Published by the New York Times on November 24, 2006
Family Planning Farce
Friday, November 24, 2006
Friday, November 17, 2006
The Closet of Self-hatred
The closet of self-hatred by Ellen Goodman published by The Boston Globe on November 17, 2006.
A forbearing piece worth reading a few times over.
Enjoy.
A forbearing piece worth reading a few times over.
Enjoy.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Go Further
By Ilana Panich-Linsman
The film Go Further (2003 Sphinx Productions) by Ron Mann chronicles Woody Harrelson and an assortment of friends as they bicycle from Seattle to Los Angeles followed by a bio-fueled bus. Harrelson and company hope to inspire action and dialogue about sustainable living. The film is not only inspirational but humorous and appealing, with some brilliant musical performances.
The principal travelers (on bicycle or in the bus) include Harrelson himself (who speaks at colleges along the way), a yoga instructor, a vegan chef, an environmental activist and Steve, a self-described junk-food addict who eventually jumps on the bio-fueled bus and adopts the mantra, "Say no to corn dogs!" by the time the film ends.
Harrelson and his posse cycle eight hours a day, do yoga, and eat raw food as they travel down the Pacific coast speaking with students, organic farmers, solar energy experts and others. In one snippet of Harrelson's college lectures, the actor explains, "The most significant thing you can do for your environment? Look at your diet and demand organic."
The crew meets Anuradha Mittal, co-director of an organic farmers' market, Food First. "We live in a country where we've been told freedom really means having the choice of choosing between twenty different kinds of toothpaste," she says. "We have not been told that freedom really is knowing what we're eating, what is in a food, is it safe for us to eat."
This film was inspirational to me. I will be evermore conscious of my personal consumption habits, and eager to get the word out about our options in combating global warming. I sense that with the recent turnover in Congress, environmental activists throughout the country have the opportunity to speak out and educate now more than ever. U.S. citizens now face the responsibility of generating answers to questions surrounding the global warming crisis.
I don’t think perfection is the goal here. Individuals, though, can make an attempt to make better decisions regarding their personal environmental footprint. Whether this means recycling, buying locally grown food, switching off a few lights, unplugging some appliances or educating ourselves and our friends by seeing documentaries like Go Further or An Inconvenient Truth (which takes a more scientific look at the causes and effects of global warming). We can all do little things, the sum of which will amount to significant results.
Remember: Just say no to corndogs.
For more information about Go Further:
Sphinx Productions: Go Further
For more information about how you can take action against global warming:
Take Action
2006: The Year of the 'Macaca'
By FRANK RICH
Published: November 12, 2006 by The New York Times
OF course, the "thumpin' " was all about Iraq. But let us not forget Katrina. It was the collision of the twin White House calamities in August 2005 that foretold the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Back then, the full measure of the man finally snapped into focus for most Americans, sending his poll numbers into the 30s for the first time. The country saw that the president who had spurned a grieving wartime mother camping out in the sweltering heat of Crawford was the same guy who had been unable to recognize the depth of the suffering in New Orleans's fetid Superdome. This brand of leadership was not the "compassionate conservatism" that had been sold in all those photo ops with African-American schoolchildren. This was callous conservatism, if not just plain mean.
It's the kind of conservatism that remains silent when Rush Limbaugh does a mocking impersonation of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms to score partisan points. It's the kind of conservatism that talks of humane immigration reform but looks the other way when candidates demonize foreigners as predatory animals. It's the kind of conservatism that pays lip service to "tolerance" but stalls for days before taking down a campaign ad caricaturing an African-American candidate as a sexual magnet for white women.
This kind of politics is now officially out of fashion. Harold Ford did lose his race in Tennessee, but by less than three points in a region that has not sent a black man to the Senate since Reconstruction. Only 36 years old and hugely talented, he will rise again even as the last vestiges of Jim Crow tactics continue to fade and Willie Horton ads countenanced by a national political party join the Bush dynasty in history's dustbin.
Elsewhere, the 2006 returns more often than not confirmed that Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, are far better people than this cynical White House takes them for. This election was not a rebuke merely of the reckless fiasco in Iraq but also of the divisive ideology that had come to define the Bush-Rove-DeLay era. This was the year that Americans said a decisive no to the politics of "macaca" just as firmly as they did to pre-emptive war and Congressional corruption.
