No, I'm not writing about the Oregon ducks. We had duck for dinner tonight. I got through dinner telling my daughter it was roast beast. She was excited and ate it and said it tasted great.
Then the clean up. My wife said "duck" and my daughter went crazy. She just said here's the problem. "These ducks see us feed them, and then we turn around and shoot them in the butt."
Yes, my 12 year old has a moral sense. Most of us do, and when we see someone who doesn't, we say things like, they aren't human. Many of us define, not only human beings, but ourselves by our moral sense. I am so and so and I believe X or Y. President Bush has, in many ways, defined himself by his moral code.
Do other animals have moral codes? Did pre-homo sapien hominids have moral codes?
And what is a moral code? Is it just our culture? Our society? Ninety (90) percent of Americans define ethics as what the culture believes is right and morality as what the individual feels is right. This subject of human nature, then, can have very important consequences for how we live our every day lives and whether we allow holocuasts or even if we allow someone to eat duck.
Monday, December 3, 2007
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1 comments:
Yes, it’s what we did with the Iraqis when first we supported Saddam’s regime then turned around and shot him in the butt, but that was simply realpolitik and had nothing to do with morality...too bad. It's always easier to see the mote in another's eye. Did you explain to your daughter that you never fed THAT particular duck and that THAT duck was raised to be eaten? Would she be as outraged by the notion that we raise animals specifically to kill and eat them? Is that an OK scenario? And is it OK to let others slaughter the beasts so that we can select chops from a tray in a cooler?
What’s even more to the point is that Bush has defined you and me and all Americans (as far as the rest of the world can see) by his choices, his moral code…or lack of one. (And that’s an interesting problem: Is lack of a moral code a type of moral code?)
We know that animals--other than ourselves--act altruistically: does such behavior constitute a moral code? Your dog won't bite you, but he'll bite a stranger: is that because your dog has a sense of fairness, justice; or does he simply trust you? Is morality intertwined with trust?
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