I Blow My Top at Princeton for Appointing Peter Singer
About 6 or 7 years go, I gave a lecture at Princeton University about bioethics. This was just after Peter Singer received his tenured chair at Princeton and the appointment was still a matter of heated controversy.
As a planned part of the lecture, I discussed Princeton's then newest professor and his advocacy of infanticide. I just learned that someone posted that part of the speech on YouTube.
At the end of my discussion about Singer, I went, shall we say, off script and lost my cool. I found it (and still find it) utterly appalling that PRINCETON would bring somebody who advocates the killing of babies to the country's most prestigious university.
Part of me regrets the outburst. And part of me doesn't. It isn't what I said that bothers me, it was how I said it. I have come to believe that anger doesn't generally work well in communicating, even though it can feel good at the time.
In any event, I post it for your consideration, warts and all.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 7:20 PM
50 Comments
50 Comments:
Go Wesley. How could you possibly not be this passionate and, at the very least, be this incensed about the words you were reading and interacting with? It reminds me of the indignation of Jesus. There's a cultural psychosis in America. We have an apathy (apathos) about these kinds of things. They should outrage us but we aren't. Our souls have been emptied or lobotomized. Something's happened. It's an emotional defect or a lobotomization of the soul that doesn't get upset at things like this. Outbursts like this are a sign of humanity.
...
You got hot under the collar about killing babies-- the babies where EVERYONE says they are babies.
Excuse me while I *fail* to find a fault with this.
Don: That's exactly what happened. I just read what Brandt had told the father of Baby Knaur and read what Singer was saying, and I thought (and said) Brandt was hanged and Singer is at Princeton! I went off.
Don and Foxfier: It isn't attractive to get so angry. I am finding in our touchy, feely world that how we appear too often matters more than what we are actually criticizing. So, as I said while my sentiments remain the same, I try and make them with a little less heat.
Unless my half Italian kicks in...
Wasn't there a Bible verse about that? (I'm not so good at the Bible quoting.)
"Answer a fool by his folly."
So by getting clearly upset about baby killing, you alienate the genuinely fooled folks who, if they saw clearly, would change their minds?
Better man than I am. I've a heck of a time getting past the whole "you want to WHAT?!?!" level.
A lot of people can't see past the angry face. It's a hard reality I have had to learn and discipline in advocacy is a requirement of success.
Still, the anger was true and righteous. It is just a luxury (if you will) that usually can't be afforded.
I haven't had a chance yet to read what Singer said, though I've heard about it, and I haven't been able yet to find what you said that you said that is posted, but the logical dissonance between what I admired Singer for, his opening sentence in Animal Liberation ("We are all animals") and what outraged you, is in itself enough to justify fury, as logical dissonance innately does, period. Life is life, respect for it is respect for it, the meaning of "animal" (from anima -- breath, soul) applies to every creature that breathes, and while the language retains its integrity, there has been a disconnect on both sides in this case. I don't know where, how, or why Singer went off the rails, and I know that incorporating the point I've been making would only strengthen your position, but since when is anger a bad thing, and what good does it do for the expression of anger to be appropriate but absent? The "culture of nice" that has destroyed civilization and now plagues us via the ratification and acceptance of and reverence for the "scientific, detached" approach that has brought us the death culture in the form of both animal experimentation and "bioethics," "end-of-life theory," euthanasia, legalized murder and technological death, etc., all of which are tied up with financial considerations, which anger is not. Anger has integrity; its position is pre-eminent; those who, lacking courage, do wrong and inspire it try to create and hide behind an atmosphere of oppression masked as "propriety," and if you apologize you're playing their game. Let the anger do its job of inspiring others to speak up as well.
(The word "that" immediately following "culture of nice" should have been deleted in my previous post.) The first thing my Torts professor ever said to us, on the first day of class, was, "Remember, your client is right." That, in itself, made him the most valuable teacher at the law school (and the day he literally banged his head on the blackboard in a deliberately humorous but also obviously sincere show of frustration when no one seemed to get the point of a particular case only proved it further). Those who themselves have violated the principles of the Academy by bestowing a chair upon someone who has been as logically inconsistent as Singer, and who don't know which end is up, have no standing to argue "decorum." Moreover, since when is it a surprise that Princeton would do this? If the academic institutions that hide behind "name" just as vivisectionists hide behind "science" and doctors hide behind "being doctors" were not as off-track as they are, what you are doing would not be necessary. They want you to feel discomfited for the same reason the doctor who declared my mother brain-dead in a legal affidavit, then called me a few hours later to say he thought she might be but wanted to do more tests, and then had to reverse himself in legal affidavit, insisted on "meeting with" me (with security guards in the room, one of the hospital's intimidation tactics), and to tell me how he was looking out for her and (though a complete stranger to her) "cared" about her, and that "I'm board-certified and you're not" after I objected to his doing an apnea test on her which I knew damned well could be harmful to her; the same "caring" doctor then said, in her room, in a louder voice than he had ever used before, and obviously deliberately loudly, that there was no hope for her, nothing could be done for her, etc., and when I said hey she can hear you, he said no she can't. That's only one example of the gratuitous suffering (which is what experimentation on non-human animals is as well) inflicted on her by a "teaching (teaching what?)and research" hospital that was hell-bent on her dying, and when it could not bring that about because she fought desperately to live, this sort of thing ensued, and how's that for professionalism, compassion, healing, logic and integrity, and remember, these marmaluke bastards were trained, in "reputable" institutions, that it's all right to torture non-human animals -- and then go on to behave as just described, which is just one example of many I could give. Another attending there who'd been at Johns Hopkins told me that this hospital and Hopkins were just alike, which was no surprise to me and only confirmed what I'd already known was wrong with the institution of medicine in the U.S., which, by the way, was what caused me to form my views on animal experimentation decades ago. Ultimately, experimentation on non-human animals is bad for humans, and Singer's having been given a chair despite his own logical inconsistency is part of the whole syndrome and culture of death which you decry. It would only strengthen your position to reconsider the animal rights question. It does not lower human animals to respect non-human ones; it only elevates us and proves that the word "humanity" has standing to exist.
Wesley,
Considering the reality of the situation and the timing of it, I would not even categorize that as blowing your top. It looked like the proper emotional component to your moral outrage. We need more of that type of emotion combined with sound argument. You presented your case, you made clear that your anger was not a desire for radical or illegal action, but you were outraged at the insanity of Princeton lending its credibility and bonafides to a man that encourages the killing of infants.
There was not one thing wrong in that and just because you personally would not do that again now it does not make it wrong then.
God bless,
Jay
You do not need to apologize - good for you - many people share your views!!
Finally, "requirement," hard reality," and "luxury that usually can't be afforded" ring of the same illogic that "justifies" animal experimentation, the end product of which is the very thing that you are fighting, and then saying that "discipline" is required to fight successfully, when in fact it, not the expression of anger, hamstrings as the perpetrators of evil intend. The justified expression of indignation is its own discipline, and emotion coincides with logic by to divine intention. "Hard reality" is used to justify what is simply wrong and unethical, e.g. experimentation on non-human animals, euthanasia, the shibboleth of "quality of life" masking economic concerns, and the death culture, just as hard cases make bad law. Those who have ethics don't need to discuss ethics, and the whole field of "bioethics" is yet another unnecessary abomination that is part of the death culture that took hold along with the acceptance of experimentation on non-human animals "in order to benefit humans." Whether human and non-human animals are of equal value is irrelevant, any departure from logic, no matter what one's stance is, only weakens one's position, and there is no need to complicate the issue, which is very simple: Are you on the side of life or not? Life is simple, anger is simple, they are part of one another, and those who denigrate one also devalue the other. Go back to the drawing board, re-examine the logic, and you will find that you do not need to exert effort to be disciplined in advocacy.
Ianthe: Glad you're here.
