The Magnetic Fields - How I Failed Ethics lyrics

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

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

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



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

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