Life as an Extreme Sport

Author: Kelly

is there a case for Bible study in secular education?

AJOB Editors Blog, Bioethics

This week, Time’s senior religion writer David Van Biema looks at whether or not there is a case to be made for secular education of the Bible and whether or not there is a place for Biblical literacy, especially in our high schools.

Van Biema interviewed Boston University’s Stephen Prothero, who gives one of the more convincing reasons why it actually would be a good idea to have this secular edudcation:

In the late ’70s, [students] knew nothing about religion, and it didn’t matter. But then religion rushed into the public square. What purpose could it possibly serve for citizens to be ignorant of all that?

The ignorance — ignorance that Van Biema notes is as problematic with self-described evangelicals as it is with anyone else — leads us to a place where people are unable to critically examine public policy platforms for their hidden religious agenda. This has been on my mind lately, given that a lobbyist for a large and influential religious group freely admitted to me and the students we were talking to that part of her job is to remove the religion from the policy she lobbies for — that is, she (and many people with the same job across this country) is specifically trying to advance her religious group’s beliefs via secular language.

It’s a hidden agenda, one that favours secrecy to get what one wants, couched in language that tries to mask religious belief for social concern and looking out for the best interest in society. And we need to give people the critical skills to examine platforms for these hidden agendas — and without a familiarity in the religious texts that are driving the agenda, the goal seems lost.

-Kelly Hills

Originally posted at the American Journal of Bioethics Editors Blog.

Considering Quarantine

Bioethics

The use of quarantine explicitly relies upon Mill’s harm principle: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will, is to prevent harm to others” (Mill). As Matthew Wynia notes in the February issue of the American Journal of Bioethics, there are many serial-distancing models that are also effective in disease control, but quarantine is an excellent boundary example that allows us to push the limits of restrictions of liberty in the interests of public perception. In quarantine, we restict the movement of or separate out from society those who might be infectious — those who have been or might have been exposed to infection. (Those who have been exposed and are showing symptoms of illness/diagnosed as sick and are removed/restricted are properly considered to be isolation, a typically unopposed move.)

Assumingand I acknowledge that this is a large assumption both that we have a civilized society and that it is in the best interest of society, regardless of the autonomous individual, to restrict movement of and remove from social settings those who may cause serious risk to others, then the harm principle clearly allows us to place people in quarantine in order to protect the public, and notions of civil liberty violations seem to be a hallmark of selfish thought that is not thinking outside the individual, rather than for the good of all.

Of course, the issue here is may, might and what constitutes risk. If I may have been exposed to chicken pox, should I be subject to the same reaction as if I had been exposed to ebola? Where, on the scale of disease and contagion, do we draw the line of acceptable risk versus need for public protection?

On top of this, we have to wonder how effective such infringements would be, anyhow. In the recent SARS epidemic, quarantine failed more than it succeeded — people either fled or simply ignored the orders. But given that contagion spreads exponentially, this might be a red herring. Even if half of those infected adhere to the quarantine, the prevention of spread of disease might be considered successful.

Ultimately, most of the people in quarantine will not get sick, and depending on the type of quarantine might actually be further exposed to illness in the very effort to prevent the spread of it. The question then becomes, not is a conflict between public health and civil liberties inevitable, but, as Wynia asks, how one should decide at what point we have to infringe on liberty to prevent the mere risk of harm to others (Wynia 2007).

Given general public attitudes toward quarantine in times of health crises, the most successful option is likely to resist the urge to panic on the part of public officials, and use the least restrictive means appropriate to protect the public. This means that

any limitations on civil liberties should be proportional and no more restrictive than is really necessary. In other words, don’t use involuntary quarantine or surveillance devices such as bracelets if voluntary measures will work; don’t restrict someone to one room if an entire house is available

and etc (Wynia 2007). Given public history with quarantines, it is not unlikely to anticipate that the public will support the idea of balancing the preservation of freedom with protecting and preventing the risk of harm to others.

How Many Philosophers Does it Take?

