A piece in the Atlantic, “Heritage Turkeys: Worth the Cost?”, recently raised the following question: why pay $7 a pound or more for a naturally raised heritage turkey, when supermarkets offer commodity turkeys for $1.50 a pound? Although much of the article reads as a PR release about how great their old-school methods of turkey-raising are, there was one passage that caught my attention:
“First, in many ways the commodity turkey is artificially cheap. In the immediate sense, industrial methods do lower production costs. These include intensive crowding in metal confinement buildings; minimal human care, made possible by total confinement and mechanized feed and water systems; and reliance on cheap feeds (often including slaughterhouse wastes and a panoply of pharmaceuticals). Government subsidies and lax enforcement of environmental laws also enable (and cheapen) industrial food production. The result of this system is water, air, and soil polluted by agricultural waste; meat with high levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria; and animal suffering on an unprecedented scale. Although these costs don't show up on our grocery receipts, they are real and, ultimately, we all pay them.”
That last sentence pretty much sums it up: the real costs of cheap turkey (and the same goes for other meats and dairy) aren’t paid at the cash register. These costs are paid in a variety of ways, and by a variety of people. Yes, the people who buy this meat pay some of the costs: they’re eating turkey that has been pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, and the phrase ‘you are what you eat’ goes for turkeys as well as people. Aside from the health costs associated with ingesting these chemicals are the risks related to consuming meat that comes from animals living in extremely poor living conditions: They’re given their drug cocktails to combat the effects of being packed together, unable to move and standing around in their own waste. Giving them large doses of antibiotics may take care of most of the bacteria, but this only clears the way for more drug-resistant strains. Yum.
Aside from the hidden costs to those who are actually buying the meat are the costs that are externalized. These are the costs that other people are forced to pay by virtue of the fact that this meat is being produced. Some of these costs are fairly direct (e.g., tax dollars going toward government subsidies for cheap-meat production), while others are more roundabout. Industrially raised pigs may be the worst of the meats, notorious for the toxic pig-manure lagoons that they produce. Animal feces loaded with chemicals and bacteria is shoveled out the door into nature, where it wreaks havoc on local ecosystems. This waste is beyond the scale that natural systems can cope with, and we all end up living in a degraded environment, or paying to clean it up, as a result.
That’s my rant on meat, so what’s the solution? Well, there are two options. The first is to stop eating it. I know, everybody says, “But I love it too much.” That reason doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny, does it? If I really love pushing little kids, it doesn’t make it ok for me to do—I have to balance my desires with the harm that I inflict on others. I don’t eat meat, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes crave it. In particular, I love lamb: delicious, delicious baby sheep… But before I start drooling, this brings me to option number two: only buy meat and dairy that are ethically sourced (or more ethically sourced than alternatives), and eat less of them. If you “have to” have meat, do your best to make sure you’re inflicting as few externalized costs on other people as possible when you enjoy it. This is the track that I go with dairy. I tried going vegan for a while, but it took an unsustainable amount of effort, and I wasn’t successful in making sure that I got enough protein and other nutrients (it is possible to go vegan and be healthy, but I couldn’t hack it—props to people who do). I now eat a limited amount of dairy that comes from an organic farm. When I’m out, I eat at places that I know use organic dairy when I have that option. I could ride a hard line and only eat organic dairy when I’m out, as well, but I haven’t made that step yet. In our diets, as in life, there’s always room for improvement.
Like many actions we take daily, eating meat and dairy has costs—both for ourselves and for others—that we don’t see on our price tags. Thinking about what these costs are is something that I try to do regularly, and I’d encourage everyone out there to do the same. I started this post talking about turkeys, but even if it’s too late for you to change your Thanksgiving plans, at least give some thought to the food you’ll be eating in the new year.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Sunday, October 17, 2010
One Week
One Week
Last week, after reading a story in the New York Times about self-control, I decided that I should take a week away from alcohol and sweets, just to prove to myself that I could do it. I used to consider myself to be quite an expert at self-control (maybe even self-denial), and so I thought that it would be a good opportunity to show myself that I still had it. I don’t think that my typical levels of alcohol and sweets consumption are harmful or bad, it was more of a matter of taking some time away from what I consider to be my vices (at least to some degree) to think about them.
I was surprised to find it more difficult than I expected (which I suppose is a little redundant). The occasional craving for a cookie or a doughnut was tolerable, although passing on trying a piece of homemade birthday cake was difficult. Not having anything to drink was tougher. I typically have a drink every evening. From everything I’ve read, drinking in moderation is supposed to be a healthy habit, and it’s certainly something I enjoy. I was able to have relaxing evenings without it, but sometimes I really did crave it. I started my little experiment on a Friday, which meant that day six landed on a Thursday. On Thursdays is the show Fringe, which I watch more consistently than any other, and part of that habit is that I have my evening drink while I’m watching. So I decided that sticking to my guns wasn’t so important, and I poured myself a shot of bourbon to sip throughout the show. I definitely enjoyed it.
On day seven I went to a party and promptly forgot about taking a break from my vices, but I did manage to remind myself of one important thing: alcohol is something that I want to continue to enjoy for a long time, and that requires enjoying it always in moderation.
Last week, after reading a story in the New York Times about self-control, I decided that I should take a week away from alcohol and sweets, just to prove to myself that I could do it. I used to consider myself to be quite an expert at self-control (maybe even self-denial), and so I thought that it would be a good opportunity to show myself that I still had it. I don’t think that my typical levels of alcohol and sweets consumption are harmful or bad, it was more of a matter of taking some time away from what I consider to be my vices (at least to some degree) to think about them.
I was surprised to find it more difficult than I expected (which I suppose is a little redundant). The occasional craving for a cookie or a doughnut was tolerable, although passing on trying a piece of homemade birthday cake was difficult. Not having anything to drink was tougher. I typically have a drink every evening. From everything I’ve read, drinking in moderation is supposed to be a healthy habit, and it’s certainly something I enjoy. I was able to have relaxing evenings without it, but sometimes I really did crave it. I started my little experiment on a Friday, which meant that day six landed on a Thursday. On Thursdays is the show Fringe, which I watch more consistently than any other, and part of that habit is that I have my evening drink while I’m watching. So I decided that sticking to my guns wasn’t so important, and I poured myself a shot of bourbon to sip throughout the show. I definitely enjoyed it.
On day seven I went to a party and promptly forgot about taking a break from my vices, but I did manage to remind myself of one important thing: alcohol is something that I want to continue to enjoy for a long time, and that requires enjoying it always in moderation.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Difficulties
I’m starting to feel back in the swing of things, but for a while I was feeling pretty tired of the whole ‘trying to be good’ thing. There were a few catalysts for my funk, but when it came down to it, none of them were actual reasons for giving up on trying to live rightly. When Ultimately, the life choices that I’ve done my best to turn into habits are geared toward doing right by others, and my lack of motivation—for the reasons I’m about to talk about—don’t change the fact that acting differently would be acting in a way that I don’t think is for the best.
