1. Many of us out of habit will write "2007" when January rolls around instead of "2008". One trick I developed several years ago was to focus less on remembering the year itself than devising a rule that was good for all time: "'January' and 'February' mean 'danger!', 'caution!', 'careful!'".
2. When walking and you are not sure whether the ground is slick or not, you can rotate the ball of your foot slightly with each step, which shows the slipperiness without needing to move your foot back and forth and thus change weight distribution and risk falling.
3. Sometimes when eating a cracker or other item whose consumption is likely to create small crumbs, you can reduce or eliminate the number of crumbs by inhaling slightly as you bite. You have to inhale very slightly, of course, so you don't get crumbs in your lungs. If you do this and succeed, you might feel a tiny increment of esteem at your skill in managing to avoid both crumbs and danger. No one with any sense would write this, because someone will try it, inhale crumbs and sue me.
4. You will receive solicitations to contribute to worthy causes in rough proportion to the number of organizations you have given money to in the past. Instead of considering each request as it comes, you can place all the requests in a pile, and go through it only once a year. You can decide at that point how much you would like to give in total, how much to various categories, and how much to different organizations. Exceptions suggested for friends, children, and national emergencies.
5. There are unintended consequences. When I was reviewing the draft announcement to the FUSN list of my mother's death, I suggested email as an alternative to a physical condolence card, hoping to make people's lives easier. But I hadn't considered at the time that the very fact that the email condolence was easy would make people reply by that means who would not have sent a card. In greater detail: People range from those who feel a close connection with me to those who feel no connection. Up to some point along that line, people would feel the effort of sending a physical card was justified by the closeness they felt. Since sending an email is so much easier, there is a class of people who would not send a card but would feel that their closeness justified an email. The email is easier, to be sure, but still requires composing a message of the right length and content. For those people I made their lives harder, not easier. Thank you, one and all, for your expressions of condolence. For those of you who were further down the scale of closeness, who thought a condolence-like thought but didn't feel enough closeness to cross the email threshold, thank you too! Any condolences I might receive by either method as a result of this message will be other unintended consequences. I'm not going to lose sleep over it.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, November 30, 2007
The cosmic subtraction problem
Consider two situations: you die tomorrow, or you live for a certain number of years and then die. Using algebra, you can represent the first case as “D” (for death), and the second as “L + D” (for life plus death). If you want to know the difference between those situations, you perform the cosmic subtraction: (L+D) - D = L. "D" drops out of the equation. You are left with "L": your life. But whatever the value of "L", all such expressions have a "D" in them. Being as young and healthy as a person can be might call for an "L" of 100, but the "D" is still there in "100 + D". It is hard to keep the view of life as "L + D" firmly in mind. A more common actual view of life is "L + d", where the lowercase "d" is something like, "well, sure, I'm not going to live forever", or "L + ..." as in "I'm going to live for the indefinite future".
Whimsical algebraic formulations aside, death is inevitable. Contemplating one's own death elicits complicated emotional, intellectual, and spiritual reactions. They are usually unpleasant reactions, so we avoid the contemplation until death is within view. However, avoiding the issue can lead us away from seeing the world clearly. I suggest that there is no reason other than procrastination why we can't do our contemplation homework 20 or 50 years in advance. We are not going to gather any new data about "D" merely by letting the years go by. Working on it soon is prudent, since we never know when there might be a pop quiz -- or final exam. On the other hand, carrying on with this investigation isn't very healthy either -- obsession can get in the way of enjoying life. There's a lot to be said for writing the (metaphorical or literal) paper and storing it on the shelf. We might take a fresh look at it every few years, but mostly we can ignore the contents as long as we keep in mind that it is there.
If we keep the inevitability of “D” in mind, then what matters most is the years of living and what we do with them. People who lose track of it are apt to be more comfortable in wasting time. We see this in the common reaction of people when death's reality rudely confronts them, through a friend's death, a death narrowly averted, or a terminal illness. They regret wasting time and encourage others to keep the important things in mind.
There are other consequences to losing track of "D". Consider our reactions to fatal and nonfatal injustices. If the result is death, I sense that the outrage we feel is tinged with a qualitatively different touch of mystical dread. If someone survives after a lengthy unjust imprisonment, or has been maimed, or has been tortured, we are angry, but it is missing that extra dimension. We tally up the American losses in Iraq by counting the dead, not those who have suffered terrible injuries. The "death" part of an injustice gets a bit stronger reaction than it deserves, and the nonfatal parts get less. Murder shortens "L", it doesn't create a new "D" that was not already in the victim's future.
Denial of death is a fundamental roadblock to getting health care costs under control. When someone says to the doctor, “I demand the most advanced treatment available to try to save my father's life”, it's hard to feel comfortable saying no. If phrased as “I demand the most advanced treatment available if it can on average prolong my father's life by an extra month of a mediocre quality of life” it's easier to weigh the costs and benefits. The very concept of "saving a life" invites us to deny death. You can never truly save a life, you can only prolong it.
One perhaps odd way of putting it is that whenever you do get around to dying, you are saving yourself the trouble of dying later.
My attempts to not procrastinate in figuring out the significance of "D" leave me pretty much scratching my head; my paper on the shelf certainly doesn't deserve a high mark. But I don't think that further study will improve it much -- at least not this decade.
I don't claim to live my own life fully in accord with these ideals -- what I write of here is an ideal I think I see, not one I live up to. Meanwhile, I am continually amazed by "L": the complexity, the wonder, the love, the humor. Existence is amazing and wonderful.
Notes:
1. What I mean by "D" is some constellation of issues pertaining to not existing any more, not whatever tail ends of life (the "dying") precede it.
2. Surely the calculus is different for anyone who believes not only in an afterlife but that the fundamental character of that afterlife varies depending on how we live.
Whimsical algebraic formulations aside, death is inevitable. Contemplating one's own death elicits complicated emotional, intellectual, and spiritual reactions. They are usually unpleasant reactions, so we avoid the contemplation until death is within view. However, avoiding the issue can lead us away from seeing the world clearly. I suggest that there is no reason other than procrastination why we can't do our contemplation homework 20 or 50 years in advance. We are not going to gather any new data about "D" merely by letting the years go by. Working on it soon is prudent, since we never know when there might be a pop quiz -- or final exam. On the other hand, carrying on with this investigation isn't very healthy either -- obsession can get in the way of enjoying life. There's a lot to be said for writing the (metaphorical or literal) paper and storing it on the shelf. We might take a fresh look at it every few years, but mostly we can ignore the contents as long as we keep in mind that it is there.
If we keep the inevitability of “D” in mind, then what matters most is the years of living and what we do with them. People who lose track of it are apt to be more comfortable in wasting time. We see this in the common reaction of people when death's reality rudely confronts them, through a friend's death, a death narrowly averted, or a terminal illness. They regret wasting time and encourage others to keep the important things in mind.
There are other consequences to losing track of "D". Consider our reactions to fatal and nonfatal injustices. If the result is death, I sense that the outrage we feel is tinged with a qualitatively different touch of mystical dread. If someone survives after a lengthy unjust imprisonment, or has been maimed, or has been tortured, we are angry, but it is missing that extra dimension. We tally up the American losses in Iraq by counting the dead, not those who have suffered terrible injuries. The "death" part of an injustice gets a bit stronger reaction than it deserves, and the nonfatal parts get less. Murder shortens "L", it doesn't create a new "D" that was not already in the victim's future.
