The Sanctity of Life:
The term pro-life has been used as a club for those who insist abortion is murder. This musing is not about abortion, but about life as humans are equipped to comprehend it. Life, as part of evolution, has been around a long time---a real long time----millions of years. In the broadest sense the evolution of life involves a heavy dose of diversity and ever increasing complexity. This God created evolutionary process (my belief), and some would insist to take out the word God, is the sustaining process for life in all its forms. Each of us is such a tiny blip in the process as to render us nothingburgers for the most part. Of course massed together as a species, and with other species, the collective mass of life is about as stunningly impressive as each individual form of life is stunningly dwarfed in comparison. It is hard to be out in nature or on major expressways and feel important at all. Sometimes I look around overwhelmed and just think, "Damn, each of these unimaginable number of people imagine themselves important." Of course if anyone takes the time to wander through a large cemetery one catches a glimpse of endless graves, each one representing the existence of many once 'important' persons, totally lost from the memory of the now living. I have always found it difficult to get too interested in my ancestral tree: John Doe, carpenter, born: blah, blah, died: blah, blah----I want to relate to my ancestors but you really can't relate to a name, a city, an occupation. Try to describe a friend to another by telling them what year they were born and where they lived and how many kids they have. You could give them any kind of date or place or occupation and they still would know nothing meaningful about your friend or relative.
I suppose, in a realistic sense, if any individual life has a sanctity to it, death would not be an absolute requirement in the evolutionary process. No matter how we think, God doesn't seem to see the sanctity of life in the same way we do. Then again, what an incredulous bit of nonsense to envision we can think on the same level or way as God. We always create a God in our own image, claim communication with God, and assume if we worship God as our inherited religion instructs, God will be pleased and reward us on an individual basis. Frankly, the more these 'born again' religious nuts of various ilk rant on about their messages from God, the more nutty they appear. In the past, out of ignorance (or is it ignorance?) human groups often worshipped nature. If I could call the shot, I would choose to have humans worship nature as opposed to human invented religious dogma. I mean, what is worshipping nature but to have reverence for God's evolutionary process?
In one sense life is a continuum. There is no death of life. Rather, life just keeps on going with one life form giving rise to other life forms, some forms more suitable to survival in a certain environment than others. One thing is for sure: life doesn't begin at conception. The sperm and egg are quite alive as entities unto themselves, and the cells from which they came were quite alive and so on until we get back to the original form of life (whatever that was). The beauty of God's created evolutionary process is that, once life began, however it was begun, life never ended. There has never been a point in which life had to start over again. So much for life begins at conception.
Still, in another sense, individual lives are important. People we are close to are important, pets are important, species diversity is important. After that objectivity is lost. Your own kids are clearly more important than someone else's kids and your pets more important than someone else's pets or even a lot of other people etc. But what does it matter, in the total picture, who we think is important? It matters only to us. In the absence of innate human ethical principles, others are of no importance. All human ethics is based on the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Period. Most species are minus this inherent ethical value, and survival of the fittest, at any moment in time, prevails. Humans have uniquely inherent ethical values. No matter where found, with whatever culture, humans understand the Golden Rule. We may not always follow it, but we understand it. Humans are inherently ethical minus a psychological disorder.
My favorite ethical philosopher does the best job of describing how we so often fail to follow the Golden Rule---do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I will attempt to condense it here. Almost all of us understand the world is overpopulated and that overpopulation of any species is not good. Nothing good ever comes from overpopulation. In an abstract way everyone can understand that. Yet this topic is almost taboo in political or religious circles. Responsible reproduction is never a topic for any serious political or religious debate. The mother of an Arkansas couple who recently had her 18th child was named Young Mother of the Year in 2004. More recently a young unmarried unemployed destitute gal was accepted for fertility drugs and gave birth to 8 babies to add to the 6 she already had----and it is all legal, in some religious circles even ethical. We still have religions in which using birth control as a method of responsible reproduction is a sin, as is the use of condoms to prevent AIDS. Most times, when the Golden Rule is broken, some sort of religious or political dogma is behind it. Certainly if God wills it, the Golden Rule is trumped. And if your political notions are firmly believed, then even the Golden Rule cannot get in the way of the 'greater good' of your political beliefs.
