Eucatastrophe Reader

Nothing Spreads Like Fear

Contagion (2011) REVIEW

Contagion is a Bioethics class candystore. It takes the plotline of a highly infectious global epidemic and drills down into it to uncover the wide spectrum of ethical responses that human beings are capable of. Here are just some of the questions that various characters are faced with.

• If a medical examination can demonstrate conclusively that a spouse has been having an affair, should the naïve victim be told?
• If a person stands to profit by disseminating false information about a medical emergency, what ethical theory should stop him?
• If a group of investors stands to gain by capitalizing on a medical emergency that they did not create, is there anything wrong with taking advantage of the situation?
• What liberties may be taken from people to protect the lives of other people?
• What measures might one legitimately take to defend and provide for themselves and their families in a crisis that threatens to favor the aggressive?
• Would an epidemic change the basic fundamental rules of ethics that a society lives by? Would nurses, doctors, firemen, and police have an obligation to put themselves in greater danger of infection in the advent of a global medical threat?
• Would a researcher told that a virus was too dangerous for him to work with be wrong to keep pursuing a cure?
• Would people with knowledge of an impending quarantine have legitimate right to inform spouses to leave the area before the quarantine was put into effect?
• Would it be ethical to put them on trial for doing so?
• If the spouse who was told to leave was also told to say nothing to anyone else, would they be right not to pass the word on to a friend?
• Would a Chinese village decimated by the plague have any justification in taking a hostage in order to get themselves placed at the top of the vaccine list in order to save the surviving children?
• Would a researcher who believed that they had found a vaccine have a right to it before others got it?
• Would they be wrong to violate standard procedures in order to test the vaccine on themselves?
• Would it be wrong to cut in line to get a possible cure if there were a limited supply?  
• Should people with political power be given special treatments and scarce resources?
• When would it be ethical or unethical to give away one’s own vaccine to save another person?

 Contagion explores the psychology and ethics of panic and mass hysteria in a variety of environments and considers how people might act differently, either for good or bad in such a life-threatening situation. Among the scenes of legitimate self-protective behavior the film is sprinkled with acts of crass selfishness and saintly altruism. A dying man tries to give his coat away to another nearby victim. A scientist risks his own life to find a cure. Another scientists goes back to a village to tell people that they have been given placebo vaccines even though she was taken hostage by them. Millions of people collaborate to pay the bail of a man arrested for intentionally publishing false information for his own personal gain. Throughout the film, the Rubics Cube of ethical possibilities in the livespans of unlimited combinations of character qualities manifest themselves, allowing for an endless variety of potential class discussions. I think this film should spread rapidly. Deeper thinking would be one of the first symptoms.

Question for Comment: If you picture the outbreak of a deadly disease in your community, do you think people would behave nobly or would instincts of self-interest manifest themselves in surprising ways? What characteristics of your community would allow you to predict?

Shake Hands With the Devil

Shake Hands With the Devil: The Journey of Romeo Dallaire

Romeo Dallaire, I discovered in the course of this video, was the U.N general in charge of the peace keeping mission in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. He goes back to Rwanda ten years later and reflects on why he was there, what the U.N. did and did not do to protect people in Rwanda, and how his experience both revealed to him who he was and shaped him. The title of the film, Shake Hands With the Devil conveys to the viewer the sense that there was in Rwanda, an “opportunity” to come face to face with evil – with the potential for human evil and the potential for human goodness. In M. Scott Peck’s book, People of the Lie, Peck argued that the essence of evil is not so much to be found in the refusal to be perfect. It is found in the refusal to see one’s own failures for what they are. "Since [narcissists] deep down, feel themselves to be faultless,” he writes, “it is inevitable that when they are in conflict with the world they will invariably perceive the conflict as the world's fault. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad. They project their own evil onto the world. They never think of themselves as evil, on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others." In Shake Hands With the Devil, we find a personality struggling to define for himself what his moral obligations were and what the moral obligations of the people who sent him were. We generally do not believe that our government has a moral obligation to give Social Security benefits, public education, or Medicare to citizens of other countries. In Rwanda, one might argued that we were not obligated to give police protection to a minority population. Indeed, we might argue that we here in America killed about 600,000 men in a Civil War between ourselves and we blame no one for not stepping in to stop us. We abandoned African Americans to a great deal of violence after the end of Reconstruction but we never hear an argument that some other country owed it to us to protect us from ourselves. Dalaire is convinced that those with power have a moral obligation to use it on behalf of the needy. In one of the century’s great glaring evidences of the power of the media to shape how we see the world and construct a sense of value in which to fit people and knowledge, during the Rwandan crisis, millions of Americans were watching the O.J. Simpson trial. Question for Comment: How do you determine what issues are worthy of your concern?

"No one saves us but ourselves"

The Buddha

"No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path." The Buddha

A PBS documentary about the life of the Buddha and how the life can be used to teach the basic ideas of the religion. I really haven’t much to say about it as it is the sort of movie that does what it sets out to do and leaves you with little in the way of controversy. Buddhism asserts that the Buddha was a man and that what he could do, anyone could do. While he clearly was something of a mystic, he approaches mystical questions with a rather scientific approach. The Buddha experiments in the area of the soul, looking for a solution to a problem – a problem of suffering. And he asserts that you will never find a solution to a problem if it is not defined in realistic terms.

In the classical Christian tradition, humanity’s problem cannot be solved by simply following the example of another human. In the Christian tradition, we need help from outside ourselves. Starting from two different assumptions about reality, two radically different solutions are presented.

