2001-06-30 - 2:50 p.m.

I've got a line on a job. This is good, because I'm desperate to get the hell out of the house, and since I live in suburbia, ain't nowhere to go if it ain't work or the movies. Besides all that, I'm in debt for about $3000, and I need to get that squared away before I get an apartment. Its a waitering gig at a restaurant, nice and expensive. The person who swung me the info says she averaged about $200 a night, and has gotten $400 in season. It's not season now, so they may be willing to take a chance on an unknown like me. Wish me luck. If that don't work out, I've got Kelly services (they have my resume, I just need to tell them to get me work) and Kaplan, maybe try teaching for a bit. But the waitering gig will pay, and that's what I need right now.

I had a great talk with my dad last night. Philosophy and Theology, the substance of morality, and the inability of humans to ground ethics firmly in anything other than God or Natural Law. It's true: without these two concepts morality and ethics become random. You can base morality on God, but then you presuppose God's existence without any real proof. Even if you take it on faith, how is God's morality revealed to us? Sacred texts? But they are not perfect, and they are also highly contradictory: No one gets to God except through Jesus (in Christianity anyway), but then Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan, who is neither Jewish nor Christian. So the texts are out, as far as infallible moral guides go. But then do we go with divine revelation? Then what do we do with the nutcases who have killed thousands of innocents in God's name, ala the Crusades or Kevin Spacey's character in 'Seven'? Who can say they are not divinely inspired? So God's kind of out as a guide too. So then there's natural law: man should do what man's nature asks. But what is natural law? Is it survival of the fittest? Or cooperation? or civilisation? If there are moral absolutes, they are hardly forthcoming here. One man's virtue is another man's vice, and so on. And without some moral absolute, what difference is there between murder and charity besides a random accident of civilisation: we decided, for no reason, to make murder evil and charity good. But that can't be right, because society, and humans individually, can't operate with murder as the virtue.

That leaves a societal definition of morality: Good is what's good for society. But what's good for society may be terrible for the individual, and since individuals make up society where does that leave us? In the void. I think we need to figure out what the Hell morality is before any of us claim we have it. And since it's my diary, I'm gonna ramble on about this a bit. Feel free to stop reading at any time :)

Husserl gives the following situation: I'm late for work, and I'm driving as fast as I can to not be late. At a yellow light, I see a baby in the road. Is it right to kill the baby in order to be on time? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no. That's my basis for morality. Problem is, is that feeling universal, or is it a by-product of living in a society that says 'don't kill babies'? I can't imagine a society in which being late for work is a worse sin than killing a baby, so I have to assume that there are differences between actions, that there is some sort of right vs. wrong. But what makes it wrong? I'm a small humanoid, and so is the baby. We are, on that level, equal. My desire to not be late is in direct conflict with the baby's desire to continue living. Without Life, I am neither late nor early, so Life (as the basis for things like thoughts, actions, or tardiness) must be more important. OK, Life is my basis. Life is good, because it is necessary for everything else, and presumably Death is bad. Maybe.

Of course, Death is necessary for Life, so that doesn't really work either. But Life is good, I've got that down. 5000 years of civilisation so that I can say, upon sober reflection, 'life is good'. Sigh.

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