'86: How I Failed Ethics

Lyrics for '86: How I Failed Ethics

Though majoring in Visual and Environmental Studies And minoring in History of Sci I had to retake Ethics from my Mennonite professor For whom my skepticism didn't fly The first time I made mincemeat of the standard propositions Establishing a so-called moral science And I declared morality an offshoot of aesthetics And got a failing C for my defiance So next semester I back to Divinity School trotted Proverbial tail not between my legs And spent the whole course positing my own ethical system While other college students emptied kegs Information ethics, cyberethics — both since taken — Said: Maximize the information flow Toward a hypothetical end state in which the cosmos Consists entirely of our info And at the highest level possible, not only data But data about data dot dot dot Or life on top of life on top of life, et cetera Profundity, my mother'd say — I'd not My Mennonite professor did concede I'd done the coursework Although my system left him quite dismayed Depending, as it did, on neither history nor Jahweh And gave me, finally, a passing grade