Lentils
It’s interesting to notice how hard it is to think without thinking morally. I suppose it can be done, but one would have to be ruthlessly, dedicatedly, vigilantly selfish and solipsistic. Psychopaths can do that, by definition, but it must be very difficult for everyone else. (Autistic people are another exception but autism is a disability, so that’s a separate issue.) We think with our emotions, as Antonio Damasio has helped to make even clearer than it was before; most of our emotions are related to attraction or aversion; once we become aware, at about age 4, that other people have minds just as we do, we understand that other people have likes and dislikes just as we do. This means that we start to learn very early in life that which we need to know in order to think morally. It is possible to avoid or delay or enfeeble this learning process – but it’s not easy. If our parents and siblings don’t teach us, then other people do, sooner or later. We have to be very dense not to understand that if we hurt people, they don’t like it, and we have to be very callous not to eventually get to the thought that we ought not to do things to people that they don’t like.
Of course, after that there is the challenging and stimulating process of rationalizing our desires to hurt or damage or hinder people. It’s hard to be entirely solipsistic, but it’s easy to come up with reasons to explain why certain people must be subordinated or exploited or enslaved or raped or tortured or killed or all those. One quick and easy method is just to invoke a deity – ‘God says so.’ Custom, tradition, our people, the tribe, the nation can serve the same purpose. Secular liberals who oppose subordination and slavery and torture don’t have it so easy – we have to come up with something better than a one or two word label for our moral reasons. This takes awhile, and a number of words; this fact often leads observers to think that secular liberals have a weaker case than theists and traditionalists do. That’s wrong. Theists and traditionalists are the ones who have the weaker case; ‘God says so’ and ‘we have always done it this way’ are worthless reasons for doing anything. But fortunately we are not cats or wolves; we can decide to eat lentils instead of animals and we can spend time and words explaining why cruelty is bad.
Actually, it’s extraordinarily difficult to explain why cruelty is bad. Luckily, most people feel that cruelty is bad, which isn’t the same thing as having an explanation for why cruelty is bad.
“Why cruelty is bad” seems to be a silly question on the face of it; what definition does “bad” have that doesn’t rely on a concept of cruelty?
I agree that our thinking is morally saturated, which makes relativism and nihilism both unworkable options.
Jenavir makes a excellent point here. If “cruelty” is defined broadly to mean all unjustified infliction of pain on others (including ruthless indifference to suffering, as well as active desire to cause suffering), then moral badness isn’t an abstract quality that cruelty possesses, it IS cruelty.
Well you would think so, but a lot of people think cruelty is not bad. The Catholic church didn’t think so for centuries upon centuries; I’m not sure it thinks so now.
It’s a more modern idea than we realize, that cruelty is 1) bad 2) the worst thing.
And, of course, we could acknowledge the roots of anti-cruelty morality in the redefinition of the wrong of cruelty from a private wrong to a public one, under the influence of Christian moralisers.
We could, if that’s true. Is it?
Mind you – I’m perfectly prepared to believe it of the Quakers for instance. But the Quakers were eccentric, not ‘normal.’
Montaigne was also eccentric in being opposed to cruelty – and his moralizing wasn’t Christian, although he was of course at least nominally Catholic.
OB: “…But fortunately we are not cats or wolves; we can decide to eat lentils instead of animals and we can spend time and words explaining why cruelty is bad.”
In his best-selling book ‘Supernature’ (1973) the late biologist and general maverick Lyall Watson cited experimental work allegedly showing that plants register something akin to fear, and presumably pain. That caused a bit of a stir at the time, and became a case for an extreme veganism. Those who wished to avoid inflicting pain faced confinement to a diet made up of solely of plants that had died naturally. Wheat and bread would be OK, but not green salads.
Fortunately for them, the research could not be replicated, and the whole issue died. However, if it had been replicated, it seems to me that it would have posed a tricky problem for Peter Singer and his acolytes, such as the blogger Peter Tatchell. (see http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/01/peter-singer-human-rights )
Indeed for all of us, perhaps with the exception of me, as I can rationalise may way past any roadblock you like.
