2001-01-12 - 11:04pm

Who's Who Cheat Sheet
Who I Read

On the internal soundtrack: "Centerfold", J. Geils Band.

We watched "The Exorcist" tonight. I had never seen it before. That is a damn good movie! Damn good! They took a completely unbelievable topic and made it real, made it work! I knew a few things about the movie, the usual details about the, uh, symptoms of the possession stuff, but I never knew what an excellent film it is. It's not a "horror movie", it's a film about a girl who ends up needing an exorcism, and how it affects all the people involved. I'm impressed.

Ohhhhh, so. Sigh. I've had a really interesting couple of days, based on some stuff I read in Kristala's journal. I've been discussing philosophical/moral issues with Megan and Poindexter, and it's been really, really interesting, and if I try to write it here it's either not going to come out right or I'll agonize over it for hours. I'll give it a shot.

Basically, Kristala has said several times that she does not believe the killing is morally wrong. So on my walk with Megan and at home with Poindexter, we talked about that.

I have never read any philosophy, so this whole thing will sound juvenile to anyone who has, I imagine. Nevertheless.

First, I'm trying to figure out, what is morality? The whole "Killing is wrong" idea is just a made-up rule, isn't it? Something that some people invented and agreed they would follow and enforce? The only reason killing is wrong, then, is because society has deemed it so?

Megan suggested this: The "killing is wrong" moral concept is in place because it is the one that has best enabled society to survive and prosper. If you go around killing people, willy nilly, it doesn't bode well for the continuation of the species or make for a happy society.

We also talked about the "Golden Rule" idea -- I don't want you to kill me, so I won't kill you, deal? That's a good theory too.

My feelings about it are along individualistic lines (it has a lot to do with my libertarian beliefs). I think that the right to end a life lies solely with the individual. (In that regard, I do not believe suicide is morally wrong, however tragic can be.) I believe that individuals can do whatever the hell they please as long as it does not intrude upon the rights of others. That seems like the best way for everyone to be satisfied. All transactions must be consensual. If you kill someone, you are definitely intruding on the rights of others. If nothing else, you're stealing somebody's life without their consent.

With Poindexter I got into an argument about absolute truths. Is "killing is wrong" an absolute truth, or is it something made up? I don't believe in very many absolute truths when it comes to morality or social rules. Just a look at the wide variety of beliefs held by the millions of people all over the world has made me think that there are none, there is only what people and societies have thought up and decreed. If nothing else, there have been societies who have ritualized killings, or cannibalistic societies, and they think killing is just fine for their purposes.

Poindexter had very interesting ideas:

Under religion, killing is morally wrong because you're "playing God", taking away God's right to decide when someone dies.

Under societies or government: It's bad business to have people killing each other. The function of government is to enable people to find the best way to live our lives together as a group, and constant killing isn't one of the better ways.

His most interesting argument was from a biological/genetic standpoint, not societal or religious. It goes like this:

Human beings have an extremely strong survival instict. This appears to be universal. Genetically speaking, there's no one who doesn't have it because anyone who didn't probably didn't survive to reproduce. The deepest seated need that human beings have, the bottom line, is survival. It's more important than propagating. Even people who are severely depressed will continue to live for years in incredible pain, and the only real explanation for that would be the survival instinct.

Human beings have an ability to reason. You can reason, without having to consider a contract with other people or a belief in a god, that your most basic need is to survive. For somebody to rob you of your most basic need would be the worst thing that could ever happen to you. Therefore taking it away from somebody else for no reason would have to be wrong.

I'm sure someone out there could tear any of these arguments to pieces, or come up with their own. If you'd like to share your theory, I'd like to hear it. Do you think killing is wrong? Why/why not?

In other, slightly less mind-garbling news, I wrote an e-mail to the place that I want to volunteer at, now that I don't need to worry about sneezing on everyone and making them sick. Haven't received a reply yet. I'm thinking over the weekend I might drop by and see if anybody's there.

I told Megan about it, because I remembered her mentioning doing something similar in the past, and it turned out to be the same place. Excellent. She highly recommended that I try to get Poindexter involved too, because many of the children there are almost desperate for interaction with an adult male. (Most of the clients of the place are single mothers and their children.) It was a sobering thing to hear.

Getting Poindexter's butt off the couch is the hard part; I'm sure he'll be agreeable as to where we go after that. ;)

Megan also recommended a book called "A Hope in the Unseen", about an amazing young man named Cedric Jennings who made his way from a violence-ridden high school in Anacostia to Brown University. Apparently it chronicles his senior year in high school and his first year at Brown.

So far it's been alternately horrifying and inspiring. Cedric Jennings is an amazingly strong and dedicated individual, with a strong mother behind him -- the stuff he has to put up with and fight through would cause most people to give up, I think. The descriptions of his life and his school -- an uninvolved father, drug dealers on every corner, constant ridicule at school, and a neverending threat of violence -- are really quite frightening. It is really a whole 'nother world and it appears that many of its inhabitants cannot conceive of anything different or better.

I want to know what to DO about this. I've heard over and over again how horrible the conditions can be. Now tell me what to DO. Is there even an answer?

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