One of my favorite scientist/writers, Steven Pinker, has an excellent feature article in the NYT on the evolution of Moral sense. He begins his piece with a series of examples that are highly relevant to India and which illustrate the classic divide between Intentions and Consequences –
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
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p>The big difference between the 3 is that Mother Teresa clearly intended to save people through direct, personal sacrifice. Borlaug, a previous SM profilee, did it more indirectly through a systematic application of science. Gates did it either 100% indirectly by helping bring down the cost of computing OR somewhat more directly by taking his billions of wealth and funneling it through charity while living in a 50K sqft mansion on Lake Washington. Modern India is benefitting from all 3 although lately, I’d wager in particular from the cheap, mass market computing & telecommunications revolution that Gates helped produce…
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p>In contrast to Mother Teresa, both Borlaug and Gates are improving the world through a consequence of their actions which may have been directed elsewhere. As a deep consequentialist myself, it’s probably no surprise that I’d put ’em quite a few notches above Mother Teresa. “Momma T” was a great person, no doubt – practically a saint, no less – BUT, I tend to value an idea and action by it’s systemic, scalable, real world consequences rather than its moral overtones.
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p>Of course, Morality vs. Consequentialism is far from a binary choice and no one lives entirely at one end of the spectrum vs. the other. In turn, Pinker’s article expertly describes the various strands that live within Morality (harm, fairness, community, authority, & purity) each of which ebb and flow in relative importance given the question at hand. Borlaug’s work, for example, directly alleviates harm but fiddling with plant DNA messes with many people’s Moral sense of Purity.
Thus, your relative place on these 2 spectrums becomes one of the most signficant political inclination markers out there… And the politics of India being what it is, there’s quite a bit of room for moral & political grandstanding with, shall we say, interesting consequences.
Update – it’s worth pointing out another recent study about quirks in our “Moral Intentions” circuitry which leads to a “natural cynicism”. In experiments, given parallel, hypohetical situations – one with bad outcomes, the other with good outcomes – subjects are generally far more likely to assign moral intent to the bad one.
As a result, “proving” to your peers that you had Good Intentions is much harder than vice versa (put alternatively, Bad Intentions like selfishness are much more quickly inferred regardless of evidence). Empirically, I’d argue, this is why Momma T’s ascetism, “pure” white sari etc. are such central elements to her morality play.
50 · louiecypher said
Unfortunately MT and her mission have done nothing for this constituency. Zilch. Zip.
I am grateful that there are anonymous individuals in the world who do what they can every day to make our lives a little better.
OK, so then what exactly did MT do, if anything? Surely she did not just sit idle in Kolkata?
One criticism lodged against her is that she was bad for India’s image. Excuse me? How was MT bad for India’s image?
she was bad for India’s image
I do not see this criticism of MT in this discussion.
I think the benchmark that MT (maybe Christianity in general) works towards is the “saving of souls”. For the life of me I do not know what this means, but have heard it often enough. The nature of “sos” implies a one-on-one interaction. One could compare the benchmarks of Gates and Borlaug but MT’s may not be comparable. Is this what razib was implying?
Saving souls means that without accepting Jesus Christ as one’s “personal saviour” that soul will go to Hell and burn forever, regardless of how good they may be as an individual.
It’s not my belief system at all, however, if Christians want hungry, poor or uneducated people to convert to that belief in exchange for getting fed, not starving to death, and getting an education, well, who cares? These people are being materially benefitted in ways they may not otherwise be, they recite some words of acceptance of a new belief system, read the bible and get indoctrinated into Christian dogma. A small price to pay when you are otherwise poor and hungry. What difference does it make what they get converted to or indoctrinated in, as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else, or themselves?
if Christians want hungry, poor or uneducated people to convert to that belief in exchange for getting fed, not starving to death, and getting an education, well, who cares? These people are being materially benefitted in ways they may not otherwise be, they recite some words of acceptance of a new belief system, read the bible and get indoctrinated into Christian dogma. A small price to pay when you are otherwise poor and hungry.
MT’s benchmark was never to educate, heal or alleviate poverty. These are benchmarks for the Gates foundation. All MT wanted to do was “sos” before the person died.
