When the President first announced his intention to repatriate the Statue of Liberty, it caused an immediate uproar. No one had ever transported so substantial an object before, and the nation’s leading commentators said it couldn’t be done. Disheartened at the prospect of such a profound symbolic act being thwarted by petty practical considerations, the President convened a blue-ribbon panel to advise him. Eager to avoid the mistakes of the previous administration, they recommended that the government solicit competing proposals for the contract.
The first proposal came from Heaven & Earth Movers, a cutting-edge corporation in Tel Aviv. They claimed that their proprietary Probabilistic Conveyance Actuator could exploit quantum indeterminacy to in effect “teleport” the Statue to France instantaneously, without it having to traverse the intervening space. The presidential panel gave due consideration to this proposal, but ultimately deemed it unfeasible. The members believed that, since the secrecy surrounding the technology precluded its creators from disclosing its carbon footprint, employing it would send the wrong message to other nations.
Bernard Sinclair, a Texas-based entrepreneur, submitted the next proposal. He asserted that his patented EnormoSeal glue could make Lady Liberty watertight, effectively transforming her into a seaworthy vessel that could be towed across the Atlantic. The panel initially found this proposal quite promising. However, they felt compelled to reject it when they realized that Mr. Sinclair intended to reinvest his profits into his own company’s research and development fund. Such a move, in their eyes, would only concentrate wealth, further perpetuating class disparity.
With months wasted and not a single viable option on the table, the President threw up his hands in exasperation. “How did the Statue of Liberty get here in the first place?” he demanded to know. His advisors had no idea, but they consulted Wikipedia and quickly found the answer: it reached America in pieces. “Well, that settles it,” the President declared. “We’ll ship it back just the way it came.”
The next morning, a legion of highly-paid union workers descended upon the Statue with saws and blowtorches. Over the next six years they painstakingly cut it into minuscule sections, which they deposited into a makeshift chute leading down to a giant barge. When they finally completed their task, the barge set sail for Marseilles amidst great pomp. The jobs created by the demolition project, combined with the influx of tourists for the departure ceremony, led to a minor economic revival in the downstate region.
Standing atop the now-bare island marking the entrance to New York Harbor, the President admired his handiwork. Still, he couldn’t escape the feeling that something was missing. What the nation really needs, he concluded, is a new statue for its new ethos. So, as his final presidential act, he commissioned another statue, one less hubristic than the old, one better suited to the new era of compassion, fairness, and hope that he had inaugurated. He commissioned a statue of himself.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
BOHICA - or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Embrace the $7 Trillion Government Bailout
"We destroyed the village in order to save it."
Bend over, America; here it comes again. The nearly $1 trillion dollars lavished by the government on banks and insurers has apparently proved insufficient to stabilize the economy, and now the automakers has demanded a $25 billion bailout for themselves. Detroit's "Big Three" even took out an ad in newspapers across the nation to assert that millions of people would lose their jobs if Uncle Sam failed to pony up. A technical term exists to characterize this sort of behavior: extortion. Of course, Ford and GM haven't threatened to deliberately cause mass unemployment; they have merely suggested that it will naturally result from the status quo. But I feel so frustrated that the subtlety of this distinction fails to impress me much right now.
When I was growing up, both my dad and my stepdad owned small businesses. During the 1980s, they each had to declare bankruptcy after incurring tens of thousands of dollars of debt. So imagine my surprise when, at the end of that decade, Donald Trump avoided personal bankruptcy when banks positively fell over each other to renegotiate the hundreds of millions dollars of debt he had incurred while building the Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. From that event I learned a profound financial lesson: the next best thing to having no debt is having so much debt that your insolvency would imperil either the rich and powerful or a sufficient number of innocents for the rich and powerful to take notice. Trump met this criterion; my family, alas, did not.
Since I began writing this, the government has decided not to bail out the "Big Three" - at least not yet. But enough livelihoods hang in the balance of the future of the American auto industry that it will likely receive its lucre sooner or later. In the meantime, the government will be bailing out other companies whose precarious financial positions pose even more imminent threats to the citizens whose future earnings the government is looting in order to bail them out.
