*hums*

[kodalai]

Moving slower than molasses
As I'm off to catch the girl who is falling off a bridge
And I'm there before she knows it
I'll be gone before she sees me
With an arm around her waist
As I pull her back to safety
By the time she knows what's happened
There'll be someone else who needs me
'Cause time keeps dragging on
And on
And on...

In other news: Stupid CA drainage systems. I don't need a bike, I need a bloody boat!

Bored at work:

A rather offhand comment on one of my friends' entries today got me thinking about something I've contemplated off and on for a while. The concept of sin goes hand in hand with the concept of an external moral code, which is fairly fundamental in Judeo-Christian thought and most Western thought as a result. A professor mentioned in a recent lecture that her Japanese physicist acquaintences were of the opinion that it was this concept of an inviolable, context-less set of abstract rules that fostered the development of scientific thought in Western history more than in Eastern history. So clearly there's more to it than first meets the eye.

But what really got me thinking on this was when I read Oedipus back in high school. Everybody knows the story of poor unfortunate Oedipus, the inadvertant sinner. At one point in the play, as Oedipus is beginning to piece together the sequence of events that's cast a curse on his land, one of his advisors attempts to reassure him by saying, in essence, that every man fantasizes about sleeping with their mother, and that's no crime, so Oedipus doesn't need to feel guilty. But as it turns out, Oedipus never thought of doing it; he just did it. But one still tends to think of Oedipus as a victim of unfortunate circumstances, not by nature a sinner.

So which is the bigger sin? To imagine committing a crime, but never do it, or to accidentally or unknowingly commit a crime, even with the best of intentions? Which is really worse? Legally? Morally? The law, which is always ultimately more concerned with practical results, pegs the crime as the deed, not the thought -- although at least in our judicial system, a higher penalty is placed on intended crimes than accidental crimes. The Catholic church, by contast, from my understanding of it identifies sins of thought and intent, not just of action. You're supposed to confess wicked thoughts or urges, even if you enver act on them, as well as wicked deeds.

Of course, we're not nearly as in control of our consciousness as we think we are, and what we would term 'wicked' thoughts will pop up whether we intend them to or not -- I don't just mean selfish or amoral desires, which could be considered natural, but you can't have a conception of sin without also having thoughts of it. From that perspective, it doesn't seem like there's any way around it. But then, the Catholic philosophy has a vested interest in making sure that every man is a sinner, so that every man will be dependant on their offices for their ultimate salvation, whether they lead a good life or not.

So which really makes up the heart of sin? Ill intentions, or ill actions? Can you call a man innocent who wishes he could do evil things but never dares? Can you call a man innocent who does harm with only the best of intentions? It's pretty sure that you can't have it both ways.

Comments

[girl-starfish.livejournal.com]

And you say that time goes rushing by.
It seems so slow to me.
And you say that time goes rushing by,
it feels so slow, it seems so slow

Or something. At school in the staffroom, can't actually look up the song. But <3

[(Anonymous)]

That is the conflict indeed. Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics pegs virtue as the middle position between various behavioral extremes; one who manages to live a balanced life easily and naturally, who is not even tempted to excess, is more virtuous than one who makes the same choices but struggles against bad ones. The Catholic position was actually best stated by the philosopher (and Protestant) Kant, whose work on morals begins: There is nothing good in the world but a good will. Unfortunately, this position focuses entirely on immediate consequences, with no regard for long range consequences, which in a chaotic world we cannot know fully. Thus it could never be right to shoot Hitler as a young man, because one could not know what evil he would cause (even with a time machine?). Catholic example: contraception cannot be about anything but the immediate act and the potential life which is denied; the great evils that continue to come with a vastly overpopulated and rapidly growing world are in the realm of what we cannot know, and therefore cannot be relevant.

One wants a middle position: intentions count as well as consequences, and the person who does well after resisting temptation gets bonus points over one who is not tempted at all; but we are morally required to select our behaviors after having trained our minds to foresee all the consequences we are capable of (and to free ourselves of self-serving rationalizations as well).

Daddy