An Imperfect Epicurean

So, the other day a commenter on my Facebook wall wrote, “feminism is postmodernism”. Yes, those words were actually set down. I almost had to do a double-take.

To be honest, though, I should probably not have been surprised in any way. Feminism has, indeed, been hijacked by postmodernist obfuscation. No longer does it have an overarching commitment to the straightforward recognition that women's rights are human rights. Instead, it has surrendered to the idea that feminism should be "for everyone" - which means, in practice, that this new kind of "feminism" can do nothing important for anybody at all.

But I digress. The thing is, I actually ::do:: know and understand as much about postmodernism as I could ever need. I know how it affects the disciplines upon which it has encroached; and I know how to spot it in my own experience, both online and off.

A bit less than half my life ago, when I was still at university, I wrote my third-year English honours major essay on the subject of postmodernism. The task to be addressed was to discuss the meaning of postmodernism with reference to one literary and one non-literary text (because everything, apparently, is a ‘text’ when we’re talking in post-structuralist terminology). In my case, because I was doing a combined honours degree between the English and History faculties (and so would be completing my second semester in the History faculty), I had to add an extra literary text. So I wrote my essay, referencing Andy Warhol’s garish screen prints of famous women (Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy) as my non-literary text; and William Gibson’s Neuromancer and a short story by the mind-bendingly brilliant Jorge Luis Borges called ‘The Circular Ruins’, as my literary texts. My thesis was that postmodernism was all about elevating the image over the substance. My professor deemed it worthy of a distinction grade, so I can only assume I made my case at least reasonably well in my essay.

During my years at university, postmodernism had really only begun to weave its poisonous tendrils through the humanities, at least in Australia. Now, almost twenty years later, it has not only laid waste to arts faculties across the Western world but has permeated popular culture with a vengeance. Image is everything now - especially since the advent of social media. Anyone can present a carefully curated version of their life that ultimately has nothing to do with their real experience. It’s become, ironically, a truism to say that we live in a ‘post-truth’ society - and it’s quite easy to see why. Many people seem to believe that their own subjective feelings about a particular issue are what determine its truth or otherwise. Again, the internet makes it very easy for people to subsist within non-overlapping magisteria (to borrow Stephen Jay Gould’s phrase regarding the supposed separation between science and religious faith). We all have our respective echo chambers, where we can bask in the comfort of knowing how right we are in our convictions. Given how profoundly uncomfortable it has become to attempt to engage in debate now that everyone takes their present belief system to be the cornerstone of their identity (as if this is somehow immutable), it’s hardly surprising that we have come to this point, where retreat from all possible opposition is the default setting; and where personal insult has become an acceptable substitute for reasoned argument.

It has become the norm again to say that anyone’s opinion is valid, that because a person feels something, it is true in a way that cannot be questioned. We did have a hope spot, a few years ago, where people began to speak about being able to actually defend one’s opinion. But that promising development never really got anywhere - and we’re now back to the assumption of “anything goes.” Indeed, if you can put any kind of individualist spin on your interpretation of the facts, there will now be plenty of people ready to laud you for your ‘bravery’, rather than point out that you’re living in a fantasy land. As long as you can maintain the belief that you are a special snowflake, whilst ignoring the material basis for any form of description or classification ever developed by humans, then you can navigate the ever-shifting postmodern ocean and the cheerleaders will love you for it. Remember - the image is what matters now.

It’s interesting to note that much of what passes for ‘feminism’ right now really does seem to bear out my analysis from my third-year honours essay. Any woman who chooses to do anything at all now is a feminist, just because she makes a choice. Never mind that the choice is constrained by patriarchal capitalism. It still looks like a choice, right, even if it’s one shitty alternative instead of another? Then there is the ever-expanding, ever-confusing transgender identity discourse (and it should be noted that ‘discourse’ is a buzzword in postmodernist theorising). The aim of this discourse is to insist that the substance is irrelevant - that what matters is the identity label you apply to yourself and the story you tell to justify the label. Such a label is all-defining, even possessing the power to reinterpret one’s sex organs as those of the other sex when there is no observable ambiguity.

The thing about identity, though, is that it runs so much deeper than a label one chooses to apply to oneself. Our identities are never formed in a vacuum, nor are they the result of a simple decision of, “I will be this.” Our interactions with others - and how those others perceive us - really do matter. People are more than a single facet of their personality, yet the label - especially the gender label now - appears to be the only thing that is counted. This feels like a reversal, to me. It used to be the case that people fought their way out of labels - now it seems that some folk will do anything and everything to ensure they fit into the stereotype.

Postmodernism, finally, really is all about the creation of a superficial image - and the ability of that image to obscure material facts. It’s easy to see this in the cant that now passes for “feminist” analysis on sites like Jezebel and Everyday Feminism. It’s clear that these self-styled feminists really are “talking bollocks” - sometimes quite literally, in the insistence that a man’s junk can be female if he says it is.

A year or so before I did my semester on postmodernism, one of my other English professors gave the most wonderfully pithy comment on the limits of textual interpretation. He said (and I may be paraphrasing slightly - it was twenty years ago), “You can say Hamlet is about many things; but you’d be hard-pressed to argue that it’s about strawberry jam.” I would suggest that you can say a man is many things - but you’d be hard-pressed to argue that he’s a woman, even if he says he is one.

Yesterday I deactivated my Facebook profile.

It's something I probably should have done quite some time ago - I've been investing what are, for me, unhealthy amounts of time and energy in posting opinions and getting into arguments (or outright fights) on my page. It's really not been good for my headspace.

So today has been my first full day without Facebooking in any way for probably a few months.

And it's been good, actually.

I feel curiously liberated, in a way. I thought the impulse to share small details about my life would be hard to shake off - but strangely enough, it seems to have simply dissipated with the doffing of the available outlet. Perhaps not that surprising, considering I didn't grow up with social media (which is probably just as well) and have in general been a bit of a late-adopter, compared to most of my social circle.

