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Month: March 2016

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So I am a racist. What do I do now?

This post originally appeared on October 27, 2015.

Like most human beings, I grew up imbibing racist stereotypes. Since I am Italian, those stereotypes were to some extent different from the kind of stereotypes I would have acquired had I grown up in the United States. For instance, I thought all people “of color” were exotic and more beautiful than “Whites”. This positive, and yet still damaging, stereotype included Black women and men, and Asian men, who in the American dating market are known to be greatly disadvantaged.

My personal attitude was to some extent reflective of Italian culture. The fascination with women of color, for instance, is fairly widespread among Italian men, as you would expect given Italy’s colonial past and its relatively racially homogenous present.

When I started visiting the US academically more ten years ago, I grew accustomed to a much more sophisticated discussion about race, and went through an awkward and often painful process of realization of how implicitly racist I was. I learned that asking “Where are you really from?” to a Seattle native of Korean descent was racist, or at the very least racially insensitive. I realized the tricky undertones of many expressions that I deemed simply descriptive, such as “Black music”. And I found out, much to my surprise, that even my aesthetic appreciation for non-Caucasian people was highly suspicious.

I also discovered that Black women are supposed to be bossy, angry, and dependent on welfare, and that Black men are supposed to be criminals and absent fathers; that East-Asian men are supposed to be unattractive and effeminate, and all Asian women submissive; that Asians in general are good at science… Some of these stereotypes were somewhat in line with my own culture’s, if not necessarily my own, but some were a complete surprise, and that surprise, that sense of “I would never think that” gave me an unwarranted sense of reassurance. When taking the IAT, I even compared positively to White Americans with regard to implicit bias toward Native Americans. So I thought: now that I know all this stuff about race, and given that I am a committed anti-racist, I’ll get rid of all the bad stuff, and I’ll stop being racist!

But, in fact, it didn’t go quite like that… When walking in segregated New Haven, seeing hooded Black men walking behind me made me nervous. I was very aware and ashamed of my own nervousness, but I was nervous nonetheless. Later on, when living in the United Kingdom, I found myself mistaking Black men for store employees. These are only two of the most unnerving instances of my implicit racism surfacing to my uncomfortable consciousness.

And it doesn’t even stop at race: I have become aware of many other forms of discrimination, over the years, and that has greatly increased my capacity at catching myself being implicitly homophobic or transphobic, fattist, ableist, and so forth. But, in fact, it seems to have only increased my awareness, not my ability to be less biased.

Philosopher Robin Zheng, whose research is on moral responsibility and implicit bias, has reassured me that I am not alone. Empirical research confirms that fighting implicit bias require a lot more than just informing people about the reality of discrimination.

This research wouldn’t be surprising to those familiar with more general work on implicit reasoning. For those who are not, I find useful an ancient metaphor from the Buddhist tradition popularized by Jonathan Haidt in his acclaimed pop-psychology book The Happiness Hypothesis. The metaphor describes the human mind as composed by an elephant and its rider. According to Haidt, the elephant roughly corresponds to what has been called System I in dual-processing accounts of reasoning: a system that is old in evolutionary terms, and shared with other animals. This system is comprised of a set of autonomous subsystems that include both innate input modules and domain-specific knowledge acquired by a domain-general learning mechanism. System I is fast, automatic and operates under the level of consciousness. The rider roughly corresponds to System II: a system that is evolutionarily recent and distinctively human. System II permits abstract reasoning and hypothetical thinking, and is slower, controlled and conscious. “The rider evolved to serve the elephant,” says Haidt, and while it may sometimes override it, trick it into obedience, “it cannot order the elephant around against its will” (The Happiness Hypothesis, p. 17).

