Talk:Birric on Ethics by Birric Forcella

It may be better to change the bold text to italics. (it was ALL CAPS in the original.) -- ◄mendel► 16:26, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

As it appears I will not be able to attend the meeting of October 13, 2009, I'd like to post a short comment:

While I take most of Birric's criticisms to heart, I'm not led to the same conclusion...or any conclusion at all, for that matter. From my POV, Birric has proposed his own ethical system, which is to act toward one's pleasure. It's a reasonable system, but I can easily imagine a majoritarian pleasure-principled mob persecuting small groups of heretical communitarians. Also, I think of Jeffrey Dahmer's pleasures.

Like Birric, I am sickened by the overbearing meddlesomeness of the state and the church, but unlike Birric, I don't blame Holy Wars on Christ, nor Marx for Stalin's "sins". Any system can be maladopted toward contrary goals.

Nature has evolutionarily given us some communitarian instincts; the groups who worked together survived. My own personal ethical system would be to seriously study the history of applied "ethics", learn from the cautionary tales, be much less sure (in general), and attempt from that to develop a personalized empathy to govern interpersonal relations. And then step back, and not take it all too seriously.

Dali Waverider 13 October, 2009