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Hi,
my name is Rachel McCausland. Here’s some quick context for what I’m going to
say. I was raised as a mormon in Utah. My parents were pretty free thinkers
compared to the rest of our community. They encouraged me and my eight siblings
to look for the principle behind the religious rules we followed. But the
ultimate authority was always God the Father, speaking through his prophet, the
president of our church.
When
I came to the ethics class here, it felt like a natural extension of my spiritual
journey over the last several years. That journey has been all about understanding
how to have strong ideals and principles, without being dogmatic or relying on
someone else’s higher authority.
Now, if I’m going to
talk about my personal experience with figuring out ethics for myself, I’m also
going to have to talk about being a vegan, because adopting a philosophy of
nonviolence was a huge part of my journey toward seeing ethics as something separate
from the church I grew up in. It was veganism which brought me to the moment where
I literally said to one of my family members, “If God himself came down from
heaven and told me to kill someone, I don’t think I would do it.” Because I
decided that even that would not make violence a good thing, or excuse me from
violating what I felt in my heart to be wrong. And that was a huge moment for
me. I was breaking off from the absolute moral law of obedience to God, in order
to follow my own code of ethics.
When
I first became a vegan for ethical reasons, I traded out one absolute moral law
for another. I took comfort in the idea that nonviolence was the one absolute
moral law that could never be used as justification for any sort of atrocity.
And I would never have to be faced with a situation where my religious leaders
would override what I felt to be the ultimate law to do no harm. It was the
ultimate life-affirming philosophy. I reasoned that with nonviolence, there
would be none of this arguing over whether the ends justified the means,
because both would be harmless. I would have no need for situational ethics,
because violence would be wrong in any situation.
Being
the science fiction nerd that I am, this approach to ethics was validated but
also challenged by some of my favorite stories about robots, written by Isaac
Asimov. Asimov invented the Three Laws of Robotics, which were programmed into
each of his robot characters and dictated their behavior. The laws are as
follows.
The
first law is: a robot must not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow
a human being to come to harm.
The second law is: a
robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders
would conflict with the First Law.
The third law is: a
robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not
conflict with the First or Second Laws.
Now, in Asimov’s
stories, even the robots who were programmed with these laws didn’t always have
an easy time making decisions. What if one human is harming another, and the
only way to stop him from doing harm is to harm him? The robot must try to
predict the possible outcomes of each action and find which one will do the
least amount of harm to the fewest number of people. Sometimes, these robots
would get so overwhelmed by these choices that their brains would short out,
and then they could do nothing at all to prevent harm to humans. Situational
ethics, and figuring out when the end justifies the means, is even harder for
these robots than it is for me, and that’s saying a lot!
But… if I don’t
approach these laws like a robot—if I keep a little flexibility—the
principles behind them fit well with the person I want to be. I can translate
them to basically, do no harm, help others, cooperate with them, and take care
of yourself. I can rearrange the order of the laws or make them all kind of
equally important, because I’m a human and my brain can do that. It’s important
to have that flexibility so that I don’t end up so overwhelmed that I do
nothing, or else so focused on sticking to the letter of the law that I’m
blinded to the effect that my actions will have on the larger good of the world.
When I was just
starting out as a vegan, still freshly horrified by what I was learning about
our food system… I was very rigid. When you open yourself up to that kind of
empathy with a group which is constantly suffering and being exploited, it
drives you a little crazy at first. The way I saw it, it was very simple.
Killing other animals when we don’t actually need meat to survive was
absolutely immoral. Staying silent about it meant I was complicit in the torture
and murder of innocent beings, and I couldn’t stand that thought. So I came on
strong. I made people feel guilty. And this did damage to my cause. I had to
learn the difficult truth that, in an imperfect world, we sometimes have to be
very careful about how we pursue our ethical goals, or we risk ending up with
the opposite result. How could I defend my fellow creatures—how could I work
toward this ethical goal of a world where the lives of animals are
valued—without breeding resentment between myself and other humans? I’m still
learning.
I have learned that
while it’s probably true that some individual actions or cultural systems are
wrong regardless of the circumstances, this does not always mean the people
involved in it are terrible, unethical individuals. Treating women and people
of certain heritage as property was, at one time, considered the natural order
of things. Someday we will probably look back on things that we all take for
granted now as being “okay”, and realize that we were acting unethically without
really realizing it. Nowadays, I realize that I was terribly homophobic when I
was younger, because I genuinely believed that being anything other than a
straight, cisgender person was a sure road to a dangerous and unhappy life.
