Fellow
activists:
It is easy and almost natural for those in our movement to be
misanthropes. How many times have I heard over the years: "The Earth
would be in much better shape had our species not evolve into being at
all." Or, "God made just one mistake, and that is to have created Man."
Some even advocate the intentional self-destruction of our species,
wishing for a global pandemic to wipe out our species, "for the good of
all".
I beg to differ, and find such sentiments demoralizing on the whole
movement, if not inducing of self-destructive behavior on the adherents.
I know this well, because I was one such adherent once upon a time. Now,
I hold a much more optimistic view, and have become more purposeful,
more effective, and infinitely happier. I have my reasons:
1. It is common agreement among scientists that it is
not "if" but "when" another kilometer-wide asteroid would come crashing
down on Earth. It could be a thousand centuries from now, but it could
also be next week. The last one 64 million years ago wiped out the large
dinosaurs (leaving the birds as their progeny). This one will wipe out
the large mammals - whales and dolphins and seals and birds, and tigers
and bears and deer and elephants, whom we all love so much. This is
inevitable in the absence of the one thing that can save them - no, not
any omnipotent god, nor any hi-tech aliens, but one of Earth's own
species capable of high technology that can defend Life on Earth - the
entire Biosphere - from such exterminating incursions. Even if no
asteroid ever again comes down on Earth, the Earth will still ultimately
be destroyed by the dying Sun. If life's inevitable fate is destruction,
what then is the meaning of life?
2. I believe that even the hi-tech aliens, with enough
technology to come to this planet, but enough wisdom to not use it to
destroy us, once went through a barbaric stage when they could have
destroyed themselves, and their home planet and all its life-forms along
with it. I believe that our species is now at this critical stage. We
are now sitting at a P-Level ("P" for "Planetary") final exam. If we
fail, we will destroy our planet and ourselves. If we pass, we will save
it from ourselves. The fact that we are sitting at this exam does not
mean that we are evil. But if we fail, then we are.
3. As the following article attests, Homo sapiens is a
moral species. This sense of Morality evolved out of Amorality over
millions of years, and is hard won. If Homo sapiens is wiped out, then
this sense of morality is wiped out along with it. The problem is this:
Where there is Morality, there is Immorality. It is out of this sense of
morality that we can condemn ourselves for being immoral. I believe that
the rise of immorality out of morality is inevitable, and the presence
of immorality does not condemn morality itself. It is morality that
gives us our sense of good and evil. Those species without a sense of
morality are neither good nor evil. And that species with a sense of
morality, which exhibits exceedingly immoral behavior, is also
exceedingly good. AR activists, at least from an AR activist's point of
view, are exceedingly good. How many species have Animal Rights
Activists, who would devote their entire lives working for other
creatures and other species? One - ours.
4. In today's world of Christianity versus Islam (this
is one of the ways I look at it), Armageddon is first of all within us.
World War Three is only the ramification of our inner conflict. Again,
this is one of the problems in our cosmic test. And again, its is not
the fact that we have the conflict that makes us evil, but our refusal
to resolve the conflict or our intensifying it. But if Christianity and
Islam commit global mutual destruction, dragging the other religions
down with them, in other words, if humanity commits suicide, dragging
the other species down with us, then we are evil indeed.
5. I also believe that given the basic biological
species with a large brain and opposable thumbs, the rise of primitive
societies with religion, conflict and technology is inevitable. By
"primitive society" I mean of course such early cultures as
cannibalistic tribes, and such early "civilizations" as Sumaria, Egypt,
Greece, Chin and Rome, but I also mean the contemporary societies, even
those considered most advanced, including Canada and the United States.
There is nothing evil about being primitive in the cosmic order of
things, but there is something evil about a primitive society refusing
to evolve.
6. I also believe that given an initial technical
impulse, the eventual advent of such technologies as fossil-fuel
combustion and nuclear power are inevitable. Again, there is nothing
intrinsically evil about these technologies, but the misuse of them is
evil. Given fossil fuel technology, I also believe that global warming
is inevitable. There is nothing intrinsically evil about global warming,
but to see it and do nothing, or to deny it out of corporate greed, or
to burn the last gallon of gas because "if I don't, another will," is
evil. I even believe that warfare is inevitable among primitive
societies. There is nothing immoral about the historical heritage of
war, but there is something evil about waging war in spite of the advent
of the peace movement, which is itself an inevitable development. Once
we realize the evil of war, then to wage war is evil. Given the
inevitability of conflict among primitive technical societies, weapons
also becomes inevitable, and, with the advent of nuclear physics, which
is inevitable given physics, nuclear weapons likewise. Again, the
presence of nuclear weapons is not itself evil, but the use of them to
result in a global nuclear holocaust definitely is.