Just today, Citigroup received a $20 billion direct investment and another $306 billion of backing for its loans and securities. According to one source, the government has now pledged $7.4 trillion of aid to faltering companies. The Republicans, who traditionally disdain welfare payments to individuals, have apparently cultivated quite a taste for corporate welfare. And the Democrats, who have traditionally disdained corporate welfare, now want even more of it than the Republicans do. Meanwhile, average Americans can only console themselves with the knowledge that, however impotent they feel in the face of forces they did not unleash and cannot control, they would find themselves in even direr straits without this intervention - at least in the short term.
As a taxpaying citizen likely to live long enough to see the bill for all this largesse come due, I demand that it come with certain stipulations. I don't mean increased oversight and accountability. Rather, I hereby call upon the government to create a new national symbol more befitting of prevailing economic attitudes. I want the eagle on the Great Seal of the United States replaced by an emaciated sow besieged by frenzied piglets furiously competing to suckle its last teat. Such iconography would more accurately reflect the actual state of the union. And if I end up having to sacrifice my retirement in order to shovel more swill into the troughs of greedy and incompetent pigs, at least I won't be laboring for a lie.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
European Disunion, or Mere Diversity
The European Union's official motto is "United In Diversity." While the EU's ongoing struggle to implement a constitution mutually acceptable to its 27 member states may impugn its claim to unity, no uncertainty attends its claim to diversity. It has 23 official languages. Its 495 million people probably comprise every known race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and belief system. Such pervasive differences make the degree of unity already attained remarkable. The failure of the Union to achieve even more comprehensive integration may reflect problems less with the European political vision than with the nature of diversity itself.
Nearly every company, school, and government agency today has some sort of statement proclaiming its commitment to diversity. This emphasis apparently finds its impetus in the misconception that diversity is an asset or an attribute which by virtue of its mere presence benefits an organization. But diversity is not a thing, or even a characteristic of a thing, but rather a state of dissimilarity between discrete things. For a group to have diversity actually means that its members lack shared characteristics. Diversity, then, entails the absence of something, not the presence of something. For this reason philosophers would describe it as a "negative" characteristic. To merely have diversity is to not have something, to have no thing, to have nothing. If an organization has no philosophically "positive" characteristics, then, to adapt a phrase from Gertrude Stein, "there's nothing there, there."
The negative nature of diversity makes the EU assertion that its constituent countries are "united in diversity" particularly provocative. If the motto only means that the EU has both unity and diversity, then it is true but trivial. But if it means that the EU is united by its diversity, that its diversity somehow contributes to its unity, then it is absurd. No group could claim unity solely on the basis of its members having in common the fact that they have nothing in common. If such a union claimed to exist, it certainly couldn't claim any positive results from its negative foundation. Hopefully, the EU means its motto to indicate that it has forged unity out of diversity. Diverse entities can unite and make common cause with each other, provided they have at least shared values. But these values must themselves have a positive nature. A group cannot claim unity on the basis of having a shared view of the importance of diversity any more than on the basis of diversity itself. Having in common a belief in the importance of having nothing in common hardly improves upon simply having nothing in common at all.
However, proponents of diversity don't necessarily believe that it promotes or provides a basis for unity per se; they more likely believe that exposure to diversity promotes other, positive values conducive to unity, such as equality and tolerance. But while these values may inspire the acceptance of diversity, diversity doesn't inherently inspire the acceptance of these values. The fact that different individuals appear, behave, and believe differently doesn't imply that no appearance, behavior, or belief can be superior to another. It doesn't even imply that people ought to treat those different than themselves with respect. What is has no necessary bearing on what ought to be; diversity only takes on significance relative to an existing worldview not directly deducible from it. For diverse parties to unite around a value, they must share that value to begin with, and on account of considerations distinct from the simple fact of their diversity.
The EU maintains the core values of peace, prosperity, and unity. While nations and peoples cannot unite around unity any more than around diversity, they can unite around a mutual desire for prosperity and peace. But the struggle of Europeans to agree even on the mechanics of implementing the values which they already share demonstrates the enduring elusiveness of unity. For Europe as for every continent, diversity is but a brute fact of life; unity is the abiding ideal. Nearly everyone wants to see the members of the world's disparate races, ethnicities, genders, orientations, and belief systems united - if not under an exclusive creed, then under the banner of tolerance itself. Ultimately, then, the real challenge confronting humanity is not promoting diversity, but promoting unity - and cultivating the transcendent values that make unity possible.
