Moral Health

Feminists regard reproductive rights as one of the central tenets of equality between women and men.  Reproductive rights roughly mean that any woman should have the right to abort the fetus she is carrying whenever she so chooses.  A woman, so the argument goes, should be just as free of having to carry a fetus as every man is.  I am not in this essay going to argue against this view as such.  Rather, I have to ask myself is this view rightly considered one of the central tenets of equality between women and men.  Or a more poignant question might be: Are American feminists more than a little narcissitic.

What prompts me to ask that question are headlines like the following: “Taliban Blamed for Acid Attack on Afghan Schoolgirls” and “Acid attack keeps Afghan girls away from school”.

What is rather intriguing here is that one has not heard a peep out of American feminists.  No protests.  Not even a sense of profound moral outrage.  Of course, I understand all too well that these sorts of things are happening outside of the United States.  But the geographical location of where these morbid acts of violence are occurring cannot possibly be the explanation for the lack of concern on the part of American feminists.  Or so it is if what they are really concerned about is equality for all women.  There are times in life when the only option that we have is to express our moral outrage over the occurrence of an egregious wrongdoing.  And surely that is precisely what we should do. (more…)

Theoretically, it might seem that it is utterly relevant want the gender of a child’s parents might be, so lo long as the child is loved by her or his parents.  But this works only if one supposes that, in terms of their displays of affection, adult females and males bring exactly the same thing to parenting or, in any case, the differences are negligible.  And it is hardly obvious that the differences are negligible.  What is more, it is anything but obvious that we should want the differences to be negligible.

While at the Syracuse, NY airport the other day, I watched a father affectionately caress his son (in his late teens).  What is manifestly clear to me, as I recall that moment, is that a mother’s display of affection would have been rather different.  It was a moment of tenderness; yet it was masculine in every way.  Had the mother of the teenage soon behaved in a like manner, I would have thought that she was rather cold or merely feigning affection.

Now, if the difference between feminine and masculine forms of affection means so very much for we who are adults, then why would we think for a moment that the difference does not matter to children.  No gay or straight person would ever argue that how the affection received is expressed does not matter just so long as what is received in the end is affection.

What may very well be one of the most important learning experiences in a child’s life could turn out to be none other than the difference between a mother’s affection and a father’s affection.  The affections of a mother stand as one of the windows through which a child experiences and learns about the world.  The affections of a father stand as a completely difference window through which the child experiences and learns about the world.

And as I watched a mother talking her daughter on the Paris metro this afternoon, the observation in the preceding paragraph about female-male differences in their expression strike me as ever the more plausible.  While it may very well be that circumstances, such as death, may prevent a child from having both, it seems fundamentally misguided to suppose that having both does not count as the ideal towards which we should strive.

On any given day, there is a study about the effects of some prescription pill or over-the-counter medication or vitamin.  Indeed, any of these may be subject to several studies over the years.

Yet, when it comes to raising children and the role of both a mother and a father, we seem to be more than content with a clever argument or, even worse, a mere rhetorical dismissal.  In fact, the following argument is, in the absence of additional premises, fallacious:

From the fact that there is nothing whatsoever morally wrong with what I do, it thereby follows that what I do will not have in any way a deleterious impact upon my children

I travel between Syracuse, NY and Paris, France with enormous frequency.  There is absolutely no wrong in what I do.  Yet, if I had children in their developmental years (say, 4-14), it would turn out that the morally acceptable lifestyle that I live would be most inappropriate for them, since the travelling would be a serious impediment to the children developing the kinds of bonds and friendships that are part and parcel of their growing years.

Here is a rather profound fact: No child who has grown up with the experience of both a loving mother and a loving father thinks for a moment that the difference between the ways in which the two express their affection was and is utterly inconsequential.  This fact should give us pause.  Yet it is this fact over which we are so quick to run roughshod.

And this is so very much a Dr. Laura point.  Adults seem to be so concerned with their own satisfaction that they are unwilling to give much serious thought as the impact that their proposed behavior would have upon the child.  It seems to suffice that a bunch of adults exclaim with great conviction that the child will not be harmed.

