Dec 29 2921 - Shaking Off Santa...At Least for a Year!

 

Santa is such a delightful visual icon.  The white curly hair and beard, rosy cheeks, beautiful elves and fur "suit"... always so charming.  But the keeping of lists for naught and nice is a nasty underside to this soft, warm cozy visual experience.   These are 'substitute' or 'stand-in' words of naughty for bad, sinful, evil, and nice for good, ethical, virtuous. Such a moral framework within the guise of candies, cookies and presents.  No wonder philosophers have looked at Santa carefully and wondered about what moral framework was used or invented to guide him.  CBC took a look at philosophical frameworks to explain how describe how the framework might work.  Consequentialist? Deontologist?  Virtue ethicist? I've summarized the interview that can be found in full HERE. Santa as a consequentialist - The Total Score Consequentialism determines whether an action is good or bad based on the consequences of that action. This is also known as modern utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham an 18th-century English philosopher is the founder of this philosophy.  It is an addition and subtraction framework with a final score of right vs wrong.  "If you, as a kid, are constantly doing things that cause harm to other people and cause them to be in pain, that seems bad. And we might intuitively understand why Santa would judge you as naughty in that case,"  Bentham created  a way of assigning a numerical value to an action — by considering questions like: How much pleasure or pain might your action cause? For how long? How many people are you going to affect? "You add up all the pleasure and you add up all the pain and you take the pain away from the pleasure. And if your action results in more pleasure overall for more people, this is a moral thing and you were nice, not naughty." There are a few issues with consequentialism.  "You might be pretty moral overall," said Fellows. "So that's one problem ... For example, what if a child is generally kind to many people and does favours for them, but keeps a frog in a jar at home to torture it?  Consequentialism also doesn't take a person's intentions into account. For example, a child who wraps the family cat in blankets to make it cozy may think they're doing a good thing, even if they're actually causing harm. Santa as a deontologist - The Stickler or One Strike and You're Out! One school of ethical thought that does account for intentions is deontology, best represented by Immanuel Kant, an 18th-century German philosopher and one of the central thinkers of the Enlightenment. "He said that you must always try and follow your duty, and your moral duty is to follow what's called the categorical imperative."  His concept is categorical because it applies in all places at all times, and it's imperative because you must follow it without exception. "Whereas we thought of Santa with Bentham as being like Santa the Mathematician, Santa for Kant would be maybe Santa the Stickler, because Kant says you have to follow this rule."  "In other words, allowing other people the freedom to make their own choices," said Fellows. "And maybe they choose to help me achieve my goal, and that's great. But I also have to [show] respect if they choose not to help me." For example, if a parent asks their child if they ate all their brussel sprouts before they're allowed to have dessert, a child who lies would not be respecting their parent's' rational autonomy.  "They're manipulating their parents into trying to get the ice cream. So they're not telling all the truth and they're not giving the parent a free choice."  On the other hand, a child who admits to their parents that they gave their vegetables away to the dog would be acting morally. But when it comes to making it on the nice list, there's a twist. For Kant, the only way to be truly moral is to follow the categorical imperative because you've chosen it as the right thing to do, and not because you're trying to get a reward out of it like a Christmas present. "If you are only following the categorical imperative because you want the treats and you don't want the coal, then you aren't doing it properly either. You've already failed. In fact, you need to take Santa out of the equation and not worry about his approval at all." So with Kant, it could be "one strike and you're out!" Santa as a virtue ethicist - The Soul Observer - Improbable Decisions for a Four-year-old If Santa the consequentialist only cares about the end results of your actions, and Santa the deontologist only cares whether you're respecting other people's rational autonomy, then Santa the virtue ethicist only cares about looking into your soul to see if you're trying to be good. Virtue ethics, a branch of philosophy that goes all the way back to Aristotle, is concerned with individual moral aspiration.  "Rather than focusing on this specific situation and what should I do in this specific situation, virtue ethics asks: Overall, over the course of my lifetime, what kind of person should I try to be?"  According to Aristotle, to become virtuous people, we have to identify the virtuous course of action. For him, virtues can be found at the midpoint of two extremes, what he calls a "golden mean." For example, if your little brother draws a not-so-pretty finger painting, and proudly shows it off to you, do you lie and say it looks great, or do you tell the truth, which could hurt his feelings?  "Truthfulness is at the golden mean. It is at a midpoint, but it's a midpoint between deception — that is, lying, which is a vice of deficiency — and what Aristotle calls kind of a boastfulness or a hard truth… truths that hurt people."  "Part of achieving the golden mean of truthfulness would be learning when to tell the truth, how to tell the truth, and when it might be best to keep silent." Virtue ethicists like Aristotle also acknowledge that while people may aim for the golden mean, they're bound to make mistakes, and that's OK. "The real point of virtue ethics is that morality is a skill that you have to practise until it becomes second nature. And when it becomes second nature, you actually remake yourself into a moral person."  "So in some ways I like virtue ethics because it is a very positive theory. No matter how naughty or how bad you are, you can work to make things better, to make yourself better."  Under an Aristotelian model, Santa would be an observer, watching what you did over the course of a year. He would ask: What habits did you acquire? How did you practise the skill of morality?  "The reward is that you will actually be a happier, better, more well-rounded person, and that you will have less regrets at the end of your days."   "So you will kind of give yourself the present. You won't need Santa."   Let's all explain that one to a four-year-old.  What moral habits did a four-year-old learn besides name some colours, count, remember parts of a story, draw a person with 2 to 4 body parts, use scissors, and so on. I rest my case on Santa - at least for another year. That's likely why he only comes around once a year.  There's too much to explain, too much "Santa's watching" threats to invoke and then moderate, keep score on how things are going with motivation and so on.    As we come to the conclusion of 2021, we look ahead to 2022.  We hope for a better year ahead.  Can we pass through the keyhole of the pandemic and climate change urgency in one year?

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Beer Deliveries in Chiberia

The polar vortex is at both poles.  It weakens in the summer and strengthens in the winter.  Whose summer and whose winter - aren't they reversed?  I find that the Antarctic polar vortex is more pronounced and persistent than the Arctic one.  Yikes! The headlines say parts of the US are colder than Antarctica amid 'Polar Vortex'.  The bbc.com had these news topics: Chicago has renamed itself "Chiberia" Chicago police say people are being robbed at gunpoint of their coats, especially Canada Goose jackets, which cost $1,100. Beer deliveries in Wisconsin have been hit, too, as brewers delay shipments for fear their beverages will freeze in the trucks. "Beastly Blast of Winter" is another headline Niagara Falls is a scene from the movie "Frozen" - the video coverage showed everything with a few inches of ice. I found this headline from the NPC Daily, an anti-Trump organization: Trump condones Polar Vortex because he wants America to be more like Russia - more collusion  Here's the story and Trump's tweet that says this HERE.   The coldest place in the world will be Surgut Russia at -39.5 F then Yakutsk at -38.6F and Winnipeg follows at -38.2F.  It's a race between Canada and Russia as to who will get the top medals for coldest in the world!  The Canadian news is comparing Winnipeg's freezing cold temperatures with Mars.  Winnipeg wins naturally.  And the comparison with the west coast:  Flowers are blooming in the west and snow is pummelling the east.  West coast wins on that one! Today's images were chosen by a random number generator - the first is rust on a Silverton rail car, and the second a model at the Sundance Museum in Florida.  They share the number 6534.