The first is money. Since I’m taking a break from teaching to focus on finishing my degree, I find myself with no income and not very much savings to get by on. This forces me to reevaluate some of the choices that I make that used to have bearable financial consequences. When I talk to my students about ethics in everyday life, and I tell them that I do my grocery shopping in a natural food store and buy organic, and that I only buy my clothes from places that are sweatshop free, one of the first things they say is always, ‘but isn’t that really expensive?’ Yes and no. Yes, because if two companies produce basically the same product, but one avoids harming others in the process while the other externalizes whatever costs they can, the socially conscious product will generally be more expensive. But I also tell my students that my grocery bill stays pretty low. This past week, for example, I spent about $30 at farmers markets and $20 in my grocery store. This is a typical weekly amount for me, so this comes out to between $200 and $250 per month. I’m sure I could eat more cheaply if I bought the least expensive version of everything at a supermarket, but these products would be worse for the environment (being non-organic, less local, etc.) and worse for me. Part of the reason that my bill doesn’t skyrocket just because I don’t always buy the cheapest option available is that I didn’t simply switch from cheap to organic, but also made other changes: I stopped eating meat, stopped buying things with so much packaging, and stopped buying ready-to-eat frozen meals. These changes (and others that I’m surely forgetting) are good for the world as well as the checkbook.
I went grocery shopping with my roommate the other day, however, and it made me reconsider where I shop, and what I pay for things. I’ve been shopping at the same, small natural grocery store for about 4 years. Things there are expensive. This is partly a factor of the reasons mentioned above, but also partly because there’s a pretty high mark-up at this store. I’m not sure why exactly this is, but I’ve always brushed it aside as a price worth paying for the community feel (the owner is usually the one at the cash register, and we chat every week), and I think of the markup as a cost I’m willing to pay to support a local business instead of a chain. When I’m feeling the pinch, however, I have to reconsider whether this is really where I should be shopping (could I live rightly and be better off individually by finding the nearest Whole Foods or Trader Joes?). For now my plan is to keep shopping at True Nature for most things, but find a better place to buy some of my staples in bulk.
The other difficulties are more social in origin: In the past six months my living situation has gone from ‘living with someone who tries to live in the same way that I do’, to ‘living alone’, to ‘living with someone who doesn’t care about this stuff’. Although it’s good to now be forced to reevaluate some of my choices (for example, by seeing how cheaply I could be buying my groceries), I now find myself questioning all of my choices and asking, ‘why bother?’ Why do I bother to take my canvas bags to the grocery store and farmers market when the landfills are overflowing with cheap plastic bags anyway? Why do I bother to avoid meat when the environment is going to be inundated with antibiotics and hormones, and the cropland is going to be used for feed regardless? Despite their demotivating effects, I know the answers to these questions: I make the choices I do because I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I won’t give in just because I’d be doing what everybody else already does. The common question is ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?’, but a more poignant question might be ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should too?’ There’s no immediate logical connection between how other people act and what it’s right or acceptable for others to do. Just because all of your neighbors enjoy shooting school kids with bb guns, it doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do. I can’t bring myself to ignore how my actions impact the rest of the world, even though it’s how most people go about their daily lives.
What’s my conclusion? For one, I do need to constantly reevaluate the choices that I’ve made regarding the way I live. When I see other people doing things differently, it should always be a challenge to my own choices: do I have good reasons for doing what I do? Secondly, I need to take my experiences with others as reminders of perspective: just as there are choices that I have made that others have never considered, there are surely choices that I could make that have never crossed my mind. Trying to be good doesn’t just mean making up a set of rules and sticking to it, it means always reevaluating and improving. Finally, I need to constantly remind myself that ‘not being a part of the problem’ isn’t the same as being part of the solution. As uncomfortable as it makes me, sometimes I need to be more vocal about the impact that all of our actions have on one another.
The first is money. Since I’m taking a break from teaching to focus on finishing my degree, I find myself with no income and not very much savings to get by on. This forces me to reevaluate some of the choices that I make that used to have bearable financial consequences. When I talk to my students about ethics in everyday life, and I tell them that I do my grocery shopping in a natural food store and buy organic, and that I only buy my clothes from places that are sweatshop free, one of the first things they say is always, ‘but isn’t that really expensive?’ Yes and no. Yes, because if two companies produce basically the same product, but one avoids harming others in the process while the other externalizes whatever costs they can, the socially conscious product will generally be more expensive. But I also tell my students that my grocery bill stays pretty low. This past week, for example, I spent about $30 at farmers markets and $20 in my grocery store. This is a typical weekly amount for me, so this comes out to between $200 and $250 per month. I’m sure I could eat more cheaply if I bought the least expensive version of everything at a supermarket, but these products would be worse for the environment (being non-organic, less local, etc.) and worse for me. Part of the reason that my bill doesn’t skyrocket just because I don’t always buy the cheapest option available is that I didn’t simply switch from cheap to organic, but also made other changes: I stopped eating meat, stopped buying things with so much packaging, and stopped buying ready-to-eat frozen meals. These changes (and others that I’m surely forgetting) are good for the world as well as the checkbook.
I went grocery shopping with my roommate the other day, however, and it made me reconsider where I shop, and what I pay for things. I’ve been shopping at the same, small natural grocery store for about 4 years. Things there are expensive. This is partly a factor of the reasons mentioned above, but also partly because there’s a pretty high mark-up at this store. I’m not sure why exactly this is, but I’ve always brushed it aside as a price worth paying for the community feel (the owner is usually the one at the cash register, and we chat every week), and I think of the markup as a cost I’m willing to pay to support a local business instead of a chain. When I’m feeling the pinch, however, I have to reconsider whether this is really where I should be shopping (could I live rightly and be better off individually by finding the nearest Whole Foods or Trader Joes?). For now my plan is to keep shopping at True Nature for most things, but find a better place to buy some of my staples in bulk.
The other difficulties are more social in origin: In the past six months my living situation has gone from ‘living with someone who tries to live in the same way that I do’, to ‘living alone’, to ‘living with someone who doesn’t care about this stuff’. Although it’s good to now be forced to reevaluate some of my choices (for example, by seeing how cheaply I could be buying my groceries), I now find myself questioning all of my choices and asking, ‘why bother?’ Why do I bother to take my canvas bags to the grocery store and farmers market when the landfills are overflowing with cheap plastic bags anyway? Why do I bother to avoid meat when the environment is going to be inundated with antibiotics and hormones, and the cropland is going to be used for feed regardless? Despite their demotivating effects, I know the answers to these questions: I make the choices I do because I don’t want to be a part of the problem. I won’t give in just because I’d be doing what everybody else already does. The common question is ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?’, but a more poignant question might be ‘if everyone else jumped off a bridge, does that mean you should too?’ There’s no immediate logical connection between how other people act and what it’s right or acceptable for others to do. Just because all of your neighbors enjoy shooting school kids with bb guns, it doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do. I can’t bring myself to ignore how my actions impact the rest of the world, even though it’s how most people go about their daily lives.
