This morning in ethics class we talked about 3 bases for ethical decisions.  These weren't out of the textbook, they were typed and lectured by the professor.  No citations were noted.  There seemed to be a dichotomy set up with a bias.  I felt as if his agenda was to lay the groundwork for moral relativism.   

In looking them up tonight I found that his descriptions are slightly, but critically, out of order.  He set up consequentialism in opposition to intuitism and labled intuitism as ethical egoism.  But I found ethical egoism to be a form of consequentialism.

He also used examples of the Catholic church's morality and decision making in a disparaging tone.  He described decisions about abortions in hospitals as if they were indisputably unreasonable and described Catholic confession as if it were a ineffectual form of praying away people's behavioral or psychological problems.  I intuitively reserved interjecting here as a matter of prudence but it bothered my conscience.

In thinking back about it, I probably made the right choice as I would not have been allowed to make an adequate defense and it would have distracted greatly for the class topic.  Also, I am sure that better opportunities will arise and I could e better prepared to respectfully defend the church.

After class I got to work with a newly sober person on taking his 12 step program.  We talked about step 1. I took the approach of drawing the key concepts from the wording of the step itself and working on each subconcept breaking them down like a factor tree.  I think that I ought to investigate and map out this idea further. In looking up insanity in the Big Book, my student pointed out a phrase to me as a definition of insanity that I don't recall using before, "Whatever the precise definition of the word may be, we call this plain insanity. How can such a lack of proportion, of the ability to think straight, be called anything else?"


Insanity: a profound lack of proportion of the ability to think straight.


I bickered with my wife today on several home management matters today.  In thinking back to the source of my discontent I see that I was lacking tolerance and patience with her.

I griped at my kids tonight about pestering me with demands.  I yelled commands to rouse them to action to clean up and get ready for bed after they repeatedly(?) ignored me.  My oldest son protested and I assigned  him sentences.  I revoked them when I thought back about it and realized that I made decisions that contributed to that situation and I actually was impatient.  I sat them down for fruit salad and apologized to them but stood firm about the requirement to stay on schedule and do their duties.  I need to complete and post the daily schedule that I was working on.

I worked on math a little

Thanks be to God.