For all of Mr. Limbaugh's supposed clout, his nasty efforts did not defeat the ballot measure supporting stem-cell research in his native state, Missouri. The measure squeaked through, helping the Democratic senatorial candidate knock out the Republican incumbent. (The other stem-cell advocates endorsed by Mr. Fox in campaign ads, in Maryland and Wisconsin, also won.) Arizona voters, despite their proximity to the Mexican border, defeated two of the crudest immigrant-bashing demagogues running for Congress, including one who ran an ad depicting immigrants menacing a JonBenet Ramsey look-alike. (Reasserting its Goldwater conservative roots, Arizona also appears to be the first state to reject an amendment banning same-sex marriage.) Nationwide, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote fell from 44 percent in 2004 to 29 percent this year. Hispanics aren't buying Mr. Bush's broken-Spanish shtick anymore; they saw that the president, despite his nuanced take on immigration, never stood up forcefully to the nativists in his own camp when it counted most, in an election year.
But for those who've been sickened by the Bush-Rove brand of politics, surely the happiest result of 2006 was saved for last: Jim Webb's ousting of Senator George Allen in Virginia. It is all too fitting that this race would be the one that put the Democrats over the top in the Senate. Mr. Allen was the slickest form of Bush-Rove conservative, complete with a strategist who'd helped orchestrate the Swift Boating of John Kerry. Mr. Allen was on a fast track to carry that banner into the White House once Mr. Bush was gone. His demise was so sudden and so unlikely that it seems like a fairy tale come true.
As recently as April 2005, hard as it is to believe now, Mr. Allen was chosen in a National Journal survey of Beltway insiders as the most likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Political pros saw him as a cross between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush whose "affable" conservatism and (contrived) good-old-boy persona were catnip to voters. His Senate campaign this year was a mere formality; he began with a double-digit lead.
That all ended famously on Aug. 11, when Mr. Allen, appearing before a crowd of white supporters in rural Virginia, insulted a 20-year-old Webb campaign worker of Indian descent who was tracking him with a video camera. After belittling the dark-skinned man as "macaca, or whatever his name is," Mr. Allen added, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
The moment became a signature cultural event of the political year because the Webb campaign posted the video clip on YouTube.com, the wildly popular site that most politicians, to their peril, had not yet heard about from their children. Unlike unedited bloggorhea, which can take longer to slog through than Old Media print, YouTube is all video snippets all the time; the one-minute macaca clip spread through the national body politic like a rabid virus. Nonetheless it took more than a week for Mr. Allen to recognize the magnitude of the problem and apologize to the object of his ridicule. Then he compounded the damage by making a fool of himself on camera once more, this time angrily denying what proved to be accurate speculation that his mother was a closeted Jew . It was a Mel Gibson meltdown that couldn't be blamed on the bottle.
Mr. Allen has a history of racial insensitivity. He used to display a Confederate flag in his living room and, bizarrely enough, a noose in his office for sentimental reasons that he could never satisfactorily explain. His defense in the macaca incident was that he had no idea that the word, the term for a genus of monkey, had any racial connotation. But even if he were telling the truth — even if Mr. Allen were not a racist — his non-macaca words were just as damning. "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia" was unmistakably meant to demean the young man as an unwashed immigrant, whatever his race. It was a typical example of the us-versus-them stridency that has defined the truculent Bush-Rove fearmongering: you're either with us or you're a traitor, possibly with the terrorists.
As it happened, the "macaca" who provoked the senator's self-destruction, S. R. Sidarth, was not an immigrant but the son of immigrants. He was born in Washington's Virginia suburbs to well-off parents (his father is a mortgage broker) and is the high-achieving graduate of a magnet high school, a tournament chess player, a former intern for Joe Lieberman, a devoted member of his faith (Hindu) and, currently, a senior at the University of Virginia. He is even a football jock like Mr. Allen. In other words, he is an exemplary young American who didn't need to be "welcomed" to his native country by anyone. The Sidarths are typical of the families who have abetted the rapid growth of northern Virginia in recent years, much as immigrants have always built and renewed our nation. They, not Mr. Allen with his nostalgia for the Confederate "heritage," are America's future. It is indeed just such northern Virginians who have been tinting the once reliably red commonwealth purple.
Though the senator's behavior was toxic, the Bush-Rove establishment rewarded it. Its auxiliaries from talk radio, the blogosphere and the Wall Street Journal opinion page echoed the Allen campaign's complaint that the incident was inflated by the news media, especially The Washington Post. Once it became clear that Mr. Allen was in serious trouble, conservative pundits mainly faulted him for running an "awful campaign," not for being an awful person.
The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen's defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of "faith."
Perhaps the most interesting finding in the exit polls Tuesday was that the base did turn out for Mr. Rove: white evangelicals voted in roughly the same numbers as in 2004, and 71 percent of them voted Republican, hardly a mass desertion from the 78 percent of last time. But his party was routed anyway. It was the end of the road for the boy genius and his can't-miss strategy that Washington sycophants predicted could lead to a permanent Republican majority.