This tension between the rider and the elephant has many different manifestations, but one that is particularly relevant to the discussion of the implicit biases is the case of mental intrusions. If we are explicitly asked to not think about a white bear, all we can think of is, you guessed it, a white bear. This ironic process of mental control is the consequence of automatic and controlled processes firing at each other: the request of not thinking a certain thought activates System II, which attempts to suppress the thought. System I activates automatic monitoring of one’s progress, which in this case means continuously checking whether one is not thinking about a white bear. That move turns out to be obviously counterproductive, since it reintroduces the thought that one is supposed to ban. But “because controlled processes tire quickly, eventually the inexhaustible automatic processes run unopposed, conjuring up herds of white bears” (The Happiness Hypothesis, p. 20). Dan Wegner, who first studied ironic process in a lab setting, has shown that it affects also people who try to repress unendorsed stereotypes.

While there is interesting research addressing more productive and effective ways of fighting implicit bias and stereotyping, I want to conclude with a remark about the implications of this empirical literature for microaggressions, a topic that has gained much attention recently.

I largely disagree with Haidt’s criticisms of trigger and content warnings in academic settings, for reasons well-articulated by Regina Rini and Kate Manne. But I do share his attention to underlying psychological mechanisms, and I worry that they are sometimes neglected in the political commentary.

Committed anti-racists are unlikely to engage in overtly prejudiced behavior. However, they may still find themselves inadvertently engaging in microaggressions such as those I described at the beginning of the post: inappropriate jokes or questions, or bona fide mistakes stemming from deeply-ingrained stereotypes. The elephant acts against the rider’s wishes, or even awareness: when something that has been internalized as a threat (such as a hooded Black man) appears in view, the elephant doesn’t hesitate, and kicks the rider in the shins, making it jump. The rider will take one or two seconds to realize that there is in fact no threat, and that will be too late: the jump was visible, the offense taken, the harm done. Not fully understanding how powerful these unconscious mechanisms are affects not only our moral assessment of the perpetrators (which can be also self-assessment). It also produces condemnatory reactions that, while appropriate in theory, are not necessarily fertile in practice, such as a certain relatively widespread paralyzing White guilt of well-intentioned liberals, who go around admitting their White privilege without knowing exactly what to do about it. Realizing that some of the mechanisms motivating our behavior are outside of our direct control allows us to focus on indirect ways to modify our behavior, and to shift from a sterile admission of White privilege to a more proactive commitment to changing the institutional injustice that gives rise to it. You can’t order the elephant at will, but you can change the environment it is raised in.

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This and That: Addressing Sex Crimes in Afghanistan

“This and That” is a series of articles in which two Prindle interns weigh on different ethical aspects to an issue. This week, interns Conner Gordon and Connor McAndrew discuss sex crimes in Afghanistan.

Two weeks ago, Representative Duncan Hunter (R, CA) introduced a bill called the Martland Act that would give commanders in the armed forces wider powers to confront criminal sexual abuse under their jurisdiction.  The bill comes after a well-publicized case in the fall of 2015 in which Sgt. First Class Charles Martland, a Green Beret, was put under review after assisting in beating up a local Afghan milita commander who kept a young boy chained to his bed as a sex slave.  

According to the New York Times, Sergeant Martland spent two tours in Afghanistan and was decorated with a Bronze Star for valor before being put under scrutiny for his participation in the assault.  Sgt. Martland wrote to the Army, stating that he and a fellow soldier, Captain Dan Quinn, ““felt that morally we could no longer stand by” and allow the Afghan Local Police to “commit atrocities”.  

Continue reading “This and That: Addressing Sex Crimes in Afghanistan”

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Too Much TV and Nothing to Watch

This post originally appeared in The Indy Star on February 26, 2016.

The critically acclaimed television drama of the early 1960s, “Naked City,” concluded each episode with the narrator proclaiming, “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” In this era of oversaturated television programming, one would think there is a show being produced featuring each of the 8 million stories.

More than 300 television programs had or will have season or series premieres in the first quarter of this year. Those shows are spread out over traditional broadcast television, cable, and streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon. Television releases now happen on a year-round basis. In years past, television outlets released program lineups in the fall and then replaced a few flops in mid-season in January. That era is long gone as program producers looking for eyeballs deluge the video arena with countless shows, many of which are quite forgettable.

