Of Food and Flatmates

Firstly, an apology to Angus for shirking plain language by using the term "co-facilitating". I will hereby endeavour to ultilize the vernacular. ;)

I'm so sleepy, yeah/ I'm so sleepy, yeah, yeah/ I could lay my head on a piece of lead/ And pretend that it was a springy bed/ I'm so sleepy, yeah.

I am so glad that Cat Stevens wrote a song about this. Important things are worthy of songs.

Jennie has moved in. This warrants a "yay!". Jennie is the "Make Rooms More Livable" Iron Chef/Fairy. I think she must have been very well brought up. She also brought with her a toaster, wok and DVD player (although our fridge still freezes stuff). Ergo, I've seen 1)Team America, which is very crass, but very funny. I love the "Montage" song. "Even Rocky had a montage!" and 2) Lord of the Flies, which has inspired me to read the book. {insert here the usual thematic comments pertaining to LotF about survival, power, society, morality and human nature}.

Jennie and I are going to go on the "Liver Cleanisng Diet". We start this weekend. This means we forgo dairy (including chocolate!), red meat, most sugar, saturated fat and artificial sweetners for eight weeks. Furthermore, we may only eat if and only if we feel hungry. Why am I doing such a thing? Here are my reasons:
1) To feel less tired and more motivated.
2) To feel less ill.
3) To improve my skin and hair.
4) To loose weight.
5) To clean out my liver.
6) To establish good eating paterns for later life.
7) To enjoy the full body massage that I will reward myself with if I can last the eight weeks.
Jen has done it before, and she felt bloody fantastic in it and afterwards. I would like the same pleasure. Such a project would normally be way to ambitious for me alone, but with someone else, it could be do able. Does anyone want to wager that I won't make it? And if so, would you like to bet a new fridge or something like that?

Goats Choose To Go To Hell

A few minutes ago, I was co-facilitating a Christian Philosophy reading group. The turnout was good - about ten people, including a Catholic (who seems to be "on the money"), a few non-Christians, at least one Spongian and a big bubbly man with a penchant for C.S.Lewis who arrived in the last few minutes to elviate any angst in the discussion. Not there was much. Thankfully people were considerate.

We were discussing Heaven and Hell. Apparently some people don't like the idea of heaven. They don't like the idea of spending eternity with the most supreme Being. They don't like the idea of doing good for eternity. They don't like the idea of not being able to choose evil for eternity. And some like the wrong choices they make, because it makes them who they are. (A non-christian girl and the Spongian agreed that earth was heaven. Such a view, if I want to be emotional about it, sickens me. Surely it is the sort of view that could only be a product of our luxurious, overfed society in the 21st century West, where suffering is easily transcended and erroniously reflected upon?) Anyway, people detesting the notion of Heaven certainly gives credence to the view that people genuinely choose to go to Hell.

Over three years worth of tutorial discussion yields this observation: Suppose an issue such as ethics is being discussed. When people are debating the issue or questioning the interlocker, they'll be quite assertive and bold. However, when the discussion turns to opinions that people actually hold instead of the opinions they hold for the purposes of the discussion (two quite different things, I've discovered) they will lower their voices, speak briefly and almost dismissively. I don't believe that this is because they are ashamed of their own view. Instead, I think that this behaviour is a function of the greater movement of postmodernity in society. In postmodernity, ones own opinion should not be taken as absoloute truth, since there is no truth. So, you ought not to assert too boldly your own view, since "that's just like your opinion, man."

"You guys are retarded!"

Edit: Despite all my qualifications, I still think that name calling and whinging is an imamature, mean and unhelpful way of dealing with the issue with on eof my lecturers. (But it sure felt good to vent!)

Instead, I think I may go talk to him in person (very scary) and somehow tell him that I dislike the sophistry he beguiles everyone with.

Everyone except me. And I’m the only one foolish and brave enough to challenge him. But I don’t last long on the floor – he shakes tables, gets personal, attacks ad hominem and uses magic words in that sneaky, impenetrable way that prevents reason from breaking the battlements of dogmatic, groundless Platonism.