What’s my conclusion? For one, I do need to constantly reevaluate the choices that I’ve made regarding the way I live. When I see other people doing things differently, it should always be a challenge to my own choices: do I have good reasons for doing what I do? Secondly, I need to take my experiences with others as reminders of perspective: just as there are choices that I have made that others have never considered, there are surely choices that I could make that have never crossed my mind. Trying to be good doesn’t just mean making up a set of rules and sticking to it, it means always reevaluating and improving. Finally, I need to constantly remind myself that ‘not being a part of the problem’ isn’t the same as being part of the solution. As uncomfortable as it makes me, sometimes I need to be more vocal about the impact that all of our actions have on one another.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Air Conditioning
Air conditioning has been on my mind a lot lately. I resisted using it until last Wednesday evening. On Wednesday I rode with my brother from Crystal Lake to Chicago in a car without AC. By the time I got back I was dripping with sweat, and I decided to go ahead and put in the window unit. Later in the week, when talking with a friend, I mentioned that I’d just put it in. They asked where I’d gotten it from, thinking that I had only recently acquired it. My response was something along the lines of, “oh, it’s just been on my floor, but I had been resisting putting it in because…” Because what? I had some vague sense of ‘I shouldn’t use the AC too early in the year’, but I didn’t really have any sense of where that idea was coming from.
Then today I read this story. It’s not super-informative, and not super-damning, but it did get me thinking again about why exactly it is that using AC all the time isn’t ultimately what I want to do. Do I want to use it some of the time? Yes, I do. Sometimes I come in from outside and just need to cool down. Sometimes if I’m sitting around in my apartment, there’s just nowhere I can be that I’m not sweating, and it makes me pretty unhappy. But taking that all into consideration, and typing from the comfort of my air conditioned back room, here are a few reasons that I don’t want to use my AC:
1. Cabin Fever – I don’t know what this technically refers to. When I hear the phrase ‘cabin fever’, I usually get an image in my mind that’s some sort of cross between ‘Little House on the Prarie’ and ‘The Shining’. When I have my AC on, it makes me reluctant to leave the house (or, since I’m using a window unit: the room). When I don’t leave the house all day, and only leave the room to get food or use the bathroom, it makes me unhappy. I don’t notice it right away. Usually it’s around 4 pm, and I’m wondering why people bother to keep living, and I say to myself, ‘Mark, you haven’t left the house all day, that’s why you’ve suddenly become a pessimist’. If I can muster the motivation, I leave the house and go for a walk. I get sweaty, but I ultimately enjoy it because I’m outside and moving around. On good days I realize that this is going to happen before I start to go crazy, and I get outside preemptively.
2. Adaptation – When it’s been 32 degrees for months, and it finally hits 60, it feels downright hot. People put on their shorts and leave their jackets at home. Leaving the AC in the closet for a few months of 80s may seem like a drag at first, but it makes the 90s seem a lot more bearable.
3. Heating up the city – How do air conditioners work? Magic, as far as I’m concerned. But I do know that the cooler they make my apartment, the hotter they’re making the outside: and it’s not an even trade. If you don’t believe me, try plugging in your AC in a closed room with a thermometer. (OK, you probably shouldn’t try that.) Millions of air conditioners in millions of houses, stores and cars lead to an appreciable amount of heat exhaust coming from cooling ourselves down. That’s something that I want to avoid participating in as much as possible.
Maybe this is a half-baked post, but it all comes down to these same issues that surround ‘trying to be good’. Using AC too much is bad for me as an individual because it leads to me being cooped up too much and being less comfortable in the heat in general. It’s also bad for me to use to much because ultimately it contributes to harm done to others in the form of global (and local) warming. On the other hand, if I don’t leave it running all day and I turn it off when it’s not an unbearable temperature outside, it’s a pretty important part of my happiness on days when it hits 90.
Then today I read this story. It’s not super-informative, and not super-damning, but it did get me thinking again about why exactly it is that using AC all the time isn’t ultimately what I want to do. Do I want to use it some of the time? Yes, I do. Sometimes I come in from outside and just need to cool down. Sometimes if I’m sitting around in my apartment, there’s just nowhere I can be that I’m not sweating, and it makes me pretty unhappy. But taking that all into consideration, and typing from the comfort of my air conditioned back room, here are a few reasons that I don’t want to use my AC:
1. Cabin Fever – I don’t know what this technically refers to. When I hear the phrase ‘cabin fever’, I usually get an image in my mind that’s some sort of cross between ‘Little House on the Prarie’ and ‘The Shining’. When I have my AC on, it makes me reluctant to leave the house (or, since I’m using a window unit: the room). When I don’t leave the house all day, and only leave the room to get food or use the bathroom, it makes me unhappy. I don’t notice it right away. Usually it’s around 4 pm, and I’m wondering why people bother to keep living, and I say to myself, ‘Mark, you haven’t left the house all day, that’s why you’ve suddenly become a pessimist’. If I can muster the motivation, I leave the house and go for a walk. I get sweaty, but I ultimately enjoy it because I’m outside and moving around. On good days I realize that this is going to happen before I start to go crazy, and I get outside preemptively.
2. Adaptation – When it’s been 32 degrees for months, and it finally hits 60, it feels downright hot. People put on their shorts and leave their jackets at home. Leaving the AC in the closet for a few months of 80s may seem like a drag at first, but it makes the 90s seem a lot more bearable.
3. Heating up the city – How do air conditioners work? Magic, as far as I’m concerned. But I do know that the cooler they make my apartment, the hotter they’re making the outside: and it’s not an even trade. If you don’t believe me, try plugging in your AC in a closed room with a thermometer. (OK, you probably shouldn’t try that.) Millions of air conditioners in millions of houses, stores and cars lead to an appreciable amount of heat exhaust coming from cooling ourselves down. That’s something that I want to avoid participating in as much as possible.
Maybe this is a half-baked post, but it all comes down to these same issues that surround ‘trying to be good’. Using AC too much is bad for me as an individual because it leads to me being cooped up too much and being less comfortable in the heat in general. It’s also bad for me to use to much because ultimately it contributes to harm done to others in the form of global (and local) warming. On the other hand, if I don’t leave it running all day and I turn it off when it’s not an unbearable temperature outside, it’s a pretty important part of my happiness on days when it hits 90.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
How to Try Not to Be Bad
How to Try Not to Be Bad
I called my blog “How to (Try to) Be Good,” but in some ways that’s a misleading title. This post is about why I think it’s right to give (I’m still using this word ‘give,’ but I mean it very broadly—including monetary giving, but also giving time, including lifestyle choices that are made with an eye toward making the world a better place). Doing good can mean a few different things, although we don’t usually think about possible distinctions. In particular, I’m going to try to make a distinction between ‘doing good’ and ‘not doing bad’.
Some people think that these two categories are identical, and maybe they are. I’m inclined to think that they’re not, however, and although if you asked someone at random on the street they might say that they think the two are the same, if you actually tried to tease out their understanding, they’d probably draw a distinction between the two. Ok, enough abstraction for a minute, let’s consider two examples.
