The following is a thought experiment by an unnamed 18th century French Philosopher.
The philosopher describes a remarkable magical button that he has in his possession. If he gives it to you, and you press it, you will immediately be delivered unimaginable wealth, power, and whatever else it is that you desire. The only consequence to pressing it, beyond your radical improvement in circumstance, is the death of a far away Chinese peasant. You will never know who they are. But somehow in all the millions of anonymous souls who die in that country there will be an unexpected and unexplained end of life that will occur. There are two questions. Would you push the button? And who would you trust with the button? (Source Unknown)
The answer to the first question for me is easy. I wouldn't press it. Anonymity, or being completely disconnected from the victim, would never absolve my guilt from the knowledge that I had intentionally caused ultimate hurt to another – or hurt of any kind. The second question for me is reasonably easy to answer as well. All the friends that I know and love, I feel with a very good degree of certainty, would have the same attitude as me. In fact I can't imagine a mind set in just about everyone I know that would act any differently. Perhaps I'm wrong in such a clear cut reaction, but I don't think I am.
So what's the actual dilemma in this suggested scenario? What kind of person would be inclined to consider pushing the button and causing the death of a fellow human? What type of personality factors would an individual need to possess to act in such a way? In what circumstances would the death of another individual, no matter how anonymous or disconnected, be justified to selfishly furnish your life with riches and power? But then is it the anonymous end of another life that is the real issue? Should we, in a more thoughtful manner, try to take ourselves outside the strictures of our current, limited, shallow, and extremely comfortable, Western, 21st Century mind-set? The way most of us live now with our ultramodern health technologies, our dramatic increases in life expectancy, and our over abundance of food, leisure, and every indulgence is a very recent phenomenon. There is the fact of the enormous longevity of life on earth, and also the massive volumes of life that doesn't, and never has, share in our peculiar affluence. According to current knowledge, if the history of life is a time peace, we are living in environmental circumstances that would cover only several nano-seconds in a 24 hour cycle. The overwhelming majority of existence has been something other than what we now take for granted.
About 50 years ago in March 1969 President Nixon and Henry Kissinger, without the approval of the US Congress, secretly decided to commence what ended up being a carpet bombing campaign of Cambodia. While the US was actually at war with Cambodia's neighbour Vietnam, some of the Cambodians were providing significant logistical support to the Vietnamese. So the Yanks decided to punish them and destabilize their infrastructure. Initially specific military targets were aimed at, but over time the amounts of explosives used expanded to record breaking levels and many innocent civilians were caught up in the carnage and killed. Nobody knows for sure but the so called “collateral damage” numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and the facts were well known to those in power in the US. Does this mean they'd push the button? Well you'd have to say yes they would because that's just what they did. They may not have pushed it to gain wealth, but they certainly did to gain the other promised gift, i.e. power. And they certainly did so with callous indifference towards the innocents. The same indifference was with President Truman when he approved the atomic bomb against Japan. But then it was only 6 years prior, under the “divine” sanction of Emperor Hirohito, that the Japanese army engaged in “The Rape of Nanking”. The intentional and prolonged atrocities committed by the Japanese during this part of their military campaign in China were so extreme that when news of what they did came out even the ruthless Nazis in Europe were horrified.
On July 13, 1099 the Christian Crusaders carried up to the walls around Jerusalem things called siege towers, and two days later they captured a sector of that wall. This allowed other combatants behind them to follow up and over with scaling ladders. Then began several days of the most appalling atrocities committed against the existing inhabitants of the city. Massacres of innocents in cities taken by storm after a siege were quite normal in ancientand medieval warfare. However, it has been generally accepted that the massacre of the inhabitants of Jerusalem that included Muslims, Jews, Christians, women, children and pretty much anything that moved, significantly exceeded even these previous barbaric standards. It was later reported, perhaps apocryphally, that blood was flowing knee deep in the streets. So I guess we could say that at that time all of those believing Crusaders not only pushed the button, but their brutal savagery was done to deliver themselves the promised power, prestige and wealth as well. I assume we're all familiar with the concept of looting.
