Moral Health

Benazir Bhutto is perhaps the most prominent martyr thus far of the 3rd Millennium.  She was willing to risk her life for what she believed—not by surreptitiously launching murderous attacks against others, but by stating in public her beliefs and hopes for her nation, Pakistan.  She had the courage of her convictions.  Although her Islamist murderer blew himself up, can anyone really doubt that she was the more courageous person by far?

This shows at once that the willingness to kill oneself does not thereby make one a paragon of the virtue of courage.  Indeed, a most poignant truth is that people kill themselves for all sorts of reasons that have nothing at all to do with courage.  Bhutto’s murderer was not a man of courage.  Rather, he was a man who exploited Bhutto’s courage.

I do not suppose for a moment that Benazir Bhutto was without fault.  Indeed, Plato suggests in his magnificent work the Republic that there is something problematic about anyone who wanted to hold public office.  There is no reason to deny that she was interested in obtaining power because she delighted in that sort of thing.  Yet, it must be acknowledged that in her quest for power she did not lose sight of the good of the people.  Indeed it must be acknowledge that the good of the people was fundamentally important to her.  After all, it was a good for which she was willing to put her life on the line.

It is, to be sure, a matter of debate whether democracy, as we know it in Western countries, is suitable for all the world.  Just so, there can be no gainsaying the truth that a society can take its members seriously only insofar as it gives them a choice in who their leaders should be.  There is a kind of affirmation that can be given to the other only insofar as one allows the other to choose.  Whatever her shortcomings might be, Bhutto grasped this truth.  And she was willing to put her life on the line to make this truth a reality for the people of Pakistan.

Benazir Bhutto’s assassination is a wake-up call to the West.  The success of Islamist terrorists (not to be confused with righteous Muslims) is tied to sufficiently many folks in the West somehow managing to believe that the aims these Islamists are no less legitimate than the aims of democracy.  Those who believe this take the humanity of those under Islamist dominion less seriously than they take their own humanity.  Just as no one thinks for a moment that it is “natural” for a person to want to be a slave, it is plainly absurd to suppose that it is “natural” for people to embrace the domination of Islamists terrorists.  And as Rousseau observed in The Social Contract: Even if a person might choose slavery for himself, he is surely not entitled to choose it for his children.

Bhutto died because she was willing to stand for what she believed in.  She did not die trying to appease all.  She did not die because she was a chameleon who got confused in moving from one audience to another.  She had too much integrity to be a chameleon.

Do we have any politicians like that in the United States who are running for president?  Ms. Clinton?  Mr. Obama?  Mr. Romney?  Mr. McCain?  The sad thing is that it is far from obvious that we do.  How can it be that the country which often claims to be the leader of the free world does not have a presidential candidate who obviously matches Bhutto in terms of integrity and courage?

This is one profound reason why Bhutto’s assassination is a wake-up call.

Politics without courage and integrity amounts to none other than a form of manipulation.  And insofar as a nation of people are more interested in self-gratification than the integrity of their political candidates, then it follows that such a nation of people has invited its very own manipulation by politicians.

Benazir Bhutto’s death is a most poignant reminder of two things.  One is that there are, in fact, moral and political truths.  The other is that there are some who above all else are committed to denying these truths and who, to that end, will destroy the very best that life offers.

Some have compared her to Nelson Mandela.  I, on the other hand, think that the more apt comparison is Martin Luther King, Jr. (who was hardly perfect). He saw “the Promised Land”.  He did not get to enter it.  Bhutto returned to Pakistan in the hopes of establishing “the Promise Land”.  She did not get to do so.

King’s dream was fulfilled because sufficiently many in the United States saw a need for change.  Bhutto’s dream will be fulfilled only if sufficiently many of the community of nations will see the need to change.

And this brings us to another reason why Bhutto’s assassination is a wake-up call.  The idea of a war on terrorism has been mocked by many and dismissed as so much nonsense.  Bhutto had returned to Pakistan in the hopes of making her country a better nation for all of its citizens.  She had returned the spirit of providing equality for all.  Alas, this simple conception of equality, which we in the West take for granted, was seen as a threat by some with a quite different political outlook, namely one which relegated a great many human beings to a position of abject subordination.

