The wrong stuff.

I like to visit Alias Clio's blog from time to time. Recently she has been running a series of "Nice Guy" posts. There well worth a visit and worthy of some contemplation. As I understand it, she was writing about the "nice guy" from the feminine perspective.

I thought I would like to write my own nice guy story.

Several months ago a young man in his 20's--engaged in a creative profession--presented himself to my rooms with his mother.
He was having difficulty sleeping and had lost his appetite and weight His mother stated that he was moody and irritable, and would lock himself up in his room for hours at a time. She was concerned about his behaviour and was concerned that he may have been taking drugs. She was aware that he has was having problems with his long term girlfriend and that their relationship had recently been shaky. I asked him what the matter was:

"My girlfriend wants to break up"

He started sobbing. "It all began after she went to Europe. When she came back she had changed. She started wanting to go out more by herself. She wouldn't call as often and has been cold. I can't live without her(Gasping sobs), I bought her presents, roses and have done everything she wants me to do. I've even written poetry for her. If she leaves I don't know what I'll do". I asked him if he thought about suicide. He nodded his head and sobbed loudly. His mother looked at me grimly.

"How do I get her back? I'll do anything. I've tried talking to her mother to convince her to stay. Her mother is upset at her because she feels we are a good couple. "

Tears were rolling down his cheeks in a small torrent. I empathised with his situation. I too knew of spurned love and how deeply it hurt. But staring at him I felt nothing but contempt. Here was a man who was in his early 20's and had to be bought in by his mother because he was not coping, he was crying in a whining sort of way because his girl was leaving him, here was a man who was prepared to sacrifice his dignity for the affections of a woman who lost affection for him. In short, crying before me was a mummy's boy who had lost out in love. My response was calculated and said in low growling voice;

"Grow some Balls"

My words struck him as if slapped on his cheek, his mother nodded approvingly. I continued;

"You've have lost her already, she's staying with you because she feels guilty about dumping you but wants to break up the relationship without feeling bad about herself. She's not comfortable about hurting you, but she has lost all respect for you. She has probably got the hots for another man. If she calls you up, you respond in a measured tone. No anger, but let her know that she has let you down, do not whine. Find yourself another woman. If you get the chance, flirt with other women in front of her. Act like a man." His mother continued nodding approvingly.

I counseled him for a while and suggested that the best strategy to deal with his sorrows would be to find a new object for his affections. At the end of the consultation his mood improved considerably. As he was leaving my room he pulled a reflective expression and said:

" You know Doc, You're right. Just before she went to Europe she kept complaining that I was too nice to her and that she wanted me to be a bit rougher with her, I didn't know what she meant then but I guess I now understand."

I have seen him again. He has another girlfriend. He is happier and is now going to the gym.

Breaking up is hard to do.

A former Greenpeace founder gives his opinion on some of his former mates and thir policy ideas. I especially like the comment about policy being made by people who have no idea about what they are talking about. Makes for good reading.

Here.

(Hat tip. Climate Debate Daily)

How to come second in line for the Nobel Peace Prize

See this little old lady. I bet you don't know who she is.


Her name is Irena Sendlerowa. She has just recently passed away, but back in the Second World War she helped rescue over 2500 Jewish Children from the Warsaw Ghetto. To put this into perspective Oscar Schindler managed to save about 1200 people all up. She was captured by the Gestapo,had her legs broken in an effort to betray her cause but she stood firm. She even managed to escape the death sentence. After the war she returned to an ordinary life. You can read more about her here and here. She was nominated by the Polish Government for the Nobel Peace prize. The Nobel Committee awarded it to an environmental windbag, Al Gore.

The Nobel Committee is without honour.

Blessed are the Engineers.

Not many people know who this man is.


His name is David Salonimer, an engineer who worked at the U.S army's Redstone proving ground. He is the father of the modern laser guided bomb. You have probably never heard of him.

His idea, with the collaboration of others has probably done more to reduce human suffering in warfare than any of the peace treaties or political gestures at disarmament since the Second World War. By improving the accuracy of weapons by several orders of magnitude he has spared countless people from becoming collateral damage. He has also probably spared many soldiers and airmen from death and massively increased the military power of his country. In this age of military barbarism he has probably done the most to lessen the miseries of war.

