do you support anything that people are going to do whether its legal or not? If you do draw a line, would you mind terribly giving me a hint where it would lie. I am not being sarcastic here. All of your posts on this and other issues have indicated how accepting, and tolerant you are. I'm just wondering if you are able to define a limit on what you accept.
Hello Abdul Haq. I thought about your question, and here's my response:
I think abortion is an extremely complex moral issue that pits several different social and moral goods against each other. I view it a shining emblem of social progress that the forum for the debate has moved out of the hands of patriarchal religious and state hierarchies and into civil society, i.e. discussions such as this one. I personally am very uncomfortable with the concept of abortion, but that does not mean it I think it constitutes a murder that should be tolerated just because women will get them anyway. Is abortion murder? I don't know. When does life start? Wow, what a question! Life started billions of years ago and has been an unceasing river of regeneration, of dying and birth, ever since. Deep stuff. Very appropriate for a philosophy or ethics class. Very appropriate for a woman considering an abortion. NOT at all appropriate for the language of legislation on the floor of Congress.
The abortion issue is very, very complicated and has numerous dimensions. It is to me not a series of black and white delineations, but rather a complex crystalline prism that defies simple answers. I view it as a sign of social progress that women now decide whether abortion is the right decision for them in the privacy of their souls, families, and confessional booths rather than having the issue decided for them by the state.
Generally, I draw the line of tolerance where I imagine everyone else draws it--at the point where someone's action infringes upon the human, civil, property, or privacy rights of another person. Talk about wishing I were dead, and that's alright. I might take offense, but you've not violated my rights. Grab a 9mm Gatt and shoot me dead, and you've violated my human rights. Hopefully you'll be convicted in a court of law, prosecuted by a assistant district attorney working for an elected D.A., overseen by an elected judge or one appointed by elected officials, and ultimately decided by a jury of your peers. Simple, huh?
But specifically, I try not to draw any lines. The world is very complex, and issues such as abortion, the death penalty, and human rights--grafted upon a series of conflicting and diverse cultures, value systems, doctrines, and sub-doctrines--do not lend themselves to crisp clean lines that can be applied universally.
Certainly, there's the rare easy case of the man who bludgeons an infant to death "cause he wouldn't stop crying." He should get the chair or life in prison. There's the case of the crook who broke into my apartment and stole my stereo to buy drugs. That SOB should rot in….ah, but wait. Maybe sending such a person to jail would merely perpetuate the cycle of drugs-jail-better connections-drugs-jail-better connections he's caught in. Maybe a solid drug rehabilitation program will relieve him of his drug addiction. And maybe without the drug addiction he'll be a productive member of society who wouldn't need to steal. Would I rather have him refine his criminal skills in prison or be treated for his addiction? He violated my property rights, though, so shouldn't he be punished?
The world presents us with moral dilemmas that defy lines, wreak havoc on lines, mock lines, maybe force us to rethink the concept of lines altogether. The Freedom Riders of the south violated the property laws of the communities where they held illegal sit-ins in an attempt to draw attention to the fight for civil rights. Does that make their action wrong? The slaves of Haiti rose up and murdered their masters in an attempt to free themselves of bondage. Were they wrong in violating the human rights of their oppressors?
Should abortion be legal? Some say it constitutes the murder of a potential human being. Others say a fetus wholly dependent on its host is but a multi-cell organism. I don't pretend to know. I say, let the mother decide. Let her draw her own lines.
Is homosexuality immoral? Some say it's a crime against nature and God. Others say homosexuals have always been a certain part of the population and should be embraced. I don't pretend to know I say let people decide for themselves whether they want to embrace or reject homosexuals, whether they want a draw a line that encompasses or exiles homosexuals, but by golly, afford everyone--be they gay or straight, black or white, male or female--the same opportunities in the workplace.
Let's grapple with these questions. Let's not pretend to have all the answers set in stone. Let's not let our opinions become ossified by false illusions of certainty and self-righteousness. Even everything I've written in this post I'm not sure about.
Above all let's keep the government out of legislating moral standards on questions where there are no clear-cut violations of another individual's rights.
Drawing abstract lines in the moral and ethical sand to me is potentially dangerous. Each issue should be looked at on its own merits and debated within civil society. Such debates are always healthy and productive. For the government or anyone else to decide where that line you speak of rests and then try to impose that line upon society reeks to me of the worst kind of Stalinist social engineering. Have you read Thomas Pynchon's brilliant "Mason & Dixon"? It's all out about the absurdity of Western Civilization's obsession with drawing lines-between black and white, between north and south, between Mason and Dixon, between Pennsylvania and Maryland, between slave and master.
So, to answer your question, I don't draw lines. I try to come up with conclusions on each issue based on the circumstances and realities of that issue as well as my own values. I do not try to come up with a set of rights and wrongs in my head and try to apply them to the real world. I fortunately don't have some handy-dandy book--be it the Bible or Das Kapital--to refer to whenever I'm faced with an ethical dilemma.
I hope this satisfies you as to where I'm coming from. |
