The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 181

181

The False Assumption: “There is no guilt if we are machines.”

To the public, one becomes immoral when one does not agree that Free Will drives the human machine: the public needs a target of guilt in order to discharge aggression.  If one stands between the target and the discharge, one is as good as the target ... and as bad. 

The mechanist’s view is guilty of several thefts.  It steals the guilt from the villain, the right for revenge from the victim,  and from others, the right to dominate through punishment.
Thus, it would be impossible for the whole world to be absolved of blame, since the engineer of such would then take the blame for his having absolved it.

Even if one only privately admits that one is not driving the machine, one does not preclude guilt ... for by one’s own admission, the machine is driving.  One stands between one’s own target and one’s own discharge.  One shoots oneself.


When Evil is no longer our ability to justify our target, it then becomes our inability to find all blame mitigated by the human condition.  The machine never stops.  We cannot stop blaming, and even for this, we blame ourselves.



A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism



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