On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 6:00 PM, Jim Devine <[email protected]> wrote: > If someone imposes his or her morality in a way that insults them > ("motherfucker") and totally ignores both their humanity ("stop eating > so much!") and the practical issues of making sure that one person's > abstinence from eating actually helps those who are starving, that > indicates an unthinking approach.
You are taking Roy's comment far too literally. If it helps, you could replace her exhortation to "Eat less, motherfucker!" with the less offensive (but also rhetorically sterile) "Adjust your lifestyle to consume fewer fossil fuels, dear friend!" Is that still moralistic? > In any event, if you want to help starving peasants, it is better to > teach them how to produce more crops (and, more importantly, to help > provide an institutional framework that ensures that they get more of > the fruits of their labor) instead of simply giving them food, > especially if it's simply taken from someone else (the alleged > over-eaters of the "first" world). It is funny how much you sound like those conservatives who want to cut taxes for billionaires using exactly the same argument. Don't punish the successful guys! After all they earned their billions by being brilliantly productive in the stock market! (If you want I can give you productivity statistics for it). If you want to help the poor, you should think of a way of making them more productive instead of simply taking money from someone else (the alleged over-paid billionaires of Wall Street). Beware the slippery slope of moral relativist extremism! -raghu. -- Dyslexics of the world, UNTIE! _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
