You have encountered Robert Wright on this blog before. Well, here he is again, giving his two cents on the ethics of extraterrestrials. We can extrapolate to the ethics of yet-undiscovered alien life forms, he says, from what we know about our own ethics – we are, after all, a fine example of what one should expect in an intelligent species. And given what we know about our human ethics, “there’s reason to hope that, actually, we’d be kinder to a new world than Europeans were to the New World” (we now being evolutionarily far beyond those boorish Europeans).
Though it must be said: the evidence doesn’t weigh entirely in favor of optimism. As Wright points out:
“Like any scientifically advanced species, we’re finding that the laws of the universe grant the technological potential for both mass affiliation and mass murder. So the question is which aspect of this technology our naturally selected nature would incline us to emphasize a century or two from now, should we stumble upon an inhabited planet.”
Ah yes, that is a rub. Natural selection has produced both what we call “good” use of technology (e.g., exploration and medical care) and what we call “bad” use of technology (weapons of mass destruction and all that); but if both potential uses – and both actual uses – are simply there in the protoplasmic play, how shall we adjudicate among them, ethically? Don’t we just have to accept whatever (i.e., everything) natural selection has handed us?
But Wright prescinds from problems of normativity; he’s only trying to predict alien behavior based on what he sees around him. And ultimately it’s unclear, from our behavior, how aliens might treat us were we to meet them someday. On one hand, as Stephen Hawking says, “natural selection does create organisms prone to belligerent self-interest” (one sees this now and then in the human species). On the other hand, Peter Singer assures us the human race is making moral progress (you know, moral progress: good progress toward what ought to be, as opposed to plain old evolutionary progress toward what is).
Wright himself finds hope in the fact that we humans “generally grant the moral significance of other beings to the extent that it’s in our interest to do so,” and if we do that, why not aliens? Of course, such high optimism must be tempered by the fact that we are on the verge of blowing up our planet, and only after we have successfully averted that disaster we can have real confidence in our “moral progress.” We’ll have to wait and see. At any rate, the ethical picture that emerges from our species is “less than wholly reassuring.”
You know what? I think someday our great-great-great-great grandchildren are going to excavate caches of New York Times articles and conclude that we were blithering idiots. I really do. And I freely admit the ad hominem.
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While we’re on the subject of ethics, here is another fascinating piece, from a French mayor of all things. He’s defending a recently enacted ban on wearing burqas and niqabs in public, and trying to show us how this is not an assault on religious freedom.
He regards the ban as “both a legitimate measure for public safety and a reaffirmation of our ideals of liberty and fraternity”:
1. Masks endanger public security, regardless of the reason for wearing them: “Visibility of the face in the public sphere has always been a public safety requirement.”
2. Moreover, masks undermine fraternity: “Wearing headgear that fully covers the face does not constitute a fundamental liberty. To the contrary, it is an insurmountable obstacle to the affirmation of a political community that unites citizens without regard to differences in sex, origin or religious faith. How can you establish a relationship with a person who, by hiding a smile or a glance – those universal signs of our common humanity – refuses to exist in the eyes of others?”
3. Lastly, masks undermine liberty itself: “Individual liberties cannot exist without individual responsibilities. This acknowledgment is the basis of all our political rights. We are free as long as we are responsible individuals who can be held accountable for our actions before our peers. But the niqab and burqa represent a refusal to exist as a person in the eyes of others. The person who wears one is no longer identifiable; she is a shadow among others, lacking individuality, avoiding responsibility.”
Then this kicker at the end: “Muslims are the first to suffer from the confusions engendered by this practice, which is a blow against the dignity of women.”
What interests me in this piece is how frankly the author assumes a posture of moral authority on the basis of what amounts to a natural law theory. “Everybody knows” (Muslims excepted) that “our ideals” of public safety, fraternity, and personal responsibility are ethically nonnegotiable – and they should be legally so.
The trouble is, Muslims insist on the niqab and burqa precisely in the interests of public welfare; they will thank you to preserve chastity and honor by keeping your eyes off their women; and if they wish to speak about personal responsibility, it will be after consulting the Qur’an, not the latest gas about “universal signs” from Western democratic ideologues.
At some point in these twilight hours of our Western civilization, we are going to have to face head-on the fact that our sources of “authority” can no longer be taken for granted. Muslims, for example, don’t accept our high-flung theories (“our ideals”) about public security, fraternity, and liberty just because we say so. (Neither, I might add, do serious Christians.) And the imposition of liberal theories by law is simply a mirror image of religious fascism. The issue is not whether we ban certain articles of religious clothing, but on the basis of what transcending standard we presume to do so. If we can’t come up with something better than, “Well, a lot of us think people should go around smiling visibly at each other, so as to preserve individuality,” then let us be candid with ourselves: we are “liberal” fascists.
