Posted 4 years, 1 month ago late at night by oso
Riding my bike back from work through the quiet seaside San Diego roads, under the slightly minty eucalyptus, overlooking the moon’s drunken ocean reflection, I was sure that I had it all figured out. Something had been bothering me about my post on moral absolutism versus moral relativism and finally I figured it out and I felt sure that I could articulate it.
I got to the door, turned off Oakenfold on my iPod, and was ready to start typing away. But then I read Laura’s incredible comment which was more or less her notes from the “integration series” at Ibero University in Torreón, Mexico. It’s the first evidence I have seen that Laura did not spend 100% of her college days inside Sanborns smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.
And it gave me a lot to think about. So I’m gonna hold off on the post and re-read some Nietzche and Bentham. I also want to translate Laura’s comment before I post my own. Unfortunately tomorrow morning I work at 6 a.m. and tomorrow night I’m headed to Street Scene so it probably won’t be till Saturday that I’ll get around to it.
Word.
There are a lot of dense books on the matter, none of which I’ve read, but it occurs to simple ol’ me that when human beings found themselves in environments where cooperation was a better survival strategy than competition (probably all of the natural world), they evolved the basic tenets required to keep up that system: to do onto others as you’d have them do on to you, and that all is fair in self-defense, but offense/personal gain has to be justified in context. So there is absolute and relative both.