What If?

Leave a comment January 31, 2015 Steve A. Wiggins

A game that parenting books used to recommend was called “What if?”. It was an imagination game played by parents with their children to teach them about “stranger danger” in a way that wasn’t too scary. We naturally, it seems, fear the other. “What if?” kept coming to me as I read John Hart’s book Encountering ETI. ETI is a bit more precise than the more familiar ET, whom everyone knows, is an extra-terrestrial. The I stands for intelligence. What happens, in order words, when we meet extra-terrestrial intelligence? I very much admire academics such as Hart who are willing to ask what is such a necessary question. The point of the book is much more an ethical than a speculative one since human history has pretty much documented what happens when the Discovery Doctrine is applied. Natives (or TI, terrestrial intelligence, if you will) at the hands of newcomers with the Discovery Doctrine, are soon wiped out. History has repeated the story far too many times. Scientists such as Stephen Hawking even apply that to us, saying that if ETI arrives we will be exterminated. Hart takes a much more balanced look at the question.

Part of the problem is that we, as a society, have been taught to laugh at those who’ve seen UFOs. UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object, and many people can’t identify what they see in the sky. But we all really know what I’m talking about. Those who’ve seen what may be non-terrestrial flying machines are automatically classed with the mentally unstable and ridiculed into silence. Thus it has been since the 1950s, despite foreign (!) governments and their militaries admitting that yes, we see things and we don’t know what they are. France, Argentina, and Russia, for example, have opened the files to some extent. The point that Hart makes is well taken—if we ridicule so automatically, will we be prepared when they arrive? Shouldn’t we be thinking about this now that scientists are discovering there are likely billions of planets in the Goldilocks Zone (capable of supporting life)? Ah, but it is so hard to let go of racial superiority! Homo sapiens sapiens are pretty impressed with themselves. As if nothing better could be conceived. Perhaps this is original sin.

Hart, whose book is subtitled Aliens in Avatar and the Americas, takes the possibility of visitation at face value. I’m sure it has impacted his career somewhat. The wise choice, it seems to me, is to take seriously what is almost a dead certainty—we are not the only life in the universe. Ironically, the idea that we are is largely based on the Bible. Genesis makes a pretty clear statement that we are God’s best idea. We’ve largely dropped God from the picture, so we, as humans, now occupy the top rung. And when we find humans different from ourselves we ask how we might exploit them to our advantage. (Here’s where Avatar comes in.) Hart’s book, as readable as it is affordable, is one that any thinker should take seriously. It is a book of ethics, writ large. Universal ethics, one might say. The aliens may not land in our lifetime, but chances are pretty good that they’re out there somewhere. It might be best to take some time to clean up the house before guests arrive.

Seeing I

1 Comment January 26, 2015 Steve A. Wiggins

One of my few Twitter followers (stawiggins) suggested that I watch Dr. Ken Hayworth on YouTube. Specifically, Part 3: If we can build a brain, what is the future of I?, hosted by Galactic Public Archives. It is well worth 9 minutes of your time. Trying to figure out consciousness has been a major preoccupation of mine for some years. I don’t have the tools of neuroscience, but I do have over half a century of coming to know this “I” that constantly seems to wake up in this same body and experience all its woes and occasional joys. Hayworth suggests that the self is a model projected by our brains to help us make decisions and to plan for the future. In a fascinating thought experiment, he notes that if a duplicate self were made, we (or I) should not object to being executed since there is an exact copy now. Hayworth notes, however, that any individual will object because we are “designed” to think this way about ourselves. Designed, I wonder, by whom? I suspect Hayworth means evolution designed us that way, but evolution is non-teleological, and, I suspect, not really reificatory. Evolution is merely a process.

Perhaps the horns here are only those of a semantic dilemma, but I feel not. Hayworth goes on to discuss how instinct works to continue this illusion of self. I’ve never found instinct a very believable concept. We use it when we want to deny consciousness to animals and very young children. Since they can’t have a concept of “I” they have to have “instinct” to preserve themselves. Logically, to me, this seems to be fudging. What is instinct? Is it really any different than admitting at some micro-level, animals have consciousness? To me it seems that consciousness is one of those “turtles all the way down” kinds of propositions. To be alive is to be conscious at some level. Be careful how far down you dig here.