There are so many people in the world today that there is not enough land or resources to sustain them. The world's population has more than doubled since 1960. I guess, '"So what?" We are just going forth, God's favored species, and multiplying according to God's will. The more the merrier. Going from 3.5 billion to 6.7 billion people in 40 years is, apparently one big yawn. So what? I guess, according to this mind set that doubling in the next 40 years will be another "So what?".
Now let's take a look at our "So what?" attitude. As Singer states: "We tend to assume that if people do not harm others, keep their promises, do not lie or cheat, support their children and their elderly parents, and perhaps contribute a little to needier members of their local community, they've done well." People settled into this mind set would be outraged should anyone question their ethics. In their mind they are chosen candidates for Heaven. Maybe they are.
Singer gives examples of ethical behavior which are easy to understand. Two are below:
1. "On your way to work you pass a small pond. On hot days children sometimes play in the pond, which is only about knee-deep. The weather's cool today, though, and the hour is early, so you are surprised to see a child splashing about in the pond. As you get closer, you see that it is a very young child, just a toddler, who is flailing about, unable to stay upright or walk out of the pond. You look for the parents or babysitter, but there is no one else around. The child is unable to keep his head above water for more than a few seconds at a time. If you don't wade in and pull him out, he seems likely to drown. Wading in is easy and safe, but you will ruin the new shoes you bought only a few days ago, and get your suit wet and muddy. By the time you hand the child over to someone responsible for him, and change your clothes, you'll be late for work. What should you do?"
2. "Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. Not only does Bob get pleasure from driving and caring for his car, he also knows that its rising market value means that he will be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does no, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is rolling down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child who appears to be absorbed in playing on the tracks. Oblivious to the runaway train, the child is in great danger. Bob can't stop the train, and the child is too far away to hear his warning shout, but Bob can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. If he does so, nobody will be killed, but the train will crash through the decaying barrier at the end of the siding and destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch."
Just about everyone concludes that the child, in both cases should be saved, that the sacrifice asked, is the only ethical response. And of course, both you and I would, in fact, save the child and pay the price, whether it be shoes and clothes or a car. Certainly, to save life is worth some sacrifice to do it. There is not a religion in the world that teaches otherwise. Really?
Well, let's just look at some facts: 60% of the world population is currently malnourished. There are almost 10 million young children dying every year from AVOIDABLE, poverty-related causes, and another 8 million older children and adults. This raises two separate dilemmas. How do we stop this runaway population growth? And, what do we do about those 10 million young children dying from AVOIDABLE poverty related causes?
The ethical question is this: if ethics requires that we as an ethical person save the child about to drown or get hit by a train, what about saving a child about to die from a poverty-related cause? Relief agencies state, on the average, a child about to die, from a poverty-related cause, can be saved for about $200. Are any of these distant children any less deserving to be saved than the girl in the pond on on the railroad tracks? Clearly not. The only difference is that none of these children are in our face. It seems odd that few, if any, of the abortion fanatics ever show even the slightest concern about these 10 million children about to die, or one I guess could even say be killed. The sanctity of life seems awfully narrow for these people. Hardly any of us, myself included, are willing to address the obvious need to stop these 10 million children from dying.
If pushed, we then respond that Americans are very generous and do what we can to help others across the world. Of course we neglect the fact that no country in the world comes close to us in number of humans killed in military adventures, or wounded, or displaced from their homes in these 'necessary' adventures. But let us ignore all this or assume these really are 'necessary' adventures. On a comparative basis, charitable giving in the United States is around 2.2 percent of gross national income. That is considerably more than any other country. Gold star deserved. On the other hand we lag behind other European countries in giving time for volunteer work. So the two kind of balance out and we are right there in the mix compared to other European countries.
BUT, when it comes to saving any of these 10 million children, all this charity is quite deceiving. A third of charity in the U.S. is given in the form of money to religious institutions. Almost all of this money is used for salaries, building and maintaining buildings, etc. Less than 10% is passed on as aid to developing countries. And most of this money is used to run international exchange programs, things like that. In the end private philanthropy for foreign aid amounts to .07% of our nations gross national income.
