”That’s Cool”

This morning it was “Single Girl” by 16 Horsepower. Granted, I have a Yankee accent but that just made the moments when I tried to sound Southern all the more humorous.

I read a piece saying that the death toll from the tsunami has reached 114,000. So I’m sitting here reading and thinking how dreadful the loss of life and destruction is when there a quote from Dubya: “"We will prevail over this destruction”. It just seems so…so…warlike. Yeah, there ‘s a bias on my part but I wondered why it didn’t read something like, “We will send food, aid, and medicine” blah blah blah. Where are words like “help” and “rebuild”? We Americans are not prevailing over any destruction because no tsunamis hit our coast. The object here is to help people who have had tragedy befall them, not fight a war. The only thing we Americans have to prevail over is our niggardliness. Do I buy the TiVo or give that money to Oxfam? Not a very tough decision for most of us, I’m afraid.

I’ve noticed something about myself recently. I think that it’s always been the case but I’m not always conscious of it. I’m referring to how I pick up other people’s phrases and ideas and use them. We all do it to an extent, I think. For instance, take the phrase “that’s cool”. It’s rather innocuous, isn’t it? Becca uses it all the time and now I’ve begun to use it. And so has Stevie. It is this generic phrase of approval.

Becca: “How was work today, Tim?”
Tim: “Well, I managed to get this stupid fucking NetMeeting to finally work after 2 days.”
Becca: “That’s cool.”

A variation including emphasis:
Becca: “How was your day, Tim?”
Tim: “Well, I helped a little old lady across the street and fed everyone in Sumatra.”
Becca: “That’s so cool!”

From The Dulcinea I got “not so much”. As in:

Becca: “Did you have a good day at work?”
Tim: “Mmm…not so much.”

The most recent addition to my vocabulary is “exsmurfly”, which I got from Marv and means “exactly”. This word (and its variations) has the added bonus of really annoying Pete. Exempli gratia:

Tim: “Since the orc is moving through my square, I get an attack of opportunity, right?”
Marv: “Exsmurfly!”

The only variation that I can recall at the moment is “absosmurfinlutely” but there are more.

I spent a lot of time reading Singer’s book last night. I don’t necessarily agree with all of it. He is a Preference Utilitarian whereas I am not. Still, we arrive at a lot of the same conclusions despite traveling to them along different paths. Much of what makes his writing interesting is that he relates his ideas & arguments to the real world instead of staying in a world of abstraction. And so, if he’s talking about the morality of how to treat non-human animals, then he also talks about how non-human animals are currently being treated.

The greatest challenge he poses, at least so far, is that he denies the existence of supererogatory actions. (It’s fun to be reacquainted with all these terms from college philosophy courses that I’d forgotten.) “Supererogatory” actions are those that, if performed, are good but that it is not wrong not to do them. For Singer, we are obligated to be morally good and we are obligated to be as good as possible. By this he means not only the frequency of good actions we perform but also that we carry out our moral obligations to fullest extent possible. E.g. - he would say that we are morally obliged to help feed those suffering from starvation. But giving $5 to Oxfam if you are not destitute is not fulfilling your obligation because you are not giving enough. Singer thinks that one should give as much as you can - as much as makes your life as austere as possible but that you don’t slide into poverty yourself.

Of course, this sounds mighty extreme and quixotic to us (comparatively) well-heeled Americans. This position can be attacked on several fronts from whether or not we are obliged to give to the poor in the first place to whether giving until we can give no more to famine relief and neglecting other charities will really bring about the greatest good. Regardless, he makes a good point about the general nature of being charitable. As he remarked, a person is lauded for giving to charity but not castigated for not giving to charity. I think this is the rub. Wherever you fall in the debate on how much to give, I believe that the most immediate issue is whether you give or not. That’s what struck me the most. That we – I – should be giving.

Another thing that reading Singer’s book has brought to the fore of my mind (and hinted at above) is simply obligations themselves. So far, I’ve only read sections on treatment of non-human animals and the sanctity of human life. Later in the book are bits on living an ethical life more generally but I’ve been thinking of them all along.