Morally Neutral

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

Cutting and pasting is actually quite a postmodern,
as I understand the term, approach to the question
of "truth," or "God's Knowledge," or "reality" to use
a slightly less loaded word. But the reductio ad absurdom
of that process, seems to me, is that that process, or 
way of understanding things, ultimately deconstructs 
the self. That is, there are no original texts, everything 
is cut 'n pasted- a rehash of previously used texts- and 
therefore, always biased by traces of past meanings. 
There is no "genuine" description of "the self"- no truly 
uniquely defined identity. It is all a weave. Which is okay,
I guess, as long as you're having fun, and can handle the
sudden blurring of boundaries between "you" and
everyone else.

It's quite interesting that modern genetics leads to just
about the same notion- everyone, every species, genus,
order, etc., along the branches (notice I didn't say "up")
of the tree (slime mold might be more apt) of life,
is just an amalgam of well used parts, or better,
desription of parts- parts list- since the parts themselves
are made from a common pool of completely
interchangeable molecules, atoms, etc., which is why,
besides the good tastes, eating makes any sense at
all. And we know, from our postmodern friends, that
all descriptions are just texts, even lists of parts.

Are there any morally neutral lists? All of which begs
the question- Do I understand the term postmodern?

Probably, only partly.

regards


In a message dated 10/1/02 6:05:12 PM, fqmorris at hotmail.com writes:

<< Is _God's_ knowledge morally nuetral?  Is insanity morally nuetral?  Or 
sanity?

http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/moby/moby_093.html

Moby Dick
Chapter xciii - THE CASTAWAY

"Out from the centre of the sea, poor Pip turned his crisp, curling, black 
head to the sun, another lonely castaway, though the loftiest and the 
brightest.

Now, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the practised 
swimmer as to ride in a spring- carriage ashore. But the awful lonesomeness 
is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the middle of such a 
heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark, how when sailors in a 
dead calm bathe in the open sea - mark how closely they hug their ship and 
only coast along her sides.

But had Stubb really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No; he did 
not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake, and he 
supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip very quickly, 
and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations towards oarsmen 
jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always manifested by the 
hunters in all similar instances; and such instances not unfrequently occur; 
almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so called, is marked with the 
same ruthless detestation peculiar to military navies and armies.

But it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly spying 
whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and Stubb's boat 
was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent upon his fish, that 
Pip's ringed horizon began to expand around him miserably. By the merest 
chance the ship itself at last rescued him; but from that hour the little 
negro went about the deck an idiot; such, at least, they said he was. The 
sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his 
soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous 
depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro 
before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded 
heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw 
the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament 
of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of 
the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's 
insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes 
at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; 
and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God."

Above or Below, is either moral?

David Morris

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