A Thinking Reed

Category: Social and ethical issues

  • Hysterical liberal watch

    Chris Hedges has an astonishingly evidence-free article at Alternet purporting to demonstrate that “The battle against abortion is a battle to build a society where pleasure and freedom, where the capacity of the individual and especially women to make choices, and indeed even love itself[!!], are banished.” The “argument” rests almost entirely on armchair psychologizing of vast swaths of people in the pro-life movement whose commitment to that cause can, according to Hedges, only be understood as a bid to contain the “brokenness, desperation and emotional turmoil” these people feel because all the good manufacturing jobs have left the country. In Hedges’ universe it’s impossible for anyone to have sincere moral objections to abortion. They can only be masks for some deeper cause – economic disfranchisement in this case.

    The supposed knock-down argument that “demonstrates” that it’s “really” fear and hatred of sex and pleasure, not a desire to protect life, that motivates the pro-life cause is that some pro-lifers also oppose birth control. Now, in the real world there are two reasons this might be the case. One is that many pro-lifers are also committed Catholics. The other is that some pro-lifers have become convinced that certain forms of birth control, including the Pill, are abortifacient because they can act to prevent the implantation of a fertilized ovum. My understanding of this is extremely imperfect, but the impression I have is that it remains uncertain whether various kinds of birth control Pill ever do in fact act to prevent implantation in cases where fertilization occurs, but I don’t think it’s crazy for someone of scrupulous conscience to worry about them for that reason. None of this comes anywhere close to showing that pro-lifers are opposed to sex or pleasure or happiness. In fact, you might think that given the pro-natalist stance of many pro-lifers that they are in fact quite in favor of sex.

    All this aside, what’s so annoying about Hedges’ article is that he’s not willing to see pro-lifers as people who might have moral convictions just as sincere and, dare I say, well-informed as his own. They aren’t fellow citizens with whom to enter into respectful dialogue, but crazed hordes who want to banish love itself!This is the mirror image of the manichean worldview held by some on the Right who see liberals as godless baby killers.

  • The moral impotence of science

    Although it’s dressed up in the pseudo-scientific language of evolutionary psychology, this defense of free trade and outsourcing elides the same issues as most such defenses. The question of trade policy isn’t just whether our society gets richer as a whole or on average, but also what the effects on particular people are and whether those costs are worth, say, a cheaper widget. Talking about our supposed evolutionary history of in-group and out-group psychology doesn’t address the issue at all. Jeremy is absolutely correct to point out that science (and I use that term loosely in this instance) is being used here as a substitute for moral and political judgment. Whether or not the loss of jobs is an acceptable side effect of free trade isn’t something that our evolutionary history can tell us. It’s a fundamentally moral and political decision.

    You see a similar obfuscation at work whenever anyone raises objections to forms of medical research such as embryonic stem cell research. Defenders of ESCR like to say that “science” should decide such matters. But science as such is utterly incapable of deciding such matters. It’s morally impotent in that sense. It can tell us what states of affairs we can bring about and what they might entail in terms of consequences and costs, but it can tell us absolutely nothing about which state of affairs we ought to bring about. To talk about what “science” tells us we should do is nothing more than a naked appeal to authority, and not a particularly convincing one.

  • Beyond antrhopocentrism and misanthropy

    I’ve been reading a short collection of essays by Wendell Berry called Another Turn of the Crank. I’m not ready to sign on to Berry’s agrarian vision, but I do think he makes some important observations. In an essay called “The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity,” he points out that much of the environmental movement sets up a dichotomy between pristine “wilderness” and land that has been exploited and abused by human beings. But what we really need, Berry says, are models for good fruitful use of the land by humans, not an idealized human-free landscape:

    That there have been and are well-used landscapes we know, and to leave these landscapes out of account is to leave out humanity at its best. It is certainly necessary to keep in mind the image of the human being as parasite and wrecker–what e.e. cummings called “this busy monster manunkind”–for it is dangerous not to know this possibility in ourselves. And ceratinly we must preserve some places unchanged; there should be places, and times too, in which we do nothing. But we must also include ourselves as makers, as economic creatures with livings to make, who have the ability, if we will use it, to work in ways that are stewardly and kind toward all that we must use. That is, we must include ourselves as human beings in the fullest sense of the term, understanding ourselves in the fullness of our cultural inheritance and our legitimate hopes. (p. 72)

    Berry’s point is simple: “as we cannot exempt ourselves from living in this world, then if we wish to live, we cannot exempt ourselves from using the world.”

