Why Does Religious Extremism Flourish?

There is a touching little article over at RH Reality Check, a reproductive rights website, about a Catholic man who also happens to be strongly pro-choice, and his interactions with others who outwardly are against reproductive rights, but inwardly feel the same as he. Why, the author asks, do these level-headed bishops and priests not attain the levels of power as the extremists so perfectly manifested in the Pope's recent blessing of a woman who is pushing for a Ugandan death penalty for homosexuals?

He recounts the unease with which his fellow-Catholic conversational partners circumlocute the issues — the tendancy to avoid the subject all together — to keep their head down, as it were. Why do these people not succeed?

They do not succeed for the same reason that people like Bishop John Shelby Spong have reached the point of almost rejecting divinity in Christianity. For the same reason the religious are terrified of gay marriage. For the same reason we have an absolute first amendment. The slippery slope.

Absolute knowledge is comforting. When we accept flexible interpretations, interpretations of religion as not having the absolute model of reality, we lose our foundation. We lose the comfort of knowledge, in a scary and indeterminate world, that religion gives. This sort of thinking was recently embodied very well by the Supreme Court justice you love to hate, Antonin Scalia, who likened homosexuality to murder.

“If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against these other things? Of course we can. I don’t apologize for the things I raised. I’m not comparing homosexuality to murder. I’m comparing the principle that a society may not adopt moral sanctions, moral views, against certain conduct. I’m comparing that with respect to murder and that with respect to homosexuality.”

He claimed this was a reduction to the absurd, which only reveals that he doesn't know what that term means, which is truly depressing for someone on the Supreme Court.¹ Regardless, what he claims to be arguing against is the dreaded slippery slope. To wit, if we cannot hold beliefs about, and thus predicate laws on, moral intuition in the case of homosexuality, then we are not justified in holding moral beliefs against murder and any other number of heinous crimes.

Scalia arrogantly and condescendingly feigned surprise that his interlocutor was not persuaded by this argument. Perhaps he was not persuaded because it was apparent to everyone that what he had actually done was undermine the belief that murder is morally wrong, or was simply defining "moral" incorrectly.

The point remains though. Scalia put into explicit, logical parlance the belief that by accepting one level-headed proposition, we are forced to recognize that a large swath of other beliefs are undermined, which when applied to strongly-held dogmatic beliefs, is unacceptable.

We do not give time to these religious people precisely because of the nature of religious belief. Dogma must be affirmed absolutely, and no matter how kind-hearted that dogma may become in some circles, it will become ever more resolute in others. Religion is, at least in the Western Judeo-Christian formulation, doomed to forever be lead by the fanatics. I mentioned J.S. Spong earlier, and he is the perfect manifestation of where Christiantiy, and truly any religion must go to avoid this trap: away from deity worship and into a life philosophy. Christiantiy must, for all intents and purposes, become Buddhism.

Most people find this unacceptable. They do not want to give up what they have, even if what they have is of only the vaguest definition. They want their god to be God, their truth to be true, and their world to be the way the world truly is. Even if none of those propositions stand up under scrutiny, that only means that scrutiny should be avoided.

There are many who call for religion to neither become something else nor be extreme. The term no absolute model is taken from William Egginton, who argues for religious moderation by rejecting the belief that one has access to an absolute model of reality. One model of reality is no better or worse than another model of reality. Ignoring all of the issues that I have with this, it is a friendly and acceptable idea on its face. It is a way that we truly can all just get along, even if our dogmas don't mesh.

Again, I believe that the issue that prevents religious moderation, and always will, is that the very act of being moderate undermines the beliefs. Dogmas do not mesh not because people are at logical odds with one another about metaphysical particulars. Dogmas do not mesh because dogma invariably must access the "real" world.² Dogma must be attached to behavior of some sort, and it is here where they clash, since metaphysical dogmas can never be truly attached to the real world in any significant way. Anyone could be correct, since truth is meaningless in the battlefield of dogmatic beliefs. And accepting that anyone could be correct about something that is so important is obviously something that will never fly. As a believer who is going to predicate a large amount of internal and external behavior around a belief, I want to be damn sure that the belief is true.

In search of this confidence, we look to those who are sure, and anyone who is sure is bound to be an extremist, especially vis-a-vis religion, since no one can ever be sure about it! No matter how much kind-hearted believers want to wish otherwise, religion needs strong dogma to survive. Religion needs extremism to be its assured guiding hand. Without it, it crumbles under the weight of its own inconsistencies and slides down the slippery slope of reason into an abyss of forgotten dreams.