Denial of death is a fundamental roadblock to getting health care costs under control. When someone says to the doctor, “I demand the most advanced treatment available to try to save my father's life”, it's hard to feel comfortable saying no. If phrased as “I demand the most advanced treatment available if it can on average prolong my father's life by an extra month of a mediocre quality of life” it's easier to weigh the costs and benefits. The very concept of "saving a life" invites us to deny death. You can never truly save a life, you can only prolong it.
One perhaps odd way of putting it is that whenever you do get around to dying, you are saving yourself the trouble of dying later.
My attempts to not procrastinate in figuring out the significance of "D" leave me pretty much scratching my head; my paper on the shelf certainly doesn't deserve a high mark. But I don't think that further study will improve it much -- at least not this decade.
I don't claim to live my own life fully in accord with these ideals -- what I write of here is an ideal I think I see, not one I live up to. Meanwhile, I am continually amazed by "L": the complexity, the wonder, the love, the humor. Existence is amazing and wonderful.
Notes:
1. What I mean by "D" is some constellation of issues pertaining to not existing any more, not whatever tail ends of life (the "dying") precede it.
2. Surely the calculus is different for anyone who believes not only in an afterlife but that the fundamental character of that afterlife varies depending on how we live.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Wikipedia is great
I have urged caution in attending too much to the news. My first-line antidote is Wikipedia. Whenever you give Wikipedia a word or phrase, you get the big picture. Origins, history, connections with popular culture, and developments right up to the present -- sometimes within the last hour if the subject is of great interest.
For those who might not know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is open for anyone to edit. I was skeptical when I first heard about it, since people could through malice or mere ignorance enter misleading or incorrect material. But this is a case where the better part of human nature triumphs. There are many more people who want to write the truth than to cause trouble.
The absence of a central decision-making editorial board that is part of other encyclopedic ventures has advantages. Changes can be made instantly without taking time for review. The choice of what topics to cover is simple: whatever people feel inspired to enter. Coverage might be a little weak on the third-century rulers in some out-of-the-way province in China, but if no one bothered to write about it, the chances are good that few people will be disappointed to find it missing. But trivia from TV shows, internet rumors, and characters from obscure computer games are covered. An editorial board would be inclined to consider them too frivolous.
It is true that you can't believe everything you read. If it is vital that you know the real truth or if you are inquiring about a controversial issue, you must go further, but Wikipedia is still the best place to start. If the issue isn't controversial, 99% of the time you will be reading the truth. Keep in mind that you can't believe everything you read on a controversial issue anywhere else, either. With Wikipedia, the cause for caution is apparent, while with other sources it is hidden.
Google is also a favorite tool, but it has limitations. Around every corner and behind every bush is someone trying to sell you something. Often when I click on a link I land on a page in the middle of some context I don't understand -- who has written it and why. Overt commercialism is banned in Wikipedia. You can also find a high school student's C paper with Google. Unlike Wikipedia, there's no one to correct the faults in the paper.
I confess that I am not very knowledgeable about all that is available on the web, and I will be happy to hear of even better tools that are available.
There is one less positive aspect, though. In recent decades our society has offered instant gratification in a variety of areas, eroding our willingness to work for what we want. Wikipedia grants a measure of instant gratification with regard to learning. You can get an overview of a subject -- instantly.
For those who might not know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that is open for anyone to edit. I was skeptical when I first heard about it, since people could through malice or mere ignorance enter misleading or incorrect material. But this is a case where the better part of human nature triumphs. There are many more people who want to write the truth than to cause trouble.
The absence of a central decision-making editorial board that is part of other encyclopedic ventures has advantages. Changes can be made instantly without taking time for review. The choice of what topics to cover is simple: whatever people feel inspired to enter. Coverage might be a little weak on the third-century rulers in some out-of-the-way province in China, but if no one bothered to write about it, the chances are good that few people will be disappointed to find it missing. But trivia from TV shows, internet rumors, and characters from obscure computer games are covered. An editorial board would be inclined to consider them too frivolous.
It is true that you can't believe everything you read. If it is vital that you know the real truth or if you are inquiring about a controversial issue, you must go further, but Wikipedia is still the best place to start. If the issue isn't controversial, 99% of the time you will be reading the truth. Keep in mind that you can't believe everything you read on a controversial issue anywhere else, either. With Wikipedia, the cause for caution is apparent, while with other sources it is hidden.
Google is also a favorite tool, but it has limitations. Around every corner and behind every bush is someone trying to sell you something. Often when I click on a link I land on a page in the middle of some context I don't understand -- who has written it and why. Overt commercialism is banned in Wikipedia. You can also find a high school student's C paper with Google. Unlike Wikipedia, there's no one to correct the faults in the paper.
I confess that I am not very knowledgeable about all that is available on the web, and I will be happy to hear of even better tools that are available.
There is one less positive aspect, though. In recent decades our society has offered instant gratification in a variety of areas, eroding our willingness to work for what we want. Wikipedia grants a measure of instant gratification with regard to learning. You can get an overview of a subject -- instantly.
Friday, November 9, 2007
To kill a mouse: thoughts on treatment of animals
THIS WAS WRITTEN A LONG TIME AGO, IN JUNE OF 2002.
I killed a mouse last night. I heard the distinctive click of the mousetrap, impressing itself through layers of sleep. And this morning, there was the hind half of a mouse, trailing an impressive tail, protruding from the mousetrap, still and quite dead. And on the way to dispose of the corpse behind the shed (surely nature knows how to recycle a dead mouse?), Imarveled at the exquisite detail in this creature of nature, the fine fur and complex pads on the bottoms of the hind feet. This new-fangled mousetrap that I bought yesterday has a cover so the squeamish customer has no need to see the squashed head or neck, and no need to worry that their hand might brush against mouse fur during the disposal process. I felt a certain affinity for this mouse, having discovered her first causing a racket while trying to drag a Hershey's Dark Chocolate With Almond candy down through a burner into the stove. I didn't see her for several days, and thought she might have left. But later, having ignored potatoes and onions, and convicted by her droppings, I found she had stolen four individually-wrapped Andes Candies (mint). Chocoholic -- a mouse after my own heart.
In the dawn I dreamed of dead mice in traps. I dreamed of finding a rat in the trap, only wounded, who spoke and said, "Well, Bart, it's come to this, has it?" I dreamed of recovering a dozen baby mice, now doomed. Killing creatures bothers me. I've heard this is a natural reaction, extending back into our prehistory. We humans can surely inure ourselves to this reaction, as farmers and herders have done reliably through the generations. Our soldiers adjust to killing fellow humans -- in the relevant, efficient short term, even if scars remain.
