Brakes

Brakes, Cafe and More GR

By John Taylor; 2007 Mar 29

Contents of Today's Mailing

Brake Failure
Philosopher's Cafe Announcement
More on the Golden Rule

Brake Failure

This morning the brakes on my car failed. I had just pulled out of our driveway and was at the corner of Cedar and Broad, driving Thomas to his piano contest, when my brake pedal hit the floor. Fortunately I had already safely come to a stop at the intersection when that happened, and I was able to turn the corner and pull over into an empty parking space. I was lucky not to have an accident. Tomaso has been practicing for weeks for this event, and that horrible Disney song, "Bingo," is grooved into all our brains. He was very disappointed not to be able to go, but better sad than dead.

Turns out that Ford was economizing on its brake warning lights when it made the 1991 Escort. It uses the same light for the emergency brake as for the main brakes. All it says is BRAKE. I often forget and leave my emergency brake on, so I was used to seeing that light on. I was not surprised some months ago when that light "broke" and began to stay on all the time. Now I realize that it was not broken, it was not talking about the emergency brakes but the main brakes, that the brake fluid was getting low. Today it hit bottom.

In a better, community-oriented free enterprise system such blunders would not be allowed to perpetuate. Cars would be built using the open system model. Plans are already being made for an open car made of standard, non-proprietary parts. There are big interests with billions to lose if this idea flies, so who knows if it will come about. In an open system I could report a design flaw like this on a website and the correction would be fed back into the system and improvements made automatically. Somewhere, somebody is going to die because of this design flaw and my near miss is not going to be reported to them. Let us all pray that the present dangerous and expensive proprietary way of making cars is booted out and an open model takes over.

Philosopher's Cafe Announcement

Last month our Philosopher's Cafe had an equal number of men and women, and for that reason perhaps the climate was more temperate than the overheated, male-dominated clashing over the environment that took place the month before. One topic came back over and over, the problem of parenting well and educating a new generation of environmentally conscious world citizens. It became clear that we could not do justice to it without devoting an entire evening to it. So it came to pass that a decree was given over the land: this will be the subject for next month. I hope to see all the regulars and maybe some new philosopher-cadets on the second Thursday of April.

Here is the official announcement for this month's Philosopher's Cafe discussion at the Wainfleet Library:

Philosopher's Cafe

Thursday, April 12

6:30 p.m. in the Library's meeting room

Topic for discussion:

Parenting and Education

A second Thursday of the month destination for provocative, insightful discussion around ideas and issues that matter.

Wainfleet Township Public Library

Wainfleet, ON L0S 1V0

905-899-1277 www.wainfleetlibrary.ca

More on the Golden Rule

Rick Garlikov kindly replied to yesterday's Badi' essay, offering four counterpoints, which I will respond to in order. He said,

"Thanks for sending this.  I have a few comments (of course) in response.  (If I didn't you would not find me fun.)

"1) I don't think that easy ethical matters are any less ethical matters. If we had great principles for determining what is right and wrong, that would be a good thing.  And it would not make such principles be the same as laws.  Laws are what they are, whether reasonable or not. They are part of a formal system.  Ethical principles, even if unassailable, would not be part of a system like that."

Yes, I do find this fun, thank you for responding so amiably in spite of our varying opinions on the GR. As for this, agreed. Many moral issues turn up again and again even though they are part of law. They still moral issues even though laws back them up. It is also true that laws tend to be independent formal systems. Still, if we are to survive as a society we must do everything possible to align legal systems with moral principles. If either flies off on its own there will be no justice, and justice is the heart of both law and ethics. My main point is only that reciprocity, of which the GR is an example, is at the heart of justice.

"2) Why search for ethical principles at all, if the minute you find one, you make its purview not be about ethics; or you turn it into an oxymoron the minute it is seen to be great."

Let me rephrase my point, which was perhaps incoherent. Scientists are concerned not with all of nature or everything known already. This would take up too much time. Rather they restrict themselves to certain difficult questions deemed likely to advance the overall sum of understanding. For example, the composition of air, whether it is phlogiston or whatever, was a hot issue in the 18th Century. Now we know about oxygen and have moved on to new problems. The composition of air, then, is still part of scientific knowledge but it is not a scientific issue, a question foremost on the minds of physicists. All I was saying was that there some matters of ethical knowledge that are understood and agreed by virtually everybody, and others are ethical issues or problems that merit the concern and debate of moralists.

"3) Where you write, "The Golden Rule asks us to take an imaginative leap and put ourselves in others' shoes..." I think it actually asks you to put others in your shoes.  That is what is wrong with it, because...

"... people use it to decide what they should do for others based on what they would want done to or for themselves. So people inflict all kinds of torments on others by treating them as they themselves would want to be treated instead of as the "beneficiary" might want or need to be treated."

"There are numerous examples one could give, but one of the clearest is parents who force their children to follow the advice the parent wishes he would have been given as a young adult -- e.g., the father who was going to make his son go to medical school because he wished someone had forced him to go to medical school instead of allowing him to follow a different path.  But this son, who was a student of mine, had no aptitude for science and absolutely no interest in either it or medicine.  But he was willing to do as his father demanded.  As his counselor, I was not, because there were no signs that would be a good thing for this kid -- and because one of the demands his father made, the counseling office did not permit of anyone. The father wanted the kid to take two lab sciences, such as chemistry and zoology.  Freshmen were not permitted to take two lab sciences because it normally did not work out well for them; was much too difficult time-wise, while trying to acclimate to university courses. The father called me and was really upset."

I agree completely that the GR can be misapplied and often is, doing great harm to society. But let me ask you, when you pick up a hammer, do you think of all the times murderers have used hammers to crack heads, or the klutzes who smashed their own fingers? Most carpenters who want to get a job done restrict their questions to, "Will this hammer help finish this job the quickest?" If so, it is a good hammer, if not pick up another tool. Not needing it does not make it "bad," only redundant for present purposes. Same thing with reciprocity. It is a tool that fills a need, and if you do not need it, lay it aside.

Rick's final point is as follows,

"5) The fact that the Golden Rule is better than some similar predecessor rules does not mean it is a great rule or all that golden. The best of a bad lot is not necessarily particularly good."

Everything depends on your need, as I say. The best of a bad lot may not be "good" but if you have nothing else then you have got to go with it. There is a persistent need for the Golden Rule, and I do not see that need ever diminishing.

I suppose, sticking to the early analogy, that a carpenter might hate hammers and only use nail guns on the job. But I bet even now that nail guns are ubiquitous, that if you look at their aprons you will still find hammers hanging from them, or if you go into most workshops you will still find at least one kind of hammer. They are just too useful for too many needs to throw away.

The Golden Rule is a tool, and a tool depends upon need. Sure, the need has to be real, urgent and obvious. I am not suggesting we use the GR wrongly, or incompetently, or when there is no need for reciprocity. However enthusiastic Edison may have felt about his light bulb, I do not think he ever advocated shutting our curtains during the day and using only artificial light.

I have to wonder, Rick, what you are suggesting we use instead of the Golden Rule? Have you found a better alternative to go by in treating others? Perhaps you advocate the higher rules that I mentioned, the rules of love?

Next time my plan is, as it were, to take a look into the workshops of some ancient philosophers and see if they kept this Golden Rule tool at hand, and if so perhaps glimpse how they swung it.