Talk with Alyssa

Me

by find one value at a time, u create an ethics, a set of values

and that is why you want to be good

because u have limits

limits of how much pain is tolerable and such

9:10pmAlyssa

i want to be good because i want to uphold the rights of all people

because i want to live, therefore life is valuable to me

9:11pmMe

yeah, that is an important distinct people forget, if one says slavery is intolerable and then makes the master the slave, he is contradicting himself and place something above enduring

namely vengence

(understood he sorry)

which has its weaknesses I admit

as an argument, but I am working on it

9:13pmAlyssa

capital punishment contradicts the value it's trying to protect. man I soo shoulda used that for my research paper

9:13pmMe

interesting

9:13pmAlyssa

well isn't that what cames was trying to get at?

9:13pmMe

I would, if I were u, read more on Camus, for he would probably say it better than i can

9:13pmAlyssa

camus"

9:15pmMe

yeah, he focuses on that because think about how systematic killings are justified through law

9:15pmAlyssa

what is unclear to me is the freedom part of it. maybe you just haven't gotten there yet. don't you think a slave can be ethical?

9:15pmMe

He was working on these theories during and after WWII

9:15pmAlyssa

"we're protecting out lives by taking yours"

9:16pmMe

a slave can be ethical, because a great deal of morality is natural, pain, empathy, whatnot)

it is just that some more abstract things like equality need to be values by a process

of realization

DOes that make sense?

9:18pmAlyssa

yah i think so

how long have you been working on this?

9:19pmMe

starting from nothing on Camus, 2 years

I am still working on him, because I have not spent every waking hour memorizing and focusing on what he means

A good book to read, a novel of his, is called THe Plague

it will explain things for a beginner in Camus, but I have forgotten some of his arguments

I am currently working on The Rebel, a book length essay

9:21pmAlyssa

i will look into it next time im in the library

what's it about?

9:22pmMe

It is about the difference between rebellion and revolution

9:22pmAlyssa

and what do you think of it so far?

9:24pmMe

while rebellion is a protestation, with no specific leader, and has a sense of resulting from injustice to life or enduring (to not rebell against the injustice of Southern Jim Crow laws was to starve, to be disenfranchised into subhuamnness)

I like it, though his essays can be difficult

to read, because it is translated from French with specific terms from a specialized philosophy

Revolution is All or Nothing for the cuase

9:25pmAlyssa

hmnnnn

9:25pmMe

and because of this, it risks putting something above life

9:26pmAlyssa

well isn't the cause usually about your quality of life?

9:27pmMe

THe French Revolution started out as a rebellion, quality of life, then became equality, liberty, fraternity

they killed off all the aristocrats as being iconic as against those values

THomas Paine came to France and argued against systematic murdering of the higher classes and the hysteria of killing off sympathizers and was duely imrisoned

So this is the All or Nothing approach and rhetoric on revolutions often

9:30pmAlyssa

i guess I mean to say that equality and liberty is a part of life. i guess you could call it a right. but didn't you determine that it was worth establishing a slave's liberty because you value his life?

9:31pmMe

America had ran the risk of that, but the revolution was actually fairly small (most people were very loyal and did not join the revolution) and England did not have the resources to continue the fight long enough to make it All or Nothing

9:32pmMe

Equality is good for life so long as one does not maintain it with absolute justice (as one may remember the limits)

9:33pmAlyssa

the limits of equality?

9:33pmMe

For instance it would be bad to make everyone equal in the sense of wealth, intelligence, ability to play sports

because in order to do that one would have to reduce the quality of life for even the moderately well off

9:34pmAlyssa

right on

9:34pmMe

In a way that is was communist tried

in order to get rid of class struggle

now it is John Rawls who explains the best way to approach equality

9:36pmAlyssa

i wish i remembered the name of it, but there was this short story we had to read in junior english, this dystopian place with extreme equality. this huge guy was covered in "handicapps", things that lessened his strength so that he wasn't superior. basically he had to go around with heavy metal objects strapped to his body

9:37pmMe

He maintains that if we did not know who we are, and we had to choose what society we were to live in, we would try to make the worst off better because we would not want to risk being in their position

I read that story as well, and that is what I was thinking of

9:37pmAlyssa

do you remember what it was called?

9:38pmMe

no

9:39pmMe

So you learn anything

9:39pmAlyssa

okay

9:40pmAlyssa

ya i mean, obviously the things you're saying make sense. People just usually don't challenge me to draw conclusions like that because most people don't think about it

I guess they leave it up to the philosophers hah

9:42pmMe

well, it shouldnt be just the philosophers who know about it or think about or we have a lot of people being revolutionists (think of tea party)

9:43pmMe

Just a nice thing to say, when you laugh at a joke, remember that there is a language game behind it, and that language game is what philosophers do (smostly not comicly)

9:45pmAlyssa

i totally wish i knew what you meant by that

9:45pmMe

... jokes are philosophy in a sense

they question our expectations and what we mean by words

they make logical mistakes that are understood

why did he do that? because he thought...

well, whatever

I recently wrote an article for a blog and got it published

a link for it is on my wall

9:47pmAlyssa

oh yah, me too. its about quantum physics

9:48pmMe

interesting

9:48pmAlyssa

not

9:49pmMe

haha, playing with my catagorical trust of friends

9:49pmAlyssa

lol were you impressed?

9:50pmMe

yes, for it shows ingenuity and teaches me to assume less about people

wait until evidence before believing something that has not shown to be an interest of said friend

but that is just rationalizing this, but u were funny

9:52pmAlyssa

well, I try

9:53pmMe

well, if u are ever interested, u can read my articles, i post them every once in awhile, i got some things i want to do right now

9:54pmAlyssa

okay. i have the browser up actually for a while i just suddenly got popular on facebook im. but i'll read it and talk to you later

9:54pmMe

k

10:38pmAlyssa

so you said you had some things you want to do right now ad I thought you meant you were going off to do things

10:38pmMe

i did

just left my comp on