Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Over the past few days I've been having what can only be called an ethical debate on various human values.
Scene I :Just the other day I was having this brief conversation with a good friend of mine on how the metre in an auto these days is just a measure of the distance the driver goes to cheat a passenger.One thing led to another and she was posing an ethical issue on what I would do if I were an auto driver who had to pay a whopping hospital bill for a close relative of mine....and out of sheer desperation I'm driven to blaming an inanimate metre which can't really speak in its defense either! My spontaneous argument was that I would resort to all sorts of measures and then if it boiled down to letting that person die...then it has to be done no matter what.But who was I kidding? And so I was forced to accede to the fact that ethics are situational.
Scene II : My workplace is inhabited by people with high moral stands.A pet issue that is often discussed about is : "Abortion ".As if it wasn't enough to try and convert an entire batch of students, here I was hearing about their exploits in the classroom....till I couldn't take it anymore.So my take on this issue covered 4 vital points.
First,its not just about playing god and deciding whether another person's life lies in your hands.It's about deciding on the quality of life that you are responsible for bringing into this world.So you can't justify developments such as prenatal diagnosis and screening as mere advancements in science..they serve a powerful purpose and they can be used to alleviate a lot of problems.
Second,if human life should just be allowed to take its own destiny...think about the loss in terms of time,energy,resources and not to mention immense heartache when one is faced with bearing a child with a serious genetic abnormality.Now I'm not suggesting that we clone perfect human beings and eliminate all the rest that do not fit up to the standards of perfection (we aren't making a Hollywood movie here) ...I'm merely saying that we do not have to learn about what is perfect by looking at what is imperfect and deformed....nor do we have to learn forbearance and tolerance by looking at another person's suffering.Yes,we need all kinds to make the world..but again I ask...at what expense?Sometimes we have to pit an intellectual decision about human life against an emotional decision about the same.
Third,if abortion is endorsed by a woman who has had irrepsonsible sex I would hardly say she is the right vehicle to justify abortion.However if it's not the fault of parents who haven't had the better sense to look up the dynamics of genetic inheritance and family trees (except perhaps for a marital alliance or tracing common links that connect them as a family) why should they be held responsible for a foetus that hardly has a mind of its own...let alone a fully developed physical body? As my good friend in Scene 1 says ...it is the complexity of the human mind that separates us from other living beings...and when that hasn't been formed yet....We can make choices that enable it to lead a better life outside the comforts of the womb.I would even go so far as to say...left to the unformed foetus,it would probably decide to abort itself when it isn't good enough (which is what happens in nature's case of the survival of the fittest !) So who is to blame for natural abortion ?I know it sounds far fetched....but its definitely something to think about...
Lastly....when we talk about abortion...are we talking about just the termination of a human life?(Just a note: Courtesy my colleague: We can hardly compare the complex issue of abortion to the malnourishment that exists in Ethiopia.Can we terminate those babies because we know that they would be born into a life of poverty and severe health risks and the pointless waste of millions of currency which have no long term solution to this issue? The point is had we provided the right nourishment to the growing foetus it would actually have a chance to lead a life that has some decent quality to it..which is not the case of those born with genetic defects.Sometimes these genetic defects aren't just physical,they are intellectual to the point that the person ultimately would not know if he or she is leading the life they should be,had they been unaffected.) Shouldn't we in fact be talking about the bigger picture of "the sanctity of life itself "? So when we have a boiled egg for breakfast...isn't that a life that was terminated before it has had a chance to be born.But now..at the risk of trivialising the issue...I have to end here.
Which brings me back to my original issue.The ethicality of values.My final take on this would be there cannot be a blanket statement that goes "Good is good and bad is bad"....life is about grey areas.Yes,there should be blanket laws about issues such as abortion,criminal activities etc,so that they aren't misused...but at the end of the day it all rests with the individual's situation and idiosyncracies.The question then is what do you do when it involves another human being...? If you say that killing a life is a crime even if it means preventing a lifetime of hardship and pain....I would say ....If you steal,even if it means it is to save a life ....it still qualifies as a crime.