Unless sufficiently many nations of the world stand resolutely opposed to what Bhutto’s murder and inalterably committed to regarding her death as just that, then those who have murdered her will have been given a way out.  If along with nations such as Canada and South Africa and Japan: the European Union and the United States cannot stand unshakably united in their condemnation of those who murdered Bhutto, then by default her assassins will have scored one of the most significant political victories in modern times.  In that case, Bhutto’s death will be in vain.

Of course, she knew that her demise was inevitable.  King did as well.  But an inevitable death as sad as that is need not be one that is in vein.  And it is up to those of us who survive to make it the case that this is not so.  Like King, Bhutto made the ultimate sacrifice; for she advanced her cause with courage and integrity.

The real question is whether the nations of the world will sanctify her death or whether they will find an excuse to retreat from the reality of the heinous wrongdoing of those who murdered her.  Islamists are counting on the retreat.  For the humanity of the world, especially those in Pakistan I can only hope that the Islamist terrorists are wrong.  Again, righteous Muslims are not to be confused with Islamist terrorists

In a word: By the moral posture that they take towards the evil of the Islamist terrorists who murdered Benazir Bhutto, the nations of the world hold in their hand the fate of the future of the Pakistani people—even the fate of the future of the world.  That is a wake-up call if ever there was one.  And if we take the humanity of the people of Pakistan as seriously as we take our own humanity, it should be manifestly clear that they are counting on us.

If it is obvious that we should accept and affirm the humanity of all regardless of bodily configuration, it is not as obvious as one might think just what it means to affirm the humanity of all regardless of bodily configuration.  The straightforward reading is that we should be fully committed to affirming the humanity of the physically challenged, be they blind or deaf or lacking a limb that is function or absent altogether.  These individuals should not be cast aside as lesser human beings.

But wait a minute.  Some would say that this very wording bespeaks a bias.  The new line of thought—that is, the political correct line of thought—insists that all human beings are physically challenged but simply differ in terms of the way in which that is so.  Accordingly, it is inappropriate to speak of the blind or the deaf or a person without a limb as being more physically challenged than someone who has his sight and hearing and the use of all of his limbs.  It is merely that the blind or the deaf or a person without limb is challenged in different ways than is the person who his sight and hearing and the use of all of his limbs.

This is the politically correct attitude towards the deaf or the blind of those without a limb.  And it is a ledger de main moment if ever there was one.

It is manifestly clear that, once upon a time, societies did what was terribly wrong: the blind or the deaf or those without limbs were cast aside as lesser human beings.  But there is non-trivial difference between saying that (a) deafness, say, does not make one a lesser human being and saying that (b) there is no rational reason to prefer having the capacity to hear to being deaf, since the difference merely amounts to no more than different ways of getting about in the world.  The animal kingdom makes it manifestly clear that the capacity to see or hear is, with very rare exception, an enormous asset.

Something has gone wrong with human reflection when we cannot acknowledge that each and every one of the senses is an asset to have.  And it is simply fallacious reasoning to hold that this is false merely because any given human being can learn to survive without any given asset—and survive well in fact.

This brings us to the very heart of what motivated this blog-entry.  It is not uncommon nowadays for deaf people, in particular, to wish to raise children who are deaf.  To this end, deaf couples are choosing embryos who most likely to result in a child who is deaf.

Quite simply this is none other than a most heinous form of narcissism.  The issue is not whether deaf people can have an enormously rich and meaningful life.  Obviously they can.  They can live a life so rich and meaningful that they are not mindful of their deafness.  Indeed, it is impossible that a deaf person may succeed in ways that he would not have succeeded has he not been deaf.  In a like vein, it is not at all clear how Ray Charles or Stevie Wonder would have been more successful were they to have had sight.  Regarding the point that one might actually do better as a deaf or blind person, one has to be careful about what follows from it.

It can also be claimed that had American Slavery not existed and had Frederick Douglass not been born a slave, he would not have become the distinguished person that he became.  Yet, what most certainly does not follow from this is that slavery was not a bad thing as such.  And it would horrific for Douglass to think that his children needed to go through slavery in order to build character.

Slavery, of course, is an evil; whereas deafness as such is not.  But what exactly is imposing deafness upon a person, if not an evil?  And what right does another human being have to do such a thing?  However, successful a deaf person might be in spite of his deafness, he has no right whatsoever to impose deafness upon his child.