7. Life is beautiful in a myriad ways - the explosive
grace of the cheetah, the acrobatics of the falcon, the majesty of the
whale, the delicateness of the butterfly, the geometry of the plankton,
even the erect dignity of the human. But there is something extra to the
human species - they can create beauty out of themselves.
An alien listening to our broadcasts, seeing our news and listening
to our music, would say, "I've seen the evil of which this species is
capable, and would not weep thrice if tomorrow I see a global nuclear
holocaust, or if next century it is roasted by global baking, but I
would weep twice, once for the millions of innocent species that fall
with it, and once for the species that precipitated it. It would be a
tragedy of interstellar proportions if the species capable of creating a
masterpiece like the music I just heard would end up committing suicide
- out of self-loathing and self-hatred.
Know how good we can be, and be that good, is what I say.
Anthony Marr, founder
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
www.HOPE-CARE.org
By NICHOLAS WADE - New York Times
March 20, 2007
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others.
Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save
others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also
deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve
themselves for several days.
Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the
precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew
out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not
philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.
Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists� bid to
annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the
biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.
The original call to battle was sounded by the biologist Edward O.
Wilson more than 30 years ago, when he suggested in his 1975 book
�Sociobiology� that �the time has come for ethics to be removed
temporarily from the hands of the philosophers and biologicized.� He may
have jumped the gun about the time having come, but in the intervening
decades biologists have made considerable progress.
Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed
in his book �Moral Minds� that the brain has a genetically shaped
mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar
to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book,
�Primates and Philosophers,� the primatologist Frans de Waal defends
against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be
seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes.
Dr. de Waal, who is director of the Living Links Center at Emory
University, argues that all social animals have had to constrain or
alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile.
These constraints, evident in monkeys and even more so in chimpanzees,
are part of human inheritance, too, and in his view form the set of
behaviors from which human morality has been shaped.
Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings,
and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess
morality. But he argues that human morality would be impossible without
certain emotional building blocks that are clearly at work in chimp and
monkey societies.
Dr. de Waal�s views are based on years of observing nonhuman
primates, starting with work on aggression in the 1960s. He noticed then
that after fights between two combatants, other chimpanzees would
console the loser. But he was waylaid in battles with psychologists over
imputing emotional states to animals, and it took him 20 years to come
back to the subject.
He found that consolation was universal among the great apes but
generally absent from monkeys � among macaques, mothers will not even
reassure an injured infant. To console another, Dr. de Waal argues,
requires empathy and a level of self-awareness that only apes and humans
seem to possess. And consideration of empathy quickly led him to explore
the conditions for morality.
Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and
fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for
others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be
treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what
they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and
other social primates.
Social living requires empathy, which is especially evident in
chimpanzees, as well as ways of bringing internal hostilities to an end.
Every species of ape and monkey has its own protocol for reconciliation
after fights, Dr. de Waal has found. If two males fail to make up,
female chimpanzees will often bring the rivals together, as if sensing
that discord makes their community worse off and more vulnerable to
attack by neighbors. Or they will head off a fight by taking stones out
of the males� hands.
Dr. de Waal believes that these actions are undertaken for the
greater good of the community, as distinct from person-to-person
relationships, and are a significant precursor of morality in human
societies.
Macaques and chimpanzees have a sense of social order and rules of
expected behavior, mostly to do with the hierarchical natures of their
societies, in which each member knows its own place. Young rhesus
monkeys learn quickly how to behave, and occasionally get a finger or
toe bitten off as punishment. Other primates also have a sense of
reciprocity and fairness. They remember who did them favors and who did
them wrong. Chimps are more likely to share food with those who have
groomed them. Capuchin monkeys show their displeasure if given a smaller
reward than a partner receives for performing the same task, like a
piece of cucumber instead of a grape.
These four kinds of behavior � empathy, the ability to learn and
follow social rules, reciprocity and peacemaking � are the basis of
sociality.
Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate
sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce
their society�s moral codes much more rigorously with rewards,
punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of
judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.
Religion can be seen as another special ingredient of human
societies, though one that emerged thousands of years after morality, in
Dr. de Waal�s view. There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman
primates, but no precursors of religion. So it seems reasonable to
assume that as humans evolved away from chimps, morality emerged first,
followed by religion. �I look at religions as recent additions,� he
said. �Their function may have to do with social life, and enforcement
of rules and giving a narrative to them, which is what religions really
do.�
As Dr. de Waal sees it, human morality may be severely limited by
having evolved as a way of banding together against adversaries, with
moral restraints being observed only toward the in group, not toward
outsiders. �The profound irony is that our noblest achievement �
morality � has evolutionary ties to our basest behavior � warfare,� he
writes. �The sense of community required by the former was provided by
the latter.�
Dr. de Waal has faced down many critics in evolutionary biology and
psychology in developing his views. The evolutionary biologist George
Williams dismissed morality as merely an accidental byproduct of
evolution, and psychologists objected to attributing any emotional state
to animals. Dr. de Waal convinced his colleagues over many years that
the ban on inferring emotional states was an unreasonable restriction,
given the expected evolutionary continuity between humans and other
primates.
