Morality, Snorality!

I ask Carll what he types about. We eye each other curiously. CAI – Canine Artificial Intelligence – translates both ways, from Dog to Human and Human to Dog. Input “Morality” and CAI gags, gasping after a few seconds “NKE,” that is, “No Known Equivalent.” Input Grace, Truth, Kindness, Justice, Faith, Beauty, and the rest of Carll’s headings and you get the same result: NKE. Dogs, it appears, don’t know from Morality. And Carll spends his life gassing about it. What gives?

Distressing, not to say Tragic, when a loved one devotes themselves to a vocation wholly futile and imaginary – alchemy, say, or politics. That way madness lies! Morality, Carll explains, is the science of making humans better, so they decide sanely, allowing the world to wag on a while. (Don’t you love that verb, “wag”?) It is not – he gets quite heated here – leashing or lashing (he loves to alliterate), not minimizing but magnifying human potential. Absent morality, the human world would be – pardon the expression – dog eat dog, an incessant contest for superiority – more power, wealth, sustenance for the voracious few – no room for Grace, Truth, Kindness, Justice, etc.

I ask him why he says, “dog eat dog.” Dogs don’t eat dogs any more than humans eat humans, that is, only in a pinch. He tousles me in response, which I like but also resent, as if my contributions to our discourse were cute, decorative, nugatory (two can play this word game!).

I “get” morality about as pellucidly as Carll got physics back in the day (“feet per second per second”? Huh?). Here’s his gist apparently (translating Dog back to Human):

Evolution, lacking brakes, whooshed the human species from creature status to crazy without pausing at sane. Their daunting intellects, which devised the Sistine ceiling and smart phone, also concocted the H-bomb and MAGA Republicans. Recall the anecdote of the Chinese sage asked his opinion about the French Revolution, Carll inquires (rhetorically)? Too soon to tell, the sage replies. So with human evolution. Is this amazing humanity accident, which began occurring about three hundred thousand years ago, a good or bad idea, a planetary plus or minus? Too soon to tell?

Morality, Carll lumbers on (get him started and he’s hard to stop), you might call corrective engineering for this evolutionary inadvertence. How do we restore the common sense that intellect crowded out of the human brain? How do we retain Mozart and Shakespeare and Michelangelo while purging our species of, excuse the expression, Trump? Grace, Truth, Kindness, Justice, etc. aren’t nice-to-have but necessary to the species’ survival, perhaps the planet’s. Either we learn to coexist or we won’t exist at all, at least for long.

And only Carll knows this, I can’t help wondering?

No, no, he anticipates my poke, he’s not smarter, there are plenty of sensible folks out there. It’s just that they’ve been drowned out or bewildered by nonsense, enticements, whacky logic, voracity, insecurity, lies. Modern communication technologies, combined with the collapse of community, make the forces of evil ever more persuasive. The smartest species ever is stupefying itself so a grasping few can gain advantage. And no, Carll’s fingers shriek, it was not always thus! The level of human insanity and the dangers it poses have reached an all-time high. It is time to reintroduce morality into human considerations. Be decent or die!

I feel a little sorry for the guy, gotta say, he’s so hepped up – a Jeremiah – or maybe Chicken Little: THE SKY IS FALLING!!!! Is he right? Maybe he’s smoking something. Hard for me to say, I’m just a dog.