Reason and Morality

Here is a fun little chat on reason and morality...


I have been flipping the grand concept of morality around in my brain for some time.
You know, along the lines of Kant and his bit.
The categorical imperative we all face, if that is even a thing...
(Just nod like you have any care about what I am getting after.)


The release of the Panama Papers provides an interesting abstraction to wonder about the whole concept, doesn't it?
Was it a moral obligation that led to the leak, or some other motive, do you suppose?
The breadth and depth of the information suggests an extended exposure to the information and implications.
Was it reason or moral obligation that pushed those details in front of our eyes?

The fall out is already pretty epic, with Iceland's PM already bailing out of office.


I got on this line of pondering morality a while ago...
The start of the Syrian refugee crisis had me haggling with somebody that, as fellow humans, we have a moral obligation to assist these people fleeing for fear, for lack of base human needs.
That is a fairly simple thought to me, but not to some others.  It seemed fear motivated their urge to ignore a terrible situation, in spite of previous reference to the golden rule in our conversation.
Is just one side of that discourse reasoning to or away from that moral cause.  We may have both been guilty of that, I guess...

The world is full of reasons to examine ones relationship with the categorical imperative, or morality, or whatever verbiage you want to mean that it's better to not be an asshole to people around you.
And then ones flexibility in it's actual application to our collective situations.


Anyway...

It took some digging in the corners of my head to find where those words came from, so I have been casually revisiting some of those texts.  Looking for new strings in those lines of thought.
This little talk, above, has some interesting extensions on the subject.

And the animation is kinda neat...