Matters of Life and Death, Part 2

Abortion has been the ball on the playing field of politics for most of my life. With every election comes a resurgence of the national dogfight between “pro life” and “pro choice”.

The pro lifers contend that life –– and the birth of the soul –– initiates with conception. Therefore abortion at any stage of pregnancy is murder. The pro choicers don’t even deal with that issue, saying that the decision to abort or not is a personal and private choice, and therefore not subject to legislative intervention.

I have a third perspective on the abortion issue, and –– surprise! –– it is based on what works.

In the book “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, the authors explore the question of why violent crime rates have fallen consistently since the 1970’s. They come to the conclusion that the decrease in violent crime came about as a direct result of legalizing abortion, starting with Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973.

Despite the fact that the United States Supreme Court decided that abortion should be legal, not all states immediately followed suit. Levitt and Dubner examine the state-level statistics on violent crime, and found that violent crime rates in each state began to drop around 18 years following each legalization ruling. Some states legalized abortion earlier -- and their drop-off in violent crime was the same: 18 years following legalization.

The ultimate conclusion is that when women are forced to bear a child they don’t want, their children are likely candidates to become criminals by the time they reach adolescence.

When you think about it, this makes sense. Unwanted children may well become scapegoats for their unhappy parents, and are more likely to be abused and neglected than wanted children. Abused and neglected children are far more likely to turn to gangs as family substitutes, and to engage in gang-related crime. Because they are angry, and violence is what they were raised with, their criminal activities are violent.

Then there is the issue of drug- and alcohol-addicted mothers. Fetuses exposed to drugs and excessive alcohol are far more likely to be mentally retarded or brain-damaged and to have birth defects of various sorts. Add to this an environment where they are neither loved nor cared for, and you have a dandy recipe for all kinds of trouble.

So I personally think that it doesn’t matter if life begins at conception. Spontaneous abortions happen all the time, naturally. If nothing happens without God’s will, then God apparently is an abortionist. And according to the statistics, abortion has a positive overall effect on civil society.

I say let every child born be a wanted child.

And for every baby born addicted or unloved, let there be a pro life activist to adopt it. It’s easy and fun to stalk righteously around Planned Parenthood with pictures of aborted fetuses. It’s a whole lot harder and not nearly as much fun to raise a child.

How about it, pro lifers?

Matters of Life and Death

As a nation, we’ve spent a lot of time and money and energy over the past couple of decades arguing over whether or not capital punishment should be allowed, and whether or not life begins at conception. So how do the injunctions (see first posting) of “Do not harm another human being, and cause no suffering to other living being, “ and “Do What Works” apply to these issues?

Oddly, the side that most strongly supports death penalty is the faction that condemns abortion, and the side that condemns capital punishment is the faction that supports the right to abortion. People are so strange and inconsistent that I wonder how we made it this far.

Let’s take the easy one first: capital punishment. I was once a supporter of capital punishment. It seemed to me that when someone commits certain crimes –– torture-killings, killing a child in the course of abusing or molesting it, etc. –– that the criminal has in effect surrendered his or her human membership card. People like this are a danger to others and have proven themselves less than human, so just get them off the planet.

My spouse’s point of view is that it is a greater punishment to keep someone in prison for life than to give him/her the easy way out, e.g., execution.

That perspective has its merits, but two things convinced me that capital punishment is wrong:

• We have executed many perfectly innocent people.
• It costs more to condemn someone to death than to keep them in prison for life, and we law-abiding citizens are paying for it.

Executing innocent people? How could that happen? I haven’t made a detailed study of it, but apparently some law enforcement officials are more interested in closing the books on cases and taking credit for catching the bad guys than they are in the actual pursuit of justice. In fact, this seems to be more common than I would have imagined possible. (I am still capable of being shocked, it seems.)

So, until there is a way to determine empirically beyond any shadow of any doubt whether or not someone is guilty of a crime, the possibility of snuffing out even one innocent life means to me that capital punishment is wrong.

