zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — toys as weapons, weapons as toys, appearances, can be deceptive, ethnicities too ]
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Before there were the realities we now know as “virtual reality” and “real life” there were the two known as “real” and “pretend” or “make-believe”.

Confusing pretend for real can be harrowing enough, as we saw this morning:

Hand Grenade Toy Prompts Evacuations At Ontario International Airport « CBS Los Angeles http://t.co/qpZi3QRyac

— Crystal Cruz (@CrystalCruzCBS) August 12, 2015

but the reverse has even more dire potential:

Bomb alert over hand grenade used as a toy http://t.co/PM8HIpkh #YEPleeds @MarkLavery1 #pontefract

— Vicki Robinson (@VickiMRobinson) May 9, 2012

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For the record, toy grenades are a a regular feature of the news these days, see for instance:

26 June 2015, Bomb disposal team called to toy grenade in Coatbridge

19 Octpober 2014, Toy grenade puts Newport News neighborhood on alert<

Get your Toy Grenades Battery Operated for Pretend Play on Amazon:

Pull the grenade pin, press bar and throw!

Estimated Delivery Date: Aug. 14 – 19 when you choose Expedited at checkout

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Watch out, Staten Island:

BREAKING NEWS: Police looking on Staten Island for men possibly with assault rifles. MORE: http://t.co/nyFoiJbEjg pic.twitter.com/Abf8DTsjrl

— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) July 17, 2015

But then again..

when is an assault rifle not an assault rifle?

‘Assault rifles' in Staten Island were paintball guns: NYPD – NY Daily News http://t.co/Ysyy5pXhxL

— Krishna Mungur (@mungurk) July 20, 2015

and come to that,

when is a paintball more than a paintball — when is it a weapon?

Teens arrested in Staten Island paintball attacks: One of the attacks, on an Orthodox Jewish man, was investig… http://t.co/LfEw9g5gdj

— David Bar-Lev (@DavidBar_Lev) July 20, 2015

and when is the reason not just a paintball, but a scarf?

Don't fool yourselves. It wasn't the paintball guns that shut down Staten Island. It was the head scarves #islamophobia

— Wisco (@Wisco) July 18, 2015

— and if that’s not enough, is skin color a difference that makes a difference?

So open-carry clowns are allowed w/ long guns in Target but #JohnCrawford was shot dead in Walmart holding a toy gun? pic.twitter.com/BK30NybXDU

— Dana Fairbanks, M.D. (@dcfairbank) August 12, 2015

Ah yes.

Target and Walmart — another nice pairing that gives that last tweet just a touch of extra impact!

[ by Charles Cameron — stunned ]
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This has got to be one of the strangest DoubleQuotes, referencing one of the strangest DoubleLives, that I have ever seen:

The FBI arrested the son of a local imam and daughter of a Mississippi police officer who attempted to join #ISIS http://t.co/yeF1VGTFq7

— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS) August 12, 2015

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Oh, and are they opposites?

[ by Charles Cameron — The Dalai Lama and the Pope: two saints, sorta, astride a supposedly secular world ]
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HH Pope Francis, HH the Dalai Lama. Photos: Jeffrey Bruno, Christopher (CC BY SA 2.0)

My latest post for LapidoMedia is titled The Dalai Lama and the Pope: renewing the power of holiness. It begins:

TWO figures of undoubted moral stature now dominate world affairs. Each of them is a religious leader. Each is known by the title His Holiness, but seems to wear the title lightly.

For neither of them is virtue a lost ideal, neither is morality a private matter.

Each preaches compassion, consideration for the poor, spirituality above materialism, and the care of the natural world.

What do these two men have in common, that distinguishes their voices from those of other office holders and persons of power and influence?

Certainly, each has been featured in Rolling Stone, which indicates their popular appeal.

Each one’s office has a long pedigree, and each just might be the last of his kind. Perhaps there’s a clue there.

It concludes with:

First contemplation, then action: this is the secret uniting heart, mind and hand which gives these two figures their appeal and stature.

