Of Good and Evil

Evildrclam has realised, as a side note, that I don't believe in an absolute good and bad. This is an important philosophical point, and I realised back in 1987 that both he and Sandor believed in an absolute sense of good and bad whereas I didn't. However, I think that I initially had taken this assumption by default, and although it is the basis of virtually any argument of consequence that I make, I have no particular attachment to it. I can see that a lot of our diferences stem from this starting point. If this proves to be our major difference in philosophy, we may well find ourselves delving more deeply into this particular aspect. Already, I see that most of my opinions of what happens behind the scenes is based on my view that some things are morally good and bad simultaneously, depending on the perspective and our view of what calculations are happening in people's minds. Moral clarity has always been less important for me than trying to engineer an end with means that you are given - and that the end you are trying to reach is an "honourable" one. For instance, I see that an end in which the numbers of abortions are reduced considerably is an honourable one. I ask myself what means I have at my disposal, this blog, people who trust me, my family and I think that I can have actions that can move things in that direction. The moral clarity that comes from the statement "Bad things like this should be prohibited" is meaningless to someone like me who thinks that "Bad" is relative to the voting population of which I can't think of a way that I personally could engineer a seachange in said public opinion (well I kind of can, but it is a kind of sinister plot type of scheme which is definitely not honourable)