Part of the reason that that area bombing was implemented was because the accuracy of bombing was so low that an inordinate number of large high explosive bombs had to be dropped on a target in order to achieve a probable hit. Given that pinpoint precision is now a real ability of armed forces, military forces have now begun to use the weapon of David, albeit in a smart form. The smart rock.

This guy is an all out legend, yet no one knows of him. As far as I understand it he has won a few engineering awards but that is it. Al Gore gets to win the Nobel peace prize for being an environmental windbag while the man who actually save lives gets passed over. I personally feel he comes second to Henry Dunant in reducing the suffering in war. The world honours its sinners and passes over its saints.

Imprecise precision.

I wish to apologise to all. I have been away rather longer than I expected and I feel I have let duty slip. I will try to post more in the next few weeks.

Carrying on with the theme of double effect, here are a few facts worth pondering. A the end of the Second World War the U.S. conducted a review of the effectiveness of its bombing campaign. The report can be found
here.

During most of the Second World War the U.S pursued a policy of daylight bombing of specific targets of military value. Unlike the British who early on instigated area bombing due to their inability to hit a specific target at all. One of the interesting facts that it presents is that overall only 20% of bombs when aimed at a clear and specific target fell within a 1000 ft radius of the target. Where did the other 80% go?

In fact the average CEP of bombers in the WW2 was approximately 3000 ft.

Now, how do we morally evaluate the actions of the bombardier, who while aiming at a specific target, exposes approximately 5 square miles around the target to the possibility of being bombed? Clearly an attempt at discrimination is being made even if the effects are indiscriminate.

Keeping in touch.

I've been really busy the past few weeks and have also had some writer's block. I hope to have a few posts up in the next week.

Imperfect acting

Before a person performs an action, they must have something in mind--the objective--which they intend to perform. The purpose of acting is to realise the objective. When we perform an act, we set out to achieve what our will wanted us to do. Now this might sound like stating the obvious and in one way it is, the problem is that when we try to achieve our objective we may cause other effects to come into being incidental to the realisation of our immediate objective.

Example: A man is involved in a motor vehicle accident. He has been flung out of his car onto the road in the path of oncoming traffic. He has also broken quite a few bones in his body. We happen upon the accident scene and try to move the man out of the path of oncoming traffic. Now in moving the man we cause him suffering and distress as every movement jostles his broken bones.

Now our objective is to move the man out of the path of danger, however in trying to perform this act we manage to move him out of danger while at the same time causing him considerable amount of pain. In actuating our objective we have also actuated this man’s pain. Now if we are aware that the man has broken bones we clearly foresee that the action of moving the man is going to cause him pain. How do you evaluate the determine the morality of an act when clearly both good and evil is happening at the same time as a result of a specific action?

Now our capacity to actuate our objective is limited to our means and circumstances. A elderly man may want to help our injured motorist but not have the strength to do it. A young lady may drag our motorist across the road, causing more pain than if he was gently lifted by paramedics yet both people have tried to actuate a morally good objective with various degrees of evil resulting as a result of their circumstantial limitations.

The prevalent view amongst a group of quite a few Christians--who should know better--is that the act is evaluated on the consequences, if one of the consequences is a foreseen grave evil then the act’s nature must be intrinsically evil and hence prohibited. The act is judged by its effects. By their reasoning, if a man performs an action in which he foresees his own death he must have intended suicide. If a pilot of a plane bombs a building in which terrorists have used hostages as shields he must have intended to kill the hostages. It is the doctrine of immaculate actuation.

They will of course deny that this is their reasoning and this is because they cannot see their error. All of them can state the principles of double effect and list examples of how they support it; up to a certain point. Once a certain psychological threshold is crossed, double effect is negated. While it is never OK to deliberately actuate pain or maiming to an individual as in torture they will quite happily accept it as a side effect of medical treatment. However once the unintended evil effects of an otherwise morally permissible action include injury to children or death to innocents then the principle of double effect usually is switched off: Double effect is applicable up to a certain threshold of unintended evil after which it is not on.

Now this is basically a repudiation of Veritatis Splendor. The document states that the morality of an act is determined by a moral analysis of the actors corporeal objective, not the effects of the realisation of the objective. The question to be asked is what was the actor trying to achieve by the action which resulted in both good and evil effects? The fact that a good action may have a bad effect does not automatically disqualify the action. St Thomas will back me up on that one.

