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April 19, 2006

Dirt Under Your Nails

this entry is a response to Mesh who wrote a response to the conversation here

Little disagreement exists, if any, between Aaron and myself from a descriptive standpoint on the matter of the complexity and difficulty of navigating the confusing moral matter of what constitutes a just war, or more specifically the appropriate use of force and its inextricable bedfellow violence.

My questioning, likely because of distinctions 'tween our personalities, is motivated from wanting, as Aaron put it, a "moral calculator". The inconsistencies of moral systems and the subsequent totalitarian nature they assume when exercised by fallen beings does not preclude the importance of understanding and unpacking from life the practical expressions of what we value. I'm worried that Aaron has left us with moral futility.

I make no presumptions of thinking that on the final analysis we can ever avoid just "moving the dirt around". It's an inconsistency with how we live our lives to think that somehow in war and the application of violent force that we wont and cannot think is some manner which can anologically be described ad utlilitarian.

If I may be personal (which of course I can), each day I weigh the pros, cons, and effects of the particular ways in which I love my wife. Sometimes, after weighing the evidence (for lack of a more descriptive term), I chose to do things which hurt her or myself because its ultimately the more loving thing to do; and I'm certain she does the same; sometimes I just need to be yelled at to remember to pay the bills.

The same thing - hopefully - is manifest in the govermental or political realm. I don't understand why we would suddenly do differently in this particular area; it seems like pure sentimentality to think we even can.

And lest we draw some distinction between war and other arenas: it is both naive and morally unscrupulous to assume that the lives and well beings of lives on the order of any war are not equally in play. The example of Lenin & Stalin's economic policies - while there was an absolutely essentially militaristic element also - towards the agrarian peasants come to mind.

It is an extreme case I realize (it is Koba after all), but I fail to see how we should morally evaluate our decisions about trade tarrifs any differently than we do our foreign policies as it relates to war. Further, I fail to see how we can't evaluate them either.