    Even the most scrupulous vegetarians must use the world–that is, they must kill creatures, substitute one species for another, and eat food that otherwise would be eaten by other creatures. And so by the standard of absolute harmlessness, the two available parties are not vegetarians and meat eaters but rather eaters and noneaters. Us eaters have got ’em greatly outnumbered. (p. 73)

    The trick is to combine use with care. And to treat our fellow-creatures with care requires us to dig into the roots of our ethical and religious traditions. Contrary to a scientism that would reduce living creatures to an assemblage of mechanical parts care “allows creatures to escape our explanations into their actual presence and their essential mystery”

    In taking care of fellow creatures, we acknowledge that they are not ours; we acknowledge that they belong to an order and a harmony of which we ourselves are parts. To answer to the perpetual crisis of our presence in this abounding and dangerous world, we have only the perpetual obligation of care. (p. 77)

    But, as they say, charity begins at home. “Misanthropy is not the remedy for ‘anthropocentrism.’ Finally we must see that we cannot be kind toward our fellow creatures except by the same qualities that make us kind toward our fellow humans.” Interestingly, Berry takes abortion as a chief exemplar of the ways in which we have cheapened human life. And this is of a piece with the rest of our violence. “If we cannot justify violence to unborn human beings, then how can we justify violence to those who are born, or to the world they are born into?”

    Obviously the guiding principle of “care” needs to be fleshed out in ways that take into account conflicts of interests. Berry concedes as much himself when he concedes that, though he believes abortion to be wrong, he can imagine situations where choosing it would be the lesser evil. One problem is that it’s so easy for us to privilege the claims of the relatively strong over the weak and voiceless. This is one of the limits of a rights-based ethic: rights-bearers are often identified by their ability to make claims on their own behalf. Thus those who are unable to claim their rights, at least in our approved language of public philosophy, are held to have none.

    But his main point, which strikes me as sound, is that, in general, any policy of sustainability has to be rooted in the possibility of thriving human communities. A sustainable human way of life has to also be a sustainable human way of life.

  • Bread for the world

    Interesting primer on feeding everybody, and sustainably to boot.

  • Ethical seriousness without self-absorption

    Hugo has a reflective post on his journey “further up and further in” to the vegan lifestyle and contemplates the importance of gradual change. And here’s an insightful post on how the quest for moral improvement can become ironically self-absorbed.

    The last point is an important one, I think. In our society, obsessed as it is with “self-help,” ethics can easily get confused with self-improvement. Someone who’s so concerned with their own moral purity is, not unlike the Pharisees in the New Testament, missing the point.

    What I’ve always liked about the Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is that it leads, or ought to lead, to a kind of self-forgetfulness. D.M. Baillie identifies the distinctive teaching of Christianity as the “paradox of grace.” This paradox is that we are most free when God’s grace is acting in and through us, and that, though we are responsible beings, we can’t take credit for our good actions. “Not I…but the grace of God in me” is the proper attitude of the Christian. Luther, in his Freedom of a Christian, points out how justification by faith frees us from concern with our own standing before God and frees us for service to our neighbor.

    That’s the key I think. Service to our neighbor (and I would include all of creation there), not self-betterment, is the test for our ethics. There have been movements within Christianity which have been at times morbidly introspective. But it’s hard to think of something more pointless than constantly taking your spiritual and moral temperature. Not that we should avoid self-examination, confession, and repentance, but that we should sit a bit lightly to our quest for “sanctification.”

    For whatever reason, it seems that people sensitive to animal rights face a particular temptation to self-righteousness and self-preoccupation. This may be a result of what is ultimately an illusory quest for a kind of moral purity. If you have made significant changes in your lifestyle such as giving up animal products you may be inclined to look down your nose at others who haven’t. But, as Andrew Linzey, probably the most well-known Christian advocate of animal rights, has pointed out, there is no “pure land” where we can claim to have extricated ourselves from the system of animal exploitation:

    [W]e need to dispel the myth of absolute consistency or ‘pure land’ theology. ‘Western society is so bound up with the use and abuse of animals in so many fields of human endeavour,’ I have argued elsewhere, ‘that it is impossible for anyone to claim that they are not party, directly or indirectly, to this exploitation either through the products they buy, the food they eat, or the taxes they pay.’ Vegans are right to prick the consciences of those who find some recourse to animal by-products inevitable, but they can mislead us if they claim some absolutely pure land which only they inhabit. Self-righteousness can be a killer not only of moral sense but also of moral encouragement.