There's something a bit too fast and loose about Facebook, at least the way I've been using it recently. It's all too easy to post something without really thinking about it thoroughly or considering the possible consequences. There are times when I have had reason to regret something posted in a fit of anger or hurt or just ennui.

This is, in part, why I've come back to Dreamwidth, after - as I noticed when looking back over my account this evening - almost four years since my last blog post here. The longer-form blogging suits my style better, I feel; and it slows me down enough to put more thought and - perhaps - a little more artistry into what I write; and more importantly, to feel that I must have something really worthwhile to say before I commit it to words.

So at this point, I don't think I will go back to Facebook, even though when I deactivated my account, I thought I might at some point. I will take the time to slow down and think and appreciate more; and I will probably get a bit closer to being the person I want to be as a consequence.

What is it that makes us consider certain actions - or behaviours, attitudes, ways of being and so on - to be moral or immoral, right or wrong, good or evil (the latter only if we want to speak in metaphysical absolutes and I seldom to never do)? It's one thing to say that one subscribes to a particular ethical system - like utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics or divine command for example - but why, then, does it actually matter to us to follow such patterns of moral reasoning? These days I mostly take a consequentialist approach to ethics but there are still certain cases in which I find myself wondering why particular consequences are more favourable, or carry more weight, than others and why, for example, an apparently good consequence arising from what seems like bad or "wrong" behaviour or reasoning still leaves a sour taste.

In a previous post I explicitly rejected Hamlet's claim that "There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so." However, when it comes to moral judgements, I have to concede that this is quite often the case, in that our attitudes, experience, even the degree to which we have actually thought about particular circumstances will colour the judgements we make as to the morality or otherwise of certain behaviours.

I have just been reading the chapters of The God Delusion dealing with the claim that atheists have no basis upon which to mount a case for moral behaviour over immoral behaviour. Dawkins handily decimates the assertion that our modern morality comes from the Bible, quoting a few choice passages of scripture that describe acts of rape, murder, incest and genocide; and he reserves particular vitriol (though not quite as much as Christopher Hitchens, it should be noted) for the New Testament notion of vicarious atonement.

Of course I know that bashing biblical morality (as opposed to Bible-bashing) is shooting fish in a barrel for any "experienced" atheist, if I may so phrase it; I now include myself in this estimation, though of course it wasn't always so. Growing up as a more-devout-than-otherwise Catholic, I fully absorbed the favourable interpretation the church always placed on the more unpleasant aspects of scripture; and if all else failed, there was always the, "Oh, but Jesus didn't really mean it that way," gambit. I was too well-schooled to ask why, if it wasn't intended that way, was it said that way in the first place? Needless to say, this childhood immersion (dare I say indoctrination?) coloured my moral judgement and at times continues to do so, even if it is usually reasoned away with all due haste when I catch myself out. Even many years after I'd discarded my actual religious beliefs, it was still with a certain frisson that I read the brazen criticisms of religious morality leveled in The God Delusion and God is Not Great. Even if I no longer found such criticism offensive, I certainly knew people who would.

I have a delightful little book called Would You Eat Your Cat?, which poses a series of moral dilemmas - or "ethical conundrums", to use the term from its subtitle - and shows how our responses to each situation fall within particular kinds of ethical systems, from the consequentialist to the more absolutist. Not surprisingly, I sit quite comfortably within the consequentialist camp - that is, when asked, "Would you eat your cat?" I am generally the kind of person who will ask for additional information on the circumstances rather than just flatly refuse - but with the odd exception. Why the exceptions? If I were a strict consequentialist I would uphold Jeremy Bentham's utilitarian moral calculus and act such that the greatest possible good would result for the greatest number of sentient beings - even if that number didn't necessarily include myself and those close to me; but I am not that person.

For a start, there are practical problems with strict consequentialism in that it's probably not possible for us to know in advance what all the likely consequences of any particular action will be, or what weighting those consequences will ultimately have in terms of their consequences in turn; and some of those consequences are going to be our own and other people's subjective feelings, which may well be shaped and informed by things other than purely consequentialist considerations. The example of fundamentalist Muslims reacting badly to criticism of Mohammed is perhaps an unfairly easy one to give. What about something like lying? Sam Harris argues that there are compelling reasons to avoid lying in any and all circumstances - and it's certainly true that deception, in any form, can and does lead to subjective hurt even if it doesn't result in objective harm.

If we are to make informed decisions in life, including in matters of morality, it pays to have access to all relevant information. Surely that is the key point - relevant information - and it is the task of the consequentialist ethicist to decide what kinds of information count towards the morality or otherwise of an action. Does it still count as lying if one refuses to disclose some particular item of information that ought not to affect someone's decision, even if it might? To pick a close-to-home example, I choose not to reveal to my parents that I am polyamorous - it's unlikely to affect them (since I am unlikely to bring any of my lovers other than japester to visit them or stay under their roof) and they would probably only be bewildered and offended if they knew. The Catholic me-that-was would have a big problem with keeping such a thing from my parents, even if I had somehow reconciled the fact of polyamory with my religious beliefs; the largely consequentialist me-that-is finds nothing wrong with my decision under the circumstances. That's not to say I might not be happier if my parents were the kind of people who would open-mindedly embrace the idea of polyamory; but they're not, so I save the disclosure for those who I feel will accept the information with equanimity - needless to say, I strongly suspect that includes everyone who might be reading this journal.

