Is it possible that children living in mud huts and defecating in ditches are happier than kids who grow up in suburbs with everything a modern American life can offer? Yes, absolutely. Because they feel loved, that they belong, that their lives have a context and purpose, and because they have FUN often. They sing, they dance, they create art.
One of the salient projects of modern philosophy has been demolishing moral ontologies. This project, here, is neither relativistic, nor so vague as to be useless. At the same time, I would want some sense of motion in it, some waves, ebbing back and forth. It feels too much like another attempt to bring the music of the spheres into a perennial philosophy [note: I mean no nod to Huxley there; my work choice was poor], something that doesn’t change, and which can be counted on, like math, not to change.
And I have been thinking a lot about transformation as well. Living is not like collecting experiences in a sort of bank account. It is about periodic waves which change who you are. We cannot say misery must stay misery, or that it lacks a purpose. Neither should we be hard hearted and fail to help others. But there must be a flux.
That’s my incomplete effort at coherence. I am tired and going to bed. This is a better morality than I have seen in a while though.
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Posted in response to this: http://bostonreview.net/forum/peter-singer-logic-effective-altruism#comment-24069
As I have said often, my record at getting through filters is abysmal, so I just assume it will get held and publish it here.
Logically, I agree with the premises stated, but affectively something seems to be missing. I think it is this: in my own thinking, which bears some morphological resemblance to what is being shared here, I differentiate quantitative pain from qualitative pain.