Hayworth then goes on to what sounds like an almost biblical conclusion. Ethics insists that humans are part of a whole. (A very diseased whole, as the imbalance in society forces us to conclude, but a whole nevertheless.) To kill one is to violate the consciousness of the whole. This concept seems sound, and I would suggest that it might benefit from expansion. Why stop at the human level? We are animals. Animals are conscious. Here we are back at the turtles again. Perhaps we have expended too much energy trying to parse self from soul from mind from consciousness. Perhaps we are all part of a large collective consciousness. If so, we got some very sick units near the top. Any organic being that insists only one percent needs to be kept in perpetual plutocratic indigence while billions of others wonder how long they will survive at this payscale in this economy, or, more realistically, act as slaves to that one percent, is a sick beast indeed. If consciousness is collective, we could all use a massive shrink.

Moral Animals

4 Comments December 19, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

For all of my life that I can remember, I have felt an affinity with animals. Even when I was relentlessly taught that evolution was wrong—Satanic even—I still held onto the idea that animals are more like us than they are different. I know this is partially the great sin of anthropomorphism (although I secretly doubt it is a mortal sin), but when I’ve interacted with animals, or watched them interact with each other, they’ve convinced me that they’re thinking. Since, however, we are the very top of the food-chain, we can’t allow such things. That’s why I turn to philosophy. Perhaps public transit isn’t the best place to appreciate fully a book of philosophy, but it’s the only time I have. Those who think categorically and with such rigid logic surely must have something to say on the issue of our fellow creatures. Mark Rowlands’s Can Animals Be Moral? is one of those books that might not be best read on a bus. I found myself constantly wanting to draw diagrams to visualize the course of his thought as we hit another pothole, or an angry bird killed a green pig in the next seat over.

While the animal stories that make such an engaging case are not a major part of Rowlands’s book, they nevertheless, for many of us lesser thinkers, seal the deal. When an animal acts in a way that shows its own lack of self-interest (how un-human!) we should sit up and pay attention. The question of morality, however, is thorny. Philosophers of ethics and religious analysts of the same seldom come near one another in their conclusions. We don’t know why we think morally, but it is clear we often do. It is obvious that it isn’t solely because of religion, although religion sometimes has a hand in it. It is, at the end of the day, a matter of feeling what is right. I feel that it is right to treat animals as thinking, feeling creatures. But are they moral?

Rowlands shows that some of the implications of animal morality can be serious. It was not that long ago that some animals were put on trial for the harm they’d putatively caused. Some were executed. (I wonder if they were eaten afterward?) If we attribute morality to animals, can they be blamed for their actions? Here is where the brilliance of Rowlands’s carefully argued book comes out—animals can be moral subjects without being moral agents. That is to say, they can act morally, but they can’t reason it out. I’m sure that I’m not saying this right, but the basic idea still appeals to me. Reading his final chapter on how moral Martians might view the naked apes of this planet gave me the chills. When we take ourselves off the top of the food-chain, the view becomes very sobering indeed. Would we want to be treated by Martians the way we treat animals on our own planet? Morality lies at the answer to that hypothetical question.

Diminishing Returns

Leave a comment August 16, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

You know that phenomenon where in movies or on television spinning wheels reach a point where they suddenly shift to spin the opposite direction? Of course it’s an illusion, since physics is not kind to fast-moving bodies that suddenly reverse direction. A friend of mine had an uncle, now sadly deceased, who studied this phenomenon (he was an academic of course). He figured out in terms I’ll never comprehend why this actually happens. To my mind, however, it seems like the maximum efficiency has been overreached. It’s like when you screw a fastener in too far, stripping the screw. So far is all you need. Anything more is too much. It seems that we’ve lost that fair concept of excess. An article in The Guardian that my wife sent me illustrates this as well as endlessly spinning wheels. “Out of office, out of mind – free yourself from inbox tyranny on holiday” by Steven Poole makes a lot of sense. Of course, in the “Old World” they take time off much more seriously than Americans do.

I didn’t get a vacation this year, but I remember what breaks from work feel like. Since I get up at 3:30 a.m., that’s saying something. I don’t have any sadistic intent that drives me to rise so early—just a killer commute and a job where no matter how much you give you could always be giving more. I could snooze and catch the next bus, but that puts me home at the time when all things being equal, nothing is equal. As it is evening is spent eating supper, doing dishes, getting ready for work again the next day, and checking my personal email. Reboot at 3:30. What my fellow Steve is writing about is the out of office message on your email that assures your clients you will check your email once in a while, even on vacation. Is it really vacation? Does your company give you a massive bonus for squandering that pittance of ten days off they graciously allow you? Have you improved from indentured servitude? With the abysmal job market any threat of employment lost is exploitation. Make no mistake—you are owned.