In cases where there is a confession or incontrovertible evidence of guilt, I maintain that the incredible expense of condemning a person to death makes capital punishment unworkable. There’s a short and sweet summary of this position here. Shorter and sweeter: capital trials cost more than non-capital trials, and the cost to the taxpayer of the endless appeals and re-trials that are the right of the condemned criminal far exceed the cost of life imprisonment.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has some detailed information about capital punishment here. Among other things, these statistics show that capital punishment does not work as a deterrent. For example, Southern states account for more than 80% of all executions. And yet, Southern states have the highest murder rates. Clearly, when people commit murder (at least in the South), they are not quaking in their boots over the possibility of being condemned to death.

So if capital punishment doesn’t act as a deterrent, and it costs more money, and we’re executing some innocent people, it doesn’t work. And if something doesn’t work, it causes harm.

I for one would like a tax reduction based on doing away with capital punishment and its attendant expenses, as opposed to tax reductions handed out like lollipops by politicians to tranquillize the population.

Since I had just too much fun with capital punishment, I guess abortion will have to wait until the next post.

Why Ideology Is Less than Ideal

Dictionary.com defines ideology as “the body of doctrine, myth, belief, etc., that guides an individual, social movement, institution, class, or large group.” Well, that doesn’t sound too bad. Until you see ideology being applied in the real world.

Most ideologies appear to be a mishmash of wishful thinking mixed in with some real wisdom. In most ideologies, some components seem to work, while other components do not. For example, Jesus’ injunction to “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” is a brilliant example of something that works.

However, from the Gospel of Mark: “And these signs shall follow them that believe…They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” There was a story in the news the other day about a woman in one of those Pentacostal snake-handling churches who died of a bite from a timber rattler. This component of the ideology didn’t work. The problem is that in the real world, snakes have their own agenda, and proving the purity of Christians isn’t even close to the top of their list.

[Forgive me for drawing most of my examples from Christianity. It happens to be the religion with which I am most intimately acquainted.]

At the core of most ideologies, there are kernels of truth, e.g. that which works. But as far as I know, there are no ideologies that work when applied wholesale.

Let’s take as an example the current (Bush II) war in Iraq. I am merely a humble private citizen of the U.S. I have no deeper insight into the machinations of the current administration than the next person. But here is what appeared to be the ideology fueling this adventure:

• Democracy is good, Saddam Hussein is bad.
• If we get rid of the bad, the good will naturally take over.
• Because we are doing a good thing, the Iraqis will throw flowers at our troops and embrace democracy.
• Once the rest of the bad (undemocratic) Middle Eastern countries see our great success in Iraq, democracy will flower everywhere, the Muslims will stop hating the Jews, and peace shall reign on Earth.

You think I am being too simplistic? Alas, I fear this is as complex and deep as the thinking went as we hastily prepared to invade. The powers that be were so sure of success that they clearly didn’t bother to plan for the occupation and rebuilding of the country –– they seem to have believed it would all go smoothly, with the cheerful assistance of all Iraqis.

I won’t go into much detail – most of us are aware of all this by now –– but here’s a few things they seem to have forgotten in the planning process. Even at the time these things seemed glaringly obvious:

• The Iraqis are divided into at least three major religious/ethnic groups –– Sunni, Shia and Kurds –– who mutually despise each other.
• The invasion of a Muslim country by “crusaders” from the West would be viewed as an ideal opportunity for Muslim fundamentalist terrorists to recruit and wreak havoc in the region.
• Iraq is a very large country bordered by six other Muslim countries –– Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iran. The longest border is between Iraq and Iran. The third longest border is with Syria. Neither Iran nor Syria is our friend, and their borders have proven to be extremely porous, allowing illicit arms and combatants through fairly freely. Its second longest border is with Saudi Arabia –– but that’s okay because they really like us.
• We never sent enough troops in the first place to be able to secure, organize and rebuild such a large country. (Never mind that we didn’t give our armed forces enough equipment and arms. I sure didn’t see that one coming.)

If I, a mere private citizen, saw very clearly in advance that the invasion would be a disaster of catastrophic proportions, why didn’t the people in the administration, with their experience and connections and the CIA, NSA, FBI, and all the rest of the Federal alphabet soup at their disposal?

They didn’t see it because they were blinded by their own ideology, which allowed them to ignore everything that didn’t fit into their distorted world view. And that’s why ideologies don’t work. We need to see things as they are, not as we would have them be.