One of my most successful students—indeed, one of Syracuse University’s most successful students—is deaf.  His name is Geoff Herbert.  In my Philosophy 191 course, Herbert sat on the front row of Grant Auditorium and for each lecture he had me a gadget to put around my neck during lecture that facilitated his hearing my lecture.  He often attended my office hours; on numerous occasions we had face-to-face discussions.

Geoff Herbert claims that he does not want to have hearing; and I can, in fact, see how he might make such a claim; for he has clearly turned his deafness into one incredible asset, as his MySpace page makes abundantly clear.  In fact, his handle is DeafGeoff.  If there is anyone who might be called the Frederick Douglass of deaf people, Geoff Herbert certainly has as good of a claim to that appellation as any deaf person whom I know.  Mr. Herbert, whom I admire profoundly, was masterfully at-ease with himself.

Still, if someone exactly like Geoff Herbert—say, Opidopo—were to arrange that his children should be deaf, he would be inflicting a horrendous wrong upon them.  Not because being deaf is wrong, but because he has no right whatsoever to impose deafness upon his children because this would make him feel good about his deafness.  He would have no right to valorize deafness at the expense of his children.  It would be utterly narcissistic for Opidopo to do this.

Why?  Because none of Opidopo’s successes would change the fact that by and large hearing is an extraordinary asset.  It is precisely because it is such an asset that we marvel at people like Geoff Herbert; for he flourished mightily without it.  More accurately, he flourished mightily in spite of a considerable biological disadvantage.  He has not shown that there is no difference between being deaf and having hearing.  Not at all.  Rather, what he has shown is that it is possible for a person to surmount that biological disadvantage with considerable majesty.

A phenomenally successful deaf or blind person does not have the right to be so besotted with his success that he refuses to acknowledge that in point of fact he has surmounted an enormous disadvantage.

Now, as a matter of fact, I think that it is true that deaf person will never be able to hear a Mozart or a Marvin Gaye or a Pavarotti.  Similarly, a blind person will never be able to hold a majestic sunset or rainbow.  It was 10 years ago that I beheld Cape Hope with my very own eyes.  I will treasure that moment for ever.

At any rate, I am willing to concede that the deaf and the blind may experience in extraordinarily majestic ways that surpass anything that I can imagine.  But from this truth, what surely does not follow is that being deaf and being blind are on a par, respectively, with having hearing and having sight.  A blind person can never be concerned with racial differences in the way that a person with sight is.  So in this regard there is an innocence to being blind that has no equal among the those with sight.  This truth hardly shows that being blind is on a par with having sight.  Certainly, what does not follow is that as we are now biologically constructed human beings in general would be better off blind.

And this brings us to the heart of the matter.  Given the way in which human beings are now constituted, the success of phenomenal success of this blind person or this deaf person or this person shorn of a working limb is very much tied to the existence of one person or another who can see or hear or who has limbs that are functional.  Not so the other way around.

This means, then, that by itself blindness or deafness or being shorn of a limb cannot possibly be seen as independent good in the same manner that we rightly regard having sight or hearing or having the use of all of our limbs.  That is, no one thinks that sight is an asset only there is blindness; and so on.  This is not shown to be false because there are those here and there who prove to be enormously successful in the absence of the asset of sight or hearing, any more than American Slavery is shown not to be the horror that people suppose because some blacks flourished in spite of it.

Self-deception occasioned by narcissism can be the only explanation for why adults who are blind would want to bring it about their children are blind; or adults who are deaf would want to bring it about that their children are deaf.  And so on.

Famously, Plato held the thesis that a person could not knowingly choose to do that which is wrong.  Alas, contemporary society would suggest that, although Plato was no doubt an intellectual giant, he was sorely mistaken about this point; for if contemporary society bears witness to anything, it bears witness to the reality that people knowingly do what is wrong all the time.  Indeed, it happens with poignant frequency that people knowingly do what is harmful to their very own person.

Now, if Plato’s claim is obviously false, what is equally problematic is the fact that people knowingly do what is wrong—even harmful to themselves.  I mean if people do not have the wherewithal to refrain from harming themselves, then it is all the more implausible to expect people to refrain from harming others.  And how on earth is it possible that people knowingly do what is harmful to themselves?

