Flirting With Relevance

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the modern life sciences as we know them! Go ahead and celebrate your opposable thumbs!

Buy a copy of The Origin Of Species or read it online for free!

Do you have rights? Of course you do. What are they?

I’m not asking for a lengthy enumeration of each individual right that you believe you possess, but rather a definition of the word. When you speak of a right, what exactly are you talking about? When you speak of an automobile, you are referring to a (usually) four-wheeled vehicle powered (usually) by some form of internal combustion. In that vein, what are we actually discussing when we speak of our “rights?”

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Rumor has it that Subway is looking to drop Michael Phelps as a spokesperson after the revelation that the 14-time Olympic champion enjoyed a bit of the wacky tobacky. Fears of a mass protest by stoners proved to be unfounded. While gathering to demonstrate outside a local Subway store, someone got the munchies and everyone went inside for a sandwich.¹

1. This post is intended as satire and should in no way be interpretated as endorsing the use of mind-altering substances… no matter how many of your minds could stand some altering… [↩]

In order to get a grasp on who might be reading this blog and how you all might view the universe, we have a simple polls on the issue of morality.

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The words “ethical” and “moral” are often used interchangeably and this is probably correct. Indeed, each word appears in the definition of the other. The thesaurus feature in my word processor treats then as synonyms. Thus, they are just two names for the same thing, right?

That would be true, if only the two words were always used interchangeably. Think about the context in which you hear people typically use the two words. The word “ethical” is usually applied to businesses and government and how people and institutions conduct themselves in those environments. College students take courses in “business ethics” and the House of Representatives has an ethics committee. In short, the word is used to describe forthright and honest conduct in an impersonal or official capacity. Lying and embezzling and similar conduct appear to be the jurisdiction of ethics.

“Moral” is often used to describe conduct on the personal level, relating to sex, booze, drugs and other vices. When actors and athletes have “morals clauses” in their contracts, they rarely seem to be invoked when the party of the first part gets nabbed for cheating of their taxes, but rather when they are caught in a crack den with a high school cheerleader.

While this analysis is clearly anecdotal on my part and people are free to use the two words any way they like, it makes me wonder: If it’s immoral to have sex with a hooker, is it only unethical if you try to deduct it on your taxes?