John Locke and the Role of Government
Here’s a post on philosophy — relevant to our discussion as it deals with the proper role of government in defining policy and in our lives more generally.
It happens to be the birthday of John Locke, 17th Century British “empiricist,” meaning that he believed that all knowledge is derived from the senses. He’s actually better known for his political philosophy; Locke was one of the first to assert that all people had different classes of rights, and that the role of government was to protect those rights. His thinking figured prominently into our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution about 100 years later — and for that, we all owe him our gratitude.
But there is a lot to disagree with about Locke. In particular, he thought that we can know about morality with the same precision that we know about math. I can’t imagine how this makes any sense. In my way of thinking, the logic of morality is at best imprecise; I would go so far as to say that good and bad are largely relative to circumstance, culture, breeding, etc. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (coincidentally also born on today’s date) said, “We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.”
Locke’s viewpoint is really a sick joke when you think about it. A British aristocrat, he made his comment on the precision of morality at a time when his country’s most lucrative industry involved sailing to Africa, rounding up thousands of innocent, defenseless people, shipping them across the Atlantic, and selling those who didn’t die of disease or starvation as slaves to the eager colonists.
See, now aren’t you glad you read 2GreenEnergy? Ya never know what you’re going to find here next. 🙂
