[lit-ideas] Re: mindless acts
- From: cblitid@xxxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2013 10:41:40 +0100
On 29-Mar-13, at 1:30 AM, Omar Kusturica wrote:
Those must be the world's most serious problems right now. I am kind
of more worried about purposeful behaviors that result in thousands
of dead, billions of dollars stolen etc.
O.K.
I would - alright, I DO - argue that there is a strong relationship
between the 'mindless' behaviour and its 'defense' (currently along
the lines of "*Everybody* knows that we're motivated to act and our
behaviour is determined long before we consciously deliberate about
what we're doing - that got proven in the *last* century!") and the
problematic 'purposeful' behaviour that you outline above.
A brief sketch: the 'Enlightenment Project' (a very recent, and in my
optimistic mind, ongoing) demands at least a nod in the direction of
responsible purposeful behaviour (exercise for the reader: how does
one determine what is 'responsible behaviour' and how does one develop
the critical faculty to give ethically defensible direction to one's
'purpose'?).
Imho (and imharguments) the 'purposeful behaviors that result in
thousands of dead, billions of dollars stolen etc.' have those results
only because sufficient numbers abdicate their responsibility. (E.g.,
how many citizens of democratic countries truly participate in the
democratic processes of those nations. By participate I mean much
more than merely making an INFORMED choices during elections. Even
that minimal criterion is, I think, nowhere fulfilled [on a national
level].) The 'defense' of, or excuse for 'mindless' behaviour I
paraphrase above is just one instance of this abdication.
Chris Bruce,
Kiel, Germany
P.S. This is all related to my posting on nazism and Kant, about which
i will write more later. But I can't write on that subject more than
once every couple of weeks.
-cb
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