Bioethics

How many philosophers does it take to change a lightbulb? Here’s Steven Brust’s answers,

Pragmatist: Hey, if holding the bulb while four of your friends turn the chair works for you, then that is the best way to change a lightbulb for you.

Empiricist: We can’t know how to change a lightbulb, but we can make lists of how big it is, the wattage, the thickness of the glass, the composition of the filiment…

Thomist: When we examine the concept of “lightbulb” one requirement is that it light up. Hence, if it does not light up, it is not a lightbulb. If it is not a lightbulb, there is no reason to change it.

Aristotelean: Changing of lightbulbs can be divided into: manipulation of the old bulb, and manipulation of the new bulb. Bulb manipulation, in turn, can be divided into: Turning motion, raising motion, dropping motion. We cannot understand motion.

Kantian: By understanding the lightbulb-in-itself, it becomes, for us, a new lightbulb.

Platonist: The closer our lightbulb gets to the Ideal Lightbulb, the less it requires changing.

Dialectical Materialist: None. The lightbulb changes because of it’s own internal contradictions.

Skeptic: We can’t know if we’re changing the lightbulb. We can’t know if changing the lightbulb is an improvement. In fact, we can’t really know if it’s dark. Especially with the lights out.

Hegelian: When the lightbulb becomes irrational, it ceases to exist. Insofar as a new lightbulb sheds light on the Absolute Idea, it becomes a rational lightbulb, and comes into being as part of our striving for the rational.

Post-structuralist: By rejecting neo-Enlightment notions that privilege “light,” we can conceptualize the relationship between optically-oriented envisioning and those signifiers that address interpretations of post-colonial modernism as an established text within the framework of which, intertextually, we are lead to reject any causal relationship between the operands and the motivators.

Memetics: The speed at which the notion (“a burned out lightbulb should be replaced”) has spread is inexplicable unless one looks at the idea itself.

Existentialist: Why change the lightbulb?

I decided that the list needed help, and added two of my own.

Clinical ethicist: It is a violation of the lightbulb’s autonomy to change it without its explicit informed consent. In the absence of the lightbulb’s advanced directive, we must act in the manner we think the lightbulb most likely to act in if it had full ability to consent to care.

Bioethicist: The changing of the lightbulb comes at the intersection of multiple fields of study, and we must research what ethical, legal and social issues are encountered and how they are handled by society before we act.

I’m Being Followed

Academics, Bioethics

Apparently I just can’t get away from the boss. This should not necessarily be construed as a bad thing, given that I actually really like my boss, but it’s one of those things where I was sitting on the couch thinking that maybe it would be nice to relax my brain and read something cushy and comfortable, something from CHID. I’ve been thinking a lot about DIYBiotech lately, Natalie and Katz, Eugene, etc, and that, combined with a conversation on transhumanism this morning made me think about this book I picked up last year, on the ethics of the body. Thesis, DIYBiotech, CHID – comfort food.

I flip open the book, and it lands on the series forward page. I see an editorial board and smile and familiar names, and then look up – to see the introduction written by said boss.

Two steps back, this is part of that series?

Oh. Of course it is. Of course it is.

trust bound

2005, Academics, blog as therapy, Summer 05, Summer Institute, University of Washington

Sunday night, sitting here along with my beer and thoughts, wind howling outside, occasionally gusting snow against the window with some vengeance. Light comedy on the television, but I wonder if something more sober, or at least darker, might not be more appropriate. It’s not that I’m feeling particularly bad, or even dark and twisty, but I am feeling introspective. It’s been a very long week, a week of chaos, and mistakes on my part. I knew the chaos was coming, and mistakes were inevitable, but I still don’t like either…well, the mistakes, anyhow. I suspect I actually might thrive on chaos.

