it's not the Lone Ranger out there

So it wasn't the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that Beagles held against the hippies.  Sex and drugs (I happen to know that Beagles does not like rock and roll) were okay, but it was their political activism that he didn't like.  I think political activism is as American as apple pie, and I think Beagles approves of American stuff.  But I think Beagles only considers political activism that he approves of as good behavior.

As a matter of fact I rather suspect that Beagles himself is a moral relativist in that only way he defines good and evil is by what he likes and dislikes.  Isn't that the very essence of moral relativism, everybody makes up their own by picking out the things that they like and dislike?  Ah, but unlike Uncle Ken he believes in in good and bad guys.  But still he is alone in determining who he deems a good guy and who he deems a bad guy, other people would make different judgments so aren't we back at moral relativism again?

It's not exactly true that I don't believe in good and bad guys.  I think some people are better than others, but I think all people are mixes of good and bad, they are good on this thing, bad on the other, if there was some way of breaking it down in percentages would those with a good rating over fifty be considered good guys and those with a bad rating over fifty be considered bad guys?

Mainly I don't like the nomenclature, it's too Lone Ranger, it's too inducive to thinking that there are only good guys and bad guys in the world and the job of the good guys to kill the bad guys or at least put them in the hoosegow.  It sets all kinds of barriers between people who should be working together to build a better world blah blah blah.


Sometimes the Indians made deals with the white man and sometimes the white man just took what he wanted and it almost always turned out that the white man reneged on his deals.  I think we can all agree that the red man now has streak of lightning cars and fancy clothes, he has better stuff, but is he better off (I think that's the question this thread began with)?  I don't know.


And Old Dog seems to be saying that nothing can be nailed down a hundred percent,and I agree, but he seems to be concluding why bother to try then, and I have to ask him what are we going to talk about then?  Why do we have an Intstute then?