The Real and the Frivolous
Is whatever promotes the survival and longevity of the species more moral than actions that are taken for frivolity? If so, why? If not, why not?
Here's an example: Clearly something that maintains a medical process to keep people alive might be considered more moral than drawing a cartoon or telling a joke.
Here's an example: Clearly something that maintains a medical process to keep people alive might be considered more moral than drawing a cartoon or telling a joke.
Comments (12)
Could a medical process on an individual past reproductive age be considered moral in the sense you want to apply it?
Are humans now more defined by their cultural evolution than their biological, so would that put cartoons in a different light?
Frivolity would need some kind of theory to pin it down here. If the issue is the moral value of our collective survival - an imperative that quite naturally informs our being - then what is the frivolous in that context?
Most folk would say it is stuff that we might do that makes no essential difference to the fulfilling of that major goal. And our moral stance in regard to that would be a collective shrug of the shoulders. That becomes the morally meaningful thing to do.
If cartoons and jokes instead seem to matter, then they probably do. They aren't actually frivolous on closer examination. They have meaningful survival value.
Being that peacock's can't make moral decisions as far as I know.
Quoting apokrisis
I guess I mean longevity to individuals and the species.
Quoting apokrisis
Not sure what that means. I guess the scenario becomes real in this situation:
You have situation where you work 8 hours a day doing the most tedious and annoying things. The job doesn't care that you don't like it, the people that run the job don't care that you don't like it.
In fact, to make this scenario even more interesting, let's say the people that run the business/non-profit/organization are downright assholes towards the feelings and respect of their employees. But the result of what this organization produces is some produce that enhances some life-prolonging process (again, think something like a medical process that prolongs life for an individual).
Or you can spend 8 hours watching tv shows or reading a book, or writing philosophy (or whatever it is that you entertain yourself). One is clearly personally more satisfying and one is morally satisfying perhaps (if it is defined as purely in terms of outcomes for increasing survival for individuals). However doing the job itself is "soul-crushing" for the individual employee- there doesn't seem to be any way the job shortening that employee's life, just testing his/her patience. Let us take away the idea of employee's obligation to organization, and just look at the idea of employee vs. outcome from employee.
Morally, what would you say is superior- the employees frivolous pursuits that are more satisfying to the employee or the 8 hours of tedious soul-crushing work that produced a life-prolonging process?
I would say morality is aimed precisely at the issue of how we make those kinds of social trade-offs as social creatures. The social system is founded on the natural dynamic of a balance of the competitive and the co-operative, the individual and the collective. It is all about negotiating that give and take.
So you have worked up an example that presents an obviously unhappy balance. And it is just as easy to present one that is a more constructive picture of life.
Now imagine you work as a much appreciated medical researcher in hot start-up with the possibility of doing great good for public health in the worst parts of the world. Work in that light is so rewarding, so sociable, that you don't even want to sit around on your own binge watching another lame Netflix series.
Morally, which would you say is superior in that light. Eight hours in front of the TV or eight hours doing the job?
But you did not answer the question, just presented a different scenario.
Diddums what? I presented a scenario and a question and you just presented a different scenario.
Diddums that you then start whining rather than answering.
Had to look that Brit term up. How is that even answering. Other than your impulse to insult you just gave another scenario. It concerns the scenario and answering the question which is more moral is simply dodging the question.
I told you how it was answering. I pointed out that the morality would concern the balance of two contrasting impulses, both entirely natural. I gave you a second scenario to make that point.
But whatever.
The only thing I saw that was sort of an answer is negotiating giveband take. Essentially it’s just stay neutral. The individual suffers for the cause I guess.
Don't be obtuse. I said it was a balance. The ideal balance is a win/win. And to justify your Pessimism, you are always trying to construct a world that is lose/lose.
The world of work is soul-less and meaningless. And the world of play is then an essentially meaningless distraction from the meaningless world of work. Oh misery me. Alas, alack. What a moral "dilemma" we seem to have.