I’ve been called out on some personality traits, and it was a fair calling out, but it’s still an uncomfortable thing. I realized, talking to Jen earlier today, that it’s been a while since anyone has gotten in my face (nicely or otherwise) and thrown me back at myself, or was so pointed in challenging what I say and why I do/say certain things. I guess…I was the golden child who could do no wrong for a while, and this was an important thing for me to hold on to. It gave a lot of validity to what I did, and helped me get over things, the hurtful things, that came part and parcel with my divorce. And, that’s not here now – which is okay, but it’s going to take a bit of adjustment on my part. It’s not that I’m a prima donna, by any means, but it catches you a bit short when you’ve become accustomed to being treated a certain way, and suddenly that way is gone and you’re getting blunt analysis of your character.

Another part and parcel of that divorce is my utter terror of two words, two words I did my best to avoid in my years at UW, where I did as much as I could alone, by myself, relying on no one, stubbornly insisting I would do it, could do it, alone. Those words? “Trust me.” I don’t do well with trust, something I’m realizing as I sit here with my barely touched beer. I realize that a lot of the issues that have caused me so much stress in the last week soundly rest with that issue, that freaking out and panic in the face of having to simply trust someone.

I did trust someone, and I got my heart and life handed back to me post-paper shredder. I pulled myself back together with a lot of effort and duct tape, and learned that trusting other people is bad. Of course, I also spent a lot of time arguing that trust is good, and can happen again after it’s been broken – have marveled that we can pull ourselves back together and make ourselves vulnerable again. And that’s sort of the whole thing with trust – in opening yourself to trust, you also open yourself to what happens when trust is broken. Alfonso Lingis, in his book Trust, says this so beautifully:

In trust one adheres to something one sees only partially or unclearly or understands only vaguely or ambiguously. One attaches to someone whose words or whose movements one does not understand, whose reasons or motives one does not see.

Is it all the things that are known that encourage the leap, in this one instance, to adhere to something unknown as though it were known? Is it not because of a long past tried and true that someone becomes a trusted adviser? Is it all that one knows about laws, the institutions, the policing, and all that one knows about the values, the education, the peer pressure of individuals in a society that induce one to trust this individual met at random on a jungle path? But the more one knows about a tried and true adviser, the more clearly one sees that every act of loyalty opened an opportunity for disloyalty.

This was part of that summer institute I did, and so I have actually thought a lot about this – and I appear to have regressed a bit from the point I was at to where I am now. Perhaps that’s just a result of new environment, change,..and fear. If I screwed up in the past, no huge deal – just my pride. If I screw up now, I feel like we’re talking career bites dust sort of huge deals.

I pulled out my paper from the Institute – the project that came of it is sitting about 5 feet away, but it’s easier to just read what I wrote. And if I isolate out what I wrote on trust alone, of forming and losing and trying again, it still rings very true – almost insightful.

trust and time are intimately linked. one cannot exist without the other. time is a construct. all that exists is now, the present. we are always in the present, passing through it. we never reach the future, and the past is always behind us. we build trust, and make the decision to trust, based on experiences – events – from our past. these singular events allow us to look at the seemingly endless options in front of us and narrow them down; trust becomes a filter that allows us to make decisions. in the network of life, trust gives us a way of managing what would be incomprehensible.

when trust is broken, our options become limitless, and we are paralized, not in fear, but in choice. we have no way of narrowing down the potentiality of an event or situation without the ability to trust. but we trust – or not – based on prior events, and it is difficult to override those prior events that taught us that we cannot believe ourselves. without the ability to trust, we are everpresent in the now, unable to pass through the present. we become stuck.

to free ourselves from being stuck, we have to take a risk. we have to look at the future potentialities and guess, choose blindly, choose based on what other people offer you. trust is a multiperson experience, and if someone extends you their trust, they do so on the basis of their experience, and what they think of you. what they think you will do. the options become filtered through the actions of another. it is up to us, whether or not we accept that external filter. it is up to us to make the decision that a single anomalic event does not mean we always have bad judgment.

to become unstuck, you must trust.

the only thing that means anything is what we do.

I realize I have the choice to stand where I am, and have the future so open I am paralyzed, missing the trust I need in order to act decisively, to have futures narrowed to manageable potentiality. Or, I just…do what loyalty wants, and acknowledge that with an act of trust comes the potential for hurt, and the beauty of hope.