I Kill You in the Name of Ethics!

Some questions and answers for Human Sit, only a few days late:

* Are you an iTunes user? If so, please discuss the technology system required to deliver your music!

Nope! Oh oops, that means I can't answer that question!

* Disruptive forces are forces that change the status quo - they somehow throw off the equilibrium and sink social groups, businesses, and even societies into chaos. Identify a technology, past or present, that is serving as a disruptive technology. How is it changing the status quo? How is it impacting society?

It may be unorthodox to think of this as a "technology," but the invention of welfare seems like one of the most disruptive technology in lower class Americas. Listen, America! No longer do you have to work! Now you can just not work and barely scrape by as the government hooks you up to the great gleaming IV tube of its budget! Just make sure you have lots and lots of kids, so you can fully reap the benefits! Oh snap, did we just shoot ourselves in the feet? Well, too late to pull out now! I may be a typical uninterested-in-politics-and-most-current-events type American, but I know that welfare is one big technological mistake that America could have done without.

/Tirade

I also like to think of Interstates and Motors as disruptive technology. They aren't so much disrupting society as they are disrupting our attention to the world around us. Like we all learned so poignantly in Pixar's Cars, the Interstate cuts accross the land like a knife, rather flowing with it (like route 66 did, apparently). Motors allowed for the inventions of automobiles, speed boats, jetliners...all things which have put nature behind in favor of economy. Now don't get me wrong, I drive a car and am not adverse to accumulating some frequent flier miles, but I also believe that sometimes a person needs to put roaring engines away and experience the world in the way it used to be.

We didn't conquer it, we just think we did.

* No one has answered Adam's question fitfully - not even Adam. Do technics that are designed and created for the soul intention of doing something immoral inherently immoral themselves? Does form follow function? If the function is immoral, is the form as well? Can you come up with any other or "better" examples than a radar detector?

Sure. Let's talk about Cigarettes, Cigars, Smokeless Tobacco, and other misery-causing addictive type things. Millions of years ago the surgeon general cast down the whole Tobacco industry into a well of despair and infamy. Since then no one, not even smokers, have said that smoking is a good thing. Except maybe those smokers who can afford cigars for every smoke. What purpose do tobacco products serve besides body-ruining? Supposedly, recreation. I guess there are some people who say "let's go take a recreational smoke for the sake of smoking" and aren't talking about mind-altering drugs.

But still, when the judgment day comes, God isn't going to cast the cigarettes into hell along with the sinners. I'm pretty sure the smokes will to be left behind on earth, along with the radar detectors and the Microsoft Zunes (because those are pure evil).

* Does absolute right and wrong exist? In what context? Does absolute good and bad exist? Are we morally obliged to always do what is absolutely best?

In my eyes, absolute right exists. However, no human can ever attain it in this life. Jesus was the absolute right, and that's why we need his blood (wouldn't that sound terrible if you didn't understand the context?) to save our souls. We are morally obliged to follow Jesus' example as best we can, but to think that we can ever be as Absolutely Good as He is is to go down a road which quickly leads to madness.