normblog

Duties to the future?

In the piece I posted about here a couple of days ago, there's a reference in passing to 'the environmentalist maxim that we have only borrowed the world from our grandchildren'. I'm familiar with the sentiment, though I'd never come across the maxim. But I don't think it's a persuasive way of thinking about the responsibilities of the present generation with respect to the environment.

I take it, first of all, that 'grandchildren' is meant to refer generically to future generations, rather than to appeal to people's concern for their own particular blood descendants. I take it this way because otherwise the maxim waives the responsibility of anyone who will have no grandchildren, and it probably lets off far more people than that: everyone who'd be inclined to say that beyond their own proximate - their knowable - blood relations, they aren't going to feel as acutely bothered as for those. That may be rather a big exclusion, whereas I assume the maxim is aiming to persuade as many people as possible.

If, therefore, the people we are thought to have borrowed the world from are future people more broadly, then what is being asserted is that future people have rights against us in the matter of our management and use of the world's resources. If these are 'borrowed', then we hold them, at least in part, on loan; so that a property right in such resources is being asserted for future people against present people.

I don't think it makes sense to assert that future people, before they are actual people, have rights.

Here's why no putative future person can have rights. Until any such person comes to exist, s/he can't have a right to be brought into existence. There are various ways of seeing this. For you (and here I do mean you) to have had the right to come to exist, it would have needed a coercive obligation upon your biological parents to conceive you, with all that this involves in the way of getting together, exact timing and so forth. Not only is this not an obligation that could be supported as morally defensible, it is also a logically impossible one, since until you came to exist no one could have known who you were, to aim for so to speak, or how to do this aiming even assuming an impossible knowledge of your so far unformed identity. If no one can have a right even to exist before they do exist, it follows that they can't, before they exist, have any rights that depend upon their existing.

But perhaps a collectivity, future people of as-yet indeterminate individual identities, can jointly hold a right against presently-existing people. I don't think so. For the same style of reasoning as I've just undertaken for the individual case can be repeated for any putative future group. Any future they that you can hypothesize may never come to exist, and it therefore doesn't make sense to say of them that they had a right to be brought into existence - or the right to vote, to freedom of expression, to inherit a decently preserved environment, or what have you. At the limit, since one generation of human beings, this generation, could destroy all human life and with it the preconditions of any human future at all, the existence of all future generations is put in question and therewith the intelligibility of assigning them rights.

Finally, if the people of, say, 2254 have rights they could claim against us once they exist, then by the same token we would have rights against the people of 1760. Try asserting - try collecting on - such rights. It makes no sense.

My point, here, has not been to argue against there being duties to future generations - against a moral responsibilty on the part of existing people not to be environmentally reckless. It has only been to challenge the notion that such duties depend on some logically and morally prior rights of future people. Not all obligations depend on there being correlative rights. You may feel you have duties of generosity to others, without anyone specific having a right to make claims upon that quality of your conduct. People who deny that animals have rights can still think there are duties not to be cruel to them. I won't try to explore here what 'ecological duties' could be based on, but I think that the idea of the continuity of the human species plays an indispensable role in the way in which nearly all human beings construe the 'meaning of life', and that this fact will play a central role in any argument for such duties.

The reopening of the Rykestrasse Synagogue

Germany's biggest synagogue is to reopen on Friday after being completely restored to its former glory. The renovation and reopening of Rykestrasse Synagogue in the heart of East Berlin is a symbol of the gradual regeneration of Jewish life... in the German capital 60 years after the defeat of the Nazi regime.
.....
The Rykestrasse Synagogue, located in Berlin's trendy Prenzlauer Berg district, was built in 1904 and its scale is not immediately apparent from the modest red-brick façade. Hidden away off a courtyard, its huge prayer hall seats up to 1,200 people. Although it was set on fire and vandalized during Kristallnacht - the anti-Semitic pogrom of Nov. 9, 1938 - the fact that it was in a heavily populated area saved it from being destroyed when the authorities rushed to douse the flames.

The rest is here.

Cowdrey at the non-striker's end

During my first two years as a student in Oxford, I used to stay the night occasionally, when I was in London, in a flat with six women. One of them was a friend of my sister Sue's, they were all older than I was and it was a very nice situation for a young bloke like me - though nothing of the sort you're now thinking might have happened did happen; it's just that I was well looked after. The flat was near Finchley Road tube station, at the top of a short hill once you turned out of Finchley Road into Netherhall Gardens. What's all this got to do with cricket? It's how it came about that on the afternoon of 25 June 1963 I was on my own in this Netherhall Gardens flat, it being the eve of my setting out with my friends Martin and Jim to hitchhike through Europe to Athens, where we were to catch a boat to Haifa. With nothing much else to do, I turned on the TV and witnessed a famous Test match ending - of the second Test between England and the West Indies at Lord's. England had lost the first Test and the situation was now dramatically poised towards the close of the second, England's ninth wicket having fallen when they were still in deficit and with only Colin Cowdrey - who had earlier retired hurt - left to bat. Here's the story of what happened:

All through the cricket had been keen and thrilling, but the climax was remarkable, Cowdrey having to go in with a broken bone in his arm... When the final over arrived any one of four results could have occurred - a win for England, a victory for West Indies, a tie or a draw... Shackleton joined Allen with nineteen minutes left and 15 runs required. They fell further behind the clock and when Hall began his last dramatic over eight were needed. Singles came off the second and third balls, but Shackleton was run out off the fourth when Worrell raced from short-leg with the ball and beat the batsman to the bowler's end. That meant Cowdrey had to come in with two balls left and six wanted. He did not have to face a ball, Allen playing out the last two. - Wisden 1964

[W]ith two balls left, Cowdrey, his left arm in plaster, walked slowly out. In the dressing-room he had been practising batting one-hand - left-handed, so as not to have to offer his broken arm to Hall. - John Clarke, Cricket with a Swing

Allen stood there, a slender Pinocchio-like figure with quiff and up-turned nose as calmly as if he were waiting for a bus. Hall tossed the ball from hand to hand, looked imploringly up at the sky and started to run. It was probably as fast a ball as he has ever bowled. It seared straight for Allen's middle stump. But Allen leant forward like a master and met it with broad and unquavering British bat. - Ian Wooldridge, Cricket, Lovely Cricket

Wesley [Hall] banged them both straight at the stumps. Allen stunned the fifth, got his bat somehow to the sixth - and the great match was over with Cowdrey a wryly smiling hero at the non-striker's end. - J.S. Barker, Summer Spectacular

Cowdrey, left arm in plaster, a photographer backing away from him as he walked slowly in, was cheered to the wicket. There was something of Wodehouse about it, something of Sapper. Allen had the strike, there were two balls to go. The batsmen conferred, but the obligation was indisputable. Hall's last two balls were fast, straight and on a length. Allen dourly pushed out the first; and then, Worrell having implored Hall not to bowl a no-ball, safely kept out the second... As he did so, the crowd, mostly West Indians, raced across Lord's. - Alan Ross, The West Indies at Lord's

Some weeks later Martin, Jim and I were getting up before dawn to work on the banana plantation at the kibbutz at Tel Katzir.

If you found this a disappointing post, in the light of the promise of its opening sentence, there's nothing I can say to you. Life is made up of many different spheres of interest.

[For links to the other posts in this series, see here.]

The normblog profile 206: Elizabeth Baines

Elizabeth Baines was born in South Wales and lives in Manchester. She is the prize-winning author of stage plays, numerous dramas for radio and short stories, as well as two novels, The Birth Machine and Body Cuts. Recently she has also become an occasional actor. A collection of her short stories, Balancing on the Edge of the World, will appear from Salt Publishing in October. Elizabeth blogs at Fictionbitch and Elizabeth Baines.

Why do you blog? > I started the Fictionbitch blog because I wanted to address issues about writing and publishing which concerned me as a writer and which I felt weren't being sufficiently aired. My Elizabeth Baines blog is a more personal diary of my writing and performing life, and a chance to exchange writing experiences on a more personal level and, of course, to promote my projects.

What has been your best blogging experience? > Discovering that other people shared my concerns, finding like-minded friends and, excitingly, engaging in thoughtful debate.

What has been your worst blogging experience? > Being misunderstood and taken as slandering someone. The problem arose because I was unaware of what another blogger had written on the subject and that my remarks would thus be taken in a context I hadn't intended. Part of the problem, too, was the brevity I try to achieve because I think blogging demands it.

What would be your main blogging advice to a novice blogger? > Remember that a blog is a public platform, and that anonymous bloggers can get outed - as I did!

Who are your intellectual heroes? > I'm not too keen on the notion of 'heroes', but of prime importance to my thinking are John Stuart Mill, George Orwell, Richard Hoggart (for The Uses of Literacy), and Kate Millett (for Sexual Politics).

What are you reading at the moment? > Alain-Fournier's novel Le Grand Meaulnes (for my reading group).

Who are your cultural heroes? > Kafka, the Brontës, George Eliot, Margaret Atwood, Stéphane Grappelli.

What is the best novel you've ever read? > I can only answer with a question: Best in what way? What's so great about novels is that, as the word implies, there are so many different kinds, and examples of each can seem the best while I’m reading them. But then I re-read books I read years ago and change my mind.

Can you name a major moral, political or intellectual issue on which you've ever changed your mind? > I'm less clear about abortion since having children. Also, I used to believe strongly that you could and should put the past behind you, whereas now I feel that - both personally and politically - that's the way to build up trouble.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > The notion that we don't and can't know everything.

