Transportation is key to new experiences – That’s necessary for the best fun
Ted Balaker, policy analyst at Reason Foundation where he has authored studies on urban policy and workplace issues, His work has appeared in dozens of publications, 7-07, [“Why Mobility Matters to Personal life,” The Galvin Project to End Congestio, Reason, http://www.insideronline.org/summary.cfm?id=5497] E. Liu
Mixed-use developments, and the “live, work, play” motto included in their promotional ¶ literature, have found favor among many local public officials. The idea is to put many ¶ kinds of options in the same area, so that they are easily accessible by foot or transit. Public ¶ officials hope that folks will find most of what they need nearby, so that there will be less need to ¶ drive. They often encourage and even subsidize projects that combine apartments or condominiums ¶ with employment spaces and entertainment options like restaurants and public parks. ¶ ¶ Unfortunately, many municipalities still segregate properties by use. Retail has its designated areas, ¶ which are separate from residential, office space, and so on. Officials should liberalize land use ¶ regulations to accommodate a greater mix of uses. Even so, we must not hold to unrealistic ¶ expectations about “live, work, play” communities. We have examined some of the factors that trip ¶ up the “live, work” part of the vision, but what about “live, play”? Might people be able to satisfy ¶ their playful sides close to home? ¶ ¶ In some cases, the answer is yes. Those who live in city centers in New York, Chicago, San ¶ Francisco and elsewhere often enjoy having a cozy restaurant a few doors down. It can be very ¶ convenient and relaxing to leave the car in the garage and take a quick stroll to dinner. The same ¶ can be said for other entertainment destinations, like parks or theaters. But whether they want to be ¶ entertained or just unwind, people don’t just care about proximity. Variety matters too. ¶ ¶ When we head out the door, much of the fun is seeing, tasting, and experiencing something new. ¶ We seek a change in scenery. We enjoy poking around some unexplored corner of our city. Fun-¶ seekers in the liveliest neighborhoods may be a short walk from a half-dozen quality restaurants, ¶ but after they’ve experienced each of them a few times chances are they’ll want to add new options ¶ to the mix. Efficient public transport can expand our opportunity circles somewhat, but our ¶ entertainment options explode exponentially if we enjoy speedy auto travel. ¶ ¶ When mobility improves, we enjoy more choices, not just in restaurants, but in all aspects of the ¶ culture boom. Two decades ago who would have imagined that chefs would join the ranks of ¶ celebrities? Today Americans watch all sorts of cooking shows and buy the latest cookbooks. So ¶ many of us are eager to satisfy our inner Emeril. America’s amateur chefs enjoy hunting down ¶ ingredients—meats, cheeses, vegetables, and spices—to make their dishes just right. They head to ¶ M ¶ ¶ ¶ specialty markets. Some stores display wide organic food offerings. Others promise the freshest ¶ fish. Ethnic markets allow us to indulge in other cultures and treat our friends and family to ¶ authentic tastes. If it is difficult to get around we have to ratchet down our expectations. We have ¶ to settle for the places that are nearby. But the more mobility improves, the easier it is to get to the ¶ farmer’s market, to Chinatown, or to the Italian deli. ¶ ¶ Although America’s “foodie” population has swelled, it still accounts for only a small slice of our ¶ nation. Most people’s interests lie elsewhere. But whatever you do simply because you enjoy it—¶ dance, hike, fish, hunt for antiques—improved mobility will provide you with more opportunities ¶ to do it.
