Moral Health

One never knows what group of people will take themselves a little too seriously.  One can find an association for just about anything.  There is the morally despicable group NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association).  And then there is NAAFA.  Did I mean  ”NAACP”?  Not at all.  The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is a real association,.  Though undoubtedly NAAFA’s name draws its inspiration from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the differences between the two organizations are real enough.  NAAFA’s statement of purpose reads as follows:

Founded in 1969, the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance is a non-profit human rights organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for fat people. NAAFA works to eliminate discrimination based on body size and provide fat people with the tools for self-empowerment through public education, advocacy, and member support.

There is, of course, a respect in which NAAFA is quite right.  People should be respected regardless of their body-type.  It is simply a fact that we are not all beautiful.  Likewise, it is simply fact that we are not all intellectually gifted.  And in the same vein, it is a fact that we are not all thin.  Nonetheless, there is no getting around the truth that we are all deserving of basic respect, equal treatment, and general politeness from others.

If the above were NAAFA’s position, then I would find NAAFA’s aims most acceptable and appropriate.  Indeed, I could even be tempted to join it or, in any case, to deem the association worthy of a charitable donation. (more…)

To the best my knowledge, most of the major social evils do not occur in a vacuum.  The Holocaust cannot be characterized as a bunch of people living quite independent and autonomous lives who just so happened to have the same views.  The same holds for the Inquisition or American Slavery.  The backdrop against which all of these social evils occurred is enormous social pressure.

Not only that, there is almost no reason to for most us to believe that we would not have succumbed to that social pressure were we to have been subjected to it.  Many of us might not have committed this or that egregious wrong, but we would have participated in what I called the cooperative silence that allowed others to do commit such wrongs with impunity.  (more…)