Word Math & Moral Relativity
What to you choose to believe in?
Moral Dilemmas present themselves to varying degrees. Subtlety and sophistication entwine with nonsense and non sequitur to betray one’s inclinations and challenge one’s indoctrinations.
I’m confronted with one such affront to my conformity every time I stand in front of my kitchen sink now. My life used to be quite simple and straightforward. The choice was to wash by hand or load the dishwasher. Ok, a few rules here: Under 6 dishes, by hand; after 8 pm, dishwasher.
Care to comment? What’s your preference?
The songs on this playlist range from jazz to acoustic to rap to country to metal. All dealing with morality, relativity, dilemma, and freedom. The songs are dark, but the theme is freedom. More specifically, the struggle for freedom. This time, though, the fight is with ourselves.
Check out this lyric from Prisoner of the Highway
I could give my hands to another line of work But my heart would always be behind the wheel. Call me a prisoner of the highway Driven on by my restless soul I'm a prisoner of the highway Imprisoned by the freedom of the road.
Find truth in songs like Morality & Sin or Wellerman Rap.
Pretty simple, right?
Then the roomie went and screwed it all up. I had the perfect soap for my lifestyle: 4X Faster. Totally. If I have to wash by hand, let’s get this shit done and move along. No lollygagging.
Then this showed up
Ugh. Now, what the hell do I do? Go 4XFaster? Or do 50% Less Scrubbing? What kind of fucking word problem is that? It’s like middle-school math all over again. I’m sure there’s a formula. There always is.
Full Disclosure: English Major. (So I aspired) Math Major. (Why I write)
That's not fair. Why can't I do less work and still go faster? Doesn’t that make more sense? And then there’s the baby duck. What the hell is that supposed to do with dishes? Nothing but manipulate my emotions.
But here is the Word Math we all love to hate. I DuckDuckgo’d “Word Math” and literally the only results were toddler math sites. (I guess I missed that red flag) Then Merriam-Webster clued me in. It’s a Word Problem. Of course. The only way society deals with shit is by calling it a problem.
If I scrub 50% less, doesn’t that mean that I work 50% less? So, that's a purported additional benefit with less effort. But does it take the same amount of time as 100% scrubbing? If so, that’s not really a benefit to me. It’s like just scrubbing half-ass for the same two minutes. Less work, to me, means less time too. Am I right?
My soap takes the same amount of work (100% scrubbing), BUT IS 4X FASTER. That’s a really cool payoff. Who wouldn’t want to be done with dirty dishes 4X FASTER? Everyone, I guess, except for those that want to do 50% LESS SCRUBBING.
Remember the old saw
Do you want it fast? Or do you want it good?
What I want is 50% LESS SCRUBBING 4X FASTER?
.50<Sc+4X(Sp)=100%Sa
Where Sc = Scrubbing; Sp = Speed; Sa = Satisfaction
Take that Mr. Periwinkle, 9th-grade Algebra teacher that gave me an F.
Like Mr. Periwinkle used to say while reprimanding me, it’s all just theoretical. You get it fast or you get it with less work. Not both. That’s just asking way too much. It’s not really about your satisfaction anymore. It’s just not.
Seems like we're being asked to sacrifice a lot these days. Obviously, our struggle is nothing in comparison to those before us that fought actual wars on actual battlefields against actual enemies that actually wanted to destroy us.
But we fall into a trap of Moral Relativity when we compare our current fight to those of the past. There's no way (so we tell ourselves) I could have survived what my grandfather encountered when he arrived on Omaha Beach three days after D-Day. But he did. Somehow. Someway. And never spoke of it.
As much as I believe that to be true, I also believe Grandpa Smitty could not have survived walking in my footsteps. Not because he wasn't tough or adaptable. He was. He was, sadly, a man of his time. He would undergo unimaginable unfamiliarity with the current war being waged against us.
His battles were against an identified enemy on the opposite side. Go forward and conquer. The battlefield our generation fights on is in the mind. The enemy we combat is indistinguishable from our own psyche. We are the enemy of ourselves.
Moral Relativity is the cause we fight for, although we won’t name it. We are fighting for freedom. Freedom from Moral Absolutism. Our rigidity gives aid and comfort to our foe. Our tribalism and distrust enable and empower our adversaries.
Take for instance the battle for abortion rights. It is a battle for Moral Relativity. Thou shall not kill is near the apex of Moses’ stone tablets I believe. So, if one trusts science, as a sonogram will lead one to do, then aborting a fetus is, in fact, taking a human life. Moral Absolute. Full Stop.
If, on the other hand, one believes that the woman has full and complete autonomy of her body and all it contains, thus full control over it, then it is a constitutional right, based on natural law, to obtain an abortion to remove the fetus. Moral Absolute. Full Stop.
May I propose yet a third perspective: Moral Relativism. Yes, the fetus is, in fact, a human life. An abortion is, after all, the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.
So let’s not pull any punches and speak in euphemisms in general. But in particular, the battle we fight is linguistic in some respects. So let’s just deal the cards face up.
Getting an abortion literally means that the baby inside the womb will no longer exist. Now and forever. That is the price to pay. 50% LESS SCRUBBING? Maybe.
And the flip side of the coin is forcing a woman birth a child she does not want, against her will. Especially in the case of rape or incest. Outside of the biological father of a consensually-conceived child, I cannot think of another human being that has an interest in the personal choice of the mother in this regard.
All of the other considerations, i.e., who pays for it, when it can be done, who gets notified, etc., are all arguments to be made after the fact is decided. They are not contributing or mitigating factors in the Moral Dilemma. They are operational decisions. Mere logistics, in a cold-hearted way.
But we use those issues as a proxy-battle. I suppose it’s easier to say pro-choice instead of baby-terminator. Just as it is easier to validate pro-life as opposed to pregnancy-slave.
For that matter, Capital Punishment sounds more palatable than prisoner-killing. Once we call it like it is, the power of bullshit just vanishes. Just listen to the excuse-reasons were fed daily: messaging problem.
A pile of shit in a cute take-out box really doesn’t improve the taste.
I can rationalize an abortion and live with myself because I don’t have the power to judge the morality of others. Only one force in the universe I know of that holds that power.
Holding on to Moral Absolutes is nothing new. History is littered with examples, for instance, King Louis XIV (1643–1715) of France furnished the most familiar assertion of absolutism when he said, “L'état, c'est moi” (“I am the state”).
Here are links to some thoughtful pieces I found and hope you enjoy.
Well, that’s a wrap. On this post. Not on this thought. I’d love to hear yours.
Be aware of the messages we receive and the interpretations we process, they have an effect on what we feel and how we perceive.
Stay present,
Ric
Interesting post
Dishwasher. All day. Almost no exceptions. I didn’t have one for a long time and still feel like it’s a bit of a luxury, even after all these years.