By contrast, let someone propose a new shopping center or traffic light; and the proposal will immediately necessitate a study, just to make sure that no serious damage will be wrought to the community.  If this is not a serious indication of how warped our values have become, then I do not know what might be.  Propose a shopping center, be prepared for a study.  By contrast, we make also sorts of changes in how we treat our children; and without any form of study, these changes are readily accepted as social progress.  Get a change involving children to fly under the banner of social progress, and we seem to become drunk with implementing it.  Suggest a change that might have an adverse effect upon the value of homes, and that will require a study.

There is the following saying: A society is judged by how it treats its weak.  None are more weak than children.  And what is manifestly clear is that we are morally than willing to sacrifice children for our pet ideas of social progress.  Indeed, we are more interested in preserving the value of our homes than the psychological wholesomeness of our children.

What more proof do we need that society is going to hell in a hand-basket—that we have become entirely misguided with respect to our moral priorities?

The affections of a mother and the affections of a father, although two marvelous manifestations of affection, are hardly without deep and profound differences that every child welcomes, appreciates, and basks in.

Liberals think that Conservatives are close-minded people who are unwilling to accept progressive changes in society.  Let us concede that for the sake of argument.  The irony is that Liberals turn out to be equally guilty of closed-mindedness.  What is unequivocally false is that Liberals provide reasoned arguments for any and all of their views.  The closed-mindedness of Liberals is no more virtuous than the close-mindedness of Conservatives.  And Liberals are just as besotted with their views as Conservatives are with their views.

Liberals, of course, associate Conservatives with bigotry.  And we know that there is a straightforward respect in which, at one point in time, Liberals were right on target.  Some of the most high-profile Conservatives in the United States—(the early) George Wallace and Jesse Helms—have been bigots.

The problem, alas, is that Liberals are just as sanctimonious, self-righteous, and unreflective with respect to their own views.  For example, Liberals extol the virtues of diversity while eschewing religion.  But how does it turn out that diversity is a good except when it comes to religious perspectives?  (more…)

When a group of people is faced with a common enemy, rationality demands that the members of the group put their differences aside in order to surmount the common enemy.  The question that many people have whether they will admit to it or not or whether they will formulate the question this way or not is simply: Why have not blacks done exactly that?  Why have not blacks put aside any and all differences in order to engage a most massive form of cooperation between blacks in order to combat racism?

The usual move seems to be that racism itself is the explanation for why blacks have not engaged in massive cooperation to combat racism.  In particular, the move is to blame racism itself for black-on-black crime in the black ghetto; for racism is said to have destroyed the will of blacks in the ghetto to take their lives seriously.

The problem is that this line of argument seems to be quite at odds with the way in which many blacks in the ghetto will affirm their love of black people and make much of having a common African heritage.  Going by the tenor of that affirmation one would think that unfailing cooperation between blacks would be the order of the day.  (more…)

Give me liberty or give me death.  Those are the famous words of Patrick Henry at the start of the American Revolution.  It is interesting, however, to note what he did not say.  He did not say “Give me equality or give me death”.  Some will be quick to point to the racism and sexism of the time.  But I suspect that if there had been no non-whites around or if there had been no women around, Mr. Henry would have said the very same thing.

It would never have occurred to him to think that inequality in and of itself entails injustice; whereas it was clear to him that an unwarranted infringement upon the liberty of another did.

All of this is rather interesting because modern American society makes an awful lot of liberty these days.  And one can rightly ask whether Mr. Henry’s idea of liberty and the idea of liberty that folks talk about nowadays are tantamount to the same thing.

Mr. Henry believed in what we might refer to as free-falling liberty; whereas most modern folks seem to believe in what we might call bounded liberty.

Free-falling liberty reflects the fact that differences in talent and temperament make a world of difference even if we all have the exact same starting point.  Two people might be equally talented but different in their temperament, with one being more determined than the other.  Or, person A might be more talented than person B; yet, it is person B that proves to be more successful simply because person B, unlike person A, mightily perseveres.  Or, we may have two people who are equal with respect to talent and temperament, but who differ enormously with respect to taking risks.

And when all else fails as a distinguishing factor, there is simply the matter of luck.  Sometimes in life, the difference between success and failure is none other than old Lady Luck herself.

