compensatory ethics - what a concept! thanks a bunch douglas, that just cost me a precious hour that I could've spent on making ethically unsound art.
of course you can extrapolate it much further; PC types being self-righteous wankers, surgeons verging on being sociopathic villains (it's true!), and of course ye olde religious righteousness causing more death and pain than blah blah blah. still, I don't really like this tit-for-tat way of thinking, it's so even-stevens. however if I do buy into this dodgy concept of compensatory ethics, then surely the next step is to apply some good old physics-style logic to it and look at the transformation/conversion processes involved. i.e. how, or more importantly how much, does the negativity invoked by the righteousness boost offset the "good deed" in question? one quarter-clean planet vs. ten million bad vibes? trade a cubic foot of minimally-polluted ocean for an insulting remark? or maybe an artwork made of recycled materials for a fast food binge? (or is that worth a year of fast food binges?) (as an aside, I think it still boils down to how much of a self-absorbed, egocentric prat you are; when not blinded by their own concerns/needs/fears/desires, people generally have a fairly well-developed sense of give-and-take (ignorance and collective 1st-world egocentricities permitting). exception to the rule of course being artists. we who create food for the mind/soul can demand the world and more for it. the only reason we conceive of ethically-valuable art is so we can do it more brazenly and righteously (or, conversely, to stop the mid-life demons).) ANYWAY, rather continuing down the path of the rant, back to the physics: what I'd propose along the lines of the symposium theme is that someone like the programmers mentioned in douglas's other post (or even better, douglas himself!) develop an ethics-energy conversion calculator. preferably one that outputs its results as pirateable MP3s and movies (quantity, frequency, copyright damage index) that I can rip off in return for all my immensely valuable contributions to the community (quantity, quality, relevance). tit tat jo _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