Further reading:
The Problem with Religious Moderates (Excerpt from The End of Faith, by Sam Harris)

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1: There are a number of permutations of the reductio argument, but two types that most frequently receive the label: negating an argument by deriving something contradictory from its underlying principles, or maintaining an argument by first negating it and then deriving the original argument from that negation. Scalia thinks he is doing the latter. What he is actually doing is calling into question the foundation of moral thought, even though he doesn't want to admit that.

2: I put "real" in quotes because I am in some dodgy linguistic waters in this part of the article. Egginton argues against the idea of an absolute model of reality, and by using the term "real" to describe the physical realm implies that there is an absolute reality to which dogmas refer. As you can imagine, following his line of thought to its absolute conclusion results in skeptical nihilism and an inability to reject or accept anything. We can freely kill one another because reality isn't anything in itself. For my part, I accept phenomenalism. All that "exists" for me is what I sense, and the model of a persistent physical realm in which other minds exist is a model that has proven useful for my mental continuity. Everything I write is predicated on the idea that there are other minds like me floating in this metaphysical realm. I do not seek the truth of an absolute model, I seek the truth of functional consistency.

Morals Don't Exist

• Morals don't exist

  • I hate morals. They don't exist.

  • How do I know that they don't exist? Point to one.

  • If you do think they exist, how do they exist? If morals are objective, such as from God, why should we listen to God? Why is what he says right?

  • I hate morals because there are no answers to these questions. Philosophers have tried for thousands of years and have failed every time. The best we have is utilitarianism, and even that is riddled with problems.

    • Don't even get me started on Mere Christianity. Christian apologists love to attack the simplistic philosophy of Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris, but then hold up their own facile piece of philosophical garbage as something special. I won't go into a blow-by-blow deconstruction of it here, but as I've said before, if you think that it holds up, you really need to read more books.

  • The reason why I hate morality the most is precisely because it's so nebulous.

  • What does it mean? Right and wrong? What do those mean?

  • Since all words must come from something external, when I describe something as morally right or wrong, what do I mean.

  • I argue that, especially in religious usage, morally wrong means that elicits a disgust response. Even a mild one.

  • We can use the word to elicit disgust responses from stimuli that would have never done so if we hadn't relied on such a poorly defined concept. We can use words with such a massive amount of wiggle room, that we can apply them to situations and then use the word to manipulate other people to have similar responses.

  • Obviously, we do have some fundamental issues that seem inborn. So in that sense, an inner sense of right and wrong does exist. Cross-cultural studies showing similar determinations about hypothetical situations proves this, but that is an incredibly primal response. It has to be if it's shared by all people.

  • These primal responses are notoriously difficult to explain or tie down with words because the sensations in all likelihood predate the formation of language. We can safely recognize these sensations, but when applying words to them that have a whole bevy of subtle connotations, we have to be careful. Otherwise, we can use language to manipulate these deep feelings and totally fuck with our, and other people's, worlds.

Is Moral Nihilism Correct?

Yes. Yes it is. While Wittgenstein never intended this to be the case, an investigation into language necessarily ends in nihilism. In fact, this direction seems so inexorable that it puzzles me why nihilism remains a dirty word.

I started thinking about this in regards to morals, and how a discussion of morals inevitably fails. It faces the same problem that David Hume tried to address when asking why metaphysical discussions always fail.

I always separate words into two classes: internal and external. All words are representative of something, but those somethings are sometimes non-empirical. They represent an internal state that is available to me only. For example, when I say "I'm angry" you don't know what that means. You only know what it means in relation to my empirically observable behavior.

You then associate that word with your own desire to act in a similar way. Thus, my world and your world acquire the same word to describe private internal states based on observation of the non-private external world.

In Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, he has a chapter on inborn moral drives. We seek out right and wrong and everyone, everywhere, seems to make similar determinations about the morality of situations. For example, I can save ten people on a trolley by diverting it to another track, but the trolley will hit a man who just happens to be on that track. That is not morally wrong. But if you present people with the situation where that same man is used to stop the trolley, like throwing him on the tracks, that is morally wrong. The end result is identical in both scenarios, but one garners a moral reaction.