I was just wondering what the reaction of the audience was to your "outburst." I admire your posting this. I agree with your comments about it, although I do think it is refreshing to see someone have real passion for the protection of human life. Your audience at Princeton needed to think about what their university has done, and you certainly accomplished that.
Wesley Smith. Thank you for sharing your Braveheart moment. What joy to see your anger.
Heather: The faculty types, even those who agreed with me, thought I was over the top in criticizing Princeton so harshly. They had the right to appoint who they wanted, they said. One even had the presumption to say the faculty had spoken and who was I to say otherwise? I conceded the point of the right to appoint, of course, but noted I had the right to say it is a disgrace.
I also had some support, mostly from the audience members who were not part of the university community.
I think that the kind of heat I showed is accepted readily from the "Left," but not from those considered on the "Right."
DisturbedMary: Thanks for being here. Braveheart is a bit of an overstatement. The truly courageous people are cops, fire fighters, and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Again my failure to proofread did not yield proper syntax in the first sentence above, and for that apology is justified and I offer it, but I trust my point is made. I heartily support comments others have made here about the righteousness of what you said and did; what I'm pointing out in addition to that is the real underlying cause of your concern, which is a logical lacuna that you have overlooked, re-examining which will arm you permanently in future against the antics of marmalukes. In order to win, you have to be completely on your own side, and that means completely on the same side of your own issue, which is a desperately important one, but the minute you separate the human species from the rest of life, you weaken it and become less effective. The history of science is rife with philosophical error and corruption, with devastating consequences to humanity and with the death culture as the end result. Following the path of Galen, and of the Catholic Church, whose inconsistency has nurtured what its proper theology opposes, only makes it more difficult to straighten out, as you are trying with great courage to do, the mess they fomented. The things that the animal rights and even the nature's rights movement are fighting are not part of the death culture, but rather are part of part of what created the death culture, for which humans, not other living beings, are responsible, courtesy of departure from the natural laws of logic, courage, integrity, and true compassion.
I spent enough time in the university of which the hospital I just mentioned is part, in graduate school at ones of similar ilk to Princeton, and teaching in a small college which suffered similarly from the insane, closed-minded, arrogant, and distorted (or, to be kind, cloistered), mindset of academia, which I'm glad I chose to abandon in favor of the real world, to be absolutely unsurprised by what you encountered. Just as liberalism, when not at its best, can be fascistic, the rubric of "academic freedom" all to often yields the opposite. The effect on society of the overweening respect, and thus latitude, society grants academia and "science" can be devastating, and the results can be mind-boggling. I am still trying to figure out how it can be true, as the hospital's pathology department recently told me, that "according to state law" the hospital does not have to let the executrix of the estate of a patient who died in it have the late patient's medical records without the approval of the doctors there -- yet another example of "We have the right to do what we want and we have spoken," which extends to the hospital arrogating unto itself the right to decide that a patient should die there whether or not s/he wants to, and to cause him or her to die there. Legalized murder shares ground with "academic freedom. I understand that Colorado has just passed a law protecting doctors from being charged with manslaughter, and that Hawaii is now considering such a law. But is such a law legitimate enough to be enforced and withstand challenge? Is it legal to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre? Are laws on hate speech valid? Do Singer's and Princeton's First Amendment rights extend to advocating infanticide and providing a "legitimate" venue for such advocacy? Has anyone outside the Academy listened to Singer and acted on his theories in a way that can provide proof of incendiary speech? (If Singer is the reason for your opposition to the animal rights movement, I can somewhat understand, and it is distressing that he started out by opening his book entitled Animal Liberation with as a brilliant statement as "We are all animals." and seems to have ended up as far afield as he has, but there is no point in adding to instances of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.) As for the expectation that "conservatives" will be "calm," if the deathmongers et al. had the logic they lack, they'd know that they themselves act and present as wacky and irrational to anyone with sense, but since most people don't think much about these issues, and many are not in the habit of thinking at all and seem to lack the very capacity to di it, they are able to "present" as "mainstream" themselves, and the result is, for example, that people sign "living wills" without considering that they can't know in advance what may happen and what they may want in a situation they have never yet experienced, they believe that doctors advocating death are "compassionate," etc. A woman whose mother the hospital disconnected from a ventilator she'd been on for a year and on which she continued to live told me that the hospital had treated her family "as if we were extreme right-wing right-to-life fanatics and kept asking us if we wanted her to suffer" and that her brother "went berserk" when the hospital disconnected their mother (who, by the way, did not have a "living will") by disconnecting her ventilator. (Also by the way, quite a few hospital patients end up on ventilators as the result of the hospital's egregious negligence in the first place.) Naturally these types want the world to believe that they are sane and that those who are sane are outside the "norm," and in that regard I understand your concern, but I'm suggesting what would make the fight easier. In fact there are a lot of people who already know, or are able to understand immediately, once the issue is brought to their attention, what's wrong, and just haven't been mobilized and been provided with a venue in which to speak up yet, there are more of them than there are doctors and academics, and any objection to what must be stopped that is expressed, regardless of how it is expressed, reaches them instantly. It's just a matter of speaking up loudly enough and with enough voices to drown out the idiots. Like bad liberals, the only things these institutions seem to understand are money and court actions, and finding out that it is no longer profitable is what will stop the death culture. The success of which effort, by the way, would be hastened immensely if animals to use in laboratories for "studies" that "justify" grant money and "advancement of careers" were no longer available. I don't know what can be done with these people who drive the industry of scientific callousness and foment the death culture and are idiotic enough to accept the latter; if those who oppose the death culture are high-minded enough not to want to use their own tactics on them, certainly they can be high-minded enough to respect the lives of non-human animals (which sociopaths do not any more than they do humans'), and in fact the death-culture proponents are the people we don't need in society, and they know it, and are using their own agenda as self-defense of their own kind. As the saying goes, "bad money buys out good." I haven't seen one yet who seems to have considered that one day they may be old, vulnerable, etc. and on the receiving end of what they are now dishing out, either. It doesn't take much to be smarter than they are, and the best thing to do is to figure out how prevent them from continuing to profit by what they are doing.
Go, Wesley.
I think there can be an important role to expressing outrage. Sure, that particular audience looked at you like you had committed a faux pas. We're all supposed to sit around and be dignified and academic and talk about this as though it's no big deal. But society as a whole needs to be reminded that it _is_ a big deal, that it _is_ appalling, that it isn't just some academic subject. Infanticide should be rejected absolutely, not toyed with as though it's a respectable thought. (We had a commentator here at SHS who might be reading this thread. He asked me if I would be interested to "hear the story" and try to "understand the perspective" of a doctor who had committed infanticide under the Groningen Protocol. Same idea: We have to treat this as a real, respectable option instead of rejecting it out of hand with disgust.)
Now, what your very mild-mannered outburst there does is simply to show in a small way that infanticide is completely unacceptable and that we don't all have to "keep calm" about it and try to "see the perspective" of someone like Singer. You are (to use a jargon term) validating the normal reaction of normal people to all of this. That's actually very important as a social signal, and all the more useful given that it is available on Youtube to a nonacademic audience.
