May The Best Person Win
Fascinating piece by Stephen Pinker on morality in New York Times Magazine. Here's an excerpt:
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
It’s not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd’s nerd and the world’s richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle’s eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.
I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish. It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines that trick the eye on cereal boxes and in psychology textbooks.
>>>Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history.
And thereby throwing off our equilibrium with our environments, leading to heart disease, obesity, diabeties, and other diseases of civilization!
Can you tell I'm reading the Gary Taubes' Good Calories, Bad Calories right now? It is the most compelling book I have read in recent memory. According to Taubes, anthropological conventional wisdom is that neolithic cultures were NOT subjected to regular periods of famine, and that famine seems to be linked more with an agricultural lifestyle than a hunter-gatherer one. I wouln't call Taubes a Luddite, although I might be becoming one. Just a little, maybe.
liz at January 13, 2008 1:59 AM
"Neolithic". I mean Paleolithic, or whatever the term is for pre-agro.
liz at January 13, 2008 5:34 AM
Once you have a culture in place and they're starving to death, giving them bread is a very good thing. (I'm a big supporter of Taubes work -- and he's a friend of mine -- but I don't think "Let them eat steak" was the answer when Borlaug came around.)
Amy Alkon at January 13, 2008 7:00 AM
I know, Amy, my comment was mostly facecious. Although, I do wonder about the results high density agriculture will have on the stability of population levels. If we can continue to sustain huge population growth food-wise, I wonder what Nature will come up with next to wipe us out. I expect communicable diseases to make a great comeback as we live even more cheek by jowl.
But don't think that I would snatch bread from a hungry kid because I'm worried about the next plague.
liz at January 13, 2008 8:00 AM
Your new BFF Hitchens has been making the same argument about Mama T for some time now. It drives many people nuts, but once you strip away the emotions and look at how the Sisters of Mercy (or Charity, or whatever) ran their facilities, you see he has very many excellent points. I heard, anecdotally, that M.T. was offered, free of charge, some clinic space in New York City, but the Health Department couldn't reconcile with the sisters' plans to rip out carpeting and light fixtures (to make it more humble and hence, Christ-like), as well as hand-carry patients between floors instead of using the elevator (for the same reason).
There was also horrible stories of sisters reusing needles and other sharps, totally ignorant of modern hygiene procedures. Most of the nuns were barely educated themselves, of course.
Nance at January 13, 2008 8:23 AM
I wonder what Nature will come up with next to wipe us out. I expect communicable diseases to make a great comeback as we live even more cheek by jowl.
Let's not give up the ghost just yet! The Gates Foundation just granted the company I work for several million dollars for our research and development of a new flu vaccine, one that is not made from eggs, so people with allergies can receive this vaccine with no adverse reaction. We are also developing a malaria vaccine, one for West Nile virus, and we're even looking into a gingivitis vaccine. The technology behind them is one of introducing vaccines into the body that will then use the body's innate immune system more efficiently, to fight off and prevent infection. (The intellectual properties alone are worth a substantial amount of $$$. No, the stock is not being publicly traded yet. I'll give you a heads up.) o_O
Flynne at January 13, 2008 8:29 AM
I wonder what Nature will come up with next to wipe us out.
Islamistitis?
Amy Alkon at January 13, 2008 8:31 AM
Islamistitis?
Heh! The only effective vaccine for that is an AK-47! o_O
Flynne at January 13, 2008 8:36 AM
"It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines..."
Yep, that's how presidents get elected, isn't it?
BTW, the agricultural revolution led to a huge increase in world population. Sure there were problems with it, but it was a much better supply of food than hunting mammoths, or else there would have been a population decline instead.
Todd Fletcher at January 13, 2008 8:56 AM
> And thereby throwing off our
> equilibrium with our environments
You're goddamn right it does! Equilibrium with our environment sucks; it starves people and sets them at each other's throats for meager nutrition. Borlaug defeated that equilibrium to the everlasting benefit of you and your children and their descendants.
> leading to heart disease,
> obesity, diabeties, and other
> diseases of civilization!