Significantly, and most importantly, the harm that people knowingly do to themselves is rarely a direct and immediate form of harm such as putting a gun to their head and killing themselves.  Out of the more than 6 billion people on the planet, comparatively few commit suicide.  So we mortals are comparatively good at avoiding direct and immediate harm to ourselves.  By contrast, we seem to be comparatively disastrous at avoiding embedded harms.  An embedded harm is a piece of harmful behavior that can be ostensibly characterized as pleasant behavior, but which in fact is known to be harmful.

If listening to the Dr. Laura program is any indication, then romantic involvements are one of the paradigm examples of an embedded harm.  For instance, it is not uncommon for Dr. Laura to receive a call from a woman who dated, had sex with, and became pregnant by a man whom the woman knew from the outset to have serious anger management or drinking problems.  Dr. Laura invariably asks: How on earth did you let yourself become pregnant by a man whom you knew, from the start, to be so unsatisfactory as even a mate, let alone a father?

The question is a very good one.  But if it is, then it would seem that there is something to Plato’s thesis after all.  A similar point can be made about any number of other activities such as people putting themselves into significant debt by gambling.

The explanation for why numerous human beings subject themselves to embedded harms lies in one word: self-deception.  And it is the capacity for enormous self-deception that distinguishes human beings from all other animals on the face of the planet.

One way of understanding Plato’s thesis, then, is as follows: (i) psychologically healthy individuals are not prone to self-deceptive behavior; accordingly, (ii) a psychologically health person will rarely if ever know the Good but go on to choose to do that which is bad for her or him.

What is particularly of the moment here is that Plato held that only those who received the right kind of upbringing were apt to be psychologically healthy individuals and so not to be the kind of individuals prone to self-deception.  What on earth did Plato suppose was occasioned by the right sort of upbringing?  The answer, I suggest, is the ability to distinguish between (a) the intensity of desire for a given good and (b) the reality of that which has presented itself as satisfying that desire, but in fact does not—a reality impostor.

In fact, one might argue that the move from infancy to childhood maturity is tied to making this distinction with sufficient finesse.  A properly developed adult is one who has the capacity to make this distinction to yet a much, much greater degree.

We all have intense desires for all sorts of goods.  And if we are sufficiently fortunate the thing which presents itself as satisfying an intense desire for a given good does precisely that.  But is not uncommon for an intense desire that we have to go unsatisfied, and that all we encounter in terms of satisfying that desire is one reality impostor after another.

If I understand Plato correctly: he held the quite simple, but yet ever so profound thesis, that with the right upbringing an adult would rarely if ever accept a reality impostor for the real thing, no matter how intense the individual’s desire for the thing in question might be.  And, of course, living well is inextricably tied to exercising precisely this sort of self-command in our lives.  This, in turn, tells us something that we all know, namely that the real problem is not so much in having desires but giving into them we should not.  And precisely what is thought to distinguish human beings from animals is that, even in the absence of any kind of threat, we can choose not to give into our desires.

This is the freedom of the self of which Plato wrote.  It is the only freedom that he thought worth having given that one is a human being: the freedom, and so the wherewithal, to refuse to do that which one knows to be bad for one.  Plato held that we cannot take ourselves seriously as human beings without taking seriously this kind of freedom.  Contemporary society is too busy ignoring the reality of its human to take seriously this truth about its humanity.

Offhand, Aristotle is perhaps the last person in the world from whom one might expect anything insightful regarding social diversity as we understand it nowadays.  What on earth could this man from a very homogenous society, which he prized, have to say about diversity?  Well, to be sure, he does not have all that there to say about diversity.  But then who does?  Just so he does have something instructive to say about it, as I now hope to illustrate.

Famously, Aristotle held that there is one way to be excellent, but many, many ways to be lacking in excellence.  This claim should not be confused with a different claim, namely that excellence itself is very limited.  Consider the case of music.  There are many musical types or genres: from classical to opera to gospel to country to hip-hop.  At its best, each constitutes a form of excellence.  Marvin Gaye was no Luciano Pavarotti.  But it is equally true that Luciano Pavarotti was no Marvin Gaye.

