'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
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 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
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 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
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 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
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 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