On Parenting, Moral development and Groundhogs

“It’s always  February 2^nd, and there’s nothing I can do about it”

I re-watched one of my favourite movies of all time, Groundhog Day, on Saturday, which is befitting given that Saturday was February 2^nd. I remember watching that movie in a tute/lecture about Nietzsche’s concept of the eternal return. Actually, it was a bit of a bludge for that one lesson, but the point was the same: how is it we gain truth? Do we study facts and concepts and learn stuff, or do we create ourselves as a better so that the truth, when it feels right, will consider us worthy of our knowledge of it? Is truth found in fact or beauty?  

I love the progression of Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors through the movie. When he first realises what is happening, he seeks to abuse the situation, firstly lying to get some from Nancy, then robbing a bank, then trying and failing to get with Andy McDowell’s character, Rita. By the way, I really am not sure that Andy McDowell cuts it as that role...I mean, she is just too much of a poor man’s Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Anyway, I digress, he is at first vane and arrogant, picking up on little atoms of knowledge that are considerably more knowable to him given his reliving of the same day. Then he starts failing miserably, his arrogance is destroyed by a lack of being able to control and manipulate a situation with Rita. Despair sets in after a brief delusion of tolerance of the situation.

So what happens to make him able to surpass the person he was at the beginning of the film? Acceptance. At first, it was just a partial acceptance, but it’s acceptance nonetheless. He realises that he cannot save an old man from dying, no matter how much it is ‘his day’ but he accepts that. He accepts his place in the scheme of things, at first quite mildly, but then this acceptance grows. He then seeks to create himself as a better person, by learning the piano, by learning to ice-sculpt and by helping others out who are known to him to be in need due to him reliving the same day. And then it happens, he has transgressed himself and surpassed his existence by a step or two. He has embraced the concept of happiness as an end in and of itself.

Aristotle said “There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way.” Eudemon. He also thought that a virtue is something that exists at a half way point between two vices. The Buddhists have similar thoughts on both although they have a concept that a virtue is the opposite of two vices. Hating something can be the same as loving it. You are repelling the impersonal in something and holding onto the inner, or at least the perception of the inner.The opposite of love isn’t hate, it's indifference. Hatred is holding onto the unpleasant in something and dismissing the pleasant. Greed is a further opposite of hatred; it is collecting the pleasant and repelling the unpleasant. Finally indifference is the opposite of greed, which completes the spiral.

Many years ago I was completely into the concept of writing a way of morality that is based on this relationalism between virtues and vices: I may still well do this one day. I was trying to create an analytical understanding of how all this happens, mapping out virtues and vices into a broader family tree. I had this thought that there were three levels: the knowable, the perceivable and the unknowable, uber vices, of which I thought everything could be related back to on some linear plane (similar to Tractus philosophy in language). The problem was I couldn't really get myself three or four uber-vices that worked well. I played around with integrity, tolerance, temperance and a few others, but wasn't overly happy. Then one day I was watching a Russell Crowe movie and just before Crowe road off into battle he turned to his long time friend and, in a pretty gay gesture, said "Strength and honour". Bugger, that was brilliant and now I couldn't use it. 

The reason I am pondering these thoughts lately is that I have been really at war with my kids lately over getting them to be better people. Nothing out of the ordinary struggle of a parent and I have changed tactics lately and have had a lot more success. But the thought occurs to me, can you tell someone, instruct them, on how to be a moral person? Or is the role of a parent, or of a mentor to maintain the particular situation and place long enough for the person to walk through the necessary journeys through self-involvement, arrogance, deceit and despair etc so that they come to the same conclusion you did?

Lawrence Kohlberg had a similar type of thing: he thought that there were six stages of moral development that one goes through: obedience; self-interest; conformity; law and order; human rights and universal human ethics. He asked people to justify a response to a particular moral dilemma, the Heinz dilemma:

A woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to produce. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug for his wife. Should Heinz have broken into the laboratory to steal the drug for his wife? Why or why not?[1]

Do you think that:

•  Heinz should not steal the medicine because he would consequently be put in prison, which would mean he is a bad person.
•  Heinz should steal the medicine because it is only worth $200, not how much the druggist wanted for it. Heinz had even offered to pay for it and was not stealing anything else.
•  Heinz should steal the medicine because he will be much happier if he saves his wife, even if he will have to serve a prison sentence.
•  Heinz should not steal the medicine because prison is an awful place, and he would probably experience anguish over a jail cell more than his wife's death.
•  Heinz should steal the medicine because his wife expects it; he wants to be a good husband.
•  Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is bad and he is not a criminal; 
• he tried to do everything he could without breaking the law, you cannot blame him.
• Heinz should not steal the medicine because the law prohibits stealing, making it illegal.
• Heinz should steal the drug for his wife but also take the prescribed punishment for the crime as well as paying the druggist what he is owed. Criminals cannot just run around without regard for the law; actions have consequences.
• Heinz should steal the medicine because everyone has a right to choose life, regardless of the law.
• Heinz should not steal the medicine because the scientist has a right to compensation. Even if his wife is sick, it does not make his actions right.
• Heinz should steal the medicine, because saving a human life is a more fundamental value than the property rights of another person.
• Heinz should not steal the medicine, because others may need the medicine just as badly, and their lives are equally significant.

My younger son has just started school this last week and he is not coping with it very well. Things will improve, but it really amazed me that his teachers didn’t immediately warm to him. They even thought he has listening and defiance issues. You have to know that he is the dreamer of the family (well, apart from yours truly). The others are very methodical, very clever in their own avenues, but he is the dreamer. He is the only one to have had an imaginary friend, who still appears every once in a while to get more lollies or treats. He is the only one who decided to come up with his own name for our new puppy Gus (Spartacus), who he calls Superdog. One really hot day when I asked the kids to turn off the tap after I had finished watering, turning it into a game to spray them and cool them down, he appeared out of nowhere with an umbrella. He’s a step or two ahead and quite a few steps to the side at any given time, kind of like me I arrogantly say to myself. 

 "Gus" or "Superdog"

So the school teachers mistook this as a defiance and listening problem. I am sure that he will have them eating out of his hands in no time, but it was such a start for me. I have never had anything but praise about my kids from school teachers. So he’s in his own world and doesn’t listen to you when you’re saying boring crap? We should all be so lucky as to have that luxury. We should not discourage people from being like that, we should champion them for their ability to resist the boring monotony that modern life reflects onto us too often.

And what if my son loses his individuality to the inflexibility of most people to be able to encourage and foster this type of life? What will that do for his moral development later on in life? Will he have to be retaught all these things that he has unlearned?

This Post’s Lame Joke.

Q: How many Analytical Philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: 5

This Post’s Inappropriate over share

The problem with inappropriate over shares is that it is really difficult to come up with ones that indicate a lacking in me. As George Orwell stated, auto-biographies are only to be believed when they reveal something unpleasant and unlikeable about a character. But look at this, I’m trying to make a point here and I’m quoting Orwell for Pete’s sake. I don’t think I am very good at this. The point is, the majority of these have in the past, been too edgy and biased to do what they were supposed to. I guess I could say that I once well...no, come to think of it, I can’t say that now can I?

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[1] Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981). Essays on Moral Development, Vol. I: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row.