Grandpa Kim on the topic of duty

[capnq]

I deal with telemarketers by screening all my calls through my answering machine. 9 out of 10 won't even leave a message, and the ones that do are usually computerized recordings anyway.

[Ragnarok]

I like toying with the people that call. There was this one company that kept calling us. But I forget what the name was. But anyways, they would go on their spew and I would basically repeat it and act all excited and stuff and be like "Wow! That is a great deal!" or something like that and they would continue on. Then I would find a flaw in their promotion and exploit it and do different stuff.
It is rather fun and they stutter around trying to reply to some of the stuff you come up with.

[E. Albright]

Originally posted by tbontob:

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Do not confuse "duty" with what other people expect of you; they are utterly different. Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily. Paying that debt can entail anything from years of patient work to instant willingness to die. Difficult it may be, but the reward is self-respect.
But there is no reward at all for doing what other people expect of you, and to do so is not merely difficult, but impossible. It is easier to deal with a footpad than it is with leech who wants "just a few minutes of your time, please-- this won't take long." Time is your total capital, and the minutes of your life are painfully few. If you allow yourself to fall into the vice of agreeing to such requests, they quickly snowball to the point where these parasites will use up 100 percent of your time-- and squawk for more!
So learn to say No-- and to be rude about it when necessary.
Otherwise you will not have time to carry out your duty, or to do your own work, and certainly no time for love and happiness. The termites will nibble away your life and leave none of it for you.
(This rule does not mean that you must not do a favor for a friend, or even a stranger. But let the choice be yours. Don't do it because it is "expected" of you.)

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The fundamental issue here is "Who has the right to decide your actions".

One thing really troubles me about GK's quote. If one takes it seriously, it eliminates the possibility of the existence of ethical standards, or at least prescriptive ones. If one mustn't do what others want you to do, one cannot accept their behavioral rules (i.e., morale codes). And if you claim that the statement has nothing to do with ethics and/or ethics are a special case, you've essentialy subverted your argument, as any request can be turned into one based on morality. Or should you argue that one can accept such things, but one must freely choose to do so, well... Like I said, this kills prescriptive morality; one no longer has any basis for demanding any sort of behavior from anyone else...

Admittedly, if one refuses to accept the concept of objective ethics, the preceeding is less than meaningless.

E. Albright

[dogscoff]

E_A: If I inderstand your comment correctly...

If you are doing something becasue it is morally/ ethically right, then it makes no difference whether someone has asked you to do it or not, and a different set of rules apply.

[ January 14, 2003, 12:49: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[tbontob]

E. Albright

The quote was not mine but Grandpa Kim's although he got it from somewhere else.

However, like him, I do endorse it.

And you do bring up a good point.

The issue is who has the right to decide our actions.

Grandpa Kim and I believe we should not have a knee-jerk reaction to someone claiming a person has a duty to do something.

That opens the door to a manipulative, conniving person to control the actions of a person.

I believe we have the right to examine whether or not there is a overriding or overwhelming duty.

I believe that even if there is a duty, there may be overriding considerations which may make the duty less compelling or commanding.

An example is the Viet Nam war. Conscripted kids had a duty to report to the military and participate in the war. Some of them questioned it, fought it and ultimately won in the long run.

The hard-liners of duty would have us believe we should do our duty without question.

But duty changes with the times. And to demand we be hard-wired to it, is IMHO neither healthy or advantages to the person or to the nation.

[Grandpa Kim]

Admittedly, if one refuses to accept the concept of objective ethics, the preceeding is less than meaningless.

E. Albright

And I do so refuse.

I refuse to give anyone or any group the right to force their concept of ethics on me. Most likely they won't come up to my standards anyway.

(BTW, this quote is from "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" by Robert A. Heinlein.)

Kim

[Kamog]

There have been some chain e-mail Messages going around on the topic of stopping drunk driving. They try to manipulate you into forwarding the message to everybody by saying that it's an important cause and that if you don't do this simple thing, you're being incredibly selfish. I received multiple copies of the same thing from different people within a few days so obviously people are following the instructions. I find chain letters annoying and I never forward them to anybody.