Perhaps I’m getting too emotional about philosophy. Perhaps I ought to just trust God that truth will prevail without my efforts and that Jesus died for my lecturer because God loves ones such as he. And perhaps I should pray that I too can share that love that God has for all.

"Extreme Mormon" is Twenty Six Points

~ I emailed John Safran and asked him if he wanted to play a game of scrabble. I haven't heard back from him yet.

~ Our flat is still very student. Things we don't have: 1 Toaster 2 Microwave 3 Technically we have a fridge, but it's a "little over zealous"; we have to chizzle milk out of the carton. So maybe Emi could use her magic wishing skilz on this one. Or people could pray... 4 A dinning table
5 Chairs 6 DVD player 7 a wok. So far, I like the whole survival-on-minimum-resources-thing. I think I'm a bit of a closet aesetist/machosist, I somehow think that I'm being positively transformed by "difficult" circumstance. However, this is probably just rubbish recieved wisdom (from the Greeks).

~ I saw some graffiti (sp?) on the Old Quad: "Destroy Power, not People." Okay, I know what they're trying to say, but prima facie that is just silly. If we destroyed the "ability to do" (ie, power) then we couldn't do any destroying. Of course, what they really mean is that they want to destroy evil, totalitarian powers, or authoritarian governments, specifically in the case of Iraq, where there were many civilian deaths for the end of a "regime change". But whatever happened to "I say what I mean and I mean what I say"?

The Island

Warning Spoilers Ahead

Without qualification, The Island is A Good Movie. Scarlett Johannson (playing the vulnerable young maid she always plays) is hottt. Two Ewan McGregors is also hottt. Lots of explosions are, of course, hottt.

However, what I liked best about this movie is that it made me think philosophically about it. Firstly, there are the ethical issues raised. Is it okay to breed human clones for the purposes of prolonging life and curing cancer? The Island thinks no. While it appears, then, that the makers take a staunch deonotological position on the sanctity of human life, the good guys, Lincoln and Jordan, seem to be justified in killing the bad “doods” out to get them. So The Island’s assumption becomes more consequentialist, since the pair’s mission is to save the other clones from impending death. And why should they be justified in saving all these lives? Because humans want to survive, or so we are told.

So, I think we can map out The Island makers’ ethical assumptions:
1 Harvesting humans for body parts is wrong.
2 People with pragmatic approaches to the value of human life are evil and deserve to be punished by the hero.
3 Human life should be protected because humans have an innate desire to survive.

In fact, it seems that innateness is a tenet of The Island. Lincoln along with all the other “Products” live in a controlled, big-brother type environment. Everyone wears white, including white Puma shoes (ahh, the product placement in this movie is so obvious I’m convinced it’s ironic), has a controlled diet and sleep and work peacefully in a sterile environment. Even though all the products are clones, they’re still human so they require an incentive. This is a lottery to “The Island”. Lincoln is Plato among the Products; he questions why he has to wear white, why he can’t eat bacon, and if there really is an Island.

Lincoln’s philosophical nature is curious. He has been genetically modified, and the only “experiences” he has had is artifical stimuli and his three year existence within a controlled world. And yet, he believes that there is more to existence than just the world around him. Ergo, there must be some things about human nature that are innate, that cannot be learnt through experience. Among these things is scepticism and a sense of morality. The movie is not clear as to wether such things are the result of genes or something more transcendental.

Interestingly, Lincoln has memories that belong to his clonee. Annoyingly, the movie does not explain how this is possible, except that maybe in cloning the original Lincoln, his memories and knowledge were duplicated too. Somehow.

It is interesting that after many years of Empiricism, a warped kind of Rationalism is back in vouge. Maybe it’s a consequence of society trying to push blame away from the individual and onto their genes. Maybe I’m just being cynical.

Going back to the film’s ethical assumption, it seems that 1 is true in virtue of 3. However, positing human desire to survive as the reason for preserving human life commits the naturalistic fallacy; why should we respect that human desire?

There also appears to be a contradiction between 1 and 3, on the one hand and 2 on the other. Surely survival is a pragmatic consideration?