Weighing consequences can be very hard work, especially when the interested parties to a particular decision have different ideas about how this should be done. To return to a well-worn topic for a moment just to illustrate, the opponents of marriage equality appear to think that it's more important to preserve their definition of what marriage ought to be and ought to signify than it is to increase the happiness and social recognition of gay couples by allowing them to marry officially. A strict consequentialist might well argue that, if it turns out that there are more people whose peace of mind would be disturbed by gay marriage than there are people who would be made happier by it, then the status quo ought to stand. Even if this could be shown to be the case, however, this is one of those occasions on which I feel compelled by deeper and more instinctive considerations to deviate from strict consequentialism. As it happens, humans normally have an innate sense of justice and the very phrase "marriage equality" is intended to appeal to exactly that. Refusing gay couples the right to marry offends my sense of justice, as it does that of many others; what's more, I see this as more harmful than offending other people's - largely religious - sense that they must preserve a traditional definition of what marriage is; despite the manifold changes in the actual practice of marriage throughout its history. You will easily see that my disdain for religious opinion allows me to place greater weight on the appeal to justice - I simply cannot help but see the religious argument as a case of faulty and misinformed reasoning.

At the end of the day, consequentialism is far from being a simple moral framework. Many people seem to find a strong appeal in rules-based systems in which certain actions are deemed to be always wrong or always right, no matter the circumstances. Indeed, accusations of "moral relativism" are merrily hurled at consequentialist ethicists by people - such as those in the ranks of the religious right - who prefer their morals in the form of unquestionable precepts, regardless of the actual consequences of applying them. However, I am strongly inclined to agree with Stephen Fry's assessment that what "moral relativism" actually means is "thought". Some things simply are more or less right or wrong depending on circumstances and it's not always easy to predict what will be the best course of action in a given situation. Even a broad stricture such as the golden rule - do to others what you would like them to do to you - carries consequentialist implications; we might not always want or need the same things from other people in different circumstances and they might want very different things than we do under the same circumstances. We're continually called upon to make judgements and the best judgements are informed and intelligent; and I think it is ultimately not just the potential for negative consequences but also my distaste for the anti-intellectual slant of absolutist, rules-based moral systems that leads me to reject their apparently easy, straightforward appeal.

One of my favourite treats from Queen Victoria Markets is ham made from free-range pigs raised in the Otways. Well, I say ‘treat’ but the truth is that I buy some nearly every time I visit the markets, simply because it’s the most delicious ham I have ever experienced. I’m not sure how much of a psychological aspect is involved – perhaps a significant one – but I strongly suspect that the deliciousness of the ham is due in no small measure to the fact that the pigs from which it’s made are afforded a healthy, natural, outdoor life rather than one spent cooped up in a concrete prison.

As you might well suppose, I spend quite a lot of time thinking about food and the food choices I make – which, of course, affect much more than just my own health and conscience. Matters of animal welfare, environmental impact and fair trade all influence the decisions I make with regard to the food I consume. These days it’s become quite the trendy thing to be a foodie, though not everyone takes it to the extent of building an entire food philosophy.

My first attempt at taking my food choices seriously culminated in what turned out to be a brief flirtation with vegetarianism. At the time, it seemed like an easy and logical choice to make for someone who genuinely cared about the welfare of other animals, including the ones we use for food. For some time already, we had been opting for free-range eggs and I had long since stopped eating veal, having found out how veal is commercially produced; so going the whole hog, so to speak, and giving up animal flesh altogether made sense. Besides, I reasoned, I could probably never bring myself to actually kill another animal for food – and if I couldn’t obtain it for myself, what possible entitlement could I have to eat meat?

Transitory though it was, my stint as a vegetarian was quite instructive. For one thing, it allowed me to appreciate how many people actually misunderstand vegetarianism to mean that, oh, maybe you’ll still eat chicken or maybe fish; not long ago, in fact, we were happily told by a waitress that the restaurant’s mussel special could be made vegetarian by removing the bacon. I also found that actually being vegetarian pretty much forces one to be more creative with cooking – provided one does not simply resort to meat substitutes. Much as I rather enjoy tofu and Quorn, for example, I am much less a fan of “fake meat” than I am of finding new and interesting ways to make use of vegetables, eggs and dairy products.

However, the biggest thing I learned from pursuing vegetarianism was this – I really, really like meat. I missed it, in all its varieties; I missed its taste, its texture and the qualities it lends to the dishes of which it’s a component. In the end, I had to admit that vegetarianism can actually be as culinarily limiting, in its way, as the old meat-and-three-veg approach. This is not to say that I don’t, even now, enjoy vegetarian food, both cooking and eating it; it’s just that these days it’s one of several possibilities, rather than something I feel constrained by my food philosophy to do.

So, having decided that my diet would contain meat, I felt it necessary to consider the ethics of meat production and consumption. I became much more conscious of the welfare issues involved in the meat industry – in the ways animals are bred and raised and eventually slaughtered. Happily it is becoming easier to obtain meat from animals raised in humane conditions, where they have access to outdoor foraging and the chance to pursue their natural inclinations. Some people would say – indeed, have said to me – “Well, what’s the point of them having decent lives if they’re only going to be killed anyway?” The question comes down to the degree to which the animal suffers. It’s one thing to be concerned about the brief suffering involved in the actual slaughter; the more prolonged suffering the animal endures during its life is a separate but related concern. I feel much better about eating meat from an animal that has led a contented existence while it lasted, than one that has been raised in miserable, cramped, unhealthy conditions. I may be going out on a limb here, but I don’t think death is necessarily the worst experience a sentient being can have.

It was some time after I had become more attuned to the ethics of meat-eating - and of food altogether - that I first encountered Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage philosophy – and it resonated powerfully with my own thinking. At the core of the River Cottage approach is respect – respect for the animal during its life and respect for its meat as the precious food source it really is. This respect extends to food in general and the central importance it has in our lives, whether we recognise it or not. I like to think my own involvement with food is reflective of my deep appreciation for it; not just cooking and eating it, but also especially the exercise of growing my own food enhances my sense of connection with the natural world that produces it. Food is so integral to the business of being alive that it makes perfect sense to me to immerse myself in the enjoyment of it, from paddock and garden, via kitchen, to table; and on that note, I am now going to head out into our garden to fetch some garlic and onions for tonight’s dinner.