His latest audience is moral philosophers, many of whom are
interested in his work and that of other biologists. �In departments of
philosophy, an increasing number of people are influenced by what they
have to say,� said Gilbert Harman, a Princeton University philosopher.
Dr. Philip Kitcher, a philosopher at Columbia University, likes Dr.
de Waal�s empirical approach. �I have no doubt there are patterns of
behavior we share with our primate relatives that are relevant to our
ethical decisions,� he said. �Philosophers have always been beguiled by
the dream of a system of ethics which is complete and finished, like
mathematics. I don�t think it�s like that at all.�
But human ethics are considerably more complicated than the sympathy
Dr. de Waal has described in chimps. �Sympathy is the raw material out
of which a more complicated set of ethics may get fashioned,� he said.
�In the actual world, we are confronted with different people who might
be targets of our sympathy. And the business of ethics is deciding who
to help and why and when.�
Many philosophers believe that conscious reasoning plays a large part
in governing human ethical behavior and are therefore unwilling to let
everything proceed from emotions, like sympathy, which may be evident in
chimpanzees. The impartial element of morality comes from a capacity to
reason, writes Peter Singer, a moral philosopher at Princeton, in
�Primates and Philosophers.� He says, �Reason is like an escalator �
once we step on it, we cannot get off until we have gone where it takes
us.�
That was the view of Immanuel Kant, Dr. Singer noted, who believed
morality must be based on reason, whereas the Scottish philosopher David
Hume, followed by Dr. de Waal, argued that moral judgments proceed from
the emotions.
But biologists like Dr. de Waal believe reason is generally brought
to bear only after a moral decision has been reached. They argue that
morality evolved at a time when people lived in small foraging societies
and often had to make instant life-or-death decisions, with no time for
conscious evaluation of moral choices. The reasoning came afterward as a
post hoc justification. �Human behavior derives above all from fast,
automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower
conscious processes,� Dr. de Waal writes.
However much we may celebrate rationality, emotions are our compass,
probably because they have been shaped by evolution, in Dr. de Waal�s
view. For example, he says: �People object to moral solutions that
involve hands-on harm to one another. This may be because hands-on
violence has been subject to natural selection whereas utilitarian
deliberations have not.�
Philosophers have another reason biologists cannot, in their view,
reach to the heart of morality, and that is that biological analyses
cannot cross the gap between �is� and �ought,� between the description
of some behavior and the issue of why it is right or wrong. �You can
identify some value we hold, and tell an evolutionary story about why we
hold it, but there is always that radically different question of
whether we ought to hold it,� said Sharon Street, a moral philosopher at
New York University. �That�s not to discount the importance of what
biologists are doing, but it does show why centuries of moral philosophy
are incredibly relevant, too.�
Biologists are allowed an even smaller piece of the action by Jesse
Prinz, a philosopher at the University of North Carolina. He believes
morality developed after human evolution was finished and that moral
sentiments are shaped by culture, not genetics. �It would be a fallacy
to assume a single true morality could be identified by what we do
instinctively, rather than by what we ought to do,� he said. �One of the
principles that might guide a single true morality might be recognition
of equal dignity for all human beings, and that seems to be
unprecedented in the animal world.�
Dr. de Waal does not accept the philosophers� view that biologists
cannot step from �is� to �ought.� �I�m not sure how realistic the
distinction is,� he said. �Animals do have �oughts.� If a juvenile is in
a fight, the mother must get up and defend her. Or in food sharing,
animals do put pressure on each other, which is the first kind of
�ought� situation.�
Dr. de Waal�s definition of morality is more down to earth than Dr.
Prinz�s. Morality, he writes, is �a sense of right and wrong that is
born out of groupwide systems of conflict management based on shared
values.� The building blocks of morality are not nice or good behaviors
but rather mental and social capacities for constructing societies �in
which shared values constrain individual behavior through a system of
approval and disapproval.� By this definition chimpanzees in his view do
possess some of the behavioral capacities built in our moral systems.
�Morality is as firmly grounded in neurobiology as anything else we
do or are,� Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996 book �Good Natured.�
Biologists ignored this possibility for many years, believing that
because natural selection was cruel and pitiless it could only produce
people with the same qualities. But this is a fallacy, in Dr. de Waal�s
view. Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by
whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in �Primates and
Philosophers,� with �a compass for life�s choices that takes the
interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of
human morality.�
ARTICLE SOURCE:
www.nytimes.com/2007/03/20/science/20moral.html
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