You’re walking down the street and the person walking in front of you is carrying a couple of big bags of groceries. One of them rips and its contents go everywhere, rolling away from the owner and toward the street. Many people would try to help this person pick up their belongings and help them to keep their things from being crushed by cars. Why would we do this? Not because we owe it to this person or because it would be malicious of us not to, but because we want to do something good, or we want to be nice.
Now that you’ve helped this poor person collect their belongings from the sidewalk, you get in your car and back out of the parking space. You aren’t paying attention as you hit the gas (you’re still thinking about that person you just helped with their groceries), and you hit a person walking behind you who also happens to be carrying two big bags of groceries. You get out of the car and see that their groceries are everywhere. Again, many people would try to help them collect their belongings. Why? Not because they want to do something nice, but because they want to make an attempt at rectifying the wrong that they have done.
What I’m trying to illustrate here is that there is a difference in how we think about the good that we do for the sake of doing good, and the good that we do for the sake of not doing wrong to others. Now, to the point of this post: why is ‘trying to be good’ important for me as an individual? You guessed it: two reasons.
First, because I think that it’s good to help other people. I know I would want the same if I were in their shoes. The limits of this help are a topic for another time: obviously we can’t spend 24 hours a day trying to aid others, but we can all do something to help. In any case, part of why I give is because I think that even in a world where there is no other reason, the fact that someone is dying of hunger and I can help stop it is reason enough.
The second reason is one that more people may find compelling: we are actually harming other people through our actions all the time. Just like I think that I should stop and help someone if I hit them with my car, I think that I should do what I can for someone whose poverty I’m partly to blame for.
This doesn’t just apply to poverty either: all sorts of things we do indirectly contribute to harmful effects on others. Not doing anything to change our actions means that we’re doing wrong and not doing anything to right it. Most people have a pretty good idea of what it would be ‘nice’ to do. People know that they could do more, give more, or make life changes for the better, but they’d rather not think about it, so they opt not to. Most of us are comfortable (or just a little uncomfortable) with that option if it’s a matter of just being nice or not, but if we’re talking about people that we’ve hit with our metaphorical cars, we need to take a second look.
This is getting long already, so I’ll just give one example for now: books. Let me just say, I love books. I like to buy them, I like to read them, I like to put them on my bookshelves. Incidentally, books are made of paper, and unless the publisher of a particular book happens to be on the conscientious end of the spectrum, the books we buy are coming from paper made from the trees of so-called virgin forests. This means that when we buy books, we’re contributing to deforestation. This deforestation is happening around the world (and has many causes aside from books). Not only does this lead to the extinction of many animals as their habitats are destroyed, but it causes problems for the people (frequently poor) who live around those forests. Deforestation leads to flooding, changes in weather patterns, loss of renewable resources, and soil erosion. When I buy a book, I am hurting people. My best alternative (e-books may be better than material books, but given the substantial issues regarding e-waste, I’m not going there just yet) is probably going to the library instead of buying new—and that’s my next step in trying to be good.
I’ll talk about some other ways we harm people without knowing it in future posts.
I called my blog “How to (Try to) Be Good,” but in some ways that’s a misleading title. This post is about why I think it’s right to give (I’m still using this word ‘give,’ but I mean it very broadly—including monetary giving, but also giving time, including lifestyle choices that are made with an eye toward making the world a better place). Doing good can mean a few different things, although we don’t usually think about possible distinctions. In particular, I’m going to try to make a distinction between ‘doing good’ and ‘not doing bad’.
Some people think that these two categories are identical, and maybe they are. I’m inclined to think that they’re not, however, and although if you asked someone at random on the street they might say that they think the two are the same, if you actually tried to tease out their understanding, they’d probably draw a distinction between the two. Ok, enough abstraction for a minute, let’s consider two examples.
You’re walking down the street and the person walking in front of you is carrying a couple of big bags of groceries. One of them rips and its contents go everywhere, rolling away from the owner and toward the street. Many people would try to help this person pick up their belongings and help them to keep their things from being crushed by cars. Why would we do this? Not because we owe it to this person or because it would be malicious of us not to, but because we want to do something good, or we want to be nice.
Now that you’ve helped this poor person collect their belongings from the sidewalk, you get in your car and back out of the parking space. You aren’t paying attention as you hit the gas (you’re still thinking about that person you just helped with their groceries), and you hit a person walking behind you who also happens to be carrying two big bags of groceries. You get out of the car and see that their groceries are everywhere. Again, many people would try to help them collect their belongings. Why? Not because they want to do something nice, but because they want to make an attempt at rectifying the wrong that they have done.
What I’m trying to illustrate here is that there is a difference in how we think about the good that we do for the sake of doing good, and the good that we do for the sake of not doing wrong to others. Now, to the point of this post: why is ‘trying to be good’ important for me as an individual? You guessed it: two reasons.
First, because I think that it’s good to help other people. I know I would want the same if I were in their shoes. The limits of this help are a topic for another time: obviously we can’t spend 24 hours a day trying to aid others, but we can all do something to help. In any case, part of why I give is because I think that even in a world where there is no other reason, the fact that someone is dying of hunger and I can help stop it is reason enough.
The second reason is one that more people may find compelling: we are actually harming other people through our actions all the time. Just like I think that I should stop and help someone if I hit them with my car, I think that I should do what I can for someone whose poverty I’m partly to blame for.
This doesn’t just apply to poverty either: all sorts of things we do indirectly contribute to harmful effects on others. Not doing anything to change our actions means that we’re doing wrong and not doing anything to right it. Most people have a pretty good idea of what it would be ‘nice’ to do. People know that they could do more, give more, or make life changes for the better, but they’d rather not think about it, so they opt not to. Most of us are comfortable (or just a little uncomfortable) with that option if it’s a matter of just being nice or not, but if we’re talking about people that we’ve hit with our metaphorical cars, we need to take a second look.
This is getting long already, so I’ll just give one example for now: books. Let me just say, I love books. I like to buy them, I like to read them, I like to put them on my bookshelves. Incidentally, books are made of paper, and unless the publisher of a particular book happens to be on the conscientious end of the spectrum, the books we buy are coming from paper made from the trees of so-called virgin forests. This means that when we buy books, we’re contributing to deforestation. This deforestation is happening around the world (and has many causes aside from books). Not only does this lead to the extinction of many animals as their habitats are destroyed, but it causes problems for the people (frequently poor) who live around those forests. Deforestation leads to flooding, changes in weather patterns, loss of renewable resources, and soil erosion. When I buy a book, I am hurting people. My best alternative (e-books may be better than material books, but given the substantial issues regarding e-waste, I’m not going there just yet) is probably going to the library instead of buying new—and that’s my next step in trying to be good.
