If you know about NP-Completeness and other completenesses and incompletnesses regarding global solutions and you apply it to optimizing the human condition as it's own system and/or cooperating in a larger system, then practical ethics must account for the non-realizability of certain constructs.
Is there a basis for believing ethical dilemmas are somehow NP-Complete?
At some point, each ethic has to deal with the day-to-day problems of boolean satisfiability, traveling-salesman, clique, etc. - especially if the way these problems are solved determines the physical constraints imposed on the members of society.
Yet, people can know this, and not use it in their personal religion/spirituality/metphysics/ethic/morality/etc.
I believe that a side effect of our culture is the devaluation of the real aspects of our real lives. We watch movies about heros sacrificing for a cause or living the big life, but we don't apply it to our own lives, we play it safe. We say we believe in this or that, but we don't practice it in daily life, as though our daily life doesn't count.
Whatever the reason this seems to happen, it is a tragedy for our entire culture. I hear people talk a lot of science and then claim to be this or that sect of christian along with some set of rules that separate good from bad - that is, the human condition is NP-Complete but god's judgement is the oracle that always guesses the "right answer" - how great can a mind be if it is governed by a lesser mind?
What if most of these "moral habits" were reconsidered by the better minds of our nation. What if every truly educated thinker had as much ambition about their personal philosophy as they did their career?
What if managing the continuous duplicity of saying we believe in certain things (justice, freedom, love, etc.) and behaving according to ritual and atavistic mores dulls the mind and the soul.
Is there anyone left not on Prozac or some other SoulJack?
No comments:
Post a Comment