much that the high ground is getting smaller, it's that the people are forcibly ripping their little standing-space of rock out of the Earth and jumping off the cliff with it.

Whatever we get, we'll deserve.

[Doktor Howl]

You guys are so late 20th century when you go bringing moral authority into it.

[Jasper]

There's no moral authority, though.  Nobody is qualified anymore.  Not the enemy, not the warriors, and not the bystanders like me.

[Doktor Howl]

There's no moral authority, though.  Nobody is qualified anymore.  Not the enemy, not the warriors, and not the bystanders like me.

I guess they win again, eh?

[Jasper]

What, did you expect a glorious revolution?  Or perhaps a new renaissance?

Maybe the history books will say so. 

[Kai]

What, did you expect a glorious revolution?  Or perhaps a new renaissance?

Maybe the history books will say so. 

Revolution is not glorious, and the renaissance was the providence of a few rich Europeans.


If we want things to change, then we have to be moral authorities. Or ethics authorities, if the word moral bothers. The price of ambivalence, apathy, nihilism and complacency is failure.

[Jasper]

I would like to agree and have that be the happy solution.  But I'm just too wary of any solution that asks me to claim the moral high ground and pass judgment on others.

[Kai]

I would like to agree and have that be the happy solution.  But I'm just too wary of any solution that asks me to claim the moral high ground and pass judgment on others.

So, in your opinion, we either have moral anarchy or an authoritarian dictatorship?

The reason morality gets twisted is the inability to question it, not simply having a moral standard and holding it up.

[Salty]

I would like to agree and have that be the happy solution.  But I'm just too wary of any solution that asks me to claim the moral high ground and pass judgment on others.

I can understand this position. You see people claiming moral authority, Ronald Reagan comes to mind, and doing so in an atrocious manner. You see the seeming permeability of moral decision making, the way that people wrap it around themselves as a cloak of protection to justify their actions without the need for second thought. Who sees that and wants to be that asshole?

But just because some people misuse morality-and I do prefer ethics as they're less founded in beliefs, by and large-doesn't mean there isn't a clear and true way to go about it. And though clarity and truth are not easily grasped, once you have them, at the time that you have them, you have stand up and make an example or declaration of it.

And as soon as you don't hold it firmly, you have to let it go.

Failure lies in not being able to do one or the other. Or both.

[Jasper]

All I'm trying to say in this thread is that, this is the situation, and whatever moral or ethical standards you might hold yourself or others to, we're still in this situation.  In fact, the only time I originally mentioned morality was in the context of this nation's (collective) moral high ground.  We as a country have no more right to wage war on terror than we do to become a totalitarian dictatorship in order to weed out radicals.  We forfeited any moral or ethical justification that might exist for the war.

But that's just a corollary to my main point, which is that ethical or no, fighting this war is turning us into the taliban.

[Kai]

All I'm trying to say in this thread is that, this is the situation, and whatever moral or ethical standards you might hold yourself or others to, we're still in this situation.  In fact, the only time I originally mentioned morality was in the context of this nation's (collective) moral high ground.  We as a country have no more right to wage war on terror than we do to become a totalitarian dictatorship in order to weed out radicals.  We forfeited any moral or ethical justification that might exist for the war.

But that's just a corollary to my main point, which is that ethical or no, fighting this war is turning us into terrorists.

I wasn't talking about we as a country though, I was talking about you and I, as individuals. There is no shame in holding a moral philosophy, and their is only failure if one doesn't.

You said, "There is no one qualified to be a moral authority anymore." I disagree, and ask, how are you disqualifying us as individuals?

[Jasper]

After actually thinking for a moment, because I didn't when I wrote that, I think I should have said,

"There is no moral value in anything the government does, in part or whole, due to the lack of moral insight in it's decisionmaking process.  By extension, by permitting the government to proceed in this way by passive commentary, we too are complicit."

[Kai]

After actually thinking for a moment, because I didn't when I wrote that, I think I should have said,

"There is no moral value in anything the government does, in part or whole, due to the lack of moral insight in it's decisionmaking process.  By extension, by permitting the government to proceed in this way by passive commentary, we too are complicit."

And I agree. Furthermore, the only way to do anything about it IS to be a moral authority.

I've been thinking more about this, and realizing that the world really does need more philosophers. NOT BA graduates who think they know everything, or postmodern nihilists who just like talking arguments in a circle, but people who actively study metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic and aesthetics to build themselves up and make themselves better and more aware people. Philosophy is not mental fappery as long as you DO something with it, apply it to your life. As trite as it sounds, "be the change you want to see in the world" is the only way possible to proceed without either being a nihilist or an authoritarian dictator.

[Jasper]

We must become authoritative dictators.