In light of the ongoing recovery efforts in Haiti, David Brooks offers several observations regarding Haitian development as well as development in general. I certainly don’t agree with all of his analysis, but he makes some important and thought-provoking points. One is that development aid, which has amounted to trillions of dollars over the past several decades, has failed to deliver on its promises:
The countries that have not received much aid, like China, have seen tremendous growth and tremendous poverty reductions. The countries that have received aid, like Haiti, have not… There are no policy levers that consistently correlate to increased growth.
There is no question that the whole approach to development aid needs to be rethought. The many millions of dollars the US has spent on Haiti in the last 20 years alone demonstrate that. But that does not mean a William Easterly-style approach of doing away with it altogether is the proper solution. The key is not to stop investing, but rather to radically change the priorities of the investment. Brooks, for example, points out that small-scale development projects are necessary, but clearly insufficient by themselves: Haiti may have the highest number of NGOs per capita on the planet.
Another issue he raises is culture:
Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape… Haiti, like most of the world’s poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
Now, these are tough words, and he does not cite any sources for these claims. Brooks has also demonstrated a pretty simplistic attitude toward culture in the past (for example, on China). However, he makes a salient point that forgives the lower-level inconsistencies, and that is the importance of seeing culture as an active component of the development process, not a neutral non-issue that has no consequences on the fate of a people. Witness, for example, the dramatic changes in English culture and social dynamics from the 16th century to the 19th century. In some ways, of course, this is a chicken-and-egg problem (does development cause changes in culture, or do changes in culture cause development?). But more attention and appreciation for culture and cultural attitudes would do a great deal of good as Haiti is rebuilt.
Finally, and equally politically incorrect as culture, is the importance of “locally led paternalism”:
…the programs that really work involve intrusive paternalism.
These programs, like the Harlem Children’s Zone and the No Excuses schools, are led by people who figure they don’t understand all the factors that have contributed to poverty, but they don’t care. They are going to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance.
A tough, no-nonsense and results-oriented approach has been lacking from most approaches to international economic development, Brooks argues. I would add that this is related to the overall lack of accountability and responsibility that is by now a cliche in most development efforts. If a given NGO helps to improve people’s lives somewhere, that’s great. But if they spend millions of donated dollars, recruit dozens of locals into some project and get the seal of approval from the UN, but ultimately contribute absolutely nothing to anyone’s life, what happens? Do any heads role? Is anyone held responsible? Is there any guarantee that this expensive mistake is not repeated?
In addition to these issues of cultural, social and financial strategy, large-scale economic realities need to be taken into account. Unfortunately, as I have mentioned in the past, the Obama administration does not seem to be taking the opportunity of the economic crisis to revisit some of the fundamental assumptions surrounding economic policy, either domestically or developmentally. How about protectionism vs free trade? How about infant industry protection? How about outsourcing cheap labor and the false doctrine of “comparative advantage” (which, in many ways, has the effect of perpetuating underdevelopment and dependence)? Brooks, being a conservative, is not allowed to raise these issues (if he even sees them as issues at all). But the destructive historical impact of economic policies pushed by the rich countries on the poor are extremely important to consider in Haiti going forward.
So these are unusual ideas, to be sure. Certainly unusual as far as traditional development strategies are concerned. And that is precisely the point. No one can reasonably argue that the traditional approaches to development and poverty elimination have been a success. They have helped to alleviate some of the harshest suffering, they have been effective (as they are now) at managing crises and calamities, and they have enabled average people to keep their heads above water generation after generation. This is not success, and this is not development. This is life support. It is obviously vital in emergency situations, but it has proven to be profoundly insufficient for actually transforming societies, which should be our real ultimate goal from a moral, financial and logical point of view.
A sure-to-be extensive and grueling legal struggle has gotten underway in California, as pro- and anti-gay marriage factions begin the long and winding road toward a widely-predicted Supreme Court decision on that issue. As with many other things in life, who will win? That’s right, the lawyers. We can all rest assured of that. Too bad nobody realizes that there is a much simpler, more elegant, fairer (to all parties concerned) and cheaper way to resolve this issue once and for all: simply get the state out of the business of marriage.
This one is blindingly simple. Marriage is a religious institution at its heart; in the United States, we have a little thing called the separation of church and state. Therefore, it follows that the state has no business getting involved in marriage. It remains a matter for religious communities and their churches, mosques, synagogues and temples to deal with as they see fit. And thus it remains an essentially private matter, right where it belongs.