So notice how applicable Aristotle’s remarks are to music.  Even if the songs are sung in key, countless are the ways in which black gospel songs or opera or hip-hop music can be sung badly; whereas singing each musical type well is rather limited.  For it is true, in fact, that each musical type has its own—dare I say it—rhythm. (more…)

So Gillian Gibbons was pardoned.  We are all relieved and grateful, of course.  But in an odd way, there is something dramatically wrong with this picture.  For the record, I am willing to concede that a teddy bear Mohammed is out of place.  After all, we don’t really do teddy bears of Moses or Jesus.  Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed are all sacred figures; and I supposed that trafficking in teddy bears of them tarnishes these sacred figures in some way by casting aspersions in some way upon the holiness of these individuals. There is a way in which this makes sense; for we do not normally have sacred items for toys.  No Jew, for instance, would think of using the Torah as a toy.

What is most intriguing to me, however, is not the disapproval of naming a teddy bear Mohammed, but the reaction to Ms. Gibbons having had a role in the school children naming a teddy bear Mohammed. I have asked myself over and over again: What was up with all the protesting and calling for the death of Ms. Gibbons.  This reaction was all out of proportion to the wrong done.

Not only that, the reaction was so shorn of compassion and gratitude for Ms. Gibbon’s work in the Sudan.  After all, she was there helping the children of Sudan—not exploiting the people of Sudan.

According to CNN, two Muslim members of Britain’s House of Lords lobbied President Omar al-Bashir for the woman’s release.  That it took this much to secure Ms. Gibbon’s release is in fact too much.

There is fundamental difference between instilling respect and instilling fear; and it is this difference that was roundly lost in the reaction by the Sudanese to Gillian Gibbon’s faux pas.

When I consider all the horrendous things that a person can do, it is simply impossible for me to fathom how so many Muslims in the Sudan could have called for Ms. Gibbon’s death.

There is the issue of perspective here; and it is this that I should like to have someone explain to me.  Remember we are not talking about some fringe group like the folks of Westboro Baptist Church for whom just about anything is an excuse to parade around with signs that read “God Hates Fags” or “God Hates America”.  Even evangelical Christians tend to distant themselves from the folks of Westboro Baptist Church.

But what explains large portions of the Muslim population of the country of Sudan calling for the death of a woman over something as trite as calling a teddy bear Mohammed?  And how is it possible to take this stand and then to say that Islam fosters respect for life?

Obviously not all Muslims shared the sentiments of those who protested.  But this truth does not at all make go away the concern that I have raised.  How could Gibbon’s simple mistake be seen by faithful Muslims as a reason for her death.  And if this is all it takes to justify killing someone, then in what sense can it be said that Islam fosters respect for life?

It has seemed to me of late that in the name of being respectful, people are failing to ask searching questions of the adherents of Islam.  And that is not good for a democratic society, such as America, of which Muslims want to be a part.

No doubt there is much about Islam that Jews and Christians do not understand, and cannot understand from afar.  To this end, then, it seems to me that Muslims and, in particular, Muslim leaders have an obligation to set things straight.  Christianity is sufficiently woven into the fabric of American culture that all but the misguided know and understand straightaway that the folks of Westboro Baptist Church constitute a fringe, lunatic group.

Insofar as we are to take Islam seriously, then, we must be able to ask whether there are fringe lunatic Islamic groups and what are the characteristics of such groups?  And if the Muslims in Sudan protesting over Gibbon’s behavior, of all things, do not constitute a fringe, lunatic group, then what on earth does.

In the oddest ways, acceptability requires that we can differentiate the good from the bad.  And for no religion is it remotely plausible to say that all that any of its adherents do is good.  Islam will not, and cannot, be the exception here.

As I have said, I can actually understand that idea of not naming a teddy bear Mohammed; and it is curious to me that the impropriety of this did not occur to Gillian Gibbons, since I doubt if she can point to anyone giving as a Christmas toy the doll of Baby Jesus.

This consideration notwithstanding, it is next to impossible for non-Muslims to take Islam seriously if non-Muslims cannot regard as lunatics those Muslims in Sudan marching in the streets call for, of all things, the death of Gillian Gibbons over her allowing her elementary school children to name a teddy bear Mohammed.  Indeed, I do not know how Muslims themselves can take Islam seriously unless they so categorize those Sudanese protestors.

Every religion has its exemplars and its non-exemplars.  And respect for every religion tracks this difference.  Islam will not be the exception that proves the rule.