Monthly Archives: April 2009

99: The Strong Leader

What’s wrong with the world society we have built? It’s threatening to destroy itself. This has been true for all of human history, but now we can actually do it, pushing and tugging each other in all directions. What’s needed, as Anakin said, is a strong leader. But human leaders are infected with the same problems the rest of us have, disastrously so; and God seems to have no interest in saving us from ourselves, the ultimate strong leader being occupied with his own ends, largely to our detriment.

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98: The Rights of Plants

New Scientist magazine recently published the following item:

“FINALLY, recognising the achievements of ethics departments everywhere, the Ig Nobel peace prize went to the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biology “for adopting the principle that plants have dignity”. In a document titled “The dignity of living beings with regard to plants”, the committee concludes that causing “arbitrary harm” to plants is “morally impermissible”. Feedback wholeheartedly agrees, and thanks the committee for the excuse to stop mowing the lawn and weeding the garden.

(Source: Issue 2677 of New Scientist magazine, 08 October 2008, page 80)

I believe New Scientist’s attitude is, from an ethical point of view, naive and also incoherent. If you value life, you will not destroy or harm it without good reason. Whatever a ‘good reason’ might be, it certainly does not include killing for pleasure. If killing animals for mere enjoyment is wrong (as I believe it is), it is also true that killing trees for mere enjoyment is also wrong. Both represent life, and both have, from a God’s-eye point of view, equal worth. Contra Kant, the famous saying goes “It is not whether animals think, it is whether they suffer.” But consider: is anesthetizing an animal before snuffing out its life acceptable solely on grounds that the animal did not suffer, if it would not be acceptable otherwise? Hardly. Suffering is not relevant to the ethical decision here; arbitrary denial of life, as if we had the moral right to make such decisions, is the issue.

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97: Cliches (see also post 43)

“In a famous exchange with the poet Ann Lauterbach, Lauterbach exclaimed, “Oh, Mr. Ashbery, I love clichés,” to which [John] Ashbery replied, “And they love you.” Clichés and stereotypes are Ashbery’s expressive unit. Cliché was originally a typesetter’s term for those plates devoted not to individual letters but to phrases so common that a slug was molded for them. Cliché is language that has been repeated so often it becomes infinitely repeatable. It “loves us” because it is inevitable; we “love it” as a way of mastering, by ingenious bricolage, the language that saturates us anyway.”

– Note how the writer carefully avoids using clichés in this passage!

(Source: Dan Chiasson, “John Ashbery: ‘Look, Gesture, Hearsay’ ”. New York Review of Books, 9 April 2009, p63f.)

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96: Friendship

Recently, an on-line writer objected to the idea of online-only friendships, where the people involved have never physically met. According to him, friendship must be based on an in-person encounter, even if conducted electronically thereafter. How are we to determine, after all, that our online ‘friend’ is not just a computer program?

I want to agree with him. Really. There is nothing to equal a physical meeting of two or more persons, whether intimate or not. On line, we don’t pick up the other person’s body language (part biological, part cultural, part individual), his unique odor, nor his distinctive physical response to us. Electronically, face and tone of voice do not have the presence and nuance they do in person. Persons are not disembodied minds, nor even embodied minds: they are unique physical presences, only part of which is driven by the mind.

That said, I have regretfully to disagree with the writer. If you will remember your own past friendships and how they grew (or failed to grow), you will sense that “friendship” is an emotion. Like all emotions, it combines the physical and the mental; but the emotion of friendship seems unique, distinct from other emotions such as love or admiration.

As an emotion, friendship arises and exists within the subject (you). It is your response to someone or something that you conceive to be another person. That is, it is entirely subjective.

While online-only friendships are only pale simulacra of the real thing, they do occur, and in many ‘normal’ people at that.

______________

Note: I use “person” as the most general term for a being that (a) recognizes itself as distinct from all others of its kind, and (b) can interact appropriately with at least some other beings, that is, has a social role. Human beings, dogs, horses, cats, most other mammals, many birds, etc. etc., unless severely brain-damaged or dead, are therefore persons. A computer program can satisfy condition (b), but it would be difficult to know what we could mean if we assert that a program could satisfy condition (a).

