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Frame problem
Mar. 15th, 2019 02:48 pm
Something I was effectively shamed for in school as a kid was not looking up words I didn't know in things I was supposed to read. (Strangely I don't feel that I was as effectively shamed for not reading things I was supposed to read.) Possibly this is one of those things that people shame kids for not so that the kids will do them but just so that the kids will feel bad about not doing them. Now that it is so much easier to look things up than it used to be, this is crippling. I could spend endless lifetimes following chains of words I don't know and things I don't know (enough) about through Wikipedia. Every time I write something to someone now, which is thankfully much rarer than it used to be, I also feel an obligation not to leave any loose ends dangling that I could tie down by looking something up--I have also been effectively shamed by LMGTFY. And Wikipedia increasingly threatens to cripple me with feeling obligated to fix (the endless) errors I notice.
I was thinking a few hours ago that it's surprising I wasn't familiar with the moral philosophical problem of whether supererogatory acts are possible until I was a doctoral student. Much of my moral life is defined by feeling that nothing is supererogatory: one is required to do as much good as one can, and morally blameworthy for not doing the best one can think to do.[1] This feeling of mine often if not always goes as far as the tragic view of the Greeks, as described by e.g. Martha Nussbaum in The Fragility of Goodness, which has it that you are morally blameworthy for not doing any good you could have done even when you failed to do it because doing it would have prevented you from doing some good you judged to be greater--Nussbaum's paradigm case is Agamemnon's choice between sacrificing his daughter and allowing everyone on his ship to die. For the Greeks, Nussbaum says, Agamemnon is blameworthy no matter which he chooses, and, it being many years now since I read the book, I suppose she is (and anyway she should be) making the point that the Greeks appreciated something about our moral sentiments about which we moderns are in denial.
You know what got me thinking about that a few hours ago? I was framing a photograph to be displayed in a small-town library, theoretically for sale. The frame I was going to put it in had a little nick and some scuff marks--as almost all frames do, and so (for that reason among others) framing photographs for theoretical sale generally throws me into a moral panic, because I am oppressed with the knowledge that as long as it isn't perfect, it could be better, and as long as it could be better, someone can tell me that I have done something wrong, and as long as someone can tell me I have done something wrong when I knew at the time I did it that someone could justifiably tell me I had done it wrong, I will feel ashamed about it.
[1] You didn't really think that using the words "crippling" and "cripple" wasn't bugging me, did you?
--
Currently under my porch: 5.8. Currently at Havelock: 5.6. High today there: 6.4, at midnight.
I was thinking a few hours ago that it's surprising I wasn't familiar with the moral philosophical problem of whether supererogatory acts are possible until I was a doctoral student. Much of my moral life is defined by feeling that nothing is supererogatory: one is required to do as much good as one can, and morally blameworthy for not doing the best one can think to do.[1] This feeling of mine often if not always goes as far as the tragic view of the Greeks, as described by e.g. Martha Nussbaum in The Fragility of Goodness, which has it that you are morally blameworthy for not doing any good you could have done even when you failed to do it because doing it would have prevented you from doing some good you judged to be greater--Nussbaum's paradigm case is Agamemnon's choice between sacrificing his daughter and allowing everyone on his ship to die. For the Greeks, Nussbaum says, Agamemnon is blameworthy no matter which he chooses, and, it being many years now since I read the book, I suppose she is (and anyway she should be) making the point that the Greeks appreciated something about our moral sentiments about which we moderns are in denial.
You know what got me thinking about that a few hours ago? I was framing a photograph to be displayed in a small-town library, theoretically for sale. The frame I was going to put it in had a little nick and some scuff marks--as almost all frames do, and so (for that reason among others) framing photographs for theoretical sale generally throws me into a moral panic, because I am oppressed with the knowledge that as long as it isn't perfect, it could be better, and as long as it could be better, someone can tell me that I have done something wrong, and as long as someone can tell me I have done something wrong when I knew at the time I did it that someone could justifiably tell me I had done it wrong, I will feel ashamed about it.
[1] You didn't really think that using the words "crippling" and "cripple" wasn't bugging me, did you?
--
Currently under my porch: 5.8. Currently at Havelock: 5.6. High today there: 6.4, at midnight.
