Today is an odd day. My roommate blames it on the full moon saying that a spontaneous wave of depression came over him. None of the people he talked to today had a good day either. As much as I would like to accept that explanation, I’m far too self-effacing to blame my fluctuations on celestial bodies.
Grant me a moment of reflection on this topic because I have nothing substantial to write about: sorry, no treatises on ethics today.
Such explanations, like others that try to grant mastery of our lives to some grand Other (corporations, governments, aliens, gods, etc), obviously take the onus of action, of deliberate purposeful interactions with reality, away from the individual. Instead of responsibility such theories ask us to rest in an opium haze of submissiveness, promising comfort in exchange for dependence.
Unfortunately, my particular brand of leftism forces me to see some kernels of validity within these otherwise preposterous frameworks. If the gravitational pull of the moon causes the rise and fall of tides, perhaps it has some effect on us as well. Perhaps. Fortunately enough, my leftist openness is balanced with some sense of rationality, which, although allowing for the possibility, dismisses its efficacy as an explanatory force. No, it was not the full moon that made you do blow!
During my time at the dojo, as well as several spiritual retreats, I have seen far too many flaky people debating a detail of such inconsequence that it made me wonder if I was not in fact missing something. Academia could, of course, be accused similarly and often is, especially by those who choose to focus on more practical methods and manifestations of scholarship. To call for a balance between specificity and generality is trite; however, I would offer that the weight of an issue must be gauged in proportion to those other issues that could come into one’s purview. Pardon me, Hallmark is calling to offer me a signing bonus…
“Hmm…I don’t know if the ceremony should be done in a shirt with red French cuffs but I do think that you should stop beating your children….yea, the aliens don’t like that.”