The flood of television programming has raised concerns about how much content the idiot box market can bear. FX CEO John Landraf told the Television Critics Association last year, “There is simply too much television.” Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins doesn’t worry about too much television, but he acknowledged in a published report that “there are too many crappy shows out there and not enough good shows.”

The viewing public has tired of what programmers define as television, finding TV fare boring and disgusting. A recent Gallup research survey shows only 16 percent of Americans now list TV as their favorite thing to do in the evening. Fifty years ago, that figure was 48 percent.

Three-channel television in 1966 wasn’t necessarily so profound either, but at least families could watch together without hearing seedy jokes about toilet activity or bedroom romps. Dramatic programs provided some social stability in that good guys and values won out in the end. Today’s television writers would have Ben Cartwright of “Bonanza” joking about his flatulence. Gidget would have a STD. Green Acres would be a marijuana farm. Perry Mason would frequent strip clubs, and Andy Griffith would be addicted to meth. The Hollywood writers, meanwhile, would be crowing about edginess and cultural realism, leaving most Americans to wonder what “real” world these writers inhabit.

Legendary comedienne Carol Burnett said recently that today’s sitcoms “sound like they’ve been written by teenage boys in a locker room.” Evidence of this mentality comes from the CBS “comedy” called “Angel from Hell.” The plot has a supposed guardian angel providing guidance for a young professional woman. This angel, however, has a foul mouth, likes booze and encourages random sex. Thankfully, CBS has canceled the show. That this show, offensive as it was to churchgoers, ever got programmed at all demonstrates that CBS has no societal gumption.

The Parents Television Council reports that decapitations in prime-time broadcast television have nearly tripled in five years. Even with that amount of carnage, not a single over-the-air broadcast program is rated TV-MA for mature audiences. Thus, the television industry believes all prime-time fare, regardless of how blood-drenched or sexually suggestive, is suitable for 14-year-olds. By the way, the networks do the ratings for their own programs.

A major failure of television today is that big media has zero interest in cultural leadership for a society that is more confused, splintered and polarized each year. Programming executives have disconnected from wide portions of their potential audience, scrounging for vacuous programs they can sell to advertisers for a quick dollar. Instead of looking for culturally unifying or positive messages, programmers hope to lure niche audiences with bizarre, fringe and even socially harmful content.

The effect is that television now plays no role in providing common cultural messages. Instead, TV contributes to the separation of generations and socioeconomic groups. With the exception of the Super Bowl, the nation’s viewers have no common viewing experiences, even within the same house.

An upcoming ABC mini-series, “Of Kings and Prophets,” will tell stories from the Old Testament. Producer Chris Brancato told a magazine that the series will be drenched in sex and violence: “We’re going to go as far as we can … we’ll be fighting with broadcast standards and practices.” To Brancato, the Bible is simply a platform from which to shock a national audience.

The late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia had it right several years back when he commented on the FCC’s authority to regulate indecent content on television, calling the media’s cultural perpetrators, “foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood.”

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Chicago Protests and Social Movement Arrogance

“And these children that you spit on,
as they try to change their world”

The observation goes back at least to Bertrand Russell of an inverse correlation between how adamant a person is in their opinion and how much they know about the topic, but nowhere is this more starkly illustrated than when we come to questions of grassroots movement strategy. It seems every pundit this week – from the Daily Show to the New York Times to Fox News – has felt the need to weigh in on the protests that shut down Trump rallies in Chicago and elsewhere. And the consensus is that the protestors are SOOOOOO naïve. As Trevor Noah so respectfully put it: “It’s like trying to put out a fire by putting wood on it.” … “Ah yes, trust Bernie Sanders’s fans to have an unrealistic view of what is actually happening.”

Why this systemic condescension? In the NYT case, we are treated to a poll suggesting that many of those on the other side are really angry about the disruptions. In other cases, it is little more than a priori intuition, or some vague reference to the fact that Trump says he has enemies and now protestors are proving it.