Sounds simple, but I guess that’s pretty hard to do, judging by results. And I suppose that “do what works” could also be called an ideology.

Touché! Except that if something actually works in the real world, who cares?

Is There a God?

I dunno. Maybe. Does it matter?

Either there is a god or there isn’t. Or maybe many gods. Or goddesses. My saying it doesn’t make it so or not so. Your saying it makes the same amount of difference.

The Bible or the Koran or the Lotus Sutra or the Talmud saying there is a God is not evidence of God. (Although in all honesty, I’m not sure the Lotus Sutra deals with the issue.) Anything that has been written by human beings or so thoroughly manipulated by human beings cannot be evidence of God, although it is evidence aplenty of the human need to believe in God.

I personally think if there is any evidence of God, it can be discerned in what works. What works is the mechanism of the deity –– if there is one.

I absolutely do not believe in the existence of a god that interferes or intercedes in the daily lives of humans. So many wars were fought by people who thought that God was on their side. But when they lost, what did that mean? That God was not on their side? Or that God was on the other folks’ side? What kind of petty god takes sides like that?

The news media appears to provide daily evidence that no god is interceding one way or the other. Recently, there was an article about a drug dealer who gave his two-year-old daughter a lethal dose of a date rape drug, then took an overdose himself. The baby died, but the murderer survived. A day or two after this incident, would-be rescuers found the corpse of a man who struggled for nine days in deep snow to save his wife and two daughters stuck in a car in the snow in the middle of nowhere. He was a bright, talented person who was known as a loving family man. Where was God in all this?

Religious people say that God works in mysterious ways, and we cannot know what His purposes are.

Could be. But if God is managing things in this world, that’s a very scary thought, really. I personally find it much more comforting to think that if God exists, he or she or it is not personally involved in what’s going on here.

In any case, I don’t think it matters. The point is to pay attention to what works. Not because we will go to hell after death if we do things that don’t work, but because we create hell on earth when we do things that don’t work.

Global warming is an example. Perhaps you don’t believe in global warming and think it is a mass delusion, as I heard recently. Or perhaps you believe in global warming, but do not believe that it is caused by human activity.

It doesn’t matter if you believe in global warming or not. And it doesn’t matter whether or not it is caused by human activity. If global warming is a reality, you and your descendents will suffer anyway, right along with me and my descendents. And even if global warming is a reality but not caused by people, does it not make good sense to do what we can to mitigate its effects, if we are able?

Of course, if it proves to be a mass delusion we can all take a big sigh of relief and go back to gas guzzling –– at least as long as we have gas, which apparently is not forever. Maybe we’ll find another planet out there that had lots of carbon life millions of years ago and it’s swimming in crude oil! That’s one I’d like to believe in.

But I think I’ll buy a hybrid or an electric car instead.

The Commandments

I have a dear friend who is a Christian. For a long time she assumed that because we were alike in so many ways, we were alike in her faith, too. It wasn’t hard for me to stay undercover, because I was raised as a Christian. (It turns out neither of my parents had the slightest belief in Christianity, but they thought it was important for me to understand the tenets of the faith because of how it has shaped the world we live in. Another story for another time.)

One evening in a restaurant, over a glass or two or three of wine, I confessed that I was not a Christian. I did not believe in the divinity of Jesus, and I did not believe in the existence of a personal god (a god who notices what you do or don’t do, or who intercedes in your life).

My friend was shocked. She continues to be puzzled. She keeps asking me how I know the right thing to do if I do not have a faith. I haven’t answered her questions yet, but she has set me to thinking about all this.

By the time I hit college I had shed any faith I once had, but I believed that religion was important in teaching people how to behave well. I believed that without religion, probably ethics and morals went to hell in a handbasket, as my Mom would say. (The hell in a handbasket part, not the ethics and morals part.)

In college, I met a young man named André. André grew up in Czechoslovakia under the Soviets. He had never heard of god as a child and had no concept whatsoever of religion. Yet André was a kind, good, decent human being who epitomized what I thought of as ethical and moral behavior. A revelation: religion is not required in the formation of ethics or morals.

