STEVE: "Hi Auralynn! I'm on Skype. Can you see me?"
AURALYNN: "Hi Steve! I see you fine!"
STEVE (VO): "Just a sec. I'm gonna switch to the laptop in the kitchen."
STEVE: "Okay, Here I am in the kitchen. Jo jo's with me."
STEVE: "So, Jo Jo....Tell Auralynn what you told me about why existentialism sucks. I don't know what I think about it myself. We should let Auralynn decide which of us right. "
JO JO: "Good idea! That's fine with me.
Okay, here's the argument. Existentialism attempts to demolish morality without replacing it with anything of equal value. Sartre says that being a moral person is a symptom of bad faith...a sign that a man is surrendering to group think, and not being true to his own nature. But that's silly."
JO JO: "Is it a good thing if dictators and murderers like Mao and Stalin are true to their own natures? You don't want to blindly embrace traditional morality, but you don't want to reject it out of hand either. Morality creates a wall that shields us from barbarism and allows civilization to flourish."
JO JO: "I guess I believe in Cicero's notion of "Right Reason." We should accept as truth the fundamental moral principals that are common to all men and all nations in every time. Using those fundamental truths as a foundation, we should use reason to deduce a specific morality. We don't need Sartre's philosophy....."
JO JO: ".....or Camu's either. I mean, that line from Camu's 'The Stranger: 'I shot him because the sun was in my eyes'....that sounds fun and
avante garde and all that, but if you actually knew someone who did that, you'd think he was crazy. You can't base a morality on silly stuff like that."
AURALYNN: "True, but in Cicero's time humanity may have been united in believing that slavery was natural and moral. You wouldn't want to base a morality on an idea like that, eith...mmf...blorf."
AURALYNN: "Oh, sorry...my lips are dry and I had to....I'd offer you some lip balm, but......"
JO JO: "LIP BALM!!! THAT SUMS IT UP EXACTLY!!!!!"
JO JO: "Okay, traditional morality has some flaws, and all of us aren't going to agree on what the basics are, but there is a consensus about most things, and what there is no agreement on....well, we apply a sort of lip balm to it. In lieu of a permanent solution...we discuss it. It'll work out eventually."
JO JO: "Alright, I rest my case."
STEVE: "i don't know, Jo Jo. You're not giving the Existentialists the benefit of patching up their inconsistencies with lip balm. Aaaaargh....it's all so confusing."
STEVE: "Auralynn, You're the tie breaker. Who won this discussion? Does Existentialism suck?"
AURALYNN: "Well...yes, of course it sucks."
AURALYNN: "I mean, Aristotle said that you can tell if an idea is a good one because a good idea is always beneficial to both the individual and to the community. What's beneficial to anyone about killing someone because the sun was in your eyes?"
JO JO: ""Thank you, Auralynn! You have earned yourself a doughnut and a YooHoo when next we meet."