Transportation Key to Love Lack of transportation undermines love – Travel, dating pools, opportunities – Decreases chances of finding “the one”
Ted Balaker, policy analyst at Reason Foundation where he has authored studies on urban policy and workplace issues, His work has appeared in dozens of publications, 7-07, [“Why Mobility Matters to Personal life,” The Galvin Project to End Congestio, Reason, http://www.insideronline.org/summary.cfm?id=5497] E. Liu
All across the nation, Cupid’s arrow is getting stuck in traffic. Although Westchester County is ¶ geographically close to Manhattan, because travel is such a hassle, New York City singles ¶ often tag Westchesterites as “geographically undesirable.”28 Thousands of Atlanta-area Match.com ¶ subscribers will not date anyone who lives more than 10 miles away. Atlanta spans nearly 2,000 ¶ square miles, but immobility limits these love seekers to a tiny corner of the metropolitan area.29 ¶ ¶ Washington, D.C. might be worst of all. According to Match.com, singles there are most likely to ¶ care about how far they travel for love.30 Elizabeth Reed refused to travel more than five miles for ¶ a date. “In D.C.,” she says, “five miles is the longest five miles you’ve ever traveled.”31 ¶ ¶ To some, particularly those in small towns and rural America, it might sound ridiculous that traffic ¶ would get between humans and what they crave most in life. Surely today’s singles can deal with a ¶ longer drive, particularly since they’re driving in the comfort of their leather interior, climate-¶ controlled, satellite radio-equipped sedans. But there’s little reason to launch into a “the trouble ¶ with kids today” speech. After all, some aspects of courtship are timeless, but others are quite ¶ modern. ¶ ¶ When people lived and worked in small villages, they chose their spouses from within those small ¶ villages, local clans, and within cliques and social classes. Today mobility gives us more choices. ¶ Ever improving transportation modes—from foot to carriage to train to car—expand our dating ¶ pools. Online dating expands them still more. We don’t have to settle for our acquaintances living ¶ on our block, or rely on distant relatives to arrange a date, let alone a wedding. And that’s a good ¶ thing because modern love-seekers expect a lot more out of a mate. ¶ ¶ Our spouses should not only love us, they should fulfill us, excite us, make us laugh, and make us ¶ feel better about ourselves. We want our spouses to be our best friend and our confidant. What are ¶ the chances we’ll find that person living next door? ¶ ¶ Singles can no longer assume other singles share their religious beliefs; yesterday’s agrarian ¶ villages were nothing like today’s vast, multicultural metropolises. Singles can no longer just ¶ assume agreement on core issues. Having kids is no longer a foregone conclusion; it’s an open ¶ choice. Even if both want kids, there are still the questions of “how many?” and “when?” ¶ And let’s not forget the serendipitous side of love—the chance encounters that occur when people ¶ are allowed to churn naturally. The more they go out the better chance singles have of finding “the ¶ one.” Singles go to places—to bars, bookstores, churches, concerts, restaurants—and fall in love. ¶ ¶ Unfortunately, many American love-seekers find that their dating pools are no longer expanding—¶ they’re shrinking. Rising congestion has begun to reverse the process that gave us more ¶ opportunities for romance. And congestion routinely compromises prime dating times. It’s often at ¶ its worst on Friday and Saturday evenings. And once you do finally meet your date, the ¶ aggravation you just endured is often written all over your face. “Why would you want to show up ¶ on a first date and give that face?” asks Elizabeth. ¶ ¶ Elizabeth did find the man of her dreams (lucky for Jay he lived 4.9 miles away from her) and they ¶ were marr ied in 2003. But what about all those other Elizabeths and Jays who don’t meet because ¶ their travel orbits never overlap? When traveling takes longer than it should, when it’s more ¶ frustrating and exhausting than it should be, people do less of it. The large-scale mixing that makes ¶ cities so exhilarating becomes smaller scale. People are less inclined to experience new things, in ¶ new places, with new people. They’re more inclined to mimic their ancestors and travel within the ¶ confines of their tiny, familiar orbit.