I’ll talk about some other ways we harm people without knowing it in future posts.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Expectations, Weakness, and Forgiveness
I didn’t torture and animals or anything, but this week I didn’t live up to my own expectations either. This is a complicated issue. On the one hand I know that it’s normal—and perfectly acceptable—to not be totally motivated 100% of the time. There will be times when I just don’t have it in me to make the most of my time and trying to be good just doesn’t interest me. Part of being good has to involve letting myself relax once in a while. If I beat myself up every time I waste a few hours playing a pointless computer game, I’m just going to burn myself out, feel worse, and not ultimately make myself any better for it. There are two issues involved here. The first is that there is a difference between not making perfect use of my time and completely wasting whole days. Relaxing, enjoying the day to day, and setting aside some down time are all necessary parts (at least as far as I can figure) of living well. What can be difficult is figuring out where the line is between how much time I need to recharge and how much time I should be using more effectively. The second issue is that there’s a difference between telling myself that it’s ok to take some time off and actually being ok with it.
This was finals week. Last Friday I collected final papers, on Monday I gave the final exam, and by Thursday afternoon I had to have final grades in. This means that much of my time this past week has been spent with red pen in hand. There are some things that I like about grading: in particular, seeing how much the students have learned and figuring out who has earned what grade can be a rewarding and interesting experience. The actual process that is involved with figuring that out, however, can be tiresome. Reading version after version of the same basic answer, trying to differentiate between them and assign grades evenhandedly, trying to decipher poor handwriting and trying to make sense of faulty sentence structures all get old pretty quickly. Part of me wants to just get it done as quickly as possible, but part of me constantly wants to take a break.
There were things that I wanted to do this week other than submitting final grades. I wasn’t going to save the world or anything, but I intended to make dentist and eye doctor appointments, get the apartment cleaned up and do a little rearranging, get some work done on my dissertation, and so on. Instead, I dragged my feet to the point that I accomplished almost nothing other than finalizing grades. I would go strong with the grading in the morning, working for three or so hours until I started losing focus and needed a break. The problem is that these breaks didn’t want to end. For two hours I'd distract myself on the internet, all the while thinking about how I should really be getting back to work. Then, when I finally started grading again, I’d be itching for a break in another half hour.
Do I think that this makes me a bad person? No. But I know that if I were to stick to a better schedule, I’d end up being happier overall. Ideally, I would work for a while, take a small break, work some more, and so on, until I’d put in a good day’s work. In the evening I’d then be able to use my time as I pleased without feeling the weight of work in the back of my mind. Instead, I stretched out working each day from 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and enjoyed almost none of that time. This would leave me tired an unhappy, both because my time had been so unenjoyable, and because I had wasted a day so inefficiently.
This raises a curious question, that’s really more about psychology than philosophy: why do we sometimes do things that we know will make us less happy? When I’m taking a lunch break and delaying getting back to work, I could easily realize—if I stopped to think about it—that ending my break right away and working again would make me happier at the end of the day. Sometimes when this occurs to me I do just that, but other times I banish the thought and continue forward on my path to a miserable day.
The reason that this particular struggle is stressful for me is that I have so much open time ahead of me. I have a lot of writing to do, and a lot of time to do it in, and I am the only one holding myself accountable for that time. My own experience has taught me that the best way to get over this type of hurdle is to think about why I get held up and make rules ahead of time to keep myself moving forward. For example, here are some rules that I will do my best to stick to in the weeks to come. I plan to update them as needed:
1. If your break has lasted more than 30 minutes, but you haven’t written 1,000 words yet, start working again.
2. If it’s 3:00 or later, and you haven’t left the apartment yet, go for a walk.
3. If it’s 5:00 and you haven’t done anything from the ‘to do’ list other than writing, do something (however small).
4. If you’ve finished 2,000 words by 2:00, stop writing, but do 2 things from the ‘to do’ list.
Not the most exciting, but hopefully I can keep these in mind. If I do, I know that I will both get more done and be happier at the end of the day.
This was finals week. Last Friday I collected final papers, on Monday I gave the final exam, and by Thursday afternoon I had to have final grades in. This means that much of my time this past week has been spent with red pen in hand. There are some things that I like about grading: in particular, seeing how much the students have learned and figuring out who has earned what grade can be a rewarding and interesting experience. The actual process that is involved with figuring that out, however, can be tiresome. Reading version after version of the same basic answer, trying to differentiate between them and assign grades evenhandedly, trying to decipher poor handwriting and trying to make sense of faulty sentence structures all get old pretty quickly. Part of me wants to just get it done as quickly as possible, but part of me constantly wants to take a break.
There were things that I wanted to do this week other than submitting final grades. I wasn’t going to save the world or anything, but I intended to make dentist and eye doctor appointments, get the apartment cleaned up and do a little rearranging, get some work done on my dissertation, and so on. Instead, I dragged my feet to the point that I accomplished almost nothing other than finalizing grades. I would go strong with the grading in the morning, working for three or so hours until I started losing focus and needed a break. The problem is that these breaks didn’t want to end. For two hours I'd distract myself on the internet, all the while thinking about how I should really be getting back to work. Then, when I finally started grading again, I’d be itching for a break in another half hour.
Do I think that this makes me a bad person? No. But I know that if I were to stick to a better schedule, I’d end up being happier overall. Ideally, I would work for a while, take a small break, work some more, and so on, until I’d put in a good day’s work. In the evening I’d then be able to use my time as I pleased without feeling the weight of work in the back of my mind. Instead, I stretched out working each day from 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., and enjoyed almost none of that time. This would leave me tired an unhappy, both because my time had been so unenjoyable, and because I had wasted a day so inefficiently.
This raises a curious question, that’s really more about psychology than philosophy: why do we sometimes do things that we know will make us less happy? When I’m taking a lunch break and delaying getting back to work, I could easily realize—if I stopped to think about it—that ending my break right away and working again would make me happier at the end of the day. Sometimes when this occurs to me I do just that, but other times I banish the thought and continue forward on my path to a miserable day.
The reason that this particular struggle is stressful for me is that I have so much open time ahead of me. I have a lot of writing to do, and a lot of time to do it in, and I am the only one holding myself accountable for that time. My own experience has taught me that the best way to get over this type of hurdle is to think about why I get held up and make rules ahead of time to keep myself moving forward. For example, here are some rules that I will do my best to stick to in the weeks to come. I plan to update them as needed:
1. If your break has lasted more than 30 minutes, but you haven’t written 1,000 words yet, start working again.
2. If it’s 3:00 or later, and you haven’t left the apartment yet, go for a walk.
3. If it’s 5:00 and you haven’t done anything from the ‘to do’ list other than writing, do something (however small).
4. If you’ve finished 2,000 words by 2:00, stop writing, but do 2 things from the ‘to do’ list.
Not the most exciting, but hopefully I can keep these in mind. If I do, I know that I will both get more done and be happier at the end of the day.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Giving
I’m sure that soon the blogging well will dry up, but at this point there are constantly several topics floating around in my head, and I always want to write about all of them. However, since I can’t actually write about all of them right now, I’m going to go with the influences of fortune and say a few things about this article that I recently came across in the New York Times.