What quality work do the exhausted produce? Those whose eyes are red and for whom a cup of coffee in hand is as close to a transfusion as you can humanly get? Yet the company will gladly give you a Blackberry to stay in touch after hours. Blackberry or raspberry? Don’t check your personal email on it—that’s against company policy. What do you think, you’re on your own time at home or on vacation? Germany, known for its legendary efficiency, has a company called Daimler that, Poole tells us, has the out of office email instruct you to contact someone else because your email to a vacationing employee will be deleted and not delivered. Daimler is a car manufacturer. And cars have wheels that seem to spin in the opposite direction when they start moving too fast. Maybe I just need sleep, but it looks to me like such wheels have reached the point of maximum efficiency.

Lobby Hobby

Leave a comment July 20, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

I can recall a time when hobbies seemed less than threatening. Indeed, the idea was to relax, not to lobby. My hobbies—collecting just about anything you could get without money—didn’t involve going to a store. Stamps (because everybody used them back then), coins (ditto), fossils from the local river bank, bottle caps that we collected while Mom was doing the wash at the laundromat, all kinds of handouts from society’s detritus made for many hours’ entertainment. I also collected Bibles. That was when I was old enough to earn some money and spend it on books. And I read those Bibles until I’d run out of versions, then I’d start over again. Now my hobby has come back to haunt me.

According to the New York Times, the Hobby Lobby family is planning to build a Bible Museum in Washington, DC, prompting fears of evangelization. Right there in the nation’s capital, not far from the Mall, a museum showing the importance of the Bible would indeed send a message. But is it really a threat? We live under the judicial decisions of a Supreme Court weighted towards the literal already. It might not hurt to have a museum dedicated to finding out what’s going through our justices’ minds. Clearly it’s not women’s rights. If we wander those proposed halls, we might see that museums are indeed dedicated to outdated stuff that has some importance. Rare are the contemporary museums that show right where we are at the moment. Rarer still, those that show the future that remains undecided. In many senses, Washington is already a museum.

The secular world seems to fear the Bible. It is, however, not going to go away. Although I left literalism decades ago, I’m still pleasantly surprised how much the Bible has to offer by way of insight into human nature and contemplation. You might even find some workable ethics if you can get away from the non-issues of birth control, stem cells, or same-sex marriage. The Bible doesn’t need to be a threatening book. In the wrong hands, it may at times seem like The Book of Eli had its eyes right on the target, but those who would use the Bible to harm others are those who read without understanding the words. No, I don’t think the Green family’s plans for such a museum are innocent. Neither can I believe that hobbies are a $3 billion industry. Reading books and picking up other people’s cast-offs may be the only hobbies you need.

Engraven images?

Double Blind

8 Comments May 23, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

When I read Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics as a child, I assumed that I’d not live to worry about them in real life. What we don’t know can indeed hurt us. Time magazine frightens me sometimes. This week’s offerings include a small blurb about drones. When I was a kid, a drone was a bee—dangerous in its own right—or it was a verb used to describe an uninspired teacher or preacher’s monotoned wisdom. Now drones are robotic planes that can operate themselves without human input. Time reveals that technology has been developed that would allow drones to kill without human input. Asimov’s laws have become truly science fiction. Proponents argue that “collateral damage” might be minimized if we allow robots to kill with precision, and some have argued that the research should be prohibited. The fact that it has been developed, however, means the line in the sand has been crossed. If it has been done once, it will be done again.

Even as a daily user of technology, a deep ambivalence besets me. Maybe if it weren’t for the fact that every once in a while my computer (most often at work) freezes up and issues a command I can’t understand, I might feel a little more secure. Instead I issue a ticket for IT and when they call on me sometimes even a specialist can’t figure out what went wrong. Once the bullets are flying it’s a little too late to reboot. Maybe I’m just not yet ready to crawl into bed with a technology that might kill me, without feeling.

