The conscience is irrational

Irrational btw is my polite way of saying Boosheet.  I happen to be sick for the week. And tomorrow happens to be a day with no lessons, instead some lame celebratory thing of handing out awards which i’m sure all of us are looking forward to. Imagine all the things we can do: apart from clap and clap and clap and .. nothing. It’s what i have considered for four years to be meaningless, with no purpose or benefit or even the slightest reason for being there.

No doubt i have made it a resolution not to skip  — wholly out of pragmatic purposes, in case i miss something that is important. It is unlikely that i would want to skip on any day. Lessons are very important and in fact now they are enjoyable much like last year where they were inflicted with things like chemistry.

But I am not skipping — I’m ill.  Medically and legally, I can be exempt from what i deem pointless. And for some reason, I’m actually thinking of going tmr. If i were to go tmr, I should laugh at my intelligence and detest how much my mind has degraded into raw stupidity. Why the hell — would i even consider. I am quite concerned that I might really go for no apparent reason. The irrationality!  Am i a son of a fool?

Because it’s the right thing.
Hell, as if i ever gave a damn about that!

 

Fairness (and meat-eating)

It is 2AM at night. It appears that reading about philosophers in an attempt to get to sleep was not such a good idea. The very fact that I’m still typing right now is proof of that.

One guy I happened to read up on was John Rawls. I’m quite sure my dad mentioned this guy a few years ago. His main point of view is basically as such: if we are behind a veil of ignorance about who we will be born as, what kind of society will choose to be born in? Is it one where there are the extremely rich people and the extremely poor — and you could be one of them? Or is it one where everyone ends up equally well-to-do, not too rich and yet not too poor?

To be honest, his argument does appeal to both reason and emotion. I would have chosen the latter world. But then again, that’s just due to my personal preference — there’s no need to be too rich and I don’t want to be too poor. On a more caring note, it’d in fact be better if poverty was non-existant! This may explain how my views are pretty much socialist thus far. (reading Free To Choose hasn’t seemed to change that)

However, let’s extend his logic. Behind this veil of ignorance, we may very well end up as an uh oh, aborted foetus. We shouldn’t have abortion either. I sure as hell won’t want to be a to-be-aborted-foetus just cos of some wild party regardless of the reason.

More importantly, we shouldn’t even eat meat! Behind this veil of ignorance, we may end up as some farm animal, we may very well end up getting abattoired , chopped up after death and well, eaten.

Consider this scenario: in a futuristic world, a new breed of superhumans have evolved. They are stronger and smarter than the average human being by a difference of heaven and earth. But there’s one problem — they enjoy feeding on human blood. For the purpose of illustrating my point, these vampires do not need blood to survive, they just enjoy sucking the blood of humans. Man is subsequently locked up, force fed and bred specifically for the purpose of providing blood for this new elite superhuman race.

We cringe at the very thought of being drained of blood, let alone getting killed and eaten like animals. We detest the manner in which a supposed “elite” breed of people would like to take control over us. Yet we are all guilty.

Perhaps no matter what we do, animals are going to continue getting killed for food anyway. But then again, shouldn’t we show even the slightest support against the act of eating animals. In fact, more people eating animals will result in more animals being killed to meet the demand.

Do bear in mind — that eating meat is in no way necessary for us. But we do so anyway. I find no justification in the killing and eating of animals, but I’m going to continue to do so anyway. Most people will.

Enjoy Thanksgiving! We weren’t born as turkeys!”

I’d like to find a justification

(But back on John Rawls, one must bear in mind not to be hypocritical. In accepting John Rawls theory, it has to be applied to both abortion and the issue of meat-eating — otherwise reject it. )

 

The World DGAS about fairness

Fairness — a vague abstract concept, almost as abstract as the sanctity of life if you ask me. (By now, those who know me well enough should also know the meaning of DGAS well enough)

But regardless of what fairness really is, no one really cares about fairness. As in really really.

