Another Ethical thought

My ethics class has been talking alot lately about what human nature is and why its so important. Frankly, I think most of what's been said is a load of crap. Not one of the philosophers we've covered have even mentioned natural selection, evolution or mutability. Not one seems to have ever taken a biology class within the last 150 years. Granted, philosophers before then wouldn't have even heard of Darwin (except perhaps for he accomplishments of Erasmus Darwin), but there's no excuse for more recent ones. Even before the theory of natural selection was formalized, the vast majority of the biologically minded community acknowledged that humans are in fact animals and that no species is immutable. Apparently nobody told the ethical theorists. Even today in class, my prof said that human nature was human nature and that it was universal across the species.
OK, here's a new ethical theory for you, it has two assumptions: 1. human beings came to their current state through the process of evolution by natural selection. 2. If there is such a thing as justice, then it is subjective (ie. one group argues that each person is autonomous with equal rights and another argues that people are variably dependant and have the equal right to have their dependancy accomodated). "Moral action is that which is in accordance with those which produced that which is viewed as human nature or changes what human nature is for a significant proportion of the population." This theory is univeralizable (throughout all life), consequentialist, and can serve as an umbrella theory under which all the other theories which my ethics class has covered.
It is universalizable across all life becaue it has all reached a current state through a process of evolution. If an organism is capable of behavior, then we shall arbitrarily say that its behavior can be deemed either beneficial/ moral, detrimental/ imoral or neutral. For much of the animal kingdom, we shall say that the range of potential behaviors is genetically hard wired (to apply to humans you can either change all occurances of the word gene to idea, belief or code of action, and any word synonymous with inherited to learned, or you can leave it as is, depending on you views of human developement). An organism is therefore obligated to conduct itself in those behaviors which increase the fitness of its gene line and those behaviors which are utilized to that end. A behavior that inhibits the reproduction of that organism will not be passed on to the next generation and thus the proportion of individuals with that trait will remain very close to 0 (its distance from zero depending on the liklihood of mutation wich results in the production of those inhibitory behaviors). Likewise, behaviors which improve evolutionary fitness will increase in proportion within the population. The developement of a novel behavior which does not affect the likelihood that the gene which controls it will get passed on will be subject to genetic drift. There would be an accumulation of novel characters which are not necssarilty shared by the entire population nor all in one sect, if the rate of mutation to produce these behaviors is greater than their random elimination through serendipitious death, non reproduction or reverse mutation. The other factor that would affect the accumulation of those characters which do not affect reproductive success is linkage. The likage/ closeness of two genes is an expression of the probablility that in a random sample of progeny from a single set of parents, individuals that inherit one character will also inherit another without necessarilty a causal relationship. If a completely neutral gene is likely do be inherited with a detrimental one, then it will likely be eradicated from the population. The converse is also true (linkage to a beneficial gene increases the carrying proportion of the population).
It is important to noe here that the affect a behavior has on fitness is entirely situationally dependant. On its own, anything becomes nuetral because it serves no direct purpose (digestion is meaningless without absorbtion, copulation is meaningless without gestation). An act can be beneficial in one situation but nuetral or detrimental in another dependig on a change in the environment (including social environment). The value of any behavior can switch to any other value depending on the situation. In the human world, flying would be considered by most to be morally nuetral. It becomes evil if you purposely crash it into a couple of builings and admirable if you fly air drop supplies for the hungry.
Humans are particularly interesting creatures because of the complexity and placticity of our behaviors, of which, one behavior is reasoning. Reasoning ability opens range of behavior even wider because we have the ability to construct tools to manifest our ideas, desires and feelings. We as human beings are not physiologically capable of completely independant powered flight, yet it is clearly within the range of our abilities to achieve flight through our natural tool use and reasoning. The act of reasoning itself one could argue is evolutionarily nuetral, but it is the impementation of that reasoning through our mechanations which affect our success (dolphins could be capable of reasoning but we'd never know it because they don't visibly do anything with it). In this way we are contrained by the limitations of our mechanations and the sum of the mechanations of previous generations. Therefore we cannot actually act outside the limits of our natures since we have it within our natures to achieve anything given time and resourses. Thus it is completely meaningless to say that acting in dischord with our nature is immoral since it is an impossible condition.
Ok, so no that I've explained alot of the biological background, I can actually get into the syntax of the theory itself. Since it is not possible to act outside the limitations of ones nature, it is possible to not act in accordance with those behaviors which increase or maintain genetic fitness or contradict those that developed the current condition of the species.
You know what, I'm actually getting bored of writing this, as I'm sure you're bored of reading this. Ok, it boils down to there is no objective good or evil act, its all situational; a group can feel threatened by a suddenly successful group and intentionally suppress it as a way of maintaining their success or they can join the new group; people when you get down to it, really aren't that bright.

