I’m breaking my “Monday for students” rule again. This letter is from an attorney in Jamaica.
Query:
Why is it that we humans find nothing wrong in defying physical laws, for example by flying, yet we do consider it wrong for us to defy moral laws? Just thinking.
Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher of will to power who originated the motto “God is dead,” wrote, "I think of myself as the scrawl which an unknown power scribbles across a sheet of paper, to try out a new pen" (letter to Peter Gast, August, 1881).
“Ten million young women rose to their feet with the cry, ‘We will not be dictated to,’ and went off and became stenographers.”
There have always been people who believed that happiness is having expensive toys. But there has been a change:
I have been reading some of the work of the late radical behaviorist B.F. Skinner. Skinner, who denied free will, seems to have drawn some of the implications of his position – but it seems to me that he stopped short. Read the following remarks, from his autobiography and to the interviewer Alfie Kohn, and see whether you agree.
Mondays are student letter days.
Query:
My friend defines his entire moral code by the statement, "As long as I am not directly hurting anyone other than me, then nothing that I do is wrong.” What do you think?
Reply:
If any be a devout lover of God, let him partake with gladness from this fair and radiant feast.
If any be a faithful servant, let him enter rejoicing into the joy of his Lord.
If any have wearied himself with fasting, let him now enjoy his reward.
If any have labored from the first hour, let him receive today his rightful due.
Once upon a time I was approached by a grad student who said he had been thinking about God. This worried him, because he had never thought about God before.
He said, "Do you think I'm crazy?"
I answered, "No."
He was relieved.