Over the years, I have felt the pull of religious community. I would really love to be able to believe in a religion. I adore ritual. I read about religions and wish I had the certainty that religion seems to bring to people. I came to believe that what I really yearned for is community; shared values that bind people together and creates brother/sisterhood. I explored many different religious communities, but found that doctrine and dogma prevented me from embracing any of them. What kind of god cares whether you attend services on a specific day or refrain from eating shrimp? What kind of god demands that women sequester themselves from society (thereby depriving society of the participation and benefit of 50% of the population)?

Eventually, I joined the Universal Unitarians. Unitarianism was originally an offshoot of Christian Protestantism. However, in the U.S., Unitarians are not necessarily Christian. You can be Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Wiccan, atheist or anything, and still be a Unitarian. I still believe in the basic tenets of Unitarianism, and I guess I always did. (For the principles of Unitarianism, click here .) And I am still sort of involved with the local Unitarian Fellowship. But the politics seemed toxic, and I distanced myself. (I am referring to a specific group and do not mean to paint all Unitarians as politically toxic. All I know is the Fellowship down the street from me.)

So the whole community thing didn’t work out the way I’d hoped. Which led me to ask myself what I DO believe in, as opposed to what I do not believe in. I believe in what WORKS. What works, not only in the context of being in the best interests of all human beings, but also what works in the best interests of all life on Earth. (Not what I think works, but what can actually be observed by anyone as working in real life.) Because life on Earth is all that we currently have. Until we open other worlds for colonization (and let’s not hold our breaths in anticipation of that), Earth is it for us. We either make a go of it here. Or cease to exist.

Here are the Commandments of the First Church of Pragmatism:

• Do not harm another human being, and cause no suffering to other living beings.
• “Harm” means causing any injury or suffering, whether physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or psychological. If someone comes up with another dimension of harm, that’s covered, too.
• “Other living beings” means, plants, animals (including people), and living things that don’t fall into either category, like fungus. This includes insects, scorpions, poison oak, snakes and anything else living that you don’t happen to like. Now it seems clear that all us animals evolved to eat plants, eat animals, or eat both. So for an animal to live, something has to die. But that doesn’t mean that we need to make the food suffer in the process. So factory farming, where animals stand in their own feces or they cut the beaks off chickens, is right out. Carving your puny little initials in tree bark is right out. Using a magnifying glass to scorch ants and pulling the wings off flies – out.
• If another living being is directly threatening your life or wellbeing – smallpox, a grizzly bear, a junkie or a black mamba – your first duty is to protect your life and the lives of others you care about. This is a biological imperative, so that’s the way it works.
• “Harm” and “suffering” and “human being” also apply to YOU. Going around putting yourself down, making yourself miserable with envy and insecurity is out. Cutting yourself is out. Making your family suffer by committing suicide is out. That doesn’t mean that suicide is out; just suicide intended to wreak revenge on others.
• “Harm” also refers to causing damage to the complex system that nourishes all living beings, not just humans. We have been abusive to the earth and its creatures and we are about to reap the rewards of this abuse in the form of global warming and its attendant ills. In my opinion, we have already experienced some of the consequences in the form of increased cancers, immunodeficiency diseases and other plagues that we have brought upon ourselves and other living things as the result of pollution, depredation of natural resources and upsetting the natural balance of the Earth’s ecosystem. The point is not that you refrain from being mean to dumb animals because you will go to Hell otherwise. The point is that when you cause harm to other living beings, you damage yourself and everybody and everything that you care about.

• Do what works.
• This doesn’t mean do what works in the next 10 minutes, or in a specific situation. It means do what works in the best interests of the planet, the species, and other species. In the long run, what works to the benefit of the planetary ecosystem is also in our personal best interests. If we fail to do what works, we cause damage to ourselves and everything else. Example: DDT was supposed to be the solution to the problem of insects and insect-borne diseases. It turned out that DDT was pretty much toxic to EVERYTHING, including human beings. It doesn’t work when we commit to actions that are based on a narrow and unconsidered point of view.

That’s it. Two commandments pretty much covers it. In future posts, I will cover some of the specifics. Because people, being people, always want to know how rules apply to very specific situations. By the way, I don’t think these are my rules or God’s rules. They are just the way things work. They’re not even rules. The problem is, when we don’t do what works, things stop working. Why? I dunno.