Nearly every company, school, and government agency today has some sort of statement proclaiming its commitment to diversity. This emphasis apparently finds its impetus in the misconception that diversity is an asset or an attribute which by virtue of its mere presence benefits an organization. But diversity is not a thing, or even a characteristic of a thing, but rather a state of dissimilarity between discrete things. For a group to have diversity actually means that its members lack shared characteristics. Diversity, then, entails the absence of something, not the presence of something. For this reason philosophers would describe it as a "negative" characteristic. To merely have diversity is to not have something, to have no thing, to have nothing. If an organization has no philosophically "positive" characteristics, then, to adapt a phrase from Gertrude Stein, "there's nothing there, there."
The negative nature of diversity makes the EU assertion that its constituent countries are "united in diversity" particularly provocative. If the motto only means that the EU has both unity and diversity, then it is true but trivial. But if it means that the EU is united by its diversity, that its diversity somehow contributes to its unity, then it is absurd. No group could claim unity solely on the basis of its members having in common the fact that they have nothing in common. If such a union claimed to exist, it certainly couldn't claim any positive results from its negative foundation. Hopefully, the EU means its motto to indicate that it has forged unity out of diversity. Diverse entities can unite and make common cause with each other, provided they have at least shared values. But these values must themselves have a positive nature. A group cannot claim unity on the basis of having a shared view of the importance of diversity any more than on the basis of diversity itself. Having in common a belief in the importance of having nothing in common hardly improves upon simply having nothing in common at all.
However, proponents of diversity don't necessarily believe that it promotes or provides a basis for unity per se; they more likely believe that exposure to diversity promotes other, positive values conducive to unity, such as equality and tolerance. But while these values may inspire the acceptance of diversity, diversity doesn't inherently inspire the acceptance of these values. The fact that different individuals appear, behave, and believe differently doesn't imply that no appearance, behavior, or belief can be superior to another. It doesn't even imply that people ought to treat those different than themselves with respect. What is has no necessary bearing on what ought to be; diversity only takes on significance relative to an existing worldview not directly deducible from it. For diverse parties to unite around a value, they must share that value to begin with, and on account of considerations distinct from the simple fact of their diversity.
The EU maintains the core values of peace, prosperity, and unity. While nations and peoples cannot unite around unity any more than around diversity, they can unite around a mutual desire for prosperity and peace. But the struggle of Europeans to agree even on the mechanics of implementing the values which they already share demonstrates the enduring elusiveness of unity. For Europe as for every continent, diversity is but a brute fact of life; unity is the abiding ideal. Nearly everyone wants to see the members of the world's disparate races, ethnicities, genders, orientations, and belief systems united - if not under an exclusive creed, then under the banner of tolerance itself. Ultimately, then, the real challenge confronting humanity is not promoting diversity, but promoting unity - and cultivating the transcendent values that make unity possible.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
FOCUS ON FILM: The Trials of Henry Kissinger
The Trials of Henry Kissinger, in the words of its producers, presents "a case for a case" against the former secretary of state. It charges him with war crimes, but argues that ultimately an international tribunal ought to determine his guilt or innocence. The film soberly documents how he masterminded the covert bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, supported Indonesia's repression of East Timor's Fretilin independence movement, and sanctioned the assassination of Chilean general René Schneider in order to facilitate a coup against president Salvador Allende. If guilty, Kissinger would certainly qualify as a war criminal. Or would he?
While The Trials, by its producers' own admission, does not attempt to present a balanced portrait of its subject, it does reveal a complex man whose actions defy simplistic moral categorization. His character arc corresponds more closely to that of the protagonist in an ancient Greek tragedy than to that of any of the 20th century's leading tyrants. More than murder, Kissinger stands guilty of hubris - a false pride in his intelligence and abilities which led him to transgress the bounds of human propriety. He may have done evil, but, as he perceived it, he did so only in the context of serving the greater good.
Kissinger's personal history helps to account for his motivations. His upbringing in Nazi Germany doubtless instilled in him a profound recognition of the reality of evil. Later, as the appalled world greeted the revelation of the Holocaust with cries of "never again," he - a young Jew - would certainly have joined in. When the threat of communism replaced that of Naziism as Stalin and Mao generated victims in the tens of millions each, Kissinger must have made a moral leap which most men find themselves unwilling to make. He apparently reasoned that violently subduing communist revolutions, whatever the casualties, would spare lives in the end. Different innocent people would die, but fewer innocent people would die. Kissinger thus prepared himself to commit some evil at the time in order to prevent more evil later.
