April 2013
1 post
Frailty Film Review
Living in the United States today, many of us are no strangers to the divine command excuse. Most of us have heard our share of freaky crime stories, about people that ate their children or slaughtered entire groups of people and, when asked why they did it, claimed that they had been instructed by God, or the devil, or an angel or demon. In Frailty, a psychological horror movie...
March 2013
0 posts
In Response to Levin's "Why Homosexuality is...
There is absolutely no shortage of discussion on the topic of love in modern America. We are absolutely obsessed with love – how to find love, how to keep love, how to tell if love is real. This is not a new phenomenon, either. Human beings have written about the experience of interpersonal romantic and erotic love for about as long as we have written at all. It’s a part of our universal culture,...
February 2013
5 posts
The Sunset Limited
Sitting down to watch Tommy Lee Jones’s The Sunset Limited, I will admit I had no idea what to expect. After the first few minutes of dialogue I still wasn’t sure, and the IMDb page wasn’t giving me much to go on, so I decided to wait and see. I was a little put-off by the two-member cast list, but I felt confident that Samuel L. Jackson wouldn’t let me down, and I have to say, I wasn’t...
Ethics: My Commentary on Capital Punishment →
unforgiving0minute:
The use of capital punishment as the consequence for murder in some American states is highly controversial. Of course it is a touchy subject because it is, literally, a “life or death” situation. Looking at an argument from both points of view is the best way to accomplish any compromise….
Bravo on doing your research! It’s interesting to know that the...
Untitled: Capital Punishment →
dissentingmoralsoftheworld:
What do we get out of the death penalty? One less criminal. That’s it. Our dead loved ones don’t miraculously come back when we kill their murderers. Maybe we feel better that they can’t kill again. But we still miss our children, our parents, our siblings, our friends, our lovers. Killing a…
I love how you tied natural selection into that, and I really like...
January 2013
21 posts
Kill Killing Killers
Well, it’s pretty much inarguable that the Capital Punishment argument is important; it’s literally a matter of life and death. And here in America, we are torn. We simply can’t make up our minds as a nation about whether or not the death penalty is something we should be supporting. But who can blame us? We’re playing God here. We’re literally trying to draw a distinct line about who is and is...
Live to Love, Love to Imagine: The Allegory of the... →
bre2733:
In my best interpretation of the meaning of the cave scenario, I believe the cave to be a brilliant representation of the way the human mind works. If we live forever influenced by only certain views, which in this case would be the shadows, those are the only views we’ll ever know; therefor,…
I love that you related the story to your younger sister. I agree, the allegory of the...
Behind the Wall: On the Topic of Piety →
theberglinwall:
I’m going to go ahead and get this out of the way. The last part of the Euthyphro was rather difficult for me to wrap my head around. I’m usually the last person to admit that something is difficult to comprehend. The whole part in which Socrates is saying, “a thing is not carried because it…
Okay, I, too, had to spend a fair bit of time picking apart the last part...
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a...”
– Martin Luther King, “Beyond Vietnam” (via thegadflychronicles)
Pious?
If there’s one thing I learned about Socrates from reading the dialogue in Euthyphro, it would have to be that the dude liked to ask questions. In fact, he liked to ask questions so much that, at the time of the conversation, he was actually standing trial for asking too many questions, to the extent that some influential Athenians decided to indict him for subverting the youth by creating...
“But also, you can see in that moment in the early morning the seeds of the...”
– -Richard Alpert, Be Here Now
My English Blog: My Personal Ethic →
I think that what our personal ethic does is help us distinguish between what is right and wrong, or good and bad. Everybody has their own opinion about what is ethical or unethical. I think that “good” means something has a benefit. You make a “good” decision because it is going to benefit you…
I’m curious, when you say that ‘good’ and ‘legal’...
Behind the Wall: A Reason to Smile (Ethics) →
theberglinwall:
Over the course of my life, I have developed a fairly simplistic and enjoyable approach to life and all of its odds and ends. I really enjoy being an entertainer of sorts and avoiding things that cause conflict, angst and all of that dramatic crap. All I want to do is make my friends and…
I can honestly appreciate your ability to find your ideal life in something so...
“Life is really simple, but we choose to make it complicated.”
– Confucius (via ohheyitsjaclyn)
Personally, ethically....
Treat others as you would like to be treated. The golden rule, as I grew up calling it. I’d like to be able to say that this alone is how I determine my personal ethic, but I would be lying. The more thought I give to the topic of ethics, the more I realize it’s not something that’s constant. I believe that my personal ethic is highly flexible, and that I draw aspects of my ethical judgments from...