;)
Why doesn’t the “golden rule” – “Do not do unto other (people) what you would not want done unto you” suffice as the basic moral guidance? I insert people because I do not want to become enmeshed in moral connundrums related to animals and plants and rocks. I think that the easy rationalization for including (people) is that I have no evidence that animals or plants or rocks ever think about this when they contemplate ME. I don’t intend to apply it to THEM till I have at least some evidence that they can think about me in the same way. I don’t think that the commonly used metric of “capabile of suffering” is appropriate because one could argue that even rocks can “suffer” – they bleed chemicals when subjected to water-boarding and can be made to emit sounds(cries of pain?) under extreme stress. I prefer reciprocity as the metric.
But I must admit that I don’t think about the morality of every action I take – it would be too overwhelming to consciously think about this every moment of the day. I actually worry more about people who DO think this way, because they seem to have such a highly developed sense of what morality is, that they are inevitably led to tell the rest of us how immoral our own lives are. And we all know where this can lead…
“It’s interesting to notice how hard it is to think without thinking morally. I suppose it can be done”
I’m a former art student… ;-)
And while I don’t think that I am being cruel when I don’t allow my cats to freely roam outside at night, THEY certainly do not agree. In fact, they consider it to be cat-abuse, and one of them has a nasty habit of giving me a (loving) nip in a tender spot when I don’t do what he wants.
rxc: I think the better formulation of a ‘golden rule’ is the one cast in the negative and variously attributed, including to Confucius and the Jewish philosopher Hillel: Do not do anything to someone else that you would not want that person to do to you.
As Peter Singer points out, there are some individual people who are less perceptive and sentient than many, many individual animals; therefore creating an exclusive moral zone for the people alone is a bit of a challenge.
Rocks may appear to cry out and shed tears of blood, but they have nothing in the way of body structures or physiology, and so cannot seriously be held to be alive and sentient. Plants are alive but non-sentient, because they have nothing corresponding to the animal nervous system. Simpler invertebrate animals show responses, but can they be said to feel pain?Probably not, on the present evidence.
There are many reasons why cruelty is the worst thing we do [A quote from Judith Shklar, I think?], but not least amongst them is because of what it does to us. To refrain from cruelty only out of fear of others’ cruelty would be to lose sight of the fact that an uncruel person is simply better than a cruel one. Call it an everyday moral intuition…
“As Peter Singer points out, there are some individual people who are less perceptive and sentient than many, many individual animals; therefore creating an exclusive moral zone for the people alone is a bit of a challenge.”
Peter Singer does seem to claim this but I have never found it very plausible except when taliking about the very yound and/or the mentally disabled which are special cases. Do you think it is plausible?
I should have said ‘some’ of the metally disabled, people with very serious brain damage.
Jenavir – are you sure the Church ‘glorified compassion and mercy’? Are you sure that’s not a modern back-reading? ‘Saint’ Francis did, but he, again, was an eccentric. Cruelty isn’t one of the seven cardinal sins, after all; it’s not even related to any of the seven cardinal sins. Las Casas excoriated cruelty, but he, yet again, was an eccentric. As far as I know the Church really was not very concerned with cruelty.
Do you really think so, John Meredith>? What about those human beings who enjoy torturing-are they by definition “mentally disabled” or just morally retarded? I would argue that my dogs are morally superior to the average Lords Army child-kidnapper and raper in Uganda.
Of course, by the standards of our troll, the soldier torturing his victim cannot be judged by the rest of us.
Am I sure? Well, the reading I’ve done of Church history supports it. Cruelty isn’t named as a cardinal sin, but wrath and envy and greed (frequent causes of cruelty) are. And kindness, charity and patience are heavenly virtues.
Eric, yes, the church did know it was torture, but the official rationalization was also that it was merciful; people who repented were strangled, because then there was no need to prolong their execution to give them a chance to repent.
Brian, I wasn’t referring to relative moral value, I was just talking about sentience and perceptivenmess. I think a torturer would be more sentient and perceptive than any animal I can think of.
Ian,
Go back and read my comment – I think I stated it the same way you do, and I think that is the right way. The other way is an invitation to busybodiness.
Also, what is wrong with my standard of reciprocity, instead of suffering? I guess it does not suit some who want to include animals, but I really do think that plants suffer – anyone who has seen plants that have been deprived water know that they really look like hell. And my cats REALLY seem to “suffer” when I don’t give them what they want.
