Home Coming

I’ve been living away from home for a while now. In the last six years or so the notion of home has become a very liquid idea. I’ve lived in a couple of different locations long enough to call them home. Compared to all of my friends I think I’ve lived in more places than the rest. I do however consider the United States my home. Living in a different country has made me appreciate things about the U.S.A. Another thing living out of country does is it gives you a sense of perspective about the good and bad of my country.

There are a couple things I have noticed that people think are attributes of Americas that aren’t true or exclusive to us from my observation. The biggest thing is the idea that Americans are a wasteful people. Maybe we are, but everywhere I have been people are just as wasteful. I think as the horn of plenty visits any society it leads to people being wasteful. It just so happens that the U.S.A. as been blessed not to be ravaged by colonialism, World War II, or the Mongols. So we have a long stint at being prosperous, but that doesn’t make us any more or less wasteful than the people I have ran across on my travels.

A thing about Americans that I have noticed that people don’t seem to attribute to us is that we are very clean. Our streets, rivers, and heck even our buildings for the most part are clean. I don’t know where this came from but I remember the days of my youth when I saw the “Don’t Waste Utah” campaign in action. I don’t know if our cleanliness is a new phenomenon, but I don’t remember a time where we weren’t like that. I guess this is a positive attribute of our society that often gets overlooked. I’m glad we are that way, because well I hate litter. All this must be from my days of doing Boy Scout things.

John Stuart Mill

I have a background in philosophy. That is to say I dabble in what I would consider deep thinking. What seems like a long time ago I was on the search for some answers or at least some tools by which I could find some answers. My understanding of the truth or answers to perplexing questions is a lot more sophisticated now then it was back then. I suppose I did make some advances after all. At the beginning of my search I started with those who asked similar questions in the past. Plato, Aristotle, Wittgenstein, Kripke, and many others seemed to shin a lot of light on things. I tried to keep an open mind on all the people I read. Despite my attempts to be unbiased every time I would read or contemplate the ideas of John Stuart Mill I just seemed not to like the guy or what he was saying. Even though some of the things he said I happen to agree with I just didn’t want to. Go figure I guess I will always have an irrational side of me, contrary to what I thought I could do when I was younger.

So this Mill cat comes along and tries to save the philosophy of Utilitarianism. It is riddled with problems so he takes it up a notch, but you all know this. By you I mean me, and by me I mean I. So we get into this big tiff about rule utilitarianism vs. act utilitarianism. But that is another topic all together. So I was getting a bit nostalgic for my younger, dumber days and started to think about all the hypothetical examples that could perplex those fancy utilitarian cats. There are a whole bunch, in fact I do remember there being a large paper dedicated to the implications that walking on grass (cutting corners) has on utilitarianism. So one hypothetical situation arose in my mind during this trip down nostalgia lane and it involves a disaster. Suppose that a person comes across a disaster. There in front of them is a person who is not conscious or breathing and there are numerous other people scattered about that need medical help. Suppose this person is trained medically. Suppose that this person could make an attempt to revive the person that is basically dead. The attempt will be successful, but the odds of the person living afterwards are next to none. On top of this if the person would be resuscitated his or her last moments are sure to be miserable. So you have a slim chance, but a guaranteed miserable last moments if he or she doesn’t make it. So Mill you got an answer for that one?