Veritatis Splendor did not deal with the doctrine of double effect explicitly but its principles are easily applicable to the doctrine. In order for an action to be licit under the principle of double effect:

The actor must have a good moral objective and
A proportional analysis of the effects of actualisation of the action must on balance be good in order for the action to be permitted: The doctrine of double effect is the doctrine of conditional proportionalism.

The doctrine of double effect does not permit an actions which have a morally good objective but which on balance has bad consequences. Likewise double effect does not justify a morally bad objective if the consequences are good. Double effect also implicitly demands that we chose actions which minimise the bad consequences where that choice is available.

Moral Object Solutions.

Apparently My Blog is being read in heaven; no seriously. I got two replies to the Double Effect post from John Paul II (check the comments on the post) I do get an impressive audience. I wonder if it is a wireless link?

I’d thought I’d have another go thinking about moral objects.

What is a moral object?

One of the big problems in understanding morality is an understanding of the concept of the “moral object“. I’ve gone looking around on the web and have been mulling over Veritatis Splendor and most explanations seem to go give a partial understanding of the subject. I also feel that Veritatis Splendor may confuse the terminology a bit. Thinking about the matter a bit more, I feel that the military may have some useful ideas in helping us understand the moral object a bit easier.

The target of a military endeavour is called the objective. The objective is the thing to which military activities are directed. Military endeavours are usually divided into two different types of objectives: The strategic and the tactical.

The strategic objective is the purpose to which all military operations are directed. Principally they are the defeat of the enemy or a lessening of its power. Broadly speaking it is why military operations are constituted in the first place. The tactical objectives and the targets which have to be achieved--either in the form of possession, neutralisation or destruction--that have to be achieved in order to achieve the strategic objective. Now the strategic objective can be thought of analogous to the idea of intent while the tactical objective can be thought of as the objective of an act.

Notice that there are two different types of objectives. Intended objectives and objectives of acts. Both acts and intents have objectives but they are fundamentally different in their natures. The intended objective is a state we wish to achieve, this state may come about passively without us doing anything while an the objective of an act is a state we wish to achieve by our active participation.

This objective can be considered from many different perspective but when considered against a moral standard the objective can be thought of as a moral objective. The moral object can therefore be thought of as the classification of an object with respect to its relation to God’s moral law. Example: Let’s say A wants to murder B. The object of A’s intent is the unjust death of B. As it is never licit to murder, the object of A’s intent can be thought of as contrary to God’s law and therefore is categorically evil. A’s intent has an evil moral object. Broadly speaking bad intentions and bad acts have are bad moral objects, while good intentions and acts have the opposite. Moral theologians have also made the distinction in the following terminology:

The finis operis: the end of the operation , similar to the concept of the tactical objective,
The finis operantis: the end of the agent similar in concept to the strategic objective.

Personally, I think that the terminology doesn’t emphasise the distinction enough, so I ‘m suggesting a different terminology be used. (I’m open to suggestions of a better terminology).

Finis operis: Corporeal object.
Finis operandis: Intended object.

I want to be clear that by corporeal object, I mean human acts including thoughts; for thinking is a human action even though it is not strictly corporeal.

Now human acts can be considered as being directed towards a specific corporeal object. Human action is the ontic realisation of the corporeal object: The thing willed is made real by the act.

Now why does all this matter?

At any given point or place the universe as we know it exists in a certain ontic state. By ontic state I mean the bits and pieces that make up our universe have a specific relation to one another. The universe as it was on June 22nd 3.05pm exactly was in a different ontic state to what it was on Feb 12 1987 at 11.37 am.

Now the intent concerns itself with the nature of the ontic state, or the type of state the particular individual would like to see exist. The object of intent is a particular ontic state; while the corporeal object realised, is an active alteration of the ontic state: the act generates a particular ontic state. The important point being is that the corporeal object and the intended object are not the same. Sometimes the corporeal object is congruent with the intended object sometimes it is not: the corporeal object--with the contingent assistance of circumstance--is a means of attaining the intended object.

I think a change in terminology is important because ill will in discussions on moral matters frequently hinge on definitions, the current definitions are not precise enough. More tomorrow.

Thinking about Hiroshima.

“What guided me in my thinking and guided all our efforts—The reason the 21^st Bomber Command worked like no other command during the war and kept us going—was the million men we were going to loose if we had to invade Japan. That says nothing of the Japanese losses, although we didn’t give a damn about them at the time. We were primarily worried about our own people”

Curtis Le May.

