.... SYMMETRIC
BEING: Ethics
LINKS Wikipedia Ethics . Eminem Lyrics . Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics . YouTube He-man vs Skeletor
"...After all, if I don't know what justice is, I'm hardly going to know
whether or not it is in fact some kind of excellence or virtue, or
whether the person who possesses it is unhappy or happy."
-Plato, Socrates speaking
"Good is dumb."
-Spaceballs
Consequences of Knowing Cheesecake is Murder
Being
aware and knowledgable of the symmetry that love is rape of pain--that
cheesecake is murer--obviously raises many ethical questions.
Firstly, what do we think
about the being going on that we by chance might happen to have
awareness of? Is it terrible that any torture at all has been
created? This is one conclusion we might reach, that existence is
not worth the terrible unending death that we must experience again and
again for half of eternity.
But
then the cold math of logic sinks in; no matter how horrible we think
death and torture are, we objectively see that joy and life must
perfectly balance the torture and death. A masochist might even
say it's a terrible thing that there is any joy, and again I cannot
argue if I'm objective, neither does the coldness of the universe care
to begin with. (If we consider we traverse an infinite timeline,
eventually having every possible viewpoint at some point in time, we
might say that all add up to zero, that we have no real net opinion, or
we could just consider that our opinion has value for the time we have
it; does the inverse opinion have value as well?)
We
have utilitarian ethics, which supports the greatest good for the
greatest number of people. Firstly, in regards to the existece of
this philosophy, we see this belief is balanced by counter beliefs by
masochists that there should be endless pain, however strange this
seems (as indeed the whole inverted world behind our backs seems
strange and backwards, even if there is a little of these inverted
ethics sharing our same world: masochists seem rare but do exist), the
extremes also balanced by neutral beliefs such as full balance is just
dandy. Secondly, a catch: if we see that all joy rapes equal
values of pain, then we see it is totally impossible to achieve the
greatest joy for the greatest number of people, if we truly view all
parties as be valued equally. One way utilitarianism can counter
this is to revise itself to believe in the greatest good for the
greatest number of people of our own kind, on our particular given
realm of being, without a care for who we hurt.
With
opinions and judgements of being come moral actions. If I stay
true to the universe's cold ambivolence, then I cannot judge a
concentration camp or a holocaust to be any worse than the unseen joy
it generates. Hence I might build one, or not, at the slightest
whim. I might decide life is precious one day, and act on this
belief, spend time with a suicidal friend to convince him to stick
around, and another day on a whim decide to nuke Ohio.
Of
course, this point of view only applies to the absolute objective
theoretical picture. Within my respective life, I have beliefs
and values I will stick to, that may change a little, but usually not a
whole lot. These beliefs and actions have value and substance for
the time I stick to them, even if they're somewhat lessened by our
understanding that they're just one haphazard set pulled from nothing
in the sea of all sets; an angle of 178 degrees in the circle of all
angles, which may shift somewhat during my life but certainly not to
all angles; all arguments on abortion, politics, and so on, just some
random viewpoint among all views.
Another
thing that diminishes our actions is a possible lack of free
will. The picture we've seen seems more like a running a computer
than a sea of souls with wills of their own. If existence is a
program -- the infinite code generated by the number zero, the only
operating system of being -- then we might see that our seeming
decisions are simply occurences generated by this automatic fractal,
results of its vastness shifting us here or there at its programmed
whim, whether in an ordered way, or producing total chaos, like a
programming function rand(). If this is right, our actions and
beliefs seem to have less value, less passion.
We
point out a huge polar difference here between cold hard truths and
relative ethical beliefs. Much of our discussion in math or logic
or metaphysics is black and white: 3 cubed is 27, p requires un-p,
etc. But ethical beliefs are not correct or incorrect. If
we ask, "what shall we do today? Should we beat up an old lady,
should we volunteer at greenpeace?" the universe gives no answer.
It is 100% ambivolent. It cannot tell us what religion we should
be, as far as the ethical elements of the religion go; though the
beliefs about cold facts; whether our consciousness terminates or goes
on to be reincarnated, are either correct or incorrect, whether or not
we ultimately discover which are true and which are false.
Though
there is a cold truth involved in ethics: that all these ethical
systems are perfectly balanced and self-sustained; in this way, we say
the hard truth of the matter is that the universe values all ethical
sysetms equally and perfectly, like a circle of 360 degrees, each
ethical system some angle. The cold math is that each ethical
system is some random angle, and so this math cannot say anything as to
whether we should have 45 degrees or 181 degrees as our favorite angle.
Now all this diminishing of our beliefs seems negative; we have used
balance to spin ethics to a negative slant, and we might say that not
to do the opposite and use the truth of what are beliefs are to also
augment them and enlighten them, would be hypocritical of our
understanding of a universe founded on perfect balance. But this
is harder. Our negative reaction to our new truth of ethics comes
from our particular ethical beliefs about ethics themselves; [our
belief about belief]. To see the death of the value of ethics
mostly results in dissapointment, as we would be unhappy at the death
of a loved one, and could not very well see many positives.
But
certainly we can see some positives at least. To destroy the
value of ethics can free us from the burdens of those ethics. If
all is relative, I cannot do any wrong, should feel no guilt, except
relative to my particular system. Or, we might even use this
truth to augment the value of ethics; we might say, since my ethics are
generated by the very core foundation of existence, that this backs
them up, they are more than the feeble attempts of a human mind to give
meaning to the sporadic world around us.
Of
course, philosophical theory is often not practical. The
utilitarians who believe that a building full of happy hamsters
outweigh a human life would usually not kill someone to help those
hamsters. In this way, our knowledge of ethical neutrality and
our judgements on this awareness of ethical neutrality can be minimized
to unpractical knowledge and passing ponderings about reality. On
the other hand, this knowledge could also be vehemently applied to our
lives, deciding to give all our money or charity, or just jump off a
building, on a whim, if nothing truly matters, noting that these
actions could just be seen as existence itself behaving randomly, if
free will is indeed an illusion in the running automatic fractal of
life.
