Morality for Dummies (Intelligence is NOT a virtue)

2006-01-04T08:06:00.000-08:00

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, yellow!

For those of you accustomed to Wikiwoolia, this will be a bit more down the serious path. But never fear, the essence of the Wool will run through this blog too. So print this out, curl it underneath your arm, and have a seat upon your WC thrown as I attempt to develop my own morality (yikes!)...

Perhaps the main underlying principle behind Mor-wul-ality is simplicity. Har har, yeah i know...take a few minutes to quit giggling like little schoolgirls. But seriously, I've read some of the great moral philosophers: Kant, Spinoza, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, most recently Comte-Sponville, and yadda yadda yadda; and each does a very enlightening job of exposing, perhaps, the nature of "good." Comte-Sponville is particularly helpful in applying moral theory to everyday life....but not to the level which I desire. I didn't learn differential equations by reading theory, I learned them (and subsequently forgot them) by doing them with guidance from somebody that already knew how to do them. Somebody taught me based on his / her experience. And morality and calculus as simple as that (conceptually)..."Woolly, raise the power by one and divide the whole thing by that 'new' power"...that's how an English major taught me calculus. Easy. That's what I'm after.

In other words, I want something that's stupid-proof. I want a pratical guide to ethics to end all practical guides to ethics. I want clarity, dammit! If I ever end up in the unlikely but morally-trying situation where I must choose between letting a speeding train run over a herd of old-fougies or pulling a switch which detours the train to run over a baby who's destined to discover the cure for cancer, I want to know, decisively, how to act...b/c in such a hypothetical, one wouldn't have time to read / decipher Kant.

But more realistically, I want to know how to act in everyday situations, not wild hypotheticals. And so my guide here is an on-going, dynamic work directed moreso at this later situation...the one of daily life. Morality as it concerns driving to work, working, working out, having coffee with the neighbors, buying groceries, eating dinner, and falling asleep with the TV on. I don't really know where this will go, per se, but I do know one thing, and that is this will be the work-in-process of a common person struggling against impulse and seeking excellence.

So, without further ado, let's get going...

I'm going to start with my current definition of morality. Morality -- n, the sum total of all virtues. That's like, the global definition....so if morality was like air or water or fruit roll ups, then morality is all the fruit roll-ups in the universe. But these fruit roll-ups are weird, b/c everybody can enjoy them together and independent of one-another. just b/c i have a blue fruit roll-up, doesn't mean you can't also have it. We can both have the blue fruit-roll up.

So what's so hard about morality? That's the question....

Well, we can all have the blue fruit roll-up, but within each one of us are subconscious desires and impulses which push us away from the blue fruit roll-up. Where these come from, I have no idea or theory right now. Maybe I'll tackle that one later. But, for now, just know there are impluses and desires that push you away from the blue fruit roll-up called "Morality." So, within the individual, morality has a destructive force called immorality. In other words, you can pig out on the world's largest blue fruit roll up but every time you eat a disgusting brussel sprout, it destroys some of the blue fruit roll up that's trying to digest in your stomach. sooooo, within the individual, morality = virtue - vice, where vice here is brussel sprouts.

In summary, in the context of the universe, morality is all that is good. But good gets filtered when it is applied to man. Filtered by "bad" impulse and "bad" desire which I've lumped together to call "vice". The goal then: achieve 100% "good." Stated differently, open the value so the water stream is unobstructed, open the garden hose to full spray, eliminate the filter of vice, release the choking grasp of vice!

Many people don't do a very good job with this, and so they allow their life to be led by desires and impulses. For that reason (since it is so uncommon to be virtuous), to lead a moral life means to lead a life of excellence. Fill your being with unfiltered goodness (nothing but blue fruit roll ups) and you will acheive 100% of your good potential, you will be excellent....an A+ student.

And we all have this desire for excellence...many are just ignorant or unmindful of it. Matter of fact, this desire for excellence is one, if not the, thing that seperates man from beast! Your dog might appear patient as he / she waits to go outside and take a dump, but surely you would not call your dog virtuous. Or, as a seperate argument: your goldfish will eat until he / she kills himself if you allow it, certainly, then, a goldfish lacks the virtue of temperance. Here, in my first example about the dog, the dog exhibits patience, but not for the desire of being excellent...Fido is patient b/c it's hard to open the door without opposable thumbs. In the second example, the goldfish exhibits no temperace, but not out of a disrespect of temperance, the goldfish simply cares about eating food, not about being excellent.

Soooo, morality is virtue minus vice and to "be moral" means "to be excellent" or "to acheive your potential as a human." In the next instalments, I'll attempt to outline how to be moral by way of outlining how follow some of the common excellences / virtues.

It's worth noting now, however, that, many values are not virtues. Intelligence, for example, is a value but not a virtue. Why? Probably b/c not all people are capable of intelligence. But, by definition, all people must be capable of all that are called virtuous...it might not be easy, in fact it usually isn't, it just has to be attainable. Some people are tall, some are short, some people "big boned" and some are beanpoles, and some people are intelligent and others are as stupid as a bag of hammers....

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Morality for Dummies (Intelligence is NOT a virtue)