An Unavoidable Inconsistency

[A quiet moment, Brijette and Adelynn both asleep, but a moment almost certain to be just that: momentary. Maybe time to sneak in a quick post, though.]

I recently took the plunge and upgraded from Adobe Creative Suite 3 to Adobe CS5. If that means nothing to you, let me throw out one word: Photoshop. If you are on a computer reading this, I'd guess there is just about a 100% chance you have at least heard of Photoshop. You would almost have to live in a total digital vacuum, I would guess, to not have heard of it.

In the various flavors of the Creative Suite, Adobe packages a range of high-powered software designed for professionals in the fields of print design, web development and design, and video production. Photoshop is one part of that package, along with such titles as InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and Flash. Since such design work is how I partially make a living, since I skipped the upgrade to CS4, and since I have a couple of projects in process right now that can benefit from some of the added and improved features in the new suite of programs, I decided to add one more item to my list of business tax deductions for 2010.

One of the really fun things about Adobe Photoshop, a function of it's age (20 years recently) and ubiquitous nature, is the availability online of thousands of free resources for making the program do even more, or for saving yourself hours of time reinventing the wheel. From online tutorials on every conceivable function to the availability of brushes, patterns, textures and gradients created by others - just about everything you need to jump-start a project and get your creative juices flowing is out there for the asking - or the Googling.

It was while looking at some sets of custom Photoshop gradients this morning that I came upon a most interesting juxtaposition. The web site that I found one particular set on, posted by some designer out there somewhere, allowed other users to post comments about the submitted item. I scrolled quickly through those comments and found one that particularly piqued my interest. Actually, it was not the comment that was of interest, but the quote, or tag line, that the user had placed in her signature. It read:

ethics only exists in the eyes of the beholder

Now in theory, that little line should not have caught my eye. It succinctly expresses a sentiment or belief that is as common today as breathing and beating hearts. The very idea that there should exist in this world any sort of ethical, moral, or cosmological standard defined outside of the beholder's own inner state of being is beyond ludicrous in our postmodern world. We define our own truth, create our own morality, and no one anywhere has the right to tell me what I ought to believe or what I must do. In this world, ethics is axiomatically assumed to exist only in the eyes of the beholder.

Well, so blatant an expression of that point of view, contained in a designer's explicit expression of personality as an e-mail signature, very naturally aroused my curiosity. I clicked on this artists name, to find out more about her. I discovered it was, indeed, a she, and that she is a designer who lives in Switzerland. And on the very top of her profile page on this particular website, there was a digital painting, a work of her art, that again immediately caught my attention. It showed a red heart, with angel wings attached and what appears to be a gaping black wound of some sort. And across the artwork she had painted these words:

true love is to die for

The curious thing about this ethical statement is that it does not appear to allow much wiggle room for variations in beholder eyes. It's pretty straightforward, and, at least to me, seems clearly to indicate the artist's belief that this is a statement of universal consequence and application.

And that highlights and demonstrates this conviction I have, that however fervently one may believe that ethics and morality are determined by each  individual, and that there is no outside arbiter of what is right and wrong or true and false, no one can successfully live according to that belief. Everyone who claims to do so gives themselves away the moment they make any kind of absolute statement about morality or ethics, as this designer has done. It is impossible for her to live by her own philosophy. The inconsistency this woman has expressed on a single web page is, I believe, uavoidable.

Well, that moment I mentioned at the top passed quickly, Adelynn woke up a few paragraphs into this, and Bryan has now long since picked up both girls and brought them home. And I'm tired of ethical and philosophical musing for the moment. Or just plain tired.