There is some truth in that

Patience week one went well. I’m now back in Providence for class, TAing, office hours, seminar, writing a paper, and rehearsing for Yeomen. Wednesday morning I return to Houston again.

I had an odd conversation last night with one of my friends from Rice. I’ve been thinking it over, and I want to talk about it a little bit. It’s a conversation that made me a little bit uncomfortable at the time. And as I look back on it, it makes me even more uncomfortable. My friend in question is a kind-hearted person who agrees with me on most political issues. But I don’t care for the way she approached the rhetoric in this particular case.

She was talking about Rice for Life, a student group at Rice University that opposes abortion and euthanasia on ‘right to life’ moral grounds. I guess Rice for Life recently hosted, or is soon planning to host, a barbecue. And my friend found this circumstance to be ironic, bordering on hypocritical. After all, what could be more absurd than a group that stands up for life engaging in an activity that supports the practice of killing animals for food?

Was this argument really meant to be taken seriously? Does it really have anything going for it, other than condemning a group my friend disagrees with? I pointed out that presumably, Rice for Life is concerned about the killing of people (and of entities like fetuses that the group controversially takes to be people). That’s entirely consistent with being willing to kill animals. Here’s a perfectly coherent view: it’s bad to kill people, but it’s ok to kill animals. Most people, in America and worldwide, probably hold this view, and there’s no contradiction in it.

Now don’t get me wrong — I’m an ethically motivated vegetarian, and I think it’s morally wrong to support the factory farming industry. And I think that there are important substantive philosophical arguments to be made, questioning whether it’s really plausible to posit a morally significant sharp dividing line between people and other animals. I think that most decent people already have moral commitments to things like the unacceptability of the voluntary infliction of unnecessary suffering that imply that eating factory farmed meat is morally wrong. But these commitments are about empathy and not causing pain — they have nothing to do with a commitment to the sanctity of human life.

I pointed this out to my friend. I told her that being pro-life is totally separate from being vegetarian. Her response: “but don’t you think if you asked them if they’re opposed to suffering, they’d say yes?” And I said to her: “Well, maybe, but that’s probably true of almost everybody who eats meat, including you.”

I don’t see why Rice for Life should be more subject to criticism than any other group or person is for supporting the meat industry.

I think a commitment to the sanctity of human life, beginning at conception, is both metaphysically and morally very problematic. That’s the main point at which I disagree with the positions of groups like Rice for Life. And I think that this is an important dialectic, and that it’s very important for diverse people to understand and relate to one another, and talk through their ideas and come to real understandings of the points at which they disagree. Refuting caricature straw man arguments does not further this goal. In fact, it makes it further. (“Further” is a WEIRD term!) Charging political opponents with phony inconsistencies is just as bad — it dehumanizes those who disagree.

“People who disagree with me are stupid.”
Or: “People who disagree with me are confused.”
Or: “People who disagree with me aren’t thinking very clearly.”

There are other less negative-looking ways to dehumanize political opponents, too. Some of them can even sound like compliments to the indiscriminating ear.

“She’s very Catholic, but she’s really nice.”
Or: “He’s a liberal, but he cares about right and wrong.”
Or: “He’s an Evangelical Christian, but he’s also very smart.”

These are all bad things to say. That’s not because they’re not true — all six of them sometimes are true. And all three of that first set *are* true of most of the people who disagree with you. They’re also true, of course, of most of the people who agree with you. They’re all bad things to say because they don’t help us get to the bottom of issues. They don’t help us think clearly. They get in our way.

Here’s a good exercise. (a) Find someone who is diametrically opposed to you with respect to political views. (b) Now consider some particular view that you disagree on. (c) Now think through your opponent’s point of view, and (d) think of what arguments he might make against your view. (e) Choose one of his arguments that is actually a good point, which you haven’t been recognizing clearly enough. (f) Consider it, recognize it, and figure out how this formerly-neglected point fits into your way of looking at things. (g) Repeat as often as possible.

(f) sometimes involves changing your view. (e) is the hardest step, but if you can’t do it, then you’re either not exposing yourself to intelligent and clear enough political opponents, or you’re being closed-minded. Either problem can be remedied.