What's the Buzz

... A nightclub in Newcastle. I've always liked the sculptural sign made of reclaimed metal.

Reflected glory of the urban streetscape

I felt privileged to see this reflection effect and was glad to have the phone-camera to hand

Bread of heaven

This is the tabernacle of the Church next to our house. It's made of wood, and I like the design.

What your shadow does when cut loose

From a wall in east-end Newcastle.

Volunteering may be good for us

Though we should note the caveat "the findings have yet to be confirmed in trials", taken with findings that cumulatively show that churchgoing seems to corelate with longer and healthier life, it is perhaps no surprise that:

Some observational evidence points to around a 20 per cent reduction in mortality among volunteers compared to non-volunteers in cohort studies. Volunteers also reported lower levels of depression, increased life satisfaction and enhanced well-being Go on, volunteer -- it could be good for you!

It may well be that this is capturing essentially the same thing as the church-going data is picking up: part of the ethos of church-going is about giving ones time and effort, without financial payment, for the common good. Of course there are other issues and some of these relate to the happiness and stress-reduction dimensions of life. And, most importantly, it is well to note a corelation, it is another thing to produce a convincing reason for it which seems to have explanatory power and is productive of testable hypotheses.

More research is needed to unpack the theoretical mechanisms by which volunteers may accrue different health benefits

And, of course; "Volunteer too much, and the habit can become a burden, bringing problems of its own." -as some of us who have been involved in church leadership are only too aware; sometimes people have to be protected from their own enthusiasm, guilt-drivers and indeed interpersonal difficulties with co-volunteers. Indeed, I'd like to see a study that helps to open out the issues related to guilt-driven volunteering as opposed to more freely-offered efforts, for example. I hove the sense that running a church or other organisation on guilt is bad for people all round in the longer term.

And part of the issue in volunteering is the type of people who typically do it: is the study actually measuring a population who would be better off even if they didn't volunteer, because of other factors?

... volunteering is associated with improvements in mental health, but more work is needed to establish whether volunteering is actually the cause. It is still unclear whether biological and cultural factors and social resources that are often associated with better health and survival are also associated with a willingness to volunteer in the first place. The challenge now is to encourage people from more diverse backgrounds to take up volunteering, and then to measure whether improvements arise for them.

My suspcion is that maybe church populations are more diverse and that if the church-going benefits are related to the volunteering benefits (as I suspect they are), then that may be evidence that it is to do with volunteering rather than pre-existing cultural or biological factors. But we'll see ...

Should we judge people of past eras for moral failings?

Whether it's to do with governments or organisations apologising for misdemeaners of previous eras, or debates about the moral record of  churches or other relgious organisations (for example -is God immoral to have got Mary pregnant at age 13 -if that particular speculation were to be correct?). So this article has a number of things worth thinking about. First up commenting on the idea that we can't judge people of other cultures or times:

 The philosopher Miranda Fricker is not a moral relativist, but she thinks the test for blameworthiness is whether the person could have known any different. "The proper standards by which to judge people are the best standards that were available to them at the time".BBC News - Should we judge people of past eras for moral failings?

 Now I think there's something to that, but on the face of it, it doesn't get us out of the hole. 'Best standards available' sounds fair enough but is actually a hostage to interpretation of 'best'. Who defines best? Is that not simply re-immersing us in the problem we started off with? - Best standards in 1700's in Europe seemed to be that slave-holding was fine provided they were treated well. There were people arguing slavery was simply wrong, but how were people of that age to know that we, their descendants, would consider that the 'best' position? After all, it was considered that the humane slavery argued for was a civilising institution for primitive people whose lives were being improved by being slaves. A position not dissimilar from the arguments for apartheid, interestingly. It's obvious to us now what the best standards were/are but I'm not convinced that it is obvious within the situation. As the article says at the end:

just as we judge Kant's century, and identify its moral defects, so it is inevitable that the people of the 23rd Century will detect flaws in ours, the 21st.
What might these flaws be? Our treatment of the environment? Our tolerance of poverty?
... the way that we, in the early part of the 21st Century, still treat animals.

 There's a really helpful perspective discussed in the article involving distinguishing between blame and responsibility using an idea called 'moral luck'.

20th Century British philosopher, Bernard Williams, tried to tease apart a distinction between blame and responsibility. He did so by writing about what he called "moral luck".

Take the following example. Imagine that while a lorry driver is on the road a child suddenly runs out in front of him. Through tragic bad luck the child is hit by the vehicle and dies.

The man is blameless, for the accident has happened through no fault of his. In this sense he has nothing to reproach himself for, and has done nothing wrong. And yet, writes Williams, surely this man is now enmeshed in a set of moral responsibilities that, for example, a bystander, who is equally blameless, is not. It makes a moral difference that it was him at the wheel. As the driver, he might have an obligation to meet the parents or attend the funeral

 This in turn helps us to think about whether and how corporate entities might be blameworthy or responsible and, in a sense, whether they can let alone should apologise for past wrongs. So ...

