“‘Look at Bonzo, your old commander. He’s got an advanced case of Spanish honor. He can’t allow himself to have weaknesses. To be better than him, that’s an insult. To be stronger, that’s like cutting off his balls. That’s why he hates you, because you didn’t suffer when he tried to punish you. He hates […]
“He could see Bonzo’s anger growing hot. Hot anger was bad. Ender’s anger was cold, and he could use it. Bonzo’s was hot, and so it used him.” ––Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card, pg. 87 “The tentativeness of scientific conclusions is a source of continuous inspiration to scientists, but also of perennial frustration […]
John Updike gets some extra love today because I really dig his writing. “‘Hold still. Just sit there. I see you very clear all of a sudden. You’re Mr. Death himself. You’re not just nothing, you’re worse than nothing. You’re not a rat, you don’t stink, you’re not enough to stink.’ ‘Look, I didn’t do […]
“What right did he have to go to church? What did he and God talk about behind the back of all these women exchanging winks that was the thing she minded if they’d just think about love when they make it instead of thinking about whatever they do think about––whatever they’re going to do whenever […]
“Our feelings of benevolence and sympathy are more easily aroused by specific human beings than by a large group in which no individuals stand out. People who would be horrified by the idea of stealing an elderly neighbor’s welfare check have no qualms about cheating on their income tax; men who would never punch a […]
“On the collective level, once we have begun to justify our conduct publicly, reason leads us to develop and expand our moral concerns, drawing us on toward an objective point of view. On the individual level reason is less compelling; while it leads us to see inconsistencies between our beliefs and our actions, or between […]
“Beginning to reason is like stepping onto an escalator that leads upward and out of sight. Once we take the first step, the distance to be traveled is independent of our will and we cannot know in advance where we shall end.” ––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, by Peter Singer, pg. 88 […]
“Far from justifying principles that are shown to be ‘natural,’ a biological explanation is often a way of debunking the lofty status of what seemed a self-evident moral law. We must think again about the reasons for accepting those principles for which a biological explanation can be given.” ––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral […]
“Scientists are now laboriously discovering what many dog owners have long accepted; we are not the only animals that reason.” ––The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress, by Peter Singer, pg. 28 “The town of Mt. Judge is built on the east side of the mountain Mt. Judge, whose west face overlooks the […]
“Social life requires some degree of restraint. A social grouping cannot stay together if its members make frequent and unrestrained attacks on one another. Just when a pattern of restraint toward other members of the group becomes a social ethic is hard to say; but ethics probably began in these pre-human patterns of behavior rather […]