But those questions relied on each person's interpretation of the word moral and how that meaning applied to the situation. I think the situation works better if we remove the word entirely and simply ask which scenario is repugnant? Which scenario gets under your skin and makes it crawl? Which scenario gives you the shivers. Morals have always had the concept of transcendence attached to them. That the determination that I am making somehow exceeds me and achieves some sort of universal rectitude.

But to describe something at all requires interaction with other people to allow a word to emerge based on shared empirical information. For example, if I suddenly start describing myself as Quizzilunked, you have no idea what that means. But if every time I used it, I shivered, smiled, farted, and then sneezed, you would only know what the word means if you also experience something that elicits the same behavior. So asking people to determine morality requires the use of internal sensations whose descriptors are determined by external data. The external data is a prerequisite to applying the word in similar ways.

This means that morals can only arise from a linguistic (social) environment, and insisting on continuing the use of the word introduces nebulousness into the discussion. The goal of any philosopher, regardless of their area of expertise, is to eliminate nebulousness and speak clearly. It is impossible to speak clearly in morals, thus turning ethics into an endeavor for fools and charlatans. The latter of which seem to all become politicians and religious leaders.

We CANNOT talk about morals. We have to talk about the other things that tie internal states with external information. If I say "I'm nauseous" and I puke every time I say that, you know that the next time you feel "off" just before barfing is likely the same feeling that I'm having. Thus, you can attach the word to your internal state while being somewhat confident that I'll attach that word to a similar internal state.

But when I say "That is morally wrong" what I'm actually describing are internal states but using an inaccurate word to do so. Most people would, today, say that burning a person at the stake, or beheading a child in public, are all morally wrong. But when we say that, we are just describing our feelings of discomfort and disgust with the image. That disgust and the corresponding word arose from our linguistic environment. There is NO TRANSCENDENT ASPECT TO THIS. If anything, pulling out the morality card has just been used as a manipulator. The word is so damned nebulous but held in such high regard that it can be used to actually cause a disgust response to something that hadn't originally caused it. For example, homosexual behavior. But remember what we're dealing with. Morality only represents an internal aversion to something (which I admit can also be internal). So when it's used in places where everyone isn't in agreement about the morality of an issue or event, it becomes a synonym for disgust.

For example, eating pie is not currently morally wrong. But let's say that a group of people move in who find pie to be a moral evil. I'm sitting with them and they begin to complain that a nearby person, who is eating pie, is morally bankrupt. Their usage of the word does not line up with my usage because our internal states when presented with this person do not match up. But if I really want these people to like me, I'll agree. Eventually, I'll fake the behavior that lines up with the statement of pie being morally wrong. Eventually, when surrounded by similarly behaving people, I will begin to feel the same internal state that triggers such behavior.

Now let's say that these people start describing really random things as morally wrong, like walking backwards, Corn-Pops, blinking both eyes at the same time, and whiskers on kittens. It is conceivable that all of this things could be habituated to trigger a disgust response ALL COMPLIMENTS OF MORALITY. There is no other word in the world that can be so flexible in manipulating people.

I frequently use the example of saying "I am horny." If someone says that to me, and always has sex afterwards, I associated "horny" with the drive for intercourse. But if they use the word wildly, saying that they're horny and eating a sandwich, sleeping, watching TV, the word association between the empirical data, the private internal state, and the word falls apart. The word becomes meaningless. But not so with morals. We can use that word to describe anything that strikes our fancy, fake it until we make it, and actually create a disgust response! The fact that a disgust response, something so primal, can be socialized I think reveals the incredible importance of society and especially language in the evolution of the human psyche.

There are no morals. None. They do. Not. Exist. All that exists are your private, internal states which you associate with words that represent the observed behavior of other people. Stop using the damned word. Stop studying ethics. If you want to do something useful, run some experiments studying the disgust response of humans to stimuli before and after reading certain phrases or hearing certain things. That is the root of morality. It's the only way to explain how, once, not all that long ago, it was entirely righteous to tie people to poles with their own intestines and watch them die.

Suck On It

I'm not one to hate on someone else's lifestyle, but vegans piss me off. Veganism can be necessary for health reasons, for example, I had a friend who developed a build-up in his joints of animal proteins, but it usually is a moral decision. Vegetarians are off the hook, mostly, since that can just be a really healthy diet.

The overcharged moralizing of vegans results in nonsense like the organic movement and PETA who make explicit, public statements that I am evil because I eat animals and animal products. As you can imagine, being called a bad person doesn't sit well.