The woman mentioned in my previous post who was on a ventilator for a year and whose family the hospital treated "as if we were far-right right-to-life fanatics" not only did not have a "living will," but had made it clear that she wanted to continue to live, just as mine did, the same happened to another friend's mother, and just last week yet another person told me the same happened to their mother. I don't favor abortion, but I never thought there should be any law concerning it at all, not because of "a woman's right to choose" (which exixts but is not the point), but because its being a matter of law opens the door to other issues in a way that has resulted in the death culture we've got now which gives "legal sanction" for murder of not only incipient people, but also, years later, of their parents. Meanwhile, for decades, veterinary medicine, whose developments often precede developments in human medicine, has been having people who "don't want their pet to suffer do their pet the favor of putting them to sleep," and, along with animal shelters, have created the accepted institution of "euthanizing" animals, terming the attitude of those whose "suffering" we "relieve" gratitude, and finding it too unpleasant to think about the others; now the institution of "euthanasia" has graduated to the human level, just as sociopaths start out harming non-human animals and move on to human ones, and "to prevent suffering," "right to die," "setting free," "granting peace," and "futile care" have become catchwords and shibboleths (masking "getting rid of the unwanted and too troublesome and expensive to maintain"). We're also becoming more and more aware of and less skeptical about life continuing "on the other side" after our spirits leave our bodies, but religion and spiritual people have always known that, and that we are supposed to remain in this life for as long as nature intends, and what's the rush, as we'll have forever to experience eternity. They have futures on the other side, too, but I have yet to hear of a pet choosing death or to commit suicide, let alone seeking assistance in achieving success such an endeavor, which is food for thought, because it's consistent with your views re human suicide and euthanasia, the outrage you expressed over a threat to the life of human children was no different than that of an animal of any species whose instinct is to defend its young, considering the way our species has created the death culture, which we have to fight as a battle between ourselves the need for which they didn't cause, their species theirs have much to teach us that transcends the value of what we can "learn" by experimenting on them, their instinct, will, and right to live is no different than ours and one we seem to need to regard these days as an example, and while they prey on one another for food as we do on them, by nature's design, they are not self-destructive to the survival of their own species about it, which is how we have become, ultimately, when we use them for "medical and scientific research," at the end of which ethical road are the evils of the "death culture" itself.
Go, Lydia! And everyone else here, too! There's a "protocol"? Well, that makes it legitimate, doesn't it. What about the "perspective" of the victim of the infanticide? And of everyone else? The same palaver and terminology gets used to try to justify the antics of the "dedicated researches" who make their livings and vaunted "careers" via experimentation on animals who are just as helpless as human infants and also have perspectives of their own. We're supposed to "understand" and pity the perpetrators, instead of condemning and stopping them? This is an example of what Aristotle meant about the necessity of purging pity and fear. My father used to tell me that in my lifetime the kind of thing that happened in Germany before and during WWII would happen here, and it looks as though, as usual, he was right. Some who possess life are "human" and entitled to life, and others are not? That people are reticent about speaking up is proof of the existence of the tyranny that has taken hold. The more they are encouraged to by example, the better. The apathy destroying this society is not unrelated to the desire to "avoid suffering" by having every possible kind of pharmaceutical and "miracle cure" science could devise via animal experimentation in laboratories where the public doesn't see what happens because, after all, it's just too unpleasant, and they swallow the pills just as they swallow the rhetoric of the death culture, sign "living wills" without realizing the agenda is to bamboozle them into cooperating with "saving cost" and "futile care theory," stand up for other's "right to die," and make donations solicited for "research for cures" and wear pink ribbons, etc. without what they are really paying for ever being mentioned and without realizing that at the end of the road is their own encounter with "futile care theory" and "euthanasia," willy-nilly. No wonder the human race regards itself as smarter than other animals, such as, for example, sheep.
Wesley:
You are right to be angry, it is , as you said, a righteous anger, but I do support that perhaps it could be seen as over the top. Honestly, though, if you were making a speech in my church or something, I'd have no problem with it.
I agree with Singer's stance on infanticide, but I think you have every right to be angry about it. I can also see, however, how letting your emotions show in this way can adversely affect your argument.
I mean, I get angry when people say Peter Singer should not be tenured, because academics should be free to investigate any topic, and should not be forced to adhere to the socially acceptable conclusions. Scientists should challenge accepted scientific theories, and ethicists should challenge accepted moral principles. It's the only way we can make any progress.
Then Joshua, you should urge pro lifers to be appointed to all of the major bioethics faculties at our most elite universities since the utilitarians and brave new worlders are in all but complete control. You should want people there who reflect traditional approaches to medicine, true Hippocratic values, even religious views. They are now the ones who are outside of the "socially acceptable theories" (Singer's theories are not "scientific") and we want academics to "investigate any topic."
Of course, that won't happen. Academic freedom these days flows in one direction.
Not shown in the clip during the Q and A, I was challenged as you did. I asked the professor if Shockley, the inventor of the transistor who won a Nobel Prize, would ever be allowed on the faculty to teach physics given that he was a racist. The fellow said no. I said of course not. Some prejudices are allowed on campus, e.g. personhood theorists, infanticide promoters, etc. and some not.
The people being denied academic freedom today are on my side of the road. But those who screamed the loudest about allowing all issues to be aired when they were in the minority, are now into hegemony. Heterodox views are no longer welcomed.
joyful one: Yes. Context matters. I am now urging people to speak in love, not anger. I posted this partially as an expose` of what might not work well because of the audience in front of whom I was speaking. At your church, it might well be different. But I think we have to be sensitive to what an audience can and cannot bear, without compromising truth as we see it.
Ianthe makes some very good points. I disagree with her just a bit on a couple of them.
It may be a hairsplitter, but I think there is a difference between saying that animals have rights, and saying that humans are compelled to treat animals kindly. I can definitely see the slippery slope betw. the attitude of being able doing anything at all that one thinks of to an animal (although research animals are protected now in ways they weren't in the past) and having the same attitude toward people. It's reported that many serial killers tortured animals when they were children.
I was amused, when doing an internet search on the use of benedryl on cats, to see one person stating that you should NEVER give an animal medication that's intended for humans. We are animals. Duh.
But euthanasia in animals - that's just a different story, in my opinion, Ianthe. To an animal, quality of life is everything. They don't have long-lost relatives to get closure with, they don't need to write down where the investments are, or who gets Grandma's silver forks, or whatever. And you can't explain anything to them, either. We had a cat euthanized at age 11 because his body had reached the end. His kidneys had ceased to function and he was too weak to stand. The vet said he wasn't suffering yet but would be shortly so we tearfully decided to have him put down. His littermate, at 17, drives us nuts by meowing all night - we think he's got dementia or possibly OCD, long story - and he limps from arthritis in his hips, but he still has a twinkle in his eye so we soldier on. When his life begins to be a burden to him, hopefully nature will take its course, but if not, we'll give him the same respect we gave his brother and help him out. He's lived way longer than he would have in the wild, and since we've interfered with nature already by unnaturally lengthening his life, it would be irresponsible to ignore how this could result in unnaturally lengthening his suffering at the end of it.
I'm with Wesley on the human exceptionalism here. This is appropriate for non-human animals but not for us.
Re: getting angry. I figured out a long time ago that when you want people to see things your way, and they don't want to, it's counterproductive to give them anything to react to other than the thing you want to get across. If you appear to lose your temper, or act inappropriately in any way, that gives them something else to focus on so they don't have to contemplate what you want to communicate. This is true in marital arguments, issues between coworkers, and parent/child issues (either way). As Wesley says, it may feel good to express anger, and the anger may be righteous, but the expression may decrease one's effectiveness.
In our past times in social discourse, people were not only allowed passion where thoughts arrived at points so timely and important as to require a calling to others deepest commitments to life, but that passion was actually respected--even admired.
Where have we come to socially, to now arrive at such a bland and tasteless position?-- where we must fear commitment to basic truths, that Life is what we all share in common and must be respected and protected by all as the one Fundamental? For this fact to have become so blurred is a real horror!
Wesley, I had no idea that the utilitarian ethicists had such complete dominance, and were suppressing the opposition.
Would anyone have done a survey of the views of academic bioethicists vs the views of the general public?
Don't be so disengenuous, Johsua. There are no traditionalists of which I am aware at major universities in bioethics. There are a few in religious universities. That isn't by accident. Indeed, if you look at the depth and breadth of college humanities, traditionalists have been squeezed out. Indeed, books have been written about it.
But you know it, Joshua. You are not dumb.
Oh, and I never meant to imply that Peter Singer's views were scientific - they are philosophical, after all. I was actually meaning to refer to the alleged infringement of academic freedom of those 'biologists' favouring intelligent design.
