h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Given that the whole reason I have a Master of Arts in Religion was that I wanted to study Ethics, and Moral Philosophy -- like all philosophy, rapidly devolves into epistemological tail-chasing -- your plug got me here.

Your article did a nice job, covering the basics. Fair, sensible, thorough, reasoned, etc.

Speaking *as* a Consequentialist Ethicist, I have to say we really don't get as stuck as you'd expect, given the 'greatest happiness to everyone' part of the theoretical structure. This is basically because the 'reducing the overall level of misery' half is really not half, but more like 90% of the proposition. We don't have to think about the people who want free access to recreational drugs, or the kids who think they'd only be happy if their parents were dead. We have to start with much more foundational, immediate, in-our-face problems and solutions.

Liberation Theology is the Consequentialist Ethicist school of theology (mostly Christian, but not all -- and very ecumenical). For example, the Roman Catholic Base Communities in Latin America have very straightforward missions: see the people eat regularly; see the people all get at least rudimentary (as opposed to no) medical care; see the children get literate, and capable of ciphering, and ideally more education; keep the local para-military (Communist, Fascist, Organized Crime, CIA-Supported, Native, Foreign, any combination of above) from shooting people for no reason; try to influence the government/dictator/local drug lord to not kill people; at least put pressure on them to not engage in torture.

Latin American Base Communities are widespread, though of course the places where they are the most badly needed are the places where they don't have a chance. Their leaders get assassinated a lot. Look up Father Romero if you want to read a story of ethics in action, in real life. Gradually, the people find they want to, and can hold their heads higher. The power of the local militia is reduced, if nothing else, by the lack of fear on the part of the people they shoot, and the people who watch them do it. Every so often, a base community spreads, joins up with another, and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Widows (or Wives, they don't know) of Men who have Disappeared dare to stage silent protests. They take the kids. They stand, and pray, mourn, and accuse. Very few Dictators are stupid enough to machine-gun silent women and children in front of their Dictatorial Palace.

The lives of the people served by Roman Catholic Base Communities are transformed, and where there was only fear and meaninglessness, grows instead a sense of unity and purpose. They do eat more regularly. They do have better medical care. They do have more, and better schools. Much more than that, they know that even if this generation, and the next, and the next, are still forced to live in violent totalitarian conditions, that they are the foundation for a better future.
To Read: Liberation Ethics (I think), by José Miguez Bonino (NB Latin American surnames are the second to last, rather than last name. Libraries should list him under Miguez Bonino, José.)

African-American Liberation Theology has a branch in the African-American A.M.E. Zion Church, and the Baptist Chuch, some other African-American dominated denominations, and used to (and will again one day) have a branch in the Nation of Islam. A fundamendal tenet of African-American Liberation Theology is that the time is past and done with, for African-Americans to 'ask for' equality. The time has come to assert it. The only way to assert it is to rise above the dog-eat-dog, gang-kill-gang world of the inner-city underclass (though now, with HIV infection running at roughly a third of the African-Americans who live in inner-cities in the USA, this is going to be one whole lot harder), and be moved by the Spirit to join together, instead of defeating each other and themselves. It is a matter of making everyone's welfare everyone's business. It can't happen fast, and it can't happen easily, but it isn't going to happen at all if the movement isn't there. Sadly, the words of the African-American Liberation Theologians have fallen mostly on ears deafened by learned helplessness. Ghetto folk say, sho' Doctah Cone, that easy fo' you to say. You teach at a u-ni-ver-sity. What make you think we can do that heah? Doctor James Cone just keeps Speaking the Truth. Cornell West writes Prophesy! Deliverance (at Harvard). Carter Heyward puts a different spin on things, with Towards a Black Womanist Ethics (also at Harvard).

