A Thinking Reed

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" – Blaise Pascal

Social and ethical issues

  • (Eco)culture wars

    Via Jeremy, a smart post from Patrick Deneen on the way Left vs. Right thinking is driving a lot of people’s reactions to environmental and resource challenges. I continue to be somewhat amazed at the glib dismissal of global warming and other environmental problems on the part of many conservatives. There is almost no attempt Read more

  • Northcott’s A Moral Climate

    Michael Northcott, a Scottish theologian, has a new book out on theological ethics and climate change. Northcott previously wrote a good book on the environment and Christian ethics, and this new one got a glowing write up in the Christian Century by Duke University chaplain Sam Wells. I’ve already ordered the book; it looks like Read more

  • The value of abstaining

    One objection you sometimes get to vegetarianism is that there’s no point in bothering because a single person giving up meat isn’t going to make a dent in the meat industry and, in all likelihood, isn’t going to save any animals. While this question might rest on some dubious premises (are we sure that no Read more

  • Unnecessary roughness

    John Schwenkler, who blogs here, wrote, in a comment to this post: [It’s] hard to see [given what I characterized as the “traditional” view of our place in the cosmic scheme of things — ed.] why we, unlike other animals, should be under an absolute (or even less than absolute) obligation not to consume members Read more

  • The humanist half-way house

    God save us even from well-meant benevolence. It is possible to be sure, in individual cases, what is or is not to an entity’s profit or harm. It seems entirely obvious that we should not wantonly do harm, but only (at the most) for our necessities. That we should do good is a much more Read more

  • The death knell of factory farming?

    Matt Halteman has a good round up of coverage on the Pew factory farming report. Could be that things are coming to a head as the confluence of a lot of factors (climate change, the price of oil, Pollan-inspired foodieism) seems to be convincing more and more people that our industrial food system is unsustainable. Read more

  • The church and social justice

    Derek and Christopher have both been pondering the issue. Also relevant is this post on Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society from Fr. Chris. I’ve wondered from time to time if part of the problem isn’t that the church has lost the idea of vocation. Instead of equipping lay people for ministry in the world Read more

  • Creative destruction

    The book reviewed here asks if capitalism as we know it is compatible with reining in environmental destruction. The author is pretty convinced that the answer is no. If this is right, the problem then seems to be that 1. there’s no particularly attractive alternative to capitalism currently on offer and 2. even if there Read more

  • The high price of “cheap” meat

    From Ethicurean: Here’s a number to knock you out of that mid-day stupor: every year, taxpayers shell out between $7.1 billion and $8.2 billion to subsidize or clean up after our nation’s 9,900 confined animal feeding operations. That’s the finding of “CAFOs Uncovered,” a new report released earlier today by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Read more

  • More from Beckmann on food aid and the farm bill

    Last week I blogged about Bill Moyers’ recent interview with Bread for the World’s David Beckmann. Beckmann discussed, among other things, how current US farm policy distorts food aid programs for very poor parts of the world. You can read more from Beckmann at the Christian Century here. Beckmann is clear that it’s a complicated Read more