More ethics in oots and a ramble about 'goodness'

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0679.html

Ah, Order of the Stick! A world where everything is seen in black and white terms of good and evil; what an excellent place to find ethical issues.

So today the lovely V (the gender of V is ambiguous, I shall refer to her as a her, though the technical term is hir) gets sued by her mate because she is never at home because she's too busy saving the world. In today's strip, V chooses to continue her journey to save the world from destruction rather than go home and oppose the divorce. 

Because I did not have my philosophy head on at the time of reading, I felt that V should go home and apologise to her mate immediately. The world was not going to end right there and then and V could easily have teleported over there to apologise. At least then she could explain to her mate why she wasn't going to attend the trial and that she was sorry for being away a lot (and accidentally luring a dragon to their home that nearly killed their children). All the people on the forum (they dislike the mate, which could have something to do with this) thought that V was doing the right thing in sticking to her quest and a few brought up the possibility of V sending an apologetic message. I did expect more objections. Almost everyone in English with Antigone thinks that Creon is wrong to put the state before his immediate family. Oddly, my views seem to be exactly opposite to most; I thought V should go home to her mate but that Creon was right to stick to the law.

This has just reminded me of the test we did ages ago where it tested how consistent our views were. I was the most confused of my friends, but I can't remember quite how confused. It would be interesting to take the test again after a year of philosophy. I would hope that I am more consistent now than I was.

It has also reminded me of an issue that I can't decide whether I want to donate to ToK or philosophy because it involves ethics. I'll probably talk about it in ToK and then come back and blog about it here, then I can get other people's reactions. The line between ToK and philosophy is terribly blurry when it comes to ethics.

Actual interesting philosophy

Today Lizzie - and there's no other word for it - accused me of being 'good'. (In a nice way, of course.) What was that supposed to mean? There's no doubting that I try to be good, though most of the time I'm not actually sure what this involves. I don't have a philosophical criteria for assessing my actions to see if they are good or not. But how can I go around even trying to be good if I'm not even sure what I'm aiming for? 

My 'goodness' mainly consists of this: Considering the effect the action will have on other people. If something will make them happy, I'll consider it. Obviously, I won't go to any lengths to make people happy (the exact length to which I will go is under debate) but I generally take the course of action that will make people happy, even sometimes (not always, I can be very selfish depending on my mood) if it will make me unhappy. It's not altruism, not by a long way. It makes me happy to make other people happy and people are friendly to me because I am in return. It's not a perfect system, of course. The big philosophical problems are still just as problematic as ever, but I think they are under every system because there is no right answer. But this is the philosophy I've always lived by and it works for me. I'm happy in a eudaimonia-type way and this I attribute mostly to the above.

As an example, when I was little, I always found that teachers were much more likely to relax the rules (regarding pretty much anything) for me than for most of my classmates. Because I was generally very reliable and usually made them happy (by handing homework in on time, etc.) they didn't mind so much when I forgot my homework.

It's very difficult to write anything very personal about ethics without sounding awfully big-headed. This is the system I try to live by, it generally works and I am quite happy. I muck it up all the time but it's nice to realise that I do actually have a philosophy that I can strive towards. (Oh, that's the other thing that makes me happy: striving really hard at everything that comes along, but that's not so ethicsy.)

This is a high culture blog! I discuss ethics and ancient Greek literature!

Existentialists fight over 'meaning'

So I actually have time to write in my philosophical journal today, rather than using it as a productive method of procrastination. And was there any burning inspiration that hit me? Nope. Isn't it funny how the mind works? I did think of something though.

On the subject of meaning and existentialism. We were doing presentations related to the Theatre of the Absurd today and one of the topics was existentialism. So of course all the philosophers in the room dived in and talked about that. (I'm exaggerating; only Lizzzy and I did, but Hessie talked about the differences between exi and her topic [absurdism].) Something interesting that both Hessie and Lizzzy brought up as being notably existentialist was the way that there was no real meaning in your life. However they both went on to say you had to make up your own meaning. I think this is a result of the video we watched and may be Kirkegaard's brand of exi. (Please correct me on this if I'm mis-remembering.)

This was another one of those "Sartre wouldn't agree with that" moments. He would call people that made up their own meaning cowards/scum, especially if it was that there was a God and they were meant to do their bidding.