The state’s concern lies in contracts. In centuries past, the state wormed its way into the marriage business for the sake of consolidating its authority over individuals’ lives. But regardless of the history, today the state is mainly concerned (or should be concerned) with who is due how much money when someone dies, who enjoys what hospital visitation rights, and who gets a tax break on what basis—the stuff of contracts and legal arrangements. And note that there is absolutely nothing inherent in any of these things that relates directly to love, companionship, commitment—the types of things normally associated with marriage in the popular and the traditional mind. That is why those types of legal arrangements have been, are and will continue to be created for non-romantically involved individuals.
The state is concerned with contracts, and should remain concerned with contracts. The recent rash of controversy surrounding gay marriage points to the fact that the state has no natural role in observing, registering, regulating or legitimating the kinds of private phenomena that give marriage its real significance.
Regarding the legal consequences, Elisabeth Eaves has given some insight:
Abolishing state marriage would raise a number of questions of the who-gets-what-when variety. Throughout much of history, marriage was a business contract, and though we eschew that notion in our romantic times, money is still pretty much what the legal paperwork is about: Who inherits, who gets dental benefits, who gets what when a relationship is dissolved.
These things, though, aren’t that hard to work out. We already legally recognize next of kin, and write wills to determine inheritance. It wouldn’t be a huge leap to allow every person to declare a benefits-receiving partner of his or her choice–who could be a romantic partner, an elderly relative or an ailing friend.
Under the new regime, if someone wishes in the future to register with the state the kinds of legal rights and the type of legal relationships that now characterize heterosexual marriage, they will be able to do so, between themselves and one other person of the same gender (whom they may or may not be romantically involved with), with multiple other adults (thereby dealing with the issue of polygamy, which is surely on the historical heels of the current gay marriage debate), with relatives, etc. The government shouldn’t care who wants to establish what arrangement with whom, just that it’s registered for public knowledge and benefit.
Those who would raise complaints about this “astounding assault on tradition” (which isn’t even as much of a tradition as they like to think), simply need to be pointed in the direction of Sweden and Holland. Not exactly failed states.
A very common argument of many religious people is that a secular, humanist or materialist worldview leads inevitably to moral relativism. Since, on this way of thinking (they argue), there is nothing inherently special or unique about human beings—we are just bags of water and proteins who happen to have evolved some tendency toward helping each other—there cannot be any basis for an absolute or objective morality. Furthermore, unlike in the religious mindset in which the divine invests the universe with a certain fundamental moral order, a materialist or naturalist universe has no such inherent moral order. Humanity provides no basis for morality, and the universe provides no basis for morality, so in the materialist world there simply is no basis for morality, hence moral relativism—anything potentially goes.
I recently made a post arguing that religion, in fact, leads to moral relativism. Similarly, I will now argue that secularism or secular reason can lead to moral absolutes. And the argument is just as simple: evidence. Or more precisely, fidelity to objective evidence. Secular reason has it, and religion doesn’t.
Absolute truth
If secular reason is defined as a tool for understanding the world that is based on objective evidence and arguments derived thereof, then we see that by its very nature it necessarily leads to absolute truths. Based on certain mathematical facts, verifiable scientific observations and internally consistent arguments, people were able to determine conclusively that the earth is round, against all previous assumptions as well as long-established common sense. In the same way, absolute truth about the world and how it operates has been consistently revealed over the centuries by this kind of secular reasonable methodology.
Why should the methodology for answering moral questions be any different than for other questions? Many religious people accept that science can help us explain what the stars are made of, how fast the earth spins on its axis, or what causes sickness and disease, but suddenly begin to have doubts about the potential for evidence-based reason to answer whether murder is right or wrong, or when violence is justified.
But the only way human beings can know anything is through the application of reason, no matter how intangible or abstract the nature of the question is. Everyone comes to conclusions based on some thought process. A religious person, for example, will answer the question of whether or not we should murder by appealing to god, to the moral order of the universe created by god, and to theological arguments dealing with free will. Thus, they use a certain kind of evidence and a certain kind of argument to answer those questions. And so, in spite of themselves, they are using evidence-based reason to understand things, although in an incomplete and ultimately self-defeating manner.
Religion, by its nature, is ultimately unreliable for moral questions (and all questions) because it lacks an objective standard of knowledge. But secular reason has such a standard: evidence. That evidence can come in many forms, tangible or intangible. Arguments can be made that rely heavily on physical observations, or on intangible deduction or induction. But the basic nature of the process remains the same.
