At 06:30 PM 11/29/2009, you wrote:
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:19:22 -0500
From: tjpa <t...@tjpa.com>
Subject: Re: Gulag
On Nov 29, 2009, at 5:32 PM, Adil Godrej wrote:
> Okay, I see what you are getting at. Point well taken. Although I
> think that killing is more about morals that ethics. Otherwise we'd
> never be able to defend against attacks against our selves. If a
> farmer commits suicide so that the government will be shamed into
> helping his starving family, did he just do something unethical
> because he didn't reject suicide? This isn't a made-up example, but
> what has happened with a lot of farmers in some states in India
> recently. Failed monsoons are the main reason for the starving
> families.
My computer says "ethics" is "a set of moral principles." How do you
want to hold them distinct?
Because they are. As I said, this has become an academic argument. I
get enough of those in my daily life. I've been trained to be able to
carry them on ad infinitum, but they don't often achieve anything
beyond the satisfaction that one had a good argument. So I've learned
to curb them once they get to the E*N*T*E*R*T*A*I*N*M*E*N*T phase, to
coin a phrase....
My reading of the farmer suicide in India was that these farmers
thought they were out of options and therefore killed themselves. The
problem with their action was that it was based on an incorrect
assessment of their situation -- put simply "where there is life there
is hope." There were ethical means to achieve their goals. Did these
farmers not know of Gandhi? It also created an even worse situation
for the families they left behind. A very bad result.
A person in depression is not necessarily rational. Expecting them to
understand homilies such as "where there is life there is hope" when
they are not all there mentally is armchair feel-good positivism.
Those who have reached a state of hopelessness can't see any hope, by
definition. The Gulag of the mind is worse than the other type of
Gulag. They view suicide as an escape. If they were capable of
thinking rationally in their situation, farmer suicide wouldn't be a
problem, would it? Go ahead and call their actions unethical if you
like, but it doesn't change the fact that they didn't factor in
"ethics" into their decision to kill themselves. Abject poverty tends
to do that to a person. Gandhi was an educated man with a good
support system and was fighting quite a different type of government.
It "cost a lot to keep him in poverty" as Sarojini Naidu said. Yet
even he wouldn't necessarily have been successful against the corrupt
politicians of today. He couldn't exactly prevent the deaths of many
during Indian's partition. And I speak as an admirer of Gandhi.
> Now, was your victory over this issue an ethical or moral one? :)
Strictly pragmatic.
I figured. Pragmatism is never constrained by either ethics or morals.
Adil
P.S. Okay, I'm done. It's going to be a long week at work. I'll
accept whatever you send my way, but I'm afraid I will not be able to
respond. Yeah, I'm running away from the fight. It's only the ethical
thing to do (being as I'm at work). (Did I just hear a collective
sigh of relief from the ComputerGuys community?)
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