POWER ETHICS

like yoga, but for your brain

[powerethics]

not marriage material 

[powerethics]

Reason as Morality

What is there to be done when the result of someone else's choice leads to your complete and utter failure as a person to salvage a relationship and create a life with someone?

It ended because he is sick. Depression is an illness. It's a life-altering, relationship-ending, contagion that can rip through you like a machete. It leaves the people you love helpless shells of themselves.

I don't consider myself a quitter, but what's to be done when the person you love most in the world decides to quit you? Because they're sick? Because they can't try anymore? Because they can't move anymore! Am I, in this case, the one at fault because I should have seen it coming? Because I should have let go? Because I wanted to be loved no matter the cost?

You'd think as a student of philosophy with a career in family law I'd be less devastated. Tha i'd be more understanding. Selfless. Aware. But, no. 

At least Kant would say denying my natural inclinations to beg for him to talk me to, to promise him I can handle severe depression even though I can't, to say to him, "I don't care if you don't love me like I love you right now," even though I do, would have moral worth.

As Kant puts in, if your natural inclination is to do good acts because you derive pleasure from doing so, because you gain, and not because it is good in itself, no moral worth exists. But the cheap bastard who scoffs as he gives to the poor, because reason would direct him to do so, because reason would tell him: people are a means in themselves, and to accept that whatever one rationally knows to benefit humanity as a whole, to help your brothers and sisters, would make him vastly superior in the moral sense. 

I am that cheap bastard. I am using reason. My inclination would be to call my ex-fiance and stir the already overflowing pot just to gain attention and perhaps seek compliments or even, I don't know, to squeeze an "I love you" out of him, but I cannot say that women should contact their exes who are ill and drive them to show affection at all times in all places by all people. I cannot will this maxim because therein would lie a profound contradiction: an ex is an ex. To show unbridled emotion to a person who has opted out of your life is not rational. 

From this I can find some solace that I am indeed doing the right thing in that I am doing nothing. Except, I'm going to get drunk tonight. In moderation. Just like Aristotle. I think I'll study him next. 

[powerethics]

DUTY ETHICS

Kant's my homie. He's like an Amish who made it to the mainstream. Rumor has it he never traveled further than 10 miles from his home and died an 80-year-old virgin (well, 79 to be exact). 

His last words uttered as he lie on his death bed were, "Es ist gut". 

"It is good," said the man who never traveled the world or fought in a war or fucked. There is something profound to be learned from those who so scrupulously walk their talk. 

To Kant, the whole world was, in his words, "The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me"; a lasting quote which was engraved onto his tombstone over 200 years ago.

Though successful in his lifetime, could this man with shut-in like tendencies have anticipated that his words and theories would someday span the globe, and would continue to do so for generations? As a man so insistent on reason being the driving force of humanity, I'd certainly think yes.