III, Tin Woodman

   Ethics is situational; entirely situational.

   Morality isn't.

   Defining ethics from a viewpoint of human interaction and morality from a viewpoint of, good and evil-- or, not necessarily good and evil, but right and wrong, at least. The world is far from righteous, but is it evil? We can't say it's "evil" to, covet, can we? How about stealing? Murder? Is murder evil? Has the holocaust completely ruined us, that we think that "evil" has to be on a grand scale now? Evil can be smaller, true, but I'd still place all the crap (most of the crap, at least, there's still sickening levels of, human trafficking and everything, that I'd classify as evil) as just, wickedness?

   This is downright cheery, sorry. Let's see, I believe I was talking about loving people like God says, but then finding them right-ish about whatever it is they do, and being torn about that? This, this isn't about that right now. I think it may be about the opposite this time.

   People have, kneejerk reactions to things, yeah? You can divert a trolley, to hit a dude while saving those 5 other dudes, but you don't push a dude onto the tracks in front of the trolley, even if the same end would be reached. People have kneejerk reactions to morality, and then struggle to explain their reasoning-- we don't have moral reasoning, says Jonathan Haidt, but moral rationalization.

   But when I hear the trolley problem my mind immediately goes to a rational ground: there's no way I'm gonna be able to push that guy off the platform onto the tracks below. Does a man steal medicine to save his dying wife? Not from the pharmaceutical company; that's too well guarded!  The pharmacy has cameras everywhere. He'd need to steal it from somebody's bathroom cupboard, but how the heck would he even have known the medicine was there in the first place? There's no way he's gonna get that medicine. This isn't even a moral issue!

   I suppose then that I reason instead of rationalize. Which is... is a good thing? It has to be, but it's not the way that *most people* deal with morality... and I think that makes them amoral. But my medicine logic morality has nothing to do with morality, so does that make moral reasoners amoral as well?

   What even is morality, you guys, if either way to arrive at it, doesn't?

   Rad tangent!: not being kneejerk, having reasons before instead of after action, the reason why I do anything haunts me, is it for myself or to bless others? Do I have reasons or justifications? As an artist, that's a problem I've thought about and discussed a lot previously. Pretend I link to some of those posts here!

   Homework for this post. Read this article! The Moral Instinct! Probably should have required it at the end of some previous article already; that's okay. A lot of what I talk about here is covered there, plus so much more.