The Enemy list

Throughout my brief life I seem to have had alot of enemies, nemecies and people I just plain didn't like. Many have commented that I must have a list of people that I'm enemies with a mile long. The other day I tried to actually think of the names on that list but very few came to me. As a matter of fact, only a few of the big ones or the more recent ones came tomind: Anna Lisa Dockman, Daniel Panosh, Richard Sander, Penrose (we only ever called him by his last name). There are certainly others that I can remember, but who's names I've forgotten. The kid in second through fifth grade that ritualistically embarresed and bullied me, that kid in fifth and sixth grade that thought I was his friend, but was really, really annoying (I have a piece of graphite perminantly in my thumb thanks to him), his other friend who pestered me to the point where a teacher dropped the F bomb yelling at him. In junior high there was the kid who sat next to me in band opposite Daniel Panosh, who constantly ridiculed me about my clothing, my weight, and on several occasions tried to cut me. In early high school pretty much hated everybody; the guy that never called me by any name other than Timmy, the majority of the brass section in the band, and pretty much any guy not labeled as a nerd, and even some that were.
I think that what I need is somebody to be my arch nemesis. A rivle who will chalange the limits of my malice and contempt, and with whom I can have such a bitter rivalry that anybody that knows of either of us will recognize our loathsome contempt for each other. Having an enemy can push a person to great things, motivated by hate, the most powerful emotion of all. I do some of my best work when I'm trying to vanquish another. Even Proffessor Membrane on the show 'Invader Zim' had a foe in Santa Clause; "From this day forward, I shall devote a small portion of my life to destroying Santa!!!"

Rage Time

Yesterday, either Allan or Joel brought up an interesting question; how much time you you say you spend enraged? For the purpose of discussion, we made rage to include angry frustration and bad moods that include mental images of hurting others or overpowering other (even if only to get rid of them). Joel responded that 15-20% of his time was spent in such a condition (this is including all that time spent sleeping). This means that practically a third of his waking time is spent in an extremely foul mood. Allans responce also seemed high at 5%, though much lower than Joel's. Allan has always outwardly presented himself as a stoic, emotionless zen master. I guess he just bottles it up. I'll have to remember to stay on his good side. As for me, I really don't know. My mood is highly dependant on ambient temperature and light and CO2 levels. The warmer it is (within reason) generally the happier I am. The converse is also true. This does not necessarily mean that I go strait into rage when it gets below freezing. Actually, I just get sluggish and go into periods of metabolic torpor. Thought there is set of ballance points where it is warm enough for me to get my blood up. Generally this is the temperature that I'm at when I'm lightly bundled in one of the halls of V-wing. With thousands of people around me struggling in one direction like some anatomical macrocosm, consuming all the O2 and acting like complete idiots, I am prone to visions of massive sweeping motions that hurtle people into the snow, or into adjacent lecture theaters. Sauron at the very start of Fellowship used such swings. Another time when I "feel" rage, or as I prefer, the wrathful power of provedence, is in any dance club or bar in which the average age of attendees is below 21. Clearly these people are wastes of oxygen and ought to be eliminated from my path like insects beneath my heel. But then I getting carried away.