I’ve been watching with dismay the two opposite lines of reasoning evidenced at VFR and WWWtW.

It would appear to me that Laurence Auster is putting forward an argument that the ends justify the means. The Japanese were wicked, tenacious and determined not to give in no matter what the price. The dropping of the bomb instituted events which stopped the war quickly and saved many lives, Japanese and American; this interpretation is consistent with the facts.

The position of WWWtW is that the attack on Hiroshima is wicked because innocent civilians were killed. As I have argued previously the position of the main protagonists on WWWtW leads to functional pacifism. The criteria that they set up for the fighting of just war make it effectively impossible to fight. Furthermore their thinking opens a line of tactical exploitation by wicked people. Tie up an innocent to your tank, plane or whatever and it is immune from attack on the basis of the moral argument put forward by WWWtW.

Both approaches are wrong and both are wicked.

Following my line of reasoning from yesterdays post I would like to make an analysis of the atomic bombings within the Christian tradition.

Auster's argument is quickly dismissed. Christian tradition has always condemned the line of reasoning that wicked means justify good ends. That ends that argument.

Now I feel that the atomic bombings were wrong but not for the reason the people over at WWWtW do.

Firstly the state has authority to bear the sword in defence of the common interest. However the state is allowed only to attack the unjust (aggressors) and their means, it is not allowed to attack the innocent. Now any enemy city is going to contain a mixed bag of the innocent and combatants, the concept of deliberately targeting a city itself, is morally wrong since by definition it would be an intended attack on both the innocent and the guilty.

However, we are allowed to attack the unjust and if in the process, innocent civilians are killed unavoidably, then the action is permitted according to Christian tradition. It would appear therefore that the attack on Hiroshima was justified, as Hiroshima was a major military base as well as Nagasaki.

However double effect is a two edged sword and the mechanism that permits collateral losses also obligates their minimization. The question to be asked then is, did the U.S. have a capacity to destroy the military installations of Hiroshima without using the atomic bomb? The answer to that is unfortunately yes.

The Twentieth Air Force had the capacity to destroy whatever it wanted on the Japanese mainland. Towards the end of the war it was safer in a B-29 flying over Japan than in a training mission over the United States. General Curtis Le May felt at the time that the action--dropping the bomb--was unnecessary, as did Admiral Arleigh Burke; the two men who were putting most of the hurt on Japan. Had the 20^th Air Force gone in to firebomb Hiroshima, perhaps twenty to forty thousand would have been killed, but that means that the sixty thousand extra who died as a result of the atomic bomb would not have been. The option to minimize civilian losses was available and it was not chosen, therein lays the evil.

Had the U.S. no other way of defending itself against attack except by nuclear weapons then I believe it would have been justified in using them, provided they were targeted at military targets only and with an eye to minimizing civilian casualties. The problem was that no one cared about the Japanese, no one gave a damn. In fact Hiroshima was also seen as an experiment, the fact that it had remained deliberately unscathed with a view of it being a test city for nuclear experiments shows just how degraded the concern for the Japanese had become, the citizens of Hiroshima were to be the guinea pigs of atomic warfare.

Truman did agonise over the civilian losses that the bombs were going to produce; I do not stand in judgment of him. He was a fundamentally decent man and I believe that when he made the decision to drop the atomic bomb, he did so with a good and hence binding conscience. I live in a different time and benefit from the freedom his actions provided. Free from the pressures, sorrows and anxiety of war, I and others can dispassionately reflect on the situation with the benefit of hindsight; which by its nature is always crystal clear. Truman did not enjoy that privilege.

Every society should make a moral accounting of its conduct and if it finds itself wanting, ask for forgiveness from the Almighty and determine not to repeat the same mistakes again. Our Christian tradition reasserts that we should choose to suffer death rather than perform evil. Death before dishonour is not just the motto of some fanatical Japanese; it is also the motto of the Christian soldier.

Double trouble with double effect.

I’ve been pondering double effect for a while and thanks to the moral definitions in the previous post, I feel I have a better understanding of the phenomena.

Firstly when one acts one brings something into being: Something is made real through the act of the will. By running I make my intention of going for a run real. The things that are actualized in this world can be good, bad or indifferent.

When one performs a good act one wants to bring something good into the world. When one an evil act they causes an evil in this world. But what happens when one brings about an action which brings about both good and evil at the same time?

