Ethics

By Michael Collins Morton

More from Michael Collins Morton

The Rolling Stones: Five Decades and Still Rocking

By Michael Collins Morton
It once would have been regarded as highly unlikely (and highly inappropriate) that The Rolling Stones would be able to achieve the vaunted milestone of a fiftieth anniversary, but that is what they have done. As a result of five decades of performing, composing, recording, and touring, along with well-known rounds of casual misbehavior, the durable musicians of The Rolling Stones (currently comprising Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts as the essential members, and Ronnie Wood as a longtime mainstay) have stubbornly ascended to the uppermost height of both fame and infamy. They have been through the mill of rock 'n' roll, openly defying their narrow-minded detractors and always doing things in their own impudent way, and after a total of fifty years of making unforgettable music on countless stages, they still are around to tell their tale. Few of their peers can make the same claim. In the 1960s, when British musicians tunefully seized the ears of the world, Th...
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Artificial Intelligence Is an Enemy of Human Values

By Michael Collins Morton
Artificial intelligence is increasingly being forced upon us by our corporate masters, who seek to use it for the foul purpose of controlling our lives. Day by day, artificial intelligence is expanding its repugnant dominion, deeply encroaching on our daily experience, crudely violating the integrity of our thoughts, our beliefs, our feelings, our motives, our decisions, and our actions, thereby irrevocably diminishing our worth as human beings. Unquestionably, artificial intelligence is an enemy of human values. Under the alluring guise of "convenience," the fundamental principles that provide a foundation for the regular course of human activity are being perverted by sinister tools that have the potential to brutally override our intentions, depriving us of the ability, and the right, to make our own choices and determine our own destiny. We are being pushed into a high-tech dictatorship. Those who promote the acceptance of artificial intelligence are tricksters. The distr...
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An Impartial Consideration of God, Offered in the Form of Eleven Questions and Eleven Answers

By Michael Collins Morton
1. Is there actually a God? That question has never been, and probably never will be, answered with any degree of certainty on this side of the eternal void, but the common evidence seen within our human experience appears to strongly betoken the unmistakable likelihood of a God, regardless of whether we are fully disposed to accept such a likelihood or not. 2. Is there actually a heaven and a hell? As with the question of God, the question of heaven and hell is an exceedingly difficult question, with no definitive answer currently forthcoming, but one thing, at least, seems readily apparent: any presumption of heaven is, necessarily, dependent on an equivalent presumption of hell, and vice versa. 3. Which of the brands of religion approved by convention provides the most effective path to discerning, accessing, and comprehending the truth of God? The answer to that question is, quite clearly, an awkward matter of divided opinion and heated disputes, with every brand of religion being ...
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Dianne Reeves: A Voice of Excellence

By Michael Collins Morton
On the evening of Valentine's Day, 2009, my wife and I treated ourselves to a concert by Dianne Reeves, who appeared with the Oregon Symphony at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland, Oregon. Her performance was one of the highlights of the Portland Jazz Festival, and paid special tribute to the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records. Dianne Reeves began singing when she was young, and displayed a wealth of strong ability from the start. She was encouraged in her musical ambition by Clark Terry, one of the great figures of jazz, and later worked with Sergio Mendes and Harry Belafonte. She began recording for Blue Note Records in 1987, and since then has released a number of praiseworthy albums that have established her as one of the most talented singers of our time. During her performance in Portland, Miss Reeves, a personable singer who follows in the sophisticated tradition of Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and Dinah Washington, offered a varied collection of...
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Bert Jansch: Humble Alchemist of the Guitar

By Michael Collins Morton
Bert Jansch (1943 - 2011), the Scottish guitarist known for his work as a member of The Pentangle and also for his standout work as a single performer, was generally acknowledged as one of the major figures in British folk music during his lifetime. His rich style was derived from a number of varied sources, but the fundamental integrity of his own talent always was uppermost in his music. In both his performances and his recordings, he frequently gave the unmistakable impression that he played the guitar not merely to earn money or to dazzle his listeners, but mainly for the pure pleasure and private joy that it brought to him. Although he wore his fame lightly and never displayed any interest in being a superstar, his musical reputation carried a serous weight. From Donovan (a fellow Scot who wrote two songs in honor of him, "Bert's Blues" and "House of Jansch") to Jimmy Page (who transformed Bert's rendering of "Blackwaterside" into "Bla...
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