And the need to join together to combat climate change is one arena in which these two men are in strong agreement.

The Guardian reports from Glastonbury, ‘The Dalai Lama has endorsed the pope’s radical message on climate change and called on fellow religious leaders to “speak out about current affairs which affect the future of mankind.”’

The Pope writes, ‘The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development.”

Where will these two religious figures – moral icons of our age – lead our arrogantly secular world?

To raead the whole thing, visit the Lapidoedia site.

[by Charles Cameron — some remedial philosophy at age 71 ]
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I seem to be doing remedial political philosophy this week. As it happens, I read a Chinese comedian in my youth and was admonished against “sitting down while running round in circles” and have been aerating my brain with too much conscious breathing ever since — neither leaving me much time or interest for what in Oxford in my day was known, somewhat dismissively, PPE — Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Which brings me today, and to grabbing lectures in just that sort of thing from Harvard’s Michael Sandel, courtesy of YouTube:

The video shows Sandel’s lectures, “Justice: Putting a Price Tag on Life”, and “How to Measure Pleasure” — salted with some dark humor:

Back in ancient Rome, they threw Christians to the lions in the Coliseum for sport. If you think how the utilitarian calculus would go, yes, the Christian thrown to the lion suffers enormous, excruciating pain, but look at the collective ecstasy of the Romans. .. you have to admit that if there were enough Romans delirious with happiness, it would outweigh even the most excruciating pain of a handful of Christians thrown to the lion.

I enjoyed the two lectures immensely — maybe I should rewind fifty years, and try PPE at Harcard?.

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All of which caused me to wonder:

Sources:

Mark Dowie, Pinto Madness

W Michael Hoffman, Case Study: The Ford Pinto

See also:

ES Grush and CS Saunby, Fatalities Associated with Crash-Induced Fuel Leakage and Fires

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I mean, all of which made me wonder about Jeremy Bentham, I suppose.

We had Locke at Christ Church, staring disdainfully from his portrait during dinners in the Great Hall — but Bentham? I don’t think I saw any utility in utilitarianism.

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But then I also wondered:

I wondered: how close is the analogy between the trolly problem and the ticking bomb torture questionn? Do we start from numbers of likely victims in each case and decide from there, or should we instead start by contemplating torture — and recognize the abyss staring back at us?

Sources:

Wikipedia, Trolly problem

Michael Sandel, Justice: Putting a Price Tag on Life & How to Measure Pleasure

See also:

Kyle York, Lesser-Known Trolley Problem Variations

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What Shakespeare said, though — getting back to my title — was “The quality of mercy is not strain’d” — not the quantity, the quality — unquantifiable.

[ by Charles Cameron — a question in aesthetics-as-morality ]
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Symmetry retains its beauty..

even when humans are to be found in the fireball?

Note as appropriate — this was last year.

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I am reminded of my most cherished passage from Plotinus, Enneads III.ii.15 — so very Shakespearean!

Murders, death in all its guises, the reduction and sacking of cities, all must be to us just such a spectacle as the changing scenes of a play; all is but the varied incident of a plot, costume on and off, acted grief and lament. For on earth, in all the succession of life, it is not the Soul within but the Shadow outside of the authentic man, that grieves and complains and acts out the plot on this world stage which men have dotted with stages of their own constructing. All this is the doing of man knowing no more than to live the lower and outer life, and never perceiving that, in his weeping and in his graver doings alike, he is but at play; to handle austere matters austerely is reserved for the thoughtful: the other kind of man is himself a futility. Those incapable of thinking gravely read gravity into frivolities which correspond to their own frivolous Nature. Anyone that joins in their trifling and so comes to look on life with their eyes must understand that by lending himself to such idleness he has laid aside his own character. If Socrates himself takes part in the trifling, he trifles in the outer Socrates.

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Chuang-Tzu, quoted by T’an Ssu-t’ung:

That which is just born is already dead; that which is just dead is already born.

Symmetry.