We are animals. We eat animals. It's the only damned reason that our brains are so large. At one time, a moral drive was critical for the survival of our species. Understanding right and wrong made sure that we never fell out of the good graces of society to die in the woods. Now, that moral drive is still there, but even if we're amoral assholes hated by everyone, we can still survive just fine. Without a serious need on which to focus the moral drive, it runs amok trying to find something about which to moralize.

There Is No Escape From Cows (Gizmodo.com)

Science Can Answer Moral Questions

Scientific American has lent a perspective on Sam Harris' new book The Moral Landscape, where he argues that science is the best choice for answeing moral questions. Both surprisingly and sadly, the criticism is terrible.

The one point that the article touches on by proxy, via a link to an article in the New York Times, that is valid is Harris' actual moral statement: morals are a function of human suffering. This sounds like utilitarianism, which as you would expect, has some problems with it. But what's important is that this perspective is empirical and thus scientific. We can analyze and determine the best ways to get the best outcomes for the most people. It allows of a discussion, a dialectic, on the subject. Religious morals are not based on anything empirical! They're based on books, scriptures, and are, arguably, total nonsense.

He brings up the issue of scientists who did lots of damage in the past, but that misses the point entirely. Scientists did what they did while "rogue." It's like saying that scientists who falsify data negate all of science.

"Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?"

There is so much wrong with this I barely know where to begin. You can not hold a process accountable for what people do with it. You don't blame physics for the atomic bomb. Religion is a pre/proscriptive belief system, science is a process for achieving things. If we can all agree that morals are the rules defining right and wrong, and that wrong is wrong because it causes suffering, science applies! With morals as a function of suffering and happiness at the core, science is all we need.

Moreover, religion can be blamed where science cannot because science is a process to try and determine truth, religion is a system of posited statements. Moreover, we don't do things in the name of science, but truth and all of the good concepts that result from science. People do perform actions in the name of their religions. Finally, we don't blame religion, per se, for the pedophillic priests, we blame the system that claims to be moral and righteous that then hides them. What we do is mock the idea that the religion can have any weight or truth to it when the supposed arbiters of God are some of the biggest assholes on Earth.

Be wary of the righteous rationalist: We should reject Sam Harris's claim that science can be a moral guidepost (Scientific American)

Oh, China.

China has been stripped of the Olympic team bronze for gymnastics for... 2000? WTF?

My first thought is, duh. It was pretty obvious that China used girls who were quite under-age for the 2008 games, which resulted in something of a controversy. So, I guess it's not surprising that they did the same thing in other years as well.

But on second thought, While it's shitty that China ignored the rules, especially considering that their handling of Olympic hopefuls is still very much in the vein of totalitarian governments, the girls did it, not the government. I say let them compete. They won, fair and square. They worked hard, and to take the medals away because their government is run by a group of self-centered sacks of shit doesn't seem right.

China stripped of 2000 gymnastics medal for underage athlete (Yahoo.com)

How Far My Ownership Goes.

The New York Times has a story about a Native American tribe that has sued The University of Arizona and reclaimed some blood samples taken from the tribe because the DNA was being used for research other than that which was initially discussed. They discuss the legal issues, and, as with most popular stories about science clashing with dogma, the only argument presented in favor of the science is that it's "good science," and that progress demands that we make concessions in the degree of control individuals have in the data that they submit.

One of the biggest issues is that the DNA indicates a link between the tribe and people making the trek over the Bering land bridge, which doesn't exactly jive with the tribes creation story (shocker!) that says that they were plopped there to be the Grand Canyon's defender.

This isn't a matter of moral or ethical problems. If a research institution wants to be tender and understanding with dogmatic beliefs, then that's their choice, but not their legal or ethical obligation. The blood was taken, and the DNA is nothing more than information, now. They have more blood, they haven't "lost" any DNA. The University didn't take it from them. The situation is similar to a researcher telling a man that, if he has a blue string in his pocket, he's, I dunno', psychic. The man empties out his pocket and the researcher finds many strings of different colors. None blue, but the researcher remembers the colors that he did see. If the researcher then writes a paper on those other colors, what harm has there been?

There are certainly a great number of ethical issues with DNA, especially as our ability to analyze it gets ever-greater, but this story is not one of them. The Universities actions did not diminish the tribe or its people. They did not steal anything. They did not harm the people. Just because a group of backwater, uneducated people don't like science clashing with their official story of their creation is not a basis for a fucking law suit.

