Stumped, TV Shows

Stumped…

Maybe I should say something about TV shows.

AGB Nielsen People Ratings (November 4 to 8, 2011) – Now nearing its finale, “100 Days to Heaven” takes lead over “Amaya” in Mega Manila People Ratings.-Starnometer

As I am writing, I could hear the theme from “100 days to Heaven.” The TV drama was about a notorious lady who owns a toy factory. The lady died and when she met St. Peter, she was given 100 days to correct or to make amends to all the people she had wronged when she was still alive. 

 The series will end today, 11-11-11.

While we were having dinner, my wife and daughter were pretty excited about the ending. My wife was even a bit sad that the series was about to end. Even though I do not like watching Pinoy series because I am more of an X-files, Fringe, Smallville person, I was forced to be a passive audience. Hard to admit but I have become a fan of 100 Days to Heaven. Maybe it’s because the series reminded me of that old Michael Landon series Highway to Heaven, about an angel who needed to earn his wings by helping people.


Maybe its Coney Reyes’ acting, maybe it’s the little girl’s acting, maybe the TV network is transmitting subliminal suggestions…

Anyway, the story was trite and the theme song was a popular song from long ago that has become a standard for funeral, not that song was bad or anything. I guess if a song becomes a standard for funeral marches, that song has reached the pinnacle of its success.

The ending has a touch of the Revilla drama..."ipakukulong ba natin ang ating kapatid?"

Hooopps...as I was typing, 100 Days to Heaven did not end today. This was expected. Local networks had this habit of extracting the last, very last drop of advertising revenue so, I guess, the series would be extended for a week. Or they would change the title to 1000 Days to Heaven.

Iglot is also ending today.

Iglot - Description: Iglot (lit. Talking Scrotum or nagsasalitang betlog) is a Philippine television drama series created by GMA Network.

 I was not a fan of the series for the obvious reason: I did not like the creature. It was stiff, the feather (I mean the fur) too artificial, looked like rayon wool to me. The eyes looked like marbles. It didn't even looked like a stuffed toy. It moved awkwardly. 


This creature was not even the center of the story. The writing got so bad that the only thing that  kept the show afloat was Claudine Barretos' mediocre acting.

Lamarck, Paper Mache, Just Having Fun...

I was sitting and reflecting… letting my imagination run amok, looking at my pupils’ papier mache projects. I  was wondering where did my pupils get the inspiration to make papier maches of creatures that have no legs or arms…reptiles and nematodes like snakes and worms are legless, so, no wondering there. 


I was looking at the ovoid shaped-mega cephalic-limbless- benevolent looking-cute-but weird creatures that they have papier mached.

Mind you, I have nothing against these art works. They are great. I am proud of them. They are the product of my pupils’ efforts and imaginations. I didn’t give them  specific instruction on what to make or not to make except that they should not submit to me a papier mache of amoeba or germs. (Crumpled paper with some paint on it!)


Any creatures will do. So, I am happy that they did not create boring stuff like a detailed, lifelike paper mache of a flying grasshopper, crouching tiger, flying eagle, mating rabbits, etc. I gave them artistic freedom. So, they created what they wanted to do and not what I wanted to see. I respect the subjective in art.  


Anyway…I love these artworks because I see beauty. The real beauty in them: effort, creativity, humor and fun! (Form, symmetry, center of attention, balance etc...these word should not be discussed with children because these words are confining. A philosopher once said, "You cannot get substance from form."

I was  writing my lesson plan when a pupils came to submit this. At first, I was confused. What did I miss? I was tempted to say things like "is this a mutant yema" or "wow, this looks like Java the Hut with hepatitis C!"But the enthusiasm and the smile on her face was so contagious that I smiled and said, "very good!" I gave her good grade because she met my requirement: she had fun doing the project.

I ask what kind of animals or creatures are these? According to them, these creatures are from a computer game called Angry Birds. Being prone to computer game addiction, I stopped playing games. So, I was a bit at a lost about the new fad in online gaming. A couple of months back, I got so addicted  to Plants and Zombies that even  my bodily function was affected; I almost developed stones from not getting up to pee. So, I made a resolution to stop playing computer games…hmm, maybe, at least until the classes are over.

A good pillow...