But the question of how to effectively respond to a growing neo-fascist movement – one that has been building in this country for the last 30 years, involves a deeply disaffected and heavily armed population in control of many local governments and with a disproportionate representation among police and the military – is an empirical one. And in the case of most complicated empirical questions, it isn’t a bad idea to actually look at some research before launching into a lecture.

There are a number of routes to gaining knowledge of movement strategy, to a more informed judgment about the likely long-term effects of tactical decisions in a movement. You could read historical accounts of movements around the world and try to discern patterns. (One might start with books like Guns and Gandhi in Africa – ed. Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer; or Protest, Power, and Change ed. Roger Powers, et al.)

You could read the extensive social science literature on how movements develop and when and how they succeed. (See, for example Why Civil Resistance Works and other work by Erica Chenoweth, or Stellan Vinthagen’s A theory of nonviolent action: how civil resistance works, or a text like Social Movements, by Suzanne Staggenborg, just for starters.)

Or you could gain some skills “on the job” by actually participating in the work over a long period of time. (Or at least read some of the experiences of folks who have, for example the
marvelous collection We Have Not Been Moved, ed. Elizabeth “Bettita” Martinez et al.)

People who are most knowledgeable in all these ways tend to be epistemically humble – to realize that it is very hard to predict the long-term effects of various actions. But they do, at least, realize that there are many complex and often competing dynamics and come to recognize some of the issues that go far beyond the local and immediate reaction. For example, one point of many movements is to make structural violence explicit and obvious. In the Civil Rights Movement, the daily indignities, oppression, and thwarting of life by segregation inflicted all manner of violence on blacks. But this daily violence of the system was easy to ignore. When people sat down in segregated restaurants, or walked together over a bridge, however, preserving the Jim Crow order required the use of literal guns, fire-hoses, chains, beatings, and jail. And the violence of beating children was something that others could see and react to far more easily than daily indignities and “dreams deferred.” Critics then, as now, said that these confrontations precipitated violence. And in one sense, of course they did. That was the whole point. They brought out direct, person-to-person violence. But the violence was always there, just operating in the shadows, where oppression always grows best.

And by pulling violence out of the shadows – turning in-group organizing to deport Latinos, ban Muslims, reintroduce torture, bomb more civilians, demean and oppress women, etc. into an open direct confrontation – one forces the masses of apathetic or undecided Americans to confront the situation. Yes, many of the readers of this blog hear of nothing else, but the majority of Americans do not vote, and are woefully ignorant of what is going on either in towns like Ferguson or in Trump rallies and Klan meetings. The long-term effects on this population is far more important to the evaluation of a movement tactic than the short-term effect on someone already convinced of neo-fascist ideology.

Or consider the way that movements put issues and concepts into the public debate. Would everyone talk about “the 1%” without Occupy? Would anyone be debating “Black Lives Matter” without Black Lives Matter, Ferguson Frontline, and other militant protests?

But the main point is that if you haven’t made an attempt to educate yourself in any of these ways, you really should consider the possibility that you have no opinion worth listening to. Rather than jump on a soap-box and lecture people who have been studying and practicing movement politics their entire life, might I consider listening and learning instead? It may, in the end, be a bad idea to directly confront Trump’s neo-fascist rallies, but the pundits insisting on this haven’t a clue. They aren’t even so much as attending to the complex long-term dynamics of how right-wing movements grow in in various political contexts, of how left-movements are nurtured, developed, and given confidence, or the way that apathetic or ignorant people are pulled into the conflict.

Take a moment to hear from the organizers about their goals and strategic vision. Take a social movements course. Take a movement history course. Take a peace studies course. Take my course Nonviolence: Theory and Practice, or one of the hundreds of similar courses around the country. Go to a meeting of the Peace and Justice Studies Association.

Otherwise, seriously, just stop. The “children” “are immune to your consultations.” And that is a very good thing.