Just five pages earlier Time notes that 1 in 5 is the “Ratio of people who would have sex with a robot, according to a U.K. study.” All things are fair, it seems, in love and war. The part of the equation that we haven’t accounted for in our artificial intelligence is that thought requires emotion—which we don’t understand—as much as it requires reason, upon which we have only a toddler’s grasp. And yet we continue to build more and more powerful devices that might kill us with ease. Isaac Asimov was a prescient writer and a forward thinker. He was from the generation that aspired to ethics being in place before technology was implemented. At least as an ideal. We’ve reversed the order in our world, where ethics is continually playing catch-up to the new technologies we’ve invented. Now it’s time to decide whether to make love to it or to say our final prayers.

To Thine Own Self

2 Comments April 25, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

Among the books that I would rate very important, Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá’s Sex at Dawn would need to be on top, or nearly so. As I’ve often stated on this blog, religion and sex are very closely related. Every religion, in some way or another, intimates itself into sexuality. Like religious belief, however, it is something about which we blush, look at our feet, and politely change the subject. Perhaps it would be helpful to shift focus, then, to the subtitle: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships. Well, not even that reaches the depths to which this book plumbs. Ryan and Jethá actually peer back deep into prehistory and look at the changes that agricultural life brought onto humanity. Comparing that information to conclusions drawn from evolutionary theory and serious biological study, they derive a picture of a much more equitable culture for which humans clearly evolved. Agriculture, and just plain culture, changed all that.

With culture, you see, comes the materialist idea of possession. Hunter-gatherers, even today, are the best sharers in the world. Their generosity isn’t noble, as Ryan and Jethá point out, but entirely practical. In addition, their lives are longer, healthier, and happier than those of the modern, stressed-out, perpetually frustrated, “cultured” individual. We are constantly trying to get ahead, and own more. Of course, we don’t want to mention or think about the fact that when we die, all that ownership will mean nothing. We invent complex laws that so only our biological (we think) offspring will carry on that legacy until the last bit is parceled out so fine that all that remains is a name that few will remember millennia down the road. For that we suffer nearly constant frustration. I’ve not read a book in decades that made me want to throw all of this off and head out to the woods, sharpened stick in hand. (Problematic, since I’m pretty solidly vegetarian.)

Some of the larger implications, however, that Sex at Dawn doesn’t address, are the roles that religion plays in problematizing what we’ve evolved to be. Of course, sex scandals in churches are referenced, since they are such crucial evidence. What is overlooked, for the purposes of the book, is that religions have always tried to define and control sexuality, at least since the dawn of agriculture. We don’t often consider that agriculture, in addition to making us fat, and lazy, also gave us organized religion. It may be that religion came first, but it only grew into a coercive social force with the temple culture of ancient Sumer, and it has been with us ever since, dictating who may love whom, when, and for what purpose. Sex at Dawn is not for those who are set in their ways, nor for those who take a one-size-fits-all attitude toward life. For the rest of humanity, however, there is hope that perhaps we can learn to be a little more true to what nature intended us to be, and to understand that nature may be many things, but it is seldom evil.

Apes and Atheists

2 Comments March 24, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

Frans de Waal is among the sanest of popular science writers. I’ve been following his non-technical work since Our Inner Ape through The Age of Empathy to The Bonobo and the Atheist. As de Waal himself explains, he tended to leave religion out of his earlier works since, for a scientist such topics are generally taboo. His direct address to religion in The Bonobo and the Atheist is refreshing and enlightened. As he notes, de Waal does not believe in God, but he doesn’t believe in the abolition of religion either. This sets him against his fellow biologist Richard Dawkins, who is so bright that the rest of us are burnt out dimmer bulbs by comparison. As de Waal soberly asks: what does science offer in place of religion? What is the point of taking away something that has evolved from our early primate days without offering anything to fill its spot? Even an ape would object.

What makes The Bonobo and the Atheist so engaging, apart from de Waal’s writing, is the openness of his outlook. De Waal suggests that the origins of morality and empathy can be glimpsed in apes and monkeys. He cites the reaction of chimpanzees to rain storms and even waterfalls that hint at early religious development. As I’ve suggested on this forum before, religion may even be allowed to animals. Their experience of religion is certainly not the same as ours, but there is evidence of both thought and feeling. When these are brought together they form religious belief in Homo sapiens. Why not in our ancestors and fellow animals? No, animals don’t develop elaborate doctrines or precious rituals. They do, however, reverence the powerful, ponder death, and feel emotion. Some of our great thinkers are ready to cast all that aside in the name of progress. More humbly, and circumspectly, de Waal considers that evolution is telling us something. And when evolution speaks, its children should pay attention.