People who are getting the good end of unfairness obviously won’t care. It would be against their own self interest to degrade themselves and lose whatever benefits they have. It’s one thing to donate a small decimal portion of your salary to the poor, its another to remove half of your salary and divide it equally  with an unemployed man. No one would willingly give up any unfair advantage they have unless it is regarding something that doesnt matter to them — i.e. i dont care about losing my competitive advantage if i dont care about winning

People who *are* disadvantaged and getting the bad end of fairness don’t really care about fairness either. Yes, they do care about the situation — their situation. But their main concern isn’t about upholding fairness as a principle, it’s about self interest as well — in order to change their situation/voice their resentment, they resort to a  form of moral blackmail. If they were now given a special advantage over everyone else, would they give that opportunity away because its unfair? certainly not.

Many a times, fairness is a term that is thrown around without proper logical explanation as to what is so important about fairness. But i’ve never seen anyone who argued against the principle of fairness or even questioned the importance of fairness (okay fine ,there is one guy i know, but he’s a psycho -_-) even i know that no one will buy the argument of “there is no such thing as fairness” because fairness as a concept has a natural appeal to the human instinct.

Why?

The world was created to be is unfair to begin with. Some are created (to avoid sounding blasphemous, nowsadays anything is blasphemous even pokemon!) born smarter, others created born blind or born in a third world nation. There’s nothing we can do about fairness really. Not even a communist world (sigh) can get rid of the unfairness in birth — how some are smarter, stronger while others have a hole in their heart.

“Whose sin is it that this man is blind — his sin or his parents?” (not that i really remember the exact wording, any more exact and i’ll be accused of being blasphemous, nowsadays anything is blasphemous even pokemon!) Spastic people certainly didnt deserve to be spastic…

Maybe it’s not just that the world DGAS about fairness,
fairness DGAS about the world as well.

 

Moral irrationality 001

It is often assumed that a person is rational in all his actions. Rationality is defined by doing “what is best” for one self. Thus far, my thinking is mainly shown through pragmatism and practicality.

Of late however, my actions have been seen to be irrational. For a long time, it was never hard to fall ill on certain days (i.e.flu/diarrohea/nasi lemak poisoning, so can’t swim/go for celebration) but on Tuesday, where there was a fire drill and chinese karaoke, i actually was well and fine, surprisingly. 17 others however were all ill. The air must have been bad in class. If there was anything simulated about the fire drill, it was the scorching fireball in the sky. Not like a fire will happen. Missing out on a drill won’t really be much of a loss..

And once more today, I didn’t go home at 10 to collect my geog book for my o levels in the afternoon, being the remaining less than ten in class (before i went to a certain place to sleep) to do virtually nothing. Yeah sure, i like doing absolutely nothing in class.

Alright, so i have cleared my locker and returned my school library book and received my report book… what’s left in school? Finally, after considering for a short while whether or not i’ll be well enough to go for the last day of school, it turns out that today wouldn’t be the last day i wear the black tie. It turns out that i’ll be carrying tables tomorrow. Great joy.

All of these are without a reason. It can be considered to be an action that is irrational. Yet I’m going ahead anyway.
I’d like to find out why.

I must admit though, i don’t regret going for tuesday since the karaoke was quite an experience (and watching C emcee) C however has been a very positive peer pressure in managing to convince me to go to school (and subdue the demon of laziness). Pity I won’t be seeing him tomorrow afternoon.

Perhaps it isn’t a moral issue: To rationalise my course of action and look at it as a comparison of benefits — i have two options a) go b) don’t go. A is driven by laziness and the need to rest/ the opportunity cost of staying at home etc. B is driven by…? Most probably the possibility that something good may happen if i get out of the house and interact with others. But isn’t that too, as irrational as gambling? Not so, if you compare it to staying at home and cutting away the possibility totally.

Often people think that “I must go, otherwise i may get into trouble”
A more positive way would be to think that “I must go, otherwise i may miss out on good opportunities”

Perhaps my laziness has been trumped by the possibility for opportunities to take place?