Morality

[tagryn]

Context: in the comic strip "Funky Winkerbean", the title character has evolved into a recovering alcoholic. In the previous panels, he'd ruined his surprise birthday party by falling off the wagon and showing up totally trashed. Here, he's meeting with his AA sponsor afterward and discussing why it happened & how to avoid it again. This is a couple panels into it:

click here

The panel bugs me a bit. Perhaps it isn't meant to make any larger philosophical points, just that Funky needs to deal with some of his "baggage" or he'll go back to the bottle sooner or later. OK, point taken. However...if what the sponsor says is true, then if I were a homicidal maniac and enjoyed putting guns to people's heads and pulling the trigger, and felt no remorse over it, then by his standard it would be OK as long as I didn't feel any self-hatred over it?

Comments

[erikred.livejournal.com]

More to the point, I think FW is trying to say that the root cause of you becoming a homocidal maniac who feels no remorse for these heinous actions is the true sin of self-hatred. If you didn't hate yourself, you'd never have become the sort of person who can perform these actions.

In other words, no, it's not the basis for an ethical system; instead, it's a recipe for recovery when you're ready to start the long, hard healing process.