What a week this was! Here's to the voters of both parties who drove a stake into the heart of our political darkness. If you'll forgive me for paraphrasing George Allen: Welcome back, everyone, to the world of real America.
Published: November 12, 2006 by The New York Times
OF course, the "thumpin' " was all about Iraq. But let us not forget Katrina. It was the collision of the twin White House calamities in August 2005 that foretold the collapse of the presidency of George W. Bush.
Back then, the full measure of the man finally snapped into focus for most Americans, sending his poll numbers into the 30s for the first time. The country saw that the president who had spurned a grieving wartime mother camping out in the sweltering heat of Crawford was the same guy who had been unable to recognize the depth of the suffering in New Orleans's fetid Superdome. This brand of leadership was not the "compassionate conservatism" that had been sold in all those photo ops with African-American schoolchildren. This was callous conservatism, if not just plain mean.
It's the kind of conservatism that remains silent when Rush Limbaugh does a mocking impersonation of Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms to score partisan points. It's the kind of conservatism that talks of humane immigration reform but looks the other way when candidates demonize foreigners as predatory animals. It's the kind of conservatism that pays lip service to "tolerance" but stalls for days before taking down a campaign ad caricaturing an African-American candidate as a sexual magnet for white women.
This kind of politics is now officially out of fashion. Harold Ford did lose his race in Tennessee, but by less than three points in a region that has not sent a black man to the Senate since Reconstruction. Only 36 years old and hugely talented, he will rise again even as the last vestiges of Jim Crow tactics continue to fade and Willie Horton ads countenanced by a national political party join the Bush dynasty in history's dustbin.
Elsewhere, the 2006 returns more often than not confirmed that Americans, Republicans and Democrats alike, are far better people than this cynical White House takes them for. This election was not a rebuke merely of the reckless fiasco in Iraq but also of the divisive ideology that had come to define the Bush-Rove-DeLay era. This was the year that Americans said a decisive no to the politics of "macaca" just as firmly as they did to pre-emptive war and Congressional corruption.
For all of Mr. Limbaugh's supposed clout, his nasty efforts did not defeat the ballot measure supporting stem-cell research in his native state, Missouri. The measure squeaked through, helping the Democratic senatorial candidate knock out the Republican incumbent. (The other stem-cell advocates endorsed by Mr. Fox in campaign ads, in Maryland and Wisconsin, also won.) Arizona voters, despite their proximity to the Mexican border, defeated two of the crudest immigrant-bashing demagogues running for Congress, including one who ran an ad depicting immigrants menacing a JonBenet Ramsey look-alike. (Reasserting its Goldwater conservative roots, Arizona also appears to be the first state to reject an amendment banning same-sex marriage.) Nationwide, the Republican share of the Hispanic vote fell from 44 percent in 2004 to 29 percent this year. Hispanics aren't buying Mr. Bush's broken-Spanish shtick anymore; they saw that the president, despite his nuanced take on immigration, never stood up forcefully to the nativists in his own camp when it counted most, in an election year.
But for those who've been sickened by the Bush-Rove brand of politics, surely the happiest result of 2006 was saved for last: Jim Webb's ousting of Senator George Allen in Virginia. It is all too fitting that this race would be the one that put the Democrats over the top in the Senate. Mr. Allen was the slickest form of Bush-Rove conservative, complete with a strategist who'd helped orchestrate the Swift Boating of John Kerry. Mr. Allen was on a fast track to carry that banner into the White House once Mr. Bush was gone. His demise was so sudden and so unlikely that it seems like a fairy tale come true.
As recently as April 2005, hard as it is to believe now, Mr. Allen was chosen in a National Journal survey of Beltway insiders as the most likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008. Political pros saw him as a cross between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush whose "affable" conservatism and (contrived) good-old-boy persona were catnip to voters. His Senate campaign this year was a mere formality; he began with a double-digit lead.
That all ended famously on Aug. 11, when Mr. Allen, appearing before a crowd of white supporters in rural Virginia, insulted a 20-year-old Webb campaign worker of Indian descent who was tracking him with a video camera. After belittling the dark-skinned man as "macaca, or whatever his name is," Mr. Allen added, "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia."
The moment became a signature cultural event of the political year because the Webb campaign posted the video clip on YouTube.com, the wildly popular site that most politicians, to their peril, had not yet heard about from their children. Unlike unedited bloggorhea, which can take longer to slog through than Old Media print, YouTube is all video snippets all the time; the one-minute macaca clip spread through the national body politic like a rabid virus. Nonetheless it took more than a week for Mr. Allen to recognize the magnitude of the problem and apologize to the object of his ridicule. Then he compounded the damage by making a fool of himself on camera once more, this time angrily denying what proved to be accurate speculation that his mother was a closeted Jew . It was a Mel Gibson meltdown that couldn't be blamed on the bottle.