Reflecting upon the papier maches...the name Lamarck popped in my head. Lamarck was known for his theory of heretibality of acquired characteristics. Before Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, natural selection, mutation etc. Lamarck proposed his theory that acquired characteristics can be passed to the offspring. Okay...look at the picture below:

Here's from the experts:

In Lamarck's view, we must imagine a situation in the past where the best food for browsing mammals was higher up in trees, the lower vegetation having been eaten by other animals. The ancestors of the giraffe—which we should imagine like antelopes or deer—needed to adapt their behavior to this changing environment. As Lamarck wrote, "variations in the environment induce changes in the needs, habits and modes of life of living beings ... these changes give rise to modifications or developments in their organs and the shape of their parts" (p. 179). So Lamarck imagined that over generations the habit of continually reaching for the higher browse produced in the giraffe's ancestors a lengthening of the legs and neck.


The giraffe with the short neck dies of hunger; and in the process, they eventually become extinct.  The giraffe with the long necks would naturally survive. Of course there are stages in between, their offspring maybe mixed some with long neck, some with short neck but according to selection, the short necked offspring would eventually die out because they could not adapt.

This one reminds of the pet alien creature from John Carpenter's earliest sci-f movie Dark Star.   Again, they enjoyed doing it...good grades from me.

The Lamarck view of evolution is that animals (or creatures) develops or modify their organs to adapt to their environment. So, if an organ is not used, these organs die off naturally. Like if an animal (or people) do not use their arms, the arms atrophies and die...maybe they will even fall off, as in, "Wow, me arms fell off. Guess, I am not using them that much!" 

What made this one special is its mass. When a pupil gave it to me, I almost lost  my balance. This was made from 100% recycled paper. No wire or bamboo stick skeleton, pure muscle, so to speak. I had fun...good grade from me.

So with the brains. "Aaccchooooo!" Look at that big snot that flew out of my nose! "Son, that's not a snot! That's you brain. Guess you are not using it that much anyway."

Of course, its true that organs that are rarely used are wasted away but according to Lamarck, these dying off, the wasting away of unused organs could be inherited. Goes both way, if we follow Lamarck, trumpet blowers should have developed large lungs, thick lips and enlarged testicles. According to Lamarck, these acquired characteristics could be passed off to the next generation.

At first glance, I almost shouted, "Bert! Is that you? What did they do to you? Ohh noo.. where's Ernie?!" I thought this was Bert's head. Again...what's important is we all had fun.

So,it is important to check what your ancestors line of work to better understand some of your features. Like, If you have fine delicate fingers, your ancestor could be a pianist. If you have thick lips and you walk like a duck, your ancestor could be a tuba player. Or, if you have an abnormally large big feet, your ancestor could be a spartan.

My co-teacher, Jayson Marquez, and I were discussing these two.  On the right is a cobra while on the left...hmmm... we came to an agreement, an amoebic poop. Artwork that makes me think and write...sort of... is way,way up there in my creativity scale. Most definitely, deserves an A from me. 

Anyway...where was I?  Lamarck....if Lamarck is right. These legless creature will...this is how we could look like: the future homo sapiens...the homo cyber potatoes. Why? More and more people are spending their time sitting down in front of the computer, game boy, PSP, etc...you do the math.

  

Ghosts, Candles, Tradition, All Souls Day

 While watching TV last night, my daughter asked why we don’t put lighted candles at our doorstep. This is tradition. I used to do this but I stopped because things are getting pretty expensive here in RP and wasting few pesos to light candles to remember the dead seemed like a waste.

 I told my daughter that I didn't light candles because lighting a candle to remember relatives that passed away is too external, too showy for my taste (if you have no money, act like a high faluting snob), and they are dead anyway surely they would not be able to appreciate it. If it will make you feel better, I told my daughter, "I will light a bonfire at the front yard so that we will have better illumination than candles. A bongacious way of commemorating our dear departed ones, drives away mosquitoes too."

Do you see the silhouette of a lady? Look again very carefully. It is somewhere above my head. The lady appears to be smiling. 

I don’t know where this tradition came from but it’s obvious that candles give off light; light is used to illuminate a path especially a meandering path. Hence, the sojourner can easily find his or her way home. Filipinos believe that when people die, they just don’t go to heaven or hell or purgatory or the park. They linger here on earth to accomplish some unfinished business or to ask for justice or to simply pissed of their loved ones by making their presence felt. This is called paramdam in Tagalog. Hence, these lighted candles are supposed to guide the departed souls back home. If one does not light candles at their door, drifter souls could enter the house and haunt the residents.

