One of the questions that has been troubling us since the emergence of philosophy and that almost everybody has an opinion on (which more or less qualifies it as a topic for my blog..I mean people who i can show up.....AND people will care..what else could i want) is the one about ethics....People have always judged their lives ( and more often !!) the lives of others, comparing it to some divine ideal....What is good and what is bad....And is the intention what matters or the actual effects caused by your actions ?
ABBTMS(almost the beginning but technically a Mid Post):Yes..Once more..i have managed to select a very difficult question that the whole world has been trying to solve ( unsuccessfully !) for centuries..And once more, by sheer 'beating around the bush'....well actually...revolving about it at a high speed and holding out a stick, whose length is the radius of my orbit minus the length of my outstretched arm....( Yes..i am a techie...They don't call it IIT for nothing...)i will manage to wriggle out and still appear to be a very deep, philosophical, mature individual...while i'm actually...a childish,impulsive,mad person..who writes ABBTMS's in his blogs...!!!
Well...First of all...The question about good and bad has been answered sufficiently well in the book 'Shantaram' by a character called Abdel Khader Khan..He tells the narrator that Whenever one is confused about good and bad one must ask oneself...'If everyone did this..would it lead to a better world ?' and decide accordingly...But of course...there are problems with this understanding...First of all, for the analysis to be exact, all the people should be playing exactly the same part in exactly the same scenario...And in most cases, this is impossible practically..Some situations...in fact the most difficult ones to analyze...are isolated ones that very few people will ever be a part of....Secondly..Most of the times..It is the degree of good and bad that we are analysing and all things are clearly not black or white....In most everyday situations our dilemmas are of the second kind....Where the effect on the world of 2 slightly differing alternatives as performed by everyone in the world must be considered...and that ...is difficult if not impossible..In the more 'Ethical code red' scenarios,the situation is of the first kind, where khan's analysis is absurd....(Statistics will tell you that whenever we are talking about rare situations..data generation is a problem ( because of the rarity) and hence so is prediction...and this is somewhat my point)
But anyway, theories is what we want and not real life solutions..Most people have a good enough ( !!) ethical code that they use as a standard...so what we are actually looking for is a hard and fast rule, a formula.... just to have fun..It's good to know that there is a solution, even if it is impractical and insoluble...It makes us feel safe...that there is some logic, some order beyond things, something that we can understand and react to....
But enough of this armageddonry and chaos rumor mongering( enough for now that is....:P)..I'll proceed to the next section....Intention...
Sometimes, even though our intentions are good, we see that factors beyond our control( or so we think..(If my blog had a theme music...i would play the dark,sinister, 'potential of doom' one form the previous paragraph)) make the effects of our actions bad...( with respect to the 'no action taken' scenario)...This is seen most commonly in slapstick comedy cinema, where, in the middle of a fight, the clumsy henchman waits with a club to hit some one from the opposite side, but ends up hitting 'the boss'( typically bollywood, though hollywood does it's fair bit too)What really matters here, the intention....or the actual actions ?
One one hand, if something bad happens, then the action should be termed bad, for intentions, like potential ( which i ranted about in my second blog) do not affect the world, and hence should not feature in any judgment...On the other hand, how is a person supposed to know the exact effect of his action..With so many factors variable, each one affecting the outcome in a totally different manner, how can one judge...Moreover, how does one judge whose ( why isn't who's used ??!! :P)
action it was that actually caused the outcome...I mean..Petrol being dropped carelessly near a pile of paper and the careless throwing of a cigarette ( in this case, none of the actions are voluntary..but it makes my point) both could contribute to a massive fire, but which one's responsible ?? Also if a person analyses something less than another, is he bad ? Is stupidity a crime ??
In my opinion, Intentions should be used to judge people, for they are a measure of inherent goodness of people, just as potential is a measure of their, well ...potential(:P)(The two judgments are exact analogues..)
Anyway...there...i got away clean..
PS: That was good !
PPS: I'm reading Simone de Beauvoir's 'The Second Sex' and progressing (surprisingly) well.....So stay tuned for some posts on women..
PPPS: I dunno why i said that..'Cause i like to brag( Oh..I read 'serious literature', or 'cause i was too excited about a pending post on 'la femme'....
PPPPS: More of the latter though..the former could have been done on several other occasions....
PPPPPS : Like that one...:P
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