| |
[Apr. 25th, 2008|03:38 pm] |
I just realised that I take my stance on sex and drugs from Buddhism. Funny story. Let’s talk a bit about ethics.
The first rule I use in my day-to-day decision making is to “cause no harm to others.” It’s similar to a line from my path of neopaganism, but actually comes from long before I was into that, from the bits of Buddhism that I just can’t find any faults with.
With that rule in place, I can then be very liberal in my attitudes to everything else.
One factor in my thinking on issues which don’t affect others is summed up nicely in a quote from the sci-fi novel “Lord of Light” by Roger Zelazny. The hero is talking to a Rakasha (the book’s version of a Hindu demon):
"All men have within them both that which is dark and that which is light. A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clear flame such as you once were. His intellect often wars with his emotions, his will with his desires… his ideals are at odds with his environment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that which was old – but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of having forsaken a new and noble dream. Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, an arrival and a departure. Always he mourns that which is gone and fears some part of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition. Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of these things, there arises the thing you called the curse of man, and mocked – guilt!"
Now, this is true. Guilt is inevitable, no matter what actions you take or don’t take. This makes it a suffering that is inflicted even on those who have behaved perfectly, which you could say is therefore evil... either way, as someone who wants to be kind to others, I want to help reduce their suffering.
With the overriding rule of not causing harm, I can’t approve of someone doing whatever his emotions want without restraint (when those suggest violence to protect him from fear, stealing from others to ensure his personal wealth is large enough to feel secure, sexual attack because they put no control on their desires or rage...) these should all still cause guilt. What I’m looking at is when the activity doesn’t affect others. The personal choices: sexuality, interests, beliefs, the right to security and self-worth whatever sex you are, how you find your freedom.
‘Who you are inside’ is something that can be repressed but not eliminated, and will be the biggest cause of friction between your emotions/desires and society’s entirely historical expectations.
I’m a liberal because I’m not scared by what people might choose to be, provided it doesn’t affect others. “But if we let everyone engage in this deviant behaviour, then society will be degraded!”, say Conservatives. Sorry to break this to you, but it’s not 1908. Society is entirely too large, diverse and dense to care. You cannot shepherd it into your ideal of a safe haven, because people will always refuse to fit the average. Besides, have you seen society recently? It could do with some change. …A lot of change.
I never understood Social Conservatism. When I propose more personal freedom, I’m not proposing freedom to degenerate into tribal warfare or anarchy. I mean the freedom at an innermost level to reduce the friction between your true nature and what you’ve been indoctrinated is right. Reducing the guilt doesn’t mean enabling people to feel none when they act harmfully. There should still be guilt for harmful actions, but not for inconsequential ones that feel natural.
I think many activities which affect only the self should be completely unregulated. Minor drug use is one of these. I do not include Heroin or similarly addictive substances in this – when you can see that something is likely to take control totally away from you, and lead you to steal, lie or anything you can do in order to keep doing it, you have a duty not to start. That comes under harming others, and is always off the menu. Part of the freedom is a responsibility to make sure you don’t break rule 1, and taking up heroin would be irresponsible towards others.
Lesser drugs are fine (although I don’t do them): the trade-off of wearing out your body in exchange for happiness is the source of most of the pleasurable experiences in the world, especially eating, sex, sports, and intense excitement of most kinds. Hastening your own death in amusing ways has always been an individual’s most basic right. Drugs are dangerous, but with education and as adults, they should be allowed.
Sex of all kinds is also completely fine, as long as it’s not harming others. That means whoever is engaged in it with you is capable of making decisions for themselves, and consents to it. That’s it. No specifics on what activity is good or bad beyond that.
In a way, you could say that social conservatism – since it reinforces the conflicts between people’s desires and society’s rules on private matters such as sex and beliefs, and therefore causes suffering due to something which has no negative impact to justify the censure – actively causes innocents to suffer. It helps this impersonal, ever-present and automatic conflict in people to strike at the innermost heart of every person, no matter what actions they actually take or how saintly they are.
(Of course, when we say Saintly we automatically mean “like someone the Church would approve of”, so it’s not a good comparison. )
Some conservatives say “But it does affect me if my neighbour is gay! That’s icky, and if we let everyone be gay/black/female/pagan/goth/different without controls on them, then society will fall!” This sounds funny in modern society, until you realise it’s still a major force in the way people vote.
Do I live up to the ideal of causing absolutely no harm to anyone? Hahaha, not remotely. I get the full whack of liberal guilt for pollution, environment, cheap labour in the third world, not having done anything about the maniacs acting in my country’s name, everything. But on a daily level, I’m practically a Buddhist - I can’t litter without going back and finding a bin. I give up my seat on trains. I take the opportunity to do a good thing whenever I can. And yet every stance I take politically infuriates conservatives. I’m pro- legalising drugs, legalising euthanasia, extremely pro-choice (we can argue whether that causes harm to others), I want equality for everyone regardless of sex, religion, sexual preference, age, race… I’m anti-war in nearly all circumstances, and very keen on preventing crime.
(This is not the same as the traditional conservative line of wanting more prisons/harsher sentences, since the evidence shows that actually increases crime. I also don’t want to let criminals go free to do it again because I’m a soft-hearted liberal, I actually want to rehabilitate. We do not have a good record of doing this in the UK.)
So, given that mental suffering is inevitable including on those who don’t deserve it, and that we should be working to reduce the suffering of our fellow man, how do social conservatives justify their position on issues which are entirely private? Ten years on the internet haven’t given me an answer yet, apart from “My God says it’s bad to put that there.” Without a justification I can understand, I have to rely on the assumption that conservatives truly believe they’re doing what’s best for society and not just themselves. They think that by restricting thought or behaviour, it will make it go away and change what society is made up of. The alternative is that they’re just actually evil, ignorant or not interested in anything but protecting themselves from their own fears at the expense of others. I’m going to be nice and assume there’s some more thinking going on than that.
So what is the thinking? Anyone help me out? |
|
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