Mr. Allen has a history of racial insensitivity. He used to display a Confederate flag in his living room and, bizarrely enough, a noose in his office for sentimental reasons that he could never satisfactorily explain. His defense in the macaca incident was that he had no idea that the word, the term for a genus of monkey, had any racial connotation. But even if he were telling the truth — even if Mr. Allen were not a racist — his non-macaca words were just as damning. "Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia" was unmistakably meant to demean the young man as an unwashed immigrant, whatever his race. It was a typical example of the us-versus-them stridency that has defined the truculent Bush-Rove fearmongering: you're either with us or you're a traitor, possibly with the terrorists.
As it happened, the "macaca" who provoked the senator's self-destruction, S. R. Sidarth, was not an immigrant but the son of immigrants. He was born in Washington's Virginia suburbs to well-off parents (his father is a mortgage broker) and is the high-achieving graduate of a magnet high school, a tournament chess player, a former intern for Joe Lieberman, a devoted member of his faith (Hindu) and, currently, a senior at the University of Virginia. He is even a football jock like Mr. Allen. In other words, he is an exemplary young American who didn't need to be "welcomed" to his native country by anyone. The Sidarths are typical of the families who have abetted the rapid growth of northern Virginia in recent years, much as immigrants have always built and renewed our nation. They, not Mr. Allen with his nostalgia for the Confederate "heritage," are America's future. It is indeed just such northern Virginians who have been tinting the once reliably red commonwealth purple.
Though the senator's behavior was toxic, the Bush-Rove establishment rewarded it. Its auxiliaries from talk radio, the blogosphere and the Wall Street Journal opinion page echoed the Allen campaign's complaint that the incident was inflated by the news media, especially The Washington Post. Once it became clear that Mr. Allen was in serious trouble, conservative pundits mainly faulted him for running an "awful campaign," not for being an awful person.
The macaca incident had resonance beyond Virginia not just because it was a hit on YouTube. It came to stand for 2006 as a whole because it was synergistic with a national Republican campaign that made a fetish of warning that a Congress run by Democrats would have committee chairmen who are black (Charles Rangel) or gay (Barney Frank), and a middle-aged woman not in the Stepford mold of Laura Bush as speaker. In this context, Mr. Allen's defeat was poetic justice: the perfect epitaph for an era in which Mr. Rove systematically exploited the narrowest prejudices of the Republican base, pitting Americans of differing identities in cockfights for power and profit, all in the name of "faith."
Perhaps the most interesting finding in the exit polls Tuesday was that the base did turn out for Mr. Rove: white evangelicals voted in roughly the same numbers as in 2004, and 71 percent of them voted Republican, hardly a mass desertion from the 78 percent of last time. But his party was routed anyway. It was the end of the road for the boy genius and his can't-miss strategy that Washington sycophants predicted could lead to a permanent Republican majority.
What a week this was! Here's to the voters of both parties who drove a stake into the heart of our political darkness. If you'll forgive me for paraphrasing George Allen: Welcome back, everyone, to the world of real America.
Seeds of Tolerance
By Ilana Panich-Linsman
The Seeds of Tolerance Contest
Current TV started a contest in June and asked contestants to make a video about the issue of tolerance. They’ve narrowed it down to six entries. The winner will receive $100,000 in cash and an additional $15,000 to donate to the charity of his or her choice. Two finalists will also receive $10,000 a piece. The awards will be presented at a film-screening event in Los Angeles in December.
The current video in the lead is "The Making of a Girl" produced by Jillian Buckley. In it, the founder of Girls Education and Mentoring Services or GEMS narrates the hypothetical life a young girl who is seduced into a world of sexual exploitation and abuse. GEMS is a “non-profit organization whose mission is to empower young women, ages 12-21 years, who have experienced sexual exploitation and violence to exit unsafe and abusive lifestyles and to develop their full potential. GEMS provides young women with empathetic, consistent support and viable opportunities for positive change."
Please watch the videos, vote in this contest and help support GEMS in its crucial mission. (The videos "Darfur Rising" and "One Nation Under Guard" are also excellent). You must register to vote, but Current TV is a great website to explore and participate in anyway, so go ahead, register, vote. Do your part in helping to support girls and women who have experienced sexual exploitation and violence.
The Seeds of Tolerance Contest
Current TV started a contest in June and asked contestants to make a video about the issue of tolerance. They’ve narrowed it down to six entries. The winner will receive $100,000 in cash and an additional $15,000 to donate to the charity of his or her choice. Two finalists will also receive $10,000 a piece. The awards will be presented at a film-screening event in Los Angeles in December.