His deeds demand understanding in this context. By bombing Cambodia, he hoped to prevent the conquest of South Vietnam by the North - a conquest that, when it took place, led to the death and displacement of millions of Vietnamese. The subsequent communist takeover of Cambodia left one third of that country's population dead. While Kissinger's intrigues in Indonesia and Chile seem less justifiable, he plausibly still believed that the negative consequences of communist rule in those countries would outweigh those of his own imperialist incursions. Since he succeeded in these latter endeavors, the world can only know the damage he caused, as opposed to the damage he averted.
While noble motivations do not necessarily make for noble acts, Kissinger's moral logic has hypothetical merit. Many ethicists have argued, for example, that Hitler's genocidal chancellorship would offer an ex post facto moral justification for having killed him at a younger age. However, since humans lack exhaustive foreknowledge, they have no adequate basis for "playing God" by imposing the death penalty proactively. Kissinger's decision to usurp this prerogative of deity convicts him of hubris, which the Oxford American Dictionary defines as "excessive . . . defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis." Kissinger probably did commit crimes against humanity. His legacy consists in absolute political realism, that brand of calculating amorality that people abhor during peacetime and demand in times of war.
I do not intend the foregoing discussion to excuse Kissinger's ethics or his behavior. I do mean to suggest, however, that Kissinger's distinction from other political leaders lies, not in the nature of his objectives, but only in the extent of the power and authority he wielded in pursuing them. For example, Che Guevara once told an English newspaper that, had he had the choice, he would have launched a nuclear strike against the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis; however, his Soviet handlers refused to grant him permission to do so. Henry Kissinger, as secretary of state of the most powerful nation on Earth, serving under a president sympathetic to his ends and means, had unprecedented latitude to use force to shape the world according to his ideology. In fact, in many ways he qualifies as the anti-Guevara: a bourgeois revolutionary who believed that you have to break a few chefs to keep them from making an omelette.
Intriguingly, Kissinger does not necessarily deny the charges which the film levels at him. In his memoirs, he does suggest that certain documents, which will not become public until at least five years after his death, will somehow illuminate his behavior and perhaps even exonerate him. But a statement he makes in the movie proves more telling: "The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can to human relations. That is not always the case, because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils." Kissinger regarded the choice of what he saw as a lesser evil as an act of goodness. Whether this makes him a tragic hero, or simply a tragedy, rests with the world - and perhaps the International Criminal Court - to decide.
While The Trials, by its producers' own admission, does not attempt to present a balanced portrait of its subject, it does reveal a complex man whose actions defy simplistic moral categorization. His character arc corresponds more closely to that of the protagonist in an ancient Greek tragedy than to that of any of the 20th century's leading tyrants. More than murder, Kissinger stands guilty of hubris - a false pride in his intelligence and abilities which led him to transgress the bounds of human propriety. He may have done evil, but, as he perceived it, he did so only in the context of serving the greater good.
Kissinger's personal history helps to account for his motivations. His upbringing in Nazi Germany doubtless instilled in him a profound recognition of the reality of evil. Later, as the appalled world greeted the revelation of the Holocaust with cries of "never again," he - a young Jew - would certainly have joined in. When the threat of communism replaced that of Naziism as Stalin and Mao generated victims in the tens of millions each, Kissinger must have made a moral leap which most men find themselves unwilling to make. He apparently reasoned that violently subduing communist revolutions, whatever the casualties, would spare lives in the end. Different innocent people would die, but fewer innocent people would die. Kissinger thus prepared himself to commit some evil at the time in order to prevent more evil later.
His deeds demand understanding in this context. By bombing Cambodia, he hoped to prevent the conquest of South Vietnam by the North - a conquest that, when it took place, led to the death and displacement of millions of Vietnamese. The subsequent communist takeover of Cambodia left one third of that country's population dead. While Kissinger's intrigues in Indonesia and Chile seem less justifiable, he plausibly still believed that the negative consequences of communist rule in those countries would outweigh those of his own imperialist incursions. Since he succeeded in these latter endeavors, the world can only know the damage he caused, as opposed to the damage he averted.
