The Magnetic Fields – 86 How I Failed Ethics (Guitar)

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Chords

[Intro] Em Am D [Verse]
       G                      C             D
Though majoring in Visual and Environmental Studies

    C                      Am         D
And minoring in History of Sci

  G                            C         D
I had to retake Ethics from my Mennonite professor

    C             D           G
For whom my skepticism didn't fly
[Interlude] Em Am D [Verse]
    G                                  C             D
The first time I made mincemeat of the standard propositions

  C                            Am           D
Establishing a so-called moral science

    G                      C           D
And I declared morality an offshoot of aesthetics

    C             D        G
And got a failing C for my defiance
[Interlude] Em Am D [Verse]
   G                       C               D
So next semester I back to Divinity School trotted

   C                           Am         D
Proverbial tail not between my legs

    G                                  C           D
And spent the whole course positing my own ethical system

      C             D                G
While other college students emptied kegs
[Interlude] Em Am D [Verse]
G                        C                   D
Information ethics, cyberethics — both since taken —

      C                        Am          D
Said: Maximize the information flow

  G                       C                  D
Toward a hypothetical end state in which the cosmos

   C           D           G
Consists entirely of our info

    G                         C             D
And at the highest level possible, not only data

    C                       Am           D
But data about data dot dot dot

   G                             C             D
Or life on top of life on top of life, et cetera

C              D                  G
Profundity, my mother'd say — I'd not
[Bridge] Em Bm C Em Bm Am C Bm D [Verse]
   G                          C                 D
My Mennonite professor did concede I'd done the coursework

  C                                  Am           D
Although my system left him quite dismayed

  G                              C           D
Depending, as it did, on neither history nor Jahweh

    C            D              G
And gave me, finally, a passing grade