Reply To: Burn Baby Burn

[Simon Paynton]

@Arcus – if people find that that model works for them, then good luck to them.  I’m not going to argue against its correctness, since it’s a cousin of a model that I agree with.  There’s more than one way of looking at a complex situation.

But if it’s claiming to be a complete moral framework (i.e. an underlying structure on which to hang the rest of morality) then I reject it, because it seems dead and soulless: it reads like a manual for how to run a supermarket or something.  If I thought this was all morality is about, then I would get in my car and drive off a cliff.  (If I could drive/had a car.)

A moral framework or system needs to make people feel encouraged about being alive.  It should hold out some promise of happiness.  If you look at Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, they all do this.  Morality began life as a survival strategy, and along with survival, this immediately implies making life better.