Indian Tribe Wins Fight to Limit Research of Its DNA (NYTimes.com)

Two Types of Country

Well, we're finally bringing some of the guys from Gitmo into the country for trials. As expected, those from the "right" have started lampooning the decision, basically saying we can't apply the same rules to them as we do to ourselves.

I find this perspective interesting. The problem with our country is that we have a nationwide case of severe cognitive dissonance. We want to think that we are a country predicated on ideals and not simply a group of people, but when the realities of being a group of people pop up, we act in accordance with those.

I always said that I had no problem with invading Iraq, if we said that we were going in there for oil and control. Think about that, we need oil, is it not our mandate to acquire what we need? Let's kill everyone in Iraq and take their oil. There's nothing morally wrong with it.

The problem is that under that interpretation, we're just a group of people. The American flag is nothing more than a logo. The American Dream is an advertising campaign. The Statue of Liberty is our mascot. And the national anthem is just our theme song. Most people have a problem with that idea.

The real argument is whether we're just a group of people or an set of ideals. We might give the ideals a high-falutin' status, but there's nothing about them that is fundamentally superior to seeing us as just a group of people trying to get what's best for us. If we're correct in our self-service, then we are a group of people and not ideals. If we are a set of ideals that "transcend" the people, then our actions are pretty easy to determine.

Too bad that latter interpretation has never been true. We've never been the good guys. Remember Nuremberg: many Nazi's got off for some action because they showed how Allied forces did the same thing. Well, if we did it, it can't be wrong. Case dismissed!

No morals.

Morals do not exist.

First, let's discuss what morals are. "It is wrong to kill" sounds like a good starting point. If we dissect that statement, we have basically two parts and an implied third. Something is right or wrong, and that something is an action. The implied third part is a rule that the action that is wrong should not be performed. "It is wrong to kill" implies "do not kill."

That's fine, but are morals really as simple as a rule? A dictate on action? Considering how highly we regard moral concepts, and how frequently they are spoken of in reverent tongues, the idea that they are nothing more than a rule seems antithetical to common thought. I am saying exactly that, though. Morals are nothing more that rules.

Depending on the semantics of the situation, I something classify morals as a very special kind of rule. Namely, a rule without which the system in which the rule applies would cease to function.

I must differentiate morals from ethics at this point. Many people regard the two words as effectively interchangeable. Morals can be part of an ehtical system, and I can be guided by my ethics as a human. Still, I think that the nebulous nature of the two words renders them useless in many terms, and I think that my distinction is one that is commonly held, even if it's rarely stated expressly. Morals are rules are behavior that apply to all humans simply because they are human, and ethics are rules of behavior accepted by an otherwise free person after accepting a certain post without society.

I am morally bound not to steal from anyone, but a doctor is ethically bound to not have sex with his patients. Since I am not a doctor, I am not ethically bound to do anything regarding patients. Truly, I have no patients. So, it seems that ethics could be considered a special class of morals, whereby they are in fact universal (all doctors cannot have sex with patients), but apply only if you become a doctor.

That brings up another aspect of morals: they are universal. They apply to everyone. Ethics possibly apply to everyone, because everyone could possibly become something to which ethics apply, so ethics are morals, just a specific type. Morals are one step up, they are universal if you are human.

My definition of morals are universal rules that are required. A rule against killing is required for society to function. It doesn't necessarily need a law or a large governing body, only a tacit agreement that those within a group won't off one another. I think that this may actually be part of evolutionary programming. Wolves in packs almost never kill one another, but they don't have advanced moral systems. The rule is required because without that recognized rule, society could not function. I'd always be worried about, and defending myself from, my neighbors.

Let's try stealing? There must be some recognition of stealing being bad since without it, the economy wouldn't function. Or lying? Communication would break down if lying wasn't wrong. Many things fall under my definition of morals, but many things that are frequently called moral wrongs do not. Rape is not a moral wrong in my book. A society can in fact function with lots of rape. It might not function terribly well, but it can. And since my morals and ethics are based on groups (humans, doctors, etc.) I could argue that it is not morally wrong to go outside of your group, kill everyone in an opposing group and take their stuff.

