I saw Grave of the Fireflies. There are no words.

This won’t stop me from writing about it of course. I will likely have much to say and at length about many aspects of this film.

But for now… It just doesn’t seem right. Or maybe more honestly I just don’t feel up to it. 

I’m gong to go crawl into bed and wish the world away.

Perfection without perspective is not a virtue.

There are many times when people come to believe that a thing is right and then pursue it with all determination and a desire to apply it to all situations and circumstances without re-evaluation.

This is inherent in the principles of universalism. This is the idea of “moral principles”. I believe in them, but I don’t believe that they should rule us in all our lives. Re-evaluation is always necessary.

Here’s a simple example. Say you don’t believe in “getting something for free without asking permission”. You believe that is morally wrong so you set out to prevent anyone from getting stuff for free. That’s fine, I’d say. I don’t particularly believe in that formulation** but I can understand it and accept that people can believe in it. If the entire society comes to an agreement on this principle even if I still don’t believe it I would accept your right to defend this principle within the society. That is to say, you are just as welcome to try and prevent people from downloading files on the internet without paying as you are to try and prevent someone from shoplifting. Both violate that basic moral principle (even if it is a pretty stupid moral principle…).

The problem comes in applying it without perspective. That is to say in your determination to make the principle universal, to ensure that no one *ever* gets away with getting something for free without acquiring permission, you end up doing certain things that can truly be considered selfish or even cruel and possibly even causing great harm.

The simplest example would be something like a pirated OS.  Now, if the rich person down the street were to steal a new OS you might well look at them with scorn and fight to cause that person to pay for their crime. But what if a person who is striving to pull himself out of poverty gets a hold of a computer with no OS and intends to use the computer to learn computer skills in order to get out of poverty, does the same? Would you say that these two cases are equal?

In one sense they most certainly are equal. Both did the same act. Either it is a crime or it is not. Yet our intuitions about them differ and for a reason. That we can identify with the plight of the poverty stricken so called “thief” suggests that we believe that there must be a conception of perception enshrined in any moral theory. The whole of the situation must be taken into account.

Now a perfectionist may well say yes I see that the latter person’s plight is worse, but still “we must be fair” or perhaps “if we don’t treat these situations equally we undermine the entire system.”  The latter is a load of garbage really.  Any system only breaks down when the people choose not to follow it. It is very easy to create conditional laws and principles and it is even easier to apply exceptions to principles. Most people will not begrudge you such a change and will not abandon the system altogether just because someone gets an advantage out of it. I would argue that if a lot of people band together to discontinue support of a system in order to undermine it because they see benefits going to others in an “unfair” manner, they are the ones being unjust.  This is the absurdity of the argument against the Kyoto Accords. Those who say the US should not adopt say that we should do so because other countries are getting an advantage as a result. I say, even if that were totally true, if the system itself is good, we should not undermine it simply because we aren’t the ones gaining an advantage in the system.

Still, some argue instead that the “undermine” they mean is simply that the lack of equality will yield a result that is strictly worse than the outcome if the principles are applied universally. That is to say simply that if you were to never allow any pirated OS then the price of OS’s will drop over all, the company will get richer and can then provide free OSes as charity to those in need and build better OSes faster and do other charity works and so on and so forth.

All I can say about that is that I remain extremely skeptical. No company needs be that benevolent and they have only minimal incentives to do so. Without any safeguards that ensure such long term benevolence I would never trust any collective entity no matter how many examples of benevolent behavior they have engaged in in the past, nor do I believe should a society trust them. I am not merely being cynical and untrusting here. Entities made up of collectives change over time and their changes are unpredictable. How do you know a company that does all in its power to help people today won’t be a company that is cruel and unjust tomorrow? Do  you think their ethics statements and statements of purpose and other meaningless documents are enough? You are far more trusting then I then.  Nor am I picking on just companies in this. Any collective be it government, university, business, union, or even charitable organization should be looked upon I think with a lot of cynicism and distrust unless the system around them itself is built in such a way as to ensure a likely predictable and trustworthy evolution. The US government for example has a system of checks and balances to prevent power corruption. That system is insufficient to ensure benevolent action over the long term but it does prevent the worst attrocities from evolving. Things like that need to be implemented for all kinds of groups.

The second half of the “world will just be worse” idea, that prices will drop and everyone will be better off is far more palatable an example. But I just don’t believe in sacrificing the one for the society in this way. A slightly faster evolution of a business at the expense of a single entity’s chance to advance strikes me as cruel. We may all be better off if we let any person in jeopardy just die off too but I could not imagine anyone with a conscience choosing such a plan of action.

Others don’t give such abstract explanations and just claim that “fairness” itself has some inherent importance. I am sympathetic to that argument. I agree that it is galls us to see someone else benefit when another does not. The person who manages to get a hold of a pirated OS benefits while the person who refuses to do so because he considers it wrong continues to suffer. This disturbs us for good reason.

However, I also believe that even though there is a distinction of justice here this is not the kind of battle that is worthy to be fought. If a perfecionist were to come along and demand that the person who got the OS for free give it up and then assess them some kind of fine or even put them in jail for their unjust act, and hold up the person who is in just a bad a situation but didn’t get an OS as the reason he is doing it, I would not be able to see the person as anything else but a cruel bully. You are, in this case causing someone harm for the sake of a principle while holding up another person as an example  but not really helping that person at all. In other words you are saying that the situation where no one benefits is better than the situation where one does through an act you happen to disapprove of. If you, the perfectionist, happen to also be the company that developed the OS then I’d say you are truly hypocritical, as you are trying to ensure a situation where everyone does not benefit just to secure your own future benefits. That’s absurd.

I truly do believe perfectionists such as that could expend their energy better. They could enforce their same principles on people who are committing the same so-called crime but are less justified in doing it. At least they could focus on those culprits first. And indeed I’d say even before you start to enforce your principle on the person who was in desperate straights and acquired an OS you would be more justified in giving an OS for free to the others who are equally in dire straights thus providing overall benefit to everyone except perhaps you who although you suffer no or minimal financial cost,  you do lose “potential sales” however unlikely those sales ever happening may be and thus are not reaching the wealth level that you could be.

Does what I am saying make sense? Perspective should be a part of deliberation when deciding who to punish for violating any moral principle. You can’t sue children. You ought not crush industries bringing cheap goods otherwise unavailable to lands where they would otherwise not go. Even if you believe the things these people are doing is wrong, the unthinking dogged obsessive pursuit of them will often be even worse.  Relax! The world probably won’t go away if some people get a benefit you disapprove of.

- Clef

** Not only do I not think this is a good moral principle to have, I actually think a large percentage of the acts covered by it are not at all morally wrong. Some may even be morally right. Finding a penny on the ground and taking it is wrong by this principle.  I only use this overly simple example to simplify the discussion. I honestly don’t know under what sane moral principle can current copyright  laws be justified. If it exists, it must look nothing like the principles against theft. It would have to be something like replicating a replicated work without permission with others that you acquired with the permission of the generator of the original and which the generator took some energy and effort to create the original even if copying the original is cheap or even without cost  is wrong. I think that’s a crazy unintuitive principle that nobody really believes in. It’d be like saying if I had a recipe to turn dirt into healthy food which took me a lot of effort to create and I refused to allow anyone to make a copy of it except for one guy I trust and that guy turned around and gave it to all of the poor and starving people in the world when  I refused to do so, then it is the defector is in the wrong and not me. I think that’s just crazy.