[Australian] Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who finally made the formal apology on behalf of the state in 2008, against the wishes of a significant minority of the Australian people. Here is an example where, arguably, the current state might be blameless, yet somehow responsible

 It seems to be an emerging consensus that institutions and organisations can be held responsible as corporates even if the individuals involved are now different.

"It seems to me to be a measure of civilisation that our institutions have full accountability, in much the way that individuals do," says Fricker. "An apology is an incredibly important act that our institutions should increasingly become capable of - people who have been wronged by the state are owed an apology by the state, even if the individuals in government are different from those at the time."

 What needs to be done beyond this, of course, is to weigh up the responsibility and blameworthiness of individuals concerned. How far are some people caught up in corporate wrongdoing blameworthy or responsible. Are they more like the lorry-driver mentioned above or a drunk-driver or even some other position on a scale of blame and responsibility.

Don't leave your paper behind. Really?

On many of the buses I catch in and around Tyneside, there are copies of the free 'paper  Metro. which, presumably the bus companies receive an adnvertising payment for allow to be placed on their buses. At the same time, a number of buses have a public notice ´Don't leave your paper behind. Take it with you and recycle it´ In some notices, leaving your paper behind is said to be littering.

 

I think there are some problems with this.  It's a free as in 'giveaway' newspaper. It is offered at the front of the bus in such a way as to encourage people to pick it up and read it on their journey. In many cases passengers will have read as much as they wish by the time their journey ends and not wish to take it with them. I suspect that many of us almost instinctievly feel that leaving it on your seat to be picked up by another passenger is a neighbourly thing to do (though dropping it on the floor isn't). There's an interesting issue about 'ownership' involved here. The notices seem to imply that picking up a paper makes it yours.

 I think the psychology of picking up a free paper on public transport is that it is often felt to be a public good not a private possession, or at least it might only become a private possession once you put it in your bag or carry it off the bus or train, until that time it is still potentially re-placeable in the public domain and, in fact, to do so is a public good of neighbourliness because you are making the service of news and entertainment available to others. Thus it is not littering: it is recirculating.  This is something to be encouraged, surely? Even the advertisers in said 'paper would agree -albeit for different reasons: they would like more eyeballs to take in the product. 

A win-win situation?

Maybe, but not quite: there is the pesky problem posed by the non-co-operators: those who don't want to take it off the bus for their own consumption but also think it more amusing or that it is somehow acceptable simply to throw it on the floor and walk on it ... problem of the commons?

The prisoners' dilemma reality is different

Actually this is a bit of o big deal:  so many bits of economic and sociological thinking are based on this bit of game theory (and I contend it should be ~s' not ~'s so I've corrected the quote):

... the prisoners' dilemma, a classic example in game theory showing why individuals might not cooperate.... a thought experiment. No one had ever actually tested it on real prisoners. ...Surprisingly, for the classic version of the game, prisoners were far more cooperative than expected. The prisoner's dilemma, in real life

In fact it's a bit of a warning to all economic theory which is one huge thought experiment rarely perturbed by actual testing of the theories in real life situations. I was tought economics which was almost exclusively thought-experiment stuff and it is all so believable because we are more rational in our own minds than we often are in our behaviour.

So next time you hear capitalistic selfishness justified on the basis of thought-experiment economic arguments remember this. As some of the comments bring out, we might also want to ponder the possible effects of culture and socialisation on the one hand and on the other whether gender has an effect. But whatever the factors turning people from purely rational calculative responses, the important thing to note is that the kind of thinking on which we base our economics -which is what our government is using- is flawed as a model for human behaviour. It turns out we tend to favour sociable nice-ness more than the thought-experiments would lead us to expect. It's time we started to build our policies on behaviourally-researched economics.

Monogamy evolution -providential ethics

Around a quarter of primate species practice monogamy, suggesting that there is a biological background to it. Now, of course, if it was totally driven by instinct it wouldn't be a moral question. So, I'm suggesting, the combination of biological drivers and some moral reasoning based on big ethical themes gives quite a strong case for preferring it. Here's the report in NS:

Suckling infants are most likely to be killed by unrelated males, in order to bring the mother back into ovulation. With pair-bonding in place, not only would a mother have a male to help protect the infant from marauding males, but there would then be the opportunity for the male to help care for it by providing extra resources. This means the infant can be weaned earlier, again reducing the chance of it being killed.  Monogamy evolved to keep baby-killers away - life - 30 July 2013 - New Scientist

As I read that I was put in mind of one of the insights that shows up in the debate on marriage and divorce: the position of women in pre-modern society was (and often still is, actually) somewhat precarious economically without adult men in the household and a recently unmarried woman's difficulties were multiplied. Thus it can be argued that a strong reason for not making divorce easy is to protect women and to discourage a disposible attitude towards them.