This evening I have been inspired by this article, by The Philosopher and the Wolf author Mark Rowlands, to consider the subject of the consciousness of nonhuman animals and whether they can be said to exhibit any form of morality. You'll notice right away that I avoid the dichotomy of speaking of 'humans' and 'animals' as two distinct categories - of course I recognise that we humans are animals, as a matter of biological fact; and based upon my own experience, we have far more in common with other animal species than many people seem comfortable acknowledging.

From my earliest days, my life has been spent in the company of nonhuman animals. When I was born, it was into an immediate family that consisted of my then-three-year-old brother, my parents and their beagle, Angus. There was never any question that Angus was a member of the family; though my actual memories of him are rather vague and nebulous, like all my memories from my first few years, looking back I know that at some level, I was aware that Angus was one of us. I have pretty much been a 'dog person' from birth, and an 'animal lover' all my life. Indeed, there are times when I explicitly prefer the company of my furred, four-footed cousins to that of my own species. I think it's fair to say, then, that I do not approach the subject of nonhuman animal consciousness with the same aloofness as someone like Peter Singer, who acknowledges in the original preface to Animal Liberation that he feels no particular sentimental attachment to other animals; though I am inclined to agree with his argument that one ought not to need such attachment in order to deplore any treatment of nonhuman animals that ignores their needs and interests as fellow sentient beings.

To my way of thinking, it ought to be obvious to anyone who has ever had any interaction with other animals that they are, after their various fashions, thinking, feeling beings who behave purposefully. Yet throughout human history, at least in the West, they have, for the most part, been treated and spoken of as objects, as possessions, as means to ends rather than ends in themselves. Indeed, I believe it is still customary, in formal English discourse, to refer to any nonhuman animal as an 'it'. Perhaps there has been an element of necessity involved in this - considering the way humans have treated other animals over the centuries, it might be less distressing to suppose that they don't experience pleasure or suffering as we humans do, if at all; although the way humans often treat each other would seem to give the lie to this interpretation.

Apart from the weight of history and custom, the other great bedeviller of any discussion about nonhuman animal consciousness and behaviour is the spectre of anthropomorphism - to make any inference about how other animals might think or feel automatically leaves one open to the accusation that to do so is to incorrectly invest them with human characteristics, as though humans somehow have a monopoly on intellect and emotion. As far as I am concerned, it is just as unhelpful to suppose that other animals only act on instinct and biomechanical programming as it is to imagine that all human behaviour is the product of thoughtful reflection and consideration. Much as I despise the concept of human exceptionalism, I also think there are times when anthropomorphism can be taken too far. It won't do to consider other animals as if they were human - to do so would be to ignore the unique context in which their thoughts and feelings occur, how they have been shaped by their particular environments and evolutionary histories. To really respect another being, one must meet them where they're at. Sure, they might not think and feel like we do, but that does not mean their thoughts and feelings are absent.

This is the way I like to observe our own nonhuman companions. This evening, our two cats have been facing off against each other. They've never been friends, as such; but they have reached an accommodation of sorts. Yuki, whom we've had since she was a tiny kitten, has always been the queen in our household. Jellicle, our foster-cat, she has always seen as an interloper. It seems to us that Yuki has been working to maintain her dominant position and thus keeping Jellicle's ambition in check. Does this sound anthropomorphic? Perhaps so. Yet consider the fact that this is merely our human interpretation of the complex array of behaviours the two cats have been exhibiting. Much of it we don't know how to read - there is a whole language of gesture, gaze, posture, scent-laying, food- and territory-claiming that we simply don't understand, so of course our assessment of the relationship dynamic between them is painted with a very broad brush. Yet I have never felt the slightest doubt that there is emotion and thought going on behind our cats' behaviour. The only thing that could possibly make me suppose their actions to be purely mechanical and informed only by instinct from moment to moment is acceptance of the notion that thoughts and feelings are an exclusively human province. In the face of the varied and intricate set of cat behaviours we witness on a daily basis, it seems not just counterintuitive but highly artificial to simply reject out of hand the possibility that they have conscious experience.

To me, it seems self-evident that other animals think and feel, if not in precisely the same ways humans think and feel - how could they be the same when their actual experience of living in the world is obviously different from our own? - but what of the question of morality? Do other animals exhibit the capacity for ethical behaviour? It's certainly clear that some, particularly the social species, demonstrate altruism, even if only towards kin and offspring; but it also seems likely, from an evolutionary perspective, that human moral behaviour had its origins in the same kinds of modest demonstrations of care for others. Mark Rowlands, in the article I referenced above, wonders if the patient tolerance and apparent concern displayed by his two dogs towards his baby son could be called moral. Maybe there was not much, if any, conscious calculation in the dogs' behaviour; some human philosophers might insist that without a conscious decision to behave morally, morality as such is not present - behaviour is just what it is, whether it looks like moral behaviour or not. It's the thought and intention behind them - the calculation - that turn mere actions into moral or immoral actions. The misanthrope in me, I freely admit, finds great satisfaction in Rowlands' thesis from The Philosopher and the Wolf - that the innate nastiness and deceitfulness of the ape is what made it necessary for us to develop morality in the first place, to keep our wicked natures in check, to turn our capacity for calculation to less destructively selfish ends.

