The Morality of Selling Rotten Peanuts

So one of the big stories in North America lately (one of many of course) is the fact that the Peanut Corporation of America knowingly sold peanuts that they knew were contaminated with salmonella.

Several young children and elderly people have fallen sick and even a few have died as a result.

Last year of course in China, several babies died and thousands of infants fell sick when dairy companies added melamine (an industrial chemical) to infant milk formula to give it the appearance of more protein.

I suspect the reason for the Chinese companies' doing it was greed. They put profits before people in this case children.

In the case of the Peanut Corporation of America, I suspect it was greed as well.

But since this was America rather than China, there could have been another reason as well.

For the past 25 years, New Age thought has been growing in America.

New Age thought isn't big in China. In fact the closest to New Agers in their thinking- the Dalai Lama and the Falun Gong- the Beijing government detests both with a fiery passion.

New Age thinking is of course the belief that one can create one's own reality. By thinking positive thoughts and saying positive words, somehow magically this is supposed to alter reality to what one wishes.

Shirley MacClaine and other people have expostulated such nonsense in North America over the past 20-odd years. Personally I wish they'd try out their theory by throwing themselves off the Brooklyn Bridge and see if by thinking positive thoughts and saying positive words and acknowledging their inner divinity within, they can create a reality in which the law of gravity doesn't apply and they won't plunge to the river below.

So maybe the President of the Peanut Corporation of America (who was recently given a rough ride in hearings before Congress) is a New Ager. Maybe he genuinely thought that by selling salmonella laced peanuts, he could create his own reality in his mind which would alter the outer reality and eureka there would be no salmonella in the peanuts when people ate them.

But personally I don't think the President of the Peanut Corporation of America is a New Ager.

I just used this example as an idea to show the absurdity and irrationality of New Age thought.

Personally I think the President of the Peanut Corporation of America is an economic neo-Nietzschean Ayn Rand style extreme laissez-faire capitalist in his mind set who would do anything to make a quick buck and maximize as much profits as possible.

So was the President of the Peanut Corporation of America wrong to maximize as much profit as possible even if that meant putting human life at risk by selling salmonella laced peanuts?

Well my dear reader, was he wrong?

Answer now.

I'm sure many of you will answer that he was wrong to do that.

Anyways the reason I ask this question is because of a disturbing statement I read in an ezBlog post last week. The blog was about a woman who was in an abusive relationship.

Anyways, the following statement was made, "There is no such thing as right or wrong. It's all a matter of opinion."

The statement, "There is no such thing as right or wrong"- is that statement right or wrong?

Anyways if one truly believes that there is no such thing as right or wrong, then of course the President of the Peanut Corporation of America wasn't wrong to sell salmonella laced peanuts even if a few kids and old folks died as a result.

The Chinese dairy companies weren't wrong to sell melamine laced infant formula even though many children died and thousands of children fell seriously ill and thousands of mothers and fathers were put through great emotional distress.

Well such is the case if you believe there is no right or wrong.

The idea that there is no right or wrong seems to be becoming very popular these days.

It's definitely always been the position of the New Age Movement- there is no right or wrong.

And I think the reason that the notion "There is no right or wrong" has become so popular these days is because there's a growing number of people- both men and women- who use that position to justify giving in to the itch in their respective genitalia and engage in all sorts of sexual encounters for their own respective pleasure.

Of course these people are so busy thinking with their genitalia rather than their brains, they don't seem to realize the idea "There is no right or wrong" has consequences far beyond the sexual immorality they want to engage in with seemingly clear consciences (since there is no right or wrong).

Thus a man who on the way walking back home to his wife and family (after dallying in various sexual positions with another woman) is suddenly hit and crippled for life by a drunk driver will no doubt be whining and snivelling that the man who hit him had no right to drink and drive and put someone else at risk.

But if there is no right or wrong, then of course the drunk driver can do whatever he pleases.

Who are we to say he was right or wrong in what he chose to do.

The idea that there was no objective right or wrong affected Greek philosophy and held it back.

Then roughly 1500 years ago a man called Socrates arose.

Socrates taught the then revolutionary notion that truth wasn't subjective.

Truth was objective.

Truth was something that lay outside man.

And it was up to man to discover that objective truth rather than create a subjective truth of his own.

Plato taught that in some of his dialogues. Sadly Plato was also influenced by the Greek cult leader Pythagoras (who is better known today for developing mathematical theorems rather than the fact that he was the leader of a mind control cult of brainwashed disciples who had several weird far-out mystical ideas involving numerology) so some of Plato's ideas are weird.

Where Plato's ideas are good, you can see Socrates' influence showing up.

Where Plato's ideas are bad, you can see Pythagoras' influence showing up.

Fortunately for the history of philosophy, Plato's student Aristotle accepted his teacher's Socratic notions and rejected his teacher's far-out Pythagorean cult notions.

Aristotle believed in objective truth.

Aristotle believed in the concept of right and wrong.

And it was Aristotle's notion of objective truth and belief in right and wrong that led to the birth of empirical science.

The 13th Century English Franciscan friar Roger Bacon studied the works of Aristotle and invented empirical science (It was Roger Bacon that did this not Francis Bacon as some anti-Catholic Histories of Science have erroneously taught).

But thanks to the intense stupidity of David Hume and the resulting mind paralysis of Immanuel Kant and the gobbleygook-covered sheer imbecility of Friedrich Hegel, this has led to the resulting philosophical outhouses of deconstructionism and postmodernism whose outhouse sh_t holes we have fallen down today and can't get up.

By accepting deconstructionism, we have returned to the ideas of the pre-Socratic philosophers.

For example by accepting the ludicrous macro-evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin, we have returned to the ideas of the pre-Socratic philosopher Empodocles (Micro-evolution has been shown to be empirically true- evolution occurs within species but macro-evolution- the idea that a species has evolved into a totally new species- no hard core evidence has been found for this despite Richard Dawkins' intense looking up his own a- - hole for signs of that evidence).

Aristotle blew apart the whole notion of macro-evolution in just one sentence on the basis of pure logic alone. I wish I could remember what that phrase was. I remember when I read it in his book Metaphysics (in the chapter where he was taking aim at the ludicrous ideas of Empodocles) in my 4th year university seminar class on Aristotle, I said to myself, "Wow. So much for the ludicrous notion of Darwinian evolution."

So today in terms of philosophical thought, civilization seems to have taken a giant step backwards. We have returned to the ideas of the pre-Socratics in philosophy.

Many so-called thinkers teach there is no objective truth.

We create our own reality.

There is no right or wrong.

In such a world then, dairy companies should be able to sell melamine laced infant formula and peanut companies should be able to sell salmonella laced peanuts- with impunity.