All those cameras

Here's a random thought. I suspect that small tightly-knit communities--small towns--have tended to produce, on average, more people with a traditional sense of morality--more people with strong consciences. Don't steal, don't kill, be kind, look out to help others in need, for instance. I don't know this to be a fact. Rather, it's anecdotal, but it's based on 54 years of experience. I also suspect that part of the reason that this is true (to the extent that it is true) is that people in small towns keep a close eye on each other. In small towns, I suspect that children grow up more closely watched and corrected by others (especially corrected by neighbors and even strangers) when they gets out of line. I think that this sort of upbringing will tend to produce more of a traditional moral "conscience." Now consider that there are a lot of cameras out there these days. Lots and lots of government cameras, of course, but also millions of phone cameras as well as plain old . . . cameras. Anything unusual that happens out in a public space is now likely to draw at least some photos and video. Is it possible that all of these cameras in big cities might have the effect of turning big city "dog-eat-dog" people into something more akin to small town people? Will the presence of so many cameras tend to make big city people feel constantly "watched." Will that, in turn, encourage big city individuals to develop traditional moral habits?

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The things our biggest and most nebulous villains have in common

Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis is one of my favorite books of all time. It is in the top 10 books I have heavily annotated. Here's a sampling of why (although if you search for "Haidt" in the search field of this website, you will find 20 of other posts regarding Haidt's work). In the following excerpt, Haidt discusses what all of our biggest villains seem to have in common:

When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled desperately seeking Satan . With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and a child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of Communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: they are invisible (you can't identify the evil one from appearance alone) their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, were stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some secular good (animals, fetuses, women's rights), and you can't have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.
How devastingly "refreshing" that modern villains are so identifiable and that they are doing such tangible damage. We are now looking at a devastated national economy, two expensive and needless wars, a ruined ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, an energy crisis and a helpless political system created by an utterly dysfunctional election system that, for the most part, attracts megalomaniac ignoramuses and repels humble, good-hearted and well-informed people. It remains to be seen whether we will ever be able to let go of our bogeymen and, instead, focus on our real villains. Addendum: See this related post on "The Power of Nightmares."

Continue ReadingThe things our biggest and most nebulous villains have in common

The next best thing to vegetarianism

Today I had the opportunity to discuss the meaning of life with St. Louis Activist Adam Shriver. Adam mentioned that, a few months ago, he was invited to write an op-ed for the New York Times. The topic he examined was what we can do about the 100 pounds of meat the average American insists on eating every year. This situation raises moral red flags for many of us because it is rather clear that confined animals suffer painful bone and joint diseases. In his article, which he titled "Not Grass-Fed, but at Least Pain-Free," Adam noted that mammals have two parallel pathways relating to pain:

[A] sensory pathway that registers its location, quality (sharp, dull or burning, for example) and intensity, and a so-called affective pathway that senses the pain’s unpleasantness. This second pathway appears to be associated with activation of the brain’s anterior cingulate cortex, because people who have suffered damage to this part of the brain still feel pain but no longer find it unpleasant.
This neurological situation, combined with the ability to genetically design mammals that lack proteins necessary for the perception of the sharpness of pain, presents a potential solution (or, rather, it presents a fascinating thought experiment):

If we cannot avoid factory farms altogether, the least we can do is eliminate the unpleasantness of pain in the animals that must live and die on them. It would be far better than doing nothing at all.

Adam's tongue in cheek solution, then would be to continue to abuse the animals but to relive ourselves of moral queasiness by genetically modifying the animals so that they won't hurt. Adam's article reminded me that I've sometimes wondered what most vegetarians would think if we could grow meat in test tubes, meat that was never connected to any sort of brain. Imagine pounds and pounds of brainless meat coming out of big vats at a factory, the raw materials being mostly grass. Before you answer, consider that I raised this topic a few years ago over lunch. A woman in attendance was adamant that if we could develop veggie burgers that tasted as good as beef burgers, it would still be immoral for a committed vegetarian to enjoy that food. A buddy and I looked on perplexed as she ranted at length. She scowled and said, "If you created a meat substitute that had the shape and texture one would experience if eating a human baby, it would be immoral to eat it!" Now I do think it's creepy to contemplate eating anything resembling the texture and taste of human babies (I insist that I haven't actually tried this delicacy), but in my book, eating something that is not a human baby is not anything like eating a human baby. And consider too all of the people who play violent video games. Is "killing" the image of an innocent person somewhat immoral, even just a bit? And what about a man who fantasizes about having sex with children, or even creates his own drawings of nude children to enhance his fantasies? Assume, further that he has never solicited a real-life child. Is he immoral? And imagine this: imagine that someone at work really pissed you off. Is it immoral, even a little bit, to imagine poisoning that person the next day at work? What if this sort of fantasy actually kept you calmer and actually prevented you from being fiercely tempted from carrying out the murder? Maybe I'm just too much enamored with thick black lines, but I believe that for something to be immoral (or criminal), one must actually do the forbidden act rather than fantasizing about or simulating doing the forbidden act. Now, back to the eating of abused animals who couldn't feel pain. What if I could actually choose to buy such pain-free animal-meat at the grocery story? Wouldn't it be more moral to eat the pain-free animals than the animals who ached with joint pain? It would seem so, even if it not perfectly morally commendable. [Full disclosure: I am a somewhat guilt ridden non-vegetarian. Most of the meat I eat is chicken or turkey, though I do eat a hamburger every few weeks.]

