Being Good

Dear Nell,

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While procrastinating before beginning my reply to your frighteningly thorough and imposingly thoughtful posting, I flipped to CNN and into a rapid succession of ethical dilemmas:

• A Yank and an Italian doctor have announced their intention to clone a human being for 200 infertile couples. Meaning 200 clones, I guess, if they get the recipe right. An ethicist was on hand to point out that for all the docs' triumphalism about Dolly, many a malformed, hideous sheep monster preceded her and that Dolly herself was aging much, much too rapidly. Mutant babies--left in dumpsters for the rest of us to deal with--are just around the corner.
• A report on the 56^th anniversary of our bombing of Hiroshima. The Enola Gay's pilot argued that today's standards can't be applied to the situation he, and the Allies, faced in 1945. There was also an essay by a GI who was among the first to enter Hiroshima after the bombing. He supported it then but now feels it to have been an unjustifiable atrocity for which he has traveled around Japan apologizing.
• Finally, a group of women, including two Americans, has been jailed in Afghanistan for trying to convert Afghans to Christianity.

Calling Mr. Blackburn! Calling Mr. Blackburn!

I'm not sure I agree with him that we hesitate to engage with ethical issues because we're either too cynical or too self-conscious. I don't agree that we hesitate to engage. I think we, especially Americans, do little else BUT engage in pseudo-ethical debates. Moralizing is what Americans do best; though, to be clear, there's rarely a debate--there's simply sermonizing. Since the vast majority of it is sanctimonious and meant to shine a big ol' light on the speaker's oft-invoked but little observed virtue (whether political or religious), these discussions tend to go nowhere. Blackburn says, "We are ... nervous talking about our good: it seems moralistic, or undemocratic, or elitist. Similarly, we are nervous talking about duty. The Victorian ideal of a life devoted to duty, or a calling, is substantially lost to us."

I have to partially disagree, though he may be right about England. But here in the good old U.S.A., we're pretty comfortable with our lack of interest in self-sacrifice (look at our savings and debt rate) or in the common good (look at our all-volunteer military or a public restroom for crying out loud). It's pretty open us-versus-them warfare, it seems to me, with little thought for our interests as a whole. What passes for this kind of debate always involves the other guy needing to change his ways, never you, and what's best for America coincides nicely with what's best for your district, ward, or block.

Have you noticed lately all the articles about the police and a "blue flu"-type slowdown in the wake of all the complaints against them? You might think they would be ashamed to admit to not doing their jobs; you'd think they might be horrified at the notion of being an unconscious racial profiler or of working with those who brutalize suspects in dark alleyways and kill the innocent. You'd think they'd be ashamed of their implicit threat to turn the criminals loose on us. You'd think they'd at least give the criticisms some thought, make it clear they don't tolerate such things and earn their money doing their jobs the way society says it has to be done. Instead, they're furious that we dare to criticize them. They cower behind anonymity and brag to reporters about how few stops they've made or tickets they've written. Where's the "nervousness" in that?

As for a moral environment where lives of service and duty come naturally, Blackburn is absolutely right--they're largely lost to us. But at least we pay lip service--what commencement address doesn't call for it? But how many commencement addresses are given by some humbly dressed, modestly paid public servant toiling outside of the lime light? Think of Curt Cobain and his aimless mall rat generation. Talk about existential crisis--today's young people don't even have the myths and untoppled heroes we got to at least consider emulating before the nude photos of them surfaced. That must explain the Reagan mystique; what else was there?

Which brings us to the DuPont Circle philosophy slams. Did you notice that that article ran in the Post the same week as one about a long-running drag club? I'm sure there's a connection; I just haven't figured out what it is yet.

Ethically yours,
Debra

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This week, Slate's Book Clubbers tackle Being Good, philosopher Simon Blackburn's short, handy introduction to ethics. Click here for an explanation of our format and here to buy the book.

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