On the Moral Application of Chainsaws

The Scales of Justice

 

 We all face moments when our consciences and our preferences wrestle with moral dilemmas. 

Very few of us will face the big moral dilemmas, like President Harry Truman giving the OK to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, but smaller moral dilemmas face us almost daily. We love pineapple and buy one even if we know that people far away were dispossessed of their land to allow big business to grow this very one at a profit.

               In an age of climate-change worries, a twinge of conscience surely afflicts many of us when we take our car even though our errand is only a few blocks away. Or when we shovel a pile of rhubarb leaves, carrot tops and other garden-harvest detritus into the garbage because the composting service is just too inconvenient.

               Indeed, effort-saving convenience or sheer necessity will always produce ethical dilemmas, so much so that denial, obfuscation, lies or half-truths—toward others and ourselves—will always exist as temptations for “saving face.”

               The question of what is moral and how that’s decided, and why humans suffer pangs of conscience as a matter of course when breaking ethical codes would be a book-length exploration. But to read a primer about the existence of moral codes, Wikipedia has a useful summary at  Evolution of morality - Wikipedia.

               Others will go to their creation mythologies and find there, perhaps, an evil serpent, a tasty fruit and a gullible Eve and Adam who choose to give up their innocent bliss for the “consciousness of good and evil, like the gods.” Obviously allegorical, the stories and the myths are talking about the same thing as are evolutionists. For what purposes do justice, love, fairness, empathy, cooperation, reciprocity exist?

                He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

               One might say codes of conduct exist to please God. Others will emphasize that cooperation achieved through the regulation of social behaviour allows functional community to form. And communities of cooperation are safer than is solitary existence.

               For me, one of the most intractable moral dilemmas has been the approach to charity. As a member of a community that emphasizes the “feed the hungry, clothe the naked” ethic, I’m often led to wonder if my offerings only serve to prolong the injustices that render people hungry or naked. In my country and elsewhere, there exists an abundance of resources allowing every person to be fed, dressed, housed and educated to a healthy standard. There just isn’t a common morality/ethic that binds the nations to abhor the accumulation of resources in the hands of a few at the expense of their neighbours.

            Imagine a playground that includes a small spruce forest, and that children love to play there, although the low-hanging branches result in painful scratches on arms and legs. Charity might see a supervisor equipped with antiseptic ointment and bandage material running around, treating the little wounds. Proper governance of the playground would take a chainsaw to the low-hanging branches.

            We must believe that our charitable acts are necessary in our world: storms, thievery, disease and greed will always exist. But our communal effort ought to be political; current economic models allow the children to get scratched … and worse. People-together have been known to wield the chainsaw that prevents hardship in one hand, while carrying bandages in the other.  

So send a generous gift to a charity that carries food into Gaza, but make sure that your member of parliament knows where you stand on economic justice.

NAICA

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