What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to combat? > The idea that there are things we can know a priori, without recourse to reason or experience. (As a writer I do value intuition, but I think in reality it's based on experience.)

Can you name a work of non-fiction which has had a major and lasting influence on how you think about the world? > I should probably say Mill's On Liberty, but I'm saying Kate Millett's Sexual Politics because that wasn't simply the original explication of a concept with which I had already been brought up, but stripped my eyes and made me see everything differently. The book which truly showed me how contingent or insidiously covert value systems can be.

Who are your political heroes? > Engels (for The Condition of the Working Classes in England), the Suffragists.

If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > I'd kick government and big business out of the cosy bed they got into together.

What do you consider to be the main threat to the future peace and security of the world? > The continuing concept of 'the other' - so crazy when genetics is proving how closely related we all are.

Do you think the world (human civilization) has already passed its best point, or is that yet to come? > If I thought I knew the answer to this one I wouldn't need to go on writing.

What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > Everything that happens to you, however bad, can be turned somehow to good.

Do you think you could ever be married to, or in a long-term relationship with, someone with radically different political views from your own? > No way.

What do you consider the most important personal quality? > The ability to see others' points of view.

What personal fault do you most dislike? > Conversely, the inability to do so, which leads to arrogance, cruelty, and on the less personal level, despotism (the personal is political, and vice versa).

In what circumstances would you be willing to lie? > If telling the truth would cause more harm than good. (It's a hard call though, and I've misjudged it badly in the past.)

Do you have any prejudices you're willing to acknowledge? > I dislike opera but I've never been to one.

What is your favourite proverb? > Do as you would be done by.

What, if anything, do you worry about? > Pollution, wars, global warming, the future for my children and any grandchildren I may have.

If you were to relive your life to this point, is there anything you'd do differently? > I'd be a lot pushier while I was young - but then I'd have to be reborn a different person and from a different background, I guess.

What would you call your autobiography? > Don’t Let the Bastards Grind You Down - subtitled And Remember They're Only Human.

What is your most treasured possession? > Probably my Silver Cross fountain pen with which I write my notes and first drafts and my writing journal.

What talent would you most like to have? > I wish I could play a musical instrument, but I've had one or two goes, and I'm not very good, you know.

If you could have one (more or less realistic) wish come true, what would you wish for? > Getting my latest novel published.

How, if at all, would you change your life were you suddenly to win or inherit an enormously large sum of money? > It wouldn't really change my life, which nowadays I love: I could repay the man who has supported me for much of the time that I've been a writer earning buttons, and I could give my kids the financial security which my income so far hasn't allowed.

[The normblog profile is a weekly Friday morning feature. A list of all the profiles to date, and the links to them, can be found here.]

Giving offence is not an offence

People have a right to offend the religious sensibilities of others, even if they do so in works of would-be art that are intellectually stupid and artistically worthless. It's a shame, therefore, to see a sort of united front of Australian political leaders - John Howard and Kevin Rudd - making the same complaint about 'a holographic image of Osama bin Laden that morphs into Jesus Christ': namely, that it is likely to offend people. (See also here.)

If the fact that it offends the beliefs of Christians is the key thing, then of course no one should say anything offensive about Judaism, Islam, Bhuddism, Hinduism or any other religion, and you've got a rich set of constraints on what painters, poets, novelists and all the rest of us may openly do and say. You're short of an answer, in particular, when outraged Muslims fulminate about Salman Rushdie. Why doesn't it suffice to say, as Glynis Quinlan is reported to have done for the Australian Christian Lobby, that Jesus's message was one of love and forgiveness - not the principal ideas associated with Osama bin Laden? Howard and Rudd might have thought of setting an example in what liberal freedoms entail in a democratic society. They include that some people get to be offended from time to time. And not only the religious. (Via Andrew Bolt.)

With respect to John Pilger

There's a piece by John Pilger in last week's New Statesman that speaks of 'the fanatics of Zion' and 'the ethnic cleansing of Palestine'. Be sure to scroll down to the comments and read Jon Pike's two contributions. Then see this post of his at Engage. Jon says:

John Pilger used to be, in many ways (I think), a journalist worthy of respect.

I once thought so.

Under permanent threat

Here's a note you don't see struck very often. It's Naomi Wolf and she's in pursuit of the comparative point, but she says something that Israel's more one-eyed critics tend to overlook or excuse:

Anyone who has ever lived in Israel - a country where, since its very birth, sophisticated terrorists have been targeting the civilian population day and night - knows that you never get the equivalent of broad-anxiety-inducing alerts in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem like the "red alert" or "orange alert" system in the US.

