One of the reasons I ended up with Mike -- and not with some other guy -- is that we both have an old-fashioned feeling for ethics. We are both morally old-fashioned!
(By that I may NOT mean what you think I mean...!)
The sense of community ethics these days has taken an unusual turn for the worse. I can look at my peers and judge them according to a certain uniform standard I have in mind for an ideal person. I can question the degree to which they avoid accommodation to this unform standard -- in other words, what are they trying to get away with, when I'm not?
These are more modern sentiments, which make uniformity the basis for communitarian goodness, and which makes public goodness out to be an issue of what one can get away with -- with the lower status members of society being allowed to get away with less. This is the kind of morality that takes as an economic imperative the necessity of policing one's peers, to make sure that they're not competing in a cheating way, by failing to put in all the effort required to make one's feelings and behaviour uniform. Under such a system of ethics, every genuine expression of spontaneity is considered to be a mode of deviance in relation to the requirements of the system. In particular, it is considered to imply cheating against the uniformity of the status quo, and hence to undermine the possibility of success for one's peers.
This modernist's -- or rather, industrialist's -- basis for ethics shivers constantly and delightedly under the impression of the Big Man. Here, someone who trumpets his voice in an abusive manner is not deserving of the flowback of an equal and opposite reaction, that suggests that he should watch his back. Rather, such a Big Man lays down the basis for ethics for all to follow. After all, how could one compete against one's fellows on the basis of a system of rules layed down, if the Big Man was not there to trumpet the rules, and cause fear to arise in the first instance?
Such a system of ethics based on fear, policing of others, and actual psychological or economical violence when somebody fails to live up to an impression of uniformity, is hardly ethical at all. But there it is.
I'm sure the reason I ended up with someone of Mike's age and attitudes is that his ethics for retaliation against any and all UNethical treatment is similar to mine!
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I think such unorthodox thoughts like: workers should socially own the means of production; that in a sane society, the insurance companies would dictate our daily risk level; that we should all have free medical care; that production of goods and services should be based on our own perceived uses and needs.
I hate class dominated society and all idiocies I have to content with in order to live MY life. For instance, our idiot rulers have all the power to change the way we get energy and look at them. While the North Pole melts, they fritter away time looking for 'market' mechanisms to solve the problems caused by climate change. In a sane society, we'd ask the scientific community what needed to be done. Granted this has happened and what are we doing? We continue to burn fossil fuels! Why, because are rulers are so totally invested in a system which depends on burning fossil fuels that they can't stop--it would be unreasonable!
Remember that. It's unreasonable to stop trashing up our planet.
Jennifer is kind of cantakerous like this. She doesn't like our rulers much either. Such stupid rulers we have. Why do we endure them? Maybe, because we're too stupid to organise. Stupid or afraid that we might upset our rulers.
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