We are discussing the assassination and reaction in Religious Quest today, I’ll keep you updated.

John McDargh read this poem on Halftime this weekend. I loved it so much that I wanted to send a copy to my mother. I searched for it on google and it brought me to THIS site! Your blog!!!!!!

I hope all is well.

DH

How are you doing by the way? Give me a call sometime and we’ll catch up

I believe in natural law and the notion that all humans have dignity that should be respected, but sometimes things aren’t so simple. If you have time, I’ve included an interesting interview about a UN diplomat whose job it was to make those kinds of hard decisions. Is playing politics with an “evil-doer” such a bad thing? Or, is helping a corrupt leader always bad if it ends up resulting in the lesser of two bad outcomes?

I think that the world is neither all good nor all bad, but both exist. Abandoning personal biases, while probably impossible for anyone to do completely, is important though in analyzing a situation. That is probably the best one can do to achieve universal values. Something to do with respecting all perspectives. And, I think it should be a requirement for those in charge of big decisions to suppress their intuition and work more with logic and reasoning. Those two things are important factors in decision making, but I think it is probably best to rely on logic and reasoning a bit more. After all, intuition is of course riddled with societal and personal constructs or complexes.

So, I would say no, universal values don’t exist. If you made a venn diagram of it, there might be a lot in that overlapping section, but I think given that values evolve over time and under the influence of so many pressures (cultural, economic, health etc) that universal values do not exist. And if universal values do exist, it is only in an intellectual and ideal sense. Values, will continue to change over time, just as culture does, just as disease categorization does, just as normal behavior does, just as climate change does. Also, what about for small problems such as what to do with a piece of land? One person may want to develop it whereas another person may want to preserve it. Preserving it might be good for the environment, but developing it might be good for the economy. Those conflict and are both values. I think you would be hard pressed to find an economist who would say preserve it just as I think you would be hard-pressed to find a biologist who says develop it. But those values probably don’t even fall under the category of what you were thinking in terms of what the umbrella term ‘universal values’ means. So to that end, ‘universal values’ is a term and an idea too vague to exist. Had enough indulgent over-intellectual garbage talk yet?

Can someone love America and call themselves a universal values believer? I don’t mean to bash America, because while it is a bit too conservative for my liking at times, it is undeniably a great country. But going to a higher education university to get a good job, which is pretty much a requirement, is inevitably going to make someone without that opportunity have a harder life than you. And let’s not even expand that to a global perspective. That is immoral in some sense. That always bugged me by the way, how people who attend universities and think they’re really liberal are really just working hard to keep things the way they are and they don’t even know it. News flash, if you get a social science degree focusing on inequalities in any area (gender relationships, race relationships etc.) and then use your high GPA (social sciences, come on people) to get a corporate job, but still retain self-righteousness, you’re actually not a douche, you’re an idiot. I think you’re dumb if you claim to be a moral person and do this at all. Nobody is completely moral and nobody should be expected to be. Like I said, morality is probably just an intellectual concept. (That’s why the ’60′s had it as close to left wing ideals as we’ll ever get – Ken Kesey, a Harvard professor urging people to drop out of school. The guy had a point). Then, those people, who so clearly buy into a system without even knowing it, point the finger at someone who spurns the institution of education for its many inequities for behaving ‘immorally’ by rebelling against it. If you are a rebel with a point then you are cool in my book, otherwise you are just selfish. You can quote me on this, a rebel is only something if he/she is something more than sin (use your own definition of sin here). This is counter-intuitive though. And please don’t even come with an argument that your job might help people someday. Even doctors can’t control it, as medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy (insert healthcare reform argument here). I think a better question is “is money the root of all evil.” (but that’s been asked before). So then, can you believe in universal values even if you don’t act consistently with those beliefs, however subtle those actions might be? And this can just go on and on.

I’ve never taken a philosophy class, so I expect someone with a more social science-y degree to have a lot more to say about this.

Here’s that interview btw
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/8950