Helping the world

[hypnagogue]

A lot of points brought up, corydoras. Let's see if I can address them all.

Your interpretation of my use of the phrase, "great burdens of the past," as an allusion to post-colonial hardships is very understandable, but it is not however what I intended. Indeed, if colonial guilt had even occurred to me I would have chosen my words more carefully. That phrase, though poorly worded, was meant to address the situations which people are born into which they could not possibly have avoided, ie troubles that were brewing before they were even born. Although, colonialism could perhaps rightly be filed under that category in some circumstances. I personally am not one to feel guilty for the fact that someone from my race alive at the time of some of my ancestors did something nasty. My motivation to aid suffering parts of the world is honestly more pragmatic. Every properly cultivated human being increases the progress of our species as a whole. To be somewhat more personal, I don't believe in a liberty agenda for any overtly moral reasons, but rather that I believe it is such conditions which produce the most potent human beings.

My distinction between morality and civil liberties perhaps owes much to that sentiment. I'm well aware that christian moralists have many factoids and angles to justify their various assertions regarding the practices of consenting adults, but I do not ascribe to any of them. For me they are purely moral preferences without any material affect on the development of human beings. If you wish to hold those moral preferences, I can not deny that they are moral, because I can not define morality. That is the basis of my distinction. One can be debated on it's merits and the other can not.

The overall theme, as I understood it, of your position is that all aid has moral ramifications, why not actively address it? I would agree with that statement without reservation were it not for the genesis of this discussion. My understanding is that you support actively trying to influence the morals of other cultures for their betterment. Keyword here is actively. I do not support active influence because, as I said, I do not believe that being in the position of aiding someone in need is an appropriate position to be trying to judge morality from. It is an uneven playing field for ideas. I say I would endorse such a statement normally for the same reasons as you've brought up regarding television and the Bhutanese. These things should be considered beforehand.

Let me explain why I believe an even playing field matters. Most simply, I believe that the responsibility of choosing for oneself what you believe and having the freedom to act on it, is absolutely vital for the development of character. If you are being influenced when you are at your lowest your own ideas have not been given a full chance. In a greater sense, or in the bigger picture, though, my greatest concern is that of cultural or moral monopolies. I oppose them for the same reason that I oppose economic monopolies. That being that competition yields superior competitors. If we set out to homogenize morality we have only dogma and stagnation to look forward to. I believe it is vital that other people's be allowed and encouraged to follow different paths to their full conclusions.

Liberty is the path I've chosen and I am more than willing to face any competitor, be they socialist, imperial, theological, or even dangerously aggressive.

 

[partypooper]

I mean in order to have a truely free country, you must have a moral society (James Madison).

moral by whose standards? this is a very dangerous idea.

 

[Corydoras]

It's often thought that our government can just waltz in anywhere and fix any problem and that we simply need the political will to do it. It seems pointing out how that's simply not the case might be the best response.

You can point to history. These trouble spots are not our colonies and should not be. I think colonialization probably is the best shot at "fixing" or "pacifying" another country, and it's been disastrous, which is why the colonial powers divested themselves of colony after colony in the twentieth century like the UK, or broke up like the USSR. You have to take over a country wholesale to fix systemic problems, and do this principally by using your army to destroy the power structure of a country and replace it with your own people. Sound familiar?


Sometimes I think the urge to fix another country comes from a sense that one's own life may be too comfortable.

But look... do you really want to save someone from death, leaving their children orphans? Literally? Do you want to be a hero and do things that other people don't have the guts to do? Seriously? Do you want to work on giving people liberty? Do you believe, as in the saying quoted in Schindler's List, that if you save a life you save a whole world?

Volunteer for a suicide hotline. This is the most direct way to save a life if you are not a doctor or a lifeguard or a first responder.

Libertarians frequently believe that whoever wants to die has the right to... but people who call suicide hotlines often don't really want to die, and feel backed into a corner, not like they're making a free choice, and that's why they're calling. You have the power to help them get into a situation where they may have more freedom. And these hotlines are almost perpetually busy; there is no shortage of work.

http://www.befrienders.org/helplines/helplines.asp?c2=USA

 

[Corydoras]

The overall theme, as I understood it, of your position is that all aid has moral ramifications, why not actively address it? I would agree with that statement without reservation were it not for the genesis of this discussion. My understanding is that you support actively trying to influence the morals of other cultures for their betterment. Keyword here is actively. I do not support active influence because, as I said, I do not believe that being in the position of aiding someone in need is an appropriate position to be trying to judge morality from.

When you write about development of character, that is a moral judgment. When you write about liberty, that is a moral judgment. When you write about opposing monopolies, that is a moral judgment. I do indeed think that your idea of morality (as being what people do with their genitals) is incredibly narrow, and, indeed, very wrong.

When I mentioned the medical implications of certain behaviors that happen to be frowned upon by Christianity, I was speaking from the perspective of informed consent specifically in regard to your bring up genital issues. You have not addressed the issue of informed consent. (Actually, I think you sucker-punched me by bringing up the particular obsessions of Protestants. I mentioned Protestants first, but not because of their genital obsessions, which latter you brought up.)

So if you want to talk genitals, Christians don't have any fondness for male circumcision, in fact at some points in history have persecuted circumcised men and have viewed uncircumcision as a proud sign of being neither Jewish nor Muslim-- and yet data show that circumcision vastly reduces the chances a man will be infected with HIV.

I'm tired of talking genital matters. Morality is much broader than that, and I don't think that you are going to get over your prejudice that because I mentioned Christianity, I am on a crusade.

If you go back and read my posts carefully, what I am saying is that among the groups that take up the moral burden of what they are doing, some of those who most fully accept that burden are religious groups. But I also pointed out Amnesty International ("as good as it gets," said I) and the charity of the Queen of Bhutan, neither of which are Christian. Nor, for that matter, are Christians morally homogeneous. If you read Christian theology, you simply cannot reconcile current Episcopalian mores with current Missouri-Synod mores-- or even liberation theology with Opus Dei, and both are Catholic movements. Ultimately, I am not saying aid groups should be morally homogeneous-- they can't be. There's too much work to do.

I think the heart of the contrast between our perspectives is that although you accept the universal "moral ramifications of aid," you are taking the view that there is such a thing as nearly morally neutral knowledge (as provided in education) and that this nearly neutral knowledge leads to freedom of choice and what you call a level playing field. I explicitly reject that, but NOT because of Christianity or because things ought to be otherwise.

I'm basically a Foucauldian, which doesn't fit very well with any stripe of politics in the United States that I'm aware of. But what this means is that I don't think there is what you call a "level playing field" anywhere, because there are power relationships everywhere. I think your attitude is to take as close to what you think is a morally neutral position as possible while denying the correctness of your position. Mine is to take up the burden because I don't think what you are urging is at all possible, humanly or theoretically.

I believe that pretending one doesn't have a perspective leads to all sorts of effects that are not likely to be beneficial, as the Nuremberg Trials showed-- or, for that matter, see the ads in Wired Magazine in print format, which are in large part about ways rich people can spend their money on fun through electronics (which, as we know, are far from environmentally neutral) even though these people got their money in fields which are supposed to be morally neutral. Silence about one's own moral perspective is complicity with what is against one's moral perspective. If you are silent about (what the Western world calls) liberty, you are in complicity with the forces of (what the Western world calls) tyranny.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-knowledge