The Warsaw ghetto comparison (by Eve Garrard)

[As many readers of normblog will already know, the university and college teachers' union (the UCU) is currently discussing an academic boycott of Israel. There is a UCU discussion board on which this topic, among others, is being talked about at length. The post below was a response to an argument made on that site. It has been made clear by the UCU that if discussion on the issue of the boycott campaign on the UCU activist email list is made public without the consent of the author, then those who made it public will be excluded from further discussion. So I've edited the post to protect the identity of the person to whom I was responding, and to remove the details of what that person said. - E.G.]

The claim has been made that Gaza is rather like the Warsaw ghetto. Now this claim is either a legitimate comparison, or it's a peculiarly unpleasant smear, insinuating that Israel is akin to Nazi Germany. So let's see if it's a legitimate comparison. The two main features of the Warsaw ghetto were (1) that it was an unspeakable atrocity, leading to the deaths of nearly half a million Jews and others, and (2) that it was part of a genocidal plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Take the first point, and consider the comparison: on the one hand, the number of Palestinian refugees in the late 1940s was approximately 750,000, but it now stands between 4 and 6 million. It would be quite hard to regard this as even an attempted genocide - few genocides end up with an increase in the victim population of the order of several hundred per cent. By contrast, the size of the Jewish population in the Warsaw ghetto after the three years in which it existed was zero. The current life expectancy of a Palestinian woman is 75 years, according to the UN. What was the life expectancy of a Jewish woman in the Warsaw ghetto? Whatever age she was, she had at the very most three more years to live. Not a striking similarity, then.

With reference to the second significant feature of the Warsaw ghetto, which supposedly resembles Gaza, it should be noted that Israel has had control of the skies over Gaza for many years now, and had it wanted to it could have produced the same outcome as the Nazis did in the Warsaw ghetto. The fact that it hasn't done so would demonstrate to most people, even those hostile enough to stand in need of a demonstration, that it has no such aims. People who maintain their suspicion that Israel has genocidal intentions towards the population of Gaza do so in the face of a total lack of evidence to support their view.

Let us now consider whether there is any evidence that Israel is aiming to exterminate the Palestinians in general. Where are the slave labour camps in the Territories, in which tens and hundreds of thousands are worked to death, with a life expectancy of between three and six months? Where are the gas chambers killing thousands every day? Beats me, I just can't see them.

So the comparison is not, to put it mildly, a legitimate one. It is, in fact, a poisonous smear, which derives its repellent quality partly from its exploitation of the terrible history of the Nazis and the Jews. It's hard to know why some people feel the need to paint the swastika on to the foreheads of the Jews of Israel in this way, to covertly suggest that the Nazis have been reincarnated as Israeli Jews and that Israel is the new Third Reich. I think it's unlikely that all boycotters share these views, but insofar as they do, their position is morally polluted by this new version of a very old stereotype, that Jews are secretly planning to kill millions of innocent people. (Eve Garrard)

A and A

So you have two young people - call them Able and Aspirational. Viewing the prospect of earning £2.9m per annum, both feel that the job that will pay them this is worth aspiring to. Told, on the other hand, that the same job would pay only half the sum, Able is discouraged. He spends more time practising his tennis. But Aspirational is still interested in aspiring. She feels that £1.45m isn't a bad deal for the job in question, or for any job.

Who is more intelligent, Able or Aspirational, and who more able? Who is more greedy? Peter Newhouse offers an answer:

The disclosure of executive directors' pay is good for society. Rather than being a cause for hand-wringing and envy, the Guardian pay survey's revelations of what our best managers can earn from running the UK's biggest listed companies should encourage others to follow in their footsteps. The survey found that directors' pay at the 100 largest such firms has risen by 37%, with the average chief executive receiving £2.9m, including salary, benefits, bonuses and gains from share incentive schemes. These figures send an important message to able and aspirational young people.

This evidence of the amounts that successful managers can earn from a career in business provides an attractive alternative to role models in music, sport, literature and fashion.

It doesn't have to be about envy. Some might just think that earning in a single year what others would be comfortable with over 40 years (£2.9m being £72,500 p.a.) is excessive, even for an incentive.

Jazz 15: Django Reinhardt

I'm not that keen on either guitar or violin as jazz instruments. I can't explain why this is. They've just never struck me as fitting the idiom as well as piano, trumpet, sax, trombone, clarinet. However, this prejudice is totally overcome by Django Reinhardt, whose music I love. As it says here:

He would spin joyous, arcing, marvelously inflected solos above the thrumming base of two rhythm guitars and a bass, with [Stéphane] Grappelli's elegantly gliding violin serving as the perfect foil.

And that's as much as needs to be said. I'm suggesting the Verve compilation Jazz Masters 38 (1938-53 - 49 minutes) for your collection, though there's plenty else. Three YouTube clips.

[Links to the rest of the series.]