{"id":1083,"date":"2006-04-20T00:02:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T05:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1083"},"modified":"2006-04-20T00:02:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-20T05:02:00","slug":"tilting-at-windmills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/?p=1083","title":{"rendered":"tilting at windmills"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know some (most?) of you can’t stand Ann Coulter, and I’ll admit sound bites and television appearances aren’t her strongest arena, but this recent column<\/a> (thank you, Diane) by her is quite good. She uses hyperbole generously, but the points she makes through it have merit.<\/p>\n

It touches on an area of postmodern thinking concerning ethics that I’ve had bouncing around in my head<\/a> for a long time. That is the shift in ideals from doing what is right<\/i> to doing what is consistent<\/i>. In other words, if you remove the concept of absolute right and wrong from your view of ethics, then the highest ideal to which to ascribe becomes consistency–being “true to yourself,” in other words. If we dismiss the notion that there are concrete standards of right and wrong by which society as a whole operates, the pinnacle of ethical achievement becomes consistency. You may do things that are “good” or “bad” according to the outdated notions of absolutes, but as long as you are consistent with your own ethical code, as long as you are “true to yourself,” then you’ve succeeded. In popular culture, we hold in higher ethical esteem the flawed anti-hero with no redeeming qualities, but who lives consistently rather than the old-fashioned protagonist who struggles and stumbles in coming to terms with his inadequacies in the face of moral absolutes. How could those outdated, unfair<\/i> ethical notions be so cruel to him? Shouldn’t he just be able to live however he pleases?<\/p>\n

And what becomes the polar opposite of consistency? Hypocrisy, just as Ms. Coulter alluded to in the column: “The unstated rule is: If you’ve done it, you can’t ever criticize it.” And granted, hypocrisy is almost universally construed as wrong, even by those who believe in ethical absolutes–certainly the ultimate, convergent ideal is to do right consistently, but when given a choice which do we value more highly? Let’s allow people to change<\/i>. Let’s try to discern, “Are they trying to do right?” or “Are they trying to be consistent?” If nothing else it may foster an inkling of understanding between the two sides of the ethical fence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know some (most?) of you can’t stand Ann Coulter, and I’ll admit sound bites and television appearances aren’t her strongest arena, but this recent column (thank you, Diane) by her is quite good. She uses hyperbole generously, but the points she makes through it have merit. It touches on an area of postmodern thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1083\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}