Just as scientists should be hired based on how well researched and influential their hypotheses and theories are, so too should ethicists be appointed based on how well argued and influential their philosophies are. And if those hypotheses or philosophies go against commonly accepted views, all the better. (You should not, however, appoint people just because their views are contrary to what is accepted).
Anecdote: My husband is a philosophy professor. Ethics is not his specialty, but of course it's taught in his department. He has had quite a number of conservative, even Christian, graduate students come through, and often their job as GA's is to teach ethics courses or to be assistants to professors for large ethics courses. I very much hope that this has not corrupted all of them. But I do know of one young lady. She was a home schooled girl from a conservative Christian family. I don't know if she'd already started changing her views as an undergraduate, but I do know that now, after she has been in graduate school for some years (not all of these at the secular school here where my husband teaches) she pretty clearly no longer believes in moral absolutes and, indeed, uses her considerable abilities to try to convince other people that they don't exist either. She uses various standard "hard case" scenarios--the whole world is going to blow up if you don't murder one innocent man, that sort of thing. She has in fact tried this line on my own teenage daughter, for whom she used to babysit when she was my husband's student. Fortunately, my daughter is having none of it. But it's a scary thing to see.
Joshua: Well, I'm not part of the ID issue. But I do know some of those who are. One is a tremendous astronomer who was not granted tenure at Iowa State because of his belief in ID. Now, ID has nothing to do with astronomy. His credentials in his field were impecable. The college head admitted he wasn't given tenure only due to his personal beliefs, even though it would not affect his work for the university.
Like I said...
But my point was about bioethics. And it remains true.
My computer won't yield the YouTube clip except in few-second segments every couple of minutes no matter how I try to get it to cooperate. but in the process I saw a picture of Singer, who conforms to type, and from what I did hear it sounds as if one of the considerations in Singer's line of reasoning was "utilitarian," e.g. financial. The moment finances are put ahead of life, logic is no longer working. Also, how stupid are these parents that before birth they didn't know whether they could afford a baby, and they could only figure that out in the first 28 or days, and picture the scene at home between the young father who finds he just can't make enough money to pay for pablum, diapers, and a college fund, and the mother who's carried Little Disposeable Johnny or Mary (or Jason or Courtney) for nine months and gone through labor, and is now theoretically able to set aside natural postpartum maternal instinct and, free from hormonal influence just as Singer is free from the experience of ever having been a woman and sequestered from the world in the land of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, discuss the subject in a calm, detached, rational fashion, based on the yuppie bottom line. Wesley's reaction is mild indeed compared to what the reaction of both theoretical parents Singer has conceived in the ivory tower of academic freedom (and how exactly did he do that, not to mention there?) if Singer were ever to show up at the door of their hovel bearing his "generous" "cost-considerate," "utilitarian" hypothesis. Anyone should be able to think and say anything they like, academic freedom is important, but belongs in the academy, which is why it is defined as and called what it is, and underlying all of that is the right to live. The problem begins when the world outside the academy is influenced by those who are confined to the academy for good reason. My father used to tell the joke about the student coming home from a medieval German university and his father asks him what he has learned and he says I can prove to you that there are two sausages on your plate, not one, and the son goes through an elaborate logical syllogism that proves it, and the father says fine you eat the one you just proved exists and I'll eat this one. The danger of the effect of the interaction between society and what should be cloistered is what causes the alarm here. Financial considerations do not belong at the forefont of reasoning, or in the academy, this society, like Singer in his "benevolent suggestion," does not know where the line is or that there is even supposed to be a line, and we end up with "cost considerations" determining death when the technology based on "scientific advances" that come out of our universities (to which we send our children so that they can make money, not so that they can be educated, and the kids themselves think that is how it's supposed to be) -- and we term cost-based killing "benevolent" -- courtesy of our having become overrun by uneducated idiots, many of whom "hold degrees." Meanwhile, Singer has managed actually to do exactly what Wesley is concerned about perhaps having done -- made fewer people willing to listen to what he has to say that is valid by having expressed what could affect his credibility and that of what he has correctly espoused previously; in Singer's case, it's content that outrages, whereas our host's concern is over manner of expression born of outrage. In the context of these two instances, Singer, whose brilliant opening sentence of Animal Liberation said it all and if he'd stopped there and gone off to pursue a more honestly "utilitarian' career he'd have ended up doing more (net balance) for animal rights, has done more harm to the animal rights movement than Wesley has to the human life movement. Now THAT's a problem, as if non-human animals didn't have enough to contend with already, between the exigencies of nature and the human race, and, as an example of the latter and on top of everything else, now Singer. I do have a question: Is the cause of the opposition to the animal rights movement by SHS and by, e.g., Michael Savage just Singer and what he's projected that reflects on the animal rights movement, or is it more than that?
Wesley, there's such a thing as justifiable anger, and you have displayed it in this clip. I'm picturing a film with one group of people saying horrific things very calmly and with smiles upon their faces, and when the "unwashed masses" (we) express our anger and dismay that someone thinks that the best thing an impoverished family can do for a child is to kill "it" we are called "irrational" or just not as sophisticated. This is how it goes, folks. The march toward something horrible (e.g. infanticide) is slow and subtle by design.
If a crazed lunatic screams that we should kill newborn babies (s)he would be shunned by society.
But if a calm man writes the same message (with "kindler, gentler phrasing") from his office at Princeton University, impartial observers may figure, "He seems like a nice man. I don't know why that other bloke was pounding his fist and desperately trying to warn us about him." And another step towards killing babies is taken.
Lanthe: "It would only strengthen your position to reconsider the animal rights question. It does not lower human animals to respect non-human ones; it only elevates us and proves that the word 'humanity' has standing to exist."
That's a beautiful idea, Lanthe. I don't know that anyone here supports needless torturing of animals; we all have our different degrees of agreement with you on that account. With 15 years into my lacto-vegetarianism, I may be closer to you on the "animal-rights" scale that Wesley is, but you are correct in pointing out that one issue (what we think of the status of non-human animals) doesn't have a necessary bearing upon the other issue (whether we tolerate gross violations against human beings). Peter Singer could have been a cow-tipping taxidermist and still hold his horrific views on newborn human babies...
"Also, how stupid are these parents that before birth they didn't know whether they could afford a baby"
This could still happen, if the baby was born with a congenital illness that would necessitate much money for medical bills.
bmmg3: I had just been thinking that the phrase "justifiable anger" should be mentioned, and what you said in your first three paragraphs was beautiful. I agree with your logic on the last point. But I do think that how we think about one -- once we have fully examined the issue -- has to be consistent with how we think about the other. Life is life, suffering and pain are suffering and pain, ability to feel is ability to feel, respect is respect, and self-interest is self-interest, and includes both the desire to live in itself and the wisdom of non-human animals. Some have chosen vegetarianism merely for the sake of their own health, and some both for that reason and for animalitarian reasons, but the efficiency of the end result of the first reason covers both, and when one is on the right track, efficiency is the beneficial result and extends in all possible directions. I oppose vivisection on both grounds: It's not only bad for them; it's ultimately bad for us. I'm not a vegetarian, though; the human blood-type theory on that does seem to be correct, and I've tested it on myself; my 0+ type does do better as a non-vegetarian, at least in my case. The distress it causes the animals we eat distresses me, because as a human animal I have the capacity (as do many non-human animals) to empathize and to feel such distress, and it's not pretty, but it's what a non-human animal would do as well. Similarly, I wouldn't impose vegetarianism on my pets, because that's not what dogs and cats are. But we can treat the animals we end up eating as humanely as possible and approach the matter with the reverence exhibited by kosher butchering, Native Americans, etc. Or are those of us who are not Native American supposed to disregard they go about things because they are not as "advanced" as we are? But defending vivisection by saying the animals are treated as humanely as possible is something else again. Not only have medical traditions that have not depended on animal experimentation developed techniques more sophiticated and effective (and less destructive) than ours, but the end results of animal experimentation, which is driven by unhealthy curiosity, lack of logic, lack of patience, lack of faith, lack of humanity, and lack of ethics, and by greed, ambition, selfishness, amorality, and those with their heads on backwards, are devastatingly destructive to us.
