I agree completely with what Dan Knauss just wrote. I also blame Napster
and its spawn. I don't know if stealing music and movies is a mortal
sin, or a venial one. But it does, I think, erode many young people's
sense of right and wrong. What concerns me is not primarily the value of
intellectual property, which is real but short-lived. I should also say,
before I go any further, that I am a technophile. In talking to my
students, though, I hear something that troubles me. I can only describe
it as a substitution of technological thinking for ethical thinking.
I.e., the question that many of them are asking now is not "Should I
download this term paper (or this MP3 file)?" but "Can I download this
file (or this term paper)." The larceny is bad, but the lie ("I wrote
this myself") taints the mind.
That sounds like I am angry, and sometimes I am. But mostly I feel sad
-- so many of them are just clueless. I don't mean that they don't KNOW
right from wrong -- the wit in most of them is more or less still erect.
But there is a kind of spiritual lethargy, a moral numbness.
Have any of you seen the movie "Infernal Affairs II"? It's a Hong Kong
detective story. At one point, a police cadet is asked why he wants to
be an undercover detective. He answers in five words: "I want to be
righteous." I live in a pretty religious corner of the world, but I
don't think I've heard anything remotely like that in a long time.
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Dr. David Wilson-Okamura http://virgil.org [log in to unmask]
English Department Virgil reception, discussion, documents, &c
East Carolina University Sparsa et neglecta coegi. -- Claude Fauchet
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