I think that for a moral to be a moral though, as opposed to tribal ethics I suppose, it must apply to all humans. I think that history supports this view over the view of tribal ethics allowing my group to kill a neighboring group for their stuff. History has been an irrevocably drive towards a larger, more global community, where my "neighbor" in Africa can be just as close as my neighbor across the street. I can talk with them and see them every day. I can mail things to them overnight. The world is so small, now. The world has also gotten progressively less violent when it comes to hot nation-on-nation action. Not only are morals actions to rules to live by, but the human animal seems to naturally move towards an acceptance of these values. Perhaps it's those mysterious mirror neurons and the empathy machine in action.

Whatever it is, people don't seem to naturally want to kill one another. Or rob from one another. And I think it's obvious why. A world that is low on violence, crime, and hot nation-on-nation action is a world with ever wider boundaries. The limits of what I can achieve and how easy and fun life is expand with increasing numbers of people accepting these rules.

Unfrotunately for my formulation of morals, it doesn't really make it sound like morals. Morals are right and wrong. As such, many people have many different kinds of morals. My formulation has removed the concept of right and wrong and replaced it with a somewhat self-serving economic perspective. That's not what people generally think of when they say the word "morals."

It is because of that, the morals in this popular sense are so fluid and flexible. That what is right for one person is wrong for another, that leads me to only one conclusion, morals do not exist. They exist in my sense of the word, but not in the sense of right and wrong. For example, my arguments work very well against Islamic extremists, but many Americans seem dead-set on saying that the Muslims are amoral monsters, when it's the Muslims saying the same thing about us. There is no firm ground onto which one can build arguments for either case.

Or take this article on Wired. Here, Hummer owners are actually embracing what they see as moral attacks on their viewpoint. So what do they do? Fully convinced of the righteousness of their own morals, they wrap themselves up in the very attacks directed at them, put a patriotic spin on them, and call themselves red-blooded Americans fighting the anti-American bias of the rest of the world. There is no way to win a moral argument, which means you're arguing about nothing, because if you were, someone could win. It would mean there was some substance underlying the conversation.

For example, I could argue that raising prices will increase sales (ignore the fact that newspapers are actually arguing this). But there is substance under this in the form of economics and econometrics. We can turn to measurements and history to show, unequivocally, that raising prices decreases sales. But that doesn't work in morals. I could argue that it's morally wrong to cheat on your wife. But you could argue that it's fine. Both stances are valid. Perhaps your wife doesn't mind that you sleep with other women. Perhaps you'll point out successful polygamous cultures while I'll point out statistics of marriage failure because of cheating.

There is no way to win a moral argument, which means there's no such thing as morals. They are only things that we like and dislike. Are comfortable with or uncomfortable with. I think that moral pursuits should be about finding that elusive solid ground from which unavoidable conclusions can be reached. An economic perspective seems to work well, where we do what's best for us, but that seems dangerously Randian. I think that a good moral argument is against a behavior that, if allowed, either increases danger or decreases freedom of other people. Strangely, many people's arguments against gay marriage is similar to this formulation, whereby they argue that letting gay marriage through would endanger traditional marriage.

Regardless, I think an immoral action is something that increases danger (as in the possibility of physical harm) or decreases freedom for others. I do not believe it is possible to be immoral against yourself. The finer aspects os ethics are complicated, e.g. doctors cannot have sex with patients for fear of psychological harm. Psychological harm can frequently lead to physical harm, but it's a pretty foggy boundary as to where that happens. A doctor cannot have sex with a patient, but I doubt that psychological harm could come from someone seeing pornography on a billboard.

Now that I think of it, perhaps the differentiation comes in the form of emotional harm and psychological harm. Yes, this must be the case or breaking up with a boyfriend would be morally wrong. Yes, you will hurt his feelings, but you will not damage him psychologically. A doctor, with a position of authority over a patient, could cause long-lasting legitimate psychological harm to a patient. Even though that is possible in the breaking up scenario, it is of low likelihood, and trying to avoid all instances of that possible outcome would have a serious impediment on our daily lives. We would be unable to say anything, do anything, or act in almost any way around anyone for the moral fear of hurting them psychologically.

I would argue that morals exist on a spectrum, where breaking up with a boyfriend is indeed morally wrong, but the degree of immorality is low. The immorality of killing your boyfriend is high, so that's where we have a rule. This is somewhat appealing to me, but it does damage to the idea that morals are easily stated rules of behavior that can be universally applied. But really, can anything be universally applied? It's wrong to kill. Unless you are defending yourself. Or a loved one. Or your friend. Or your pet? Or someones property? Or someone's good name? Where is the moral line drawn?