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Pleasure (and Happiness and Good Lives)

Philosophers known as hedonists, and probably some slightly more normal people as well, have held that pleasure is the only thing we desire in itself, that pleasure is the only thing good in itself, and that it is the only thing that makes a person’s life good. To evaluate these claims, we must distinguish three distinct types of pleasure: sensory, or the pleasure of a massage or caress; intentional, or taking pleasure in some object or activity, as when I take pleasure in a round of golf or in the new car that I own; and pure feeling, the warm glow we get when learning of some award or accomplishment. Philosophers these days often seek to reduce the first and third types to the second. Sensory pleasure is supposed to be simply a sensation we take pleasure in. But this will not do. We can have sensory pleasures that we take no pleasure in, if they are guilty or addictive pleasures. Then we have sensory pleasure but no intentional pleasure. And masochists take pleasure in sensory pains. Then they have intentional pleasure but sensory pains. Nor can the reduction go the other way, attempts at which used to be more common. We can take pleasure in various activities without having any particular sensations. The pure feeling type falls between the other two: it is a bodily feeling, but without specific location in the body, and it takes objects, as does the intentional kind.

Now we can ask whether any of these types fills the exalted bill of the hedonists. We sometimes do aim at sensory pleasures, as in sex, food, and music, and they are good. We might feel frustrated or impoverished without them. But unless we are Don Giovanni, Falstaff, or Mozart, they are not the cornerstones of a good life. Pure feeling pleasures or warm glows are far more rare and not aimed at directly. Intentional pleasures are more diverse and numerous. They are therefore the best candidates for sources of goodness in our lives and goals of our desires. Focusing on intentional pleasure therefore makes hedonism more plausible, while naive attacks on hedonism most often implicitly focus on sensory pleasures.

Nevertheless, even the more sophisticated versions that view intentional pleasure as our ultimate goal and/or source of value in my view does not survive close reflection. We take pleasure in many different kinds of objects and activities. But we do not aim directly at taking pleasure. Instead, we aim to engage in the activities and experience the objects, the pleasure being a byproduct of their successful pursuit. In fact we find activities most pleasurable when we are fully “in the flow,” therefore directly aware of the pleasure we take in them only in retrospect or future prospect. When we desire an object, we typically have pleasant thoughts about it, but we desire the object, not the pleasant thoughts or the pleasure we will take in fulfilling that desire. Thus, pleasure of the intentional type is not the typical aim or object of our desires.

So what’s all the fuss about pleasure, especially among philosophers? One explanation is the equation, or I would say confusion, of pleasure with happiness. But happiness is not of fundamental importance to a good life either. In my view happiness is a judgment, most often implicit, that one’s life is going well, sometimes producing a feeling of pleasure. What’s really important is that one’s life is going well, that one’s rational, by which I mean prioritized, coherent, and informed, desires are being satisfied. Desires are coherent when the satisfaction of one does not frustrate the satisfaction of more or deeper desires. They are informed when one knows what it would be like to satisfy them. The satisfaction of such desires is a measure of one’s welfare, of how good one’s life is overall or at a given time. Nonsensory pleasures are both effects and symptoms of a high degree of welfare. But they come from fulfilling desires for more important things. Fulfilling rational desires brings value to our lives, not the pleasure we take in doing so, although the pleasure is a sign or reflection of that value.

It has been my pleasure to produce this post. But the important thing is that I have produced it and that you have read it, whether or not you took pleasure in doing so (but I hope you did).

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Putting Politics Aside: A Lesson in Common Courtesy?

President Obama has been making headlines lately for missing the funeral of Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia, who passed away unexpectedly on Febuary 13th. When asked why the president would not be in attendance, his aid deflected the question, instead relaying that “Vice President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden will be attending Justice Scalia’s funeral.”

Continue reading “Putting Politics Aside: A Lesson in Common Courtesy?”

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This and That: The Implications of Guns on Campus

The Texas legislature voted to allow guns within all public university buildings in Texas in June, with the legislation set to take effect in August – just in time for the new school year. The bill was welcomed by supporters of concealed carry rights, but many people have condemned the bill for negatively affecting education. I must agree with the latter camp; allowing concealed carry of guns on campuses is irresponsible and will be detrimental to education in Texas.

