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August 19, 2005
The Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford

Dichotomies and Spectrums

     We don’t live in a world of black and white. We not only have a full range of gray tones, we also enjoy a wide palate of colors. The world is not divisible into clear categories of hot or cold, fast or slow, short or long, light or dark. There are many gradations to almost every measure we can make of the universe, at least at the macroscopic level that we experience. We live in a world of many spectrums that interact with us and with each other in complex and wonderful ways.

     Unfortunately, many people cling to a dichotomous worldview that says that the things people do are either good or evil. “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” In large part, this type of worldview is a result of certain religious traditions that seek to coerce conformity by demonizing anyone who strays from the “one true path.” Clearly that is not the only factor contributing to these types of beliefs. Ideas are influenced by many different sources. But any time you are talking about the idea of good and evil, religion is a major influence.

     Yet the idea that the things people do in the real world are either all good or all evil is pretty easily refuted. Any action that any person can take will have many consequences, like ripples spreading out on a pond. Some of those consequences will be beneficial to one or more persons. Some of those consequences will be harmful to one or more persons. A single consequence of an action may harm some people, and benefit others, or it may both harm and benefit the same person in different ways. The balance between benefit and harm will vary, depending on the particular action that has been taken, often in ways which were entirely unforeseen and unforeseeable by the actor.

     This may seem somewhat abstract, so let me give a couple of examples. An action which many would deem entirely good would be to save the life of a dying child. The beneficial consequences of that type of action will outweigh the harmful consequences in all or nearly all cases. Yet there will also be harmful consequences from that action. That child, in the course of his or her life, will do things that hurt other people. Those harms mayor may not be intentional, but they will happen. Unless the child is a sociopath, the number of beneficial things that the child will do are likely to far outweigh the harmful things. But the saving of the child does have both positive and negative consequences.

     At the other extreme, many people would say that the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the middle of a populated city is entirely evil. The harmful consequences of that action will far outweigh the beneficial consequences. Yet there will also be beneficial consequences. Some of the people who die in the blast will be prevented from harming other people in other places. The bomb will probably prevent the future harm of numerous killers, rapists and thugs. That does not make the benefits outweigh the harm, but there will be benefits. Nothing that we can do is all good or all evil. Our acts fall somewhere on a spectrum where benefits predominate at one end, and harm predominates at the other end.

     The danger of dividing human actions into good and evil is that we fail to recognize that the world is much more richly nuanced than that. This “either/or” attitude ignores both benefits and harms when they come from unlikely sources. It is often paired with a belief that following simple rules like “thou shalt not bear false witness” must always be followed, and will always result in good, even though a small lie can sometimes save thousands of lives. Recognizing the fact that the world does not fit neatly into dichotomous categories gives us a better chance of  minimizing harm and maximizing our positive contributions to the world

     We never know what all of the consequences of our actions will be. Chaos theory tells us that a butterfly flapping its wings today can alter the course of a hurricane next year. Yet this uncertainty does not mean that anything we choose to do will be morally acceptable. We all need to strive to maximize the beneficial consequences of our actions, and to minimize the harm we do. We won’t always achieve that goal, but we need to try. We are more likely to achieve that goal when we have a realistic understanding of the way that our actions affect the world around us.





Kevin Morford is a political activist and an attorney in private practice in the Anchorage area.  He can be reached at kmorford@insurgent49.com.
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The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.