I didn't bring this up in front of the whole English class (I think there were a bit intimidated by our knowledge and ability to discuss the topic that they found confusing. It's sad because they seem to consider philosophy as something that philosophers do and that you have to have a lot of specialist knowledge to understand it. It's totally against the whole point of our paper 3 stuff! Having lots of knowledge about other philosophical theories is almost a by-product of doing philosophy; there's no point in debating ourselves round in circles without looking at the thinking other people have done for us. I really think we should correct this view! I think I'll probably be shot if I suggest this to the rest of the class but I think we ought to be given a chance to explain why we enjoy philosophy and that it's not just remembering what people thought. LONG digression, sorry!) but I talked to the philosophers later and they both said that they talked about the finding your own meaning bit because they preferred to think of it like that, personally. Fair enough, I say! We had a lovely little conversation about the differences between types of existentialism.

I really do think of us as philosophers now. To think that I used to worry about what to write here! Being a philosopher is amazing, having fellow philosophers is even more so. I feel a sense of team spirit among the philosophers, more profound than in any other lesson. I suppose we've experienced a lot together, we've chased ideas and undergone some radical thinking changes. I'm proud to be a philosopher!

Also,

I MISS MARGIE! 

Thoughts on assembly

Just noting my thoughts about the assembly this morning. (Whilst simultaneously procrastinating about my English homework; two birds + one stone?)

I don't know if you were there, but Mrs Marriot was talking about joining extracurricular activities and how great they were for developing your personality in the right way and teaching you things that school cannot. Educating you in a different way. This is fine and, having participated in the judo team for several years, I am a strong believer in the power of teamwork, even in a non-team sport. The team spirit we had when the judo club was at its height members-wise was incredible. Sadly, many people have left and this spirit is only preserved in the few of us that are left. Anyway, back to the point: I agree, sports are great. 

However, Mrs Marriot went from saying that we should all cooperate in sports to develop our character to saying that we should be selfish when it comes to academic work. I was a bit shocked at this drastic leap. Why should we be selfish when it comes to schoolwork and not sports?

Is it because our academic work actually matters in the long run? Was she saying that sports are good fun but don't really matter? What about the professional athlete? Should they be allowed to be selfish in their sport because it is important to them? Does it therefore follow that sports don't actually make any difference to our personalities, as was previously claimed, if we are capable of being selfish in other areas of life? Doesn't altruism permeate all areas of life? Shouldn't it? 

These were the questions that came to me at the time but I think what she really meant was that we shouldn't 'collaborate' with others in our school work. I think she was trying to discourage this idea. Which makes sense, of course, but I don't think this means we should be selfish in our academia. We frequently work together in understanding problems (especially maths!) and explaining concepts to each other. We'll debate to gain a deeper understanding about a topic, work through examples together and give critiques of each other's work to improve. Surely this is a form of collaboration and is good and wonderful and maybe sometimes even altruistic? (Whether that is possible or not is a whole different topic for debate. I'm actually fairly cynical and don't believe much in altruistic acts. They can happen, but true altruism in humans is rare.)

I'm nitpicking, really. But I was confused at first (thinking too much, probably) and I hope nobody else has gone away with the sense that they should never help anybody with schoolwork. 

Ooh, Sartre would disapprove of that

All this existentialism is getting to my head. Seriously. So we are all sitting in ToK; everyone has brought in a source that they think deals with ToK-related issues. (I brought The Truman Show, as a consequence, we're talking about starting up a ToK film club.) Hannah brings in the first source which was a newspaper article about a woman killing her children to make her husband's life a misery. She said this was not logical. (I disagree, but that's something else.) Obviously nobody thought this was a very good idea but it just struck me that Sartre would disagree with us.

He would say that the woman took action to change her life and because she chose to do it, she was acting morally. She didn't talk herself out of it by saying that she couldn't kill them because it wasn't in her nature to be a murderer, she did what she chose to. Interesting, Sartre.

I think where he would have not been so happy is that now she is pleading to not have been in her right mind when she did the thing. This is presumably so she gets let off with a lighter sentence. However, according to fellow ToK-er, Lizzie, she was planning to kill them the day before but she took her children shopping and they had such an nice day she thought it would be a shame to spoil it. So she did it the next day. This sounds like it has been a little exaggerated for the media (another ToK issue in itself) but it would have redeemed her in Sartre's mind. He might have still been a little cross with her for telling people it was unplanned, though.

His theory produces such contradictory results to those we expect from a moral philosophy. He doesn't condemn this woman for killing her children and even thinks it is better that she planned it beforehand. Whenever I begin to think that there might be something to his ideas, a practical situation like this comes along and makes it sound so plainly 'wrong' in the normal view of things that I go back to thinking he was a bit mad.

But most philosophers are, if I'm honest.