Religion fails on moral truth for the same reason it fails on all truth, and secularism succeeds for the opposite reason.
So, then, what is the basis for morality in a secular world?
William Lane Craig argues in the following video that in a naturalist or materialist worldview (which assumes that only this world exists) there is no basis upon which to claim that humans are inherently special or unique or deserving of some special treatment, relative to anything else in existence.
But this is simply not true. Without going too deeply into the details of a secular objective morality, we can say, for example, that humans are special because they are us. That is, we want to survive and thrive and continue to improve our lives and enhance our existence. Therefore we should do the things that further those goals. So while the religious perspective ultimately justifies humans by pointing to god, and then justifies god by pointing back to god, this secular approach would do the exact same thing, except replacing god with humans. Note that the religious have no problem at all with a basis for morality that is justified by itself—they just have a problem with that basis being humans.
The student in the video asked why humans themselves can’t simply be the basis for morality. Craig responded that “it’s arbitrary. There’s simply no reason to invest homo sapiens and their herd morality… with the kind of objectivity that you want…”
Allow me to reshuffle this scenario, and turn it against Craig: Craig asks a secular person why God itself can’t simply be the basis for morality. And a secular person responds “it’s arbitrary. There’s simply no reason to invest God and God’s morality with the kind of objectivity that you want, Dr. Craig.”
Note that the logic works both ways! And this indicates that, when it comes to first causes (for morality or anything else), regardless of the philosophy in question, logic and the normal rules of causality break down no matter what the first cause is designated to be. This is a permanent problem for any moral philosophy, religious or secular.
So any religious person, like Craig, who would ask “on what basis do you invest humans with such specialness?” should be answered with a question: “on what basis do you invest god with such specialness?” Again, the answer must come back: the thing itself. And if that is an adequate explanation for god, then it is an adequate explanation for humans. Except, not really. It is much more legitimate for humans, because we know that humans exist. The same cannot be said for God. For that reason alone, a morality based on humans is superior to a morality based on God.
The idea of a “war on terror” was created after September 11th by political leaders seeking to rally the country, and responding to an unprecedented attack on the United States. It made sense for a little while. Then, when reason and clearheadedness came back on the scene, and emotion and passion receded back to their proper place, the stark inadequacy of that concept became manifestly obvious.
Firstly, it is totally illogical to wage a war on “terror.” Terror is typically taken to mean extreme fear or anxiety, in common parlance. Therefore, unless American leaders plan on banning horror movies, it’s not going to happen. People will always be scared of something (rationally or not). ”War on terror” has often been rephrased as “war on terrorism.” This, too, is problematic. Terrorism is a tactic. You can’t wage war on a tactic. We may as well be waging a war on guerrilla fighting.
Semantics, many on the other side would argue. The point, they would say, is that we are engaged in a war against Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who want to destroy our civilization. And here is where real problems arise (although the narrow-minded emotionalism and woodenheadedness embodied in the concept of “war on terror” is disturbing in its own right, to be sure).
There are wars, and then there are wars
Traditionally “war” has been a country-to-country phenomenon. Military machines were mobilized on a large scale, entire populations sacrificed, all governmental policy was impacted to some degree, geopolitical realities were altered and global economic dynamics were disrupted or remade. Can anyone honestly say that any of these things have come to pass, over 8 years after September 11th and the proclamation of this “war”? Is the world or the America of January 10th, 2010 meaningfully different than that of September 10th, 2001?
Of course there have been important changes during that time, many of which were already underway years before September 11th, some of which were not. But it would seem wishful thinking to assert that America or the world has been significantly remade during this time specifically as a result of this conflict. Any changes that the US has experienced have not been the stuff of which “war” is made. Now we have to arrive at the airport an hour earlier. This is war. Yawn.
Aside from the real, painful, armies-versus-armies type of war, any other use of the word “war” has usually been metaphorical in nature (the war on drugs, war on crime, etc). Yet many people have and continue to take the metaphorical idea of a “war on terror” (such as it ever was metaphorical) to another level and really, truly consider this a matter of war, comparable to the war waged against Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan (the Islamists even have their own kamikazes).
The nature of the enemy
Aside from the inconvenient truth that no war has been declared in this war (isn’t there something in the Constitution about that?), if the US were at war, a quick question: which country is it warring against?
That’s right, there is none. The greatest military power the human race has ever known is waging war against a religious movement and the groups that compose it. They may be deadly dangerous, and they are. But that doesn’t mean a war is called for.