The current video in the lead is "The Making of a Girl" produced by Jillian Buckley. In it, the founder of Girls Education and Mentoring Services or GEMS narrates the hypothetical life a young girl who is seduced into a world of sexual exploitation and abuse. GEMS is a “non-profit organization whose mission is to empower young women, ages 12-21 years, who have experienced sexual exploitation and violence to exit unsafe and abusive lifestyles and to develop their full potential. GEMS provides young women with empathetic, consistent support and viable opportunities for positive change."
Please watch the videos, vote in this contest and help support GEMS in its crucial mission. (The videos "Darfur Rising" and "One Nation Under Guard" are also excellent). You must register to vote, but Current TV is a great website to explore and participate in anyway, so go ahead, register, vote. Do your part in helping to support girls and women who have experienced sexual exploitation and violence.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Thoughts on the Fence
By Andrea Prudente
I would like to spend some time addressing what I will term moral or ethical “fence-sitting”. While I hesitate to refer to it as an affliction or syndrome, I believe it is a condition in our culture that, while it is not necessarily negative, it is usually not positive. What I mean by “fence-sitting” in this context is the practice of putting off forming opinions on, taking a stance about, or committing to a viewpoint or “side” (if there are sides) regarding important moral and ethical issues. Though it is sometimes difficult to discern in others (as its manifestations are often absences of manifestations), I have begun to believe ethical fence-sitting is widespread enough to warrant some serious consideration, if not on a social or academic level, at least individually. And if I am to be completely honest, this condition is of particular personal interest to me because I admittedly suffer from a mild case of it myself. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am a selective fence-sitter—while there are a handful of issues I remain undecided on, it is not my general practice or politics to do so (for some people, it is). In what follows, I would like to look critically at what I take to be the ins and outs of ethical fence-sitting—what makes it possible, why people do it, some logistical questions, and its implications. While I do not intend to arrive at any definitive conclusion or resolution, I think there is some merit in the process of simply addressing the issue.
There seem to be more or less two types of fence sitting. There is thoughtful and often somewhat tortured fence-sitting wherein a person is conscious of their state of limbo and is actively thinking about and seeking information regarding the issues at hand (I will call this an “active” state). Most of us usually feel the active condition temporarily when a new ethical issue is brought to our attention or comes to the forefront of the political arena and we realize that we should form an opinion on it. First, however, we must gather relevant information and perspectives. This temporary state of undecided-ness following exposure to something new is not what I call fence-sitting. Rather, it is remaining in this state of limbo for a prolonged period of time which constitutes fence-sitting (what counts as “prolonged” can be up for interpretation). The active sitter is highly conscious of their rather precarious position, and it concerned with making the relevant moves in order to eventually move off the fence.
Then there is what I will call “passive” or complacent fence-sitting in which we can imagine a person has set up their lawn chair and cooler and is in it for the long haul. They are on the fence, and they are fine with that and are not working towards forming opinions and making important moral and ethical value decisions. In some senses, they have chosen their position, and that position is on the fence. In general, I do not think that one person is one type of fence-sitter all of the time. Rather, it is probably more often the case that the same person might be actively on the fence about a few issues, and passively on the fence about a handful of others.
It seems important to make a side note here that I think it highly likely that ethical fence-sitting is less of a problem for individuals who adhere strictly to a particular religious code or doctrine. For them, they may often look to their doctrine for appropriate values and stances regarding the relevant moral and ethical conundrums. We may see forming ethical views and opinions as a privilege and a duty and in many ways a burden—there is generally a lot at stake and values and morals are a key element in personhood and identity. It would be fairly uncontroversial to propose then that strong religious faith eases this burden to some degree by shifting responsibility from the individual to a transcendent and higher power.
Let us turn now to situations in which moral fence-sitters are forced to make decisions. Life events and political processes can often put us in positions in which we must address our ethical viewpoints and act accordingly—not committing is no longer a viable option. Let me explain: a person who has postponed forming her views about abortion discovers that they/their mother/sister/daughter/friend/partner has become unintentionally and undesirably pregnant. Or a person who has yet to decide what they think about euthanasia is faced with an elderly or ill loved one who wants to end his/her life. Or we may put off addressing any number of issues until legislation about those very issues appears on our local, state, or national ballots. (Granted, some extreme and committed fence-sitters may choose not to vote rather than do the necessary legwork to establish their ethical viewpoints).