First things first: what is this post actually about? It’s about the idea of giving money to charity. This is something that most Americans do every year—around 70% of us. Go ahead and guess what percent of the United States’ gross national income is given away in charitable donations every year. I’m serious, come up with a guess. Imagine all the people with all the incomes in the U.S., and think about all the people making all their donations to charities far and wide: the Red Cross, food pantries, churches, schools. Keep in mind that this includes people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who are giving billions. Ready for it? 2.2%. Now think about what 2.2% of your annual income is, and divide that by 12. How does that compare to what we spend on ourselves every month?
The lure placed at the opening of the article in the Times is that last year the Obamas gave 6% of their income. George and Laura Bush, on the other hand, gave away 18%. In The Life You Can Save, the book that I mentioned in my first post, Peter Singer lays out his own suggestion for what people might give annually in order to account for their ‘fair share’: give 1% of everything you earn up to $105,000. For everything between $105,000 and $148,000, give 5%. From there up to $383,000, give 10%. 15% from there to $600,000, and 20% on everything from $600,000 to $1.9 million. For every dollar earned from $1.9 million to $10.7 million, give 25%, and for everything over $10.7 million, give 33.33%.
How do Barack and Michelle measure up to this? If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion, they would have given over $1.2 million, compared to the $329,000 they actually gave. Of course the $5.5 million is pre-tax. They paid about a third of it in taxes, leaving $3.7 million. If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion for this amount, they still would have donated more than double the amount that they actually gave.
Most people reading this make nowhere near $5.5 million a year, so let’s pull the discussion back to something a little more everyday. The main question that I’ve been leaving unanswered so far is this: What is our fair share anyway? In other words: what are we measuring this against? Without getting into too many details, what’s notable is that half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And before you starting pointing out that $2 can go pretty far in some places, let me clarify that this means that these people are living on less than what $2 a day would get you in the U.S. (in other words, the calculations for differences in economies and markets has already been done). People who live on this amount are literally dying from their impoverishment. Around 18 million people die every year from poverty-related causes such as malnutrition, lack of sanitation and lack of clean water. This includes 27,000 children under 5 every day. Most people don’t process statistics very well, so let me try to make this more specific: imagine a 4 year old child. This child is always hungry and usually ill. She is malnourished and doesn’t have adequate shelter. In the three seconds it takes you to read these sentences, she has died. Every three seconds, a child like this dies from poverty-related causes.
Certainly, if you make $5.5 million annually you can afford to help someone living on less than $800 a year. Even if you make significantly less than that, however, you can still afford to make an incredible impact on the lives of individuals. 3 billion people in poverty is an intimidating thing to think about, but $60 a month can help a family with dying children to be able to feed them and send them to school.
As usual, I’ve got a head full of ideas, and not enough space to write them all. Here are a few final thoughts:
1. If you’re currently giving less than Singer’s suggested donation amount (for most of you this is 1% of your annual income), consider making that your goal. This is 1 cent out of every dollar you spend, and it can literally save someone’s life.
2. If you’re currently giving to charity but you’d like to give more, set yourself a goal. Try adding 1% to the percent of your income that you donate each year (for example, if you gave 5% last year, make it 6% this year). If you’re ready for a more aggressive increase, then do it.
3. If you feel like you can barely make ends meet, commit to giving future earnings instead of present income. Rather than giving 1% of your annual income, make a commitment to donate 30% of all raises and bonuses in the years to come. You’ll still be making more money, but you’ll also be moving toward making the world a better place.
In general, Singer’s suggestions are fairly modest. Soon I plan to write about suggestions of my own in terms of giving, but for now let’s stick with what he proposes. My own personal challenge in my own quest to be good is to always try to improve. I don’t always succeed, but I stand by my goal.
One last note: If you’re thinking about giving but you don’t know where to start and you’re worried about your money actually making a difference, I’d suggest Oxfam.org. If you’re not great at budgeting or sticking to a plan, check the box to make your gift monthly so that it will happen automatically.
First things first: what is this post actually about? It’s about the idea of giving money to charity. This is something that most Americans do every year—around 70% of us. Go ahead and guess what percent of the United States’ gross national income is given away in charitable donations every year. I’m serious, come up with a guess. Imagine all the people with all the incomes in the U.S., and think about all the people making all their donations to charities far and wide: the Red Cross, food pantries, churches, schools. Keep in mind that this includes people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet who are giving billions. Ready for it? 2.2%. Now think about what 2.2% of your annual income is, and divide that by 12. How does that compare to what we spend on ourselves every month?
The lure placed at the opening of the article in the Times is that last year the Obamas gave 6% of their income. George and Laura Bush, on the other hand, gave away 18%. In The Life You Can Save, the book that I mentioned in my first post, Peter Singer lays out his own suggestion for what people might give annually in order to account for their ‘fair share’: give 1% of everything you earn up to $105,000. For everything between $105,000 and $148,000, give 5%. From there up to $383,000, give 10%. 15% from there to $600,000, and 20% on everything from $600,000 to $1.9 million. For every dollar earned from $1.9 million to $10.7 million, give 25%, and for everything over $10.7 million, give 33.33%.
How do Barack and Michelle measure up to this? If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion, they would have given over $1.2 million, compared to the $329,000 they actually gave. Of course the $5.5 million is pre-tax. They paid about a third of it in taxes, leaving $3.7 million. If they’d followed Singer’s suggestion for this amount, they still would have donated more than double the amount that they actually gave.
Most people reading this make nowhere near $5.5 million a year, so let’s pull the discussion back to something a little more everyday. The main question that I’ve been leaving unanswered so far is this: What is our fair share anyway? In other words: what are we measuring this against? Without getting into too many details, what’s notable is that half of the world’s population lives on less than $2 a day. And before you starting pointing out that $2 can go pretty far in some places, let me clarify that this means that these people are living on less than what $2 a day would get you in the U.S. (in other words, the calculations for differences in economies and markets has already been done). People who live on this amount are literally dying from their impoverishment. Around 18 million people die every year from poverty-related causes such as malnutrition, lack of sanitation and lack of clean water. This includes 27,000 children under 5 every day. Most people don’t process statistics very well, so let me try to make this more specific: imagine a 4 year old child. This child is always hungry and usually ill. She is malnourished and doesn’t have adequate shelter. In the three seconds it takes you to read these sentences, she has died. Every three seconds, a child like this dies from poverty-related causes.
Certainly, if you make $5.5 million annually you can afford to help someone living on less than $800 a year. Even if you make significantly less than that, however, you can still afford to make an incredible impact on the lives of individuals. 3 billion people in poverty is an intimidating thing to think about, but $60 a month can help a family with dying children to be able to feed them and send them to school.
As usual, I’ve got a head full of ideas, and not enough space to write them all. Here are a few final thoughts:
1. If you’re currently giving less than Singer’s suggested donation amount (for most of you this is 1% of your annual income), consider making that your goal. This is 1 cent out of every dollar you spend, and it can literally save someone’s life.