While noble motivations do not necessarily make for noble acts, Kissinger's moral logic has hypothetical merit. Many ethicists have argued, for example, that Hitler's genocidal chancellorship would offer an ex post facto moral justification for having killed him at a younger age. However, since humans lack exhaustive foreknowledge, they have no adequate basis for "playing God" by imposing the death penalty proactively. Kissinger's decision to usurp this prerogative of deity convicts him of hubris, which the Oxford American Dictionary defines as "excessive . . . defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis." Kissinger probably did commit crimes against humanity. His legacy consists in absolute political realism, that brand of calculating amorality that people abhor during peacetime and demand in times of war.
I do not intend the foregoing discussion to excuse Kissinger's ethics or his behavior. I do mean to suggest, however, that Kissinger's distinction from other political leaders lies, not in the nature of his objectives, but only in the extent of the power and authority he wielded in pursuing them. For example, Che Guevara once told an English newspaper that, had he had the choice, he would have launched a nuclear strike against the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis; however, his Soviet handlers refused to grant him permission to do so. Henry Kissinger, as secretary of state of the most powerful nation on Earth, serving under a president sympathetic to his ends and means, had unprecedented latitude to use force to shape the world according to his ideology. In fact, in many ways he qualifies as the anti-Guevara: a bourgeois revolutionary who believed that you have to break a few chefs to keep them from making an omelette.
Intriguingly, Kissinger does not necessarily deny the charges which the film levels at him. In his memoirs, he does suggest that certain documents, which will not become public until at least five years after his death, will somehow illuminate his behavior and perhaps even exonerate him. But a statement he makes in the movie proves more telling: "The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can to human relations. That is not always the case, because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils." Kissinger regarded the choice of what he saw as a lesser evil as an act of goodness. Whether this makes him a tragic hero, or simply a tragedy, rests with the world - and perhaps the International Criminal Court - to decide.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Educated Fools
To my dismay, I constantly encounter that pretentious bumper sticker reading, "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance." This attempt at pithy sloganeering fails to recognize that education and ignorance aren't actually opposites. Many Americans who have never attended college possess a profound acquaintance with common sense, while many with advanced degrees demonstrate an acute detachment from reality. Ours is a nation replete with educated fools.
I recently encountered such a fool in the person of a professor whose anthropology course had piqued my interest. In conversation, she made a series of assertions so reckless that she could only have entertained them by "virtue" of not considering their logical consequences. Yet she affirmed them with a superciliousness indicative of the worst stereotypes about academia's ivory tower.
She first contended that, since different people perceive reality differently, multiple realities exist. She apparently meant that, since perception ranks as the highest level of reality that admits of certain knowledge, it qualifies - practically speaking, at least - as the actual highest level of reality. I countered that generally something has to exist before anyone can perceive it, and that this something, however unknowable in its essence, constitutes a higher level of reality than that dependent on the mind of an observer. The subjectivity of human perception doesn't imply the absence of an objective reality. Those with different worldviews only inhabit "different worlds" metaphorically. The teacher basically conceded this point.
However, she subsequently asserted that everyone perceives through a filter conditioned by his or her experience of socialization and enculturation. Beliefs, then, have little or no foundational basis which would allow for their valuation either absolutely or relative to each other. In advocating this viewpoint, the teacher failed to recognize that she has no grounds for commending it to others because she cannot exempt herself from its implications. Her belief that beliefs result from socialization and enculturation would itself count as just another belief resulting from socialization and enculturation. No justification would exist for privileging it over opposing beliefs, and no criteria would exist for assessing its truth value. It would qualify as just as true - or just as false - as my own contrary opinion. It would amount to nothing more than an emotivistic decaration such as "I like pizza."
Our conversation reached its nadir when the teacher declared, "By the time you get to college, you have to throw all that truth stuff out the window." This struck me as her most inexplicable pronouncement, because, however false I may regard her beliefs, I cannot imagine that she herself does not regard them as true. Beyond that, the proposition that "truth doesn't exist" refutes itself, because it implies that at least one truth exists - namely, the truth that truth doesn't exist. It has a curious quality such that, if true, its truthfulness makes it false. Only an educated fool could maintain such a belief.