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95: ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’

Remember the old joke? A routine questionnaire asks your name, date of birth, and sex, and for ‘sex’ you write ‘yes, please’, or ‘as often as possible’, or ‘not yet, but I’m still hopeful’?

Our language should not change just because people don’t understand it or are simply thoughtless (the origin, apparently, of ‘one of the only’), or are trying to be cute (the historical origin of pronouncing ‘one’ as ‘won’, some scholars believe.) Language should change only when there is good reason for it to change, such as:

.. Increased richness

.. Avoidance of unintentional ambiguity

.. Improved consistency

and, as relevant here,

.. Better distinction between oft-confused words

‘Sex’, before a few years ago, was ambiguous. It could mean sexual activity such as intercourse, or it could indicate the male/female distinction. These two very different meanings were frequently confused, sometimes on purpose; see the old joke in the first paragraph. Women’s groups made the valid point that ‘female sex’ too strongly emphasizes the sexual-activity meaning of ‘sex’, whereas the most important male/female distinctions are cultural, or in other ways have little or nothing to do with sexual activity. ‘Gender’, formerly a term used in linguistics, was adopted in place of ‘sex’ to emphasize this point.

Some writers, while accepting this use of ‘gender’, urge that dogs, cattle, giraffes, etc., do not have ‘gender’, since they have little or nothing in the way of culture; they have ‘sex’ in both senses.

I believe this just confuses the issue, and unnecessarily distances us from our fellow animals as well. I use ‘sex’ to mean sexual activity in any species, and ‘gender’ to indicate any (warranted) male/female distinction in any species; and I urge you to do likewise.

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92: Story Idea- “The Cult”

Anne’s younger sister Marcia joins a cult of fanatics living in squalor in an old house. After two years, Marcia tries to leave the cult, is relentlessly harassed by the cult members, pestered day and night, brow-beaten, compelled to witness at their meetings, etc. They make her life the proverbial living hell. After several more months, Marcia, in desperation, kills herself.

Anne, blaming herself (perhaps unjustly) for not having done enough to prevent Marcia’s suicide, founds an activist group dedicated to preventing young people from joining cults.

The group draws in other affected people, is immediately successful. It receives grants, starts an online newsletter, establishes a modest office in the low-rent district. Anne quits her job, begins to give very successful lectures, appears frequently on television. The movement grows, has a Board of Directors and officers, grants, a growing budget.

After two years, Anne is burned out and feels that she has done all she can for the group. She attempts to resign. The Board refuses her letter of resignation. She quits anyway. She is relentlessly harassed by the group’s members, pestered day and night, brow-beaten, compelled to give more and more lectures, solicit more and more donations, speak at group meetings, etc. They make her life the proverbial living hell. After several more months, Anne, in desperation, kills herself.

Anne’s older sister, Helen, blaming herself (perhaps unjustly) for not having done enough . . . . . . .

91: Does the Washington Post Have (a code of) Ethics?

Correspondence To and From the Post’s Ombudsman

1. to Andrew Alexander, 22 February, 2009 via email

Congratulations and my sympathies on your new position.

In one of her last columns, Deborah Howell mentioned that she had long advocated making the Post’s code of ethics public (as is the New York Times’ code), but that she had failed to persuade Post management to do so. Perhaps you can have more success. As a sometime instructor in ethics (GMU Learning in Retirement Institute), I believe that keeping a code of ethics secret from affected publics and stakeholders (subscribers) is itself ethically questionable.

Having published the code, Post readers will have better tools for understanding why news stories are written the way they are, and interpreting the information they contain.

ASNE.org contains a version of the Post’s code of ethics — from ten years ago. The code has doubtless been updated several times since then, and in any case there should be a prominent link to the code from the Post’s home page.

Best wishes,

Terence Kuch

2. from Andrew Alexander, 22 February, 2009 via email

Thanks for your e-mail. That’s a topic I intend to address at some point – either in a column or in the weekly internal note I do for the staff (it also goes to top management).