Why this primal reaction? I suppose it has to do with empathy -- our ability to put ourselves in another's shoes. A very useful skill for living in social groups. A useful skill for hunting previously unknown prey, to understand them the better to feast on them. Maybe just an offshoot of our general intelligence. The connection is easier the more easily we can map from our parts to their parts. Fellow mammals are a shoo-in. Ants, with their recognizable heads, bodies and legs, are easier to identify with than worms. Fish have eyes and mouths going for them, though their fins are foreign. Trees are a stretch, but with their size and limbs, they have it over moss and mushrooms. Dolls can get our empathy because they are crafted to look like us, despite lacking life force.
More recently, we have brought our reason to bear on how we feel about our fellow creatures. When our science tells us that a loved one is brain dead, and has no chance of recovery, we consent to hastening the death of the remaining physical body so others can benefit from organs, though our primal empathy with this body remains so strong.
We also try to figure out systematically how similar animals are to us. For which purpose we need to know: Who are we? We experience this world -- it has a "seemingness" to it, the wonder of consciousness. For all the magnificent structure our science has sketched for us about why things areas they are, it has been astonishingly silent on why consciousness should exist. But exist it does -- and when we stop to reflect, we realize that this consciousness is the one thing we are sure of -- something is seeming! With no clear evidence about why we are conscious, most of us figure that animals who are similar to us must be conscious too, and have an experience of life. This experience includes pleasure and pain. This consciousnes shas a value, this pleasure and pain has weight, and if we are thinking about a just and harmonious world, animal pain is bad.
Another recent realization has been the existence of ecosystems and biodiversity, and our all-too-real power to destroy them. As fascinating and complex results of evolution, they have value in their own right. We realize that extinction is bad because a type of being is lost forever. All individual organisms are mortal, but populations can go on indefinitely. I certainly value efforts to preserve ecosystems and biodiversity, but think it is largely a separable issue from animal rights. The last passenger pigeon and last wooly mammoth did not suffer extra stress and agony because neither knew they were the last, nor could their heads hold such a concept.
So aside from feeling pleasure and pain, what do we think animals do? Some seem to have plans and goals. They remember things. Do they reflect on their consciousness, as we do? It's hard to know. We have some evidenc efrom our own experience as children -- the idea that we know we are conscious comes as a revelation, long after we know a great deal and exhibit as much foresight as the most advanced animals. Monkeys typically react to their reflection in a mirror as if it were another monkey. Great apes (chimps, gorillas, orangutans) don't, and a clever experiment was done to show that they realize they are looking at themselves. The subject apes were anesthetized, and a patch of red dye was put on their forehead. Whenpresented with a mirror, these apes suddenly became distressed, feeling their forehead repeatedly even after the mirror was gone. It doesn't prove much, I suppose, but recognizing ourselves in a mirror is something we pick up very early as children, and if only our fellow great apes can do so, it doesn't speak well of the philosophical capabilities of all the other animals.
What are reasonable goals for our domestic animals? Here are a couple possible answers. One is that since they are under our control and we have taken responsibility for them, they should get the best of everything. This is how some well-off animal lovers treat their pets. They may not always understand what their animals want, and may project human desires onto them, but their goal is that the animal should have the best. A classic dilemma is whether this lame, arthritic dog is enjoying life, or (having no fear of death itself) would be better served by euthanasia-induced nonexistence. Another possible view is that the animal should get as fair a shake at life as a similar wild animal. This is a far lower standard. For all her intricacy and wonder, nature is not kind to individual animals. They suffer from starvation, disease, and predation. By this standard, a steer who lives his short healthy life grazing on the range before being rounded up and slaughtered is getting a pretty good deal. This steer would have been castrated (as we neuter many of our domestic animals), a physical trauma, but in the absence of gonads to create the appropriate urges we have no reason to think that the animal misses its sex life.
So what about exploitation or slavery, aside from physical suffering? These are wrong for people, because people know about exploitation and slavery, and want to be free. Beyond the most egregious abuses, we in the human world have much to debate concerning equality, equality of opportunity, responsibility and reward for past choices. A different subject entirely.
I don't think animals understand exploitation. They live and react. Our need to respect animals is either in their role as part of a treasured ecosystem, or as rather dim beings with limited awareness, not as individual victims of exploitation. I've also heard concern among animal rights groups over the fear or anxiety an animal may experience on its way to the slaughter. Is this out of line with what nature metes out? One thing the animal is not doing is reflecting on the end of its life and an eternity of nonexistence. This moment has no special status to the animal compared to other fears or anxieties.
What is wrong, I think, is raising animals in a way so that the bulk of their lives is spent in misery. Confinement of veal calves seems wrong. Raising any animal in excessively cramped and crowded conditions seems wrong. These wrongs are most glaring when their only purpose is the maximization of profit. These wrongs are much easier to address than the more far-reaching agenda of having all animals within our reach have wonderful lives. If I'm right, vegetarianism for the sake of animals is not in itself an answer. Animals might suffer more to produce dairy products than to produce meat. What matters is how the animals live.
It's much harder to evaluate what animals suffer for the sake of scientific research. It's possible to wonder whether chickens or fish feel pain. It's possible to wonder whether modern computer programs have any conscious experience. We can say they surely don't, since we can understand how they work mechanically. Yet it ignores the possibility that some day we may understand how human brains work, but still have no idea why we are conscious. Could consciousness arise somehow from certain kinds of complexity?
In the end, I think my mouse had a good life. She did not have time to suffer. I chose to end her life because of my own convenience, wanting to reserve my space and my food for humans. The trap is still there, awaiting any pals my mouse may have.
I killed a mouse last night. I heard the distinctive click of the mousetrap, impressing itself through layers of sleep. And this morning, there was the hind half of a mouse, trailing an impressive tail, protruding from the mousetrap, still and quite dead. And on the way to dispose of the corpse behind the shed (surely nature knows how to recycle a dead mouse?), Imarveled at the exquisite detail in this creature of nature, the fine fur and complex pads on the bottoms of the hind feet. This new-fangled mousetrap that I bought yesterday has a cover so the squeamish customer has no need to see the squashed head or neck, and no need to worry that their hand might brush against mouse fur during the disposal process. I felt a certain affinity for this mouse, having discovered her first causing a racket while trying to drag a Hershey's Dark Chocolate With Almond candy down through a burner into the stove. I didn't see her for several days, and thought she might have left. But later, having ignored potatoes and onions, and convicted by her droppings, I found she had stolen four individually-wrapped Andes Candies (mint). Chocoholic -- a mouse after my own heart.
In the dawn I dreamed of dead mice in traps. I dreamed of finding a rat in the trap, only wounded, who spoke and said, "Well, Bart, it's come to this, has it?" I dreamed of recovering a dozen baby mice, now doomed. Killing creatures bothers me. I've heard this is a natural reaction, extending back into our prehistory. We humans can surely inure ourselves to this reaction, as farmers and herders have done reliably through the generations. Our soldiers adjust to killing fellow humans -- in the relevant, efficient short term, even if scars remain.
Why this primal reaction? I suppose it has to do with empathy -- our ability to put ourselves in another's shoes. A very useful skill for living in social groups. A useful skill for hunting previously unknown prey, to understand them the better to feast on them. Maybe just an offshoot of our general intelligence. The connection is easier the more easily we can map from our parts to their parts. Fellow mammals are a shoo-in. Ants, with their recognizable heads, bodies and legs, are easier to identify with than worms. Fish have eyes and mouths going for them, though their fins are foreign. Trees are a stretch, but with their size and limbs, they have it over moss and mushrooms. Dolls can get our empathy because they are crafted to look like us, despite lacking life force.
