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The Popeye Principle

"I yam what I yam, and that's all I yam."

Those are the somewhat immortal words of the Comics Philosopher, Popeye.

(I am sorry to say it reminds me of what might be the most mindless chiche of our time:  "It is what it is."  To which I nearly alway resist replying, "Well I will be damned!  So it is!")

This is a terribly obtuse way of saying that I have been trying to remember the name of the philosopher whose argument, as I fragmentarily recall it, is that our reasons for doing what we do, ethically, can be reduced to this:  we do things because we are who we are.  What I might erroneously recall is that he used the example of what we might be reduced to answering if asked why we jumped off a diving board.  Not because it is hot:  other people, in hot weather, do not do that.  Sometimes we don't dive in hot weather.  Sometimes we do.  We do it, he said, because "I am I."  We are like that.

Out training for becoming moral persons begins in childhood.  Parent say, "No", gently or firmly, and sometimes scoot us off to our rooms, or postpone treats.  We are completely other-directed.  As we mature, habits become who we are, and we internalize what we have been taught, or conclude for ourselves.  Teachers continue what parents began, and for those who are religious, God becomes the ultimate enforcer.

Unfortunately, so long as we have external enforcers, even if they are publicly paid and wear guns, or free of charge and promise eternal life, our morality is something enforced.  What we hope for in maturity is to become rational, inner-directed, self-enforcers.  We want to become people who do not need external enforcers.

We want good people, not just obedient people.  Obedient people need an enforcer.  Good people do what comes naturally.

Most of us are, of course, a work in progress; some combination of needing reinforcement from others, and just being what we are.  When we say we trust each other, we mean that we believe that the other person is ethically or morally dependable.  When we don't trust each other, we lay traps, or hire someone to watch the other.

For ourselves, we want to be able to say that we do not steal, or cheat, or screw around,  not because we might get caught, or disappoint someone else, but because that is how we are, or want to be.  Trust isn't built on a clean record sheet, but on what we believe the other person is like.  We want to be "like that".  I want to be able to say I did something because "I am who I am".

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