On May 18, 2005, at 2:45 PM, Dan Minette wrote:
OK, so what in your view is the unspoken assumption at play here?
Thinking about it, I think the assumption is implicit with Gary, but more
explicit with you. That one's humanness is not innate. That society has
the right to declare the humanness of one individual and the non-humanness
of another fairly arbitrarily. So, it was proper for Jackson to commit
genocide against the native Americans because there was a consensus among
American citizens that this was so.
Hmm, that's not wholly where I think I'm coming from, as you've reached a conclusion that doesn't really represent my view on the topic (at least, as I read the conclusion).
The attempted genocide (alleged, to be fair) of American aborigines in the 19th Century was possibly acceptable to many in the context of its time, but I wouldn't personally reach, from that understanding, the conclusion that it was "proper", if we're talking about the judgment of history.
That is, while I can understand -- I think -- why the "native problem" was at the time dealt with in the way it was, and while I wouldn't want to condemn the perpetrators of it in the context of their era, I am very much of the opinion that the attempts at eradicating the aborigines were grossly, outrageously incorrect conduct.
But the only way I think I could possibly indict those responsible would be if I knew that they had the sense of distance and perspective I did -- that is, if they had the outlook of a spectator living 150 or so years later.
IOW they did the best they could with the insights they had available to them at the time, in a way not too dissimilar from how alchemists in the 16th Century were doing the best they could to understand nature and its laws at the time. They simply did not have the knowledge, intellectual or physical tools necessary then to see that alchemy was a dead end. Were they foolish? Some, undoubtedly, were. Were they doing their best with what they had? I like to think so.
If I were to say that Jackson, et. al. were heinous inhuman monsters, I would be guilty of judging their mores based on my own very different perspective, which to me would be unfair to them. Were they living today, however, and attempting genocide, I wouldn't hold back judgment at all.
Looking at my views myself I think I have several discrete ideas about what "human" means, and that those ideas can be self-contradictory, but that they can also overlap in different ways. This is so because there are so many variables to behavior in our species, and because we are not eternal units (in my mind) forever fixed in time or forever endowed with a specific property that is given by any outside agency and which cannot be revoked.
So when I read passages such as "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all [persons] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", the message I get is that what I'm seeing is a definition, a decision to form a social structure based on a concept.
The concept itself is rooted in the idea of a deity, of course, which is an unprovable (unfalsifiable too) hypothesis. However, that the concept is rooted in the idea of a deity does *not* necessarily invalidate it, as we could just as easily come up with a passage that reads every bit as altruistically but doesn't attribute granting of rights to a divine agency.
So to me the rights afforded by US legal custom (and that of other nations) were arrived at by social consensus, and yes, they can be revoked at any time, also by social consensus. I know that opens another tin of bait, but that (as you suggest) is probably best considered in a separate missive.
In practice, I think my view is more consistent with behavior in US (and other) societies than the view that people have a "god-given" right to anything. That is, I think my formulation is much closer to how people observably behave, *including some who declare they believe otherwise*.
As for humanness and where ideas of mine bump into one another, maybe posing some dilemmas can help illustrate where I think I'm coming from there.
Is an infant more human than a fetus? Not necessarily. Would I defend the rights of an infant over those of a fetus? Almost certainly.
Is a murderer more human than an infant? Probably not. Would I defend the rights of the infant before those of the murderer? Almost certainly.
Is a ten-year-old more human than an infant? Probably not. If I had to choose between saving the life of a ten-year-old *or* of an infant, but not both, I would probably elect to save the older child.
There's a sense I might have of innate worth versus potential worth, of potential versus earned worth, and of the possibility of having earned worth revoked. All members of this species, I think, have innate potential worth, but at some point one individual's potential worth might outweigh that of another, or one person's earned worth might outweigh the potential worth of another.
Both an infant and a ten-year-old have a great deal of unrealized potential worth, but to my mind the infant, which is (again to my mind) a largely blank slate, is more, well, expendable. Brand new humans are generally pretty easy to come by.
After a decade or so, though, there's enough shaping by nature and nurture to show distinct traits of personality and intellectual ability that -- in general, and of course in my view -- the older child simply has more invested in it, and has much greater potential for accomplishment. So I guess to some extent I'm suggesting that experience gives uniqueness, and that I value uniqueness more than an unmarked page.
Too, there is the society surrounding both youths. I think it's generally safe to conclude that a ten-year-old has touched more lives more deeply than has an infant, and thus the loss of the older child would cause many times more suffering *in others* than the loss of the infant. So perhaps another factor in my judgment of what "human" means is how a given individual has affected others, how deeply, to what extent and in what way.
That said I would not ever want to have to make such a choice, because I have no doubt that however it turned out I would be haunted forever. And of course whether one of the kids in question was related to me in some way would drastically alter my perceptions on how to choose.