Joshua: Yes, the baby could be born with a congenital problem that would necessitate much money for medical bills. (Bills that would not be as high, by the way, if animal experimentation and insurance companies did not drive western medicine.) How stupid were these parents that they didn't consider that possibility beforehand and make sure they were prepared for it? What a pair of spoiled brats! Your logic doesn't hold, because you're doing the same thing Singer did, making money the primary consideration, and money doesn't behave and serve us well unless it's treated like the servant it is and kept in its proper place, subsumed to logic and morality. What if money were no issue and they had plenty and more enough of it so that Little Disposeable could have whatever s/he needed, and more, forever, even if s/he outlived Methuselah, and would still be able to leave an immense estate; let's say the parents are trust fund kids from a families so rich no that one has ever heard of them and their parents are there for them, plus they have lucrative, secure careers and an extremely talented, trustworthy financial planner. Just to make sure there's no issue over their solvency in this hypothetical. Would they still want the baby, or not? If not, why, and can they still bash his/her head in with a rock and get on with their lives and try for a better specimen next time, or maybe rethink the whole parenting thing? If they don't, let's see what Singer has to say now. Helloooo! Peter Sinnnger! What nowwww? Ok, let's say they still want the baby. Case closed, and we leave them to their domestic and family bliss. Then it WAS all about money, and that's what's wrong with this picture, because the child has just as much right to live whether they can afford it or not. Idiots who didn't consider the possibility, well, maybe they shouldn't be reproduced, and they're all going to end up in a mess anyway, and the kid doesn't have good genes and won't live very long, but at least maybe these idiots are "dumb" enough to love the child and hold it in their arms until it dies on its own, rather than bashing its head in with a rock or taking it to a low-priced vet (if such exists, and in any event they can't afford a doctor)and having it put to sleep, even if the vet, taking pity on them, has to do it sub rosa like a doctor performing an abortion at risk of his license in days gone by. Meanwhile, they have left behind their parental instincts, the mother and probably the father too, and made this decision, and are ok with it, and can go on without it haunting them for the rest of their lives? Well, maybe some people can, and good luck next time. What kind of laws are even left in a world like that, even to say it's legal? Now we're back in the ancient world, where exposure of infants was a normal practice, as was abortion. Fine. These were brilliant civilizations, and it worked for them. But at the time they declined and fell, their abortion rates rates were the highest. I'll say something now. I was trained as a classicist, and I still am one. I'm not a bible person, I don't cotton to the the Judeo-Christian tradition, and I don't even particularly like babies. I can understand Singer's point, in theory, but not on the grounds of economy. It's a hard world (which we humans did not create), and the principle survival of the fittest applies. But life and the will to live are sacred, and whatever happens in it, every day above ground is a good day, in the absolute sense. Even if we can arrange a being in a petri dish, we still didn't create it, and it is not our right to make the choice to end it unless we are killing it for food, as is the nature of an animal, which is what we are. We cannot snuff out the life of a weak, vulnerable creature that is struggling to survive (nor if it isn't struggling to survive, and at that point, if no possible help, support, or intervention exists, the matter will resolve itself on its own as nature intends), at no matter what stage of life it is; not even an "animal" would do that. The most important things are very simple: It is not necessary, it is no right,it is not truly efficient, and it violates the law of true self-interest (all of which come down to the same thing), and if we do it, condone it, or allow it to happen in our society, some day it may happen to us.
Lanthe -
I don't entirely agree with all of your positions, but it's 10:10 pm CST here and I have to be up early tomorrow for work so I can't get into details. Bah! I want a good discussion, dang it!
But I have to say this because you impress me - you're one of the more thoughtful authors I've seen on this web log. I enjoy reading what you write and I look forward to getting a chance to talk to you in the future.
Why "Second Hand Smoke" is the name? (I'll figure that out eventually, but haven't yet.)
Why "Human Exceptionalism?" Every human being, and every non-human animal, is exceptional, as is every species, including ours. Yes, we can do things that no other species of animal can, but every other species of animal has uniquitude, as well, and we simply represent the most advanced stage of animal evolution at this point in the evolutionary process, which is not necessarily its ultimate stage. "Human exceptionalism" seems a redundant term; it's like saying that the sky is blue. We simply are as we are. Those among us who are exceptional are, sadly, those of us who are humane.
Why "the importance of being human"? Again, that seems redundant. Each life is important. How much more needs to be said than that? It's just as important to a cat to be a cat as it is to us to be human. I'm not denigrating "human" or saying that humans are cats and cats are humans; it's just that things simply are as and what they are. Why not "the importance of being humane?" I don't mean by that the quality of being humane to other animals, but the quality of being humane in general, including to our own species; it would just say more than "human," which it's already obvious that we are, reminding us to be the best of which we are capable, and thus serve our own self-interest.
What would be wrong with a popular backlash against science, which as you note has arrogated unto itself the status of a religion and become lethally utilitarian? If we don't exercise enough self-interest to manifest that backlash, we won't be able to harness science in a such a way that it does the best for us, not the worst to us. Otherwise, it's going to keep running rampant until the death culture pac-mans all of us.
How did science acquire such dangerous arrogance and turn into a religion that has yielded the death culture? How did doctors and scientists come to abandon the Hippocratic ethic and become arrogant, inhumane, without conscience, utilitarian, driven by ego, ambition, materialism, and greed, and acting as though they are a religion, and one that need not include regard for moral and ethical considerations? Their having been allowed to feel entitled to experiment on animals and to disregard the pain and suffering they thus caused living creatures because what they were doing was "more important" had nothing to do with it? Experimentation on animals who cannot give consent is as profound an example of utilitarianism as there could be. Is the logic of this not obvious? If we want science to serve us, rather than to become its victims, we have to take control of it by not allowing it to continue in the habit of victimizing the innocent, and animals used in scientific experimentation are innocent victims; it's that habit that has led to its victimizing us. If we don't address this, we're going to end up in even more trouble and danger than we've already allowed to develop and now, as a matter of literal life and death, have to contend with and stop. They're complaining that they can't get their hands on enough human eggs now, despite the risk of harm harvesting (note that human organs, eggs, etc. now have become the object of the same verb as foodstuff) them poses for women, now, are they? Well, what did you EXPECT? They've been treating living, sentient beings like THINGS, torturing them, cutting them up, taking parts from them, throwing their dead bodies away like garbage, with impunity for how long now? And now it's surprising how they treat US? Where did we think the "scientific detachment" about which they vaunted themselves and which had us regarding them with awe and respect would lead? They've been given free rein to do what we are not allowed to do to animals (and why are we not allowed to? because society, and our souls, know that it is wrong, but the "scientist" was freed from the obligation to have a soul, and that's how things got to the point where SHS is necessary; what kind of science was that going to end up yielding? nobody thought of that?) all this time, and their resulting sense of entitlement and superiority, constantly reinforced by doing as they pleased with impunity to "lesser creatures," haven't led them to have an unrealistic, narcissistic (which includes lack of empathy) sense of self-importance, and it's any wonder that they are more concerned, when they commit malpractice on other human beings, about their own careers and insurance premiums than they are that they have done harm, and that they are willing to say and do things I've seen them do to a patient, deliberately, to inhibit their healing and break them down emotionally and try to make them give up the will to live, because the patient as far as they are concerned is supposed to die, but refuses, and to pull plugs? No, I am not making that up, and whether narcissitic and sociopathic native tendencies drew them to the laboratory, where they could cause pain with impunity (and you should see some of the people who do that "respected" work) and to "science" or they acquired sadistic temperaments because of being in that environment, the result is the same. We allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise drugs developed on the backs of helpless laboratory animals tortured for the sake of financial gain, and the ads themselves tell us how the product is going to harm us, and still we don't say hey, how could this even be, but instead we buy the stuff. We don't even raise our eyebrows when the ads tell us to "ask your doctor," as if the doctor isn't supposed to be the one telling us about it. We know the stuff is harmful to us, but we (when I say "we," I don't mean myself or anyone else here, but society) keep buying and taking it, just as women sell their eggs, because we, like the doctors and scientists, want to profit, one way or another, from "science." That's how "utilitarian" we, like the science toward which our attitude is reverence, admiration, and gratitude, have become, and that's why SSH is alarmed and Wesley expressed righteous anger on behalf of our survival over the Academy, in the personification of Princeton, having given Singer and his "modest (utilitarian") proposal" a tenured chair rather than a much-needed, on behalf of society, the slap to the head, which it could be argued that the Academy could, and was the very institution that should, have administered to him. We don't care what suffering of innocent creatures led to the "new developments" -- which, of course, often turn out to be harmful to us as well, but what else to expect from what grew out of harm to another creature? Wrong does not yield right. Naturally we have ratified the "death culture"; we want a remedy, whether it's really necessary or not, to avoid any possible kind of discomfort or inconvenience, we haven't considered the truth that it could not possibly be ultimately beneficial to us if its origins are ugly, and at the end of that road is the shibboleth of "quality of life" justifying assisted suicide and legalized murder in the form of plug-pulling (oops, I mean euthanasia, don't mean to be politically incorrect), even when the victim is unwilling, and we call the doctor-gods who do it for utilitarian reasons, based on "futile care (now there's an oxymoron for you) theory," e.g. to free up beds, "not waste the technology," for the sake of their own careers, etc., "compassionate." Now I ask you, being this stupid makes us "exceptional"?? If we DON'T manifest a popular backlash against "science," we're done for. At least a cat, faced with such offensive and dangerous threat, would have the sense to snarl, scratch, and hiss.