Well, you might say, let's not forget all the aid our government gives from our tax money. The U.S. government does give more in total foreign aid than any other country but not as a percent off gross national income. There we are in 21st place. So, in reality, we and our government do something but nothing very spectacular. I wouldn't embarrass all of us by comparing what we do give to the amount we spend on military matters. Here we spend more than all the other top industrialized nations combined---but not enough to save us a loss in Vietnam and a stalemate in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course there is no stalemate, we've only been there over seven years now.
But I stray, as I always seem to do. Every affluent person in the U.S. spends discretionary money on a bunch of stuff we desire in the illusion that acquiring it will bring happiness. It must bring some happiness because we continue to buy more. The fact is that if we spent a little less we could probably, each of us, save a whole bunch of these 10 million children who would otherwise die. If it is wrong for the guy to save his Bugatti instead of a child---and the Bugatti is an expensive item----then how can it not be wrong for the rest of us to spend a lot less to save some of these 10 million children? We have, by human nature, a warped sense of priorities. 2500 people were killed in the Trade Center Towers. 10 million children die needlessly every year. And we yawn. To 'free' Iraq we have displaced 4.5 million Iraqiis, left 1-2 million widows, 5 million orphans, and 1 million dead. To save any of the 10 million children we spend what? Aside from the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 we made them pay a bit more than tit for tat.
The reason for the ethical imbalance is clear. We actually watched Americans leaping out of the Twin Tower high rises. It was a televised spectacle. We don't see any of these 10 million children die. Maybe we should train cameras on them and broadcast their demise. No doubt, watching this I would probably, cheap as I am, send money to save the child I was watching die. Let's face it, most of us probably would. Now the child would be like the child in the pond or on the railroad tracks---an actual child about to die unless one of us does something. Like others, I recently lost about half of my savings. Too late, but I could have saved a good number of those 10 million children dying, and been none the worse off for it---just as affluent today as I am without having done anything.
I have come to increasingly dislike the strange form of American fascism which seems to be some kind of alliance between radical nationalism and religious purism---this notion that 'my religious beliefs and my country are always right'. It puzzles me that they can be so right and yet so angry all the time. I figure the anger comes from a feeling, deep down, gated away from reality, that they are wrong. The mentality is always the same: "I don't care how sensible or rational or ethical an issue might be---if my beliefs are wrong here then maybe much of what I believe is wrong". I guess that really is scary for anyone.
Sadly, no matter if all of us, collectively, were to sacrifice financially and save all these 10 million children---if we really did this, and of course we could, anything gained is short lived. There are too many people. The more we save, the more the situation is aggravated. Mother Nature will take care of overpopulation like she always has. It won't be pleasant and many parts of the globe already feel the mass destruction via wars, terrorism, homelessness, starvation, genocide, pollution, and all the other crushing forces that are consequences of overpopulation.
With ethical choices in matters like this it is always necessary to see the forest for the sake of the trees. Evolution always does this, humans---at this stage in our evolution---have trouble doing this. Saving these 10 million children from death is not the solution to the basic problem. There are too many people on the earth---we have senselessly and carelessly overpopulated the planet. Evolutionary laws do not tolerate overpopulation. The choice humans have is simple: responsible reproduction or more starvation, homelessness, terrorism, genocides, class warfare, and massive slaughter across the globe as each group fights for a piece of the dwindling pie.
Organized religions need to return to the Golden Rule and change their dogma to fit the times. Religions can't be centuries behind the times with change. Almost all the major problems of today are global. With modern avenues of communication solutions have to be global. We even need a global religion based simply on the Golden Rule. Forget the rest of the tripe. The world is governed by the laws of evolution and it is through this God created process that our fates our governed. Forget all the sectarian illusions, the personal communication with God, the notion that inherited religious dogma is a ticket to heaven, and use as the global ethical commonality the Golden Rule. With the golden rule ethics is stable and on sound footing. Issues can be addressed fairly in a timely fashion and all people, everywhere, at every level of society, can finally address issues rationally and be on the same page. When the common good tops sectarianism, cultural matters, ethnic background, economic divisions, and 'family values', only then can all major problems be tackled with an effective collaborative effort to any successful conclusion. Yes, we should all dig down and help save the 10 million children, but to do this and not bite the bullet of responsible reproduction is to render such an effort useless, even cruel as they will merely live to suffer yet another day.