Descriptions of reactions and behaviors that we consider unique to humans among the animal world draw me to de Waal’s books. As a scientist de Waal has to draw logical conclusions, and those conclusions point to an inner world that is not so much unique in humans as it is evolved. Religion, I believe, is one of those traits. If animals show some of the early stages of religious development, including a basic form of ethics, how does that devalue our human efforts to explain our universe? Religion is in good company, along with opposable thumbs and basic language comprehension. Looking at how we treat each other, I consider being related to animals a compliment most of the time. Without a doubt some of the ethics Frans de Waal illustrates among the bonobos exceed those I’ve experienced at the hands of many who think of themselves as made in the image of God.

The Ethics of Swallowing

Leave a comment January 6, 2014 Steve A. Wiggins

Mary Roach never fails to please. I first discovered her during a jaunt to my local, lamented Borders (not a weekend passes when I don’t mourn the chain’s closing anew) on an autumn evening when Spook leaped out at me (metaphorically) from the science section. I have read layperson-digestible science since I was in junior high school, having been a charter subscriber to Discover magazine. I was, therefore, amazed when I realized an author with some scientific credibility would take on the topic of ghosts. This was followed by Stiff, Bonk, Packing for Mars, and now, Gulp. The subtitle of Gulp, Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, captures the flavor of this book about eating. While some live to eat, we all eat to live, and it makes perfect sense that religion could come to shine a little light in this facet of human existence. Actually, although Roach doesn’t emphasize it, the ethics of eating has become a major interest in embodiment theology over the past few years. Food and faith, it turns out, are closely connected.

In Gulp, the one instance where religion comes into major play regards, ironically, rectal feeding. Roach points out that the question of its effectiveness had been part of discussions of fasting in the contexts of convents. Some traditions in various religions advocate denying oneself food as an act of penance or contrition. The question of whether nourishment taken without the satisfaction of eating counted, however, is one that the church took up. Characteristically not making a definitive answer, the practice mutely continues. Roach notes that clergy have been among the avowed supporters of colonic irrigation as well, making one wonder why the upper half of the alimentary canal has typically caused religions so much trouble. Of course, Roach is not writing about religion, but about eating. But still…

Religion, broken out abstractly from everything a person does, is a modern phenomenon. In fact, it is questionable whether religion can even be considered as a phenomenon of ancient societies at all since it was so thoroughly integrated into everything a person did. When priests separated themselves from laity, at least as early as ancient Sumer, the idea that one class of people could handle the requirements of the gods while the rest of us got along with the secular business of living life took hold. But religious specialists still maintained control over morals. Food, in a world of unfair distribution, will forever be an ethical issue. Instead, most religions have brought the focus down to the individual. What you eat may very well reflect your religious beliefs. Whether we feed the world or not we have, unwisely, left to politicians. As I ponder this indigestible topic, I recommend reading Gulp for a bit of relief from the serious business of the ethics of eating.

Hire Education

Leave a comment August 23, 2013 Steve A. Wiggins

Physicians are trained to notice symptoms before a condition becomes fatal. That’s their job and our society pays them well for it. Who wants to die? “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” a very wise person once said. If we had a physician to look over the health of the nation, I would tremble at the diagnosis. A colleague just reminded me of this by pointing out Un-Hired Ed, an infographic that reveals the chart the doctors don’t want the patient to see. My daughter is starting college. Long ago, however, we gave her that talk that parents give their kids—you know the one—the beware of the lure of higher education talk. As Un-Hired Ed points out, our society has been putting on weight: universities consume far more doctoral candidates than there will ever be jobs. I speak from first-hand experience with an earned doctorate from a world-class research university and a list of solid publications, in saying that the prognosis is distressing, likely fatal. I spent nearly a decade of my “best earning years” functionally unemployed because I was “overqualified” for job after job after job. How many people don’t even rate an interview to become a meter reader for the electric company? Well, with the unending awarding of doctorates, that, like the national cholesterol level, is sure to rise.