The Purity Test

Well, it seems to be the popular thing right now to take the purity test. There are many different versions of the purity test. In this one, a high score means that you are more pure/ wholesome etc. In otherwords, the the lower the score, the more things that you've done in that catagory. Once again, for clarification, gayness of 100% means that you've never done anything gay. I reiterate this because I know that somebody (e-hem, Don) is going to leave a comment completely to the contrary to what I have just established. He does this because he knows that I'm a homophobe. I've also tried to include the scores for my room-mates for comparison as well as the average.
Category _____ ME Allan Joel Average

Self-Love _____ 55% 23.3% 46.7% 65%


Shamelessness 95.2% 71.4% 73.8% 79.3%


Sex Drive _____ 92.1% 92.1% 32.4% 77.6%


Straightness _ _ 87.5% 89.3% 3.6% 44.8%


Gayness _____ 100% 92.9% 89.3% 83.5%

Fucking Sick _ 97.3% 94.7% 84.1% 89.9%


You are _ 85.42% pure 77.2% 57.29% 72.6%

A couple of interesting things occur to me right away. First of all, despite the fact that I don't have a girlfriend, I still scored more pure on the self love catagory than Joel who is (at least amongst us nerds) the most womanizing guy around. Also, Allan didn't post his average, so I decidd to calculate it for him. Also, Allan's gayness and straitnes are pretty close to equal, in fact, I'm sure that if one were to run statistical analysis, the two would be indistinguishable.
Well, it seems like I'm the purest guy in the house, which isn't really saying a whole lot. I'm not really sure if this whole purity thing is good or bad, especially since I was pretty liberal with my answers, trying to depress my score. oh well.

Reunite Gondwanaland!!!

The University of Alberta Students Union is quite possibly the most useless organization on campus. The only function that the SU has served lately seems to have been to fight the provincial government over the amount of subsidies that the university receives. Freeze the Fees is their slogan. This refers to the desire to stop current rise in tuition. Since 1990, tuition, they claim, has risen over 200 percent. The SU points out that Alberta is currently in one of the largest budget surpluses ever and that only a small fraction of that surplus would be necessary to maintain tuition costs for the next several years.
So what has the SU done to actually fight rising tuition costs? They've given out free hamburgers and soda to passing students in order to get them to sign petitions and pre-typed letters to legislature. A couple of times, the SU has organized a march on the parliament building and staged "theatrical" protests on the steps of the provincial government building.
What has this accomplished? Absolutely nothing! Not only did the SU completely fail in its attempt to fight bill 43, the bill which removes tuition caps for universities, but they continue to fail in every single attempt to make a politician (students for the most part too) care about keeping tuition the same. The SU is going about this issue in entirely the wrong way. They might as well be screaming "Reunite Gondwanaland" infront of the United Nations building. Reuniting the southern continents is both physically and politically impossible. Anybody That knows what the issue is would laugh, even if it did seem like a good idea. Politicians don't care about the rants of a few young university students, they care about the voters. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. If the student union were to put as much effort into backing candidates that support their cause and convince students to go to the poles and vote out the current administration, then some change will be seen. People will act if they're afraid of losing their jobs. Student's parents and the parents of prospective students, if they vote would probably be able to make a huge impact.
I hate people who say "fight the system." No, the system is there for a reason, it's a good system. It's changeable but it takes time and effort; so that people wont just fiddle with it every time there is a small, but upset group. Unlike a lot of situations where the squeaky weal gets the grease, the politicians will normally just say that the squeak of students isn't loud enough to be worth the grease. However, if a couple of current leaders of state are replaced, the remaining individuals would be able to clearly see that they are not immune from lay offs.
Voter turn out is absolutely appalling. Old people make up the vast majority of voters, and let me tell you, they don't care about student tuition, unless their grandkids are hitting them up for money. There are approximately 30 thousand students and professors at the U of A. Each of those students has two parents. If half of those people are even eligible to vote, and a tenth of those actually show up to the poles, then that is nearly 5000 votes agains increased tuition. Granted, that isn't very many people, but Alberta has just about the lowest average age of the population, so that some octogenarian won't be skewing the vote. Consider also the 1400 voting parents of students that will be entering university next year. With such low normal voter tern out, over 6000 people voting the same way on a particular issue will has a tremendous impact.