Sbusa’s Weblog

Dateline February 29, 2008

I saw on the news on Wednesday, 2/27/08, these two reporters arguing about the morality of the show Dateline.  Dateline is a show where they film the process of special police going online and posing as teenage girls to catch sexual predators and then once they are caught, they film the police showing up at the house, busting the guy, taking him down to prison, questioning him with the intent really of humiliating him by reading conversations the predator had with what he thought was a teenage girl and making him admit to the perverted things he said.  I personally love this show and think it’s hilarious, though sometimes really disturbing what these guys say because I know that these are all true stories.   Anyway, apparently there was a recent episode where they targeted a guy, and upon arriving at his house he flipped out and threatened to kill himself and then apparently went through with it to save himself the humiliation.

I heard the first reporter state the case and voice her disgust at the lengths the media would go to for what she called “good television”.  She said that the guys running the show basically heard this guy’s suicide threats and thought “man, this will make great t.v.” and rushed to follow through with the episode and then the guy really did kill himself.  The second reporter completely disagreed with this statement and basically said, “This isn’t Jerry Springer; this is Dateline.”  He was arguing that these are real sexual predators and that the guy was receiving the consequences of his actions, and how he chose to respond to them is not the media’s fault.  The woman argued that he should have had the right to an attorney or something and the man refuted that he did in fact have the right to an attorney but he chose to act rashly and kill himself.  The guy was very unsympathetic and sort of kept saying “boo hoo” over all of the woman’s statements, yet I do think he had a point.

After I saw this I planned on bringing it up in class, but as we’re sort of focusing on a stead fast topic right now, I decided to blog it out.   This is a philosophical issue.  How do we deal with someone who has so severely violated moral values?  This is a sexual predator that preyed on thirteen and fourteen-year-old girls.  Had this guy not committed suicide, there would have been no News report questioning as to whether it is right to go to the lengths of humiliating this guy on national television rather than going through the whole process of arrest and conviction without the cameras.  One good thing to be said about this show is that it does not film mere suspects of these crimes; by the time these guys make the show they are in fact proven to be sexual predators.

I think that this show is a great way of exposing how twisted these sexual predators actually are.  I have always known obviously that sexual predators are out there on the internet, but I have been pretty shocked by some of the things I have learned on this show.  For instance, I have seen episodes where a married couple was in on luring this girl to their house, and it wasn’t just a forty-year-old man that lives at home with his mom.  By watching this show, you are exposed to how normal these predators may look to the rest of society at first glance at their lives.  This show can be funny and is made with a twist of entertainment rather than just a normal News story, which attracts more viewers and thereby creates more awareness.  I think that this show is a clever way to tune people into what’s really out there and to advise parents to really monitor who their teenagers are talking to on the internet and meeting places.  I honestly don’t think that the people running the show were hoping that this guy’s suicide threats were genuine, and though perhaps that could have been better dealt with, I agree with the male news reporter that this guy deserved the humiliation as a consequence of his actions and it was his choice to choose suicide over accepting the consequences of his actions.  I don’t think that the show should be demeaned at all for what happened on that episode because I think that the producers’ intent is more than just “making good television”.

Determining Rights December 10, 2007

I was thinking the other day about what would happen if someone used an electric collar on his or her child. That would be thought to be inhuman and cruel. But then, why isn’t it thought to be so for dogs? Because humans are different beings, they think, feel, and imagine. We also can communicate with each other better through language, and therefore have other methods of teaching. These are what we call human characteristics. These are what give us rights, what make us human. If all of this is true, then what is the difference between a dog and a person who lies in a hospital bed in a vegetative state? I am talking about a person who cannot think or feel or imagine or communicate in any way; in other words a person who can do nothing more than breathe, eat, drink, and have a heartbeat. What separates that person from dogs despite that he or she is physically a human being? We determine why humans have rights and dogs do not with these human characteristics, so shouldn’t it follow that a person in a vegetative state that lacks these human characteristics should not have rights? Logically, it makes sense and is something that we should think about.

Life’s Meaning December 10, 2007

  Mr. Huston said something like “If you can get out of bed in the morning, your life has meaning.”  I don’t like this statement because it’s so broad and generalizing.  If you’re out of your bed and getting through each day then you believe that your life has meaning?  What if you don’t?  I think it’s possible to move through your day and go on with your life without thinking that there is anything meaningful to what you are doing.  You may do things because they give you temporary happiness, but just because you’re working towards a goal doesn’t mean that you find that goal to be a meaningful one.  If you don’t find momentary pleasures meaningful, and that is what you drag on your life for, then how is your life have purpose?

I just don’t see the point in delving into what is and isn’t meaningful because it’s all based on opinion.  Sure if you get to be 30 years old and you want to do something that you find meaningful with your life, then it’s good to question whether or not you are doing so.  But that’s a personal decision.  We can’t determine if other lives are meaningful because they might be to that individual.  What if someone literally doesn’t get out of bed ever and just lies around and does nothing but think and stew in boredom, and he or she finds that life meaningful?  How can we question it?  There are no laws or rules set down to determine a meaningful life, so I have a hard time looking into different situations and deciding on whether or not they have purpose.  It all comes down to different opinions anyway.

The Difference November 26, 2007

I hate when people ask what the reason for war or famine or genocide is.  There is always a reason.  I think if we are going to take this class, we really need to differentiate between the words “reason” and “purpose”.  There is a reason for everything, even if we don’t like it.  There is a reason that Bush went to war with Iraq, even if it was to finish what his father didn’t or if it was truly to find weapons of mass destruction.  There is a reason for genocide, and it’s hatred and racism.  There is a reason for famine, and it’s poverty and lack of resources and lack of people who care.  There is a reason for a child to die at an early age, and that is because he got hit by a car or because of a fatal illness he suffered from.  That isn’t to say that these things have purpose.

