a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
But is the avoidance of suffering the purpose of life? Pretty obviously not. One of the most salient features of this mortal coil is that it opens up opportunities for suffering undreamt of by mere spirits.
If avoiding suffering were the principal thing, mortality would be pointless and counterproductive, and we would have to agree with the verdict of the chorus from Oedipus at Colonus: "Not to be born is, beyond all estimation, best; but when a man has seen the light of day, this is next best by far, that with utmost speed he should go back from where he came."
Life was never intended to be Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Mortality is a school, and those of us who experience a protracted mortality are here to learn. The reason we should wish to live longer rather than shorter lives is not so that we can have more years of not-suffering, but so that we can have more experience and learn from that experience. "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding" (Prov. 4:7) -- for "Whatever principle of intelligence we attain unto in this life, it will rise with us in the resurrection" (D&C 130:18).
Killing is wrong not because it causes suffering but because it cuts short an education. The greater a being's inclination to learn from experience, the greater the wrong of killing that being.
That is why, though Bentham is right that a horse is the intellectual superior of a human infant, and though both can suffer, killing a human child -- even, perhaps, a human fetus -- is a far greater evil than killing a horse. A horse's capacity for spiritual learning (though not, I believe, negligible!) is limited, while a human child's is virtually infinite.
That is why murdering a saint is so much worse than executing a hardened criminal. (The reverse should be true by Bentham's Utilitarian standards, at least if one believes in heaven and hell.) The one is inclined to learn; the other is not. (The chief thing for the criminal is to repent, but I believe that can be done after death.)
What prompted these thoughts was my recent experience of listening to the entire Torah of Moses read aloud. I was struck by the casual violence of the Mosaic world, so shocking by modern standards, how lightly life was taken. We think of murder as one of the worst possible sins, but ancient people like Moses and Homer -- and their Gods! -- clearly saw things differently. And I thought, What if they weren't moral idiots who casually committed the gravest of crimes? What if, due to the evolution of consciousness, human life really was "cheaper" back then? What if the vast majority of people in those times were, in their capacity for spiritual learning, rather closer to the horse? What if we have, over the course of our historical development as a species, not so much discovered that life is precious as actually made it more precious?
And what does this line of thinking imply about the present day?
4 comments:
Thank you. Had a hard day and it is good to remember. I don’t know about your speculation though.
Excellent questions. I tend to believe that we have made life more precious. I would go so far as to speculate that we have made it more precious than it really is. I don't mean this from the nihilistic view so many modern people possess. The prolonging of human life at any cost has been explored by you, William, and by Bruce Charlton and others, and this is the vein in which I made this statement.
Who can say what the world would be like if men didn't see their lives as so, so very precious? Every Christian I know mouths words like "This world is not my home. I'm just a traveler passing through. Heaven is my goal. The next life will be so good, it'll make this one look like hell in comparison." And yet none of them seem to be anything other than absolutely terrified at the prospect of being merely inconvenienced or hurt, much less killed.
We occasionally read of some individual who commits a great act of selfless bravery, like a man unable to swim jumping into a lake and rescuing a drowning child, himself dying in the act even as he saves a life. But we never hear od men deliberately endangering their lives to make this a safer and saner world. The wicked criminals among us are emboldened by their knowledge that Christian men will forever hide behind "It's the State's job to bear the sword...private vengeance is forbidden!" and will never put their lives on the line to make the evil spend their days in fear of good men.
And yes, I tangent often. Also been known to diatribe and occasionally broadside.
I don't agree with you analysis of the OT attitude; but I am not sure how to express the disagreement.
Maybe the essence is that morality is about knowing what is sin, much more than about avoiding sin.
The OT characters seem to be clear and sure about what is sin, but bad at avoiding it. i.e. The opposite of the mainstream middle class 'nice women' of today - who commit few or none of the spectacular OT sins; but deny the sinfulness of most of what the OT regard as sin.
Perhaps the OT characters are more immature, more child like. They can't rationalize.
"The OT characters seem to be clear and sure about what is sin, but bad at avoiding it."
I don't think that's really true when it comes to killing. Such atrocities as the slaughter of the Midianite women and children (Numbers 31) are are not recognized as sinful at all. (Moses' only concern after the massacre is for those who may have become ritually unclean by touching the dead bodies of their victims!)
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