    Instead, he says

    [w]hat we need is progressive disengagement from injury to animals. The urgent and essential task is to invite, encourage, support and welcome those who want to take some steps along the road to a more peaceful world with the non-human creation. We do not all have to agree upon the most vital steps, or indeed the most practical ones. What is important is that we all move some way on, if only by one step at a time, however falteringly. If someone is prepared to boycott factory-farmed foods, at least they have made a start. If that is all the humanity that person can muster at least some creatures have been saved from suffering. If someone is prepared to give up only red meat, at least some animals will suffer and die less as a consequence. If someone is prepared to abandon just meat and fish, at least some other creatures have a chance of living in peace. The enemy of progress is the view that everything must be changed before some real gains can be secured. There can be areas of genuine disagreement even among those who are committed to a new world of animal rights. But what is essential for this new world to emerge is the sense that each of us can change our individual worlds, however slightly, to live more peaceably with our non-human neighbours.

    Connecting this with the point above about justification by faith: I don’t need to justify myself in the eyes of God by attaining some level of moral purity, which is impossible anyway. God has justified us by making peace with us through the Cross of his Son. But, this frees me to creatively explore ways in which I might live less violently, not in order to earn God’s favor, but out of gratitude for what he has done.

    And, it’s important to recall, we live in a fallen world. There won’t be an end to suffering, death, predation, competition for resources, and violence until the Lord returns in glory (whatever that’s going to look like!). Moral perfection isn’t an option in such a world. But we can witness to the hope and promise of a new heaven and new earth. What that looks like for each of us will, as Linzey says, vary from person to person. The point is to leave behind our self-preoccupation and to serve others in the liberty of the children of God. We can “sin boldly” knowing that that by God’s grace we are accepted and cherished.

  • PBA ban

    While I’m in sympathy with the spirit of such a law, I’m a bit skeptical of the logic. After all, the point is to ban a certain procedure, rather than to, say, ban all abortions after a particular point of development. It’s hard to see why it’s not ok to kill an unborn child by means of this particular procedure, but ok otherwise (indeed, part of the Court’s rationale for letting the law stand was that there are always alternative procedures available).

    It seems to me that it’s coherent to hold that human life should be protected from conception onwards, or to hold that the fetus/unborn child comes to merit greater degrees of protection over the course of pregnancy. But it’s harder, I think, to make a coherent case for selectively disallowing certain ways of killing the unborn child while allowing others at the very same stage of pregnancy.

  • More from McKibbon

    A while back I blogged a couple of items on the argument Bill McKibbon makes in his new book Deep Economy for rethinking our commitment to growth uber alles.

    Interested readers may want to check out this article at Mother Jones where McKibbon develops his argument at greater length. In short, the argument is that we’ve gotten to the point where continued fossil fuel-driven economic growth that we’re used to both threatens the environment and doesn’t make us any happier (“we” here refers mainly to the prosperous West). The solution, he thinks, is a shift toward more local economies and reconnecting with the sorts of things that, beyond a certain level of income, actually increase happiness, such as companionship.

    I’m still unsatisfied that a withdrawal for the global economy is really feasible here. McKibbon concedes that there are still many people in the world who live well below a decent level of material well-being. Given that, it seems that places like China and India (not to mention other even more impoverished nations) don’t yet have the luxury of putting the breaks on economic growth. But this has consequences for the West too. After all, suppose that the U.S. were to slap tariffs on products from abroad as a way of encouraging local economies. Doesn’t this effectively close or at least reduce the market available for Chinese goods? And don’t the Chinese depend on the U.S. market for their continued growth? I have to say that shutting the door on the world’s poorest producers doesn’t sit too well with me. I almost certainly don’t understand all the variables here, but I wonder if a reformed global economy isn’t a more realistic option.

    But I still think this is good stuff to be grappling with. And McKibbon is certainly right to challenge the equation of increased wealth with happiness, which goes as an unspoken assumption in a lot of our public debate about economic policy. You don’t need the latest “happiness research” to realize this either; it’s also the virtually unanimous wisdom of our philosophical and religious traditions. And this raises another interesting question: if consuming less is better for our happiness and our souls, but consuming more is better for keeping the economy humming along, doesn’t public virtue become private vice? I guess this is just an exaggerated version of Adam Smith’s paradox that the pursuit of rational self-interest creates broaded public benefits, which is pretty clearly true to some extent. But McKibbon’s warning is that taken to its logical conclusion this attitude becomes disastrous.