2. If you’re currently giving to charity but you’d like to give more, set yourself a goal. Try adding 1% to the percent of your income that you donate each year (for example, if you gave 5% last year, make it 6% this year). If you’re ready for a more aggressive increase, then do it.
3. If you feel like you can barely make ends meet, commit to giving future earnings instead of present income. Rather than giving 1% of your annual income, make a commitment to donate 30% of all raises and bonuses in the years to come. You’ll still be making more money, but you’ll also be moving toward making the world a better place.
In general, Singer’s suggestions are fairly modest. Soon I plan to write about suggestions of my own in terms of giving, but for now let’s stick with what he proposes. My own personal challenge in my own quest to be good is to always try to improve. I don’t always succeed, but I stand by my goal.
One last note: If you’re thinking about giving but you don’t know where to start and you’re worried about your money actually making a difference, I’d suggest Oxfam.org. If you’re not great at budgeting or sticking to a plan, check the box to make your gift monthly so that it will happen automatically.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Enjoyment
Yesterday morning, as I was walking to the coffee shop to do some work, I noticed how beautiful everything is. This is something that I notice with some frequency, but in the Spring I notice it much more regularly. New leaves are such a vibrant green, flowers are blooming, and people seem happy. They walk down the street with looks on their faces that say, “It’s so nice out!” Today it’s a little on the warm side for my taste, but to be able to go outside in a T-shirt is certainly refreshing. Furthermore, the sun is shining, and as it’s the last day of classes, people on campus are generally in good spirits. Today is easy to enjoy.
As far as enjoyment goes, a lot of things are easy to get wrong. First of all, it’s easy to forget that enjoying life is something that you should do. This isn’t true for everyone, and it affects different people in different ways, but for me it manifests itself in an inclination to feel like I’m doing something wrong if I’m enjoying myself too much. It was only recently that I realized that when someone asks me “do you want whipped cream on that?” the correct answer is usually yes.
Many people want to do things that they enjoy, and many people actually do them, but most of us think of that as being something selfish, or less judgmentally as morally indifferent. I think this is wrong. If you were the last person on Earth, it would be better for you to enjoy yourself than to not. If you are going through life without any enjoyment, you need to rethink your life plan.
These observations need a little qualifying, since enjoyment is such a broad term. Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed today:
1. Eating a healthy breakfast this morning: For breakfast I ate yogurt with bran flakes and granola. The taste isn’t thrilling, but I find it agreeable enough. The part that I enjoy is knowing that it’s good for me, and knowing that it will lead to me feeling better throughout the day.
2. Walking to campus and back: As I’ve said, the weather is wonderful today and easy to enjoy.
3. Teaching the last class of the semester: This was enjoyable on a number of levels. First of all there wasn’t a ton of material that I had to cover, and it was a topic that I’m familiar with and enjoy talking about. I was in a good mood, and the class seemed to be as well. Secondly, it was rewarding. The students handed in one page reflections on the course as a whole, and many of them had positive things to say about the course, as well as observing that they have changed as a result of it. This gives me a sense of purpose in life, knowing that I can help people to become aware of their connections to those around them, and that they may make conscious life decisions as a result.
4. Drinking some good whisky: Ok, so this part hasn’t actually happened yet, but I’m looking forward to it. In fact, anticipating drinking it is something that I find enjoyable in itself. In any case, there’s an event being put on by a couple faculty members: they’re bringing a couple bottles of scotch in exchange for an audience for their bagpiping.
The reason I went through a few of these things is that I think it’s important that we think about the different ways that we experience enjoyment. Many things we do and experience in life can please us, and it’s for the best if we take a moment to enjoy them.
One final thought: although I think that personal enjoyment is important, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and do whatever they think will give them the most pleasure at any given moment. First of all, being good involves acting rightly toward others (a topic to be covered in the future), but equally important is the fact that getting the most out of life sometimes involves delaying gratification. In fact, I think that’s a topic for another time.
As far as enjoyment goes, a lot of things are easy to get wrong. First of all, it’s easy to forget that enjoying life is something that you should do. This isn’t true for everyone, and it affects different people in different ways, but for me it manifests itself in an inclination to feel like I’m doing something wrong if I’m enjoying myself too much. It was only recently that I realized that when someone asks me “do you want whipped cream on that?” the correct answer is usually yes.
Many people want to do things that they enjoy, and many people actually do them, but most of us think of that as being something selfish, or less judgmentally as morally indifferent. I think this is wrong. If you were the last person on Earth, it would be better for you to enjoy yourself than to not. If you are going through life without any enjoyment, you need to rethink your life plan.
These observations need a little qualifying, since enjoyment is such a broad term. Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed today:
1. Eating a healthy breakfast this morning: For breakfast I ate yogurt with bran flakes and granola. The taste isn’t thrilling, but I find it agreeable enough. The part that I enjoy is knowing that it’s good for me, and knowing that it will lead to me feeling better throughout the day.
2. Walking to campus and back: As I’ve said, the weather is wonderful today and easy to enjoy.
3. Teaching the last class of the semester: This was enjoyable on a number of levels. First of all there wasn’t a ton of material that I had to cover, and it was a topic that I’m familiar with and enjoy talking about. I was in a good mood, and the class seemed to be as well. Secondly, it was rewarding. The students handed in one page reflections on the course as a whole, and many of them had positive things to say about the course, as well as observing that they have changed as a result of it. This gives me a sense of purpose in life, knowing that I can help people to become aware of their connections to those around them, and that they may make conscious life decisions as a result.
4. Drinking some good whisky: Ok, so this part hasn’t actually happened yet, but I’m looking forward to it. In fact, anticipating drinking it is something that I find enjoyable in itself. In any case, there’s an event being put on by a couple faculty members: they’re bringing a couple bottles of scotch in exchange for an audience for their bagpiping.
The reason I went through a few of these things is that I think it’s important that we think about the different ways that we experience enjoyment. Many things we do and experience in life can please us, and it’s for the best if we take a moment to enjoy them.
One final thought: although I think that personal enjoyment is important, I’m not advocating that everyone go out and do whatever they think will give them the most pleasure at any given moment. First of all, being good involves acting rightly toward others (a topic to be covered in the future), but equally important is the fact that getting the most out of life sometimes involves delaying gratification. In fact, I think that’s a topic for another time.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Obligations to Ourselves
Some parts of trying to be good I do pretty well at, while other parts I struggle with. As time goes on, I plan to cover some of each of these. A big part of what I do here will be to try to figure out what it means to be good at all. ‘Good’ is a pretty general word, and being human is certainly not an activity that comes with an accepted standard of perfection. Setting aside the issue of being good at it, what it really means to even be human is something that people have been asking since there were people.
