A perfectly extraordinary man talks surfing and the secrets to a healthy society…
Are you at all interested in the fruitless struggle of man? Do you have an inquisitive mind that questions…everything?
The ethics of eating meat.
The ethics of, say, spending a million bucks to save one cancer patient in Australia or the USA instead of rescuing a thousand Third World kids from death by dysentery or whatever.
The ethics of torture if it leads to, say, the saving of lives?
Lethal injections for disabled babies?
Should adult siblings be able to fuck each other without fear of prosecution?
And so on.
Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher whose ideas have been shaking trees since the seventies, knows how to frame a question that forces you to really switch on a few extra neurones.
Oh he’s a provocateur. A utilitarian, too.
Which means?
You do whatever has the best results for everyone not just yourself.
Simple?
Not exactly.
A utilitarian would torture the daylights out of a terrorist if it was revealed he had an atom bomb primed to go and the lives of hundreds of thousands depended on finding out where it was etc.
Anyway, Peter Singer surfs.
He ain’t John John, but who is.
Singer likes the “entire experience”, the feeling of sitting on his board, looking at the cliffs behind him, examining the moves of better surfers, the challenge of riding a wave well.
In this sixteen-minute interview, Singer talks about “surfing and the healthy society.”
It’ll open your world, even if it’s a just a little.
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The problem with torture is that it gives you bad intel. Easy to force a false confession, or to get the guy to snitch on his own mother to get it to stop, but doesn’t mean you’re getting the truth
I’d be interested in his take on localism?
Utilitarianism. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
A basically totally discredited concept these days because it can be used to condone slavery.
Be that what it is, Peter Singer is one of the great philospohers. Used to lecture at Monash before he went ivy league.
Ain’t that swell should get him on the pod.
UP THE SWELLIANS!!
Wanker. Morally vacant materialist bean parser.
Hmmm. I’m with him a lot of the way, but I do think that there are absolutes. And for instance his example of the terrorist and the atom bomb raises the idea, that if we were to stick to certain rules for living and treating other people, maybe we wouldn’t have ended up in that situation.
Very easy to end up super cynical. That’s my main beef with Utilitarianism. Whenever I listen to/read guys like Fischer, I think of Dalai Lama and Ghandi and true moral courage.
The health care example is a very pertinent one, however, for the Baby Boomer shitstorm that’s brewing in our can’t-won’t-plan-beyond-one-election-cycle western societies.
Hold on is it book week?? Dez you trying to throw shade ( a la Slats) on Chas book by spruiking Springers book??
Can we arrange a sit down between Peter Singer and Wiggolly’s Paddling Style?
This would be gripping!
How do we know they are not one and the same?
Can Singer do the post heat interviews?
One of my favourite humans. Forced me to confront the idea that if my mother was hanging from a cliff top by her fingertips and my daughter was about to eat RatSak, I’d push the old bird over the edge to save the kid. Cheers Pete 👍
What would Singer think of John John’s post Mendes Heat interview when he concludes with the statement “it’s bad for me, but good for surfing”?
You know what I think, Sophie already left a copy of Singer’s book in JJF’s locker in Lemoore.
https://www.utilitarian.net…
Singers summary.
Basically: reciprocity, tit for tat.
In the spirit of Singer, consensual, loving incest between two adults. Discuss.
Something you wanna tell us Dezza?
I always dreamed of a sister. Is that enough?
EYEBROWS RAISED MUTHAFUCKA!
(am I doing it right Nik?)
As long as the offspring from such a union doesn’t cost the tax payer a cent through the NDIS, I have no problem.
ok, anything is better than listening to the pottz say that sally came out of the tube three seconds after the imaginary spit