How does one form a moral assessment of surgery, in the days prior to anaesthetic? When the knife is put into the flesh, curing the patient (good) begins at the same time pain(evil) and mutilation(evil) is actuated. To deliberately cure someone is good, to deliberately hurt someone is evil, then how do we evaluate the morality of surgery if intrinsic to its actuation, good and evil result?

The Christian tradition stated that the moral species of the act is determined through its moral object: what was the moral quality of the “thing” realized through the act. Example; putting a dent in a brand new car--as in an act of vandalism--is evil, since by denting a car, it is privated in some way. The moral object of an act concerns itself with the moral quality of what is bought about by the act, not why the act was done.

Now according to Aquinas one does good when one actualizes a good, and one sins (peccatum) when one actualizes an evil; now sin in this context is non-pejorative. A man sins and does good when he performs an action with a double effect. So how to determine its permissibility or not?

Christianity has stated that acts which bring about a state with a mixed moral quality are permitted provided:

• That a person may choose to act in a way which results in mixed moral objects provided that the person is choosing the good moral object.
  

• The mixed moral quality of the act must on balance be good. A proportional assessment of the act has to be made and the result must be in favor of the good. In sum, a net good is achieved by the act.
  

Now a man is culpable for the things he has control over not for the things he doesn’t. In choosing an act which actuates mixed moral objects, one cannot be blamed if the evil moral object is bought about, not through any choice of the agent. He is inculpable. However if the evil moral object could be avoided in some way then the agent becomes culpable because he has some choice in what type of evil is bought about. No choice, no culpability. There is a double imperative in Christianity: do good and avoid evil.

The Good Conscience

I thought I would post a link to an interesting speech delivered by Bishop Anthony Fisher of the Catholic Church here in Australia. Bishop Fisher is one of the most conservative Catholic bishops out there and a strong defender of orthodoxy. His comments on conscience are quite nuanced. They can be found here.

An Inconvenient truth

The local paper for right thinking people; The Age, frequently berates outer suburban types for living in high energy consuming McMansions in the outer suburbs. It’s quite funny then that the paper ran an article in its Sunday edition which showed some “surprising results’. It would appear that our affluent inner city environmental types leave the largest eco-footprint in the country. Those berating the community about their inconsiderate use of water and fossil fuels tend are its worst offenders. Reminds me a bit about Al Gore’s energy Bills. Who would have ever thought the Left a bunch of hypocrites?

Yours truly lives in an area that is quite conservative and also has a very low eco footprint. Right wing and environmentally sensitive; now there’s an inconvenient truth. Anyway you can see how much damage you’re doing-in Australia at least-by clicking here.

The Damned.

One of the blogs I like to visit is David Apatoff's, Illustration art. His latest posting deals with Mr James Montgomery Flagg, the illustrator who painted this famous poster.


The fellow's story is tragic; Mr Flagg you see loved beauty, but for the wrong reason. To him the beautiful was something that was valued because of the pleasure it gave to Mr Flagg, but not of the object it represented. The consequences were predictable. Read on.
(Caution, some risque art)

The Verdict.

I've been waiting for my "higher authority" to get back to me, they haven't officially as yet, but Annoymous of 5.58 pm sent me a very interesting post which I think settles the matter.

"I don't know if a Jesuit qualifies as "higher authority" but he's probably more likely to be right than a bunch of guys yakking on the web. One of the instances Father Hardon gives below (in his Pocket Catholic Dictionary), is almost exactly analogous to the discussion at WWWtW...

(Father Hardon then goes on to discuss the principle of double effect and gives the following example)

...the commander of a submarine in wartime who torpedoes an armed merchant vessel of the enemy., although he foresees that several innocent children on board will be killed.

(Father Hardon then states that the action is licit if) All four conditions are fulfilled :

• he intends to merely lessen the power of the enemy by destroying an armed merchant ship. He does not wish to kill the innocent children;
  

• his action of torpedoing the ship is not evil in itself;
  

• the evil effect (the death of the children) is not the cause of the good effect (the lessening of the enemy's strength);
  

• there is sufficient reason for permitting the evil effect to follow, and this reason is administering a damaging blow to those who are unjustly attacking his country.
  

You were right, at least according to Father Hardon, S.J...

Oh, and who was Father Hardon S.J. ?

Click here


The defence rests.


We praise God and not our strength for it.