In
either case we should re-examine our beliefs and actions in a practical
way. Consider a specific example. An issue of whether or
not to put a tip in the tip jar at a fast food joint. If I put a
dollar in the jar, I'm making a tiny sacrifice for someone else, while
my invert experiences something vaguely like gaining or specifically
anti-losing an anti-dollar. Although if my sacrifice of tipping
makes me feel good for doing a good deed (I might even wait until the
cashier is looking to get extra credit), then this good feeling is
actually rape, and if I’m aware that this is rape, I might feel
bad for feeling good, and so on. If I don't tip, I'm saving
money, while my invert feels he is wasting money, although I might feel
selfish and guilty for not tipping. If I really want to involve
all parties, I might even consider the clerk’s un-self, and so on.
Plato
builds an imaginary society, going to celebrated lengths in debating
the issue of justice. After this whole debate, we must consider
the effect that this society we’ve built has on the inverse
society which supports it. Does the existence of a total inverted
society nullify everything we’ve accomplished by building
Plato’s republic? Does it even matter what is just and
unjust, if there is a perfect inversion balancing all just and unjust
actions? Is there still value in being just given the belief that
all justice rapes a negative? Should we still strive for the
enlightenment of the ideas outside the cave, knowing that our extra
enlightenment just costs extra ignorance elsewhere, not to mention that
the nature of this “knowledge” is now extremely
questionable anyway juxtaposed to its inverse.
Good and Evil
With
these issues, we've raised the ageless issue of good vs. evil. As
with everything else, our system generates a clear point of view of
what these are; sheds new light on this endless conflict. First,
we see that each exists as a tear in one direction of nothingness, not
just conflicting, but each needing the other to exist via
opposition. And in addition to seeing the creation and sustenance
of each, we also better understand what they are.
Evil
seems to be the acquirement of power and lust at the great expense of
the innocent, this is the belief that joy raping pain is a good thing,
and good seems coversely thinks that joy should not rape pain at all,
that it should exist intrinsically of itself. But if our theme is
true that joy rapes pain, we see that evil is actually much more aware
of how things work. Not that the ethical judgement that joy should rape pain cannot be correct or incorrect, as we've seen that
ethical judgements are all equal, but evil seems much more in tune with
the concrete facts of the matter, and acts on this reality.
If
the good were to understand what evil knows innately, it would be
destructive. Good's actions and causs are now somewhat
pointless. Good can still maintain its ethical judgement that joy
raping pain is wrong, and fight against the opposing belief, but it's
condemnation of evil becomes severely weakened; even more so if it is
believed that there is no free will. In Plato's argument of
justice vs injustice -- good vs evil -- injustice seems to have
triumphed at least in its basic knowledge of the universe, if it's
ethical beliefs are still equally balanced with it's foes. (We
might wonder what Plato would have concluded if he believed that love
was rape!)
I
ask, what in the flying hell is the difference between He-man's
cheesecake and Skeletor's cheesecake? Skeletor gets out of
bed in the morning and says "How many little kids in Eternia should I
murder today? This is gonna be fun." And He-man gets out of
bed and says "I wonder how many Eternian little kids I'm going to have
to stop Skeletor from killing today. This is gonna be quite a
victory." If evil cheesecake is rape, and good cheesecake is not,
then evil has to pretty damn stupid not to just pick the kind that
makes you happy with all the extra added morality that justifies it.
As is said in the movie Spaceballs, "Good is dumb."
Eminem and Ethical Symmetry
An
incredible example in music of a polarization ethically tearing itself
apart is Eminem. I've admired Eminem for his ability to balance
the most exreme emotions and personas, telling people to beat their
girlfriends or slit throats then yelling why the hell did you do that
shit, man, you gotta respect life. Treat your girl better, get
some therapy. He'll twist back forth even from line to line.
He'll say stuff like: go slit a throat, wow they think I'm
serious, well I am, just kidding, no really, if you do this shit you
needs serious help... He'll use violent language to the point of
it being infathomable that anything worse could be said, and then
there's the song and video "Stan" painting a deeply negative picture of
the extreme actions of a fan acting out on all the things Eminem sings
about.
Consider--just maybe--that it's the most ultimate, absolute catch-22 possible. Maybe Eminem causes the exact
same damage as he does healing, because maybe there can be nothing
else. Extreme violence and hatred--with infinite exact
precision--automatically tearing themselves into existence by raping
compassion and humanity and visa versa. Even in the haphazard
world we happen to occupy--without being at all omnipotent--we have a
perfect example of love being rape of pain. If the conflict that
exists in the everday--reflected by the conflict in an average rock
song--is obviously a microcosm of the more extreme conflict--reflected
by Eminem, why on Earth can't we see the tiniest little extension that
this continues outward forever, that we can't avoid it, or any of the
moral situations resulting from it. That it's the result of
existence.
Again, I'm not stating the obvious; of course, of
course, everyone agrees that conflict and pain and hell and
suffering--and joy and love and nirvana and hope--exist, and surround us daily and likely everywhere there is; of course it's nothing new to extend the existence
of the minor conflicts to major and then to universal ones. My
point is that the existence of each necessitates the absolute axiom
that one rapes the other.
A deep, powerful anti-violent video like "Stan" necessitates the
violence that its humanity feeds off of, and visa versa. We can
condemn every pleasurable belief and action we personally, subjectively
dissaprove of as wrong and evil, and we say those that comit them often
deserve punishment. And then we can go eat cheesecake. ......
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