{conversations.nonesense} Who is righter?
"Good and evil in ethics are abstract values. You cannot say an action is good in some circumstances and evil in some other circumstances. It just does not make sense to me," argued Mohan while Suru was staring at him.
"If you categorize theft as an evil action, stealing bread for the poor is still evil. In my opinion, what makes people sympathize in such a situation, is their disability to implement an organization that supports the hungry layers of the society. Stealing bread for them is not a solution and is still evil," continued Mohan. Suru nodded in disagreement.
"Why can't you see that idealism is not realizable? Why do you think that there are no such ideal Utopias in the world? Isn't it over simplification to blame just everyone for not implementing such a society? Think about it. There ought to be another reason," said Suru matter-of-factly.
There was a silence after Mohan started to utter something which remained as an unclear sound. He did not finish the word. A few moments later, Mohan headed to the kitchen to pour a cup of tea for himself.
"Care for a cup of tea?" asked Mohan.
"No, thanks. I will make some coffee for myself," replied Suru. A thousand thoughts struck his head right after denying Mohan's offer for tea. Why did he deny it? Was that because he hated to agree with just anything that Mohan says? He was skeptical indeed. When he got to kitchen he told Mohan that he feels like having tea rather than coffee at the moment. Mohan smiled and poured him a cup of tea. The tea aroma was dominant in the living room where both friends were watching an unimportant hockey game. In fact, none of them were actually watching the game, but sinking in their deep thoughts.
When I was looking at them from here, I thought to myself that they both could be right. No one is righter than the other. Everybody is right in a way. Is this the reason why few people use the comparative adjectives righter? Being right is not a measurable function, so I cannot just compare and use that weird adjective.
"If you categorize theft as an evil action, stealing bread for the poor is still evil. In my opinion, what makes people sympathize in such a situation, is their disability to implement an organization that supports the hungry layers of the society. Stealing bread for them is not a solution and is still evil," continued Mohan. Suru nodded in disagreement.
"Why can't you see that idealism is not realizable? Why do you think that there are no such ideal Utopias in the world? Isn't it over simplification to blame just everyone for not implementing such a society? Think about it. There ought to be another reason," said Suru matter-of-factly.
There was a silence after Mohan started to utter something which remained as an unclear sound. He did not finish the word. A few moments later, Mohan headed to the kitchen to pour a cup of tea for himself.
"Care for a cup of tea?" asked Mohan.
"No, thanks. I will make some coffee for myself," replied Suru. A thousand thoughts struck his head right after denying Mohan's offer for tea. Why did he deny it? Was that because he hated to agree with just anything that Mohan says? He was skeptical indeed. When he got to kitchen he told Mohan that he feels like having tea rather than coffee at the moment. Mohan smiled and poured him a cup of tea. The tea aroma was dominant in the living room where both friends were watching an unimportant hockey game. In fact, none of them were actually watching the game, but sinking in their deep thoughts.
When I was looking at them from here, I thought to myself that they both could be right. No one is righter than the other. Everybody is right in a way. Is this the reason why few people use the comparative adjectives righter? Being right is not a measurable function, so I cannot just compare and use that weird adjective.
posted by Azad at
10:24 PM
3 Comments:
Great writing Azad. Here is my opinion on this matter:
1- "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts".
2-Coming to an absolute measure to define what action is right or wrong is impossible even if you include circumstances. This is beacuse theire is no well-defined "measure" for goodness.
3- God bless random variables!
By
Anonymous, At
6/27/2005 10:16 AM
Thanks Omid.
Re 1: How do you mean by not being entitled to one's facts? After all, any person lives in the world he/she has created for himself from his "facts" or let's say his self-imposed rules of life.
Re 2 and 3: 100% to the point :-) Also, God bless mathematical non-isomorphisms and rank deficient matrices :))
By
Azad, At
6/27/2005 8:45 PM
Re1: By saying that no one is entitled to his own facts I meant exactly this:
"that there exists an external world, whose properties are independent of any individual human being and indeed of humanity as a whole; that these properties are encoded in "eternal" physical laws; and that human beings can obtain reliable, albeit imperfect and tentative, knowledge of these laws by hewing to the "objective" procedures and epistemological strictures prescribed by the (so-called) scientific method."
You might think that I am crazy to re-state the obvious but you'll be surprized to know how much of humanities progressive "thoughts" and "literature" are based on defying this simple "reality".
By
Anonymous, At
6/28/2005 11:24 AM
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