Monday, February 5, 2007

Cycle Paper #1: Do I have an obligation to my fellow human beings?

Every cycle I will write a cycle paper on an assigned topic this cycle paper assignment was to respond to the question: Do I have an obligation to my fellow human beings?

Negativley, no, in my mind no one has any obligation to anyone else human or not. Many people make up their own obligations and rules, but there is no built in “human obligation”. If someone feels that they want to help others or fulfill some type of “commitment” to others, that would be a personal choice not an obligation because the “commitment” itself is an imaginary figment of its creator. I do not believe that there is such thing as an “obligation”. This does not however mean that I feel no need or want to help and give to others. The definition, as quoted from dictionary.com of obligation is ”something by which a person is bound or obliged to do certain things, and which arises out of a sense of duty or results from custom, law, etc.” Law, custom and duty are all fictitious ideas, unsound, fabrications made from human necessity. I am not saying that I do not believe in what they represent however I do not believe that they are real or that anything based on them (such as obligation) have any more substance than they do themselves. But, even with all of this there is part of me that says there is such thing as obligation and moral sanctity, something that sets humans or life in general apart from everything else. Is it true that if "we run the risk that many will shrug their shoulders and say that morality, so conceived, is fine for saints but not for them?"(Singer solution) then all of Human compation will disintagrate and fall away? Maybe as fluid and flakey as moral obligaton is, it holds all the worlds gifts and generousity inside.

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