Text of this morning's thought
In matters of life and death, people are often accused of “playing God”. But some recent events have made me think we should be more careful before we level this charge at others.
The issue came to mind yesterday when I read about a remarkable windpipe transplant undertaken in Spain. The replacement trachea was actually grown in Bristol from cells taken from the woman who needed it. The success of the operation paves the way for the possibility of growing any number of replacement organs in laboratories.
Compare this to the story of Hannah Jones, the 13-year-old who last week refused a heart transplant operation; and to that of the paralysed 23-year-old Daniel James, who chose to end his own life last month.
Who, if anyone, was playing God in these cases? Few accused the Bristol and Spanish doctors of doing so, even though they grew body parts to deliberately alter the course of life and death. Few accused Hannah Jones of usurping the deity, even though her decision will almost certainly make her life shorter than it would be. But when Daniel James chose to shorten his life, using no Frankenstein science, he was accused by many of playing God.
I’m not sure this makes much sense. It is as though we are allowed to try as hard as we can to influence the direction of our lives, just as long as we don’t succeed in actually getting our hands on the rudder. To be human, it seems, is never to take decisive control, while always trying and failing to do so.
In other words, trying to play God is usually seen as both normal and acceptable. It’s succeeding which is both rare and condemned.
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Wednesday, 19 November 2008
On moral leadership
"When Barack Obama was being elected as the most powerful man in the world, James Bond was again laying claim to the same title, as the new 007 movie Quantum of Solace opened worldwide. Having watched both, on screens big and small, I'm now not sure which is the most realistic. In a curious role reversal, the President-elect now seems more idealistic and more morally grounded than the fictional serial saviour of the human race."Tuesday's Herald column
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Irish Skeptics - Dublin, 18 November
Giving a talk “How to argue badly and (still) influence people”. Full details here.
Thought for the Day - BBC Radio Bristol
Text of this morning's thought.
Yesterday we discovered that, contrary to earlier reports, there were no murders or underground punishment rooms at a Jersey children's home. It seems we were all too willing to believe the worst when these lurid tales first surfaced.
In the case of Baby P, however, the problem was that those responsible were all too unwilling to believe the worst. Despite clear evidence of terrible abuse, social services allowed themselves to swallow innocent explanations.
It would be rash to speculate as to what exactly went wrong in Jersey and Haringey, but both conform to a familiar pattern: thinking badly of people we have some distance from is easy, but facing up to the bad in front of our noses can be very difficult. It is as hard to believe that friends or relatives are guilty of crimes they have actually committed as it is easy to believe that people in different times and places routinely do barbarous things.
What then of our judgement when it is as close to home as it can get? How can we trust our moral vision when we look in the mirror? People can, of course, be very self-critical, to the point of self-loathing. But we rarely doubt the purity of our own motives. “No man is a villain to himself” as Michael Caine once put it.
There is no easy way to improve our ethical night vision. The best we can do, in Jersey, in Haringey, and in our own lives, is to try as best we can to see good and bad for what they really are, not what we want or expect them to be. And to remember: it's always hard to see in the dark.
Yesterday we discovered that, contrary to earlier reports, there were no murders or underground punishment rooms at a Jersey children's home. It seems we were all too willing to believe the worst when these lurid tales first surfaced.
In the case of Baby P, however, the problem was that those responsible were all too unwilling to believe the worst. Despite clear evidence of terrible abuse, social services allowed themselves to swallow innocent explanations.
It would be rash to speculate as to what exactly went wrong in Jersey and Haringey, but both conform to a familiar pattern: thinking badly of people we have some distance from is easy, but facing up to the bad in front of our noses can be very difficult. It is as hard to believe that friends or relatives are guilty of crimes they have actually committed as it is easy to believe that people in different times and places routinely do barbarous things.
What then of our judgement when it is as close to home as it can get? How can we trust our moral vision when we look in the mirror? People can, of course, be very self-critical, to the point of self-loathing. But we rarely doubt the purity of our own motives. “No man is a villain to himself” as Michael Caine once put it.
There is no easy way to improve our ethical night vision. The best we can do, in Jersey, in Haringey, and in our own lives, is to try as best we can to see good and bad for what they really are, not what we want or expect them to be. And to remember: it's always hard to see in the dark.
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
On individual rights
"Which is really the greater threat to our freedom? Is it laws, enacted by an elected government, that openly tell us how alcohol can and cannot be sold? Or is it corporations, analysing our buying habits, using research in psychology to make us want what we didn't know we wanted, and using every trick they know to get us to buy more and more?"This week's Herald column
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