(no subject)

[johnpalmer]

So, I think I have my brilliant philosophical contribution taking shape.

It comes down to drunk driving and peanut butter sandwiches.

Drunk driving is evil, even if no one gets hurt. The risk of causing harm is too great, even if no harm is actually done.

And, at some point in time, a person who keeps giving random hungry children peanut butter sandwiches is obligated to ask "Can you eat peanut butter?" after a few children go into anaphylaxis.

There's still a little bit more to be written filling in the gaps and tying it all together... but really, that's the essence.

You're responsible for what might happen as a result of your actions, and you're responsible for noticing what happens when you perform an action, and change your behavior accordingly.

Past that, it comes down to my fundamental theorem, you have to make the best moral decision you can (which might include listening to the advice of another, following a set of guidelines, etc.), since it'd be silly to make a decision other than the one that's the best you can make.

Oh, yeah, and it's good to make things better for people, and not good to make things worse for people. What's better and worse? Well, some of those are obvious; the rest comes down to noticing what happens, and doing your best to figure out what that means.

Comments

Re: Sooo

[kightp.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you're talking about what the Buddhists call "mindfulness" - the responsibility to pay attention to the consequences of one's actions.

That doesn't always mean you don't act if the consequences are "bad," but you try to make the decision and take the action mindfully, with full recognition of those consequences.

Or maybe I've been reading too much Dalai Lama again. (-:

Re: Sooo

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

No, that sounds right. Mindfulness is a good way to put it, in fact. And, yes, the best decision might involve bad consequences, which you shouldn't ignore, but you can't just decide to keep doing the same stupid thing, over and over, because you claim that it's "a hard thing", like some Presidents... oh, wait, am I getting partisan? Really, this book I'm working on *is* going to be non-partisan... mostly.

(Re: how many of my ideas seem to sync up with Daili Lama's, I'm going to be pissed off if people say that I'm just cribbing from Buddhism and re-writing it in modern English. I really *am* thinking this stuff through! That I'm coming up with this stuff independently just shows that it's pretty good stuff.)

(Hey, I think I just found that streak of arrogance I said I'd need to write this properly. :-) )

Re: Sooo

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Sigh. I hate it when I mis-spell something with an example *RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME*! Dalai Lama. Sigh-sub-2.

Re: Sooo

[kightp.livejournal.com]

how many of my ideas seem to sync up with Daili Lama's

It's not that the ideas synch up in a re-inventing the wheel sort of way, it's more that the viewpoints are compatible, and there are places where specific ideas and concepts intersect.

This is mostly just me synthesizing ideas from separate sources, though. That's how my brain works, by drawing associations and metaphors from here and there and mooshing them into a sort of grand unified theory of What Pat Believes. When I was reading a lot of Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth) for instance, everything else I read reminded me of something he said ... but considering that he was writing about mythology - well, duh!