More recently, we have brought our reason to bear on how we feel about our fellow creatures. When our science tells us that a loved one is brain dead, and has no chance of recovery, we consent to hastening the death of the remaining physical body so others can benefit from organs, though our primal empathy with this body remains so strong.
We also try to figure out systematically how similar animals are to us. For which purpose we need to know: Who are we? We experience this world -- it has a "seemingness" to it, the wonder of consciousness. For all the magnificent structure our science has sketched for us about why things areas they are, it has been astonishingly silent on why consciousness should exist. But exist it does -- and when we stop to reflect, we realize that this consciousness is the one thing we are sure of -- something is seeming! With no clear evidence about why we are conscious, most of us figure that animals who are similar to us must be conscious too, and have an experience of life. This experience includes pleasure and pain. This consciousnes shas a value, this pleasure and pain has weight, and if we are thinking about a just and harmonious world, animal pain is bad.
Another recent realization has been the existence of ecosystems and biodiversity, and our all-too-real power to destroy them. As fascinating and complex results of evolution, they have value in their own right. We realize that extinction is bad because a type of being is lost forever. All individual organisms are mortal, but populations can go on indefinitely. I certainly value efforts to preserve ecosystems and biodiversity, but think it is largely a separable issue from animal rights. The last passenger pigeon and last wooly mammoth did not suffer extra stress and agony because neither knew they were the last, nor could their heads hold such a concept.
So aside from feeling pleasure and pain, what do we think animals do? Some seem to have plans and goals. They remember things. Do they reflect on their consciousness, as we do? It's hard to know. We have some evidenc efrom our own experience as children -- the idea that we know we are conscious comes as a revelation, long after we know a great deal and exhibit as much foresight as the most advanced animals. Monkeys typically react to their reflection in a mirror as if it were another monkey. Great apes (chimps, gorillas, orangutans) don't, and a clever experiment was done to show that they realize they are looking at themselves. The subject apes were anesthetized, and a patch of red dye was put on their forehead. Whenpresented with a mirror, these apes suddenly became distressed, feeling their forehead repeatedly even after the mirror was gone. It doesn't prove much, I suppose, but recognizing ourselves in a mirror is something we pick up very early as children, and if only our fellow great apes can do so, it doesn't speak well of the philosophical capabilities of all the other animals.
What are reasonable goals for our domestic animals? Here are a couple possible answers. One is that since they are under our control and we have taken responsibility for them, they should get the best of everything. This is how some well-off animal lovers treat their pets. They may not always understand what their animals want, and may project human desires onto them, but their goal is that the animal should have the best. A classic dilemma is whether this lame, arthritic dog is enjoying life, or (having no fear of death itself) would be better served by euthanasia-induced nonexistence. Another possible view is that the animal should get as fair a shake at life as a similar wild animal. This is a far lower standard. For all her intricacy and wonder, nature is not kind to individual animals. They suffer from starvation, disease, and predation. By this standard, a steer who lives his short healthy life grazing on the range before being rounded up and slaughtered is getting a pretty good deal. This steer would have been castrated (as we neuter many of our domestic animals), a physical trauma, but in the absence of gonads to create the appropriate urges we have no reason to think that the animal misses its sex life.
So what about exploitation or slavery, aside from physical suffering? These are wrong for people, because people know about exploitation and slavery, and want to be free. Beyond the most egregious abuses, we in the human world have much to debate concerning equality, equality of opportunity, responsibility and reward for past choices. A different subject entirely.
I don't think animals understand exploitation. They live and react. Our need to respect animals is either in their role as part of a treasured ecosystem, or as rather dim beings with limited awareness, not as individual victims of exploitation. I've also heard concern among animal rights groups over the fear or anxiety an animal may experience on its way to the slaughter. Is this out of line with what nature metes out? One thing the animal is not doing is reflecting on the end of its life and an eternity of nonexistence. This moment has no special status to the animal compared to other fears or anxieties.
What is wrong, I think, is raising animals in a way so that the bulk of their lives is spent in misery. Confinement of veal calves seems wrong. Raising any animal in excessively cramped and crowded conditions seems wrong. These wrongs are most glaring when their only purpose is the maximization of profit. These wrongs are much easier to address than the more far-reaching agenda of having all animals within our reach have wonderful lives. If I'm right, vegetarianism for the sake of animals is not in itself an answer. Animals might suffer more to produce dairy products than to produce meat. What matters is how the animals live.
It's much harder to evaluate what animals suffer for the sake of scientific research. It's possible to wonder whether chickens or fish feel pain. It's possible to wonder whether modern computer programs have any conscious experience. We can say they surely don't, since we can understand how they work mechanically. Yet it ignores the possibility that some day we may understand how human brains work, but still have no idea why we are conscious. Could consciousness arise somehow from certain kinds of complexity?
In the end, I think my mouse had a good life. She did not have time to suffer. I chose to end her life because of my own convenience, wanting to reserve my space and my food for humans. The trap is still there, awaiting any pals my mouse may have.
A measured approach to radical Islam
THIS WAS WRITTEN A LONG TIME AGO, IN OCTOBER OF 2001
This is an email in reply to another FUSN member "Pete". Passages from the email I was replying to are in quotes.
"I am puzzled why some of us so faithfully point out deficiencies of the U.S.A and equally faithfully neglect to point out what is so good about the U.S.A that so many from outside our borders would like to live here."
Against the backdrop of a general cultural perception that the US is great and always has good intentions, critics naturally want to say the part that isn't being said: that the US in its foreign policy is often very self-interested. Foreign policy and domestic policies can be quite different. There's no conflict between wanting to enjoy the fruits of an empire domestically while also wishing it would treat subject peoples more humanely. The Roman and British empires come to mind. British subjects in India could reasonably want to both move to Britain and end British rule inIndia.
"I am puzzled as to why some of us cannot disentangle what we must do to become a more ethical player in the world from what we must do to defend ourselves against lethal enemies."
I think the crux of the disagreement is here. For the moment let's set aside every moral consideration and take a hypothetical amoral goal only: to make life as safe and pleasant as possible for (non-Muslim) Americans, whatever the cost to anyone else. Very harsh actions (like expelling all Muslims from the US or slaughtering them elsewhere in the world) will get in the way of that: the outrage this would cause will either put us in constant physical danger, or we will have to drastically curtail any mixing with other parts of the world (which would lead to a drop in trade and a big sag in our economy and standard of living). It may be true that Radical Fundamentalist Islam has strong currents that want us dead, and it may be true that they have power to cause us considerable harm. But their power is far from limitless, and in the wake of September 11 we have taken countermeasures to make large-scale attacks on us much harder.