Ultimately, if students took these teachings at face value and ignored the contradictions, then not only would they have to reject most philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders, they would have to reject teachers. If no belief ranks as more true or false than any other - even the belief that no belief ranks as more true or false than any other - and the nonexistence of truth qualifies as the only truth, then teaching emerges as a meaningless endeavor. The appropriate response to this state of affairs would entail, not upper-level social science instruction, but a full Rousseauean retreat from formal education. However, I reject noble savagery as forcefully as I reject extreme postmodernism, so I simply enrolled in a different class. Sadly for the future of the West, not every aspiring scholar is following my example.
I recently encountered such a fool in the person of a professor whose anthropology course had piqued my interest. In conversation, she made a series of assertions so reckless that she could only have entertained them by "virtue" of not considering their logical consequences. Yet she affirmed them with a superciliousness indicative of the worst stereotypes about academia's ivory tower.
She first contended that, since different people perceive reality differently, multiple realities exist. She apparently meant that, since perception ranks as the highest level of reality that admits of certain knowledge, it qualifies - practically speaking, at least - as the actual highest level of reality. I countered that generally something has to exist before anyone can perceive it, and that this something, however unknowable in its essence, constitutes a higher level of reality than that dependent on the mind of an observer. The subjectivity of human perception doesn't imply the absence of an objective reality. Those with different worldviews only inhabit "different worlds" metaphorically. The teacher basically conceded this point.
However, she subsequently asserted that everyone perceives through a filter conditioned by his or her experience of socialization and enculturation. Beliefs, then, have little or no foundational basis which would allow for their valuation either absolutely or relative to each other. In advocating this viewpoint, the teacher failed to recognize that she has no grounds for commending it to others because she cannot exempt herself from its implications. Her belief that beliefs result from socialization and enculturation would itself count as just another belief resulting from socialization and enculturation. No justification would exist for privileging it over opposing beliefs, and no criteria would exist for assessing its truth value. It would qualify as just as true - or just as false - as my own contrary opinion. It would amount to nothing more than an emotivistic decaration such as "I like pizza."
Our conversation reached its nadir when the teacher declared, "By the time you get to college, you have to throw all that truth stuff out the window." This struck me as her most inexplicable pronouncement, because, however false I may regard her beliefs, I cannot imagine that she herself does not regard them as true. Beyond that, the proposition that "truth doesn't exist" refutes itself, because it implies that at least one truth exists - namely, the truth that truth doesn't exist. It has a curious quality such that, if true, its truthfulness makes it false. Only an educated fool could maintain such a belief.
Ultimately, if students took these teachings at face value and ignored the contradictions, then not only would they have to reject most philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders, they would have to reject teachers. If no belief ranks as more true or false than any other - even the belief that no belief ranks as more true or false than any other - and the nonexistence of truth qualifies as the only truth, then teaching emerges as a meaningless endeavor. The appropriate response to this state of affairs would entail, not upper-level social science instruction, but a full Rousseauean retreat from formal education. However, I reject noble savagery as forcefully as I reject extreme postmodernism, so I simply enrolled in a different class. Sadly for the future of the West, not every aspiring scholar is following my example.
Friday, September 07, 2007
Global Warming: The Naked Truth
On August 18th, 600 environmental activists posed nude for a photo shoot on a Swiss glacier. Their publicity stunt aimed to raise awareness of how rising temperatures are causing glacial recession. They managed to draw attention to themselves and to global warming - in that order. But they unwittingly succeeded in raising the most profound question about climate change: not "is it real?" (it is), or even "are humans responsible?" (they are, at least partially), but "so what?"
I don't mean that rhetorically. The true issue at the heart of climate change involves, well, change. Change in itself doesn't count as either inherently good or inherently bad. It only merits such judgments relative to a standard. Without a conception of Earth's ideal climate, changes in current conditions lack the moral status necessary to justify a response. The value neutrality of change raises the great, unacknowledged question of the climate change debate: what conditions constitute Earth's optimum climate? In the absence of a climatic ideal, the "crisis" of climate change amounts to nothing more than hysteria over brute facts without context.
Glacial recession offers a case in point. During the Wisconsin Glaciation 20,000 years ago, ice stretched as far south as Olympia, Washington. Without glacial recession, my hometown of Seattle would not exist. Alternately, scientists recently discovered that, around 450,000 years ago, boreal forest covered much of southern Greenland. Glacial advancement has presently buried these remains beneath over a mile of ice. Glaciers ebbed and flowed long before the advent of humanity. Earth has had both more and less glaciation that it has now. If humans are presently exacerbating the process of glacial recession, then before taking counteraction, they must first determine the optimal extent of glaciation.