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“Okay Ladies, Now Let’s Get in Formation”

The Super Bowl happened last month, but the media still has not quieted down over Beyoncé’s half time performance, particularly the debut of her new song, “Formation.” For those who haven’t seen the music video or her Super Bowl performance, it is unlike anything the singer has done to date. It was culturally provocative, emotional, highly stimulating and an reminder of where Beyoncé came from. From Beyonce on top of a sinking police car in what seems to be New Orleans to her riding around in an old convertable with her hair in braids, the images leave little doubt in the viewers mind that Beyonce is black.

In the music video, released a day before her Super Bowl performance, Beyonce takes on all African-American stereotypes and does so in her own way. Beyoncé and Jay- Z, her husband, have been publicly quiet on the racial conflicts of the past few years, including the Black Lives Matter movement. But the couple has taken a more public role in racial dialogues. Beyonce’s “Formation” in combination with Jay-Z’s business Tidal donating $1.5 million to the Black Lives Matter program makes their position on these issues fairly clear.

Continue reading ““Okay Ladies, Now Let’s Get in Formation””

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The Nuances of the Death Penalty

In the wake of a violent crime and loss of a family member, complicated decisions often must be made in an attempt to find a suitable resolution. In 2013, Darlene Farah’s 20 year-old daughter, Shelby, was murdered in Jacksonville, Florida by 24 year-old James Rhodes.  After security camera footage and Rhodes’s confession made the case clear-cut, Rhodes and his attorneys came up with a plea deal for him to get two consecutive life sentences plus 20 years in state prison with no trial or chance of his appeal. Despite Darlene Farah’s desire to accept the plea deal and allow her family to begin healing, the Florida State Attorney’s Office has decided instead to seek the death penalty for Rhodes.

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Can Someone’s Dignity Be Taken Away?

This post originally appeared November 3, 2015

“Dignity” was invoked no fewer than 10 times by the supporters of gay marriage during the proceedings of the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy used the term 8 times in the majority opinion of the court. He concludes the opinion of the court with these final words: “[The petitioners] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” The take-away message is this: any sort of ban on gay marriage undermines the dignity of those couples and/or of homosexuals in general; anything that undermines dignity is unconstitutional.

Yet, not everyone on the bench agrees that the dignity of homosexuals is in peril with state-based restrictions on marriage. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued that dignity is not at issue here:

Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away. (Obergefell V Hodges 2015)

This somewhat surprising point was quickly picked up by The Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore. During the June 29th episode immediately following the ruling, he asks, “Do you even know what slavery is? Slavery is the complete stripping of humanity and dignity. That’s the point of slavery. When do you think slaves were whipped? Whenever they tried to dare to show any humanity or dignity.”

Although Thomas and Willmore appear to disagree, it’s hard to say what the disagreement is really about. There is something right about what each of them says. Thomas is right to point out that when we say that someone has human dignity, we mean they have intrinsic value and that they are equal in value to other humans. Government policies, even policies permitting slavery, cannot diminish this human value. The intrinsic value of the slave and the slave owner is equal, even if the government says otherwise.

Wilmore’s take also gets something right. The slave holder or the slave state undermines the slave’s human dignity insofar as it fails to treat the slave with the respect that dignity demands. Moreover the slave owner forces the slave into a life not worthy of dignity. The central question is, how can you rob someone of something that is inalienable? If the answer is, “You can’t!,” as Thomas insists, then what are we to conclude about the role that dignity plays in explaining why slavery and discrimination are morally wrong?

Martha Nussbaum suggests that perspectives like that of Thomas’ are based in the ancient Greek tradition of Stoicism. The Stoics believed that all humans have intrinsic dignity on account of their moral rationality and this dignity is invulnerable to the misfortunes of life. No matter what harm or humiliation befalls you, your dignity remains intact. Nussbaum identifies a serious problem with the Stoics’ view of dignity: it lacks normative relevance or force. It cannot be used to condemn certain practices or even explain why certain actions are immoral. If Thomas is right, then the concept of a ‘human dignity violation’ is meaningless.