Btw, Annonymous; good wine shall be drunk in your honour.

Legal terminolgy.

Janet E Smith, of conservative orthodox Roman Catholic fame, gives a little run down on moral terminology. Some people may find it helpful. It can be found here.

The right call

I’ve been away for a while, posting on other blogs. Apparently I can get into trouble anywhere I go so I guess in order to keep the peace, I am staying at home.

Recently I was involved in a rather engaging struggle over at the What’s Wrong with the World site. The site is definitely worth a visit and the topics raised there are treated intelligently and with conviction.

The matter under contention was titled The Right Call? The thread can be found here:

The moral question in essence was: Is it morally permissible to shoot down an civilian aircraft, commandeered by terrorists in flight and intending to use the aircraft as a weapon? Essentially a moral judgment was to be made on Dick Cheney’s decision to shoot down Flight 89 during the September 11 attacks.

Yours truly, took up position as counsel for the defence; arguing that the act was morally permissible under the principle of double effect for the following reasons.

1) The intention was to defend the United States.
2) Shooting down the aircraft was a morally legitimate form of defence.
3) The shooting down of the aircraft would have a double effect:
a. Stopping the attack. (good)
b. Death of the innocent civilian passengers(Evil)
4) Death of the civilians was not wished/intended.
5) A proportionate analysis of the double effect weighed heavily on the side of good.

The action of the Vice President conformed to the principle of double effect and hence was morally licit.

The prosecution argued that the VP’s actions were morally illicit. It was agreed that:

1) The intention was to defend the United States
2) The Vice President did not wish the civilians any harm
3) A proportionate analysis favoured the action but;

4) The action of shooting down the aircraft was morally impermissible since innocent civilians were going to be killed. It was argued that as the death of the innocent civilians was foreseen, and hence must have been intended. As deliberately causing the death of innocent civilians is intrinsically evil, the action was morally forbidden.
5) The principle of double effect is negated if evil means are chosen for good ends.

The Prosecution argued that the defence were proportionalists, justifying any evil act provided good could come of it. The Prosecution argued that the killing of the innocent was always and everywhere a deliberate evil and any other such act in which a deliberate evil was chosen was always and everywhere wrong.

The Defence argued that firstly, the Prosecution's understanding of intention was deficient; just actions could have deliberately foreseen evil consequences which were unintended. What defined the goodness or badness of an act depended on its moral object. The Prosecution argued that a deliberately chosen behaviour which resulted in intrinsic evil was always a sign of an evil moral object, the Defence rejected this proposition. Furthermore the Defence argued that the Prosecution's understand of double effect was flawed, since apparently some intrinsic evils were permissible and others were not. Cutting the flesh is intrinsically evil, yet is permitted for surgery. The Prosecution agreed that surgery was permitted but because cutting the flesh was not intrinsically evil.

At stake for the Defence was more than the question under consideration: At stake was everything.

If the Prosecution’s line of reasoning was correct, then any action in which an intrinsic evil was deliberately bought about would be not permitted. Killing one’s self is an intrinsic evil. One can step in front of fast moving train and afterwards claim that the train killed him, but one cannot say that he did not foresee his death. The Prosecution's line of reasoning would lead to the conclusion that the death was suicide; their early argument illustrated this position. The Defence insisted that why a person did what they did was vitally important. If stepping in front of a train to push a young child off the tracks resulted in the foreseen death of the rescuer, then the act was self sacrifice; not suicide: the highest of motives, as our Master taught.

Indeed; the Defence feels that the line of reasoning pursued is a most evil attack on Christianity, veiled as a defence. It was mentioned in opening argument, that had the passengers of flight 89 deliberately crashed the aircraft to save other Americans on the ground, it would have been collective suicide. Yet; our master would have taught that no greater love man hath, and would have such men supp with him in paradise. Indeed in choosing to have himself killed, Christ would have, by the prosecutions reasoning: committed suicide: The Son of God becomes the Devil himself. It is this foreseen consequence of the Prosecution’s reasoning, that drove the Defence’s vigorous crusade, but as usual argument drew to a stalemate.

The Defence as such has deferred the matter to higher authority and will publish the findings of this authority when it becomes available.

It remains to be seen whether the Prosecution or the Defence made the right call.

Eating your greenies makes you healthier.