Those who have been actively on the fence regarding the issues at hand may be fully or at least partially prepared to make decisions in such circumstances. But for passive fence-sitters, since they have not been seeking information and working toward committing to a viewpoint, conditions which make it suddenly imperative to make a decision are highly problematic. Perhaps there are some people who make really wise and informed decisions under pressure and with serious time constraints. But I think it probably more common that the most educated decisions, particularly on issues of significant moral weight, are made after careful consideration and some time devoted to stepping back and addressing it from several perspectives in order to thoroughly exhaust all possibilities. Like procrastinating on writing a paper or studying for an exam, some of us are good at it, others are not, but all must admit that waiting until faced with an imminent deadline limits the amount of resources available and increases the possibility that we will do/write/say/decide something we may not have done had we taken the time for significant reflection.
There are of course many moral and ethical issues which may never be accompanied by an event or circumstance which might make it necessary for fence-sitters to dismount and take a stance. These issues include but are not limited to lifestyle and environmentally relevant choices such as eating vegetarian or vegan, transportation practices (using public transit, bicycling, driving a hybrid, driving a hummer, etc.), chemical and pesticide use, and many more. Though Mother Nature will probably eventually force us to significantly refine our ways of living, in the very near future it is less likely that fence sitters will be nudged into decisions by life circumstances or political events regarding vegetarianism, for example, as opposed to the issues mentioned earlier.
In our culture (and I might venture to say in cultures in general) there emerge seemingly morally neutral or default positions on particular issues. That is, there are these strange sort of precarious (and imagined?) safe spaces in which a person can position herself such that she, because she is positioned in line with the majority, can feel she has not made a decision or is morally neutral. In these situations, there is no fence to be on, but we pretend there is. On an issue such as abortion, one can legitimately be undecided. But on an issue like vegetarianism or meat eating, what would represent being undecided—not eating? So it happens that if there are two sides, let’s say eating meat versus vegetarianism, being on the fence is indeed being part of one side, namely eating meat. We are at least partially willing to grant a person “undecided” or “on the fence” status if she eats meat but does not advocate for carnivore-ism in general, nor against vegetarianism.
But isn’t this imagined morally neutral space sort of a delusion? Just because something is or has become the norm, doesn’t make it value-neutral. I may tell myself that, because the majority of my culture eats meat, my not being a vegetarian is not taking a position…but isn’t it? At the very least by eating meat I am saying that I am not significantly morally opposed to eating meat/factory farming/killing animals etc.. We may grant that “Not Against” does not necessarily signify “For” in that it is not diametrically opposite of “Against”. But I am inclined to argue that “Not Against” is just as legitimately a moral position as “Against”. That is, I think we would be deceiving ourselves if we were to consider “Not Against” as a non-position.
I’d like to end by addressing the various reasons for ethical fence-sitting. First, taking a stance on significant ethical issues is almost always and inevitably accompanied by social conflicts and disagreement. It is the way of the universe that different people (intelligent people!) disagree on things, especially on things which involve high stakes and moral values. So one can imagine why someone, with a particularly strong aversion to conflict and confrontation, might try to refrain from taking stances and forming solid opinions on ethical issues—it may seem more costly to them to be vulnerable to conflict than to remain morally in limbo. Another option might be to keep one’s opinion to oneself. In either position, one could pose the counterargument that true friends and loved ones do not love you less if your ethical views differ from theirs. In fact, challenging and discussing our viewpoints is an important part of living socially and can serve to strengthen social bonds and moral convictions and prevent “living truth” from becoming “dead dogma”.
Another reason (excuse?) for remaining on the fence might be the desire to be highly informed and in possession of as much of the relevant information and background as possible before committing to a view. This is where my own personal fence-sitting falls. Like all decisions in my life, and perhaps even more so, I want my ethical values and opinions to be educated and solidly grounded—when someone asks me why I don’t eat meat or why I support the right to abortion, I want to be able to speak articulately and intelligently about that choice (partially for my own sake, and partially for the sake of inspiring others to follow suit). This may be a fairly legitimate reason if one is actively seeking the relevant information and perspectives which one thinks will aid in the process of coming to a decision. But it could easily be an excuse if a person says she is on the fence because she wants to get all the information, but is not interested in actually obtaining said information. (For the record, I think I generally fall into the former category).
And finally, why might so many people practice the art of ethical fence-sitting? Because we can. It is a luxury and a privilege to be sufficiently insulated from the injustices/risks/harms etc. accompanying the moral issues at hand such that it is possible to refrain from forming an opinion or taking a stance. To never experience an unwanted pregnancy, or not have any gay friends, or not live in a particularly polluted area, or not see poverty on a daily basis, or not see the cow get killed before it becomes a burger in your hand—it is this type of insular living that allows for people to remain uncommitted and uninvolved. I also think ethical fence-sitting is more or less feasible depending on the company one keeps. It is harder to remain on the fence when interacting regularly with people who are not and who are engaged in critical dialogue about complex ethical questions.
