From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.meta
Subject: Re: Different moralities (Was 'Love')
Date: 15 Sep 92 17:18:20 GMT
Reply-To: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technologies, Mt. View, California.

In article <1992Sep15.050117.9316@news.eng.convex.com>, cash@convex.com
(Peter Cash) writes:
|> In article <1992Sep12.202939.3812@abo.fi> CBURMAN@finabo.abo.fi () writes:
|> >RE articles <1992Sep11.180011.17209@news.eng.convex.com> cash@convex.com 
|> >(Peter Cash) and <vpvnc_c.anson@netcom.com> anson@netcom.com (Anson 
|> >Kennedy):
|> 
|> >Anson Kennedy suggests that 'The Story of O' "demonstrates a different 
|> >morality". In the discussion that follows Peter Cash writes:
|> 
|> >> I doubt it, but I suppose you
|> >>might find some weird isolated tribe somewhere where people stand around
|> >>and cheer whenever a kid drowns. If I were to come across behavior like
|> >>that, I'd call it "callous and cruel". Would you say I was not entitled to
|> >>say this?
|> 

Just to give another slant on the question.... I think the creation of
a culture which "cheers" upon the drowning death of its young is one 
of those nightmarish creations of mental paranoia which prevents a 
truly thoughtful reflection on the subject.

Though I know of no cultures which cheer, I know of a number of individuals
and cultures that understand death and its effects quite differently 
than ours.  This does not mean that their survivors don't grieve, but
they may grieve their own loss, different from the other's "being lost".
Grief is the body's healing over a significant loss at a part of its
identity.

There are a number of post death recovery/resucitation books which indicate
that revived drowned people often REGRET, get it -- REGRET -- having been
"brought back" from clinical death.   I know of someone personally who died
on the operating table, only to be revived.  For a short time afterward
-- he was quite bitter.  He "knew" he had died, and he knew that the doctor's
took emergency measures to revive him.  Death for him was the most sublime
experience he had had, and he was angry to be yanked back from it.

He died recently.  He had been hanging on while his body was falling apart.
He wanted to go.  We miss him, but we're "glad" for him. He was
released, and none of us think his "permanence" is in any way
jeopardized.  I'm not "worried" about him in the least, and I am not
uncaring or unfeeling. He'll be fine.
Death is perfectly "safe" and normal.

Peter, I think you're making a lot of assumptions based on an inability to
step out of your own experience and really embrace the incredible variety
that really exists here on spaceship earth.  I agree that there is a 
universal morality, but I disagree on it's being absolute or transcendent,
though I agree that there is an absolute transcendence as well.

The universality concept grows out of empirical work.  It is not
deduced from principals.  I am familiar with the work of Angeles Arriens,
who is a cross-cultural anthropologist who has isolated common threads
to all cultures.  She has looked at quite a number of cultures.  I 
forget what the common threads are, but I could chase it down, if you're
interested enough.

Paul Collacchi