On the virtue of gray

Originally published 3 April 2005

There is no bright side to the sto­ry of Ter­ri Schi­a­vo, nor would it have been my place to sug­gest to her loved ones an appro­pri­ate course of action.

But I am always aston­ished by those on the right who pro­fess the absolute sanc­ti­ty of life, then issue death threats against, say, Ter­ri’s hus­band Michael or doc­tors who per­form abor­tions, and those on the left who con­demn the use of ani­mals in med­ical research, for exam­ple, then attach bombs to the researchers’ cars. Last Sun­day’s New York Times had a sto­ry about a Mus­lim actress who has received Islam­ic death threats for shar­ing an on-screen kiss with a Hin­du actor.

That is to say, I dis­trust moral absolutes. It seems to me that any com­pas­sion­ate ethics must nego­ti­ate shades of gray, strug­gling as best one can to max­i­mize hap­pi­ness and min­i­mize harm.

Advances in med­i­cine, genet­ics, and repro­duc­tive research, espe­cial­ly, raise dif­fi­cult eth­i­cal issues for which past expe­ri­ence offers lit­tle guid­ance. That’s why hos­pi­tals and research labs have ethics com­mit­tees. Ide­al­ly, those com­mit­tees should reflect a broad range of eth­i­cal tra­di­tions, reli­gious, and secular.

Still, their work is not easy.

Absolute com­mand­ments — “Thy shalt not kill,” for exam­ple — have done lit­tle to help humans steer a com­pas­sion­ate course through his­to­ry. Cer­tain­ly, “Thy shalt not kill” did­n’t stop the many slaugh­ters past and present per­pe­trat­ed by those who pro­fess to hold the Com­mand­ments sacred. The very peo­ple who are most anx­ious to enshrine the Ten Com­mand­ments in hos­pi­tals and cour­t­hous­es are often the same peo­ple who sup­port cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment at home and mil­i­tary adven­tur­ism abroad.

Even such a broad-based moral prin­ci­ple as the Gold­en Rule — “Do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you” — can be ambigu­ous. For exam­ple, if I were in Ter­ri Schi­avo’s posi­tion, I would not want to be kept alive, but that does­n’t mean I would be com­fort­able pulling some­one else’s feed­ing tube, espe­cial­ly not that of my own wife or child. It is easy to feel sym­pa­thy for both Michael Schi­a­vo and Ter­ri’s par­ents; less easy to relate to those who sought to make polit­i­cal cap­i­tal out of an inher­ent­ly trag­ic situation.

What seems fair­ly cer­tain is that there is an innate altru­ism built into the human species that is a prod­uct of our evo­lu­tion­ary his­to­ry. The broad out­lines of that altru­ism have been incor­po­rat­ed into all of the world’s great reli­gions — includ­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments — but they also guide the actions of peo­ple who do not pro­fess any par­tic­u­lar faith. Altru­ism means rec­og­niz­ing that one’s own health and hap­pi­ness depends upon respect­ing the health and hap­pi­ness of others.

But know­ing the right thing to do isn’t always easy. The fact that I don’t cheat on my tax­es, run red lights, or express my anger by kick­ing the cat are no-brain­ers. Whether I eat fac­to­ry-farm ani­mals, dri­ve a hybrid car, or donate a sub­stan­tial part of my income to char­i­ty are trick­i­er ques­tions. Pulling the feed­ing tube from my own men­tal­ly inca­pac­i­tat­ed wife or child is a deci­sion I would make only after deep soul-search­ing and seek­ing the wis­dom of oth­ers whose moral sen­si­tiv­i­ty I respect.

Most impor­tant­ly, I don’t pre­tend to know the mind of the Cre­ator. I claim only to be human, and there­fore heir to all the ten­den­cies toward vice and virtue that go with being part of the human race. Like most peo­ple on the plan­et, I feel best about myself when I choose virtue over vice.

Our cur­rent regres­sion into moral abso­lutism has a par­al­lel in ancient Greek thought, as described by E. R. Dodds in the last chap­ter of his clas­sic book, The Greeks and the Irra­tional. He tells of the great age of intel­lec­tu­al dis­cov­ery that began with the foun­da­tion of the Lyceum in 335 BC, and con­tin­ued until about 200 BC. Hori­zons expand­ed. For the first time in his­to­ry, it did­n’t mat­ter where a per­son was born or what was his ances­try. Indi­vid­u­als began to con­scious­ly use tra­di­tions rather than be used by them. The sci­en­tif­ic way of think­ing was invent­ed and briefly flourished.

But there was, writes Dodds, a fear of free­dom, a long­ing for the old cer­tain­ties. Greek cul­ture slipped back into super­sti­tion and irra­tional­i­ty. The ancient gods regained their sway, and a con­fi­dent, cau­tious open­ness to gray revert­ed to the rigid polar­i­ties of black and white.

Gray isn’t easy, but it’s the plan­et’s best hope for a civ­i­lized future.