[MD] Is Morality innate in the cosmos?

[Platt Holden]

Ham -- 

> > I asked:
> > Have you reviewed my Freedom essay yet?
> > I'll be looking for your full report by Monday.

As I predicted I began to cheer I read your essay. But then I ran into a 
problem. And it's only Sunday. First, what I cheered:

"There is evidence of a creeping disregard in our society for the value of 
freedom, along with widespread abdication of the personal responsibilities 
needed to ensure its viability."

"But the freedom of a nation isn't free. It's bought through the hard-won 
struggle of enlightened individuals who know its value and will sacrifice their 
lives to preserve it." (Not the Hippies)

"A free society is not immune to the laws of gravity; left to its own devices 
it runs downhill."

"Thus a free society cannot long exist if its citizens do not consider self-
restraint a value." 

(I couldn't help but notice your frequent references to values which, of 
course, is Pirsig's whole shtick.)

But then after cheering the first 400 or so words of your essay, I was taken up 
short by this statement:

"While man is delivered into this world meticulously packaged and fully 
equipped for life, no instructions are included."

Fully equipped for life? I don't think so. Unlike his animal brethren, he must 
acquire knowledge to survive. He is not equipped with tooth and claw and the 
instinct to use them properly.  He is born naked and without weapons except for 
his mind which he can choose to use or not. Instinct will not help him to know 
that a spear is a better tool to hunt with than his bare hands, or that a wheel 
and axel can help to carry a heavy load. "Fully equipped" suggests to me that 
man has all the know-how he needs to live. I say not so.  

Perhaps I have misinterpreted your meaning. In any case, from that point on you 
get into your essentialist philosophy which I have yet to comprehend, due no 
doubt to my lack of ability to grasp the concept of "negation" and the meaning 
of such sentences as:

"As an incremental negate of it Absolute Source, the individual cannot exist 
beyond the conditions of finitude. Instead, having rounded the negate cycle, 
the individuated self surrenders its 'I'-ness--conditional being and 
existential awareness--completely to otherness, thereby revoking its negated 
status and reclaiming its Essence -Value."

Does this mean I'd be better off dead? Sorry to sound facetious, but that's  
how it came across to me. Is there a plain English version that would drop such 
words and phrases as "finitude," "negate cycle," "individuated self," 
"existential awareness" and "negated status?" 

Best regards,
Platt