My daughter asked me again, why we don’t visit any grave. We all watched the news and saw the mayhem in cemeteries. Children were getting lost, the elderly having high blood pressure because of the heat, the noise, the mob, the CO2, and the vendors.  People were looking for their loved ones’ graves and not finding them or finding them only to find out that the remains were ejected and a stranger was occupying the niche. Would you exchange that for the comfort of the home? I asked my daughter.

I think the more sane Filipinos visited and cleaned the graves of their loved ones ahead or later than the holiday. This is much better because this avoid all the inconveniences I  mentioned above. Also, they have the privacy, the silence and the intimacy of the moment, so to speak, and this makes it better for them to hear the dead talking back, not literally...hmmm... well, maybe literally.

Here is another view. Do you see it? The silhouette of the lady seemed like smiling! Look above, near my head. There, there, there..did you see it?

My daughter was worried, so to assure her, I told her that my father, her grandfather, was buried in the clan’s cemetery lot. He was interned with the rest of the de la Pazes from Cainta. So, aunties, uncles, cousins and relatives would be cleaning the lot. As far as I could remember, my mother, father and siblings were not really observant of traditions.

Here is the close up of the flame. The image is now forming in your head. Are you seeing it now? The silhouette of a lady.

While I was stoking the fire, I heard a neighbor shouting, “Hoy! Hoy! Why are you stealing the candles!””I went outside and asked, “What’s the matter pare?” “A little boy stole our candles. I was watching TV and when I look outside, I saw a flash. A little boy stole our lighted candles!” He was quite pissed off.

Stealing is a part of the tradition. Not really stealing, but stealing for fun,sort of a prank. Usually people let go of this small prank thinking that lost souls are at it again.

A few decades back, I used to play guitar to accompany the mangangaluluwas.  Mangangaluluwas are people, usually old ladies (or mature ladies to be pc), who go around houses singing songs for the dead, serenading the dead, sort of. The owners of the house are expected to give money or food or something to the singers.   It was a good way of earning a few pesos for a few hours of strumming. Of course during those days, I felt ashamed of being seen with the mangangaluluwas. I was afraid of what others would say. But looking back, I am glad I did it because it was  fun, and I have stories to tell.   

Anyway, according to these ladies, in the provinces, while the ladies were singing for the dead, the men would go under the houses and steal chicken eggs or  the eggs and hen  or the basket containing the egg and the hen. I asked the ladies, "Isn't that wrong?" They answered, with a smile, "Yes, if you're caught."

 The tradition is dying if not, it is already dead.

Did you see it?

1.  If on the first picture you saw a silhouette of a lady, better have your head checked.
2. If on the second picture you think you are already seeing the silhouette of a lady, better have a your eyes checked.
3. If on the third picture you did see the silhouette of a lady , you are one gullible human being
4. If on the fourth picture you did see  the silhouette of a lady, you are no better off than number 3.
5. If you did not see any silhouette of a lady  at all...you have reading comprehension problem.

Enough!

Meanderings about death, hell, heaven etc...

I am already having dreams about death and most of these dreams are rather pleasant ones and some are even romantic in an ethereal way, as opposed to the erotic dreams of my youth.

The dead and the living: achieving ecological balance.

Death is both scary and fascinating. It is scary because it means the end of our existence. If one believes in life after death, death means transcending from this material world to another world, the life after death, the spiritual world. What is that spiritual or other world?

You can now find Death in rock concerts.

I don’t know. Nobody knows. Religion offers answer to that question by saying that there are two, or more, places that we go to when we die. The Catholics say there’s heaven, hell and the intermediate station called purgatory. Accordingly, by the power given to the pope and the church’s ecclesiastical council, limbo, the intermediate place where the unbaptized children go when they die, was stricken off as a dogma by the Roman Catholic Church for lack of scriptural basis. 

It was said that Nostradamus received his prophetic visions from Limbo. Now that Limbo is gone, what will happen to poor Nostradamus? I wonder if the declaration removing limbo from church dogma is retroactive. 

(I am with Martin Luther here. When Luther learned that the bishops and the pope had the power to grant salvation for the souls of the departed based on the principle of borrowing or imputing the merits of the saints and of Jesus Christ to them, he asked: Why not just let these poor souls go to heaven for free?   Anyway,  that’s church history.)

