Aesthetic Materialism

  Accomplishment Pride Glory Honor Respect Courage Consistency Tradition  Accomplishment is not a moral value.  It is a fact.   In order to survive and reproduce, an organism of sufficient complexity must set goals, work toward them, and eventually reach them.  Thus natural selection is the driving force that will compel the evolution of beings capable of accomplishment. As the saying from Twin Peaks goes, "Achievement is its own reward.  Pride obscures it." But in the absence of any moral values, there is nothing to prevent this obscurity. Is pride a moral value?  According to many, it's the very opposite: Pope Gregory the Great, back in the 6th century, declared pride "the queen of all vices."  Theologians have long written about how pride is the sin that gives rise to all the other sins.  Thus Milton portrays Satan as motivated by pride in the initial fall at the origin of the universe. And yet this very diversion, this very obscurity, may be the step that gi

It is often said that deontology is "disguised utilitarianism."  In fact, the opposite is true. Utilitarianism is a form of deontology.  In metaethics, a deontological system is one that is based on fundamental, axiomatic principles of duty, and which derive all of their moral rules from this set of axiomatic principles (or, in some cases this one principle). A utilitarian moral framework is one that is based on a single, axiomatic principle.  The principles vary from one utilitarian system to another, but they usually take the form of something that can be restated like this: "Act in such a way that maximizes the total pleasure for the greatest number of people," or  "Act in such a way that minimizes the total suffering for the greatest number of people," or "Act in such a way that fulfills the desires of the greatest number of people," or something along these lines.  Among the various possible ethical systems, utilitarian systems are some of t