Well. Thanks to Young Keith for his presentation on the wonders of Creation. Entitled "Ooh the Universe is Scary", it featured numerous "Eyes of God" along with Keith's home-made "Partial Perspective Vortex" - a rather sensible twist on the idea from Douglas Adams, where the size of the universe is scaled down to barely more than terrifying. He projects the wonders of the cosmos onto the roof of the Moot House.
So you go in the Partial Perspective Vortex, see a nice ooh-ah view of the Universe - which, at that scale, carefully ignores all disturbing death and suffering, unless you consider what the black holes are up to in the centres of galaxies - and go away thinking God is great and the Universe is wonderful.
In theory.
Morgwyn came out full of the wonders of creation. Walked out across the gravel walk to the Great House. Looked up at the brilliant stars - including the brilliant blue Sirius - and the wonders of Mars, Jupiter and Venus above, and lay on the ground screaming that he was unworthy. Which, to be fair, is true. He's not worthy. Not by a long chalk. But I don't like to judge.
Marston, meanwhile, got the idea that "Mars is looking at me in a funny way". Believing that a God of War is never a great supernatural being to get on the wrong side of, he's now sitting in the Rainbow Room, strumming his three-string ukulele and singing "Give Peace a Chance". I wouldn't mind, only he's rubbish. And the Ukulele Workshop at the Stables is fully booked months in advance. It's a long time till Mars stops shining in the night sky, and I reckon it's going to be a long, hard Spring.
Goodness is always a local phenomenon.
ReplyDeleteBut what about the concept of Goodness - is that local as well, do you think?
ReplyDeleteYou know AE I think it just might be; I guess it depends on your definition of goodness, I was thinking more about "well-being" rather than morality in this case, but even if we're talking Human morality then even that seems to change over time and at different rates depending on locality.
ReplyDeleteNot disagreeing that it does - but do you think all civilisations have some idea of what is right and what is wrong, even if the right and wrong differs?
ReplyDeleteIt's an interesting question AE, I would actually go further and say that I think there's strong evidence that all social species (particularly primates) have an innate and evolved sense of what behaviours favour the well-being of their community and those that don't (they kind of have to be that way or they wouldn't be successful social species!) - there are always exceptions of course.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason I was thinking of Rupert Murdoch when I typed that last sentence ;)