For orthodox (not necessarily correct, simply means what the majority believes) Christians, its either go to heaven or go to hell. But many are in disagreement whether the dead go straight to heaven or to hell, or they sleep first in the grave or they go to Sheol first, a neutral place where all the dead go before judgment day not different from purgatory may I  say except here there are no sufferings and no hope for the damned. Its like they are in a bus station waiting for their coaches to bring them to their destinations.. 

For the Muslims, the belief heaven or hell except in their heaven instead of having crowns for rewards the faithful are rewarded with virgins. I am wondering, what will do with all that virgins?

 Each time we sleep with a Houri we find her virgin. Besides, the penis of the Elected never softens. The erection is eternal; the sensation that you feel each time you make love is utterly delicious and out of this world and were you to experience it in this world you would faint. Each chosen one [i.e. Muslim] will marry seventy [sic] houris, besides the women he married on earth, and all will have appetizing vaginas.-Al Suyuti, Quoranic commentator. (It seems that their heaven is more fun.)

The thought that the misbehavers will go to hell scared the hell out of everyone i.e. before the enlightenment. Of course there are already people wondering why they should believe what they should believe, but they kept quiet for fear of being burned alive. Many became victims of persecutions for their world changing ideas and scientific findings; many fell victims to burnings and tortures by the Christians which I would suppose make hell a welcome relief. The persecutions did not stop the evolution of civilization; nobody can stop change.

But this changed during the enlightenment when Copernicus proposed that the earth revolves around the sun thereby smashing the belief that the earth was the center of the universe and that humanity, specifically the Christian, specifically the Roman Catholics, were the center of it all. When the traditional dogma and the superstitions of the era were challenged and the yoke of ignorance broken by the enlightenment, humanism flourished and we are now enjoying the intellectual boon and bane and everything in between. 

Copernican cosmology.

 Now, the postmodern era, hell is a common word whose meaning has lost all its power to invoke the feeling of pain; the fear fire, boiling sulfur, maggots, torture and all unimaginable suffering that goes with the package. Hell now invokes images from computer games.


 Hell is Gehenna, a place outside Jerusalem where the pagans and the apostates burn their human sacrifices, sort of a dumpsite; a smokey mountain. The place also acts as a boundary defining Jewish land boundaries as well as their religious limits, if you’re in Gehenna you’re not in Jerusalem. Let us have an analogy: To contextualize it here in the Philippines today, I suppose it’s like scaring the little children to be good or else when they die, their souls would go to Payatas where there are maggots, fires, methane gas; a place where garbage avalanche happens every hour. Jerusalem is always identified with heaven and Gehenna is with hell.  Jerusalem =Heaven, Gehenna=Hell; SM Malls=Heaven, Payatas:Hell.

This fear of hell, through religion, through the priests, pastors (hey,! I am one, sort of), cult leaders etc, inculcated in people a sense of right and wrong that is founded upon fear!  

Hell as imagined by an artist. This kind of pictures used to scare  children and adults as well, but now these  images  are mere characters in computer games where children shoot, bash and decapitate them at a push of a button.

I have always believed that scaring the hell out of people so that they behave is from the dark ages. Faith and reason is better. As dear Anselm said, “For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand. For I believe this: unless I believe, I will not understand.”
 

The times are changing, world views change, paradigms shift.  This image of heaven's entrance reminds me of a memorial park's gates.

Upon reflection, I believe there is a worse place than hell and that is being in heaven while seeing your dear loved ones past and future suffering and being tortured by the everlasting fire while archangels, angels, cherubims, seraphim, and all the souls, accompanied by heavenly harps and electric guitars are singing in paradise telling you, “See because you did not preach to them look where they are now! You are an uncaring and selfish son of your father’s other woman.” Of course you could be happy in heaven that way if you’re an effing masochist.

Hendrix and Vaughan playing guitar in heaven.

There’s heaven. I find it amazing how the thought of heaven could inspire people to do the honorable and selfless things; while at the same time, I find it also amazing how the thought of paradise could drive people to do the most horrendous evil acts in the world.

I will not list these acts here because history books are replete with them; and, they are, in truth, depressing. But I should not judge faith based on what their extremist or their misguided members are doing and has done because these acts, in truth, I believe do not damage nor negate the honorable and the truth in people’s faith.

Heaven is a place that I look forward to going when I die. And if such a place does not exist, well, maybe my belief in the existence of the place will make it so. Of course, I am not inclined to think of heaven as a garden or a new Jerusalem in a physical sense, maybe there’s more to heaven than that.