Feminist Liberation Theologians are the first to admit that they're advantaged Anglo women with PhDs, writing about something they do not personally, live. Beverly Harrington is right up front with that, and good thing, too. But just because the messenger is "advantaged" does not mean the message is meaningless. All modern women, who've been alive long enough to remember being taught to make weak, stupid, and helpless, so the men would take care of us, know: the greatest key to everything we have accomplished so far, and everything we still need to accomplish, is we have to *talk* to each other. We can't let You're a Muslim, You're White, Oh, well, I'm Just an Ignorant Farm Wife, and like that get in our way. We can't (we tried, and it bombed) impose US style feminism on Developing Countries. But there is no reason why we can't listen and learn from each other. So long as women had no voices, we had no choices. We started checking out our realities, and finding things out, like Ohhh I thought I was the only woman in this rich suburb whose husband beat her; I don't need to be ashamed any more. We started looking further than across the street, saying, that's funny, I thought only us working-class women make 2/3 what the men make for the same job. Whut? Women doctors, as a group, make about 1/3 what men doctors make? (Because more women doctors do more pro bono and public health clinic work, because the women see the need is there, and go out to meet it, to our own detriment, as usual.) What's this about women are 8 times more likely than men to die from their first heart-attack, either because they minimize it, or because some fool doctor does.

(Went to the Emergency Room -- Casualty, yaw'l English say -- in February this year, with every symptom on the books for heart-attack. Mister Doctor decided what he had on his hands was one of those whiny, hypochondriac women with nothing better to do than waste his time. When Mister Doctor found out this was a psychiatric patient, he sent her on home, with no tests run, and a piece of paper saying he'd treated her for an "anxiety attack". Well, symptoms just got worse, so went back a few hours later, and this physician ran every test they have, and then some, to rule out heart-attack. It wasn't one, as it turned out. It *could* have been. Mister Doctor is a dead woman waiting to happen, if she hasn't happened already. Yes, medical grievance filed!)

So we talk, and we listen, and we learn, and if we don't do that, sistahs, we are going to stay right where we are. In the USA, Anglo women got ex-slave African-American men the right to vote 75 years before they got it for *themselves*. In some Arab countries, the only limitation on wife-beating is if the woman is pregnant, and miscarries, and it would have been a boy... well *that's* grounds for a scolding (source: Progressive Magazine, early '90s). In some European countries, men murdering their wives fall under a separate 'crimes of passion' section of the law (or did, as recently as 20 years ago), even if the murder is premeditated, so they don't stand trial for "murder", but for some sick euphemism like "lethal assault".

Feminist Liberation Theology is the quietest. Why are you not surprised? It moves and spreads like ripples through water. The fact that the United States Congress is taking bigger and bigger bites out of a woman's right to choose abortion, so that a girl fetus has more rights *before* she's born than after the first light touches her eyes, more rights than the woman in whose body she grows, *until* she gets born, is an unbelievable outrage. But women can only be so noisy for so long. Consequentialist Ethics says, when the overall level of misery gets worse, from the backlash, back off. Then bounce back. So, if I read it right, the men are going to try to keep the overall level of misery worse. But see, if it's already worse, we women got nothing to lose, again.

"We, oh we are rising up/rising from the depths of our despair." - Ysaye Maria Barnwell

Alice Sojourner, for LeKZ
Evangelical Social Justice-Seeker and Speaker

I see where you're coming from I think: that the trickinesses of Consequentialism only comes into effect when we're somewhat closer to an ideal community than we are in now - and at the moment it's pretty obvious what should be done and what should be changed.

My current irritation is begging (irritation to me - rather more important to the beggars). The UK govt has been running a campaign to encourage people not to give to beggars, because allegedly they're all addicted to drugs and ciggarettes, so it'll just make it worse. On the other hand, I wouldn't put it pass the govt to try and reduce the homelessness figures by getting all those without homes to starve to death. So I've compromised: I buy "Big Issue" from people with the vendor cards and that's the lot. Ho hum.

Abortion as a patriarchal conspiracy? I can't see it: from my experience most (not all) of the anti-abortion people are too stupid to be conspiring any which way. Most of it seems to be anti-future rather than anti-female: the same people who complain about GM food and cloning and IVF and divorce and so forth.