It's at this point that I find it worthwhile to draw some comparisons. Late last year we adopted a rescue dog, Max. His behaviour and demeanour when we brought him home suggested to us that he had come from an abusive background. So we lavished attention and love on him, and gradually it seemed that he was coming to trust us and feel affection towards us. A few months into his residence with us, he killed one of our cats, Spooty. Whilst I was understandably horrified and distraught, Max seemed not at all conscious of having done anything wrong, as such, even when I locked him in the garage for the night, simply because I couldn't stand to look at him after what he had done. The next day, when I let him out, he seemed as happy to see me as he'd ever been. I found that I just couldn't blame him for his behaviour - clearly he had a strong prey drive that had been triggered by seeing Spooty run from him. I justified his behaviour to myself, and it was primarily for the practical purpose of keeping Yuki safe that I brought him back to the shelter from which we had adopted him. In this instance, I think it's fair to say that Max didn't know he had done anything wrong or unacceptable - I doubt very much that any of it was premeditated in any way. But does this mean that he was in all other ways incapable of the kind of caring behaviour that might be considered a primitive form of morality? I couldn't say so with any confidence. His actions were, after all, no different to those of a human hunter who is infused with the thrill of the chase. Humans can be similarly overcome by emotional excitement - even our legal system recognises the existence of crimes of passion.

At the end of the day, it might simply be the case that the differences between humans and other animals, in terms of moral capacity, are differences of degree rather than of kind. Much as many of us have an innate sense of empathy and altruism, consciously moral behaviour, I am convinced, is learned behaviour. I see examples all around me and in the news of human behaviour that makes me marvel that any person could possibly imagine such actions to be acceptable, yet it seems there's no limit to what some humans might do if they think they can get away with it; and the only difference between me and those other people is our upbringing and social environment. Other animals are not greatly different to us in that regard - they can be taught to behave in ways that look remarkably similar to the exercise of morality, whether or not they understand any actions in terms of 'right' and 'wrong'. It's true they are propelled by instinct and raw desire - but so are we, to a much greater extent than we often seem to appreciate. Sometimes we simply do the right thing because it feels right, whether from an innate sense of justice or because of social conditioning. Is that moral behaviour or just...behaviour, plain and simple? Ultimately, I wonder if we can simply say that morality is as morality does.

This post may in fact be a continuation of yesterday's rant; but I'll be heading off on a somewhat different tangent and hopefully rounding out and concluding my present contemplations on the notion that life must have some kind of purpose.

One of the concepts the Catholic Church co-opted from the Ancient Greek philosophers was the idea of Natural Law; and if the selection of articles I read yesterday on Life Site News are anything to go by, it's one that still heavily infuses their thinking on matters of morality, particularly (and the cynic in me says exclusively) sexual morality. I am once again reminded of Stephen Fry's most elegantly cutting summation of the Catholic Church's attitude to sex - "The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese; and that, in erotic terms, is the Catholic Church in a nutshell."

But I digress...well, a bit. The basis of Natural Law in terms of ethical reasoning is that everything in nature - in creation, as religious believers would have it - is directed towards a natural end, an ultimate purpose. What this means in terms of sex, since this is the example most readily to hand, is that the proper, natural purpose of sex is procreation. The upshot of this is that any use or practise of sex that is not accompanied by the active intent to conceive is violating its correct moral end. Hence the church's condemnation of homosexuality and its insistence that nonprocreative sexual activity is the height of selfishness, an act of moral evil.

I'll leave aside, for the time being, the fact that the only arena in which the church's adherence to Natural Law theory apparently prevails is in matters of sex and reproduction - in most other aspects of life, natural moral ends tend to fall by the wayside. But what of this idea that nature itself, upon rational examination, yields answers to the philosophical quandaries of what we are here for and what we ought to do with our lives? You might think, on the basis of my professed pantheistic leanings, that I would be all over the idea that nature provides the key to understanding our purpose in life; I have already indicated my enthusiasm for Sam Harris's claim that science can determine human values through examination of what constitutes human well-being in the world as it is. I think there is a genuine sense in which nature can and does inform our moral thinking and behaviour. This is not, however, the sense in which it is used by Natural Law theorists.

The defining feature of the concept of Natural Law is, of course, this idea of natural ends - everything, including the human animal, has a purpose, a reason for being, some goal that it was designed to accomplish. Behaving in ways that tend towards this designated end is thus morally good; behaving in ways that don’t tend towards it is morally bad, wrong, evil, unnatural. Notice right away the first glaring problem with this assessment – its narrow conception of purposes and ends. Everything has an end, singular. Nothing ought to be repurposed, hacked, or in any way moved from the correct channel that leads towards the achievement of its one true object. The idea is laughable when taken to its logical extreme.

Notice also the problem inherent in the very question of how we can know what the particular purpose or end of any being or action is or ought to be. Undoubtedly the ancient philosophers observed the world around them, noting that certain beings tended to behave purposefully and that certain actions tended towards certain ends. So far, so good – but by what leap of reasoning does one conclude that because something tends towards some end, that one particular end constitutes its true purpose?

This may have been what David Hume was getting at with his insistence that one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is' – you can’t look at what is the case in nature and thus determine what should be the case in an ethical sense. I have my own issues with this idea – I don’t know how else you can derive an ‘ought’ other than by means of what ‘is’ – but I do feel that the ancients and the Catholics after them have gravely misused and belittled nature by trying to limit the concept of what is ‘natural’ and therefore morally good to such a small set of strictures. This does, in fact, constitute a highly artificial imposition of human rules and regulations upon the natural world and our own behaviour as beings deeply embedded in nature.

Having said all that, however, the real kicker is this – it’s also natural for humans to try to categorise and impose order on the world around us. This is a glorious irony, in view of the fact that nature is as nature does – and it is not static but almost endlessly mutable, elastic, malleable – and while we are part of it, we cannot say with truth that any of our actions are unnatural. We certainly can say that some actions lead to objectively positive or negative outcomes and subjectively good or bad experiences but we cannot impose the judgement that any such actions are unnatural – how could they be? It’s also worth observing, though this is not the place to delve into it, that by these lights, the set of actions leading to positive outcomes, by both objective and subjective measures, is rather different from the set of actions deemed morally acceptable by the Catholic Church.

