What's scary for those of us who went to UC is the way the world is full of religious nutters, all of whom have a different infallible book. Not to mention religion. I just read Christopher Hitchens' book.
I remember my first lecture at UC, after which nothing of equal importance was said. I heard was Bentham's idea that people jump from something is the case to something ought to be the case. (In those days a popular view was that women don't drive cars therefore they shouldn't.)
Otherwise clever people often suddenly reveal they believe in odd things, ranging from cats being unlucky, to number 13. The whole of Asia is obsessed wtih the numbers 4 and 8 and more bothered about your car numberplate being lucky than about road safety.
A woman at the local fitness centre nearly became my friend. After 30 minutes of general jolly chit chat she revealed her nearest and dearest was in poor health. The GP could not find the cause.
She had a husband who claimed to have given up drinking. But he was still having problems (blackouts) previously related to drinking. Finally, she said her church would say it was probably witchcraft. I made my excuses and left.
Surely science is observation which can predict. I admit that people looking for witchcraft make self-fulfilling prophecies. And self-fulfilling predictions. Heads you win and tails you lose. A woman sinks so she must be a witch.
Some of the world's troubles are being proved to be purely caused by something physical. Too much sugar in food or drink leads to hyperactivity and bad behaviour in schoolchildren.
Singapore laws are based on the empirical. They try rewards and punishments until they get the desired result.
Is ethics still relevant? John Stuart Mill in ethics said that even if 100 people got pleasure from torturing one to death, that did not make it right. Greatest good of the greatest number.
Let's move from the abstract to the practical. A subject such as the death penalty.
A similar debate on numbers of people being punished is whether it is better for one man to be wrongly imprisoned or hanged, or for 99 murderers to go free.
Somebody just wrote a newspaper comment piece (Today's Mail?) saying that to protect children we had to be tougher on crime and criminals and take the risk of making a mistake about one adult man rather than risk having ten or a hundred children suffer.
Often human relations fail because we believe what we want to believe. Pupils fall in love with teachers, patients with doctors, audiences with speakers, voters with leaders, gurus, kings, identity, praise. I have now ended where I started.
Philosophy looks at ethics and psychology looks at morality and crime and punishment. Our notion of fairness is often a question of balance. Children don't need to believe in God to know that if my big brother hit me and I hit him back and Mum or Dad turns round and punishes me, 'It's not fair!'
But leaders find that they get better obedience if they say God says do this than if they merely say that Bob says do this. Especially as some people have the defy Dad syndrome. When told not to do something they want to do it. (Or do they have a death wish?)
We like the idea that what goes around comes around. Good people think that if we are all nice to everybody, no matter whom, everybody will eventually be nice to us. It's a popular subject for morality songs. It's the same idea of time being a circle and ending up in the same place as the comic song, There's a hole in my bucket.
Yet immorality often takes the same idea of passing on good and bad to the next person you meet, except that it's passing on bad instead of good. It can't be right for you to kick or kill somebody with red hair or black skin just because your hated stepfather who beat you looked like that. Nor attack girls with black or brown or blonde or grey or white hair who remind you of your mother.
Most people accept that neither an aggrieved individual nor a court of law can condemn a group for what others did.
Yet we are trying to make people today apologise for what their ancestors did. We assume that people have the same attitudes because of what they have been taught unless they prove otherwise.
A court will try each person and never punish a family or tribe or race collectively.
Let me finish on a jolly note.
I write therefore I am.
Cheers Angela
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