Nobody gives the bum a buck.

My last three posts have all ended up with a question, all of which have lain untouched, like a dinner check everybody is hoping somebody else will pick up.  Remind me never to dine with any of you guys.  Maybe I should have been watching "The Good Place," it appears to be addressing the same issues that I have been trying to bring up to no avail.  "The morality of an action is solely judged on its consequences." See there is the whole question of which of which, if any, is a better man, and according to this proverb, they are all the same.  What if one of them didn't, and I am thinking in this case of the dawgs who have both come out  foursquare against beggars,  I don't know why my colleagues are so anti bum,  They don't bother anybody much.  It's not like they are hitting you over the head with a two by four and taking your wallet.

So let's say likely neither Beagles nor Old Dog dropped a buck in the hat.  Let's say it's because they don't believe in begging, that it just encourages people to hang around street corners and not do anything useful, but if nobody gave them any money, then by gum they would go out and get a job, and that would increase their self-respect and they would be solid citizens, and much better off than hanging around that street corner,  So you would both be doing the guy a favor.  You would be doing the right thing.  Uncle Ken, who gave them a buck, and let's say that he did it (which he never would) because the bible urges us to be good to the poor) would be doing the wrong thing.

How about if some stranger went by and didn't give a buck, just because he is a cheap son of a bitch and he wanted to keep all his bucks.  Would he now be on the same elevated moral plane as the dawgs?


Running over a pedestrian is a different matter.  It is a matter of legality which is not the same as morality.  Legality is more a matter of society running smoothly than of keeping up your karma.  The law acts on actual actions and doesn't take much account of intentions.  Intentions may come up in sentencing and I think it sometimes comes up in cases of murder or manslaughter, but in general if you run a stop sign, no intention to get to church on time will help you in the eyes of Johnny Law.


And the issue of fake news is heavy on the headlines of late, noticeably in the case of Dumbo's inauguration crowd and those two photos.  See guys, this is just like the hypothetical tree in my hypothetical yard.  This is... Objective Reality.  The newscaster and even some of the Trumpists have mentioned that it really doesn't matter whether Dumbo or Obama had the bigger crowd.  What matters is Dumbo is denying facts on the ground.  He is standing outside my backyard and saying my tree isn't there.

Facts on the ground are things we can all agree on, and from them we build up our picture of the world and it is how he are able to communicate with each other.  Otherwise we don't know any better than the beasts in the field.  There can't be an alternate theory that there is no tree in my yard and that a lot of Trumpists had turned on their invisibility shields rather than be photographed by the lying media.

The bible is fake news.  There no historical Moses.  The Ten Commandments incident never happened.  To discuss it in terms of religion or folklore is fine, but to think it has any significance beyond that, and to use it as an example to prove a point is nutty.

Morality was around long before we had any religions.  The reason most religions have similar morality is not because Jesus had tea with Buddha, it's because they both dipped into the same well of morality, the way mathematics is the same in all parts of the world.  Morality (ethics) is in our genes and bigger than any religion that has been around a few paltry thousand years.

So the dawgs and Uncle Ken walk by a beggar.  Beagles doesn't give him a buck because he doesn't believe in encouraging that kind of behavior.  Old Dog doesn't  give him a buck because he thinks he is too fat and healthy to be a beggar, and Uncle Ken doesn't give him a buck because he is an a disagreeable mood and fuck a bunch of bums.  I believe the bum liked the previous three examples better.