The debate on ethics will go on.
Scene I :Just the other day I was having this brief conversation with a good friend of mine on how the metre in an auto these days is just a measure of the distance the driver goes to cheat a passenger.One thing led to another and she was posing an ethical issue on what I would do if I were an auto driver who had to pay a whopping hospital bill for a close relative of mine....and out of sheer desperation I'm driven to blaming an inanimate metre which can't really speak in its defense either! My spontaneous argument was that I would resort to all sorts of measures and then if it boiled down to letting that person die...then it has to be done no matter what.But who was I kidding? And so I was forced to accede to the fact that ethics are situational.
Scene II : My workplace is inhabited by people with high moral stands.A pet issue that is often discussed about is : "Abortion ".As if it wasn't enough to try and convert an entire batch of students, here I was hearing about their exploits in the classroom....till I couldn't take it anymore.So my take on this issue covered 4 vital points.
First,its not just about playing god and deciding whether another person's life lies in your hands.It's about deciding on the quality of life that you are responsible for bringing into this world.So you can't justify developments such as prenatal diagnosis and screening as mere advancements in science..they serve a powerful purpose and they can be used to alleviate a lot of problems.
Second,if human life should just be allowed to take its own destiny...think about the loss in terms of time,energy,resources and not to mention immense heartache when one is faced with bearing a child with a serious genetic abnormality.Now I'm not suggesting that we clone perfect human beings and eliminate all the rest that do not fit up to the standards of perfection (we aren't making a Hollywood movie here) ...I'm merely saying that we do not have to learn about what is perfect by looking at what is imperfect and deformed....nor do we have to learn forbearance and tolerance by looking at another person's suffering.Yes,we need all kinds to make the world..but again I ask...at what expense?Sometimes we have to pit an intellectual decision about human life against an emotional decision about the same.
Third,if abortion is endorsed by a woman who has had irrepsonsible sex I would hardly say she is the right vehicle to justify abortion.However if it's not the fault of parents who haven't had the better sense to look up the dynamics of genetic inheritance and family trees (except perhaps for a marital alliance or tracing common links that connect them as a family) why should they be held responsible for a foetus that hardly has a mind of its own...let alone a fully developed physical body? As my good friend in Scene 1 says ...it is the complexity of the human mind that separates us from other living beings...and when that hasn't been formed yet....We can make choices that enable it to lead a better life outside the comforts of the womb.I would even go so far as to say...left to the unformed foetus,it would probably decide to abort itself when it isn't good enough (which is what happens in nature's case of the survival of the fittest !) So who is to blame for natural abortion ?I know it sounds far fetched....but its definitely something to think about...
Lastly....when we talk about abortion...are we talking about just the termination of a human life?(Just a note: Courtesy my colleague: We can hardly compare the complex issue of abortion to the malnourishment that exists in Ethiopia.Can we terminate those babies because we know that they would be born into a life of poverty and severe health risks and the pointless waste of millions of currency which have no long term solution to this issue? The point is had we provided the right nourishment to the growing foetus it would actually have a chance to lead a life that has some decent quality to it..which is not the case of those born with genetic defects.Sometimes these genetic defects aren't just physical,they are intellectual to the point that the person ultimately would not know if he or she is leading the life they should be,had they been unaffected.) Shouldn't we in fact be talking about the bigger picture of "the sanctity of life itself "? So when we have a boiled egg for breakfast...isn't that a life that was terminated before it has had a chance to be born.But now..at the risk of trivialising the issue...I have to end here.
Which brings me back to my original issue.The ethicality of values.My final take on this would be there cannot be a blanket statement that goes "Good is good and bad is bad"....life is about grey areas.Yes,there should be blanket laws about issues such as abortion,criminal activities etc,so that they aren't misused...but at the end of the day it all rests with the individual's situation and idiosyncracies.The question then is what do you do when it involves another human being...? If you say that killing a life is a crime even if it means preventing a lifetime of hardship and pain....I would say ....If you steal,even if it means it is to save a life ....it still qualifies as a crime.
The debate on ethics will go on.
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