Universities have turned greedy eyes towards the profit margins of businesses since about the 1980s—those years of “me first” that have plunged us into an economic dark age. Salaries and privileges skyrocketed and so did college enrollments. I worked at a university that was seriously considering a “Marina Management” major. To cover all the additional courses that universities must offer to “educate” the vast numbers of students, they face a financial brick wall. College presidents expect to earn a certain (unrealistic) salary, and football coaches deserve even more. Stadiums don’t come cheap, you know! So they hire adjuncts; Ph.D.s who are functionally unemployable, and pay them less than the janitors. Woo-hoo! We’ve beat the system of fair compensation and it has only cost us the livelihood of those whose professors encouraged off to grad school because they were the best and brightest in the class!

“Like lambs led to the slaughter,” as the saying goes.

Can higher education be redeemed? I have to believe so. You see, back in the Dark Ages some of the theologically literate began to congeal into clumps of readers and writers that eventually became universities. They valued learning and passing that learning on so that, like the physician, society might heal itself. And it did. Bologna, Oxford, Paris, Cambridge, St Andrews, Edinburgh—lights began to shine in the darkness. Then business models assured our great institutions that more is better, and doctorates spread like an unstoppable disease. Society’s interests had moved on. Who needs higher education when there’s something really entertaining on YouTube? Prognosis: chronic obesity. Don’t you agree, doctor?

Source: Online-PhD-Programs.org

God in the Shops

Leave a comment August 2, 2013 Steve A. Wiggins

Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been out and about, I’ve been noticing the way that the divine has been utilized by shop-keepers. In a culture where incipient religion is so pervasive, it seems that God is treated much like the NSA in some quarters—always watching, always vigilant. I popped into a shop selling locally made items (I try to support the local economy when I’ve got a greenback or two to spare, although that is rare), where I saw a sign reading “Shoplifting & Theft Will Be Judged By God.” The sentiment gave me pause. Deeply embedded in our society is the idea that without a divine mall cop, we would all run amok with crime. Although religion is pervasive in the world, much of it is non-deistic, and yet highly moral (particularly in east Asian nations). Their cultures have advanced, even beyond western culture in many aspects of technology, and yet gods (and specifically our God) do not figure into the ethical equation. Pillage and plunder do not seem to erupt when God is not in the shop.

Whimsical signs have been popular decorative items for decades now. The problem with whimsy is that it loses its effectiveness once the initial chuckle is over. Signs reading “no pain, no gain” in fitness clubs may inspire day after day (although I have my doubts), but the cute warning that “the dog is crazy” on your doormat fails to impress after the first reading. (It must be pretty obvious that I don’t entertain much.) Nevertheless, shops stock those impulse-buy signs that are clever and witty, if soon outdated. I found one the other day reading, “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.” Even with the strains of self-righteousness, there is valid thought here. When the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus, he said, “Let the one without sin throw the first stone.” This disputed passage is one of the most pertinent in all of Scripture. No stones flew.

Finally, a friend came in bearing a shopping bag with Jesus on it. “Lookin’ good for Jesus, the King of Kings, King-size Tote” it read. The bag was clearly designed with a heavy dose of irony. I couldn’t help but notice that the bag was full of bottled gas. This portable version of the only begotten is a reminder of how commercial our religion has truly become. Although clearly presented with tongue distending cheek, we know that, as I tried to convince many at Gorgias Press, Sects Sells. People will buy cute knock-offs of their deities. In Wisconsin we used to visit Holy Hill, a Carmelite shrine where all manner of sacred kitsch lined the walls, from glow-in-the-dark rosaries to cheap, plastic saviors. The shop was never empty. Perhaps it is possible to worship both God and mammon after all.

The Importance of Being Honest

1 Comment July 8, 2013 Steve A. Wiggins

Continuing our quest to be a family out of sync with the modern world, we used part of our free day in Edinburgh to take the Book Lover’s Tour. Edinburgh has a long literary history that includes such writers as Sir Walter Scott, Robert Louis Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. A more recent star in that constellation is J. K. Rowling. The tour we took was led by the redoubtable Allan Foster, a geology student turned literary psychopomp. Although not associated personally with Edinburgh, Oscar Wilde had an unusual connection that made for an interesting tale. One of his male lovers, John Gray (a model for the eponymous Dorian) eventually became a Catholic priest, and lover of a wealthy Russian poet, Marc-André Raffalovich. When the Gray was assigned to St. Patrick’s in Edinburgh, Raffalovich was appalled at the state of the building and offered to finance a new church with the provision that his friend be appointed priest in charge. Thus the new building came to be and still stands on Cowgate.