For those of you who read the entire article, you’ll notice that this is a great example illustrating the mentality of “taboo”. I thought the existence of “a conviction that some thoughts are sinful to think” was kind of far-fetched at first but I guess not. This is a prime example where “the subjects not only disagreed but felt personally insulted and were outraged that anyone would raise the question.”
I found this somewhat amusing.. “taking Jesus into own’s life” is not quite like taking a pill..
I would recco you actually read about other saints’ lives – and you will find that the majority of these saints have struggled deeply with their faith some point in their lives – ie: even Jesus did at the garden. So the “revelation” of her struggling is hardly surprising. It is the daily act to go on amidst doubt and negativity that is inspiring.
So what you could infer is that there is hope.
And that is exactly what modern India is all about right now – hope for a better tomorrow.
To that end, I sincerely hope that are still people in this world who are willing to make the sacrifice for those in need and be role models for the rest of us cynics out there.
As a lapsed Catholic, it is no surprise Vinod would say that.. but I would propose that MT was improving the world through a consequence of her actions – however is not economic consequences as Gates or Borlaug suggest, but spiritual consequences as she deeply believed. The action where one shares with those who are in need; gives food to those who are poor; gives up what one has for the sake of others. It is an economic response to a spiritual reality that could be systemic, scalable with real world consequences if people were brave enough to step up.
As a lapsed Catholic, it is no surprise Vinod would say that
Cut it out. There is no measurable consequence of MT’s actions. Wait, maybe there is. Zero. Nothing changed for the person: they died after drinking the water she provided.
One of the most intellectually sloppy ways to respond to an argument is imply dubious Motives of the other side… It’s only a few notches removed from old skool playground name calling and we’ve all seen quite a few cases of it over the years.
BUT, this is a SPECTACULARLY solid example of this type of shoddiness & one I haven’t seen before. So congrats, Neel, for being up there with the worst of them.
SM Intern – please do NOT delete Neel’s comment; even though he and the guy commenting under the handle AudacityOfHope suspiciously share the same IP address. I’m getting a good chuckle out of it.
I don’t know about intellectually sloppy, but it is certainly grammatically sloppy. I had to read the comment over multiple times to realize that the participial phrase “as a lapsed catholic” was intended to describe Vinod, not the commenter himself. Although if he’s picking arbitrary handles while being all churchy, shouldn’t he have used “Kneel” instead?
Good on you for turning the other cheek, Vinod.
First three chapters of the book are online. [link]
AudacityofHope:
You are actually condemning MT more than I intended, my skepticism notwithstanding. I was ready to give her the benefit of the doubt that she went about her charity and suffering “despite” her doubts (non-belief, really, as we have found out). A secular moralist, I suggested. But you say it was all for her own “struggle” and “doubt” that she soldiered on. That doesn’t sound like altruism to me – neither of intent nor consequence. Comes awfully close to self serving sanctimoniousness or hypocrisy. Is that what you meant?
Pinker’s article in my opinion, is excellent and his logic sound, whether or not you find all his “scientific” claims compelling. This is exactly the kind of debate we need in the public square regarding morality, altruism and ethics. For too long the default position has been to give religion the credit for our humane predilections because we are too lazy to examine our own minds and motivations.
About 13 years ago, the Indian students association at Texas A&M University had organized a lecture by Dr. Borlaug, (He used to teach there, maybe still does?). Being one of of the only 2 Nobel Laurates at that university, we had anticipated a huge crowd, and had reserved a large lecture hall.
The event had been well publicized, and Dr. Borlaug had come well prepared. Unfortunately, only about 25 people showed up. Mostly Desi grad students, a couple of ABCDs, and a handful of PhDs types from the Econ. dept.
The lecture went great – what was sad was that in a university of 40,000 full time students, (and 500+ Indian students – FOB+ABCD), the turnout was so shabby.
The silver lining was that many of us got to interact one-on-one with Dr. Borlaug.
What manner of being is a “proven intellectual”? One who has been shown to think?
“proven intellectual” = being capable of thinking at a much deeper level than most others.
Like evidenced here
You are probably confusing a serious academic researcher for a simple journalist or a writer.