I often have conversations of a philosophical nature with my friend Stone Taggart. I find his musings so entertaining and thought-provoking that I wanted to share them with you. Our last conversation turned into a candid interview and the results of that are below.
Due to the length, I have broken this into three posts. The views expressed below are the sole property of Mr. Taggart and are not necessarily shared or endorsed by myself. This is the second of three installments.
Part I
Palaverer: Do you think that it's possible/improbable/likely that at some time in the future, humanity will ever have more of a cohesive sense of morality, or that there will always be numerous groups?
Stone Taggart: I don't think it's ever going to be possible, nor is it ever going to be particularly beneficial to iron out the various groups. Because diversity is an integral part of progress. You have to be trying different things in order to find out which is going to work, but I do believe that over all, we are eventually going to have a much more cohesive sense of what morality is.
So we are going to have a basic code that we all adhere to. In fact, most of us already do. As I was saying before, do not kill, do not steal, do not lie, do not cheat, and it just goes down the list of things that, while helpful to you, are harmful to others. I think that as a whole we are going to find a balance of good for the individual balanced against good for everybody. I mean, you can't have a moral code that is good for everybody more than it is for the individual because that's another form of imbalance. Your individuals will start suffering, and through that, everybody's going to be equally miserable.
But if you have the right balance, then everybody will be able to express the kind of freedom that they need in order to pursue what they want to do and sort of fulfill the niches in society that are best suited for them. I mean, there are all kinds of people who desperately want to do something in particular with their life. And while these goals are not strictly humanitarian in nature—I mean, they don't want to become a charity, doing it for free—but it's something they'd be happier doing, than anyone else would be happier in their place, doing, and something they'd be happier doing than any other task.
As long as we've got this kind of—I hate to go back into the chaos thing—but as long as we've got paths of least resistance to balance out the pressures of everybody's lives and make it so that people who want to contribute in a certain way then have a channel through which to express that, that will be for the best. And I think that we are definitely on our way to that. We are heading toward a balance between diversity and conformity. Conformity has such terrible connotations. It's just that we're used to conformity in a context where it's conformity that squashes diversity. But the kind of conformity that I'm seeing in this is a system that allows for diversity to coexist.
P: Many people espouse the moral code that you said was pretty standard (don't kill, don't lie), and yet they do those things anyway. How do you close up the gap between what people believe in as a moral code, but actually practice?
ST: See, in all things you can kind of measure potential energy, sort of like you can in physics. You can see the pressures in their life that led them to make those decisions. I guess they are wrong to make those decisions but it's important to consider what made them think that was a good idea to begin with. And that's really the part of the problem that we should be attacking. Yes, there are definitely going to be flawed individuals in society that no matter what you do, they are going to do terrible things. But like I said, there is a balance.
We can't have a “thou shalt not kill” that is completely universal and unquestionable in every way, or else when someone goes around killing, you can't stop them because you're not allowed to kill them. If you have a balance, though, perhaps in directly tossing out that value that they claim to espouse, they're giving up their right to the receiving half of that. I think that would make short work of unsavory elements.
If you have someone who's going around killing and stealing and raping and lying and cheating and all of the terrible things that we know to be terrible, then they kind of don't have a right to say that those things can't be done to them any more. They were the first ones to—I hate to put this in immature terms—but they started it. They brought it upon themselves. They chose to reject those values after they, in the very first place, claimed they were going to support them. They've basically proven themselves to not be capable of being part of society. And what do we do with people who aren't part of society? Well, what does every society do to members that don't mesh well? Those members are removed.
I think it's important to note that there is really, although we are going to have a kind of agreement between the majority of people, there really isn't going to be any ideal one perfect human being. It isn't going to be possible to have a system that you'd call perfect. Perfection, in my opinion, doesn't even exist. It's something that you move toward, but it's nowhere that you actually get to. As long as we're moving toward perfection, then we're fine, we're good. That's the way that we should be going. But we're never going to have a system where nobody ever dies and nobody ever steals and nobody is ever wronged in some way. Again, it's all about balance.
P: Are you familiar with the trolley problem?
ST: Trolley problem . . . oh, I think I know! Where there are a bunch of situations where there's a trolley rolling down the tracks and there are people who are going to die unless you do something and sometimes that thing that you can do may have bad moral implications.
I've thought long and hard about these problems. To me, the moment there is bad on both sides of the equation, it stops being so much of a moral question. Because, if you switch the track to kill the one and spare the five, you're still responsible for killing someone directly through your own action. Whereas, if you're just standing there, and things are the way they are, and you just let it happen, it's a lot harder to blame someone for inaction than it is to blame someone for action.
Now, a lot of people will immediately jump to the conclusion, oh, well kill the one guy and we'll spare the five. The moment that you have a situation that's laid out like that already . . . to say that there's anything like fate—I don't think fate even comes into it at all. But sometimes it's just not any of your business. If it is the way it is, you're only sticking your neck out if you try to change it. I mean, that's a really cynical way to look at things, but really the individual at fault is the person—well, okay, no person would be at fault, per se, for having the people stuck there on the track, or the other guy stuck on the track. But the people who built the track? They're going to be held liable. I know I'm dancing around the point here.
P: I think the story is that some villain has tied people to the track. Twirling his mustache all the while. There's also the one where you're a doctor and you have five patients that need organ transplants. Someone rolls into town who has no family, has nothing particular to live for, you could easily kill him, no one would ever know, take his organs and save those five lives.
ST: That still involves direct action and at that point, that guy has not done anything to revoke his right to have organs. Just because other people are in a bad situation does not revoke the rights of an individual to not be in an equally bad situation. I guess that's what I meant by balance.
You go into a society where the rights of the individual are worthless compared to the rights of the whole, you're going to make all the individuals miserable. There's a line to be drawn. And there are going corrective mechanisms, like if five people keep dying in trolley crashes, over and over and over again, society is going to adjust its morality to a point where it's going to actually be written down as law that if you switch the track so that it only kills one person instead of five, that you're not accountable. But that hasn't happened.
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