So where does all this leave us, in terms of identifying and pursuing the purpose of our existence?

Well, I think it should be abundantly clear by now that I do not believe life has a purpose, an ultimate end, as such. I’m also realistic enough to recognise that it’s a very naturally human characteristic to yearn for answers, for meaning, for a reason to get out of bed every day. We very often can’t just have what we want for the asking, though – usually we have to make an effort to go out and get it...or invent it, if it’s not yet available. Yet to say that we make our own purposes and meanings in life never seems to be enough to satisfy those who want our existence to have some ultimate, cosmic significance.

For myself, I find it oddly liberating to consider the very likely possibility that we are just here, for no better or more profound reason than that nature just happened that way. I don’t know if I want my actions to be important to anyone other than myself and those affected by them. I am content with the idea that my life will be important to me and mine while it lasts but when I’m done, I’m done. The knowledge that when my body is no longer any use to my conscious self, because the latter will have ceased to exist at my death, it will sink into the earth, decompose and its atoms be used, perhaps, by other life, is a greater source of comfort to me than contemplation of any possible spiritual afterlife.

I can think of no better way to round off this post than with a quotation from The God Delusion, which I am currently rereading. It’s from an interview Richard Dawkins conducted with James Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the double-helix molecular structure of DNA. As those who have read any of Dawkins’ work will know, he rejects the idea that religion and science address completely different questions of existence – the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) school of reconciling empirical investigation and supernatural faith. Science, so the claim runs, attempts to answer the questions about how the world works; religion, on the other hand, tries to find out what it’s all for. Watson’s response to this idea, quoted in the book, is delightfully dismissive: “Well I don’t think we’re for anything. We’re just products of evolution. You can say, ‘Gee, your life must be pretty bleak if you don’t think there’s a purpose.’ But I’m anticipating having a good lunch.”

In his brilliant and moving speech at the 2009 Intelligence Squared debate on whether or not the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world, Stephen Fry described himself as "someone who is filled with love; whose only purpose in life is to achieve love". So far, so good, if one wishes to define a purpose for oneself – and Stephen Fry quite correctly, I believe, referred to a purpose “in” life, not a purpose “of” life; the very idea of life existing for a reason other than “just because” is, I think, absurd and indefensible. Be that as it may, if one’s purpose is the achievement of love – and I think there are many for whom it is, at least in part, myself included – then what can we say love itself actually is?

Since I mentioned it, the Catholic Church has plenty of its own ideas about what love is and what it means to demonstrate love. “Greater love hath no man than this: to lay down his life for his friends,” so the scripture goes (or words to that effect, depending upon which version you happen to read). Real love, to be worthy of the name, must be self-giving, self-denying, self-sacrificing…self-destructive, one might say. This notion of selfless, sacrificial love infects even our modern secular thinking to some extent. Love isn’t the real deal unless it hurts - if you’re not suffering for love, you’re doing it wrong.

Here’s the thing, though – we all want to be loved (if you’ll pardon the gross generalisation) but how many of us actually want people to suffer for us? I certainly have no wish for anyone to hurt or destroy themselves on my account. Consider, for a moment, the effect of knowing that another person had undergone a terrible, painful death in order to spare you a similar fate. Especially if it was someone you loved in return, not only do you now have to deal with their loss but also the dreadful burden of responsibility that comes from knowing they suffered and died horribly for you. Here you have the essence of Catholic guilt – Jesus is supposed to have done exactly that for each and every one of us; only the horror is mitigated by the fact that crucifixion is something far removed from the everyday experience of most of us these days; and anyway, Jesus came back to life after a few days, so it’s all okay, really. Just imagine if it really happened. That is not a gift of love I would ever wish to receive. I have argued with Catholics who claim that only their faith instils the kind of noble, selfless love required to give up your own life for someone else’s. They are welcome to it; I don’t believe this is a kind of love worth wanting.

At what might be considered the opposite extreme is the claim that love is just a chemical reaction in the brain. In terms of what we actually experience, the sensations, thought processes and motivation to action to which we give the name of love, it’s quite true that what we are talking about is a matter of chemistry and physics. But what people seem to intend when they call love just a chemical reaction is to dismiss it as insignificant, as if it’s just like the effect of a drug that will sooner or later wear off. Sometimes this is done with the intention of riling someone up or counteracting excessively romantic notions of what it means to feel love for another. However, I have more often encountered this form of dismissal from those who are trying to point out that if I actually think love is the product of material interactions, then I am the one dismissing it as insignificant – because unless love is some great and mysterious supernatural phenomenon with cosmic significance, then it doesn’t really matter. Why a philosophically naturalist approach to love should be considered as devaluing it and stripping it of all meaning in our lives is just one facet of the much larger question of why so many people seem to think that all conscious experience must be beyond the purview of science – otherwise it’s just not special, don’t you know? It should be quite clear by now what my own views are on that subject.

The Ancient Greek philosophers identified four particular types of love – agape, eros, philia and storge, which roughly translate to spiritual, physical, mental and natural, or innate, love respectively. Agape is often touted as the Christian ideal of love – again that selfless, sacrificial love that Christ is supposed to have had for all humanity and which Christians are called upon to emulate. Eros of course refers to romantic or erotic love, whilst philia is the bond of shared interests; storge, finally, is the kind of natural affection felt towards members of one’s family, tribe, etc – those to whom we have an innate attachment. Of all of these, it seems that agape is the one that might constitute a purpose in life, simply because it’s the one that doesn’t come easily or readily – one must strive for it. Yet I’ve already rejected the idea of anything that might be called spiritual love, both because I am a philosophical naturalist who entertains no notion of souls or higher powers; and also because I believe it is neither entirely possible nor even desirable to pursue love in such a way that it involves the destruction or sublimation of the self.

