I get it now

There are some comments in the post about Terri Schiavo that have crystallized something for me. It explains the bat-shit-crazy people, and how George Bush got elected and re-elected.

I consider logic and reason immutable. Apparently, for a lot of people, logic can become irrelevant. The rule of law can be irrelevant. Reason can be irrelevant. What is reasonable and unemotional can all be discarded in a mind when a person's moral compass is violated.

I think those types of people can makes logical judgments, up until the moral tipping point. I'm different in that I keep tuned into the logical aspect of something regardless of my sense of morality.

For the people on a typical jury, their sense of morality can tip the scale at some point where they can change their mind.

Example: the death penalty. I'm opposed to it. Consider a jury evaluating the case of a white 18 year old who kills an older man in a drug deal. The odds are that a jury will not impose a death penalty. Change the age of the offender to 30, and the odds increase that they will. Change the victim to a women who the offender robbed, and the odds increase a lot. Make it 10 victims and we're pretty sure the offender is going to get the death penalty.

My vote would be no in all cases, because in my view the death penalty is wrong, and circumstances are irrelevant.

What I'm saying has nothing to do with the death penalty per-se but about how reason can be weighted against extraneous factors to the point where moral indignation is more important then the clear cut logic.

That's exactly what is going on with the Terri Schiavo case, and that's exactly how people justify abusing and torturing Iraqi prisoners. It's how people oppose gay marriage, and the list goes on and on. Nearly every issue I write about on my blog can be traced to different positions people have, based on where their moral tipping point is. For some, the fulcrum of the logic lever is very far to the left (so to speak) and it's very hard to cloud their rational thought through offending their morals. For others, they teeter on losing focus on logic frequently due to moral crises that are constantly crashing on them. I think the super religious freaks are that way. Their grasp on logic is a thin sliver that gets blown away the moment the slightest deviation presents itself.

I really noticed it in the comments about Schiavo, on my blog here, and elsewhere. Even from Congressmen.

If Mr. Schiavo was a fine upstanding family man who was at Terri's side in the hospital every day, and who never won any kind of lawsuit, and seemingly was torn apart by the decision, not many people would object to his decision to disconnect the feeding tubes. It wouldn't be on the news at all. It would all quietly be over with.

That same exact scenario happens in this country all the time. That is a FACT. Please drill that into your head. People are disconnected from feeding tubes as a matter of routine. It probably happens every single day. OKAY?

But - Mr. Schiavo is perceived as an evil guy. He's in it for the money. He's got other children and a girlfriend - basically an all around jerk.

That nudges some people's moral tipping point and now all of a sudden the tubes should not be disconnected.

Try and evaporate the emotion and analyze that. On one hand, it's okay the tubes are disconnected. One the other, it's not okay. In the eyes of the law, which is just words on a paper and has no moral say so, both cases are exactly the same.

But - when you get human beings involved, all of that changes and the rational and sensible thing is suddenly the wrong thing.

That is how otherwise logical people become Bat Shit Fucking Crazy.

Oh boy.. I added another letter to it.. BSFC's. It's all perfectly clear to me now.

The next step that I need to figure out is how to teach people to consider issues without a moral tipping point clouding their judgement. People are very highly resistent to anyone tampering with anything that would challenge their belief system and possibly get them to understand they were not viewing things in the best possible way.

That's like trying to get a freeper to say he/she was wrong on a political issue.

I'll have to think about this.