The dirty little secret about moral rules

Many people feel that to be moral is to follow a set of rules.  But there’s an implicit unwritten preamble to every set of rules or commandments: they don’t apply equally to everyone.

Consider “Do not injure or kill other people,” for example. Assume that two people have fallen off a ship and you’ve only got one lifesaver.  One of the people is a stranger and the other is your mother.  Should you consider throwing the lifesaver to the stranger instead of your mother?  Most people would say no.

A second example:  you might voluntarily put your life in danger to save members of your immediate family, but most of us wouldn’t offer our extra kidneys to people we’ve never met. We walk around simply assuming that having an extra kidney (when someone else desperately needs one) is not a moral act.

Here’s a third example:  You have $100.  You want to spend it on a fancy dinner for yourself and your significant other.  You are aware that if you sent that same $100 to your favorite African relief association you could save the lives of two starving people.  Are you allowed to spend the money on the fancy dinner knowing that doing so will condemn two people to certain deaths?  Most people would say yes. The same dollars that could be used to save human lives can also buy jewelry, souped-up car stereos and expensive tickets to sports events.  If you ever bring up this undeniable fact to a …

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Good Friday – Good Grief!

I was raised Roman Catholic. Many things about the church puzzled me, Good Friday perhaps being the most puzzling of Holy Days.   On the lighter side, the kids at Catholic school insisted that it always rained on Good Friday, usually in the afternoon while Jesus was dying on the cross.  Whenever it did rain this was seen as proof of something important.  When it didn’t rain on Good Friday, that lack of rain was merely an exception to the rule.

Throughout my life, I’ve found that Catholics are very skeptical about religious beliefs . . . well, as long as it isn’t their own beliefs that they are questioning.   Growing up Catholic, I always heard about those “bizarre” beliefs of other types of religions.  “How could anyone ever believe such silly things?” Catholics would often ask.  For reasons I still don’t understand, I found myself asking these same skeptical questions about my own church (and everyone else’s church).  I started asking these questions even as a young child.    Good Friday has always been the focus for many of my questions, for at least three reasons:

I.  False Suspense. 

The Good Friday church services were always dreary.  Tears were shed, incense was burned, and sad songs were sung.  Those attending the services went away from them thinking that all bordering on hopelessness, as though this might be the year that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead.  This was puzzling to me, given that Easter was already marked on everyone’s calendars.  The …

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The true importance of Diversity

. . .  To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Star Trek Mission Statement

When I hear the term “diversity” I become suspicious.  For many people, diversity refers to the mechanical process of gathering different-looking people and assuming that doing this creates a melting pot of ideas and character traits.  Used in this way, however, “diversity” is no less than a form of racism; the people who mechanically gather other people by their looks assume that people who look the same have the same character, intellect, and culture.  This is not my experience.  I have often found that groups of similar-looking people are often just as diverse (in character, intellect and culture) as groups of different-looking people.  Similarly, groups of different-looking people are often culturally homogenous.  You just shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.  For me, then, mixing people by looks is not a legitimate form of diversity.

Understood in a broader way, however, diversity is something to which we should still aspire with vigor.  To understand the importance of true diversity requires a short detour into the study of human cognition. 

Humans are both assisted by and shackled by the “availability” heuristic.   “Heuristics” are rules of thumb we constantly use, often unconsciously, to navigate our complex and often disorienting world.  The availability heuristic is the “strong disposition to make judgments or evaluations in light of the first thing that comes to mind (or …

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The Curse of Fungible Dollars

A friend recently gave me a ticket to a hockey game.  I couldn’t help but noticing the high cost of tickets; the average ticket costs $50. 

Mark Manary, a WUSM pediatrician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, is saving the lives of children in Malawi with peanut butter. His revolutionary new method for treating starving children in malnourished regions could become a worldwide standard of care. 

My attendance at this game reminded me that numerous people spend substantial dollars to go to sporting events. As I watched the game tonight it occurred to me that whenever 20,000 people each pay $50 to go to one hockey game, the total gate for the event is $1 million. That $1 million is spent solely to distract and entertain the people for a few hours.  The money is for pure amusement, of course, even when it’s the “game of the century.”

An average of 20,000 starving children each year enter the so-called Nutritional Rehabilitation Units in hospitals throughout Malawi.

The arena literally filled up with Americans.  60% of Americans are overweight and half are obese.  But Americans are largely in denial regarding the extent of this problem.

When Manary first traveled to Malawi a decade ago, he was eager to make a difference. Everyone told him to stay away from the nutrition wards in the large hospital where he worked. It will depress you, they told him. 

People want to think of some dollars as “entertainment dollars” and others as “charity dollars.” Most people …

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Metaphors everywhere; where is “pure reason”?

Many professionals (including many lawyers) believe that the careful use of “reason” cannot involve the use of one’s imagination. This is absolutely untrue.  The belief in “pure reason” has always and everywhere proven to be the source of great confusion among those who strive to use langage precisely.

Responding to the Enlightenment claim that Reason itself is “rigorous, linear, cool, and unemotional” Steven L. Winter points out that such a claim actually proclaims the metaphorical quality of reason:  “reason is cold; it is rigorous; it is linear; it is clear; it is felt.  Indeed, in its dependence on embodied experiences like temperature and rigor, the metaphorical quality of reason is anything but detached and impersonal.”  Steven L. Winter, “Death is the Mother of Metaphor,” 105 HARV. L. REV., 745, 749 (1991).

Winter gives numerous examples of metaphors connecting our immediate experience even high-level legal concepts. One of these metaphors is of law as a “person.”  For instance, we speak of the body of law, we ask what laws say “on their face.” We refer to “seminal” cases, as well as their “progeny.”  We “strike down” statutes, and sometimes recall “dead” legal concepts.    Winter, Mark Johnson and George Lakoff each argue that these uses of metaphors constitute far more than poetry. Their use is essential to bridging the gap between the high level principles of every profession and the real world. 

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