Reflections From a Murky Pond

The role and extent of government has been a matter of contention since Man first developed government. Nowhere is this more true than the ongoing war over what, if any, harm any government should allow to happen to the People.

Even the philosopher Hugo Adam Bedau, a current favorite among limited government and social liberal circles doesn’t provide much surcease from the argument.

Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as:

1. they know what they are doing,
2. they consent to it, and
3. no one — at least no one other than the participants — is harmed by it.

— Hugo Adam Bedau

Sure, Bedau’s words sound good and is if they’d make a good framework for the limits of government involvement and interference with the lives and actions of the governed.  Sadly, however Bedau’s words beg the questions of what is the proof of knowledge aforethought and what constitutes consent.

His words also, much like the Wiccan Rede – An it harm none, do as you will – leave the glaring and easily warred over questions of what’s the harm and, much like claims of offensiveness,  just who gets to decide that harm has been done in the first place.

No, not even Bedau’s simple prescription will ameliorate the conflict over just what the government should be allowed to regulate or proscribe.

Tags: Bedau | Crime | Ethics & Morality | Harm | Law | Liberty | Philosophy | Politics | Society

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 3rd, 2015 at 9:34 am and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Philosophy, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There always seems to be a plethora of questions about how one can win. Indeed, there are whole industries profiteering off of it. The answer is so simple though…

That’s the answer. Just as Heather Dorniden did, you get up after you’ve fallen – or have been tripped – and you run faster, try harder. This is how you win, whether it is in sports or life.

What you don’t do is: expect the race to halted and restarted; for any of your competitors to help you up; or to just lay there and blame various and sundry other people, groups, organizations, or whole cultures for your having fallen down in some fashion – even in those rare occurrences when they are to blame for it.

Sadly, this is lesson rarely taught anymore. Instead being a victim is what is taught along with blamecasting whenever one doesn’t achieve success quick enough or at all. Perhaps this is because “winning” requires there to also being losers and that’s “not fair.” Perhaps it’s simply that “validation” of one’s self-image has become more important than being of worth in the first place.

In any event, winning is quite simple. Yet, losing because you’re a victim is so much easier to both do and teach.

Tags: Blame | Blamecasting | Failure | Heather Dorniden | Philosophy | Responsibility | Society | Sports | Success | Victimology | Victory | Winning

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 29th, 2015 at 12:27 pm and is filed under Philosophy, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

It may surprise many that I spend a fair amount of my time musing about the state, follies, foibles, and rare successes of Man. Then again, it may not, given that people ascribe little value to such pondering and, hence, would assume I would engage in it.

Much, however, do I muse upon Man and his dysfunctional relationship with both Life and Death. How we deal or, more often than not, fail to deal with either perplexes me.

Some men seek power because life ends. Others, for the same reason, seek meaning. And yet the world is the same for both sorts, and makes no effort to accommodate either.

Tags: Death | Life | Musings | Philosophy

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 23rd, 2015 at 11:52 am and is filed under Musings, Philosophy. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

What is the nature of reality? It’s a question that many have asked and that many, many more have thought to answer.

Would He Still Lie?

The Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley asked this, as did William Fossett. So too did Albert Einstein, Charles Riborg Mann, and George Ransom Twiss. Indeed, throughout the modern age the question has been posed in publications as diverse as The Chautauquan and Scientific American.

Tags: America | History | Humor | Lies | Obama | Perception | Philosophy | Politics | Reality | Truth

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 4th, 2014 at 7:31 am and is filed under Humor, Philosophy, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

All science is theology or, said in another way, theology is the only science, with each otherwise-named path of research merely being a sub-discipline of the greater course of study. The whole of we call the “sciences” is nothing more or less than Man’s attempt to discern the Divine’s will and how it was enacted upon Creation.

There’s no intrinsic conflict between between Science and Religion. Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the father of modern Western science knew that as did even the Muslim World’s AbÅ« Ê¿AlÄ« al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham. The conflict between Science and Religion is a purely modern invention and a poor one at that.

Tags: Musing | Philosophy | Religion | Science | Theology

This entry was posted on Friday, February 7th, 2014 at 2:42 pm and is filed under Musings, Philosophy, Religion, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.