Index 
Compassion Morality Email to Sun Times: American and Israeli Shared Values
(J) Re August 1: I started yesterday pruning and clearing the driveway. Senses  (J) Progress: ISTMRN that "progress" is demanding restrictions on freedom. Caesar (we) adopted the utilitarian mantra "the most good for the most people" and added a corollary, "the least harm to the least people". One almost universally accepted "good" of course is life, especially human life, especially humans living in America, especially those who attended Purdue; so the corollary follows and the harm to reduce is “harm to people”. Earthquakes and sunshine we can do nothing about (yet). Things we can do something about that harm people, us, my kind, me, by extension, is wrong. Wrong things, actions, even thoughts not only can be but should be prohibited, at least by Caesar, according to many. But oft' will arise a situation where preventing someone from harming another will, in and of itself, cause harm to another, perhaps even a wanderer randomly in "harm’s way". That's when we invoke the tradeoff in the mantra or its corollary. Mathematically it's impossible to maximize for two variables, only to "optimize". So how many harms are we allowed to inflict on how many of "them" to achieve how many "goods" or avoid how many "harms" for how many of us, and still achieve an optimum, that is a "moral" outcome? If we don't perceive any harm from actions that stop other people from harming, then there is no limit to our "rightful", "moral" power of coercion. But I think we have no such infinite community right, because all, every action causes some "harm" to something, even my breathing which contributes CO2 and warmth to the atmosphere, that as the wake of a butterfly's wings might lessen the "needed" rain over a downwind farmer's fields, lessening his yields, lessening food, and contributing to the final starvation of some child somewhere. Absurd! Right? | Well, not really. To the point here: all actions likewise cause good, else they would not be chosen to be done. So we must trade off among preventing harm, doing harm, doing good, encouraging good, and allowing harm. I think the latter is often present in many value systems though commonly ignored. So "progress" is the extension of coercion that reduces harm. But what happens when most "harms" are already sanctioned and the remaining "harms" are rare. I think many are so focused on reducing "harm" that their vigor never wanes. "There is always more harm to ban, more good to do, we must always strive with all our energy to make the world a better place" (note: "a better place" for people, most importantly "me", and people like me, the last two phrases usually meant but rarely said and always drowned out by a chorus of the first, i.e. "for people"). I think this issue of selfishness through community coercion (Caesar) is much like thermodynamics: the closer you get to the limit, the more energy it takes for each equal increment of approach, e.g. absolute zero and the speed of light. Perhaps we are near the point where efforts to reduce remaining "unregulated harms" take so much energy which is "harm" itself; exceeding the harm we are trying to prevent. This is especially cogent if we include the in the tradeoff those quintessential American icons of good: "freedom", "liberty", and "free choice". ISTMRN that some, no many believe that "health and safety" trump "freedom" every time. "Freedom” is so abstract, so ethereal; while harm is as real as a hospital and a grave. By "wringing out" the last vestiges of "harm", we have now turned coercive attention to behavior that "might" cause harm, defined statistically as in cancer risks from selected chemicals or seat belt requirements. So now we must also "wring out" not just harm but risk of harm, and with it the last vestiges of our freedoms. Maybe that's why our libraries are filled with shelves after shelves of regulations but have no copies of the Bill of Rights. So maybe all I am saying is that we need to temper our compassion with common sense. |