It seems to me that the 'protecting baby' matter bringing about monogamy (though mechanisms are hazy but presumably relating to infant survival rates for faithful fathers) has a similar sort of feel to it. There are sensible reasons why, in general terms, it's a good idea. We should note, too, that the evolutionary basis to this would suggest that there is a certain 'built-in-ness' about this (which may apply to the drive towards faithfulness too). However, as creatures able to reflect and create meanings and act differently as a result, quasi-instinctual drives can be overruled. And so that leaves open at that point the question about the ethical meaning of such a discovery/hypothesis.

I think that this is where we need care, of course. The long-established principle of moral reasoning is that you can't derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. In other words just because things are a particular way doesn't make it right. We can see this working out in different ways from two examples. On the one hand the 'is' of a homophile orientation doesn't of itself say anything one way or another about the rightness of various homosexual acts or arrangements. On the other hand, the 'is' of feeling attraction to another person's spouse does not make an 'ought' to act on it. Or to take a different arena: it is the case that the strong exploit the weak, however this 'is' does not imply that they ought to do so: might does not make right of necessity. The 'is' of violent feelings does not make an 'ought' to murder.

So, does an evolutionary reason for monagamy translate into any kind of ethical steer?  Clearly not directly.However, the question remains in such a case of whether it is an 'is' we should go with, resist or think about carefully. I'm intrigued by the idea that such a thing might have evolved in order to protect babies and probably to support and protect their mothers. This opens the possibility that such behaviour generalised actually makes for a society in which grief and anxiety are minimised and so socially-cohesive behaviours fueled by healthful emotional states predominate. Basically a utilitarian perspective there.

If God is in some sense community where love, joy and shalom are characteristic then utilitarian perspectives deserve some consideration. If God desires the welfare of creation, a utilitarian approach is part of what should be considered. That being so, if the created order has, providentially, structures built in that tend towards the well-being and happiness of humans, we should take them seriously as clues to properly moral behaviour.

I would point up 'tend towards' in the last sentence: we need to note that this is 'aggregate ethics', that is something like Kant's (and Sartre's) universalisability argument. However, we should recognise that aggregates may not serve individuals in some cases and may even tyranically bear down and harm some if the 'norm' is made into a universal 'must'.

So does the evolutionarily-explicable tendency towards monogamy give any clues as to whether there are reasons to be wary of an aggregate-norm becoming universal-rules tyranny? Well, the putative reason of protection for child and mother would seem to offer the basis for a trump-card: if monogamy was bad for either or both, there may be reason to resist universal application and an insastance on faithfulness. This seems to be where we have got to in a lot of reasoning about such things: that protecting the welfare of vulnerable parties is reason to disolve a marriage.

I don't think that this is deriving an 'ought' from an 'is'. I think that it is treating the 'is' as having a providential dimension to it which is potentially a clue or a supporting reason for a general or aggregate ethic. Perhaps this is close to being a 'natural law' position but not entirely so. it doesn't absolutise the 'natural' state and in this case the providential approach (that is seeing a potentiall providentiality in the way some things have come to be) is not so much an argument as a way into a perspective to help uncover reasons for decisions or approaches. You'll note, of course, that I combined the evolutionary theory with a theological perspective. I think that this is probably the only way to try to ground a providential argument to be able to shift it from a simple 'is' into some kind of 'ought' in however weak or nuance-needing a way.

Perhaps I should freely confess that I've not made ethics a big part of my studies, so please forgive any naiveties in this. I'd be happy to have some gentle pointers to assessing the kind of approach I'm outlining -or even some cross referencing.

Matthew Fox's open 'Letters to Pope Francis" -a review

This book is basically a series of open letters from Matthew Fox to Pope Francis. I was intrigued, so I got a copy. I have a love-annoyance relationship with Matt Fox's writing: I tend to warm to the broad kind of agenda he has, as I understand it: a celebratory spirituality which is rooted in the natural world and concerned for peace, justice and human flourishing. On the other hand, I have tended to find him overly dismissive and unnuanced in relation to those whom he demarcates as 'enemies' (though that term he never uses) of creation spirituality, particularly proponents of 'fall-redemption' theologies. I think that he is often unfair about FR proponents and cartoonises their views. My other problem with his writing is that it often comes over as a Christian vocabulary for new-age perspectives. That said, I think that starting with 'original blessing' is a right sort of thing to do and that a celebratory spirituality is important. Happily, from my point of view, these difficulties were not much on display in this series of open letters.