Transportation Key to Love
[Insert a terminal impact to love here]
OR
Love is a moral obligation – It’s a positive feeling that causes self-recognition as an agent
Edward Sankowski, Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Oklahoma, 78, [“Love and Moral Obligation, The Journal of Value Inquiry ¶ Volume 12, Number 2 (1978), 100-110, DOI: 10.1007/BF00145887, http://www.springerlink.com/content/k57n3j2410j27140/] E. Liu
Questions about kinds of love will recur, but now could something more be ¶ said about what is meant by applying "moral obligation" to love? (For ¶ curiously enough it has not been necessary up to now to do this). The notion ¶ of "moral obligation" need not have uniform or precise rules, either as ¶ employed by ordinary persons in everyday life or by philosophers when doing ¶ philosophy. Nonetheless, for the purposes of this essay the notion might ¶ usefully be explicated in some degree. There is a fairly clear-cut, natural and ¶ well-established use of "moral obligation" worth our attention. In this use, to ¶ say "A has a moral obligation to X" could be understood as saying this: "A ¶ ought morally to X and if A does not X, A would properly be subject to moral ¶ blame for not X-ing, other things being equal." (For this explication, "A ¶ ought morally to X" does not imply anything about A's moral responsibility. ¶ It is simply a judgment about the positive moral value in A's X-ing. It might be ¶ rephrased "It ought morally to be the case that A X-es.") This explication ¶ leaves much to be desired for some purposes, but for my purposes here it ¶ suffices. It is not one of my aims here to inquire into the intricacies of the ¶ various uses of "moral obligation" or to resolve any of the major questions ¶ that might arise over that word concept taken by itself. My interest in this ¶ essay is primarily in love and moral obligation, not in moral obligation except ¶ insofar as it is relevant to love. Though some philosophers have criticized this ¶ general sort of explication of moral obligation, their objections are not ¶ impressive. If presented with supposed counterexamples consisting of cases ¶ where supposedly the explicandum ("A has a moral obligation to X") applies ¶ but the explicans ("A ought morally to X and if A does not X, A would ¶ properly be subject to moral blame for not X-ing, other things being equal") ¶ does not apply (or vice versa) one could properly respond that the supposed ¶ counterexamples only show the ambiguity of the relevant notions, but do not ¶ overthrow the claim that sometimes just what one may defensibly mean by ¶ talking about A's moral obligation to X is that A ought morally to X and that ¶ if A does not X, A would properly be subject to moral blame for not X-ing, ¶ other things being equal. The final vague escape clause is necessary to take ¶ care of cases where other extraneous factors might make it wrong to blame A ¶ morally; for example, if in certain circumstances the consequences of blaming ¶ A would be disastrous and morally out of proportion to A's lapse. Vague ¶ though the explication be, what we mean by moral obligation sometimes is ¶ vague. 1 ¶ Now applying this notion of moral obligation to love, we may find it ¶ surprising that any philosophers would deny that there could be a moral ¶ obligation to love. Surely it is sometimes morally the case that A ought to ¶ love. All this means here is that morally it would be better if A loves than that ¶ A does not love. And this is clearly sometimes the case; love is sometimes a ¶ positive value. This is obvious. Moreover, sometimes A can regulate his ¶ emotions in such a way that if A does not love under certain circumstances, A ¶ is properly subject to blame for that reason. Here is only one example: A, on ¶ the verge of achieving a loving interpersonal relationship in one setting, ¶ chooses instead to pursue some ultimately shallow power over others in ¶ another setting far distant where love will not arise. The unfortunate A has ¶ evaded love. 12 The unfortunate A may deserve some blame for this. Talking ¶ about blame here is just talking about an aspect of A's freedom. Thus the ¶ recognition of A's capacity for modifying, cultivating, and, in sum, regulating ¶ his emotions, including love, leads to a recognition of the applicability of one ¶ concept of moral obligation to love in some contexts. ¶ This point about moral obligation would apply for many varieties of love. ¶ A case could at least intelligibly be argued for particular persons in particular ¶ contexts having moral obligations to many sorts of love. If we consider but ¶ one recent schema of types of love, moral obligation would be arguably ¶ applicable to some cases in each of the six categories in D. P. Verene's ¶ classification: 1) brotherly love; 2) erotic or sexual love; 3) compassionate ¶ love; 4) self-love; 5) intellectual or philosophical love; 6) religious and divine ¶ love. 13 The point even holds for some cases in class 2), which might provoke ¶ most surprise. Proclaiming the idea that sexual love could be a moral obli- ¶ gation may excite a mixture of horror and pity in my readers. Images of an ¶ overbearing sexual orthodoxy which grimly demands marriage and sex as ¶ duty determines may commingle with images of tyrannous demands for a ¶ quota of orgasms, at the very mention of a moral obligation to sexual love. ¶ And yet I cannot think the idea is mad. A person committed to celibacy for no ¶ good reason might under certain circumstances be fairly charged with a kind ¶ of immorality in neglecting to develop his or her