I could be wrong, but I think the main reason people bring past self-interested and cruel US foreign policy actions into the debate is not to paralyze us. One purpose is to point out that since we have messed things up in the past, we should be suspicious that we are messing things up again, and scrutinize the Bush policy very closely. Perhaps even more important is to point out that anti-American sentiment elsewhere in the world is a reasonable reaction that reasonable people will have. You stated in an early post, Pete, that you didn't particularly care to understand why the fundamentalists hated us. I disagree on moral and spiritual grounds, but I also disagree on purely amoral grounds of self-interest, which is the point I will take up here.
Restricting our attention to Islam, I think a good model is that there is a broad range of sentiment. At the left extreme are some who idolize America, toward the middle are some who respect and understand us even if they are envious of what we have, a little further along are those who don't like what has happened to their world and think we have a lot to do with it, more to the right are those who choose freely to attend rallies and shout anti-American slogans, and then further along are those who might turn a blind eye to those plotting terror against the US, and finally are those who actually call for, organize, and carry out terror attacks. From our purely amoral perspective, it's not at all clear to me what to do. I have a strong hunch that if there are thousands in the last group, and we start killing them and many innocents too, then many of the millions who shout anti-US slogans might be moved to terrorism so we then have swelled the last group to tens of thousands. I care about this very much. I would like to see a sort of "Muslim opinion poll", where we can describe various US actions and see how various Muslims would react. Actions that outrage large numbers are almost certainly a bad idea. It's possible that money is the scarcest resource, so we could have solved our problem best without killing anyone at all. If we hadn't killed anyone, it's possible that some significant number of moderate Muslims would have been willing to infiltrate the radical groups as spies and give us the vital intelligence we need to thwart their plans.
Bringing ethics back in, it is just possible (he said slyly) that if we had a strong ethical basis to our foreign policies and combined that with a deep understanding of what goes on in the minds of various groups of Muslims, the culture of hatred against us would eventually dry up.
"I am puzzled by the so-called peace demonstrations in the U.S.A which have a kind of flower-power or naive quality for me. I certainly understand and sympathize with the humaneness behind such demonstrations, but they just don't work for me. Were the demonstrations to occur in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, to ask the governments of *those* countries to desist from violence, I'm not sure how many of the demonstrators would survive to demonstrate again. What *is* permitted (or governmentally orchestrated) in those countries are demonstrations *for* violence and hate, especially (maybe only) if directed at the U.S.A. or Israel."
I'm not sure what the relevance of this is. Should we suspend civil liberties because other societies don't have them? I hope not. Should we voluntarily refrain from criticizing our government? Until some foreign army threatens to invade our soil, I don't see any reason to even think about it. Popular will is felt even in repressive societies, as the governments of Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan are finding out. The popular will there seems to be much more anti-US than the governments.
"I just don't understand how many wake-up calls we need."
I don't think the US government needs any wake-up calls. Some pacifists and people who want to proceed with caution may not be fully informed, but some hawks are also ill-informed, and that doesn't invalidate anyone's views.
"There is a world view, Radical Fundamentalist Islam, which has arrived on the world stage, and it is mortally incompatible with every humane culture or work-in-progress for a humane culture. Imperfect as our American culture is, it needs to be defended, and I see the the best way to defend it is by destruction of those who adhere to Radical Fundamentalist Islam."
It's possible, though I doubt it very much. It is very hard to kill ideas and belief systems, especially ones that have already shown they have widespread appeal. Killing those who espouse the beliefs hasn't worked in the past. I think our best bet is to crack down on preparations for terror itself where we can, find a balance between a level of terror attacks we can tolerate and a level of security we can tolerate, address legitimate grievances from around the world, but mostly wait for the conditions of the world to change. Like many of us, I grew up in a world where the US/USSR Cold War defined the landscape of international relations. It was very hard for us to see how this competition between two nuclear-armed states could ever resolve itself in a peaceful fashion. And despite Russia's current woes, it did resolve itself without a single battle or nuclear explosion. Those who advocated we "wake up" and risk a nuclear confrontation with the USSR turned out to be very wrong.
This is an email in reply to another FUSN member "Pete". Passages from the email I was replying to are in quotes.
"I am puzzled why some of us so faithfully point out deficiencies of the U.S.A and equally faithfully neglect to point out what is so good about the U.S.A that so many from outside our borders would like to live here."
Against the backdrop of a general cultural perception that the US is great and always has good intentions, critics naturally want to say the part that isn't being said: that the US in its foreign policy is often very self-interested. Foreign policy and domestic policies can be quite different. There's no conflict between wanting to enjoy the fruits of an empire domestically while also wishing it would treat subject peoples more humanely. The Roman and British empires come to mind. British subjects in India could reasonably want to both move to Britain and end British rule inIndia.
"I am puzzled as to why some of us cannot disentangle what we must do to become a more ethical player in the world from what we must do to defend ourselves against lethal enemies."
I think the crux of the disagreement is here. For the moment let's set aside every moral consideration and take a hypothetical amoral goal only: to make life as safe and pleasant as possible for (non-Muslim) Americans, whatever the cost to anyone else. Very harsh actions (like expelling all Muslims from the US or slaughtering them elsewhere in the world) will get in the way of that: the outrage this would cause will either put us in constant physical danger, or we will have to drastically curtail any mixing with other parts of the world (which would lead to a drop in trade and a big sag in our economy and standard of living). It may be true that Radical Fundamentalist Islam has strong currents that want us dead, and it may be true that they have power to cause us considerable harm. But their power is far from limitless, and in the wake of September 11 we have taken countermeasures to make large-scale attacks on us much harder.
I could be wrong, but I think the main reason people bring past self-interested and cruel US foreign policy actions into the debate is not to paralyze us. One purpose is to point out that since we have messed things up in the past, we should be suspicious that we are messing things up again, and scrutinize the Bush policy very closely. Perhaps even more important is to point out that anti-American sentiment elsewhere in the world is a reasonable reaction that reasonable people will have. You stated in an early post, Pete, that you didn't particularly care to understand why the fundamentalists hated us. I disagree on moral and spiritual grounds, but I also disagree on purely amoral grounds of self-interest, which is the point I will take up here.
Restricting our attention to Islam, I think a good model is that there is a broad range of sentiment. At the left extreme are some who idolize America, toward the middle are some who respect and understand us even if they are envious of what we have, a little further along are those who don't like what has happened to their world and think we have a lot to do with it, more to the right are those who choose freely to attend rallies and shout anti-American slogans, and then further along are those who might turn a blind eye to those plotting terror against the US, and finally are those who actually call for, organize, and carry out terror attacks. From our purely amoral perspective, it's not at all clear to me what to do. I have a strong hunch that if there are thousands in the last group, and we start killing them and many innocents too, then many of the millions who shout anti-US slogans might be moved to terrorism so we then have swelled the last group to tens of thousands. I care about this very much. I would like to see a sort of "Muslim opinion poll", where we can describe various US actions and see how various Muslims would react. Actions that outrage large numbers are almost certainly a bad idea. It's possible that money is the scarcest resource, so we could have solved our problem best without killing anyone at all. If we hadn't killed anyone, it's possible that some significant number of moderate Muslims would have been willing to infiltrate the radical groups as spies and give us the vital intelligence we need to thwart their plans.
Bringing ethics back in, it is just possible (he said slyly) that if we had a strong ethical basis to our foreign policies and combined that with a deep understanding of what goes on in the minds of various groups of Muslims, the culture of hatred against us would eventually dry up.