I might also argue that people who don’t apply the golden rule towards me do not deserve it from me. And remember, I/we are defining the rule in the sense that we leave others alone, and do not do to them what we would not want done to us. So, we do not harm those who are “intellectually challenged”, but instead we carefully deal with them in non-hurtful ways. I see no other organism that is DNA-based that can demonstrate reciprocity, but _people_ all have DNA that is basically the same, and which seems to have allowed US to develop these sort of philosophical systems. No other animals seem to have developed such systems. Maybe some other primates are close, but it is still inferential because we cannot communicate with one-another unambiguously. You may see cases of animals who seem to care(I see it with my cats), but you cannot prove this, only infer it.
I think you have to put children and fetoeus(sp?) in a special category, where I don’t really want to go right now, which I think I can justify. And having only one expection for young human organisms who have not developed their sense of reciprocity yet does not seem to me to be as morally or ethically difficult as trying to decide what level of neural system makes an animal sentient.
Jenavir, okay, thanks. I’ve read some Church history (I even took a class in it once, it surprises me to remember), but not a huge amount, so I’ll heed your correction. (I am curious about the subject. Catholicism does seem to have at least a very broad streak of cruelty, and I’m curious about how that has been justified or excused or explained over the centuries.)
It has a very broad cruel streak, no question. But it’s interesting to me that it still has called itself the merciful “Mother Church” and prided itself on offering the comfort and mercy of the Holy Virgin. I’m not a credentialed expert in the history of the church, to be clear, but this contradiction does seem to be a pattern. If you’ll excuse the profanity, it’s an enormous mind-fuck.
rxc: You are quite right, my golden rule formulation misleadingly attributes the opposite casting of it to you. Apologies.
“And having only one expect[at?]ion for young human organisms who have not developed their sense of reciprocity yet does not seem to me to be as morally or ethically difficult as trying to decide what level of neural system makes an animal sentient.”
Exactly. Ask easy questions, get easy answers. Trouble is, the real world forces us to come up with at least provisional answers to the harder ones.
My OS is this: the more intelligent and sentient the source of the meat, the more reluctant I am to eat it. No trouble with molluscs and crustaceans. Chicken and fish OK. Lamb and beef so-so. Cetaceans, primates and carnivores definitely off the menu.
Works for me.
Jenavir: As a former Jesuit priest explained it to me, “the Church taught the world the art of bureaucracy.”
It could also teach Madison Avenue a thing or two.
“But it’s interesting to me that it still has called itself the merciful ‘Mother Church’ and prided itself on offering the comfort and mercy of the Holy Virgin.”
Yes, it has sanitised its image and airbrushed the evil out of its own history. It would hardly call itself ‘the Hammer of Witches’ or ‘the Blowtorch of Heretics’, would it?
Re: the Seven Deadly Sins, Dorothy Sayers saw them as being the fundamental bad habits of mind recognised and defined by the Church as the well-heads from which all sinful behaviour ultimately springs.
One of the Desert Fathers named Evagrius of Pontus, who late in the fourth century, took up monastic seclusion in The Egyptian desert made the Sins a basic part of his moral teachings and conceived them as the basic sinful drives against which a monk had to fight.
Pride is apparently seen as one of the most deadliest of sins as one becomes so independent and oblivious of the praise of others. It was thus seen as the most insidious and deadly of all sins.
I read lately that the pope is asking people to give up the Internet and texting for the duration of Lent.
It is rather ironic as an Irish parliamentarian the other day only urged the government to put a tax on texting.
The powers that be will not be too enamoured with the pope and his “innovative” suggestion.
John: “Peter Singer does seem to claim this [ie the lack of an exclusive moral zone for humans] but I have never found it very plausible except when talking about the very young and/or [some of the mentally disabled, people with very serious brain damage], which are special cases. Do you think it is plausible?”
Yes I do, and that is precisely Singer’s point. We would outlaw a program to use even ‘brain dead’ humans as subjects in destructive experimentation, but we tolerate such programs in the case of perfectly healthy other mammal species. He works (from what of his work I have read and seen reported) by pointing to such inconsistency and hypocrisy, labelling it ‘speciesism’.
Its ‘plausibility’ lies in the fact that there is no watertight boundary between the categories ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ in terms of sentience, consciousness, psychology or physiology.
