Hi Shawn, moving to [email protected] .
On Saturday 23 Apr 2011 20:24:36 Shawn H Corey wrote: > On 11-04-23 12:53 PM, Casey West wrote: > > 1. What did you do that doesn’t fit with our Lincoln School Rules? (Be > > specific and start with “I”) > > Wow. The very first thing they have to think about is their contempt > for the school authorities and not their victims' feelings. No wonder > why they tought they could get away with it. All they had to do is hide > their actions from the authorities. You know, there's something a > little bit sick about a society that insists that the authorities are > the only ones capable of deciding right and wrong. As an Objectivist (both a Randian, and in the meaning of believing that absolute Ethics and a shared, objective, reality exist), I agree with such sentiments. The whole "a criminal is someone who violates the law" is quite contemptible, and it is my opinion that a criminal is only someone who did something that is wrong according to the absolute, objective, Ethics is a criminal. A person who violated the law and was convicted as such is a "felon", but not necessarily a criminal, and we can recall many past heroes who were prosecuted by things that we now consider as non-crimes, and it's not unlikely that many innocent men still get prosecuted as such. I think explaining the difference between Laws/Regulations/Rules, Ethos, Morality, etc. to schoolchildren is too big of an undertaking. (I had a problem explaining the difference between "Ethical" and "Moral" to a very bright and intelligent programmer, with a smaller amount of intuition and knowledge than I do in Philosophy.), so imagine doing it for school children. Still I think this question could be demoted because the rules is not the worst thing that they could violate, nor should these children be instructed to blindly accept the rules, or not challenge them (without rebelling or violating them knowingly). See: http://www.paulgraham.com/gba.html Regards, Shlomi Fish -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/ Original Riddles - http://www.shlomifish.org/puzzles/ Dax: yep, space. Nothing but nothing all around. -- Star Trek, "We, the Living Dead" by Shlomi Fish Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply . -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] http://learn.perl.org/