"I am puzzled by the so-called peace demonstrations in the U.S.A which have a kind of flower-power or naive quality for me. I certainly understand and sympathize with the humaneness behind such demonstrations, but they just don't work for me. Were the demonstrations to occur in Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, to ask the governments of *those* countries to desist from violence, I'm not sure how many of the demonstrators would survive to demonstrate again. What *is* permitted (or governmentally orchestrated) in those countries are demonstrations *for* violence and hate, especially (maybe only) if directed at the U.S.A. or Israel."
I'm not sure what the relevance of this is. Should we suspend civil liberties because other societies don't have them? I hope not. Should we voluntarily refrain from criticizing our government? Until some foreign army threatens to invade our soil, I don't see any reason to even think about it. Popular will is felt even in repressive societies, as the governments of Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan are finding out. The popular will there seems to be much more anti-US than the governments.
"I just don't understand how many wake-up calls we need."
I don't think the US government needs any wake-up calls. Some pacifists and people who want to proceed with caution may not be fully informed, but some hawks are also ill-informed, and that doesn't invalidate anyone's views.
"There is a world view, Radical Fundamentalist Islam, which has arrived on the world stage, and it is mortally incompatible with every humane culture or work-in-progress for a humane culture. Imperfect as our American culture is, it needs to be defended, and I see the the best way to defend it is by destruction of those who adhere to Radical Fundamentalist Islam."
It's possible, though I doubt it very much. It is very hard to kill ideas and belief systems, especially ones that have already shown they have widespread appeal. Killing those who espouse the beliefs hasn't worked in the past. I think our best bet is to crack down on preparations for terror itself where we can, find a balance between a level of terror attacks we can tolerate and a level of security we can tolerate, address legitimate grievances from around the world, but mostly wait for the conditions of the world to change. Like many of us, I grew up in a world where the US/USSR Cold War defined the landscape of international relations. It was very hard for us to see how this competition between two nuclear-armed states could ever resolve itself in a peaceful fashion. And despite Russia's current woes, it did resolve itself without a single battle or nuclear explosion. Those who advocated we "wake up" and risk a nuclear confrontation with the USSR turned out to be very wrong.
Pacifism, almost always
THIS WAS WRITTEN A LONG TIME AGO, IN SEPTEMBER OF 2001, SHORTLY AFTER "9/11"
I've grappled with the issue of pacifism over the years. Where I have ended up personally is that violence is not always wrong, but that in real-world situations people usually jump to violence too soon.
When people weigh in on what to do about our war against terrorism, I imagine a giant see-saw. If you know which way you want it to tilt, it's pretty easy to just jump on the end. To the degree that we have a voice in what the final national policy is, it doesn't matter that much whether we give a carefully nuanced position about exactly what the final tilt of the see-saw should be. But if each of us imagines that we are suddenly thrust into the decision-maker's chair and we are making the final decision, opinions might converge a little more. Good intelligence tells you there are 50 terrorists finalizing plans for a new wave of terror at a remote location in a hostile country, and you can prove it, and they will disperse shortly. I would authorize the air strike to kill them, and maybe some ofthe others who jumped on the pacifist end of the see-saw would too. On the other hand, some of those who have advocated massive indiscriminate bombing of Afghanistan (none from within FUSN so far) might decide against it if the final responsibility for the attack fell on them (this I fervently hope).
The real situations will fall in the middle between those extremes. I am somewhat comforted to think that our intelligence services, state department, and military are staffed with enough non-partisan professionals that they will veto a wide range of actions that would by any reasonable measure turn out badly. I could be eating my words shortly, but I think they realize that air strikes that kill thousands of civilians, or trying to invade and then actually rule any part of a hostile country such asAfghanistan or Iraq would be hugely counterproductive. They may still undertake missions that turn out badly, or that I will find immoral, but the fact that our government has waited a week without lashing out is a good sign that the worst mistakes have been avoided.
One other perspective that might bridge the gap between us at FUSN is to think about our goal. Here's a suggestion: We want the best future world we can have. Could we agree that actual terrorist organizers should be in jail if the alternative is that they are walking free? Could we agree that we want to minimize future terrorism? Could we agree that we want to minimize loss of innocent lives? If so, then our differences are about means rather than about ends. (I realize that varying importance attached to these goals is still an area for disagreements, but it's a start.) Some people might argue that we should seek revenge even if we know that it will lead to increased terrorism in the future, because revenge is an end in itself; I strongly disagree with this. For those who feel that strong revenge will lead to a better future world situation, I may disagree but I do see it as an empirical question and I respect your view.
In the early 1970s I applied for and got a CO (conscientious objector) status from my draft board. With draft number 35, I would have done alternative service had draft call-ups not been ended my year. For a couple years right after college, I considered myself a Quaker, and as many of you will know, there is a strong peace testimony in Quakerism which is often taken as absolute. One note from history is interesting: after the Quakers settled the Delaware Valley, an enterprising band of pirates discovered this was a great place to operate since the pacifist Quakers put up no defense. After much soul-searching, the Quakers hired some mercenaries to hunt down the pirates by what they surely knew would be violent means.
Some of us have quoted Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, great people who achieved great things with nonviolent resistance. But the success they enjoyed in particular circumstances hardly settles any general question. Quotations rarely do, even (especially?) quotations attributed to God.
I was also very interested in social justice from a leftist perspective during the 1976-86 period, and there were many opportunities to think about the role of violence in those struggles. For a while I thought violence as a means to ending apartheid in South Africa might be justified, but as history has turned out, it seems like it was not. The vast majority of leftist guerrilla movements have turned out badly, whether they ultimately lost or won. The brutal Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union played a major role in defeating Nazi Germany, and then became the less brutal Brezhnev regime and ultimately disintegrated into its component republics -- all without external violence.
It took me a long time to find a war where I could easily see myself picking up a gun and heading off to the front, but I found a pretty clear case during the Bosnia war: if I had been a Muslim resident of Sarajevo during the Serbian siege, I would have been able to go off and defend the trenches with a clear conscience. The price of failure in that violent struggle would be the killing or expulsion of my people from their home. It's much harder for me to judge earlier wars because I have only the information supplied by history, not the information available at the time.
I've grappled with the issue of pacifism over the years. Where I have ended up personally is that violence is not always wrong, but that in real-world situations people usually jump to violence too soon.
When people weigh in on what to do about our war against terrorism, I imagine a giant see-saw. If you know which way you want it to tilt, it's pretty easy to just jump on the end. To the degree that we have a voice in what the final national policy is, it doesn't matter that much whether we give a carefully nuanced position about exactly what the final tilt of the see-saw should be. But if each of us imagines that we are suddenly thrust into the decision-maker's chair and we are making the final decision, opinions might converge a little more. Good intelligence tells you there are 50 terrorists finalizing plans for a new wave of terror at a remote location in a hostile country, and you can prove it, and they will disperse shortly. I would authorize the air strike to kill them, and maybe some ofthe others who jumped on the pacifist end of the see-saw would too. On the other hand, some of those who have advocated massive indiscriminate bombing of Afghanistan (none from within FUSN so far) might decide against it if the final responsibility for the attack fell on them (this I fervently hope).
