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!
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