Podcast 28: Not tonight honey, I have a headache

An interesting show, gentlemen. I'm humbled to have given Joey something so serious for consideration.

In my effort to keep my comments brief, I am sometimes not very clear. In regards to the evolution of morality, I was stating, not that morality has gotten worse, but that it is hard to say that it has gotten better (i.e. evolved). The Holocaust would suggest that morality has not evolved. Peter seems to suggest that the numbers killed are explainable by the industrialization of mass slaughter, which is true. But the point is not that no slaughter like that had ever been perpetrated, but that in a morally evolving species (as Roddenberry's vision would have humanity) such an atrocity should not still be happening, particularly in one of the most advanced countries in the world.

The deaths in Communist Russia almost serve as a better example of the lack of moral evolution. The revolution was supposed to bring greater equality to the Russian people. Socialism was supposed to be a great moral victory, a perfectly egalitarian system. Instead of being a moral evolutionary step forward, it turned to total tyranny.

These examples are not listed to assert that humanity is getting worse, only that it is not provable that mankind is getting better. A theory that links morality to evolution then is dubious at best. Spock's assertion that this is an evolutionary step for the Romulans is hard to support historically.

I hope this has brought some clarity to my remarks.

Jim:
Thanks for all the great insight you bring to the podcast. I think you've clarified your stance, and I agree with you. Contrary to Daboo, I don't see the "the wisdom of crowds" as proof of any kind of moral evolution - although I do love her choice of examples, as it incites me to argument status almost sub-consciously. But we'll get to that in a moment...first, I want to talk about what gave me cause to reflect, and the results thus-far of said reflection.

I've been thinking a lot since Friday, and I want to lay out some of my thoughts here. I see humans as making all decisions based on a sort of "three-dimensional model of thought" - a sort of Iron Triangle, if you'll allow me to use a common metaphorical device. In this model - whether or not you know it - you have three fixed points from which all decisions are derived. 1) An idealistic philosophical stance; 2) A dogmatic religious/moral opinion; 3) A logical/pragmatic application. To give examples, I would describe myself as existing on these three axes as "Objectivist/Christian/Empiricism". I hesitate to use this last because it's usually used in a context that bleeds more into the first bucket, but I find myself ill-equipped to speak on the third axis - either there's not an accepted language/framework for discussing the different logical/pragmatic choices we have to make each day, or my lack of formal education simply leaves me without the tools that are there, but beyond my sight.

As with any iron triangle, you cannot move any one point without either stretching all the remaining sides out of the original shape, or moving the other points away from their previously fixed marks. My understanding of Christianity today is that it is absolutist - that is, lying is always a sin, regardless of the reasons. However, Jim made an excellent point that there is a sort of "hierarchy of wrongs", and sometimes we have to prioritize our decisions - by holding my own intellectual and moral purity as the highest goal, am I defying my own principles? The trouble I'm having, and the reason I do not yet have an answer to the questions in my mind, is that I have yet to decide: does the triangle reshape, or do I need to move all points to some new level of understanding?