I love nuclear power and this article in the Australian is priceless.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21495572-23289,00.html

Doublethink

Orwell was right; Many on the left have a remarkable capacity for doublethink. For those of you who don’t know what doublethink is a definition is in order: Doublethink is the capacity to hold two mutually contradictory thoughts in ones head and not notice the contradiction. It’s almost a prerequisite capacity in order to belong to the Left.
The latest cloning bill bought before the Victorian Parliament would support genetic manipulation of the embryo. But here’s the rub, why are they against genetically modified crops but for genetically modified humans? Beats me.

A McDonalds culture.

I personally don’t mind McDonalds. No body forces you to go there. The food is appropriate if you’re on the run, ravenous and need something to eat. It’s cheap and the kids love it. It’s a bit like chocolate, fine as a treat but unhealthy eaten all the time. One of the things I don’t like about McDonalds is its ubiquity. I am not very traveled. But in New Zealand they are everywhere as they are in Europe. I don’t have a problem with McDonalds chasing economic opportunity rather it’s the cultural damage that it brings with it that bothers me

The last thing I wanted to do in Europe was to eat at a McDonalds, because I can eat at one at home. The whole point of traveling is to experience other cultures; not to relive what is at home. But that was the problem, to my mind Europe was too much like home. Standing in Vienna, it struck me that the faces were the same, the scenery was a bit different: I had traveled around the world to experience another backdrop. The injury that a business like McDonalds does to a country such as France is that it makes the place a bit less French and bit more American. Is it such a great idea that France becomes less French when multinationals set their businesses there?

Now most of my friends on the Left would agree that it’s a bad thing. However I feel that they are being hypocritical, for why is the destruction of economic diversity so much worse than the destruction of cultural diversity? Yet my friends on the left have no problems with multiculturalism. In my mind economic multi-nationalism is just as bad as demographic multi-nationalism; in other words multi-culturalism. Our friends on the left are very keen on keeping biological diversity; they are not so keen on cultural diversity. When cultural diversity becomes universal it simultaneously becomes extinct. Japan is the nature it is because it is full of Japanese. If we were to put large minorities of Europeans, Indians and Africans in Japan it would cease to be Japanese, it would become multicultural.

And that’s the problem, traveling will become pointless because of the world will be the same. It will be one big melting pot; its individual flavours indistinguishable from each other.

Greenies

“The Earth has a skin and that skin has diseases, one of its diseases is called man.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

My mother ran a spotless house and I suppose I have inherited a legacy of enmity towards dirt and mess: I like things clean. I grew up in an industrial part of town and I can still remember as a child, my disgust at dirty walls, industrial rubbish, polluted creeks and smelly air. I always thought that the men who allowed this to happen were somehow deficient in manners. I always imagined their homes as being grubby, with piles of dishes and washing lying around. Little did I realize that the men who owned these factories, left them, to go to nice tree lined streets, in areas zoned to prevent industrial activities when the evening came.

I think it was Chesterton who once remarked that every movement starts with some disputed truth and invariably ends in error. The environmental movement is one such movement.

I have much sympathy to the environmental movement. The way that many of our ancestors treated the environment was simply abysmal. They poured pollutants down the rivers which we drank from, poisoned the air we breathed and generally left their trash out of site. Many of the great capitalists in the past would think nothing of cutting down a whole forest, fouling a river or wiping out a species in the ever relentless pursuit of greater profit. Afterwards retiring to great estates that would maintain nature in its most pristine if not sometimes contrived forms. Hence it was right that this total disregard of our common environment should have been opposed. But what started out as a noble cause has morphed into an ignoble philosophy.

What irks me with regard to the environmental movement is its quasi religious overtone. Walking on elevated bridges through forest canopy is meant to inspire the same religious awe that the relics of the saints were meant to arouse: A trip to Amazon, equivalent to a pilgrimage to Mecca. Somehow, any disturbance of the way things are is the equivalent of sin. Indeed it is this undertone; that mans presence is sacrilegious to the environment, that rubs me the wrong man. In Christianity man was cast out of the Garden of Eden when he ate from the tree of knowledge. In the environmental movement, paradise was lost when God created man. I suppose Nietzsche could be considered a proto-Greenie.

I take the biblical view that man was put in the Garden of Eden to tend it, not worship it. This means that we have a responsibility towards it and not veneration. We are free to use the resources of nature, provided we do so with good husbandry; for we are the stewards of this Earth and not its owners.