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It’s The Women, Stupid…redux

I have from time to time made the point that the entire debate over abortion and birth control and almost the whole edifice of what we call Fundamentalism in the world, in whatever religion, is all essentially over controlling women. Here is an article which has one of the most bizarre takes on the entire issue I've ever seen. The central premise is early on stated in 0ne sentence that defines all of this nonsense, in whatever creed you care to name. "Sexual relationships, while enacted privately, are public property." The twists in logic, never mind rationality, are among the most byzantine I've ever encountered. What is more, the writer doesn't seem to understand that this "philosophy" reduces children to little more than marks on a scorecard. The exhibition of marital health and fidelity is all that is important. The attempt to limit family size and indulge private acts privately for private purposes is reduced to an attempt to deceive the community, pure and simple. But ultimately, as in all other instances of this kind of obscene interference with the personal, it is the women who bear the costs, the burdens, and the responsibility. I suppose the next step would be to devise a kind of tracking bracelet for the penis and vagina so someone somewhere can determine when either is being used and where. I have no answer for this kind of inanity (or insanity). The fact that this makes sense to some people disturbs me no end, because it means that some people cannot see past the end of their own prurience. Yes, I said prurience, because to come up with this kind of thing, rather than demonstrating a balanced healthy appreciation for sex, shows an obsession with it that can only be described as prurient.

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Sam Harris on objectively measurable moral progress

Within a tradition that extends backwards at least to David Hume, many people insist that science is utterly incapable of telling us what we ought to value, and that science is thus unable to weigh in on moral issues. This position has often been referred to as the naturalistic fallacy--the claim that what is "moral" can be defined in terms of natural properties. In this highly-engaging and wide-ranging TED talk, Sam Harris argues that this is a dangerous illusion, because whether humans are experiencing "well being," and whether communities "flourish" clearly depend on facts. He argues that questions of values reduce to facts about the brain functions and specific social circumstances of human beings. Science is thus relevant to values, and as we move further into the future this will be ever more obvious. Harris paused to make it clear that he is not claiming that science will necessarily provide answers to all values questions. He is not claiming that those trying to decide whether to have a second child, for example, will turn to science. On the other hand, meting out corporal punishment on children (which is still allowed by the laws of many southern states) raises a factual question: Whether inflicting pain, violence and embarrassment encourages positive emotional development. He also points to the wearing of burkas under threat of physical punishment as a practice that can can be factually analyzed as not likely to improve well being. Harris doesn't offer a single recipe for a "right" or a "correct" way to run a society. Rather, he suggests that the moral state space consists of many peaks and valleys; there might be many right answers, in addition to many wrong answers. This multiplicity of approaches doesn't mean that there aren't factual truths about the better and worse ways of achieving social well-being, however. He repeatedly makes the point that science has a lot to say about morality, and there is no good reason to be non-judgmental when the facts scientifically show that a particular practice leads to social dysfunction. In many human disciplines, some of the people weighing in are so ill-informed that their opinions shouldn't count at all -- not every person has a right to a wide audience on the topic of string theory. The same thing goes for moral expertise. Those who insist that the best thing to do when their young daughter is raped is to kill her out of shame lack moral expertise. Those who would behead their son because he is gay in order to keep him from going to hell do not have moral opinions that should count. There are right and wrong answers regarding questions of human flourishing (this can increasingly be fleshed out in terms of brain function) and "morality" relates to a specific domain of facts.

It is possible for individuals and even whole culture, to care about the wrong thing. It's possible for them to have beliefs and desires that lead to needless human suffering. Just admitting this will transform our discussion about morality.

Continue ReadingSam Harris on objectively measurable moral progress