Of course, nowhere is the priest or his lover, benefactor of the parish, mentioned in the church literature. Morality often parades as self-righteousness. Secret lives are not restricted to the clergy, of course. The fact is that people everywhere are human, and people are complex. So complex that we will sometimes carry on a charade to ensure religious respectability, to the point of having political candidates endorsed by clergy for issues that run counter to the very sources of their funding. Righteousness can be very costly, but self-righteousness comes cheap. Religious systems that demand standards that they can’t uphold either collapse or excel in duplicity.

When the tour was over, we walked by St. Patrick’s church. I wondered how many of the patrons knew the history of the lovely building they use for worship. Should they take a literary tour and learn the background of the church, would it make any difference? Ethics can be a matter of convenience, particularly when it is a matter of sexual propriety. Somebody else’s sexual propriety, that is. The real business of religion should be helping to improve authentic lives. Today it has often become the business of supporting the political system that bankrolls the special interests nearest to one’s heart. And reading, especially of unapproved materials, only gets in the way.

Time in a Bottle

Leave a comment June 21, 2013 Steve A. Wiggins

On of the intangible tangibles of my humble job is seeing a book move from an idea to a published product. A little bit of joy rained down on my day yesterday as my first Routledge book appeared. It also helped that this is an important book and no matter what the reader feels about the conclusions, it will be crucial in getting the question out in the open. John Portmann’s The Ethics of Sex and Alzheimer’s places a face squarely on an issue that will only increase as time without a cure for Alzheimer’s grows. As a culture, we don’t like to acknowledge aging. We know it’s happening constantly, but we somehow think if we avoid it long enough, it might somehow, miraculously, disappear. Portmann, an ethicist and religious studies scholar at the University of Virginia, puts the question boldly: what happens to marriage when one of the partners no longer recognizes the other? This is a thorny issue. And that’s an understatement. We are conditioned to assume that wedding vows, with their origins in an era before people lived long enough for Alzheimer’s to become a plague, must still apply. Portmann isn’t so sure.

I won’t spoil the book for you by giving away the conclusions of his carefully argued case, but I would like to consider for a moment the importance of ethics. The religion in which I was reared knew little in the way of uncertainty about right and wrong. Gray areas were scarce, and often diabolical. I’ll never forget when I took my first ethics course as a religion major. It was if someone had thrown open a door to a sunny Arctic day while I was seated in a warm, dark den. It was blinding. And disorienting. I hadn’t thought of issues in that way before. Simple answers wilted and died by the thousands. Figuring things out, ethically, was costly and required an awful lot of mental energy. No matter which answer I chose, there was a good case for an alternative choice to be made. Morality is seldom black and white. That’s why when Dr. Portmann pitched me his book, he had my attention from page one.

Ethics is the process of trying to figure out the best way to decide on the right course of action, given any alternative. Little ethical issues crop up constantly: should I pretend I didn’t see that homeless person stealing an apple? Should I tell that person who got the job that I wanted when he’s got a mustard splotch on his beard he can’t see? Should I hold the elevator for that woman down the hall when I really want to get to work a few seconds early today? Issues-issues everywhere! Alzheimer’s forces the issues. We know it is right and good to continue to care for the sufferer. It’s no sin to forget who you are or when you are. But what of the partner who’s not ill? Immediately our moral sensibilities kick in. And with a population rapidly aging (I know I’m doing my part in that department) the question will likely continue to press on our collective consciences. Ethics reaches its fingers into those dark spaces we’d rather not put our hands. There might be spiders in there, or bugs. It might be something far worse. Not everyone will agree with Portmann’s answers, but I think we can all agree that he has raised a very necessary, if prickly question.

