Bravo, porridge-head.
Morality is based on the ability to imagine an other. That there are other
noisinesses in the universe, just as rowdily real as oneself.
best
Dave
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 10:57 PM
Subject: Re: On moral cruelty
> Rather liked Kent's hallucinogenic blooms here, and although my mind
> feels like a squelch of porridge due to unpleasant micro organisms
> exercising their own kind of visicidity and transparencies upon me,
> wanted to respond: with apologies for slow wittedness. Dom seems to be
> talking about one particular kind of Christian morality which arrogates
> all truth and rightness to itself, but there are many other, perhaps more
> moral moralities: the abnegation of the different in order to heighten
> the correct Self described by Dom seems to be, rather, _immoral_. Kent
> is quite right in saying that moralities demand imagination ("The only
> crime," said Wilde, "is lack of imagination"). Whether a morality grows
> first from an awareness of mortality seems to me moot: ye-es, of course,
> but is it fundamentally that, or that, as Zygmunt Bauman suggests, we are
> "moral beings" who are faced with the problem and responsibility of the
> other. (Or are these two things inextricably linked? The awareness of
> the other being a kind of death, the death of narcissicism and
> egocentricity? And it's true, some human beings don't survive that
> realisation.)
>
> Bauman also calls morality a flower, but says it is rooted in
> uncertainty, the permanent condition of life - "(Uncertainty is) the very
> soil in which the moral being tkes root and grows. Moral life is a life
> of continuous uncertainty. To be a moral person takes a lot of strength
> and resilience to withstand the pressures and temptations to withdraw
> from joint responsibilities. Moral responsibility is _unconditional_ and
> in principle _infinite_ - and thus one can recognise moral persons by
> their never quenched dissatisfaction with their moral performance, the
> gnawing suspicion that they were not moral _enough_."
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
