Friday 8 February 2008

morality bytes, or why my essays suck

I've always been very intrested in morality. whats right and whats wrong, who decides yadeeyada. now time for my very genral and vague (like all my essays) views on such things.

I was on youtube watchin the most awesome jack johnson preform his laid back accoustic love (truly he is my idle) when scrolling down i saw someone had left a negative comment! Ignorance online? surely not! it went something like this

"All you people that like jack are just sheep Baaa Baaa. he's sooo mainstream and unorginal"

Seems to me that things become mainstream because they are good. its like their reward. and originality for originalitys sake alone seems a bit pointless to me. fair enough of your making a statement, but don't critise something purely because its "conformist". and i would suggest that theres a few conformist ideas that are pretty good to subscribe to. for instance, geneocide beiung bad and not setting fire to dogs. sometimes the masses do get it right.

Then again that raises a tricky issue. say the vast majority of folk decided it was a good idea to set fire to dogs. wouldn't it be percieved as a good thing. after all morality soemtimes seems to be nothing more than a sort of democracy. you vote on what you think is a bad thing and if a significantly high percentage (say 70%) says it is, then it officially becomes so. course there are grey areas like abortion (where the splits kinda in the middle)

But like all democracys theres a problem. what if mostly everyone is STUPIDO!? (I don't think they are but just bare with me) after all 1000 years ago 70% of everyone thought rights for women were a bad idea. so it "officially" became one. and about 200 years ago everyone though slavery was a good idea (except the slaves presumably) so it "officially" was. Point is todays evil might well be tommorows good. so place your bets and invest your cash carefully.

course this takes the argument into a full contradictory circle. like me essays. YAY.

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