They like me? I find this surreal.

[gement]

My Hip Knitter shirt design has been climbing steadily in the ranks for two days now. It's at 34th, out of over 200 contenders.

When I hoped to at best make top 50, I was telling myself that the voters are Philistines, and it really doesn't matter because sometimes taste has nothing to do with quality, and so on. And now I'm like, "YEAH, they recognize my incredible awesomeness." Silly pattern-matching brain. Hush. But squee! I'm up in the top 40 with the mostly-good designs, where people look at them and stuff!


Work is going okay. I've survived 4.5 weeks of ambiguity and random reports, with apparently about another 3 to go before we start settling down to having any idea what my routine tasks are on this project. I really, really, really, really do not do well with the marketing aspects of this job. I am the last person to ask about how to make a shoe sale look clickable.

If you've been a job situation like this before, and found good strategies for dealing with the "I don't speak marketing and I am not the target audience" problem, I'm all ears.


Similarly, I've realized a lot of problems I have with my own responses to Internet arguments are based in not having formal philosophical training. I'm feeling a big gap in my toolbox there. The gap is shaped like this: I know the fundamental principles I want to live by. I know that my actions can affect one or more of those, usually in conflict. I know I need to identify those effects to the best of my ability and have some way of weighing the costs. I also need to get better at identifying when a principle doesn't apply, it's just a strawman or a false echo.

I took an Ethics class in college but they were doing everything in proofs, and I was really good at both geometry and algebra, so I just solved for conclusion and never absorbed any of the concepts we were manipulating. It wasn't deliberate, they'd just put some really easy logic problems in front of me, and how those would apply to real situations wasn't brought up long enough to stick.

So when I spend $X and Y hours doing a craft project and there are people starving out there, or I'm running into the basic truth that all writing contains fail and if I'm going to publish I'll just have to decide on an acceptable contaminant level, I have dramatically insufficient tools for holding comparative values in my head and choosing what I consider Right Actions.

I'm pretty confident I'm on my personal right side of the line for personal pleasure vs. sharing resources, for example, but I can't spell out why. What I've learned more than anything from social justice discussions is that my first instincts on anything unquestioned are wrong more than half the time. I'd like to get better formal tools for questioning.

How does one do that? Do any of you know of good books on personal ethics and how to define and test a set of principles? Classes? Particularly excellent blog series?

Comments

[beaq.livejournal.com]

That is the kick-assiest shirt.

[caladri.livejournal.com]

You may find Moral Philosophy or Moral Psychology more rewarding than Ethics, it seems to me from what you're saying. For the former, I'd happily suggest familiarizing yourself with the "veil of ignorance" concept John Rawls explored, which if you find intuitive or useful, I'd suggest moving on to his A Theory of Justice. Really one of the masterworks of modern liberal philosophy.

For Moral Psychology, you may have already seen Jonathan Haidt's TED talk, and I'd suggest looking up his work in general. I can provide pointers to very good papers, if you'd like.

Neither Haidt nor Rawls is going to give you a process for determining your ethics, but both of them define tools and problems spaces that are very useful for conceptualizing and manipulating moral questions, and your daily life (or solitude, perhaps) can guide you through encountering those questions. It's impossible to seek out the uninterrogated and unquestioned without being able to name or spot them at work, is my experience. But I've found it possible to firm up my intuitive response to new lines of interrogation and questioning by firming up my moral keystones and understanding the moral tools with which I think, and which I value.

I recently went through a class which was aimed at equipping seminarians to approach their own uninterrogated beliefs and biases, but the general principle behind it was to sort of build up pattern recognition, and I'm sure you're already familiar with the building blocks of that class, which were pretty typical pieces on privilege, the continuing impact of historical racism, insidious modern racism, etc.

What I've learned more than anything from social justice discussions is that my first instincts on anything unquestioned are wrong more than half the time.

Do you have an example? And what do you mean by "wrong"? Do first instincts matter much if you learn and grow from the encounter? Getting it right the first time doesn't seem as important to me as a willingness to listen and learn.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Do you have an example? And what do you mean by "wrong"? Do first instincts matter much if you learn and grow from the encounter? Getting it right the first time doesn't seem as important to me as a willingness to listen and learn.

Yes, exactly. I want to get better at the learning from the encounter and being sure to spot it when I run into one.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

My general approach to learning something I want to know more about is to find an introductory college textbook on the subject. But in this case that might not be a very good way to do things. Unless intro philosophy has changed a lot since I took it, you won't get much focus on the issues of ethical philosophy you're interested in.

So I don't really have anything to recommend to you. I just have a negative recommendation. Perhaps if you dredge around the web you'll find something? Sometimes you can get good leads from Wikipedia citations.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Yup. I can also do the straight-to-the-point reference cheat and send an email to a relevant UW professor. It's amazing how people like to talk if you ask them about their field of interest.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course. I will certainly go on for hours and hours about astronomy, if given the slightest encouragement.