Again, how did science and medicine get to be this way, and how did such peril to our survival come to exist that this site is necessary? How many of us are going to end up as geriatric patients on ventilators as the result of gross medical negligence caused by the arrogance and callousness of doctors who feel the elderly "should die anyway," and end up having the plug pulled on us despite our desire to continue to live? I've spent every day of most of the last year watching that very thing happen, fighting for the life of someone in that situation who simply wanted to live, and being told by all and sundry, sometimes scolded and yelled at, that I should let the person (who did not want to die, or I wouldn't have been doing what I was doing) die, as if that would be the "right" and "humane" thing -- people so completely brainwashed by the death culture that they could not even believe that indeed, the person actually wanted to live and had begged me to fight for her, people who talked self-righteously of their own "living wills," as if they were "doing their part" and as if everyone has the duty to die and they looked forward to the time when their "document" would be "honored," people who felt smugly secure that they would be in control of their own death and, cowards that they are, "not have to suffer" (I can tell you, having been very close to death myself more than once, and still here only by the virtue of grace of God, miracle, fate, or whatever, that suffering beats death, hands down, and the line between life and death is very fine, and it's good, and highly desireable, to stay on this side of it) as if they could even know advance how they will feel if they end up in a situation whose outcome is to be dictated by a piece of paper they signed long before, and as if they could know when they signed it what the exact circumstances would be and how they would feel when they manifested. Now that's arrogance and stupidity if anything is, and they're smug and self-righteous about it, on top of everything else. (Wait a minute -- that's how doctors behave, isn't it; well, they are cooperating with the agenda of their role models; God forbid they should actually think, let alone independently.) Two people -- both of them, like the rest of this ilk, incidentally, enthusiastic (is there any other kind?) Obama supporters, came to visit the patient one day; one said, (in her hearing, no less), "She's (said her age), why not just pull the plug?" (Those had been the first words the "guardian" the hospital had gone to court to have imposed on her in place of her choice of health care proxy, me, because I wouldn't go along with its agenda, had said to me, too.) The other said he was "appalled" that I was fighting that being done, and, though he didn't known her well enough even to know that she wanted to live, was just SURE that she would NEVER want to be on life support, and did what he could to sabotage the success of the desperate legal battle in which I was trying to save her life so that she could leave the hospital alive and return to her own home, which hospital staff told me she was able to do, which she'd fought for months more bravely than I can even describe to be able to do. But the hospital, which demanded "respect" like a bully in a backwater town, had absolutely no respect for her wishes and rights in that regard. This is what can go on in medicine today; this is what it has come to. The "guardian case manager" who was willing to follow the hospital and her mercenary bosses' agenda to get the plug pulled had pulled the plug on her own mother and had the mien of absolute moral bankruptcy and poor character; the lawyer who didn't handle the case the way I kept telling him it needed to be handled turned out to have been party to pulling the plug on his own mother-in-law; I can't decide whether people who have acceded to plug-pulling were deficient to start with, or damaged by having done it, probably both, but the bottom line is, it's not good. Now priests, even Catholic ones, go along with it; the Catholic Church has said it's ok if the person wants to be removed from life support "to spare their family and/or the community expense," and approves the handy mechanism of the "living will" to hold the person to their (long-since) "written word" in order to make sure the utilitarian agenda is fulfilled. Never mind what the person wants now when they are in no condition to repudiate the document but have changed their mind; "This is what s/he wanted." Yes, I said the Catholic Church. At least according to the local diocese that oversees the "guardians" who stooge for the hospital; but then, according to the the Catholic Church, non-human animals don't have souls and it's ok to experiment on them (there went the history of science down the wrong road) and is adept at what I will kindly term bifurcation.
What are we facing ourselves? I just described it. With things this bad, it's not worth trying something "drastic" to turn them around? I'm proposing a "experiment" that will shake things up as needed, constitute a backlash that yields immense benefit to the human race, and not cause any creature, of our own or any other species, to suffer: Take away their laboratory animals. Sure, it will throw the medical and scientific world into consternation and disrupt incomes and careers. That's exactly what needs to happen, and it won't hinder the human race; it will enable us to survive and defeat the death culture. (Ok, now someone please figure out how to get the laboratory animals taken away from them, and see to it that it's done; I don't like to micromanage. Kidding aside, my suggestion is absolutely serious.)
Why "Second Hand Smoke" is the name? (I'll figure that out eventually, but haven't yet.)
Why "Human Exceptionalism?" Every human being, and every non-human animal, is exceptional, as is every species, including ours. Yes, we can do things that no other species of animal can, but every other species of animal has uniquitude, as well, and we simply represent the most advanced stage of animal evolution at this point in the evolutionary process, which is not necessarily its ultimate stage. "Human exceptionalism" seems a redundant term; it's like saying that the sky is blue. We simply are as we are. Those among us who are exceptional are, sadly, those of us who are humane.
Why "the importance of being human"? Again, that seems redundant. Each life is important. How much more needs to be said than that? It's just as important to a cat to be a cat as it is to us to be human. I'm not denigrating "human" or saying that humans are cats and cats are humans; it's just that things simply are as and what they are. Why not "the importance of being humane?" I don't mean by that the quality of being humane to other animals, but the quality of being humane in general, including to our own species; it would just say more than "human," which it's already obvious that we are, reminding us to be the best of which we are capable, and thus serve our own self-interest.
What would be wrong with a popular backlash against science, which as you note has arrogated unto itself the status of a religion and become lethally utilitarian? If we don't exercise enough self-interest to manifest that backlash, we won't be able to harness science in a such a way that it does the best for us, not the worst to us. Otherwise, it's going to keep running rampant until the death culture pac-mans all of us.