While these incidents were clear demonstrations of button pushing it turns out historically that they were not at all uncommon. Have you ever heard of Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan, or Julius Caesar, or Saladin, or Napoleon, or Mao Zedong, or The Vikings, or The Assyrians, or The Spartans, etc. etc.? I wonder how many millions and millions of non-combatants, or innocent women and children, died as a consequence of their brutal military campaigns? Most generals or leaders that I have read about planned their military strategies with total disregard for anything, human or other that got in their way. No great military figure of history has ever demonstrated anything like compassion or empathy. And given the levels of ruthlessness recorded in most reports of warfare we could say the same about all their generals, commanders, officers, sergeants, plain old troopers, foot soldiers, or basically any person involved? Somebody has to do the bidding of commanders in chief. The constant desensitising of being ordered to continually slaughter anything that breathed would probably mean that they too would quite naturally push the button.
Perhaps the thought experiment should be re-framed. A cursory review of history shows that as soon as humans moved into tribes and grouped together in semi-permanent settings around the start of the Neolithic they had more than just the brutality of nature and the environment to worry about. Life and liberty became monumentally more perilous because there emerged the new menace of neighbouring tribes who might become jealous of their successful crops, fattened livestock, or pretty young daughters. Continued threats of enslavement to, or death by, other groups meant that the protections created by tribal cohesion and social unity were as important to the health of the individual as was food, drink and air.
So I think that we could reasonably say that there have been many, many people who would push the button. Perhaps even an overwhelming majority. Think about it. If you're completely powerless, poverty stricken and under direct threat of your life by external malevolent powers, which seems to be most of history, of course you'd act to get you and your family out of such danger. Particularly if it meant that your precarious position would be replaced by certainty, strength and protection for you and your offspring. This is simply an evolutionary fact. It would unmistakably be the natural or normal thing to do. It's what all of nature does so successfully, and has done so for millions and millions of years. It's called Evolution. Its underlying principle is “survival of the fittest”, and it's driven by what has come to be called the “selfish gene.” The is no glory in virtue, there is only survival.
So when I started this reflection by saying that l could never imagine myself pushing the button and bringing about the death of some unknown and obscure individual, was I actually not reflecting my natural motivation based on many thousands of years evolutionary inheritance, and the reality of the world we live in? Would I be just like the billions of other historical life forms? Am I actually the odd one out? According to any modest examination of the history of life it appears I am.
It is often observed that nature is ruthless and completely devoid of sentiment in the pursuit of its survival, but it only takes what it needs, and no more. In choosing to push the button is that all an individual would be doing – simply getting what you need to ensure your family group survives one more generation. According to nature that's all you can be held responsible for. Much of what causes people to be powerless and threatened is beyond any form of individual control, or capacity to change. I might have been the most heroic ,humane and virtuous Japanese civilian who has ever existed, but if I lived in Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War, so what? No amount of personal goodness mattered when someone else decided to push their button. Survival imperatives for endless millennia have always been juxtaposed with the ruthlessness of the physical environment and the ever present and rapacious food chain of which we are all a captive part. So lets re-frame the thought experiment in this slightly changed context and see what it has in common with the initial one.
The philosopher describes a remarkable magical button that he has in his possession. If he gives it to you, and you press it, you and your family will immediately be delivered from the poverty, mortal danger and powerlessness you are currently trapped in. You will simultaneously be supplied with the means to guarantee their continued safety. The only consequence to pressing it, beyond your obvious success in your pursuit of survival, is the death of the marauding band of others who are about to destroy your encampment, kill you, and enslave your children. You will never know who they were. But somehow in among all the millions of anonymous souls who die in the barbarity that always been our world there will be unexplained end of lives occurring. There is one question. Would you push the button? (Source Me)
So what is changed in this alternative scenario? In evolutionary terms what does pressing the button deliver? Survival and safety for you and your offspring which would quite correctly be seen as equivalent to wealth and power in today's language. Is this really any different to that first story? When did the horrors of slavery, genocide, dispossession and selfishness suddenly stop, and we were gifted so much spare time to stare at our navels? Well for many they haven't. They continue on right now as if nothing has changed. Somewhere between 40 – 50 genocides happened in the 2nd half of the 20th century. There's somewhere between 30 million and 45 million people living in slavery right now and that's not to mention the 30 million or so child brides. If pushing the button meant that you, your partner, or your son or daughter moved a little further along the survival trajectory, and the ensuing prosperity ensured the same fate for their offspring, when did that become wrong, or something that I shouldn't feel right about? On what logical basis, and in the context of our dominant intellectual paradigm – Evolution – is the very recently declared and historically very odd principle of the sanctity of life established? Who on earth was crazy enough to think that such an anachronistic idea would have any traction in this naturalistic cauldron we inhabit?
Коментарі