This evening I restarted my online ethics classes on Outschool, after a break over Christmas and New Year. I had three classes in a row, so it’s diving right back in. There were 7 returning students and 3 new ones all together, so I did my class introduction bit a couple of times. Then we got stuck into the topic, which was “laws”.
We started with questions about why we have laws, would it be possible to have a society without laws, what might such a society be like? Then we moved on to the fact that historically laws were stated unilaterally by a king or emperor and everyone had to follow them, so what gave them the authority to do that? In modern society in contrast, governments make laws, and what gives them that authority, and is it any different to a king?
Then we moved on to questioning if everybody in a country needs to follow the same laws. What if someone strongly objects to a law, or disagrees with it for religious reasons or whatever, should they still have to obey it? What about people from ancient traditional cultures, whose traditional laws conflict with modern government laws? Is it fair for a government to recognise ancient cultures by allowing them to do things that other citizens can’t do?
All this stimulated a lot of very interesting discussion with the kids! I think it’s a good topic that really led to a lot of tricky questions and thoughtful answers.
In other news, earlier I worked on a particularly tricky bit of Darths & Droids plotting and script writing. I wrote a good chunk of material, but it needs polishing and reshaping a bit to flow properly, so it’s not finished yet. I also took a walk up to the shops because I had to visit a pharmacy to get some things. I’ve been trying to avoid going anywhere with people due to the now rampant COVID omicron strain going around, at least until I can get a booster vaccination in a couple of weeks, but I needed some things. Usually the shopping area is bustling with people, but today it was almost like a ghost town a a few people around, but nowhere near the normal levels. I stopped to grab some sushi on the way home for lunch.
New content today:
“Then we moved on to the fact that historically laws were stated unilaterally by a king or emperor and everyone had to follow them, so what gave them the authority to do that?”
I know you know this, but I’m compulsive: that was true in certain places, at certain times (e. g. Hawaii just pre-European-contact), and not true at all in others (classical Athens when there was no tyrant, which was most of the time). I’m watching a video series on the history of my own ancestors, the Jews, and during the Hasmonean period there was actually a time when Judah was a constitutional monarchy with a powerful parliament. This is before the Roman conquest of what became Judea.