So what does it mean for me, given my naturalistic and non-self-effacing approach to understanding love, to say that the achievement of love is part of my purpose in life? For a hedonist, the answer to that is deceptively simple – love is one of the greatest pleasures available to conscious beings and pleasure is the highest good that can be pursued in life. I am sufficiently self-interested to want to be loved for myself and because I give pleasure to those who love me – not because they feel obliged by some higher calling to subvert their inclination and behave as if they love me, through an effort of will. I want to love and be loved because I am a social animal shaped by millions of years of evolution to desire love and acceptance. The particular pleasures of love – the heady experience of being in love, the sudden surge of joy at meeting an old friend, the satisfaction of sharing hobbies and intellectual pursuits, the comfort and security of curling up with a long-term lover – whilst transitory in the grand scheme of things, are nonetheless worth wanting for their own sake; as is the tranquillity afforded by the knowledge that there are those who accept us and value our company just because we are who we are.

In an Ancient Greek myth, Sisyphus is condemned by the gods to spend eternity rolling a rock uphill, only to watch it roll back down to the bottom, every time. As it was likely intended to be in its original telling, this is a great metaphor for the often tedious tasks of living in the world; and some days I can really feel the weight of the rock and the seeming pointlessness of continuing to push it. Progress, when it's discernible at all, is painfully slow.

It's at times like these that I like to take a step back and consider the process of working towards a goal. It seems like the most straightforward thing in the world - you want to achieve something, you make a plan for how you're going to  proceed, you work through the plan, you achieve your goal, rinse, repeat. Sure, it's never actually that simple - real life throws up challenges and setbacks and changes of direction all the time; but there does seem to be a deeply ingrained belief that in life, we're always heading towards something - or we should be, otherwise what's the point?

What indeed? And why should there even be a point to it all? Maybe there isn't and we're just so busy counting the trees that we completely miss the beauty of the forest; too busy ticking off the great landmarks in life to notice the pretty little rest stops along the way. I know I spent much of my life doing just that.

During my adolescence, I felt keenly the expectation that I would have a plan for how my life would progress beyond school and accordingly, I formulated such a plan. I set out to push my rock uphill. I would go to university, I would study to be a teacher and I would follow in the footsteps of my aunt and those of my own teachers whom I admired and respected. So far, so good. 

Only it all went pear-shaped after I actually started my career as a teacher, only to discover that in fact, it really wasn't something for which I was suited. That was the first time the rock came crashing back down the hill. In hindsight, it would probably have been better had I taken a break in between my BA and my BEd - in which case, I suspect it's unlikely I would have done the BEd at all. By the time I got there, I had already begun to rethink my life path. I realised at last that I was not the kind of person who lived to work but for whom work was a means of supporting my other interests. I had a new rock, one that had been patiently waiting for me to help it on its way up.

So there I was, on the other side of the country from where I'd grown up, struggling to find work as anything other than a teacher (having apparently defined myself as such). It was fortunate that I discovered teletext captioning, something I didn't even know existed as a job of work until I applied for it. So that became my bread and butter - something I was good at, that didn't stress me out, that would provide me with an income whilst I pursued more interesting and creative avenues. It seemed a light, undemanding burden.

In the meantime, other things were happening. I was building relationships, learning about myself (sometimes painfully), pursuing hobbies to a greater extent than I would have thought possible; during this time, some of the most significant milestones of my life occurred, which had nothing to do with gainful employment - that was just the backdrop against which the real drama of my life was played out. It was as if I took time out from the uphill toil to explore the landscape either side of the path.

Eventually, the work I did to earn a living began to seem far too much like the situation of Sisyphus - constantly pushing the rock uphill only to watch it roll back down again. My whole life took on this sameness - there was no change, no progress, nothing but the same old struggle every day; and having recognised it as such, the struggle just became harder and harder, seemed more and more pointless, less and less rewarding.

So I left that rock at the bottom of the hill.

Now I have a whole new rock, one that I have only just begun to push toward the summit. Sooner or later, I will get there, only to watch as this new rock, perhaps still coloured with the charm of novelty, goes tumbling back to base camp. I know it will happen; but that's okay - because each time I set out to push the rock back up the hill, I will find ways to make the experience different. I'm not going to waste my time planning exactly how I'll get the rock from the bottom to the top of the hill; instead I'll leave myself open to possibilities. I'll welcome those who offer me their companionship for the journey; I'll prop up the rock at convenient resting points and enjoy the view from different places on the hill; and above all, I'll resist the temptation to define my existence in terms of how far I've progressed.

It's been a little while since I last wrote anything about religion - or specifically my own lack of anything resembling supernatural belief - although I've hinted around it in several recent posts. It might look a bit bizarre to combine this with a post about gardening; but I promise it will all make sense in the end.

A couple of days ago I spent a satisfying hour or so ripping up ornamental vegetation from our back garden bed. This was not an act of wanton destruction but in fact part of the process of preparing the area to become a vegie patch. It already contains a tomato plant - which I'm very happy to say is now fruiting - and if the seeds I am currently attempting to germinate actually end up sprouting, it will soon be home to peas, carrots, celery, dill and stevia.

But in order for this to happen, a substantial amount of vegetation had to die and large numbers of worms, grubs, snails, spiders and sundry other small wildlife were disturbed. This is not a small amount of harm to be inflicting, when you think about it. So I have to say I have mixed feelings about my gardening project - the satisfaction of actually making progress is tinged with a certain sadness and self-questioning.

On the whole, though, I am inclined to consider it a positive experience and oddly enough, the reasons for that actually have something to do with my present approach to religion.

The opening chapter of The God Delusion is headed 'A deeply religious non-believer' and it aims to make clear that there is a vast difference between the God of Classical Theism and the god to which scientists such as Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan have been known to refer; the argument being that it is disingenuous to claim that such distinguished minds believe in God, when what they are actually demonstrating, when they use the word 'god', is their awe and wonder at the glory of the universe. This is the god in which I believe, if I might be said to believe in any god at all.

