Sunday, December 23, 2007

Planeseatreclineology

Obviously I haven't had time to blog on this subject lately, but I couldn't pass this one up. Your comments, please?







4 comments:

ch ♥ said...

Person 'A' isn't sensitive towards others. He only thinks for himself. Isn't this called selfish?

Anonymous said...

It gets hard to keep writing a blog when no one cares doesn't it?

Unknown said...

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Unknown said...

Actually quite funny. Most philosophical people I know think of the world in exactly that way, even with the cynical hatred of mankind.

However their oversight is exactly the same as the oversight presented by this cartoon: it's reductionist. It tries to reduce all motivation to plausibilities. It's the same as the phrase "why does a dog lick it's balls?" Answer: Because it can.

But the truth is that there are a multitude of emotions behind this, and a multitude of ideas, self-made and socially made rules/principles/virtues that guide these emotions. Just because I have a gun does not mean I will kill. But give me a time machine and point me towards Adolf Hitler and I may think again. In a similar fashion revolution and civil war does not always happen in deprived countries, even when the people know that their deprivation is unecessary and relatively worse than that suffered by prior generations. You always need group mobilisation, money, armamanents etc, or in this case the permission to put your seat back on a plane. My point is that this authority to do what you want is only a permissive cause (though one that may in fact trigger behaviour in this context).

Also, seen as the last guy did it (sorry, but I guess my taking advantage ties nicely into the debate) I'm going to take this opportunity to advertise my website: www.thebigqs.co.uk. It's a new website aiming to debate all the big questions from various fields. The tab 'Debate it' has the blog debates like here.