Looking forward to teaching Comparative World religions again this coming term.

Question for Comment: So, what do you think is a human beings biggest Spiritual Problem?

We Shall Remain

Just finished watching the five episodes of the new PBS series on crucial moments  in the Native American resistance to European encroachment over the course of some 350 years in North America. The series deals with the relationship of the early Pilgrims and Puritans with the Wapanoags that ended in King Phillip’s war; the relationship between Tecumseh, Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee, and William Henry Harrison that ended with the destruction of Prophetstown and the Battle of the James; the relationship between Georgia, Andrew Jackson, and the Cherokee that ended in the Trail of Tears; the relationship between America and the Apache that ended with the assimilation of Geronimo; and the relationship between the Pine Ridge Reservation, the American Indian Movement, and the FBI in 1973.

In each case we find Native American leaders wrestling with complex decisions about assimilation, passivity, and extermination either cultural or literal. In each case, we see tribes uniting in the face of certain members capitulating. In each case, we see acts of retaliation that serve to justify the use of overwhelming force. It is a record of right making right. Of people in power using power to declare themselves in the right when they do so.

America is an interesting place full of contradictions. It is a place that uses tax money and the donations of its citizens to tell stories of our own rather nefarious exploitation and aggression. On a number of occasions in the documentary we are reminded that American whites would intentionally use native American disunity and dependence for advantage. Indians are sold goods or even medical services with the intent to place them in debts that they can only free themselves from by the sale of land. Debt is used as a tool of acquisition. Clearly, again and again, Native Americans demonstrate that a sustainable lifestyle is no match for technological advantages.

In the end, what does it all mean? If a high school history teacher uses this documentary to tell the story of American expansion, what attitude should accompany it. Has America given up on the notion of itself as Manifestly destined? Clearly, these colonists and cavalry officers saw God as siding with the white Christians. Nowhere is the message made explicit in the documentary but one gets the feeling that the producers see God as wearing Native American team colors as He watched this fight. And if not God, then basic principles of Ethics and fair play.

The irony is that what so many of these Native Americans experienced at the hands of Colonial militias and the U.S. Army would later be experienced by whites themselves during the Civil War. Whites in the South and North both believed that the other was taking over their lives and they too, like King Phillip and like Tecumseh, and like Geronimo and like Russell Means opted to stand up and risk their lives to stop it. What shines through in all these episodes is something human. None of us like to have our lives taken over by others and yet few of us recognize it when we are doing so TO others. For even the Apache were no strangers to raiding the property of others and justifying it.

Between this series, the Ken Burns series on The West, and Kevin Kostner’s 500 Nations, the resources are definitely there for a cultural self-examination. In the battle of History, the white guys have lost the argument in winning the land. Perhaps it was always impossible to do both.

Question for Comment: Might one argue that continued deficit spending by the government today is the equivalent of the legal acquisition of Indian land in previous generations? The enrichment of today’s public coffers at the expense of a people powerless to organize and resist?

What Dreams May Come

Nova: What are Dreams?

I wonder sometimes if my dream journals will ever wind up in some Doctoral research on dreaming. Silly idea I am sure. I had one last night the involved an old friend of mine whose last name was Manion peeling a layer of skin off himself. The name MANION sounds like a combination of "MAN" and "ONION" and it was interesting that he was peeling off a layer just like you might an onion. In the dream, I became this person and I was looking down at myself as I took this layer of dry shiny skin off in a big sheet and then rolled it up in a ball and tried to decide if I could eat it or if it was too big.

There was more to the dream but these details should indicate that I personally believe that dreams are the consequence of a desire to create meaning intended to be decoded and understood. It is entirely possible that meaning id FOUND in randomness that contains no meaning but I tend to doubt it. I think there to be too much intelligence in that chaos rather than in the intelligence I might posess conciously to derive meaning from chaos.

What do you think?

Loving a person. Loving an Idea.

The Last Station gives an intimate portrayal of the last days of Leo Tolstoy. Brilliant acting brings together a chaotic symphony of competing human relational forces that strive to have their way with us all. Leo Tolstoy was a man committed to ideas and to ideals. His wife of some 48 years is deeply attached to him and he to her but she does not share his same commitment to his ideals. And indeed, he does not even share the same commitment to his own ideals that many of his followers have. Ironically, some of his followers believe that because the ideals that they subscribe to were given to them by Tolstoy, that this somehow gives them ownership of Tolstoy.

For many people who, like myself, often find themselves loving ideas and liking people, Tolstoy suffers from the need to be loved more than his own ideas. And this is the central conflict of the film I think. There is a battle for Tolstoy’s deepest affections being waged between those that love HIM and those that love his IDEAS. Between the principle promoter of “Tolstoyan” ideology and Tolstoy’s own wife. Both, at times, feel betrayed. Both, at times, feel threatened.

As Leo Tolstoy’s life comes to end, there are those who seek primarily to protect the ideas. Who “love Tolstoy” by wanting to see him die uncompromised – an icon to his own ideals if you will. While Tolstoy himself admits that he is not the best Tolstoyan, these supporters would have him be an icon. There are also those, his wife primarily,  who simply loves the man. Who love him even though they deeply and profoundly disagree with his ideas. And in the middle, a central character, who finds himself caught in the riptide of love for both the man and his ideas.

Question for Comment: Have you ever given up a cause or a dream or an ideal for the love of a person? Or a person for the love of a cause, a dream, or an ideal? Which do you think the greater sin? Or is neither?