Nussbaum's tragic choice

 Agamemnon was a stupid dude who did some stupid shit because he was stupid. A smart guy gets that there is no shortcut to kicking ass on the battlefield. Sacrificing your daughter to some God or demon aint gonna cut it. You need to concentrate on kicking ass. Putin is finding this out. It is not the case by doing really evil shit is going to help you kick ass better if the other side just concentrated on kicking ass rather than wasting resources on doing evil shit.

Quite naturally, cretins like Sen & Nussbaum don't get this simple lesson from the ancient Greeks. They think there are situations where all your choices involve evil shit. This simply isn't true. Hamlet shouldn't be murdering old men. He should concentrate on building up an army and learning how to kick ass like Fortinbras. Arjuna's case is different. He concentrated on ass kicking and Krishna explains that he is part of a divine plan whereby lots of warriors get to go to Heaven. Concentrate on the ass kicking or whatever your job involves and don't sweat the moral philosophy behind it. 

Arjuna has 3 choices at Kurukshetra

1) Walk away like Krishna's elder brother Balrama. He can just become a farmer or can become a holy man or he can go found a kingdom elsewhere.

2) He can use his magical gift of second sight to discover his true eldest brother is Karna in which case there is no War. The Empire remains united. The 5 brothers might get to conquer territory on its behalf and set up as satraps. 

3) He can do what his true eldest brother wants him to do which is what he does because Krishna shows him that this is part of the Divine Plan. 

There is no 'tragic choice' here because information structures matter and there is always a better information structure which becomes accessible if you tell Sen & Nussbaum to fuck off and concentrate to talking to, or just imitating, smart peeps. 

Nussbaum mentions 'Cost Benefit Analysis' which is about information structures. Accountants are useful because they show you where to concentrate effort to reduce cost and increase benefit. Making decisions is part and parcel of a process of Management by which outcomes improve as information structures improve.

Nussbaum does not get that Krishna is omniscient. Also the dude is actually God almighty. He can give anyone he likes a gazillion years of bliss on a paradisal planet. 

Nussbaum thinks Arjuna faces an 'obvious question'- what should he do? The answer is obvious. He should do his job. The dude is a soldier. But soldiers have a duty not to fight in a sacred place. The others are deluded but Arjun senses something is amiss. He is welcome to discuss this with others. Somebody is bound to remember that Kuruskhetra is a sacred teeth. They needed to shift the battlefield a couple of miles down the road. Stuff like that happens all the time. However, God's secret plan is that the 'vishodhana' purgation occur nowhere else. The point about the Gita is that it explains the mysterious economy of the Divine without actually dispelling the mystery. Cretins like Nussbaum and Sen won't get it. But for guys who watch a lot of Netflix the thing is blindingly obvious. 

This is stupid shit. Yuddhishtra's 'vishada' is dispelled by his learning statistical game theory. Arjuna's is dispelled by his learning occassionalist theology and devotional Yoga. Information structures change. Meanwhile Nussbaum & Sen just get stupider and stupider. 

Nussbaum next takes up the case of Arjuna incurring exile because of his desire to help a poor Brahmin whose cows are being stolen. This is a bit silly. The guy should just go by himself and shoot lots of arrows at the thieves. It is foolish to go get help from his brothers. Still, we later learn everything was prearranged- like we didn't get that plot twists work that way. 

Does Nussbaum give any real life examples of tragic choices? Sure. She thinks the guy behind the My Lai massacre faced one such. This is not just stupid. It is evil. This racist cunt does not get that killing innocent brown people is not in the choice menu for ANYBODY.  It wasn't the case the Lieutenant Calley had been told to fuck up the military mission in Vietnam- which was to win hearts and minds and persuade the population that Democracy and Capitalism was better than Communist Dictatorship. Even if the order was to kill everything that moves, there was no order to waste time gangraping women and kids. Nussbaum doesn't get this. She thinks the American soldier faces the tragic dilemma of whether to gangrape and kill some kids rather than defy Truth, Justice and the American Way. Fuck is wrong with her? 

This is fucking horrifying. We picture these officers weeping copiously and saying 'Spirit of Agamemnon, how dire is our tragic dilemma!' as they serially sodomize little Arab kids as part of the war on Terror- which, quite naturally, America lost. No wonder cunts like Sen & Nussbaum didn't denounce that shit-show even on Cost/Benefit grounds. 

Nussbaum's stupidity arises from her belief that there are rules one must follow all one's life. However 'don't do stupid shit' is a good rule which forbids its own following. We can, for shits and giggles, take a vow- 'vrat' in Sanskrit- e.g. always wear a colander on your head- and that can make life more interesting but any resulting dilemmas aint tragic. They are as funny as fuck. This is the stuff of situation comedy. 

There are no genuine moral dilemmas because moral philosophers are genuinely as stupid as shit. Nussbaum thinks we have to go down the Satrean road and proudly take responsibility for own choices. But that involves being a verbose asshole. The French would now be speaking German and Heil Hitlering each other if the Anglo-Americans hadn't liberated them. Incidentally, Husserl wasn't smart. He wasted his fucking life.