sexual experience. Particular ¶ cases, such as are involved in the claim to justified celibacy by those with a ¶ religious vocation, might present room for argument, but this is another ¶ matter. Moreover, the claim of an obligation to sexual love might be sub- ¶ versive of emotional and sexual orthodoxy. Think of cases where the anxiety ¶ of rejecting conventional satisfaction makes it more comfortable to accept ¶ safer and less valuable forms of sexual affection than would be possible under ¶ alternative arrangements. Even here we sometimes have moral obligation in a ¶ sense some philosophers find paradigmatically displayed where there is ¶ conflict between inclination and duty.¶ vii ¶ The two conditions in the account of moral obligation might be the targets of ¶ further objections. But they also suggest further positive insights into the ¶ point of ascribing an obligation to love in appropriate contexts. ¶ It might be objected that there are dangers in a person's evaluating himself ¶ with respect to the qualityof the love he feels. It might be said, in the spirit of ¶ such a worry, that a sure way to guarantee the impossibility of love of any ¶ vivid and valuable sort will be to wonder persistently whether one loves and ¶ whether in a good or bad way. There is indeed a danger that self-evaluation of ¶ one's love may take inappropriate forms, but self-evaluation does not have to ¶ take such forms. Self-evaluation of the quality of one's feelings is indeed often ¶ a constituent of valuable kinds of love, rather than a mental item distinct from ¶ valuable love in itself. 14 ¶ It might also be objected that the encouragement of blaming for mental ¶ states leads to too harsh and overbearing a conception of morality. As one ¶ author writes in a similar context, "There will be a perfect orgy of moral ¶ indignation and condemnation, and charity will almost disappear from the ¶ world. ''~5 Part of the answer here is that the spirit of charity is more likely to ¶ emerge from an extension of intelligent reflection, orgies of indignation and ¶ condemnation less likely to result with the growth of a certain reflectiveness ¶ about emotional sensibility. The determined objector may still be dissatisfied. ¶ Would it not be possible to foster individuals who evaluate their emotions ¶ with a view to appropriate regulation, but without blame upon lapse? Some ¶ philosophers have thought so, but they seem to me to miss an important ¶ aspect of the matter.¶ . ¶ It might admittedly be possible for persons to evaluate features of their ¶ personalities with a view to improvement though never feeling emotions like ¶ guilt or remorse upon failures of self-regulative efforts. But something valu- ¶ able would be lost along with the bitter self-reactive feelings. It is of the ¶ greatest importance that persons should be aware of themselves as agents in ¶ their self-regulative enterprises. With love in particular this is especially ¶ important. Love can and sometimes should be an achievement, and it can be ¶ an achievement of a particularly significant sort, since in creating oneself as a ¶ person who loves in a certain way, one creates the self at a level more ¶ fundamental than with many other achievements. The desire for an "inner ¶ sphere of liberty" about the interior of which there is moral silence, and the ¶ desire to free love of its connections with possible blame are outweighed by ¶ the importance of recognition of oneself as an agent in certain respects so far ¶ as one's love is concerned, and this necessitates a connection between moral ¶ self-regulation with respect to love, and possible blame.
Sacrifice Good
Sacrifice is morally essential to achieving a complex and larger goal.
David Cummiskey (professor of Philosphy @ Bates University, Ph.D., M.A., University of Michigan; B.A., Washington College) 1990 (“Kantian Consequentialism”, http://www.bates.edu/philosophy/faculty/david-cummiskey/) chip
Indeed, despite Kant’s deontological intuitions about particular moral cases, his basic normative principle is best interpreted as having a fundamentally consequentialist structure. In order to justify agent-centered constraints, one needs a non-value-based rationale. Many Kantians attempt to provide such a rationale by appealing to the Kantian principle of treating persons as ends. The Kantians’ strategy is clear: Treating persons as ends involves respecting persons, and respecting persons involves recognizing agent-centered constraints on action. We have seen, however, that this strategy is problematic. The Kantian principle itself generates a duty to advance a moral goal: The duty to strive as much as one can to promote the flourishing of rational beings, and to make others’ ends one’s own, is the very essence of treating humanity as an end. Morality thus constrains and shapes the pursuit of individual well-being or happiness. We have seen, however, that Kant’s moral theory does not provide a rationale for basic agent-centered constraints that limit what we can do in the pursuit of this complex moral goal. The imperative to respect persons thus does indeed generate a consequentialist normative theory, rather than the desired deontological alternative. It certainly seems that a Kantian ought to be a normative consequentialist. Conscientious Kantian agents have a basic duty to strive, as much as possible, to promote the freedom and happiness of all rational beings. In the pursuit of this moral goal, it may be necessary for the interests of some to give way for the sake of others. If we are sacrificed, we are not treated simply as a means to another’s goal; on the contrary, our sacrifice is required by a principle we endorse. Our non-moral interests and inclinations may cause us to feel reluctant, but since our sacrifice furthers a moral goal that we endorse and that we are required to pursue, our sacrifice does not violate our moral autonomy or our rights.
Last printed 9/4/2009 07:00:00 PM
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