  • Lutheran World Federation – following in the footsteps of the Anglican Communion?

    The Christian Century has a brief article on tensions in the Lutheran World Federation over … suprise! Homosexuality! As in the Anglican Communion, the split is largely along north/south lines.

    However, I think it’s unlikely that we’ll see the same level of acrimony that the Anglican Communion has experienced. Lutherans, in my admittedly limited experience, are not at all inclined to think of the LWF as “the church” in any meaningful sense (do most Lutherans think about the LWF at all?). And I have a really hard time imagining anyone pushing for a more centralized global Lutheran church body in order to impose a uniform policy as some parties have done in the AC.

  • Respect for life as a communal value

    In yesterday’s Boston Globe, Harvard political philosopher Michael J. Sandel accused President Bush of moral inconsistency with respect to the President’s position on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR). According to Sandel, if Bush regards the destruction of embryos as tantamount to killing a full-grown person, then he ought logically call for a total ban on ESCR, since it would be morally equivalent to murder.

    I think there are two problems with Sandel’s argument. First, it assumes that pro-lifers can never engage in piecemeal, pragmatic politics or compromise. Many pro-lifers would like to see abortion banned, but in the interim they’re also quite happy to see policies that limit abortion enacted such as bans on federal funding of abortion, parental notification laws, bans on partial-birth abortion, etc. Bush could well be following a similar tactic, recognizing that a ban on ESCR has no chance of being enacted.

    The second problem, though, is that Sandel doesn’t address the possibility that one can oppose the destruction of embryos for scientific research without conceding that an embryo is morally equivalent to a full-grown person. This isn’t dispositive, but I imagine that most of us, if faced with the choice between rescuing a child from a burning building or a dish with fertilized ova in it, would have no problem deciding to save the child. This suggests that we don’t regard embryos as morally equivalent to human persons.

    But it doesn’t follow from this that embryos have no value, or that it’s unproblematic to use them as raw materials for research. There are several objections one might make to this practice that don’t rely on the supposition that an embryo is morally equivalent to a human person. One is that the use of embryos in research is another step on the road of regarding all of nature and life as a “resource” to be used for our benefit. This denies their intrinsic value and makes human utility the measure of all things. To draw a line and say that certain things mustn’t be done to embryos is a way of affirming the intrinsic value of nascent human life.

    It’s very difficult to make these kinds of arguments in a political culture based on concerns of utility or on rights, since embryos don’t seem at first blush like the sorts of entities that can have their utility diminished or their rights violated. But it’s noteworthy that Sandel, a noted communitarian thinker who has criticized “procedural liberalism”, wouldn’t be more sensitive to ethical concerns that go beyond this rather narrow set of concerns. A polity might, on communitarian grounds, affirm its respect for life by making certain kinds of research off limits. Of course, Bush hasn’t generally made his case in these terms, and one can question whether such a policy reflects the values of our polity considering that it has been maintained only by presidential veto. Still, I would think that Sandel would recognize that such a case could be made since it’s more congenial to his approach to political philosophy.

  • Look for the label

    The last couple of posts got a bit bogged down in philosophical abstraction (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), so I thought I’d offer an example of what I see as a good concrete proposal for changing our treatment of animals.

    The “Certified Humane” label is a program of Humane Farm Animal Care, a non-profit “created to offer a certification and labeling program for meat, eggs, dairy and poultry products from animals raised according to Humane Farm Animal Care’s Animal Care Standards.” Go here for a more deatiled description of what the Certified Humane label means. Go here for a list of participating producers. I’m a fan of Nellie’s Nest Eggs, produced in nearby New Hampshire (giving you a animal-friendly and localist twofer if you live round these parts). See the “Eco-Labels” report card for Certified Humane here.

    Part of the idea with something like this is that given enough demand for humanely-raised animal products, producers will respond with more options like this. This won’t please hard-core animal liberationists who argue that any use of animals, particularly for food, is immoral – and I’m not going to deny that I have some sympathy for that argument – but I think that the widespread adoption of these kinds of humane practices would be a vast improvement over industrial farming. And I think just about anybody can be brought to agree that humane treatment of farm animals is a worthy goal even if they hadn’t previously given much thought to the matter. It’s also impeccably free-market if you’re worried about the heavy hand of state intrusion.