So how do we get people off the fence? Do we? Should we? Eventually I think fences collapse and social changes cause those imaged morally neutral spaces to decay. But should we wait for that? Should we wait for the ballot or the unwanted pregnancy or the terminally ill and suffering loved one to form important ethical opinions? Whatever we decide, it would serve us all well to consider our own relationship to the fence—if we discover that we are on it, let us carefully and frequently reflect on how and why we got there, what privileges that position embodies, and stop making excuses.
I would like to spend some time addressing what I will term moral or ethical “fence-sitting”. While I hesitate to refer to it as an affliction or syndrome, I believe it is a condition in our culture that, while it is not necessarily negative, it is usually not positive. What I mean by “fence-sitting” in this context is the practice of putting off forming opinions on, taking a stance about, or committing to a viewpoint or “side” (if there are sides) regarding important moral and ethical issues. Though it is sometimes difficult to discern in others (as its manifestations are often absences of manifestations), I have begun to believe ethical fence-sitting is widespread enough to warrant some serious consideration, if not on a social or academic level, at least individually. And if I am to be completely honest, this condition is of particular personal interest to me because I admittedly suffer from a mild case of it myself. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I am a selective fence-sitter—while there are a handful of issues I remain undecided on, it is not my general practice or politics to do so (for some people, it is). In what follows, I would like to look critically at what I take to be the ins and outs of ethical fence-sitting—what makes it possible, why people do it, some logistical questions, and its implications. While I do not intend to arrive at any definitive conclusion or resolution, I think there is some merit in the process of simply addressing the issue.
There seem to be more or less two types of fence sitting. There is thoughtful and often somewhat tortured fence-sitting wherein a person is conscious of their state of limbo and is actively thinking about and seeking information regarding the issues at hand (I will call this an “active” state). Most of us usually feel the active condition temporarily when a new ethical issue is brought to our attention or comes to the forefront of the political arena and we realize that we should form an opinion on it. First, however, we must gather relevant information and perspectives. This temporary state of undecided-ness following exposure to something new is not what I call fence-sitting. Rather, it is remaining in this state of limbo for a prolonged period of time which constitutes fence-sitting (what counts as “prolonged” can be up for interpretation). The active sitter is highly conscious of their rather precarious position, and it concerned with making the relevant moves in order to eventually move off the fence.
Then there is what I will call “passive” or complacent fence-sitting in which we can imagine a person has set up their lawn chair and cooler and is in it for the long haul. They are on the fence, and they are fine with that and are not working towards forming opinions and making important moral and ethical value decisions. In some senses, they have chosen their position, and that position is on the fence. In general, I do not think that one person is one type of fence-sitter all of the time. Rather, it is probably more often the case that the same person might be actively on the fence about a few issues, and passively on the fence about a handful of others.
It seems important to make a side note here that I think it highly likely that ethical fence-sitting is less of a problem for individuals who adhere strictly to a particular religious code or doctrine. For them, they may often look to their doctrine for appropriate values and stances regarding the relevant moral and ethical conundrums. We may see forming ethical views and opinions as a privilege and a duty and in many ways a burden—there is generally a lot at stake and values and morals are a key element in personhood and identity. It would be fairly uncontroversial to propose then that strong religious faith eases this burden to some degree by shifting responsibility from the individual to a transcendent and higher power.
Let us turn now to situations in which moral fence-sitters are forced to make decisions. Life events and political processes can often put us in positions in which we must address our ethical viewpoints and act accordingly—not committing is no longer a viable option. Let me explain: a person who has postponed forming her views about abortion discovers that they/their mother/sister/daughter/friend/partner has become unintentionally and undesirably pregnant. Or a person who has yet to decide what they think about euthanasia is faced with an elderly or ill loved one who wants to end his/her life. Or we may put off addressing any number of issues until legislation about those very issues appears on our local, state, or national ballots. (Granted, some extreme and committed fence-sitters may choose not to vote rather than do the necessary legwork to establish their ethical viewpoints).
Those who have been actively on the fence regarding the issues at hand may be fully or at least partially prepared to make decisions in such circumstances. But for passive fence-sitters, since they have not been seeking information and working toward committing to a viewpoint, conditions which make it suddenly imperative to make a decision are highly problematic. Perhaps there are some people who make really wise and informed decisions under pressure and with serious time constraints. But I think it probably more common that the most educated decisions, particularly on issues of significant moral weight, are made after careful consideration and some time devoted to stepping back and addressing it from several perspectives in order to thoroughly exhaust all possibilities. Like procrastinating on writing a paper or studying for an exam, some of us are good at it, others are not, but all must admit that waiting until faced with an imminent deadline limits the amount of resources available and increases the possibility that we will do/write/say/decide something we may not have done had we taken the time for significant reflection.