That's one reason I would strenuously oppose any law that said, in effect, "Always save the older child first," even though I indicated above that such a choice is one I'd likely make most times anyway. Exceptio probat regulam: The exception tests the rule; and in this case I don't think a rule would be appropriate to make. There are too many possible contingencies in play when one gets down to the actual choice, and having to make such a choice would be bad enough without it being compounded by punishment later on for doing what *someone else* decided was the "wrong" thing. (Or being tortured forever by making the legal choice when one was certain to one's core that it was the "wrong" one.)
The thing is that these dilemmas exist whether or not one presupposes a soul or an innate quality of humanness. Thus these questions are important to consider, however uncomfortable they are, no matter where one stands on the idea of the source or meaning of human rights or of the term "human" itself.
I'm fairly sure that any person can behave in a way that effectively negates his humanity, but it requires volition. Jeffrey Dahmer would be one example of such an individual. I really don't feel too bad that he was beaten to death in a prison shower. His actions -- not just the multiple murders, but the particularly reprehensible way in which they were performed, and the aftermath -- I think rendered his humanity null. Even if it had been successfully argued that he was simply mentally unwell -- insane -- I would probably not have considered that an extenuating circumstance. (And therein lieth, perhaps, more worms in more cans.)
With abortion the question then becomes one of the merit of a potential humanness against an actual one, an earned one. The reason I'm not sure we should put the kibosh on late-term abortions is twofold. For one, they appear to be extremely rare, which suggests that they're not being abused now; for two, I find it very hard to imagine that any woman could carry a fetus for seven, eight or more months and decide to abort because of stress, inconvenience or anything else short of extremely dire contingency. Should such a person exist I would be in strong favor of the idea that, during the abortion, her doctors should consider tying her tubes as well.
That will probably provoke a very outraged reaction from someone somewhere, but we're getting into grey areas. Suppose a woman strangles her one-month-old infant. Should we continue to allow her body to breed, thus producing another child she might kill? Possibly not. I'm not entirely certain that a late-term abortion due to an inconvenience factor alone is significantly different.
Wow, I'm really wearing out the can opener, huh? ;)
So in the case of a mother's life, I'd suggest that abortion is, in virtually all cases, the more sensible choice. (I don't know if there are exceptions, so I'm leaving the door open there.) In the case of a mother's health, assuming we're talking about lifelong physical issues, again I suspect abortion is usually the better idea.
If what we're talking about is a person who feels she just can't handle having a child right now, and who's taken the baby to late term, I don't honestly know where I'd break. I'd be tempted to suggest going ahead with the birth and putting the baby up for adoption.
But there are other rare thorny cases. Suppose a teenaged girl doesn't even know she's pregnant, and seven months along learns she is. Is abortion the option there? That's hard to say. I think it would depend on a lot of factors, including who the father was (if it was a child of incest, I'd have few doubts about what to do), how capable the girl would be of supporting a child *as well as* leading a satisfying and productive life of her own, and the health of the fetus (if it was genuinely biologically disadvantaged I'd probably lean more toward termination than if it were completely healthy).
I think you have stated a consistent position on this...and I accept as
valid the position that the definition of humanness is arbitrary, but your
definition includes Jews, blacks, Native Americans, etc.
Thanks. I'd say the general sense is correct here. Of course a black college professor is, to me, an individual possessed of far more merit -- more "humanness" -- than a caucasian psychopath. I think what I'm suggesting *here* is that labels that indicate ethnicity or religious background don't mean anything to me in terms of deciding what "human" means with respect to a given individual.
I strongly differ
with your presuppositions, and I think there are ramifications that you
haven't considered, but that will be addressed in a reply to a long post of
yours that I'm still thinking about...
Ah. Should I sit in a corner and rust, or do you want me to fall apart where I'm standing? ;)
I guess what bothers me is that people that argue strongly against this
sort of idea in other applications see no problem with accepting it here.
Statements like there is no difference between the legality of terminating
the life of a fetus that would do well on its own (if only it could be
born) to save the life of the mother and terminating the life of a fetus
that would do well on its own (if only it could be born) because of a
health risk for the mother. The former is consistent with humanness being
innate, and not arbitrary. The second isn't. The former is consistent
with Christianity. I don't see how the second is.
To be fair, Dan, I think a better formulation might be "The former is consistent with *my understanding of* Christianity," for reasons which I hope by now are fairly self-evident. ;)
I think what frustrates me is that, for the most part, what I see as the
source of the main difference in looking at things is ignored, and that one
position on this is simply assumed to be true.
That's a fair thing to bring up, and meshes with my feelings about people who attack religion because they think it's dangerous nonsense of the purest ray serene, when in fact it's the thinking that leads to *some* conclusions in *some* religions that is really the danger -- and that kind of thinking exists *everywhere*, including outside of religious circles entirely.
In some ways, the explicit recognition that from my vantage point, that
humanness in innate, not a bequeath of society, and that the abortion of
fetuses that would be viable with normal care from any one of millions of
adults is inherently problematic if one makes this assumption. It is only
acceptable if one assumes that humanness is arbitrarily defined by society.
I'm not so sure of that; look over my dilemmas again.
-- Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books http://books.nightwares.com/ Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror" http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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