The real situations will fall in the middle between those extremes. I am somewhat comforted to think that our intelligence services, state department, and military are staffed with enough non-partisan professionals that they will veto a wide range of actions that would by any reasonable measure turn out badly. I could be eating my words shortly, but I think they realize that air strikes that kill thousands of civilians, or trying to invade and then actually rule any part of a hostile country such asAfghanistan or Iraq would be hugely counterproductive. They may still undertake missions that turn out badly, or that I will find immoral, but the fact that our government has waited a week without lashing out is a good sign that the worst mistakes have been avoided.
One other perspective that might bridge the gap between us at FUSN is to think about our goal. Here's a suggestion: We want the best future world we can have. Could we agree that actual terrorist organizers should be in jail if the alternative is that they are walking free? Could we agree that we want to minimize future terrorism? Could we agree that we want to minimize loss of innocent lives? If so, then our differences are about means rather than about ends. (I realize that varying importance attached to these goals is still an area for disagreements, but it's a start.) Some people might argue that we should seek revenge even if we know that it will lead to increased terrorism in the future, because revenge is an end in itself; I strongly disagree with this. For those who feel that strong revenge will lead to a better future world situation, I may disagree but I do see it as an empirical question and I respect your view.
In the early 1970s I applied for and got a CO (conscientious objector) status from my draft board. With draft number 35, I would have done alternative service had draft call-ups not been ended my year. For a couple years right after college, I considered myself a Quaker, and as many of you will know, there is a strong peace testimony in Quakerism which is often taken as absolute. One note from history is interesting: after the Quakers settled the Delaware Valley, an enterprising band of pirates discovered this was a great place to operate since the pacifist Quakers put up no defense. After much soul-searching, the Quakers hired some mercenaries to hunt down the pirates by what they surely knew would be violent means.
Some of us have quoted Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, great people who achieved great things with nonviolent resistance. But the success they enjoyed in particular circumstances hardly settles any general question. Quotations rarely do, even (especially?) quotations attributed to God.
I was also very interested in social justice from a leftist perspective during the 1976-86 period, and there were many opportunities to think about the role of violence in those struggles. For a while I thought violence as a means to ending apartheid in South Africa might be justified, but as history has turned out, it seems like it was not. The vast majority of leftist guerrilla movements have turned out badly, whether they ultimately lost or won. The brutal Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union played a major role in defeating Nazi Germany, and then became the less brutal Brezhnev regime and ultimately disintegrated into its component republics -- all without external violence.
It took me a long time to find a war where I could easily see myself picking up a gun and heading off to the front, but I found a pretty clear case during the Bosnia war: if I had been a Muslim resident of Sarajevo during the Serbian siege, I would have been able to go off and defend the trenches with a clear conscience. The price of failure in that violent struggle would be the killing or expulsion of my people from their home. It's much harder for me to judge earlier wars because I have only the information supplied by history, not the information available at the time.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
When our reaction to the news is bad for other people
In "When the news is bad for you", I argued that when we get our impressions of the world from news, we overestimate the chances that an event in the news might apply to us. Our reactions to the news also profoundly influence how we act in the world at large -- how we affect other people.
Most of us take the news as the primary way we think about the world outside of our personal experience. If we accept the news at face value, our opinions and actions will be distorted. Some of what follows is widely understood, I think:
News organizations have a great deal of power. News tends to be slanted towards the views of those with the money -- owners and advertisers. Whatever groups with enough savvy and expertise orchestrate their strategies within the framework of the news. This includes politicians, businesses, nonprofits -- and terrorists.
Corporations will package many sorts of losses as a single "charge", of perhaps billions of dollars, to have one news story about a large amount rather than a series of stories about smaller amounts that are still large enough to be news.
Sophisticated terrorist organizations know that steady attacks killing ten people a day become routine and fall out of the news, whereas a single large, unexpected attack will make the news.
Compare on the one hand how we deal with grisly murders and how we deal with drunk driving deaths. One reaction to grisly murders is to urge the death penalty. Many heinous crimes are news stories, and execution of a perpetrator is also a news story. There are relatively few grisly and relatively few executions. A death penalty proponent has in a sense urged a news story as a reaction to a news story.
Deaths from drunk driving, on the other hand, are very common and usually are just local news. News reports will often note that drunk driving deaths are common, and briefly cite statistics to back up that claim, but they will spend more of their report focusing our attention on the suffering of a particular victim and family. And there will still be more stories about grisly murders than about drunk driving, even if drunk driving deaths are a hundred times more frequent.
How to prevent deaths from drunk driving is not something I feel at all knowledgeable about, but surely there are things we could consider: increasing penalties for repeat offenders, a form of ankle bracelet that alerts authorities if someone on probation gets into the driver's seat of a car, mandated living situations without cars. Just about any such measure would do far more to save lives than the death penalty. It is true that a great deal of progress has been made on this issue in the past thirty years, but the deaths from drunk driving still dwarf most other non-medical causes.
In the words of Tom Lehrer, in an early 1960s song lampooning the Boy Scouts, "Be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you". Politicians are more concerned with news stories covering the fact that they took action on an issue than the effectiveness of the action. One small instance that struck me occurred in the wake of the Columbia space shuttle disaster. There was a passage in the tax form 1040 instructions concerning certain special treatment available for families of astronauts who died. Surely compensation to survivors of seven people could have been handled far more efficiently by direct payments than by special tax legislation. Could it possibly be that the PR value of that passage in the tax code was more important to the politicians than the compensation?
The rationale for federal assistance in a disaster area is that the damage is large enough that local resources are not sufficient to provide relief. But I suspect that a more compelling motivation might be to be perceived in the news as helping with a disaster that made the news. I think I saw an implication of this in the wake of the New Orleans hurricane disaster. This was a disaster of sufficient scale that extraordinary aid was called for. Many other communities along the Gulf Coast were devastated, and the awkward question was how far away that extraordinary aid should reach. It was the same hurricane, but the flooding of New Orleans was truly extraordinary news, while devastation from hurricanes is unfortunately a relatively common occurrence.
As for the war on terror, that is a topic for a different day.
So how might things be different? I fear there is no sexy or dramatic antidote. Some of the news bias is intentional: corporations with their PR, politicians with sound bites, and terrorists with orchestrated terror. Many of us understand these manipulations and try to counter them. I think most of us could try harder, and I include myself. It is more relaxing to read or listen to the news with a sense of safety and trust than with a healthy dose of skepticism and suspicion.
I think it is even harder to counteract news bias when it is not intentional. When we hear of a grisly murder, especially of a child, it's hard to blame the news media for covering the story, since it really is news and does grab our interest. We appropriately feel outrage, and it's hard to be open to the possibility that there isn't anything we should do about it (even if we can). Perhaps the human cost of keeping hundreds or thousands of not-very-dangerous people locked up indefinitely is just too high. If we don't take that into account, then in an important sense what we are saying is that we place more value on avoiding the shocking news story than actually minimizing the suffering in our society -- when it includes that borne by those whose lives aren't newsworthy. We could help far more people by encouraging greater awareness of the potential for abuse within families, including the very common instance of brothers abusing sisters.
