LS Re: Morality and Potential


Horse (horse@wasted.demon.nl)
Wed, 22 Jul 1998 05:44:46 +0100


Hi Jonathan and Squad (again!)

> THEO wrote:
> >My immediate thought here is that Hitler realised his potential to a
> >great extent in the final solution and also in the creation of a master
> >race. An atomic bomb realised its potential on Hiroshima. Were these
> >then 'moral' acts.
> >
> >I think I understand your point here Jonathan, but are you not in
> danger
> >of following Ken in splitting human morality from the morality of the
> >universe and if so, does this not trouble you? I repeat again my
> >conviction that if human morality is reduced to individual desire then
> >the MoQ has little practical worth regardless of its metaphysical
> >veracity.
>
> I think I may have a way around this objection. I previously made the
> point that potential requires mechanism to be realised. From a given
> point there may be many possible paths (mechanisms) downhill, but not
> all of them will necessarily lead to same lowest point. I think that
> Nazism was a PERVERSION or a DIVERSION. Morality was side-tracked.
> Thankfully, a superior morality ultimately prevailed.
> It is immoral to attempt to reverse the natural flow, but moral to
> divert or attenuate the flow to facilitate it's movement down the best
> channel. Examples of this approach can be found in engineering (drainage
> design), medicine (toxic drugs), economics (government intervention) and
> probably many other systems. Thus it is moral for the LS to restrict
> (censor) discussion to focus on selected topics.
>

The big problem, as I see it, with the above is that you are trying to
anticipate the probable outcome of the effect of DQ in advance and
as such limiting DQ. This is surely a case of intellect attempting to
subjugate DQ for its own purpose, which is apparently immoral
according to what Pirsig has written. I'm not saying that P. is
necessarily correct, just pointing out the already stated.

What I do think is definitely wrong with the above is that you are
not taking into account the effect of a possibly vast number of
additional contributory factors that may undo any good that you are
trying to pre-empt. This has definite tones of Utilitarianism. The
short term effect may seem to what is required but the long term
effects are unpredictable and could be worse than the condition
you try to prevent. This is the basis of chaotic systems.

Horse

"Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
It was what got written down.
It was as simple as that!"
Sir Sam Vimes.

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