Contemporary ethicists including Nussbaum argue that this view should be replaced by one that takes into account the extent to which material conditions do impact someone’s dignity.
Contemporary views of the concept of dignity tend to recognize it as having both descriptive and prescriptive aspects. Dignity describes a particular human property (the property of having intrinsic value) while at the same time providing moral reason to refrain from enslaving, degrading, or otherwise denying a person equal rights. Recognizing dignity as having these dual roles allows us to explain the wrongness of certain moral practices we otherwise couldn’t. For example, slavery is clearly a violation of dignity. Denying someone a set of rights enjoyed by all others simply because of their sexual orientation is also, for many, a dignity violation.

Thomas’ view of human dignity is at best parochial. He appears blind to the vital prescriptive role that the concept of dignity plays in everyday discourse concerning our duties to each other. Appeals to dignity underlie our reasons to treat others with respect and explain our moral outrage when governments fail to recognize these reasons. At worst, Thomas provides fodder for denying certain minorities equal rights. This view should be jettisoned in favor of one that provides explanation for why practices such as slavery or discrimination are morally wrong. Wilmore is right to point out that dignity is of central importance in debates concerning the treatment of minorities, especially the treatment of minorities by their government.

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The Church of Green Capitalism

Religion has been notoriously hard to define since before the common era. Make the definition of “religion” too exclusive and well-established movements such as Scientology are left out; make the definition too broad, and everyday fads such as CrossFit suddenly become “religious.” Using the functionalist definition that David R. Loy uses in his essay “The Religion of the Market,” a religion is defined as a historic worldview that teaches humanity what the world is and our role in the world. Under this definition, market capitalism can be defined as a religious movement that has replaced traditional religions in Western society’s search for purpose and happiness.

Continue reading “The Church of Green Capitalism”

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Apple and the iPolice

A few months ago, the San Bernardino Shooting, the deadliest terror attack on American soil since 9/11, took place when Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik burst into an office party at Farook’s job, armed with semi-automatic weapons and dressed in black ski masks and tactical gear. Sixty-five to seventy bullets ripped through the crowd, seriously injuring 22 civilians and leaving 14 dead. Before being killed in a shootout with the police, the couple posted a message to Facebook pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. In the suspects’ destroyed car, investigators found an iPhone belonging to Farook. The battle between the FBI and Apple over the decryption of this device has brought this incident back into the news.

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David Shields’ War Is Beautiful: Did Our Media Fail Us?

David Shields, an American author, has recently released his latest book: War Is Beautiful: The New York Times Pictorial Guide to the Glamour of Armed Conflict. The book criticizes The New York Times, which, according to Shields, was complicit in protracting the Iraq War by presenting front-page photographs of the war in aesthetically attractive ways, blinding readers and making them insensitive to the real violence that happens in war.

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Green Energy or Global Markets?

On Wednesday, February 24th, the Huffington Post published an article calling attention to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) objections to India’s “ambitious program to create homegrown solar energy.” The declaration was especially controversial due to the organization’s history of and capacity to squash other international efforts attempting to utilize local resources and businesses to build sustainable energy programs.

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Surrogacy and Abortion Rights

On February 18, The Atlantic’s Katie O’Reilly published an article titled, “When Parents and Surrogates Disagree on Abortion.” The article describes a messy ongoing legal battle between a pro-life surrogate carrying triplets and the soon-to-be father of these children. In January, a California woman named Melissa Cook entered into a surrogacy contract with a single Georgia man. There were three embryos created, as is frequently the case when doctors implant multiple embryos at a time to increase the chance that one will be fertilized.

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Student Loan Debt’s Enforcement Problem

The prospect of student loan debt is often enough to scare any college graduate. For many, such fear is all too common; according to the Wall Street Journal, 71% of the Class of 2015 graduated with student loan debt. For many of these graduates, the amount owed is scary enough, in itself. What happens, then, when heavily-armed members of law enforcement are thrown into the mix?

