Alright, it’s time for me to grab a soapbox. I try to avoid being too preachy (or at least, I try to mix it with a large amount of sarcasm and humor,) but recent events have really made me feel that it’s necessary to explain morality and its fallacies to people.

First though, background: I’m in a Business class, which is a joke in itself here at PSU. The teacher is wholly unaware of how technology works in the slightest in spite of the fact that the class is called “Information Technology.” He’s incredibly charismatic though, which makes me think he has a solid future in televangelism, swindling thousands of dollars from your good ol’ granny who tries to buy her way into an intangible and completely unproven afterlife. I digress, though.

At any rate, we’re all posting various thoughts on discussion postings, when the following statement is made by the professor: “Virtually all undergraduate students [do] not believe that cheating or plagiarism is ‘wrong’ unless the student is caught red-handed.” That’s a direct quote from the board, with a small amount of editing (he’s a “technology” professor that somehow doesn’t use spellcheck or any sort of computer-based grammatical tool.) We’re supposed to then comment on this idiocy.

This of course led me into a two-paragraph about the benefits of logical nihilism, but then I thought about how often flawed morality jumps into our society. So, without further adieu and for the future of society, I provide you with the following…

So, with the example above fresh in your minds, let’s look at that. First, let’s create a hypothetical college or country, where plagiarism doesn’t exist - not because people don’t technically do it, but because it’s not against the law. The term plagiarism doesn’t even exist. People give their works out freely, expecting them to be reused and picked apart by others. Does that make this other society wrong in our eyes, or naive, simply because they’re different?

If you’re still applying logic here, then the answer is “No Jake, and how did you get to be so sexy?” The answer to the latter is stem cells, if you must know. And now, with logic still hopefully functional in our minds, we can see how this principle can be applied to almost any activity we view as wrong, from sex (depending on warped you are about natural activities) to driving, use of technology, etc.

“But Jake,” you whiny little bastards ask, “what do all of our moral judgments mean then?” Well, it’s easy - nothing. If every moral judgment can be shown to have exception or lacking the encompassing properties it needs to exist, then the only thing left is nothing. No moral judgment, and every action just becomes what it is - an action without any specific value.

Now, this isn’t to say there’s no morality whatsoever, just that there’s no use applying labels to actions. To demonstrate, suffer with me through the classic cavemen example. Two cavemen live near each other. One knows not to kill the other, since there will be no one to help him hunt when a large animal comes nearby. He also knows not to steal or otherwise harm the other caveman, since the other caveman might become unwilling to help him when necessary. The other caveman knows these things as well. I know it’s over-simplified, but you can start to see how morality, such as helping others, doesn’t need to stem from ridiculous words or arbitrary values placed on actions.

Well, that’s that. I may add to or modify this, depending on how many errors and comments I get. Hopefully someone will actually see the underlying principles behind this.