There were “studies” my family and friends often quoted to back this up. There
were religious authorities, and my own fears of the unknown, and of my own
queerness, too, I think. But I was not able to face any of that at the time. The
journey out of absolutism and obedience-based morality was a long one, for me,
and when I got to the other side, it was confusing to try and establish new
points of reference, new anchors to make sure that the actions I take—my means—were
actually bringing me to an ethical end.
One of the readings for
our class included this quote from Paul Alinsky: “Means and ends are so
qualitatively interrelated that the question of the ends justifying the means
is unreal nonsense. The true question… is ‘Does this particular end justify
this particular means?’” From a vegan perspective, the ethical goal of
eliminating hunger is actually crippled in the long run by relying on meat to
feed people, as meat production is more wasteful and consumes more resources
per calorie than plant based foods. So, a vegan who believes this would have to
apply situational ethics to decide whether to support a nonprofit organization
which relies heavily on meat to end hunger in their community. I’m not sure
there is one right answer to that question. I thought my nonviolent ethics
would protect me from this kind of choice. I was wrong.
There is one other issue in the vegan
community that I think really illustrates this question about the ends
justifying the means, and why we need situational ethics. One of the most powerful
tools that animal rights activists have (and other activists too) are
undercover videos. Volunteers will get jobs at factory farms around the
country, and secretly take videos to document the awful conditions inside, and
any abuse their coworkers might be committing. In order for these videos to be
most effective, the person taking them can’t interfere with the cruelty that’s
being done. They have to stand by and watch these animals be killed, or left
with untreated illnesses, or be kicked and tossed around and stomped on and
ground up alive and all kinds of awful things. They can’t interfere because
that video is important evidence that can be brought to court. These videos are
the most effective tool we have in legal cases against factory farms. So the
question here is… how does that situation fit with my absolute morality of
nonviolence? If I were one of Asimov’s robots, and I was programmed to protect
animals, my brain would probably short out in that situation. I would not be
able to ignore that piglet, or that chick, or that calf that was crying out,
even though I know that if I try to help that one being, I will get fired
before I can finish my video which might prevent hundreds of other cases of
abuse. I must weigh the life of that one suffering soul against the gradual
overthrow of the structure that is causing that abuse in the first place.
Thankfully, there are people out there who can handle that sort of situation
without being overwhelmed. I don’t think I could.
Over the years I have considered many scenarios like
this in regards to veganism, and the ethics class with Crystal opened my mind
to its application in other areas of life as well. It helped me to understand
why an ethical decision can be different in two different situations. So… my
belief in the absolute moral law of nonviolence has, over time, evolved to
become less rigid, and more and more independent from the religious trappings
of heaven and hell that I started with. But the core of it remains the same. I now
see the principle of nonviolence more as a scientific law of the soul, sort of
like gravity.
Whenever we do harm, we are harmed, both
individually and as a part of humanity, or, to be more inclusive… as a part of
the web of life. Violence conditions us to close our hearts to others a little
more each time it is committed. And this isolates us and prevents us from
experiencing a more complete and connected existence. This is why, in my
opinion, it is impossible to create true peace through the use of violence. Unfortunately,
in this world, there is sometimes so much harm going on that we have no choice
but to participate to some extent, in order to prevent an even greater harm.
Obviously, we need to be very careful when making such judgment calls, or we
can end up playing God with the lives of others. There is danger at both ends.
But ideally, with a great deal of thought, and the
wisdom of experience, we can learn to choose means that are justified as a
natural extension of our ultimate moral goal, whatever that may be.
To put all of this in a nutshell… I think
situational ethics means that wherever we can, we try to choose the best means
available. Choose a path that will create more positive options rather than
fewer. Then we will be less likely to fall back on that old saying “desperate
times call for desperate measures” or choosing the lesser of two evils.
Absolute morals are only helpful if they’re based on actual cause and effect. Considering
what will do the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest time,
among the options that we have, and taking all the relevant information into account…
not clinging to one answer for every situation. That’s situational ethics.