Religion, Generally

1 Comment June 11, 2013 Steve A. Wiggins

Attempting to keep this blog focused on religion, has, of course, relegated it to the hopelessly outmoded pile for many people. I run into this all the time, professional, sophisticated individuals who have moved beyond the need for religion don’t see why we should waste our time with it. It’s about as useful as a room full of year-old newspapers. Like most people who end up studying religion, for me it began as an outgrowth of a religious upbringing. When you get to college they ask what you’re interested in. When your response is “Not going to Hell,” they’re likely to send you over to the Religion Department (if there happens to be one). One of the early lessons you learn as a religion major is (or at least should be) tolerance. Sure, the beliefs of other religions, when encountered for the first time, may seem weird. If you step outside your own tradition, however, chances are a great deal of what you believe could be considered odd as well. In such circumstances tolerance is perhaps the only way to avoid violence.

The few readers who leave comments on my posts give me pause to think. I largely study religion in isolation now, without the give-and-take of academic colleagues. It is not unusual for someone to point out the bizarre, or even unethical behavior of someone else’s religion (New Atheists do this all the time). When trying to understand religion, however, we have to be honest about the fact that all religions, and non-religions share instances of bad behavior. As my grade-school teachers said, “one bad one ruins it for everyone.” Religions are just as subject to human perversions as any other activity. People do bad things occasionally. Sometimes in the name of religion (or non-religion). Rationally it is obvious that we shouldn’t blame the religion for the poor behavior of some adherents. Yet we often do.

Religion-bashing is a popular sport. Those who engage in it, however, frequently fail to take into account just how widespread religion is. By far the vast majority of people in the world, educated or not, believe in a religion. This is complicated by the fact that an agreed definition of religion is still lacking. We don’t know what religion is, but we know it when we see it. Our universities and public intellectuals often ridicule it as unsophisticated and naive. As someone who has spent a lifetime thinking about religion, I suppose I’m obligated to say it, but there is a deep truth here: religions do motivate for good as well as for evil. Both non-religious and very religious people can be bad or good. What we require to get along in such a world is tolerance. And a willingness to listen to others. Otherwise both religion and non may not survive to criticize each other.

The Computer of Dr. Caligari

Leave a comment March 4, 2013 Steve A. Wiggins

To be human is to be ethical. Not always in the best way, unfortunately. Nevertheless, our moral sensors are pretty much constantly running as we try our best to make the right moral decisions. This thought occurred to me while reading Jonathan Cohn’s article, “The Robot Will See You Now,” in this month’s The Atlantic. Having been a sideline watcher of FIRST Robotics for about four years now, I have heard countless stories of how robots perform some surgeries more efficiently than clumsy humans can. Cohn’s article starts off with the impressive potential of IBM’s Watson to sort through millions and millions of bits of data—far beyond any human capacity—and make more informed recommendations about medical treatments. After all, Watson won on Jeopardy!, so we know “he”’s smart. But he isn’t really a he at all. Still, in our reductionist world where humans are just “soft machines” computers and robots should be quite capable of helping us heal. To survive longer.

I am a veteran of Saturday afternoon science fiction movies and weekday episodes of Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica (original series, both). The present is starting to feel like that impossible future I watched as a starry-eyed child. But what of Dr. McCoy? I remember literally cheering (something I haven’t done much in recent decades) when DeForest Kelley’s name appeared on the opening credits of Star Trek when season three began. Bones was always one of my favorite characters—the doctor who didn’t trust the machines upon which he relied so heavily. He was a down-to-earth country doctor, who seemed to feel out of touch with the human (and occasional alien) element with machines interposed between them. Medicine is, after all, a very personal thing. Our bodies are our souls. I know; scientists tell us we have no souls. Embodiment studies, however, suggest otherwise. That robot coming at me with needles and scalpels may know how to heal me, but does it have my best interests at heart? Where is its heart? Its soul?

Better health care is certainly much to be desired. But in a country where our lawmakers continually debate whether the poorest should have access to Watson and his ilk, I wonder where ethics has gone. Robot doctors, I’m sure, will not accept patients with no insurance. Does not compute. Having gone without health insurance myself for several years, despite holding advanced degrees, I know that if I’d had a health crisis I’d have been rightly ranked down there with the blue collar folk that I consider kin. You see, to be human is to be ethical. That doesn’t mean we’ll always make the right decisions. It’s a safe bet that Watson can play the odds mighty finely. And the soulless machine may be making the decisions about who lives and who does not. Now that I have insurance again, when I’m on that cold slab I may have a shot at seeing a robot doctor. If that ever happens, I’m going to hope that Dr. McCoy is at least standing in the corner, and that those waiting outside the comfortable walls of affluence will somehow enter Watson’s scientific calculations with me.