Quote:
Originally Posted by Zaqarbal
I know what you mean, but I think the analogy with the idea of god (at least the Judaeo-Christian god) doesn't work here. God is supposed to reward good actions and punish bad actions. So if you want to make an accurate analogy, there must be moral consequences for oneself, not only for the others. And experience shows the existence of millions of fortunate motherf***ers and millions of ill-fated good people. And they don't get their aliquot part of karmic justice meted out by an impersonal higher power. Look at the unlucky virtuous Justine. And look at the social hypocrisy, praising the virtue when it suits its need but exclaiming " how fortunate the man with none" when it doesn't.
Your argument could be valid, but only to an ideal society, and only if you consider that doing the good is good per se, regardless of the consequences (negative or positive) for oneself; not as an analogy with the traditional idea of God (as a "personal higher power"). |
I see what you're getting at and it's a legitimate criticism that had me stewing for a bit.
The counterpoint I've come up with has a couple different parts, but they're very interconnected (heh) so I'm going to try and put them in a way that makes sense but I'm not sure how clear it'll come out.
Basically, the parts are:
1. In the idea of total interconnectivity, you can't totally separate the whole from the self--what's good for one is good for the other
2. Any perspective we might have isn't a complete picture because we're fundamentally unable to be objective or contain all the relevant information
Consider the ill-fated good people you talk about and how many of them are self-defined as happy, despite their negative circumstances (see also: "Man's Search for Meaning" by Frankl or the biblical parable of Job) and, on a similar wavelength, the malaise prevalent in those we might consider socially fortunate (see: most American literature from the mid-20th century on for examples).
The kind of social hypocrisy that you're talking about is a fundamental to the necessity of evil to exist for there to be will. In cause-and-effect type terms, I think of it like... um. I can't remember the name for it, it's a calculus thing--the line that eternally approaches zero without ever reaching it. We're constantly evolving, trying to resolve the equation of our existence in a moral dimension, but it's a perfectly imperfect system (such is the nature of the infinite)--for us to have a moral choice, we must be able to choose evil sometimes and because we're imperfect we sometimes do. This falls in line very directly with the idea of a JudeoChristian God.
The idea in Judeochristian theology is that there is some kind of ultimate reward that allows for virtuous suffering in this life to be rewarded in another iteration of existence. Frankly, I don't know how to speak to that. I don't think there IS any way to speak to that outside "mythology" because we have no empirical evidence of what experience might or might not exist after death as we understand it. I could start talking about multidimensionality and the nonexistence of time as they could potentially relate to consciousness (there's that tangent again), but it'd be hypothesizing at best. As an aside, focusing solely on empiricism to understand the universe is fatally flawed, but that's a topic for another day.
I dunno if I really addressed what you were saying--I'm kind of thinking as I go here. I'm curious what your thoughts are. Thanks for engaging on my level. Also, Dead Can Dance? Nice.