What the Outrage over Cecil the Lion Says about Our Warped Moral Priorities

06 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Interview, Philosophy

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Cecil the Lion, current events, debate, ethics, gun control, guns, hunting, interview, Just Babies, Moral Psychology, morality, Morals, Paul Bloom, Philosophy, Podcast, psychology, religion, Sam Harris, Veganism, Vegetarianism, Waking Up

I imagine you have some thoughts about how well spent the moral outrage of seven billion people has been on Cecil the Lion.

“I do. Look, there’s some reason to believe the dentist did do something wrong. It’s not quite clear; he said he was hoodwinked by somebody else and he thought they had proper permits. And so, you know, if he did something wrong, broke the law, he should be punished. I don’t have any problem saying that. And also, I don’t have any particular love for big game hunting — I may be betraying my own liberal background but I find it kind of a repellant activity.

However, the lack of proportion in this case is astonishing.

I honestly think if the dentist went to Africa and shot an African, there’d be a lot less fuss. Instead he shot this beautiful lion… and the sentimentality combined with the mob attacks has been insane.

Of course, he was not hunting for food, he was hunting for trophies. Personally, I find myself totally unsympathetic to that, even though I can get right up to the door of it. I shoot guns because I’m very interested in self defense, and the truth is it’s incredibly fun to shoot guns…

So I can imagine that hunting is even more fun if you don’t have any scruple about killing the animal. And I’m under no illusions that my position as a non-vegetarian, as someone who eats meat and therefore delegates the killing of animals to others, is more ethical. I think the hunter who eats his kill is in a stronger moral position than I am. He’s owning the full process by which he’s arriving at his hamburger, or in this case, his venison steak…

What matters? What counts as a worse crime than another? What should one be allowed to do? And one can, as a reflective person, rank things. It’s worse to kill somebody than to beat them. It’s worse to steal one-hundred dollars than one dollar. It’s worse to kill an African human than an African lion…

If you feel the killing of Cecil is one of the biggest news stories of 2015, you’ve really got to reassess your values.”

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Remarks from two self-described liberals — Sam Harris and and Yale psychologist Paul Bloom on Harris’s Waking Up podcast last week (these remarks come at the 48 minute mark in the track below).

Bloom touches on many of these themes of moral psychology in his book Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil.

There’s more to see:

Sam Harris: Let’s Cut Cops Some Slack

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by jrbenjamin in Current Events, Interview

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Ferguson, gun control, guns, interview, Joe Rogan, justice, Law and Order, Lethal Force, Michael Brown, NRA, police, Police Brutality, Police Officers, Sam Harris, violence

“People have erroneous assumptions about how violence unfolds.

If you’re deciding to block or defend yourself once a guy is already throwing his sucker punch, you are 9 times out of 10 too late.

I’m not making any claims to know what happened in Ferguson with the shooting; it could be every inch the homicide that many people seem to think it was. But the reality is that cops are having to work in a universe where they do a traffic stop and someone pulls out a gun and shoots them in the face.

So they have to assume that is a possibility no matter what you look like, no matter what kind of car you’re driving… You see them unbuckling the strap on their holster as they just walk up to give you a ticket. That’s because they don’t have the luxury of time. They can’t wait to see you produce a gun and say ‘OK, now my lethal force option is beyond reproach.’

So the only mode to be in with a cop — no matter how much of an asshole he might be — is to stay compliant, and then you sue him later. In the middle of negotiating with a cop, no matter how unjustified the arrest may seem, that’s not the time to be telling him he’s an asshole or talking about how you’re such a good guy and this is a violation of your civil rights.

The sheer fact that a cop has a gun on his belt makes any contact a potential lethal encounter for him.

So if you just go hands-on a cop, push a cop, he doesn’t know that you’re not going for the gun on his belt. He doesn’t know that you’re not going to push him into a car and he’ll be knocked out, and then you’re going to grab his gun.

So it’s all deadly from a cop’s point of view. Very few people understand that.

I had a friend who was stopped by a cop recently. This is a middle-aged Jewish guy who is, in his mind, the least dangerous person on earth, thinking why on earth is a cop stopping him. But my friend said something to the cop, then the cop unlatched the top restraint on his gun, and my friend said, ‘What? You’re going to pull out your gun on me?’

And the cop said, ‘What does a bad guy look like?’

And that just cut through the misunderstanding for my friend.

My friend knew he was not a bad guy; but there’s no way for the cop to know he’s not a bad guy. People are just not aware of that, and they’re interacting with cops and it’s dangerous everybody.”

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Sam Harris, riffing in an interview with Joe Rogan last September.

There’s more:

Brothers and Countrymen

19 Friday Jul 2013

Posted by jrbenjamin in History, Politics, Speeches

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America, George Zimmerman, gun control, guns, hatred, On the Mindless Menace of Violence, Robert Kennedy, Trayvon Martin, violence

“The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed…

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution. But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.”

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From one of the most tender American politicians of the twentieth-century, Robert F. Kennedy, speaking on “The Mindless Menace of Violence” the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Put it on your shelf: RFK’s Collected Speeches.

These words should be penetrating and immediate to all of us, regardless of what we feel about the Trayvon Martin killing and the subsequent trial and verdict.

“It is my conviction that nothing enduring can be built on violence. The only safe way to overcome an enemy is to make of that enemy a friend.”—Mahatma Gandhi

Martin Luther King, who in 1959 traveled to India to learn about nonviolent resistance from the disciples of Gandhi, made an observation that’s been with me since I read it several weeks ago:

The great irony of our age is that we have guided missiles, and misguided men.

Another terrible irony: two months after giving this elevated speech, Robert Kennedy was killed in the same way as King — shot, struck down by the mindless menace of violence. But he did leave us this affirming incitement to press on, a principle with which he had to wrestle his fair share:

“Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.”

Below are some of my favorite pictures of Robert Kennedy and his family.