Tuesday, January 8, 2013

it just is!

I had my usual argument with anti-piracy friends the other day.  It sucked.  I've written literally 200+ blog entries, each with a unique and special argument essentially in favor of piracy, but I hadn't slept right for a couple days and I just kept coming up with butkus.  Blank.  And everything I said was lame and easily refuted.

It happens.  I know better than to be too hard on myself.

But it was a good chance to get reacquainted with the most devastating argument against piracy of all:

"It's just wrong.  It just is."

Not much you can say to that.  When someone says something like this, it is a signal that rational thought has ceased--thinking is not happening.

I'm not even saying that's necessarily always a bad thing.  Shooting up a classroom full of children is wrong.  It just is.  This is an acceptable argument for something like that.  It's the difference between morality and ethics.

Morality is all about how something feels.  Somebody grows up with a system where artists are compensated a certain way, and if someone breaks the system, it seems wrong.  Murdering children, also wrong, for the same reason.  I could come up with an ethical (logical) argument for why shooting up classrooms is wrong, but I don't feel it's necessary.

And this is a problem we often face.  Some folks (most?) go around making moral judgments without too much thought, and, importantly, are not inclined to question it.

And so this is why changing public opinion takes time.  I don't judge my friend harshly for his opinion--I know he's a good guy and means well and is even reasonably intellectually honest.  But I can't argue with "uh-uh".

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