There are of course many moral and ethical issues which may never be accompanied by an event or circumstance which might make it necessary for fence-sitters to dismount and take a stance. These issues include but are not limited to lifestyle and environmentally relevant choices such as eating vegetarian or vegan, transportation practices (using public transit, bicycling, driving a hybrid, driving a hummer, etc.), chemical and pesticide use, and many more. Though Mother Nature will probably eventually force us to significantly refine our ways of living, in the very near future it is less likely that fence sitters will be nudged into decisions by life circumstances or political events regarding vegetarianism, for example, as opposed to the issues mentioned earlier.
In our culture (and I might venture to say in cultures in general) there emerge seemingly morally neutral or default positions on particular issues. That is, there are these strange sort of precarious (and imagined?) safe spaces in which a person can position herself such that she, because she is positioned in line with the majority, can feel she has not made a decision or is morally neutral. In these situations, there is no fence to be on, but we pretend there is. On an issue such as abortion, one can legitimately be undecided. But on an issue like vegetarianism or meat eating, what would represent being undecided—not eating? So it happens that if there are two sides, let’s say eating meat versus vegetarianism, being on the fence is indeed being part of one side, namely eating meat. We are at least partially willing to grant a person “undecided” or “on the fence” status if she eats meat but does not advocate for carnivore-ism in general, nor against vegetarianism.
But isn’t this imagined morally neutral space sort of a delusion? Just because something is or has become the norm, doesn’t make it value-neutral. I may tell myself that, because the majority of my culture eats meat, my not being a vegetarian is not taking a position…but isn’t it? At the very least by eating meat I am saying that I am not significantly morally opposed to eating meat/factory farming/killing animals etc.. We may grant that “Not Against” does not necessarily signify “For” in that it is not diametrically opposite of “Against”. But I am inclined to argue that “Not Against” is just as legitimately a moral position as “Against”. That is, I think we would be deceiving ourselves if we were to consider “Not Against” as a non-position.
I’d like to end by addressing the various reasons for ethical fence-sitting. First, taking a stance on significant ethical issues is almost always and inevitably accompanied by social conflicts and disagreement. It is the way of the universe that different people (intelligent people!) disagree on things, especially on things which involve high stakes and moral values. So one can imagine why someone, with a particularly strong aversion to conflict and confrontation, might try to refrain from taking stances and forming solid opinions on ethical issues—it may seem more costly to them to be vulnerable to conflict than to remain morally in limbo. Another option might be to keep one’s opinion to oneself. In either position, one could pose the counterargument that true friends and loved ones do not love you less if your ethical views differ from theirs. In fact, challenging and discussing our viewpoints is an important part of living socially and can serve to strengthen social bonds and moral convictions and prevent “living truth” from becoming “dead dogma”.
Another reason (excuse?) for remaining on the fence might be the desire to be highly informed and in possession of as much of the relevant information and background as possible before committing to a view. This is where my own personal fence-sitting falls. Like all decisions in my life, and perhaps even more so, I want my ethical values and opinions to be educated and solidly grounded—when someone asks me why I don’t eat meat or why I support the right to abortion, I want to be able to speak articulately and intelligently about that choice (partially for my own sake, and partially for the sake of inspiring others to follow suit). This may be a fairly legitimate reason if one is actively seeking the relevant information and perspectives which one thinks will aid in the process of coming to a decision. But it could easily be an excuse if a person says she is on the fence because she wants to get all the information, but is not interested in actually obtaining said information. (For the record, I think I generally fall into the former category).
And finally, why might so many people practice the art of ethical fence-sitting? Because we can. It is a luxury and a privilege to be sufficiently insulated from the injustices/risks/harms etc. accompanying the moral issues at hand such that it is possible to refrain from forming an opinion or taking a stance. To never experience an unwanted pregnancy, or not have any gay friends, or not live in a particularly polluted area, or not see poverty on a daily basis, or not see the cow get killed before it becomes a burger in your hand—it is this type of insular living that allows for people to remain uncommitted and uninvolved. I also think ethical fence-sitting is more or less feasible depending on the company one keeps. It is harder to remain on the fence when interacting regularly with people who are not and who are engaged in critical dialogue about complex ethical questions.
So how do we get people off the fence? Do we? Should we? Eventually I think fences collapse and social changes cause those imaged morally neutral spaces to decay. But should we wait for that? Should we wait for the ballot or the unwanted pregnancy or the terminally ill and suffering loved one to form important ethical opinions? Whatever we decide, it would serve us all well to consider our own relationship to the fence—if we discover that we are on it, let us carefully and frequently reflect on how and why we got there, what privileges that position embodies, and stop making excuses.
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