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Old March 18th, 2008 #3
Alex Linder
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10 MAR 08

Hail Jason! Many thanks for your thoughtful essay on Honor. You cover lots of moral territory which other thinkers have also sought to address since ancient times, & it always serves our own quest for truth when we strive to address these virtues anew.

Carl Jung saw Honor & other moral ideas as emanating from Racial Memory, which we forget at our peril. As you say, Judeo-American society under ZOG favors "situational ethics," or "Do in Rome as the Romans do." The name of that game is: Sell Out. But those who do so are sometimes surprised that they are rendered unhappy thereby, because they have offended their consciences. What an old-fashioned concept! But what is "conscience," if not a part of ourselves? If I have offended against myself, why should I not be unhappy? To sell oneself is also called "prostitution."

How do we function as members of The Animal Kingdom? I see our primary drive as instinct, which is irrational: Why do I wish to live? Why do I enjoy the beauty of a sunrise, &c? The servants of instinct are passion & reason, or should be, although sometimes we see passion or reason override instinct, usually under the influence of drugs, including alcohol. That is why The 4 Greek Virtues were Courage, Temperance, Wisdom & Justice.

Morality is largely a matter of knowing which is 'me' & which is 'not me.' Self-awareness & self-knowledge occur consciously, sooner or later, at least among intelligetn beings. Hence, we establish boundaries over which we may not cross without incurring risk to ourselves. In my case, I actually quit a job, just before it left for India, when my supervisor showed me how she wanted me to handle an emergency road service call, within the 7-minute time limit. As the 7-minute call limit arrived, she simply hung up on the caller, thus exposing the caller, who was stranded beside a busy highway, with his wife & baby, to injury or death, solely because of this artificial time limit. I pointed out to her that the people who had joined the road service club believed that they would get road service. I also pointed out that we could be sued for breach of contract, not to mention personal damages & injuries, in which I would be an accomplice, & therefore partially liable, and I had to consider how deaths & injuries resulting from my breach of trust would roost on my conscience. Was the minimum-wage I made sufficient to buy off my conscience? I thought not, so I quit on the spot. As I say, the job soon left for India, since the bottom line was all-important. Service in the public welfare was no part of the equation. Imagine being haunted by the voices of those who'd depended upon you for help, whom you'd let down, & found out later how they'd died, as the result of your betrayal of their lives to a profit margin? Imagine if the Fire Department were to limit its assistance in all fires & accidents to 7 minutes, after which, their service would be curtailed!

My late friend, Robert Frens, worked for a department of Boeing Aircraft Company in quality-testing of metals to be used in aircraft parts. He said that this was merely a formality, since the parts were already being made as he tested the ingredients. One particular batch of aluminum failed the aircraft tests, so Robert reported the failure to the Boeing executives, & refused to sign that the shipment was acceptable. The Boeing execs tried to argue that the test was 'irrelevant' & had no correlation to aircraft safety, when that was what the tests had been designed for! Every aircraft part is governed by hours of flight, for that determines metal-fatigue & likely times of part-failure. As I recall, the defective parts were not recalled. Robert was replaced by a zombie who'd approve anything, & Robert had to find another job. Such a deal! Well, he'd done his duty, so his conscience was clear, althouggh he seemed a bit jittery about taking plane trips.

In The Fire Season of 1961 on the Stanislaus District of California, where I worked as Helitack Foreman for the U.S. Forest Service, we lost 5 helicopters & 6 men, allegedly because of part-failures due to metal fatigue, accelerated by "hard-landings." But somebody made a profit, despite our losses. I had a conscientious helicopter mechanic, so I survived. I also guarded our machine when no one else would, at our fire base, to deter idiots who'd drive up the road to play. I wasn't being noble or heroic; just smart.

Words are symbols for the qualities they describe. Our job is to give substance, i.e., reality, to those symbols. Otherwise they remain mere lines on paper or sounds produced by our lips flapping in the air. I wish you every success at turning these symbols into real behavior. Strength through Joy to you. ORION!

Eric