Re:Why We Fight over Fiction
by Smaug123 on Sunday February 07, 2021 @08:46AM
(#26054971)
I think you've missed the point of the article, which is that authors usually construct the options in such a way that the morality thereby displayed is ultimately an easy and comfortable one for the reader. The article is a paean to fiction that is uncomfortable and therefore capable of helping us push at the boundaries of our increasingly outdated ideas of morality.
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Re:Why We Fight over Fiction
by myWindoonn on Sunday February 07, 2021 @09:44AM
(#26055347)
The author and I have different definitions of morality. To the author, morality is only available for humans. However, I subscribe to Pirsig's morality, which means that I believe that atoms are moral too: Their morality is the laws of chemistry.
Viewed this way, the typical human is exhorted to "do what they want" (Pirsig's MoQ [0]) or "do what they will" (Discordianism) and the morals which the author is discussing are arbitrary cultural artifacts.
Of course, however, Pirsig's morality is neither easy nor comfortable, because it is the morality of pragmatists. To choose to do something is to choose for the effects of what one has done to be real in the world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirsig's_Metaphysics_of_Qualit...