It occurs to me that I am fairly out of the mainstream in terms of my stance on things like sex, drugs, and alcohol. In high school, this never troubled me particularly, but the contrast is becoming increasingly stark, and so as usual I am overthinking it. The situation is interesting because my actions don’t correspond to my philosophy, which is atheist and does not value morality except as a means to happiness. I postulate that, in lieu of a stable moral system, college will be an irresistable force for corruption. Hopefully my plans for a litigation-oriented future will prevent me from doing, say, heroin.
Meanwhile, I am becoming a rodent activist and reading The New Yorker, which is awesome.
what is your stance, exactly?
well, in high school i was very doctrinaire: no drugs or alcohol at all, ever!
Who talks like this? oh right. = )
now now, Anush. You have to be a moral athiest to prove that it’s possible. If you’re a hardcore athiest and hypocrite when it comes to morals, it’s just one more piece of evidence to suggest that religion is necessary to keep people in line and that no one has the discipline to do it without belief in a higher power motivating them. Besides, you assume that drugs, sex, and alcohol make you happy in the long run which I would postulate is false. Sure, an orgasm in a bag is all good and well, but such things are addicting and addictions definitely oppose happiness. anyways, don’t want to moralize on your forum, but I say keep making the right choices. you’ll be happier in the long run, and you’ll respect yourself more.
Not being “immoral” by some standards is not hypocrisy by atheist ones. I think you’re right that alcohol and drugs etc won’t make me happy in the long run, but this is true only in excess.
The issue of self-respect strikes me as arbitrary. It may be easier to reevaluate the reasons for self-respect than to act in a way that preserves it. It seems that I should be evaluating potential experiences based on their short-term payoff and long-term risk of unhappiness — not based on a flexible standard of self-respect.
Morality does not exist. In its place we have laws, which are arbitrary products of Jude-Christian morality conflicting with various circumstantial antitheses. Moralists fail to realize that society is dysfunctional even with a high degree of religion and moral dictates, as demonstrated by the high proportional degree of crime in the United States, the most religious, and provided that one considers Christianity moral, most moral nation.
What makes one happy is what one finds pleasurable, and what will not harm or kill Anush will not make her unhappy. You are imparting a faux-ethicist rationalization by making both making a fallacy of division in regards to the nature of society. In other words, you are pontificating without realizing the non-existence of objective morality.
Adieu.
I think you just contradicted yourself. You just said morality does not exist and then you said laws are arbitrary products of Jude-Christian morality.
I think most moralalists would admit that society is somewhat dysfunctional in the sense that there is still crime, murders, unhappiness, poverty, etc… but saying morality doesn’t exist and everyone should do whatever it takes for them to be happy would make things far worse for the reasons I just supplied with my rape analogy. If what you say is true and murder, theft, rape, etc… legalized because laws are “arbitrary moralizing” then you and I could not have this conversation because someone would have probably have robbed you and taken your money and the computer you used to type your response. In fact, I would have shot you because I disagree with you in this argument and hey, no morality and no laws, no reason not to. It would make me happy.
You see? You can say oh, I’m just moralizing, but the fact is most laws exist to keep people safe. sometimes they don’t work, sometimes they are made by corrupt people serving their own interests. But in the end, we should be glad that they exist and that morality exists to help give us a context for what is acceptable and what is not. Like the Locke’s social contract.
anush, i think your stance may be outside the mainstream of your social group, or even your whole demographic, but it’s not that unusual, generally speaking. my whole life i’ve wavered between groups of people who were really open to the drugs/sex/alcohol thing and people who just weren’t into it; big groups of people exist on both sides of the line.
also, i wouldn’t exactly say you were “no alcohol, ever.” i think you were opposed to a particular kind of drinking that was going on, but within your own little paradigm, alcohol was a-ok. you can’t fool me, i sat next to you during that survey in euro.
listen, if nathan chan is any example, i say it’s totally possible to be opposed to drugs/alcohol in your own life but be comfortably surrounded with people who gladly partake. i think it’s also possible to have your stance on the issue loosened without somehow becoming “corrupted.” you can let your new social environment change your stance if you want, there’s nothing wrong with that. just don’t think either of the following things:
a) that what works for everybody will or should work for you, that it’s at all necessary to betray your own instincts in search of a comfort level you’re wondering why everyone but you has got;
b) that there aren’t plenty of people in your situation (both alone and in whole groups.) that you’re somehow so far in the minority that it’s impossible you’re being reasonable.
my general stance lately is that whatever you feel is generally the thing to go with. i used to overthink my instincts a lot. now that i know what really is like to feel something for no reason, and know in your gut that there’s no justification or cause, i find it hilarious that i ever doubted myself. if you’re ever feeling something that really is wrong, you’ll just know.
i love you!! let’s hang out this weekend.
Morality “exists” insofar as that it is a prescribed set of behaviors, or an ideal type of behaviors, generally prescribed by societal norms.
What I meant to say by saying that it does not exist is that it is entirely internal. There is no Platonic “universal” morality. What is right and what is wrong is marble-caked, not written on a stone slab in the Levant.
If someone wants to drink once in a while, they will not dissolve into a Marcello Mastroianni.
“Morality is herd instinct on the individual.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
ah, ok. well that’s a big step away from “laws are products from Jude-Christian morality.” even if that’s true, you were implying that we should abolish laws because they conflict with the individual sense of justice, which is what I objected to. I have a friend that is living in a commune downtown made of old bicycle parts and goes dumpster diving for most of her food. And she actually does think we should abolish laws for the reason given above. Maybe I was projecting a little bit, so I apologize if that is the case. There’s definitely room for alternative lifestyles; I just like going to sleep knowing that laws, judeo-christian inspired or otherwise, keep me safe.
Once Jean-Paul Sartre is personally commenting on your weblog, it might be time to consider taking yourself a little less seriously.
…maybe?
I have no idea.
I agree entirely. I return to the grave now, to get drunk. Regretfully, Beauvoir is off with that damned Warhol fellow, so Anush may have to come.
Also, Ben, your Anglo-Saxon attempts to exploit my “Jude” typo fall flat. I use a typewriter, after all.
you give me too much credit; actually I just wasn’t confident enough to assert that you made a mistake, I thought maybe I was the one messing up so I followed your spelling for a while and then decided I was probably right after all and switched back. lol.
Au contraire… doing heroin is a *great* way to get involved in litigation!
judeo-christian blah blah pseudo-intellectual blah blah.
you kids need to smoke a joint.
The only person who has the right to say that the École Normale Supérieure produces pseudo-intellectuals is Heideggar.
Also, I’m already blazed on some ill chronic. White widow. South side represent.
Why doesn’t Sartre ever talk to me? I feel like an unsuccessful Philosophy major.