Part of trying to be good will involve trying to act rightly toward others. This has a particular side (acting rightly toward the individuals around me) and it has a general side (acting rightly toward the inhabitants of the world at large). What each of these means is something that I will have to deal with. I think I do pretty well with the second one—I’m very conscious of how my actions impact the world around me, and I generally stick to a way of life that’s compatible with the well-being of others. The first one I’m not always great at. I do ok when it comes to friends and family, but when it comes to my interactions with strangers and acquaintances, my social anxiety frequently overwhelms my attention to others. In short, I suspect that my shyness often comes across as standoffishness.
However, today’s post is not about my relationship to others. It’s about me. Ask yourself this: If I were the last person on Earth, what would it mean for me to be good? Some might think that this question is meaningless; morality deals with the relationships and interactions between people, so if there were only one person left, there would no longer be such a thing as morality. I don’t think that this is true. I wouldn’t blame this last person for unhappily sitting around, listlessly bemoaning their loneliness and waiting for death, but I wouldn’t call that living rightly either. What am I getting at? I think that being good requires seeking personal happiness.
Now that I’ve spent three paragraphs introducing my topic (hopefully as the blogging goes on, I’ll get better at getting to the point without so much introduction), I’m realizing that this isn’t something that I’ll be able to cover in a single post. Actually, I’m realizing that this post will just be an introduction for what’s to come. I’m inclined to think that happiness involves two parts: enjoying the present, and planning to enjoy the future. Next post’s topic: Enjoyment.
Part of trying to be good will involve trying to act rightly toward others. This has a particular side (acting rightly toward the individuals around me) and it has a general side (acting rightly toward the inhabitants of the world at large). What each of these means is something that I will have to deal with. I think I do pretty well with the second one—I’m very conscious of how my actions impact the world around me, and I generally stick to a way of life that’s compatible with the well-being of others. The first one I’m not always great at. I do ok when it comes to friends and family, but when it comes to my interactions with strangers and acquaintances, my social anxiety frequently overwhelms my attention to others. In short, I suspect that my shyness often comes across as standoffishness.
However, today’s post is not about my relationship to others. It’s about me. Ask yourself this: If I were the last person on Earth, what would it mean for me to be good? Some might think that this question is meaningless; morality deals with the relationships and interactions between people, so if there were only one person left, there would no longer be such a thing as morality. I don’t think that this is true. I wouldn’t blame this last person for unhappily sitting around, listlessly bemoaning their loneliness and waiting for death, but I wouldn’t call that living rightly either. What am I getting at? I think that being good requires seeking personal happiness.
Now that I’ve spent three paragraphs introducing my topic (hopefully as the blogging goes on, I’ll get better at getting to the point without so much introduction), I’m realizing that this isn’t something that I’ll be able to cover in a single post. Actually, I’m realizing that this post will just be an introduction for what’s to come. I’m inclined to think that happiness involves two parts: enjoying the present, and planning to enjoy the future. Next post’s topic: Enjoyment.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Ignoring Jesus
I think I might need to ignore Jesus. Well, at least this one thing he said: ‘when you give money to charity, don’t go blowing your trumpet.’ This idea is a strongly held norm in our own society as well; you can be as good as you want, but don’t go talking about it and making other people feel bad. It’s widely held to be pretty rude (and a little hypocritical) to do something good and then follow it up with, ‘Hey everybody, look what I just did!’ Actually, it might help to extend my paraphrase of Jesus’ words a little bit more: ‘when you give money to charity, don’t go blowing your trumpet, because then you’ll be like the hypocrites who only do this to get the accolades of others.’ In other words: be good, but don’t just do it for the admiration of those around you.
The question I’ve been wrestling with lately is whether we might be better off focusing on the ‘don’t do it for the accolades’ part of these words instead of the ‘don’t toot your own horn’ part. In fact, evidence shows that when people talk about the good that they’re doing (in a non-hypocrite-seeking-accolades kind of way), it makes other people more likely to start doing some good of their own. You might notice this when charities call to solicit donations: Rather than asking for what you can spare, they’ll mention what the person they just spoke to committed to giving. This helps you realize, ‘hey, other people are being generous, I should be too.’
Peter Singer brought this up in his recent book, The Life You Can Save (which I’m recommending to everybody I talk to). If we all talk about the good things we do, the world just might end up being a better place.
There are a number of impulses and drives competing within me when I think about this. Most prominently, there’s the drive to modesty. I can talk about these things in the abstract (for example, suggesting that ‘people’ should give a higher percentage of their income to charity), but once I start talking about things on a personal level (‘no, I won’t buy that shirt, it was made in a sweatshop’) I quickly become conscious of how others will perceive my comments as a judgment of their own decisions. I'm not naturally inclined toward this sort of personal interference.
Although I’ve noted how uncomfortable it makes me to be doing this, I'm obviously here blogging nonetheless. This is because there are two other impulses which, at least for the moment, are overriding this fear of coming across as preachy. The first is a general drive to promote discourse: I’m a strong believer that everything important should be talked about as freely as possible. Concealing things, ignoring differences, or hiding truths only serves to slow the tide of progress. Combined with this is my drive to do what’s right. If I can contribute to making the world a better place by sharing my methods of being in the world at the expense of my own comfort, then so be it.
In conclusion, I’m starting this blog. I plan to chronicle my own attempt at living rightly in the world, with the goal of both sharing what I’m doing with others, and reaching out to others who can help me to become a better person.
The question I’ve been wrestling with lately is whether we might be better off focusing on the ‘don’t do it for the accolades’ part of these words instead of the ‘don’t toot your own horn’ part. In fact, evidence shows that when people talk about the good that they’re doing (in a non-hypocrite-seeking-accolades kind of way), it makes other people more likely to start doing some good of their own. You might notice this when charities call to solicit donations: Rather than asking for what you can spare, they’ll mention what the person they just spoke to committed to giving. This helps you realize, ‘hey, other people are being generous, I should be too.’
Peter Singer brought this up in his recent book, The Life You Can Save (which I’m recommending to everybody I talk to). If we all talk about the good things we do, the world just might end up being a better place.
There are a number of impulses and drives competing within me when I think about this. Most prominently, there’s the drive to modesty. I can talk about these things in the abstract (for example, suggesting that ‘people’ should give a higher percentage of their income to charity), but once I start talking about things on a personal level (‘no, I won’t buy that shirt, it was made in a sweatshop’) I quickly become conscious of how others will perceive my comments as a judgment of their own decisions. I'm not naturally inclined toward this sort of personal interference.
Although I’ve noted how uncomfortable it makes me to be doing this, I'm obviously here blogging nonetheless. This is because there are two other impulses which, at least for the moment, are overriding this fear of coming across as preachy. The first is a general drive to promote discourse: I’m a strong believer that everything important should be talked about as freely as possible. Concealing things, ignoring differences, or hiding truths only serves to slow the tide of progress. Combined with this is my drive to do what’s right. If I can contribute to making the world a better place by sharing my methods of being in the world at the expense of my own comfort, then so be it.
In conclusion, I’m starting this blog. I plan to chronicle my own attempt at living rightly in the world, with the goal of both sharing what I’m doing with others, and reaching out to others who can help me to become a better person.
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