How did science acquire such dangerous arrogance and turn into a religion that has yielded the death culture? How did doctors and scientists come to abandon the Hippocratic ethic and become arrogant, inhumane, without conscience, utilitarian, driven by ego, ambition, materialism, and greed, and acting as though they are a religion, and one that need not include regard for moral and ethical considerations? Their having been allowed to feel entitled to experiment on animals and to disregard the pain and suffering they thus caused living creatures because what they were doing was "more important" had nothing to do with it? Experimentation on animals who cannot give consent is as profound an example of utilitarianism as there could be. Is the logic of this not obvious? If we want science to serve us, rather than to become its victims, we have to take control of it by not allowing it to continue in the habit of victimizing the innocent, and animals used in scientific experimentation are innocent victims; it's that habit that has led to its victimizing us. If we don't address this, we're going to end up in even more trouble and danger than we've already allowed to develop and now, as a matter of literal life and death, have to contend with and stop. They're complaining that they can't get their hands on enough human eggs now, despite the risk of harm harvesting (note that human organs, eggs, etc. now have become the object of the same verb as foodstuff) them poses for women, now, are they? Well, what did you EXPECT? They've been treating living, sentient beings like THINGS, torturing them, cutting them up, taking parts from them, throwing their dead bodies away like garbage, with impunity for how long now? And now it's surprising how they treat US? Where did we think the "scientific detachment" about which they vaunted themselves and which had us regarding them with awe and respect would lead? They've been given free rein to do what we are not allowed to do to animals (and why are we not allowed to? because society, and our souls, know that it is wrong, but the "scientist" was freed from the obligation to have a soul, and that's how things got to the point where SHS is necessary; what kind of science was that going to end up yielding? nobody thought of that?) all this time, and their resulting sense of entitlement and superiority, constantly reinforced by doing as they pleased with impunity to "lesser creatures," haven't led them to have an unrealistic, narcissistic (which includes lack of empathy) sense of self-importance, and it's any wonder that they are more concerned, when they commit malpractice on other human beings, about their own careers and insurance premiums than they are that they have done harm, and that they are willing to say and do things I've seen them do to a patient, deliberately, to inhibit their healing and break them down emotionally and try to make them give up the will to live, because the patient as far as they are concerned is supposed to die, but refuses, and to pull plugs? No, I am not making that up, and whether narcissitic and sociopathic native tendencies drew them to the laboratory, where they could cause pain with impunity (and you should see some of the people who do that "respected" work) and to "science" or they acquired sadistic temperaments because of being in that environment, the result is the same. We allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise drugs developed on the backs of helpless laboratory animals tortured for the sake of financial gain, and the ads themselves tell us how the product is going to harm us, and still we don't say hey, how could this even be, but instead we buy the stuff. We don't even raise our eyebrows when the ads tell us to "ask your doctor," as if the doctor isn't supposed to be the one telling us about it. We know the stuff is harmful to us, but we (when I say "we," I don't mean myself or anyone else here, but society) keep buying and taking it, just as women sell their eggs, because we, like the doctors and scientists, want to profit, one way or another, from "science." That's how "utilitarian" we, like the science toward which our attitude is reverence, admiration, and gratitude, have become, and that's why SSH is alarmed and Wesley expressed righteous anger on behalf of our survival over the Academy, in the personification of Princeton, having given Singer and his "modest (utilitarian") proposal" a tenured chair rather than a much-needed, on behalf of society, the slap to the head, which it could be argued that the Academy could, and was the very institution that should, have administered to him. We don't care what suffering of innocent creatures led to the "new developments" -- which, of course, often turn out to be harmful to us as well, but what else to expect from what grew out of harm to another creature? Wrong does not yield right. Naturally we have ratified the "death culture"; we want a remedy, whether it's really necessary or not, to avoid any possible kind of discomfort or inconvenience, we haven't considered the truth that it could not possibly be ultimately beneficial to us if its origins are ugly, and at the end of that road is the shibboleth of "quality of life" justifying assisted suicide and legalized murder in the form of plug-pulling (oops, I mean euthanasia, don't mean to be politically incorrect), even when the victim is unwilling, and we call the doctor-gods who do it for utilitarian reasons, based on "futile care (now there's an oxymoron for you) theory," e.g. to free up beds, "not waste the technology," for the sake of their own careers, etc., "compassionate." Now I ask you, being this stupid makes us "exceptional"?? If we DON'T manifest a popular backlash against "science," we're done for. At least a cat, faced with such offensive and dangerous threat, would have the sense to snarl, scratch, and hiss.
Again, how did science and medicine get to be this way, and how did such peril to our survival come to exist that this site is necessary? How many of us are going to end up as geriatric patients on ventilators as the result of gross medical negligence caused by the arrogance and callousness of doctors who feel the elderly "should die anyway," and end up having the plug pulled on us despite our desire to continue to live? I've spent every day of most of the last year watching that very thing happen, fighting for the life of someone in that situation who simply wanted to live, and being told by all and sundry, sometimes scolded and yelled at, that I should let the person (who did not want to die, or I wouldn't have been doing what I was doing) die, as if that would be the "right" and "humane" thing -- people so completely brainwashed by the death culture that they could not even believe that indeed, the person actually wanted to live and had begged me to fight for her, people who talked self-righteously of their own "living wills," as if they were "doing their part" and as if everyone has the duty to die and they looked forward to the time when their "document" would be "honored," people who felt smugly secure that they would be in control of their own death and, cowards that they are, "not have to suffer" (I can tell you, having been very close to death myself more than once, and still here only by the virtue of grace of God, miracle, fate, or whatever, that suffering beats death, hands down, and the line between life and death is very fine, and it's good, and highly desireable, to stay on this side of it) as if they could even know advance how they will feel if they end up in a situation whose outcome is to be dictated by a piece of paper they signed long before, and as if they could know when they signed it what the exact circumstances would be and how they would feel when they manifested. Now that's arrogance and stupidity if anything is, and they're smug and self-righteous about it, on top of everything else. (Wait a minute -- that's how doctors behave, isn't it; well, they are cooperating with the agenda of their role models; God forbid they should actually think, let alone independently.) Two people -- both of them, like the rest of this ilk, incidentally, enthusiastic (is there any other kind?) Obama supporters, came to visit the patient one day; one said, (in her hearing, no less), "She's (said her age), why not just pull the plug?" (Those had been the first words the "guardian" the hospital had gone to court to have imposed on her in place of her choice of health care proxy, me, because I wouldn't go along with its agenda, had said to me, too.) The other said he was "appalled" that I was fighting that being done, and, though he didn't known her well enough even to know that she wanted to live, was just SURE that she would NEVER want to be on life support, and did what he could to sabotage the success of the desperate legal battle in which I was trying to save her life so that she could leave the hospital alive and return to her own home, which hospital staff told me she was able to do, which she'd fought for months more bravely than I can even describe to be able to do. But the hospital, which demanded "respect" like a bully in a backwater town, had absolutely no respect for her wishes and rights in that regard. This is what can go on in medicine today; this is what it has come to. The "guardian case manager" who was willing to follow the hospital and her mercenary bosses' agenda to get the plug pulled had pulled the plug on her own mother and had the mien of absolute moral bankruptcy and poor character; the lawyer who didn't handle the case the way I kept telling him it needed to be handled turned out to have been party to pulling the plug on his own mother-in-law; I can't decide whether people who have acceded to plug-pulling were deficient to start with, or damaged by having done it, probably both, but the bottom line is, it's not good. Now priests, even Catholic ones, go along with it; the Catholic Church has said it's ok if the person wants to be removed from life support "to spare their family and/or the community expense," and approves the handy mechanism of the "living will" to hold the person to their (long-since) "written word" in order to make sure the utilitarian agenda is fulfilled. Never mind what the person wants now when they are in no condition to repudiate the document but have changed their mind; "This is what s/he wanted." Yes, I said the Catholic Church. At least according to the local diocese that oversees the "guardians" who stooge for the hospital; but then, according to the the Catholic Church, non-human animals don't have souls and it's ok to experiment on them (there went the history of science down the wrong road) and is adept at what I will kindly term bifurcation.