Heaven maybe like the final scene from the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Maybe heaven is transcending our humanity and becoming one with the consciousness of the universe.

 “Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God.” Shermer’s last law.

George: “Now, why do I think things like these?”

Pilosopong Tasyo:  “It’s your way of coping with the seemingly irreconcilable thoughts floating around your head!”

George: “I see.”

Enough!

ICT day two and three

While most, if not all, if the teachers were eager to go home for the very long weekend, still they managed to stay to finish the workshop and to submit the required output for the seminar.

Many teacher especially the senior teachers enjoyed the workshop because they were not working under any pressure. This was because the principal almost half of the teaching force was in Iba, Zambales for the Division theme building. The number of attendees was manageable for us, the three facilitators.

The workshop was really meant to be hands on. We just prepared simple step-by-step instruction for the teachers to follow. The teachers were expected to finish the tasks with no or as minimal guidance as possible and with no time pressure. Because the workshop size was manageable, communication was not a problem. Peer cooperation also helped in making some of their   outputs better than what was expected.

  

(MT Garcia and Teacher Velasco doing their best to learn Power Point. They were able to submit the required output.)

Many teachers commented that the workshop was better than the past workshops (which I was also a part of) because there were no lectures. They hate lectures; I hate lectures. But once in a while we have to but in to correct and check mistakes.

(Grade six teachers Mam Juliet,Mam Malou, Mam Divine and Mam Joan (standing). 

The comments of the senior teachers were encouraging because they said they learned better in this workshop. Maybe it’s because the lunch was free :-)

ICT Workshop Day 1

When I came to the school a year ago, I was asked to be one of the facilitators for the school’s ICT program. The seminar then was held after school hours from 4 to 7 pm.  Most, if not all, of the teachers were already tired and were just playing along hoping that the seminar would end so that we could all go home. Tiredness and the desire to go home were the learning barriers. Also, the CMPC’s (notebook pcs) were so unreliable that most of the time was taken setting them up and fixing the problems.

(We were teasing Sir Diomeng because it took him almost three hours to type a lesson plan using MS Word. But he did finish the task, and he was able to submit the required output of the workshop.)

But today’s seminar was different.  The teachers were not tired, and the atmosphere was relaxed. It’s amazing how things get efficiently done in a relaxed and laid back atmosphere. Of course, all of us would rather have the semestral break, but we have to follow the department's order to conduct school based training.

I saw on the news that there were groups of teachers who were opposing this order. They said the teachers needed the break. I agree, but I DepEd is justified in saying that the summer vacation was enough rest for us, teachers.

Anyway, we were having fun teaching our senior (or senior citizens) teachers. When the seminars started a year ago, most of them were afraid to touch the computers for fear that they would break or damage them. Up to now, they still have this apprehension about computers.  The facilitators and I have to continually assure them that pressing the wrong button would not break or short circuit the computers. They would not blow up or something.

(Mam Virgie complained that she was having a head ache. It was not surprising because she was using a classmate PC that had 6" screen. Coaching them was fun. Jokes were always flying around.)

I also explained to one of them, with difficulty may I say, what a computer virus was.

The real challenge was how to change the senior teachers’ attitude towards computers and to challenge them not to be afraid to explore their computers.

Project Orion and why the Bozanian did not attack Earth

Project Orion was an ambitious and may I say crazy project planned by American scientists in the 1950's. The project was a top secret  military space program planned to do a preemptive invasion of Bozania . But the US military would not admit this.  

The spacecraft was an ambitious project. Here are the specs from Wikipedia:

	"Energy Limited" Orion	"Momentum Limited" Orion
Ship diameter (meters)	20,000 m	100 m
Mass of empty ship (metric tons)	10,000,000 t (incl.5,000,000 t copper hemisphere)	100,000 t (incl.50,000 t structure+payload)
+Number of bombs = total bomb mass (each 1MT bomb weighs 1 metric ton)	30,000,000	300,000
=Departure mass (metric tons)	40,000,000 t	400,000 t
Maximum velocity (kilometers per second)	1000 km/s (=0.33% of the speed of light)	10,000 km/s (=3.3% of the speed of light)
Mean acceleration (Earth gravities)	0.00003 g (accelerate for 100 years)	1 g (accelerate for 10 days)
Estimated cost	1 year of U.S. GNP (1968)	0.1 year of U.S. GNP

Orion's diameter was 20 km; a Nimitz class aircraft carrier has a length of 330+ meters. The gross tonnage of the space ship was 10 million tons for the limited edition (did not know what limited means, did not read the whole technical thing about the project); a Nimitz class aircraft carrier has a displacement of around 100,000 tons.