Best wishes,

Andy Alexander

Washington Post Ombudsman

3. Ombudsman column, Washington Post, 5 April 2009, page A17 [abridged]

Got Rules? Then Don’t Be Afraid to Share Them

Newspapers demand accountability and transparency from the institutions they cover. But when it comes to The Post, one of the world’s best-known media institutions, the attitude seems to be: Good for thee, but not for me. The Post keeps its journalistic policies largely hidden, making it virtually impossible for readers to know the paper’s ethical and journalistic standards.

The public should be able to easily access them online. It’s not merely right but also smart to be transparent at a time when The Post is trying to hold on to readers.

A number of newspapers, including the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, post their policies online. A dated version of The Post’s policies made its way years ago onto the Web site of the American Society of Newspaper Editors (http://www.asne.org) and can still be found with a little digging.

The issues are numerous. What are the ethical standards for editing visual images or audio content? What rules should govern the treatment of information obtained through Twitter or social networking sites such as Facebook? What are the policies for posting user-generated content, such as photos? What are the verification guidelines for linking to non-Post material from The Post’s Web site?

A separate question is whether The Post adheres to the policies in place. In my first two months as ombudsman, I’ve found a disturbing lack of attention to the standards and ethics rules.

New hires are taught about them as part of their orientation. But a surprising number of staffers told me it’s been years since they reviewed them. And several said they simply don’t adhere to some of the policies on confidential sources, including a requirement that “the source of anything that appears in the paper will be known to at least one editor.”

Why have policies if they aren’t followed?

One way to ensure adherence is to let the public see them. Readers are smart, and many are darn good at holding reporters accountable through what we in the business call “prosecutorial editing.”

It takes a leap of faith to make the policies public. But a good newspaper, confident that it can meet its own high standards, should welcome the scrutiny.

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89: Ergo-Gnomics

(Like ergonomics, but highly sententious.)

1. The Samsung Instinct cell phone ** displays “speaker on” when the speaker is off, and “speaker off” when the speaker is on. It makes a kind of weird sense, after a while …. But I would have preferred the displays to read “turn speaker on” and “turn speaker off”.

2. Remember when cars still had door keys, not things you clicked and hoped the thing’s battery wasn’t dead yet? Well, some cars still require keys, including my car, and several of the cars I’ve rented the past few years.

On my car, turning the key ‘forward’ from either the driver’s or rider’s side (i.e., turning the top of the key toward the front of the car) unlocks; and turning the key ‘backwards’, locks. This makes enormous sense to me, perhaps because my car is German, and so am I (by descent).

BUT, some cars require you to turn the key ‘backwards’. Now this, like the Instinct’s ‘speaker’ display, has perhaps a kind of perverse logic to it.

BUT BUT, other cars require you to turn the key in a different direction, depending on which side of the car you are on. This makes no sense at all.

Back to the clicker!

** The Instinct is a wonderful phone, iPhone-ish, but it has two advantages over the Apple product ***: (1) Minor advantage: it gives you tactile feedback when you touch a screen object; and (2) Major advantage: you can use a stylus to pick out names, web addresses, etc. on the onboard keyboard if you wish. I don’t have fat fingers, but I have the devil’s own time trying to press the right keys on the iPhone’s soft keyboard, and the iPhone won’t recognize a stylus touch, just a finger or perhaps some other warm and flexible body part.

*** Actually, I have an iPod Touch, not an iPhone; but they are the same except for cell phone capability.

88: Divine Intervention in Fargo

Thousands Flee Fargo as Floodwaters Surge in N.D.

 

Washington Post, March 28, 2009, page A4

 

Fargo, N.D. — As thousands of residents left North Dakota’s largest city Friday, others stayed and prayed that miles of sandbagged levees would hold against the surging Red River.

 

“It’s to the point now where I think we’ve done everything we can,” said resident Dave Davis, whose neighborhood was filled with backhoes and tractors building an earthen levee. “The only thing now is divine intervention.”

 

(Isn’t that what they’ve been suffering from?)

 

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[Can there be an evil god? Is the concept contradictory? In the book of Job, Yahweh certainly seems to be evil, but that’s only from the point of view of Job’s dead sons, and his dead servants, and his dead sheep). In the end, Job’s faith was rewarded with seven new sons (among other gifts) -- as if his sons were all just interchangeable, no matter about the first batch now that he has more.]

 

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