What are we facing ourselves? I just described it. With things this bad, it's not worth trying something "drastic" to turn them around? I'm proposing a "experiment" that will shake things up as needed, constitute a backlash that yields immense benefit to the human race, and not cause any creature, of our own or any other species, to suffer: Take away their laboratory animals. Sure, it will throw the medical and scientific world into consternation and disrupt incomes and careers. That's exactly what needs to happen, and it won't hinder the human race; it will enable us to survive and defeat the death culture. (Ok, now someone please figure out how to get the laboratory animals taken away from them, and see to it that it's done; I don't like to micromanage. Kidding aside, my suggestion is absolutely serious.)
I'll just make a couple of short last points:
Did you ever notice how deeply and permanently altered and traumatized some people who have worked in animal shelters where animals are constantly euthanized (against their will, and their will to live is as genuine and thus as much to be respected as ours) are? That societal custom is yet another precursor of the "death culture," and an example of how destructive "euthanasia" -- of any species -- can be to those who are not its direct victims. One reason our society suffers from lobotomy of the soul is that we have tolerated the kind of treatment of animals, out of our sight, that we could not endure if we had to see it, and now the custom of euthanasia of the helpless, abused victim isolated from the world in an institution has climbed up the species ladder to our own.
We humans are not at our best when we regard ourselves as "different" from "animals"; we are at our best, and strongest, when we acknowledge what we have in common with them, and what they can teach us by the way they are is precisely what we need to learn. Look at the mess we've made for ourselves while regarding ourselves as "apart from," "different from," and "superior to" them.
Finally, one word sums up the eggheads who gave Singer a chair instead of a slap to the head, couldn't be reached even by justified outrage over the propounding of unjustified homicide and, as that type does, unloaded their own discomfiture over their own inadequacy onto the one who protested their inadequacy, Singer, with his logical inconsistency and not only skewed, but dangerous, priorities, the scientists and doctors who got to where they are, which is more impressive to themselves than it is to anyone with sense, got to be as they are, by experimenting on animals, and the idiot sheep people who have bought into the death culture: Incompetents.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Man can move nations with passion tinged with anger at the injustice of other men Wesley. The tight wire you are striding upon must be a bit of both. I can abide with Singer holding a job at Princeton a lot more then I can with the fact that Princeton's search committee was actually callous enough to select his type of humanity. They deserve a larger portion of my anger for the act of hiring such a sociopath who values humanity so callously . Does the Princeton search committee actually believe Singer is a boon to humanity??? If they do they better get down off their high horse and look deep into their own dark souls.
Blogger Ianthe said...
(The word "that" immediately following "culture of nice" should have been deleted in my previous post.) The first thing my Torts professor ever said to us, on the first day of class, was, "Remember, your client is right." That, in itself, made him the most valuable teacher at the law school (and the day he literally banged his head on the blackboard in a deliberately humorous but also obviously sincere show of frustration when no one seemed to get the point of a particular case only proved it further).
Using your Prof's own words which you seem to hinge your views upon.
Hitler's clients were the people of his nation. Did he consider them right or did he mold them to believe he and the Fatherland were right? Such is the danger of putting the wrong people in charge of the clients. Cases in point ::: Pete Singer, Ward Churchill, Bill Ayers, Tom Regan, .
Blogger Wesley J. Smith said...
DisturbedMary: Thanks for being here. Braveheart is a bit of an overstatement. The truly courageous people are cops, fire fighters, and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
November 24, 2008
Truly courageous people have been seen using their tongues to fight battles against a wave of ideology which might be popular or not challenged Wesley. Don't sell yourself short.
Donnie: Singer, Regan, Churchill are many things, but Hitler isn't one of them, just so we are clear. Their policies are anti-human, and as I pointed out Singer's support for infanticide is no different than Brandt's statements about Baby Knaeur, and Hitler supported infanticide, but these people would never set up death camps or start wars, or establish a total tyranny.
Ianthe: Re name Secondhand Smoke. It was a whimsical decision, based in self depcracation. I am full of hot air and emit particulate matter.
Beyond that, I always thought that if I ever had a regular column I would call it Secondhand Smoke. So that is what I named my blog. Some like it, some don't. I do.
The point I make is they are the wrong people in the wrong jobs Wesley. They are an extension of having the wrong people in the wheel house who CLAIM fervently that they offer such as Churchill & Singer to give the other side of the story. Meanwhile they avoid putting other philosophers who contradict those named philosophers a platform.
Please note that I noted I can abide with Singer ( thus I don't view him as a Hitler)accepting the Tenure but I worry about the University that put him in that tenure when his callous views are so evident to the people who chose him which to ME is a wrong person serving his clients.
Wesley, you are my hero! I understand what you're saying about getting angry-but as others have said, that is the appropriate response to such bigotry. And, I think that what you said is fine-you could, perhaps, have modified your tone of voice and kept the words the same. For instance, I think the comparison you made between Singer and Duke was very important and something the most people do not want to acknowledge because it shows how hypocritical Singer's appointment was/is. Do you have a video of your entire speech?
Safepres: Thank you. Let me be clear, it isn't WHAT I said that I regret. I think that the HEAT with which I said it was counterproductive.
Strange thing about how handlers that are politically correct to a fault don't speak for the populace in general.
I have an example of how the politically correct ushered a speaker out the door after he made remarks they didn't favor. However the net result was, the audience concurred with the speaker. One of the terms used isn't what I would chose but I can not quote the gist of the speakers point without quoting him directly.
___________________________
" One thing about Australians is that their hearts and humour are always in the right place!
T. B. Bechtel, a part-time City Councilman from Newcastle, NSW was asked
on a local live radio talk show, just what he thought of the allegations of
torture of the Iraqi prisoners.
His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous
applause from the audience.
HIS STATEMENT:
'If hooking up an Iraqi prisoner's nuts to a car's battery cables will save just
one Australians life, then I have just three things to say,'
'Red is positive,
Black is negative, and
Make sure his nuts are wet.'"
__________________________
Crude and certainly not politically correct. However in the audience's applause is drowned by the handlers. In real terms most folks would concur with the councilman. The attitude of politically correct police has dulled the populace from taking strong stands on just about everything.
As a 1990 graduate of Princeton University and Captain of the Ivy League Champion Varsity Football Team, I am similarly outraged. You don't need to apologize for your anger or the passion with which you spoke. I'd say considering the evil of Singer's work and influence, you were quite calm.
Lastly, I want to inform you that Singer isn't the problem. He is the symptom. The real problem is spiritual. The real problem is that the True Faith of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Faith, has been eclipsed by a false "catholicism", promulgated from Rome since October 1951. These sickos, like Singer, are the punishment for man's sins of idolatry, loving possession and comfort more than God.
Let me know if you would like to learn more and work to secure your salvation. There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church, not to be confused with the religion of the Vatican since October 1951.
Visit TheCatholicFaith.us for more information. It's still a work in progress.
I was thinking about it tonight and it occured to me that when I think about my disability, it is usually in terms of it being a part of my greater life-narrative. In this sense it is both a culturally relevant feature and a propegator of dragons to be slain. I wonder if one of the issues at play in the cold dehumanization of handicapped people stems from the contrasting tendency to think of people in terms of numbers and calculated relationships, rather than as protagonists in their own story. In short, it seems like people who advocate views like Singer's see life and people's relationship to it as a math problem to solve, rather than as a narrative to read.
was thinking about it tonight and it occured to me that when I think about my disability, it is usually in terms of it being a part of my greater life-narrative.
....There's another way decent folks CAN think of it?
I mean, you lose an arm-- it's something you have to deal with.
You can't take stairs anymore, it's something you have to deal with.
You can't do tight, hot, dark areas without flipping out? It's something to deal with....
Scares me all to heck when folks see it as THE thing, rather than something about the person.
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