Right in Our Own Eyes?

Today I did some manual labour. I like manual labour, or at least this kind. My parents are creating a "Tuscan" area on the east side of the house. I mean this in a totally non-kitsch way. Kitsch is anathema to our family (for future reference). I joked with dad that he needs to install a water feature, where the fountain is actually a little naked boy weeing. Or maybe dad needs to paint a niche on the wall. Anyway, dad needs to lower the patio, so it was my job to remove all its bricks and stack them. A repetative, physically strenous task in the sun, but I liked it. I like to ponder things, and make patterns in the way I remove the bricks.

As I was starting, dad came out of the house and he chatted with me about how the Italian precinct of the property would look. At that moment I felt like a paid labourer, and dad was the foreman, whom I was on good terms with so he would chat to me, even about things the mere labourer doesn't have to know. In an instant, the foreman turned back into dad. But for a moment, my dad felt like my boss.

I imagine if I told this to someone, they might reply "Oh, that's awful, that's bad." Or make some other normative judgement. It bothers me when people do that. For example, I might say "Guys with the waiter type personality can be intimidating." Someone, upon hearing, might jump to the conclusion that I don't like such guys, and would be suprised to find out that sometimes I like to be intimidated. They would be suprised because in responding to me, they have made a moral judgement. This judgment will probably be made according to their own lattice of moral understanding, and in making a judgment, they've assumed that I share it.

I don't think of things in such moral terms, so I don't understand why others suppose that I do.

I'm guilty of replying "Oh, that sucks" and imparting value judgments too. I think we all reply in such ways when someone has said something that we haven't really connected with or internalised, so the best way we think we can engage with them is to empathise lamely.

So, maybe when we say "that's good" and "that's bad" we don't really mean it, we're just making conversation. Either some of us carry around moral frameworks, or none of us really do. (Instead, we probably, at base, see the world causally, not normatively. For example, if you say, "I don't like X", you mean "X causes me to feel [some kind of pain]". Maybe. ) Maybe the only person who is lisenced to make such moral judgments is the one who pronounced the world "Good" when He made it.