It was supposed to be powered by 30 million-1 megaton atomic bombs. To imagine this power, the atomic bomb that destroyed the city of Hiroshima had a 13-18 kiloton yield. This meant that this spaceship's fuel could destroy an entire galaxy.

The project was estimated to cost a year of the United States' GNP. During the 1950's the US GNP was .35 trillion dollars, adjusted to today's US GNP, the project would cost around 15.27 Trillion Dollars. In figures that would be 15,270,000,000.000.000.000. Give or take a few zeroes.

Simple mathematics would show that the Orion spacecraft was not a simple ship, it was in fact a city--it could contain hundreds of aircraft carriers plus other smaller ships. It was a ship designed to battle it out with the Bozanian skull ship Sky Rook. 

When NASA intercepted a Bozanian transmission on its planned invasion of the planet Earth, top US scientists scrambled to assemble a spacecraft that could meet the challenge of an interplanetary invasion. Though thetechnology available then was crude, but it sure was powerful and destructive.

 It was planned that Orion would be propelled by Nuclear pulse propulsion. This meant that a series of atomic bomb would be set off in intervals to move the ship. This is like like putting thousands of extra-super-explosive-powerful dynamites under a house to lift it into the atmosphere.

Anyway, the initial take off alone would create a nuclear fall out and could fry, irradiate, sterilize and blind people for miles around. Though global warming was not an issues then, the series of atomic explosions could block the sun for months resulting to irreversible changes in the earth's atmosphere. 

The project was given initial funding but was later stopped when the Bozanian backed out from their planned invasion. A floating radio active city is too much for them to take. It was later found out that their horns contained their sperm cells and naturally were sensitive to nuclear radiation. Mere proximity to the Orion could sterilize a Bozanian, and Orion, even just it debris landing on Bozania,  it could sterilize the whole male population of the planet. The fear of a ship carrying 30 million atomic bombs scared the excrement out of them.

Orion was scrapped. The project was later declassified and though the information the military gave to the media was baloney, the Japanese knew the real score.  

Thinking about Kant

Moral philosophy or ethics is one boring subject to read about. I sometimes wonder why I even bother to read about this stuff.  The theories are interesting enough, but when it comes to the exposition and the exemplification that’s when it gets sleepy. Anyway, I am interested in the work of Kant. Though I admit that I may not or, in reality, would not be able to understand his writings, I still try, maybe its because challenging. (I really tried but it’s is just too difficult to go through those jumbled words. Dr. Durant described Kant’s writing as “Jehovah speaking through clouds, but without the illumination of the lightning flash.”)

  

For Kant evil is a form of irrationality. When we do evil, our reasoning fails, or you are not just thinking straight. It is not about lack of knowledge or ignorance it is more of a failure in reasoning and not in acquiring information. Morality for Kant is not a question of knowledge but of the logical principles that ought to guide action. To be evil therefore, is to be motivated by principles of action that are illogical.

Another feature of Kant’s ethics is universality. Universality according to Kant is not just opposed to relativism but universality in the sense that it is also necessary. Kant wants ethics to be like mathematics. Whatever language you speak, whatever atmosphere you breathe, the principles of ethics for all the possible worlds are the same. Its like mathematics where all the mathematical statements like 2+2=4 is a self evident truth that cannot be changed wherever, whenever and in all possible worlds. 

Kant’s Categorical imperative.

The Categorical imperative is the supreme command or overrding command, from which all lesser commands follow. This is part of his view of the universalization of ethics: “Act that the maxim of thy action could thy will be a universal law.” This is Kant’s greatest contribution to moral philosophy that we should act according to the principles. When we act, we do not think of kindness, wrongness based on emotions and how it feels but based on logical principles. If you are kind simply because you are a kind person, and act naturally without thinking about whether it is morally right or not, you are not acting in an especially moral way, he claims. To be moral, you must set yourself the principle, “I should be kind,” and act kindly because you want to act in accord with correct principles.

He calls this acting from duty.

Reading about hypothetical imperative…if I could figure it out :-)