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Forbidden Fruit: Apple, the FBI and Institutional Ethics

Your birthday, a pet’s name, or the nostalgia of a high school sports number; the composition of our iPhone password can seem so simple. But a recent case levied by the FBI against Apple has led to a conflict over the integrity of these passwords and sparked debate concerning privacy and security. A California court ordered Apple to produce a feature that would circumvent software preventing the FBI from accessing the phone of Syed Farook, who, along with his wife, committed the San Bernardino terrorist attacks. The couple died in a shootout following their heinous assault, and their electronics were seized by the FBI. They had smashed their cell phones and tampered with their laptop hard drive, but Farook’s work phone, an iPhone 5c, was found undamaged in his car.

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Why Act When It Doesn’t Make a Difference?

This post originally appeared on May 28, 2015.

I’ve got a friend who’s suffering from depression. He’s been holed up in his house for the last two years; living first on sick pay, then savings; venturing out only for fish and canned vegetables. (“They’re healthy.”) I visit him from time to time, which isn’t often enough, and I excuse the infrequency with a lame thought: it doesn’t matter whether I go.

The problem is not that I’m wrong. He doesn’t want visitors, we have the same conversation each time, and he isn’t getting any closer to the man he once was, all bright and bounding. If I’m showing up to make a difference, I’m probably wasting my time.

This defense of inaction is psychologically powerful. We know how the election will play out, so we don’t vote. We know that having tofu won’t save a cow from slaughter, so we have the burger. We know that Old Navy isn’t going to notice whether we shop elsewhere, so we may as well save some money. When we can’t make a difference, why bother?

Sometimes, because we’re wrong. It only seems like we can’t make a difference because so many people contribute to the effect. This tends to be the story in consumer ethics: industries don’t care about what any one person does, but they certainly care about what lots of people do, and “lots of people” don’t do anything if we don’t do something.

In other cases, we really can’t accomplish what we’d like—too few are willing to take up the cause—but we can do something else worthwhile. Consider, for example, participating in Adjunct Walkout Day. My university isn’t going to start paying adjuncts a living wage, so canceling class for their sake feels pointless. By joining in, though, we stand in solidarity with those who aren’t being treated fairly, insisting that wrongdoers be held accountable. That’s a far cry from achieving securing fair wages, but it still isn’t trivial to encourage and criticize, respectively, those who deserve encouragement and criticism.

All that said, my friend’s depression isn’t a collective action problem; it isn’t as though a few more supporters will tip the scales. Protest won’t help either: depression may be a thief, but it can’t be shamed. And we could conclude, on this basis, that my excuse is a good one. But I remain unsatisfied by it. When I drive the twenty-two miles to his door, I’m his friend. When I pick up a book instead, I’m not. And that choice isn’t trivial.

It might sound like I’ve just made this about me. “I can’t make a difference in my friend’s life, but I can make a difference in mine: I can choose what sort of person I’ll become, the ideals that I’ll embody.” And although those things are true, they’re beside the point.

Which is this: sometimes, difference-making doesn’t matter. If I’m going to be a friend, I’m going to sit with him in his depression. Not at the expense of everything else in my life—that’s martyrdom. But at real expense, since that’s what friendship involves. Likewise, if I’m a citizen, I vote; if I’m compassionate, I don’t want anything to do with factory farms. That’s what it is to be a friend, or a citizen, or compassionate. And that’s why we aren’t bad friends or citizens if we fail, or a little less compassionate when we keep eating animals. Rather, we are “friends” and “citizens” and “compassionate.” We have different versions of these relationships and roles and virtues—the paltry, calculating ones where “This is my country” isn’t argument enough for voting, and “That creature suffered needlessly” isn’t argument enough for abstaining. Not so with the versions worth having: they settle how we ought to proceed. (Indeed, that’s much of why they’re worth having.)

Why act when it doesn’t make a difference? In some cases, because it does—though only with some help, or not how we’d hoped. But often enough, this is the wrong sort of question to ask, and the right kind is much simpler:

Are we friends?