One of the little things I enjoyed was at the end of the letters he signs himself 'Matthew Fox oops' where 'oops' stands for 'once of the order of preachers', signalling his own history: he was a Roman Catholic priest belonging to the order of preachers (that is the Dominacans). He was inhibited from teaching by the RCC and now functions as an Episcopalian priest in California. Fox does refer to this history a little, but mostly on the oblique in referring to wider issues.

For me the letters were a bit of an insight into the RCC since Vatican II written, as it is, from an insider-outsider perspective. Fox is, overall, cautiously hopeful about Francis: he finds the reference in his taken-name to the popular saint of Assissi to be encouraging if it represents something of a manifesto or at least a statement of interest. He also, like many of us, is encouraged by the pope's choices for simplicity and humility in his public and not-so-public actions so far. Fox compliments him on these things and expresses a hope for the trajectory so far marked out to continue. He suggests where this might lead and where, in his view it should lead ending with a letter in which he offers twelve concrete actions that should be undertaken to address the concerns he has developed in the earlier letters.

I think three (or four) things stand out for me in terms of what he writes in the collection of letters as a whole. One is to do with the scale of sexual and other kinds of abuse by priests and bishops, another is the response to Vatican II and then there is the issue of gender and sexuality.

In relation to gender and sexuality, Fox is unsurprisingly in favour of the RCC taking a more fully egalitarian approach by ordaining women and giving a fuller place to lay people in decision-making. In relation to sexuality, he argues that the sensus fidelium (the sense of direction that tends to emerge from the whole people of God over time as they wrestle with issues) has already spoken and that he hierarchy needs to get with the plot: the sensus fidelium is clearly in favour of allowing birth control and of a less uptight approach to matters of sex. One of Fox's recommendations is that the RCC should declare a moratorium on public and official statements about sex and sexuality and concentrate instead of matters of justice and peace. I suspect that this would be a big ask of the Pope, even if it turned out that he was sympathetic to the radical agenda (from the point of view of the Roman hierarchy): it's a huge shift to ask for.

It seems easy to link the sexuality issue with the clerical abuse scandals, Fox on the whole does not do this and I think that this is wise. In some cases it may be linked but the two issues need to be looked at on their own merit, and on the whole Fox does so. What I learnt from the letters was just how much clerical abuse there appears to have been and just how inadequate the hierarchy's responses have been. There is a huge amount of work to be done here and the hypocrisies involved seem to point to radical root-and-branch reforms needed. Again, one wonders how such far-reaching reform can be attempted and I found myself thinking at several points that while Fox is right to highlight the need for reform, he's not giving much help in relation to the 'how' questions except in very broad terms (more of which below) and actually the realpolitk of this is going to be the make-or-break thing and probably has been for the last two generations (and more).

With regard to the legacy of the second vatican council,I thought that a very interesting point is made: a council trumps a pope, that is the directions set by a council such as Vatican II are more binding than the directions set by a pope. On this basis, Fox makes a bold claim that the last two popes have been schismatic because they have presided over a retrenchment in relation to the clear direction of travel set by Vatican II. I think he may have a point, and I'm sure that many will be uneasy or angry at the proposal, but it would at least offer some basis for a program of reforms if Francis wanted it. Perhaps we should note that if Fox is right, the reversals have taken two popes 30 or 40 years to enact and embed, we might need to consider that to reset things to a Vatican II setting might require quite a long timetable against more resistance than the conservative turn faced.

One of the few indicators of how to engage in reform was Fox's suggestion of re-education of hierarchs -and Fox offers his own services for this. I felt that self-serviing feel of this suggestion seemed ill-fitting, though I'm not sure what else could be offered so perhaps that's just my cultural bias to self-effacement at work. I was a little uneasy about the suggestion of re-education -it sounds all too like a Stalinist response. I'd love to see Fox engage more fully in the details of a renewal of perspective program for a huge enterprise like the RCC.

I finished reading feeling both more hopeful that the RCC could reform under this pope, and also more aware that the wheels could come off. Probably that's about right! One of the hopeful things was a set of excerpts  from RC laypeople telling of their disaffection for the way the RCC is  and their struggle to find a life-giving spirituality in spite of or in the face of conservative control-freakery. Hopeful because if their voices are truly heard, then surely something must happen.

I'd love to see some exploration of whether there might be ecumenical progress on eucharistic hospitality and a drawing back from the Marian dogmas, but those are perhaps bigger issues and less pressing ...

Letters to Pope Francis: Rebuilding a Church with Justice and Compassion (UK) Or if you're wanting to go straight to Amazon.com Letters to Pope Francis: Rebuilding a Church with Justice and Compassion
Some other reviews: Matthew Fox (hearts) Pope Francis…and is hoping for more - Religion News
Is Pope Francis A Fraud? - Salon 
#SpeakeasyPopeFrancis