Individuals shouldn't have to make all these adjustments on their own. We should be able to find others who take the same attitude and pool our resources, and support organizations with the same view.
Progressive organizations are not the answer. Most are just as eager to manipulate us as those of the powers that be. I used to get some letters with the following basic message, but am now inundated since I am handling my parents' mail: "This particular moment is unlike all others and you simply must give us more money or uniquely terrible things will happen." They will cite any news story that supports their message, to play on our feelings. To be clear, I do think that progressive organizations are vital and I do support some of them some of the time. They are no worse than conservative organizations. It's just that they aren't a solution to the problem of news bias.
One could imagine an organization dedicated to truth, regardless of whether it supports a liberal or conservative view and how unpleasant or politically unpopular the conclusions. It could not exist for long, especially after a few reports that are politically unpopular with just about everyone.
To some extent it is professional government experts (we might call them bureaucrats) who can serve this role. They have the time to study these matters in depth and the skill and training to consider what is best for everyone, all considered. They are not (or should not be) subject to immediate political pressure. My impression is that it is the radical Republicans, starting with Reagan and dramatically extended by "W", who have convinced people not to trust the experts, if not to view them with outright derision. (Yes, experts can be biased and self-serving too.)
The judiciary can help to some extent. But I believe judges are exasperated and demoralized by mandatory sentencing guidelines that do not take into account the realities of life for ordinary citizens who are not newsworthy. The sentencing guidelines come from legislation passed in response to political pressure arising from -- news stories.
Education about news bias is an important lesson we could give to our children in how to be a responsible citizen.
Most of us take the news as the primary way we think about the world outside of our personal experience. If we accept the news at face value, our opinions and actions will be distorted. Some of what follows is widely understood, I think:
News organizations have a great deal of power. News tends to be slanted towards the views of those with the money -- owners and advertisers. Whatever groups with enough savvy and expertise orchestrate their strategies within the framework of the news. This includes politicians, businesses, nonprofits -- and terrorists.
Corporations will package many sorts of losses as a single "charge", of perhaps billions of dollars, to have one news story about a large amount rather than a series of stories about smaller amounts that are still large enough to be news.
Sophisticated terrorist organizations know that steady attacks killing ten people a day become routine and fall out of the news, whereas a single large, unexpected attack will make the news.
Compare on the one hand how we deal with grisly murders and how we deal with drunk driving deaths. One reaction to grisly murders is to urge the death penalty. Many heinous crimes are news stories, and execution of a perpetrator is also a news story. There are relatively few grisly and relatively few executions. A death penalty proponent has in a sense urged a news story as a reaction to a news story.
Deaths from drunk driving, on the other hand, are very common and usually are just local news. News reports will often note that drunk driving deaths are common, and briefly cite statistics to back up that claim, but they will spend more of their report focusing our attention on the suffering of a particular victim and family. And there will still be more stories about grisly murders than about drunk driving, even if drunk driving deaths are a hundred times more frequent.
How to prevent deaths from drunk driving is not something I feel at all knowledgeable about, but surely there are things we could consider: increasing penalties for repeat offenders, a form of ankle bracelet that alerts authorities if someone on probation gets into the driver's seat of a car, mandated living situations without cars. Just about any such measure would do far more to save lives than the death penalty. It is true that a great deal of progress has been made on this issue in the past thirty years, but the deaths from drunk driving still dwarf most other non-medical causes.
In the words of Tom Lehrer, in an early 1960s song lampooning the Boy Scouts, "Be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you". Politicians are more concerned with news stories covering the fact that they took action on an issue than the effectiveness of the action. One small instance that struck me occurred in the wake of the Columbia space shuttle disaster. There was a passage in the tax form 1040 instructions concerning certain special treatment available for families of astronauts who died. Surely compensation to survivors of seven people could have been handled far more efficiently by direct payments than by special tax legislation. Could it possibly be that the PR value of that passage in the tax code was more important to the politicians than the compensation?
The rationale for federal assistance in a disaster area is that the damage is large enough that local resources are not sufficient to provide relief. But I suspect that a more compelling motivation might be to be perceived in the news as helping with a disaster that made the news. I think I saw an implication of this in the wake of the New Orleans hurricane disaster. This was a disaster of sufficient scale that extraordinary aid was called for. Many other communities along the Gulf Coast were devastated, and the awkward question was how far away that extraordinary aid should reach. It was the same hurricane, but the flooding of New Orleans was truly extraordinary news, while devastation from hurricanes is unfortunately a relatively common occurrence.
As for the war on terror, that is a topic for a different day.
So how might things be different? I fear there is no sexy or dramatic antidote. Some of the news bias is intentional: corporations with their PR, politicians with sound bites, and terrorists with orchestrated terror. Many of us understand these manipulations and try to counter them. I think most of us could try harder, and I include myself. It is more relaxing to read or listen to the news with a sense of safety and trust than with a healthy dose of skepticism and suspicion.
I think it is even harder to counteract news bias when it is not intentional. When we hear of a grisly murder, especially of a child, it's hard to blame the news media for covering the story, since it really is news and does grab our interest. We appropriately feel outrage, and it's hard to be open to the possibility that there isn't anything we should do about it (even if we can). Perhaps the human cost of keeping hundreds or thousands of not-very-dangerous people locked up indefinitely is just too high. If we don't take that into account, then in an important sense what we are saying is that we place more value on avoiding the shocking news story than actually minimizing the suffering in our society -- when it includes that borne by those whose lives aren't newsworthy. We could help far more people by encouraging greater awareness of the potential for abuse within families, including the very common instance of brothers abusing sisters.
Individuals shouldn't have to make all these adjustments on their own. We should be able to find others who take the same attitude and pool our resources, and support organizations with the same view.
Progressive organizations are not the answer. Most are just as eager to manipulate us as those of the powers that be. I used to get some letters with the following basic message, but am now inundated since I am handling my parents' mail: "This particular moment is unlike all others and you simply must give us more money or uniquely terrible things will happen." They will cite any news story that supports their message, to play on our feelings. To be clear, I do think that progressive organizations are vital and I do support some of them some of the time. They are no worse than conservative organizations. It's just that they aren't a solution to the problem of news bias.
One could imagine an organization dedicated to truth, regardless of whether it supports a liberal or conservative view and how unpleasant or politically unpopular the conclusions. It could not exist for long, especially after a few reports that are politically unpopular with just about everyone.
To some extent it is professional government experts (we might call them bureaucrats) who can serve this role. They have the time to study these matters in depth and the skill and training to consider what is best for everyone, all considered. They are not (or should not be) subject to immediate political pressure. My impression is that it is the radical Republicans, starting with Reagan and dramatically extended by "W", who have convinced people not to trust the experts, if not to view them with outright derision. (Yes, experts can be biased and self-serving too.)
The judiciary can help to some extent. But I believe judges are exasperated and demoralized by mandatory sentencing guidelines that do not take into account the realities of life for ordinary citizens who are not newsworthy. The sentencing guidelines come from legislation passed in response to political pressure arising from -- news stories.
Education about news bias is an important lesson we could give to our children in how to be a responsible citizen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)