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Nathan: I’ve got a hypothetical for you.
Holden: How’d you know I’m a sucker for hypotheticals?
Nathan: C’mon Holden, most good Jews are.
Holden: Hit me.
Nathan: Imagine there’s a tribe in some remote part of the world who believe in a prophecy that goes like: “Every second child must walk blind.”
Holden: They are commanded to keep their eyes shut? Seems strenuous.
Nathan: Nah. To keep true to their religious tradition, they pluck out the eyes of every second child.
Holden: Thank their God I’m a third child.
Nathan: Ha. Anyway, that’s the hypothetical, but the question for me is can we objectively say that this culture’s treatment of second born children is relatively worse to other cultures?
Holden: Such as… us? The US?
Nathan: Doesn’t have to be, but sure, why not?
Holden: You’re asking whether we can objectively — as impartial as a Douglas fir — and outside of our own cultural contexts label this tradition of blinding babies, of holy eye gouging, as wrong?
Nathan: Not wrong, just worse than the way other cultures without that tradition treat their second born sons.
Holden: Can you describe the barometer in this hypothetical? By how many inches is that culture proverbially shorter than ours?
Nathan: There isn’t a degree to it, one is just above the other. To poorly paraphrase e the brilliant Sam Harris, cultures live on a moral landscape where some are higher than others. More than one type of culture can be structured high up on the landscape, just as more than one type can be structured lower down.
Holden: But in what measurements is the Y axis of this graph labeled?
Nathan: I’d argue that the most important aspects would be the physical and mental well being of the people within the culture.
Holden: And what device is there to measure — empirically and absolutely — the physical and mental well being of an individual, better yet of a whole culture of people?
Nathan: Well it’s obviously not an exact science —
Nathan: Ouch, I’m not talking about killing people here, just revising how they treat certain members of society, you Person from Porlock. But physical and mental well being can be evaluated by doctors and therapists .
Holden: Okay (1).
Nathan: There isn’t a perfect tool or way to measure it. But, missing eyes are a knock from physical well being, and I’d be willing to bet that the kids who spend their whole lives without their eyes — with no say in the matter I might add — will be a serious notch lower on the mental evaluation as well. People like to see.
Holden: Okay. We’ve suddenly leapt from “objectively wrong —in an absolute sense” to “willing to bet.”
Nathan: I don’t have the data on me, so I can’t empirically prove it one way or another. But in the mind of most reasonable people, maiming children at birth for a superstition, (2) is a bad thing. Hence, that culture’s treatment toward second born children is lower on the moral landscape than ours.
Holden: Gotcha. “Most reasonable people” are the barometer. From what demographics are we grabbing these ‘reasonable people?’ Are we just rounding up all of the White, Male, Upper-Middle-Class Jewish College Students and asking them what they deem reasonable?
Nathan: Hahaha. Obviously this isn’t just my opinion. I guess the best demographic to use would be… I guess people who have regard for human life.
Holden: Okay. I understand your point. But what if “most reasonable people” in a different demographic — say, Saudi Arabia — think something like treating half of their population as second class citizens is good and proper? Does that make such treatment truly good and proper?
Nathan: Those people don’t have regard for human life in the way that maximizes mental and physical well being for everyone in that society. Maybe the men are really well off, but certainly not the women.
Holden: But it’s the “most reasonable people” that determine physical and mental well being. Circular logic, my geometry honors teacher taught me (3), leads to circular grades.
Nathan: But they’re not physically and mentally well, in an objective sense. The “most reasonable people” is a misnomer. We’re talking about people who can look at facts and objectively tell us whether someone is physically and/or mentally healthy.
Holden: We’re swapping euphemism for euphemism here.
Nathan: Perhaps, but let’s take a real world example. You mentioned Saudi Arabia above, yeah? And their practice of treating women there like trash? Well I’ve got another question, this time from the real world: Would you say that America’s treatment of women — as flawed as it is — is objectively better than Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women? Because I would.
Holden: I hesitate to make such an objective statement for a few reasons. First, I’m not sure of the nuances of the quality of life — and even how to characterize “quality of life” — of Saudi Arabian women. Second, I hesitate to perch myself up in the clouds above the fray of mingling cultures and make absolute comparative statements. Fuck, I hesitate to call paper white sometimes.
Nathan: I’d urge you to read Sam Harris’s book, because I’m doing a disservice to his argument. I’m not the one who ultimately makes the decisions, but as human beings I’d like to believe we could reach a consensus and decide that allowing women to have the same basic human rights as men is better than anything short of that — in the same manner that cultures that promote slavery and genocide should be universally condemned. There is a scale out there. Some aspects of one culture are worse or better than that same aspect in another culture.
Holden: What are these basic human rights and who gets to define them? On another note, do you have a mac charger?
Nathan: I could give you my best guess and some of it would be right, but ultimately, that’s for better people than me to determine and then explain. And uh... only for my Macbook Air.
Nathan: Would you expect anything else?
Holden: Oy.
(1) I wanted to dive into an argument on whether spirituality and spiritual fulfillment can trump something like physical disability. It’s tough to measure spiritual utility and its effects on quality of life and I wonder if living the devout life of a hypothetical blind second born could add to the again hazy ‘quality of life’. My pal Nathan disagrees and believes that spiritual well being would fall within the mental umbrella but alas this is a conversation for another night. --H
(2) Eerily similar to a certain Jewish tradition, is it not? Though I would argue the quality of life changes are drastically different, making one maiming much worse than the other, but the concept is similar --N.
(3) Stonily fascinating: with Rate My Professor/Teacher teachers have suddenly become public figures that can be commonly and casually referenced — celebrities. --H.
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