As an aside, this is why I often say that I am one of the luckiest people in the world.  Yes, I can be, and have been, exceedingly hard-working.  However, it would be utterly arrogant of me to deny the reality that I have been lucky in respects that far exceed what effort alone might occasion.  For in so many instances the difference between me and others who are no less hard-working is none other than luck itself.  And luck can simply be a matter of who submitted an article first.

So for Patrick Henry, I suspect, it would have made no sense to carry on about equality precisely because if nature ran its course, differences would abound—and necessarily so.

Significantly, it is not so much that Patrick Henry’s view denied the reality of moral equality to the class of persons to whom his words were addressed, it is just that he did not think for a moment that moral equality removes the contingencies that give rise to differences between people.  He did not even think that all white males would all end up being the same.

Patrick Henry’s world is, I suspect, a very frightening one.  Some might even say it is repugnant.  However, it reflects the thought that moral equality gives one very little by way of social equality, even if everyone is just.

In so many ways, modernity is about trimming the sales of the contingencies of life.  It can be easy to miss this because there have indeed been grave injustices in the world.

Alas, there is no evidence at all that all people would act decently and rationally and with foresight.  And while racism may explain why some minorities act in a self-destructive manner, it most certainly cannot explain why all do.  Why?  Because there is no small percentage of whites in America who are ever so self-destructive or lazy.  And so on.  Indeed, this can be said not only of poor whites but of wealthy whites.  So there is no inverse correlation between money and foolishness: more of one equals less of the other.  Foolishness, it would seem, is endemic to the human race—and not a particular race.  Why that is so is an extremely interesting question, to which I most certainly do not have an answer.

But this much seems clear: we can have a society shorn of foolish behavior only if we were to restrict the liberty of folks in unconscionable ways.  And that, I think is the very, very, very deep insight behind Mr. Henry’s words.

Shorting of laying out how people should live their lives in a kind of George Orwellian type manner, foolishness is an ineliminable part of the human condition.  And that truth is enough to give us sharp differences between individuals, even if in a just world the starting point was the same for all.

Now, what does it mean to be foolish?  Notice that we never call a 3-year old foolish.  For we understand that, with rare exception, a 3-year old cannot grasp the true consequences of her or his actions.  Only adults get to be called foolish.  But implicit in that appellation is the judgment that an adult grasps the consequences of her or his behavior.  And part of what this entails is exercising foresight if one knows that one is likely to do something inappropriate.

To take a simple example: if a person is genetically prone to abuse alcohol, then the person would exercise foresight and refrain from being around such situations or immediately leave if she or he suddenly happened upon such a situation.  Again, if a person is prone to behave in sexually inappropriate ways around children, then guess what: the person should make a point of not being around children.

Now, this last example is particularly instructive.  Why?  Because it is simply false that child abusers cannot help themselves.  After all, they do not just walk to a child on the street and grab the kid.  They do not impulsively grab children from their parents.  Quite the contrary, these individual typically exercise meticulous planning in order to get to be alone with a child, and so they exercise considerable restraint until they have achieved that end.

Getting back to Mr. Henry, his view is a simple one: If a person did not exercise the appropriate foresight, then either the individual is insane in which the person needs to be locked up or the individual is foolish in which case it is the person’s problem that she or he is in the mess that she or he is in.  There can be excusing conditions.  But they would be few and far between.  And the case of child sexual abusers is most telling precisely because of the enormous planning they exhibit in going after their target.  It is not possible to exhibit that much planning and not have foresight.  And if a person could exhibit that much planning and self-control in trapping a child to abuse sexually, the individual could also get himself help.

And this, most profoundly, is Mr. Henry’s point generally applied.  When, might I ask, was the last time that a person’s explanation for being inebriated turned out that she or he was captured, held down, and had whisky or whatever poured down her or his throat?  This happens, but quite rarely in comparison to the number of people who regularly go out and make a point of getting drunk.

Give me liberty or give me death was not just a battle cry.  It was also a theory of responsibility.  If we find Henry’s view morally repugnant, let me just note that the equality we moderns seek presupposes something equally repugnant, namely a less robust conception of moral agency.

Less rather than more liberty is appropriate for children precisely because there are lacking in terms of moral agency.  Liberty is for adults.  And so is the responsibility that it entails.  Bounded liberty is for children; for as adults it is an affront to our moral agency.  Or so it should be.