Questions about Earth's ideal climate continue to go unasked and unanswered, and probably defy any definitive response. Earth's "balance" has swung so widely in the past that it offers little guidance. Pre-21st-century temperature averages did not qualify as "just right" so much as just what everyone grew accustomed to. Humans have simply so invested themselves in the status quo that any change, whether the global cooling of the 1970s or the global warming of today, heralds dire consequences for someone. And that, however anthropocentric, serves as the primary reason to act.
But how to act? Should we feverishly alter out behavior in the hope of forestalling climate change's most serious consequences? Or should we proactively strive to accommodate its effects in order to minimize disruption to our lives? Without a "model Earth" against which to measure the present Earth, we cannot comprehend the "message" of global warming and whether our responses to it are working for or against nature. And even nature only reveals what is, not what ought to be.
Ultimately, then, the human response to climate change hinges, not on science, but on philosophy. While descriptions of ecosystems entail the former discipline, prescriptions about them necessitate the latter. When environmentalists promote policies to combat global warming, they engage in what should be termed "philosophical ecology." This fact does not necessarily invalidate their opinions and actions. But it makes them, at best, highly subjective.
Monday, September 03, 2007
Evolutionary War
Remember eugenics, the "science" of attempting to promote desirable traits in humans through selective breeding? This idea attracted its share of prominent advocates until Hitler's genocidal extension of it prompted the world to declare "never again." Eugenics's more doctrinaire adherents included Charles Darwin, who in 1874's The Descent of Man wrote:
Think about it. Natural selection operates as evolution's "engine." As members of any population compete for survival, those best adapted to their environments live longer and produce more offspring. These offspring increasingly possess the heritable traits which confer a survival advantage. Over time, this accretion of beneficial adaptations produces a hardier species. Given enough time, theoretically, it produces brand new species. In this manner, natural selection ostensibly produced human beings.
However, as Darwin realized, natural selection breaks down at the human level. Humans themselves labor to ensure the survival of the least fit members of their species. Darwin regarded this development as undesirable, but the fact that he regarded it at all presents serious problems for his theory. Since evolution doesn't treat humans as utterly unique from other species, it cannot thereby exempt them from its laws. If the principles of evolution do not dictate human behavior, then whether or not they dictate the behavior of other creatures becomes irrelevant; the principles themselves hold false. And if the principles hold false, then evolution itself holds false - or at least its primary explanatory mechanism proves inadequate.
The mere fact that the opportunity for eugenics ever presented itself demonstrates the failure of "survival of the fittest." Someone can believe in either natural selection or eugenics, but not in both. The fact that Darwin tried to embrace both demonstrates not just the limitations of his character, but of his theory.
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.You may understandably find something perverse about the notion that inhumanity ultimately serves humanity's best interests. But this passage implies more than that Darwin thought like a Machiavellian social engineer cloaked in a thin veneer of scientific respectability. It implies that evolution is, more or less, not true.
Think about it. Natural selection operates as evolution's "engine." As members of any population compete for survival, those best adapted to their environments live longer and produce more offspring. These offspring increasingly possess the heritable traits which confer a survival advantage. Over time, this accretion of beneficial adaptations produces a hardier species. Given enough time, theoretically, it produces brand new species. In this manner, natural selection ostensibly produced human beings.
However, as Darwin realized, natural selection breaks down at the human level. Humans themselves labor to ensure the survival of the least fit members of their species. Darwin regarded this development as undesirable, but the fact that he regarded it at all presents serious problems for his theory. Since evolution doesn't treat humans as utterly unique from other species, it cannot thereby exempt them from its laws. If the principles of evolution do not dictate human behavior, then whether or not they dictate the behavior of other creatures becomes irrelevant; the principles themselves hold false. And if the principles hold false, then evolution itself holds false - or at least its primary explanatory mechanism proves inadequate.
The mere fact that the opportunity for eugenics ever presented itself demonstrates the failure of "survival of the fittest." Someone can believe in either natural selection or eugenics, but not in both. The fact that Darwin tried to embrace both demonstrates not just the limitations of his character, but of his theory.
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