Almost Insightful
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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.