Ah well. My original formulation stands. A moral is a rule without which society could not function. We can break up with our boyfriends and society continues to function. We can kill in self defense and society continues to function. Our doctors can even sleep with their patients, and society continues to function... doctoring might not do too well, but the rest of us will be fine. As that, morals are absolute and easy to determine. Beyond that, morals are nebulous at best, don't exist at all at worst, and barely seem worth discussing either way. So why bother?

I Loved Her So Much! Loved With At Least a Million.

As everyone knows, the lawsuits have been pouring in in regards to Hurricane Katrina. The $100 billion cluster-fuck hasn't even begin to write its legacy in the history books, but it recently wrote an interesting footnote in the law books. Someone, we don't know who, has filed a lawsuit claiming damages of $3 quadrillion. Yes. Quadrillion. This is beyond even Carl Sagan numbers.

Everyone is getting a good laugh out of it, but I can only imagine that it's a stunt by someone trying to prove a point. I can't imagine even the dumbest person on Earth using that number. And it also puts something of a cap on the Katrina debate for me. Namely, what's a human life worth? Obviously, there were many comments by the black community, and Kanye West, about the response to Katrina, but only this really drove home the point that the national debate isn't about repairing New Orleans, or helping fellow Americans, or repairing industry. It's about the value of human life.

Were these people, poor and primarily black, less valuable than other lives. How can we actually attach a value to it. We do it all the time in court cases, and the values CHANGE from case to case. Are we afraid to attach a direct value, for any court case, that one person is worth X? Do we decide based on the number of crying relatives who come to the stand? Usually, yes. The movie A Civil Action said it best,

"It's like this. A dead plaintiff is rarely worth more than a living severely-maimed plaintiff. However, if it's a long slow agonizing death as opposed to a quick drowning or car wreck, the value can rise considerably. A dead adult in his 20s is generally worth less than one who is middle aged. A dead woman less than a dead man. A single adult less than one who's married. Black less than white. Poor less than rich. The perfect victim is a white male professional, 40 years old, at the height of his earning power, struck down at his prime. And the most imperfect, well in the calculus of personal injury law, a dead child is worth the least of all."

Who's to say a life isn't worth a quadrillion dollars? Especially with Katrina victims, who have suffered for an amazing amount of time as the Federal government has dropped the ball repeatedly. We can't base value on suffering. I guess we could base it on economic output and probability of societal benefit. By that measure, the people of New Orleans are worth less than your average, well-off American. They do less and are likely to merely live out their lives and die anyhow. So then, the question becomes why we should value them at all.

Is it entirely a matter of justice? If we take the eye-for-an-eye approach, we're still forced to try and valuate a human life. Very difficult. I don't think it can be justice since that's too personal. Justice exists on a human level, not on a societal level. Societal justice is merely the society bending to the will of a person for, usually, revenge. And again, we're forced to valuate a life.

If it's dealing with negligence, then we have something. We are punishing those who are negligent to prevent future negligence, thus benefiting all of society. And in this case, the crying relatives should have nothing to do with the case since the valuation must be based on the depths of the negligence. A doctor who makes a mistake because he's tired and gets hammered with 100 crying relatives is toast, while a doctor who made deadly decisions for financial reasons on a person who has no one will likely get off easy, perhaps even keeping their license.

I generally like to take the economic view. These people are very likely to never achieve anything other than living and dying. As such, I do NOT see them as valuable as other people who are likely to achieve things in life. Fat, dumb, and poor does not greatness make. Unfortunately, this cold view of reality doesn't jive with another, partially emotional view I have. In the past, much greatness as risen from the depths of poverty. It's the reason we work with the mentally retarded, drive towards early care for poor children, and send people to the streets in hopes of helping the drug addicted and homeless. An enlightened society MUST recognize that the greatest contributions can come from its weakest members. We must hope against hope.

So, again, I'm back at being unable to come to an answer for myself. I know that probability strongly says these people will never do anything. It says not to care and to concentrate my energy elsewhere. But I can't stop valuing any human life as the next breakthrough in medicine or art. Anyone, at anytime could do it. All you have to do is watch Connections to know that. In these idealistic terms, a human life, any life, is priceless.