Tag Archives: morals and ethics

What the Dickens?

I have written many times here about the wonderful Charles Dickens story, A Christmas Carol (1843). I wrote the first post back in December of 2012 when this blog was less than two years old. The most recent was ten years later, in December of 2022.

December, of course, because Christmas. Every year I watch as many adaptations as I can find (and I read the Dickens novella). It’s one of my favorite stories: it’s small and personal; it centers on a redemption arc; it has a classic happy ending; and it has ghosts.

This year I was struck by how it’s a powerful example of our cultural normative social values — something expressed throughout human literature.

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Friday Notes (Jun 7, 2024)

I’ll be dog-sitting my little pal Bentley for a couple of weeks starting Tuesday, so I thought I should get this month’s edition of Friday Notes done early. By the time Bentley leaves, I’ll have only one Friday left in June.

Of course, big news at the end of last month. Guilty on all 34 felony counts. A whole new level of strangeness in politics. Even bigger news comes next month with sentencing. Will a President serve while serving time?

That it’s even a question we need to ask is astonishing.

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Morals and Ethics

mug-0As one ventures ’round the ‘web, a topic that arises time and again is the endless debate — or perhaps war might be a better term — between the poles of theism and atheism. I’ve determined, at least as far as my participation elsewhere, to recuse myself from that war. I’ve served my time on both sides, and I’ve pretty much heard it all, said it all, bought many tee-shirts and a couple of souvenir coffee mugs.

So, this isn’t about the war itself, but about a topic that frequently arises as part of that debate: the idea of morality and/or ethics. A sub-question is whether those are different things, but the main question is how we define morality and how we ground that definition.

Here’s my stab at defining the difference along with some ideas about morality.

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