Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to I don't follow that reasoning

You follow the rational way.
Mary Anne — (archived)

That works for you. You're a lucky man, to have found a way to follow.

It doesn't work for everyone, nor should it have to.

Some of our greatest insights in the physical world were prefigured by artistic movements that preceded the discoveries by decades. Some people's brains work best in one hemisphere, and some in the other. Neither should have to pick a way against their nature.

Consistency in behavior is a wonderful thing. So is rational thought. Neither one is a path to justice without empathy. Empathy is taught by all the great spiritual movements, some of which are religious.

It's when people get stuck in the workaday literalism and chauvinistic exclusiveness of religious law, forgetting its empathic heart, that they forget justice.

Rational thought has had similar outcomes, because in its pursuit, too, people forget empathic understanding of each other while they slavishly act upon the syntax of their thought without fully reflecting on its meaning.

Legalism in both cases substitutes for justice because the rules come to mean more than the people. Consistency is not enough; every case is unique, because we are all unique in our circumstances even as we are all equal in our basic dignity as human beings.

Different modes of travel suit different people on the road of life. What makes justice is not where the travellers expect to go or if they travel in vehicles or on foot. What makes justice is if those travelling on that road stop and help those who need help, no matter who they are, because we are all human.

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