Heart disease is a great way to go! If you're enjoying a reasonable diet and other health support but you still die of heart disease, it probably means you're a very old person who's dodged a lot of the hazards that come from "equilibrium with our environments." Borlaug doesn't feed Big Macs to people; it's personal taste, and personal willpower, and a little bit of government incompetence that makes obesity and diabetes such scourges... Though I've seen diabetes kill people without a finding a purchase in their bad dietary habits. To a certain extent it occurs naturally. Nature is not our friend.
Anyway, Liz, I don't like you. I like Norman Borlaug, though!
Crid at January 13, 2008 12:25 PM
Also -
> famine seems to be linked
> more with an agricultural
> lifestyle than a hunter-gatherer
> one.
God, I hate this. Yes; those are your options; you can grow your food or you can fucking well scrounge for it every morning like goddamn lizard in the sun. PJ O'rourke made this plain for me in a book years ago, and no one's ever refuted it: Starvation is something people do to each other, not something that happens by natural events. Even in the face of hurricanes and crop failures, the world is ready to bring food to starving masses... If the local dictators will let us (Hello, Kim Jong Il!).
Borlaug has done humanity's best work to overpower this brutal truth.
Crid at January 13, 2008 12:30 PM
> my comment was mostly facecious
OK, so I take it back... Though I don't see why fascetiousness was called for. Let's say nature does come up with something worse... Won't we solve that problem when it becomes apparent to us? If the next problem kills us, were we therefore wasting our time in solving this one? There are several million people alive over this weekend who would probably think not.
I hate cluckers.
crid at January 13, 2008 5:19 PM
Mother Teresa was a vile woman. All she ever did was create a bunch of dying rooms for sick people. When she was dying she got the best medical care money could buy. 20 years ago people would look at me like I was a cynical bastard when I would call Mother Teresa a fraud. Penn and Teller did a TV show about her hypocrisy a few years ago. They were also called assholes and one radio host got fired for saying they should be killed.
http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/04/11/radio-host-fired-over-comments-about-penn-and-tellers-penn/
David H at January 13, 2008 7:21 PM
Did you ever see the article in the recent Times magazine about morals? It gives readers different scenarios in which they would have to make life altering decisions- like a 'good for the many or good for the few' kind of deal. It was fascinating because I surveyed a lot of people with it (cause I'm nosy like that) and the reactions were interesting. Some favored self preservation, others self sacrifice. But the article didn't tell who was right or wrong, it just posed the questions.
Morals are subjective, look at all the evil that's done by people who boast about having such high ones.
Julie at January 13, 2008 7:40 PM
Pinker's piece contains some of those scenarios.
We have common hard-wired morality. There are some who are sociopaths, but there are common beliefs about what is fair and what is cheating. There's a good deal of research on that, actually. Reciprocal altruism, cheater detection, prisoner's dilemma are some terms to look up if you're interested. Sorry, still recovering from an anesthesia-driven, three-day stupor or I'd post in greater detail.
Amy Alkon at January 13, 2008 7:43 PM
Fascinating article and replies. For what it's worth -- and at the risk of seeming self-promoting -- there is a free, non-profit educational web site that has several full interviews with Dr. Norman Borlaug about his work in agriculture. Go to http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org and click on the "Media Resouces" for video podcasts of his interviews. Or go to the "Farming in the 50s-60s" section and click on the "Crops" subsection to see longer articles about the history and debate about the Green Revolution. Again, it's totally free and non-profit.
Bill Ganzel at January 14, 2008 7:59 AM
Thanks, Bill.
Amy Alkon at January 14, 2008 8:03 AM
I acctually took some of the tests the article mentioned. The doctors had some website set up with a dozen or so test, I'll try and find it.
Just switched laptops so it might take me a while since I cant use my history
lujlp at January 14, 2008 9:47 AM
That Pinker piece is one of the dullest articles ever written.
Trees died for that thing, and if we're talking about morality, that ain't right.
Crid at January 14, 2008 10:41 AM
At least according to you, and that was the point
I agree though it was dull, I've never read anything that made me fall asleep before
lujlp at January 14, 2008 12:56 PM
Leave a comment