MModern life is morally exhausting. And it's confusing. It seems like everything we do matters. But at the same time, nothing we do seems to matter. A friend of mine who is an outspoken environmental activist recently posted a photo of himself on social media celebrating a quiet moment with nature on a beautiful beach. And as expected, the internet is such a thing that within seconds of this post he received one of the first comments. “How much carbon did you emit to go on vacation?” The implication, of course, is that she's a hypocrite and is preaching environmentalism for you, not me. That's it. And even though that comment seemed like a childish jab, she, like most of us, cares about justifying her actions, so she's worried about her carbon footprint. He cited all the ways he minimized his life and claimed that he never seemed to be able to enjoy his life. Unreasonable standards.
This kind of argument plays out in my head, and I play both sides, regularly, many times a day if I feel like it. At breakfast this morning, I poured almond milk on my cereal. This is the result of a decision we made many years ago when we decided that the environmental impact of using milk was too high to justify. Animal foods generally have a higher carbon footprint than plant foods, so I've reduced or eliminated them from my diet to varying degrees over the years. But while working on a recent food ethics project, I learned that almond milk may not be a great substitute. Although they have a low carbon footprint, almond trees require large amounts of water – more than three gallons of water to produce one nut, and more than 80% of the world's almonds are subject to severe drought. Grown in beleaguered California. Therefore, switching from cow's milk to almond milk uses more water and creates a larger carbon footprint.
I also drove to the gym today, which reflects many ethical decisions I've made about my life. I live in the suburbs, so I own a car and have to drive most of the places I want to go. Making this choice means that many of us live in big houses, have big single-crop lawns, and drive our own cars to do everything. , supporting a lifestyle of rampant individualism. Minor tasks. The car ride to the gym or the 45-minute commute to campus reminds me that I am part of a fundamentally unsustainable cultural choice.
However, I try to minimize the impact of this lifestyle by owning an electric car and rarely driving it. I work from home as much as possible and most trips are less than 10 or 15 miles. So I have responded to the feeling of being caught up in a problematic structure by minimizing my participation. But I know it's not a perfect response, so I feel moderately guilty about my house in the suburbs and my car.
Even our entertainment decisions are not immune to such moralization. In recent years, there has been widespread debate about the appropriateness of “deplatforming,” or boycotting problematic artists. Should I stop consuming their products? If I stream a stand-up comedy special on Netflix, it's unlikely that the artist (or their financial backer) will notice that I watched it. Nor does my refusal to watch have any measurable impact on them. But even if they don't realize it, the watching seems to be supporting them in some way, and I find that support morally problematic.
You can continue digging into the case. But the basic background that makes up today's confused ethics is this: Many of us feel a personal responsibility to address large-scale collective problems, yet fail to act in ways that have a meaningful impact on those problems. The problem is too big, but my contribution is too small to make a difference. I have a certain sense of purity (that I should withdraw from problematic activities and keep my hands clean) and a sense of nihilism (that I don't care what I do, so I get over myself and just They are torn between their feelings about how they should live. live my life).
So what should each of us do? How do we live a morally decent life when we can't even avoid problems? This is where what I call the “ethics of catastrophe” applies. Traditional ethics may include an ambition to tell us exactly what we are morally supposed to do (don't lie, don't kill people, keep promises, etc.). However, catastrophic ethics aims to: Please answer a slightly different question. What kind of life can you justify in the face of today's threats?
psychologist and philosopher joshua green I believe that the human brain is like a camera. The brain has an automatic (fast and easy to use, but not very versatile) setting and a manual (slow, tedious, but versatile) setting. Greene believes that this leads us to make different kinds of judgments in different situations, and that this extends to moral judgments as well. Just as we have quick intuitions about danger (snakes!) and slow deliberation in other situations (how do you determine the volume of a sphere?), we have both Has type judgment. Our automatic morality camera helps us navigate the world, often responsibly, making quick and unconscious decisions, and without constantly slowing down or reflecting. And, like its non-moral counterpart, the quick judgments it makes are often correct. There is usually no need to ponder whether to lie or keep a promise, or whether to provoke indiscriminate violence. Automatic configuration is very efficient.
However, automatic cameras must be calibrated to obtain reliable and quick decisions. Green says we can obtain such adjustments through genetic transmission, cultural transmission, or effortful learning. Perhaps some of our deepest quick judgments (snakes! danger!) are explained in part by genetic transmission, many of which are also learned by cultural absorption (watch out! guns!). . However, many of the automatic settings were adjusted by personal experience (Stove! Hot!).
But sometimes we find ourselves in an unprecedented situation, for which neither our ancestors nor our culture nor our personal experience prepared us, and yet what should we do? have moral intuitions about Should we trust this quick and automatic judgment? Mr. Green said no, as there is no reason to think this is the case.
Many of today's moral issues are unfamiliar. They are very different from anything humanity has faced before, so we should not assume that our moral surveillance cameras are trained on reliable datasets. Green himself points to climate change as a classic example of an unfamiliar moral problem, but there are other catastrophes to which we can make a small contribution simply by living our normal lives.
Humans evolved in fairly small groups, where the effects of our actions could largely be witnessed or inferred. The moral rules that humans developed to regulate their behavior thus made sense as responses to the most salient ethical considerations of the world around them. These rules focused on concepts such as personal harm and personal rights. But over the past two centuries, the world has grown in size and complexity to an almost unimaginable degree. In 1800, there were still fewer than 1 billion people alive, and they were scattered all over the world without direct or easy access to each other. The population now exceeds her 8 billion people, and the information and communication revolution of recent decades has made a world that is much larger in terms of population feel much smaller in terms of reachability.
In this context, the question of my personal contribution to a devastating problem arises. The morality of our ancestors did not prepare us for climate change. And we, as individuals and as a culture, do not yet know how to respond to the moral demands of such a wide range of issues. Because the ethical questions raised by large-scale structural problems are unfamiliar, our intuitions require adjustment.
The first step in answering the question of what kind of life to live is to resist the seductive temptations of both purity and nihilism. Pure ethics tells us to stop contributing to harmful systems. But following that command is probably impossible and certainly irrational. Since consumption is a part of life, each of us emits greenhouse gases. And because society makes certain choices for us, we end up emitting more emissions than we would otherwise (e.g. American society is car-centric, and none of us (This is a fact that has not been selected.) Expecting everyone to reduce emissions to zero is therefore unreasonable and unfair because individuals are trapped within a system that limits their realistic choices.
But here the nihilist makes a mistake. They move from the claim that retreating from all bad structures is not ethically required to the claim that it doesn't matter what anyone does. But this doesn't last. You may find it hard to believe that I have a duty to keep my hands clean, but good When we reduce our participation in a bad system and actively contribute, even in small ways.
In other words, in a world where almost all of our actions involve various systems and structures; a lot Many opportunities to participate in both good and bad things, a lot Make careful inferences. The bad news is that this feels overwhelming. It seems like everything we do matters. But the good news is we become important. Moral work is continuous and creative because we must constantly decide how to structure our lives in response to the threats around us.
Of course, not all ways of organizing life are morally equal. There are all sorts of strategies for responding to catastrophe, but the real work is for each of us to step back and take the time to see how we can contribute to the many moral projects available to us. It starts with doing. The question here is: How can I fit in? Where can I best serve with my interests, talents, and privileges? That means there is no one right way to fight climate change or any other big problem. Rather, there are different legitimate lives for each of us.
Choosing one of these lives is not a matter of moral purity. And it avoids nihilism. It allows conscience.
This is an excerpt from ethics of catastrophe Written by Travis Rieder, published by Dutton, a publication of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2024 by Travis Rieder.