Clearly this isn't a god that requires worship or answers prayers - it's not the God in whom I was taught to believe as a child; it's not a god with a personality or feelings of any kind. Nature, my god, doesn't care about me or any other individual - it just is and we are all part of it. I've had arguments with theistic believers who either think it's ridiculous to glorify nature (mostly because, well, you can't pray to it) or who find the idea of a universe indifferent to our joys and pains, our achievements and failures, indifferent even to our very existence, deeply depressing. For myself, I must own that I find this idea exhilarating; the feeling of reverence for the universe in the face of our own insignificance, expressed in the likes of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech, makes my heart sing.

It's in this context that I consider my actions with respect to gardening. In the grand scheme of things, what I do here and now makes not a jot of difference to the universe. It only makes a difference to me and to those with whom I interact, directly and indirectly; including the plants and animals that inhabit our garden. Yes, I am inflicting death and destruction - on a relatively small scale, to be sure, but let's not quibble over the fact of what I am doing, just because the victims happen to be small and insignificant from our perspective; from far enough away, we're all small and insignificant. The facts of our world are such that there can be no life without death, and we all play out this balance every day of our lives. The trade-off here is that by destroying some life, I am allowing other life to flourish. On the one hand, it's an easy decision to make; on the other hand, I don't take it lightly - it is what it is.

It may seem odd to consider gardening in such a philosophical, even religious way; but I can't deny that on top of the physical satisfaction (and it must be said, the resulting aches and pains from muscles that haven't seen enough use before now) of furthering my aim to grow my own food, there is the deeper, more comforting - though sometimes unsettling - consciousness of actually participating in the destructive and creative processes of nature. I suppose it could be said that the garden has become my place of worship.

(This is the post I had intended to write yesterday before it all went pear-shaped. Thanks to alamark for the idea!)

At the recent election, Family First came in last on my ballot paper. Not just because they stand for the kind of 1950s ideal of "family values" that most sane people realise was a propaganda piece for capitalism and a thin veneer over the repression and exploitation of women; but because of what I found to be the deeply offensive implications of their giant billboard over the West Gate Freeway proudly declaring, "This election, I'm putting my family first!"

Why would I find such a thing offensive?

Well, for one thing, it's clearly not a socialist idea. They're not talking about the whole human family here, obviously, but the very narrowly specific concept of the nuclear family - a man, a woman and their children. There is much I could say about my feelings with regard to the nuclear family and the pernicious belief that it is the "natural" state of human relationships; but that isn't quite the direction I'm taking in this post. There's something wider and deeper going on with the insidiously reactionary sentiment expressed in the Family First billboard and it's been going on in our society for some time - the attempt to contain the definition of 'family' within a small, manageable, capitalistic box.

For several years now I have been adamantly and openly child-free - that is, I have no children by my own choice and do not feel that by making this choice I am missing out on anything that I actually want to have in my life. I am very fortunate to be married to someone who is of the same mind on this point but I think it's fair to say that japester and I would thus not qualify as a family by Family First's standards. Moreover, there still seems to be a sense in wider society that it's children that make a family. I want to talk about why I don't believe this to be the case and why I think the concept of family should be more expansive.

What seems to be at issue is really how we define relationships and what makes us attach greater importance to some than to others.

"Blood is thicker than water" is an old and well-known saw expressing the belief that those to whom you are related "by blood" - or genetically, as we'd now say - are ultimately the most important people in your life; even if you don't get along with your relatives, you'll still be there for them when they need you. All well and good but in practice, many of us have friends, unrelated by blood, for whom we'd drop everything if they were in a crisis - even if we haven't so much as spoken to them for years. Why do people not more generally consider such friends to be 'family'?

The point might be made that there's a biological imperative to advance the interests of those who carry one's own genes and that therefore your relationship with your own children is the most important connection you can have in life. It seems reasonable to suppose that there's something to this argument but again, in practice there's much that runs counter to it. Some parents abuse and even kill their own offspring - not exactly a means of advancing one's genetic contribution to the next generation. Do they still get to be called a 'family'? And what about adopted children? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's children are not all their biological offspring but they are all collectively referred to as a family. So it's quite apparent that the notion of children making a family is only loosely related to our biological drives.

How about other animals? I am very much a dog person and I've observed that amongst those who readily identify themselves as such - including many of my friends - dogs really are part of the family. I might be laying myself open to charges of profound weirdness in this, but I genuinely cannot imagine being more devastated by the death of a child than I was when I lost my dog, Bosworth, to cancer in 2011. He was very much family to me and home just hasn't been the same without him. Our cats are part of the family too. Unfortunately, society in general hasn't yet caught up to this more enlightened embrace of our fellow mammals. It might, however; at the 2012 Global Atheist Convention, Peter Singer gave an excellent speech about expanding circles of ethical consideration. It seems, from research done by Steven Pinker and others, that humanity has been gradually, over its history, becoming less violent and more broadly altruistic; progressing from kinship bonds through to caring for people of other groups, other countries, other races, even through to caring about the interests of nonhuman animals - recognising that ultimately, we are all family.

I think that is why, in the end, I found the Family First billboard so offensive. So narrow and selfish in its scope (and yes, I am alive to the irony of being called selfish myself for not having children of my own) and so closed to the possibility of a broader concept of family than man, woman and 2.4 children, all tucked up in their cottage behind the white picket fence, it offers no understanding to those of us who want something different for our lives and our relationships.

I may not fit the little model of the family so vaunted by conservatives but I do have lovers, friends and nonhuman companions whom I count as my own; I also have the consciousness that the interests of my brother and sister humans - and my nonhuman cousins - matter as much to them as my own do to me; and so if anyone is ever foolish enough to ask me, "When are you going to have a family?" my response will always be, "I already have one."