Reading this makes me think that I’ve no chance of getting anywhere studying on my own in Korea.
Ursala Le Guin: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
I read this story recently and I can’t make up my mind as to whether I understand it. Here is my best attempt.
The city can only thrive when it’s citizens whole-heartedly accept a utilitarian ideology. This deep psychological acceptance occurs, for most of them, when they see the abused child. We must assume there’s no other way for this wholly necessary acceptance to be brought about in the citizens. Then the child has to be there for the city to thrive and the city thriving outweighs its being there in the calculation of utility.
I think that the semicolon might represent the tone of voice that English speakers use to indicate the same conversational status that Koreans use the ~는데 ending to indicate. But that ending is only used in speech whereas a semicolon is used in speech and writing.
It follows that while the arguments put forward by many Christian philosophers are serious arguments, there is something less than serious about the spirit in which they are being offered. There is a direction in which those arguments will not be permitted to go. Arguments that support the faith will be seriously entertained; those that apparently undermine the faith must be countered, at any cost. Philosophy, to use the traditional phrase, is merely a “handmaid” of theology.
There is, to my mind, something frivolous about a philosophy of this sort. My feeling is that if we do philosophy, it ought to be because we take arguments seriously. This means following them wherever they lead. This may sound naïve. There are moral commitments, for instance, that few of us would be prepared to abandon, even if we lacked good arguments in their support. But if the followers are Hume are right, there is a close connection between our moral beliefs and our moral sentiments that would justify this attitude. In any case, even in matters of morality, we should not be maintaining positions that have lots of arguments against them and few in their favour, just because we have made a commitment to do so. —Gregory Dawes
(source)
An issue has arisen in my relationship with my (first) girlfriend, and it hasn’t gone away after a month. I’m not going to write about this personal matter as it relates to our relationship right now, but I want to write about it in general terms, as I’m sure we’re not the first people to encounter it.
I have been told today that I have to decide whether or not to renew my contract for another year of teaching at my elementary school in South Korea before Friday. This turns out to be a difficult decision, though I thought it would be quite easy. Here is my attempt to explain to myself why it’s hard.