More importantly, there is a profound danger in continuing to think of this conflict as a “war.” That danger lies in the fundamental nature of the enemy. Al Qaeda, its allies and their movement do not have a country (indeed, the kind of political order they seek is antithetical to the nation-state system altogether). Unlike the foolish assumptions inherent in the “war” effort in Afghanistan, they need ownership over not one inch of land to succeed in their effort to undermine western civilization. They move outside, between and within nations, including the United States itself.
Insofar as war has traditionally been waged outside a nation’s borders (as a nation cannot logically wage war against itself), against targets that could only be outside, it could never harm itself in any way. But since the Islamic terrorists can be inside the country, harm can potentially be done to the country itself. Like cancer treatment that kills healthy cells along with the cancerous ones, this kind of approach can be lethal. Of course, the crucial difference between cancerous cells in the body and the terrorists in question is that one is permanently stationed within, while the other can move in or out.
So, although perhaps a bit esoteric, this is an extraordinarily fundamental issue. War, along with all of its other characteristics, has only ever been a matter of violence, strategy and attention directed outward from a nation. Now there is the unsavory potential for it to be directed inward, into the nation. This is the stuff from which martial law is made.
Though unsavory, this potential is not, strictly speaking, unprecedented. Massive campaigns have been and are waged by governments against “enemies within” all over the world. And this has occurred either after a society is poor and underdeveloped, or as a prelude to its decline.
A very common argument of many religious people is that a secular, humanist or materialist worldview leads inevitably to moral relativism. I will deal with the fact that secular reason can, in fact, produce moral absolutes in another post. For now, I will take the religious’ assertion and turn it on its ear: religion, in fact, leads to moral relativism in many ways. How can this be? Simple: evidence.
In a framework of secular reason, evidence can be used to support or refute arguments of all kinds. For a long time, people thought that the sun went around the earth. Then new evidence arose indicating that the earth goes around the sun. So one idea, one well-established and long-held assumption, was thrown out because the objective observations no longer supported it. Naturally, the Catholic church in medieval Europe refused to accept the scientific evidence—and here is where the rubber meets the road. Whereas it was impossible to believe rationally that the sun went around the earth after the overwhelming evidence was made clear, the religious nonetheless continued to believe that for a long time. We see that in a religious world, many possible explanations can be held by many people, because there is no fundamental standard of knowledge. By contrast, in the world of secular reason, there is a fundamental standard—objective evidence.
That objective evidence can be misunderstood, practitioners of secular reason can be mistaken, errors in analysis can be made during experimentation, etc. But the essential, inherent nature of science and secular reason ensure that only claims that meet a certain standard are ultimately accepted as legitimate knowledge. Religion has no such standard. Much of religious knowledge comes down to what “God” wants or decrees. But how are we supposed to know when god is really talking to someone, and when they are just hallucinating? If someone claims to have special knowledge of what god wants, how do we know they’re telling the truth, or if they are lying through their teeth?
There is absolutely no way of knowing, because there is absolutely no objective standard of knowledge inherent in religion. And here is where moral relativism comes into play.
In religion, one person can claim that “God told me to stop committing violence and to become peaceful and to work tirelessly to help the poor,” while another person can claim “God told me to stop being peaceful and working to help the poor, and to start committing violence.” How do we know which one is telling the truth? How do we know what god really wants people to do, if anything? We cannot. Therefore, both claims are equally legitimate. Moral relativism.
Many religious people will say “this is an illegitimate argument because it is an established fact that god wants specific things.” Really? How do you know? How do you know that a special messiah arose thousands of years ago, as opposed to someone hallucinating thousands of years ago?
It becomes a matter of faith. And that is precisely the point. If one is to operate one’s belief system on the basis of faith, then anyone can have faith in anything, and no one will ever be able to refute their argument. If I truly, deeply believe that God desires for me to kill, rape and destroy, how can anyone prove me wrong?
Sure enough, history bears this out. There have been many religions that have supported violence, and many religions that have supported peace. More significantly, within particular religions, there have been countless individuals that have supported violence, and used their holy texts to justify it, and there have been countless individuals that have supported peace, and used the same holy texts to justify it! The fact that no final, binding and unequivocal moral standard can be provided by religion is demonstrated by the continued emergence of violence and oppression securely within the walls of religions that many claim are “basically peaceful.” Islam has its transnational terrorists and burqas, Christianity has its abortion clinic bombers and witch hunts, Judaism has its Israeli settlers.
So if religion can’t give us binding moral answers, what can? Secular reason, and that is the subject of another article.