He is right there, but the ‘speciesist’ analogy with racism and sexism works only partially.
If you are alive then you just can’t avoid being speciesist, IMHO. That however, does not condone cruelty, and particularly deliberate or institutionalised cruelty.
(Disclosure: I have a financial interest in the pastoral industry.)
I read that “cruelty” is rooted there in a subdivision of “Lust”, (specified by) Gregory, which is a Cardinal sin.
Lust, predominately so lurked behind a lot of the “cruelty” that occurred in Goldenbridge industrial school. Children were trained by the religious to be fearful of their own bodies, anything to do with their bodies was considered by the holy ones to be fierce dirty.
Children’s heads of hair were by the religious shaven off, because hair represented parts of their bodies and children’s bodies were made of dirt and under no circumstances were they to look pretty.
I never wear short hair because of the effects of having my hair constantly shaved off by the religious when I was a child inmate in Goldenbridge.
Anything appertaining to the body was perceived by these black penguins to be at odds with human nature.
I grew up being so ashamed of the human form.
Teenagers, especially, were constantly reminded by the sisters of how disgusting their growning bodies were – if they were caught running on corridors, they were immediately reprimanded by them. Their bodies were an anathema to the religious and in this sense one could compare them to the Iranian young people who are asked by the authorities to cover up.
In other institutions it was even worse than Goldenbridge as twelve year olds, were made to wear, what they called ‘top corsets’. They were made (by older girls) with approximately four layers of calico with strings that came from the back round to the front. Children had to tighten these strings very tightly and the sisters used to rub their backs to make sure they were wearing them. The whole idea was to prevent their bodies which were growing into adult shape from being on show.
This was all done in the name of my sweet lord.
Love wore many cruel masks!
Marie-Therese, I think you would probably agree that any doctrine that starts from the premise that people are by their very nature fundamentally flawed (dirty, bad, sinful etc) is itself fundamentally flawed and well past its use-by date.
The more fruitful investigation is with regard to just how such an attitude might have arisen, since (correct me if I am wrong) it is by no means universal in humanity.
Yeah I’ll excuse the profanity all right, Jenavir. An enormous mind-fuck.
So long as we remember that it is a ‘mind-fuck’ (never heard the expression before), Jenavir, I’ll take your suggestion that the reason for not strangling victims before burning them is mercy, but it is not particularly convincing. If burning someone to death doesn’t strike one as a cruel thing to do, then there is more problem here than idiotic beliefs.
Or there may be. There is one thread of belief which can be traced through Christian history which holds that pain is in the soul, and not, in an odd sense, of the body. Also that, in some mystical sense, pain is a way of suffering with Christ. So, it might be concluded from this that submitting someone to the flames might innerly transform the person (through suffering) to be fit to be received into paradise.
But it’s still a mind-fuck, and, as OB says, an enormous one. We have someone who thinks this way at the top of pile in the Vatican just now. And this should remind us, too, of Charles Taylor’s repetition of the idea (in A Secular Age) that there are more things dreamed of in the transcendental frame than merely human flourishing. Now I think I get his point!
“I think you would probably agree that any doctrine that starts from the premise that people are by their very nature fundamentally flawed (dirty, bad, sinful etc) is itself fundamentally flawed and well past its use-by date.”
Ian, yeah, I would agree, but it sadly took me till well past my use-by date to cop on to the flaws. I knew nothing else. Bernadette Fahy, in her book, Freedom of Angels, touches on the historical aspects of why the religious in Goldenbridge and in other institutions were so cruel to children in the past.
I just read at wiki, that “Peter O’Toole was evacuated from Leeds early in World War II and went to a Catholic School for seven or eight years, where he was “implored” to become right-handed. “I used to be scared stiff of the nuns: their whole denial of womanhood—the black dresses and the shaving of the hair—was so horrible, so terrifying,” he later commented. “Of course, that’s all been stopped. They’re sipping gin and tonic in the Dublin pubs now, and a couple of them flashed their pretty ankles at me just the other day.”
And I might add, handing over their school buildings to the government of Ireland to pay for all the cruelty that was bestowed on young children in the care of their predesessors.
Cuiteogs (which, as gaeilge, translates into earthworms) were forced and beaten by the religious in Goldenbridge to write with their right hands. Writing with the left hand was deemed to be the work of the devil.