Sometimes people find meaning in things that others don’t.  I’m not going to get into individual deaths, but what about genocide and war?  Hitler saw the Holocaust to be very meaningful, I’m sure.  The crusades were meaningful to those who believed God was on their side.  Yet things like war and murder and hatred are meaningless, while peace and love are thought to hold purpose.  Why?  Someone who grew up in the ghetto joins a gang and hates the world.  He or she robs people and shoots people, and then gets killed in a fight, or maybe even lives out his or her life and dies naturally.  Either way he or she dies.  What makes his life meaningless next to the person who worked at a shelter in a struggling city and was never famous or anything and never had a lot of friends but made a difference to those who entered his or her life?  They both die.  The people they impact die.  Life cycles on and on until both are out of the picture.  Let’s take it further.  Shakespeare.  Why was his life meaningful?  Because he was one of the greatest poets and playwrights of all time?  Because his plays and poems still touch the lives of generations today?  Is life’s meaning based solely on how long that person is remembered or how many people allow that person to touch their lives?  What if I loved the boy from the ghetto and he touched my life despite his flaws?  Does that make his life meaningful because I loved him?

Life’s meaning is based solely on other’s opinions and people’s preference.  I know people who just hate Shakespeare.  To them, his life has no more meaning than the spider they swatted against the wall.  There is no meaning.   There is talk and opinion and stereotypes.  I could have worked my whole life towards an Olympic event and won it and then my country lost… what’s the point?  We find our own meanings, but no one can decide what is and isn’t meaningful because there is no one meaning.  Still, there’s always a reason.

The Less Obvious Purpose November 26, 2007

I remember the end of one of our Philosophy classes we laughed about certain things humans do that don’t make sense.  Sports seemed so pointless.  Then someone brought up art as another pointless thing that humans do.  It was what was on my mind at the time when she said it; that it seems stupid to see something and then decide to draw it exactly on paper.   A second later, however, I felt like an idiot, because that is just one form of art.  Paintings, especially these days, rarely are meant to measure exactly what a visual scene depicts.  A lot of modern art is portrayed through grids, or messes of paint thrown at a canvas, or sometimes even just a piece of canvas mounted on the wall.  It’s not “Hey, I bet that I can draw that apple exactly the way it looks.”  It’s “Hey, look at what I see when I look at the apple.  Look at the way that I view the world.”  Art is expression.

Poetry, painting, even theatre.  I think someone did actually bring up theatre as “Wow, let’s pretend to be these people for two hours.”  But plays are stories; they are visual representations of what the writer was trying to bring to the world, and a good actor is someone who understands people and understands the world and can fall into a character and learn his or her thought process and way of life.  Acting isn’t just going up there and learning lines and playing pretend.  I took a playwriting/theatre intensive program at Sarah Lawrence College over summer, and I learned about the things that people put themselves through to really understand and become their characters.  They might not eat or sleep for a week or more to comprehend the hunger and desperation of their character’s living situation.  A less extreme scenario was when my theatre teacher once bought a certain pair of shoes and wore them everywhere for a couple of months to feel the way his character walked and the way he held himself.

Okay, enough about art.  What about sports?  I love sports.  I love playing them and I love watching them.  In both situations they bring people together, either as a team or as fans.  The adrenaline is such a rush.  Are sports just another way that people express themselves?  Stereotypes.  The athlete is someone who enjoys competition, even thrives under it.  The athlete craves the sense of belonging to something, is a team player, loves people, loves the game.  The athelete seeks wisdom to improve his or her game.  Meanwhile, the artist seeks worldly wisdom.  The artist does not necessarily want to improve his or her self or even the world, but seeks to understand.  The artist wants to express and be heard, even if only by his or her self.

How can I explain why humans do what they do?  Why things like sports and art are such a big part of culture… These things date back to ancient history.  People had to find something to do when they weren’t working or taking care of their families.  The results were intriguing because people could do certain things that gave other people good feelings, but had no obvious purpose.  People are awed by physical strength portrayed in sports, the visions of others that enlighten them to a whole new way of thinking, a song’s melody that sympathizes with the way they are feeling or that one uplifting verse that just makes people happy or pumped.  People needed something that was separate from abiding by morals or going to work or being with their family… but there was no apparent meaning behind these things except that they felt good or “to get away”.  Maybe that’s why society honors them so much.  Greeks honored physical strength and beauty.  Gaelic Ireland held poets and druids to the highest staure.

Today, the adding of purpose to these things is more than just beauty or respect in the eyes of a god.  It’s about money.  That’s why some people “sell out”.  Would we really call songs like “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne or “Crank That” by Soulja Boy art or honorable?  What about baseball players that have the highest batting average and take a whole bunch of steroids?  They have the physical beauty, they portrayed the physical strength; does it matter how they did it?  Are what about players and artists that are spoiled and rude and selfish but are still rich and famous and have a lot of fans?  Still, people benefit from the songs and the teams benefit from the players, so they get the fame and the respect and more money than our heart surgeons.  We have to have things that don’t make a difference in our lives as obviously as a good job and a healthy family do; and although I enjoyed laughing about it in class, I think that the way we were going, we could have made anything sound stupid and pointless.

Decision Making and Emotions November 8, 2007

       Do we need to factor in emotions when making decisions?  In my opinion, emotions are what stop us from making selfish decisions.  Sure, we can make decisions based on what we know is right, but how do we know what is right without factoring in feelings?  When I hold the door open for someone, I do it because I know it is right based on what I have felt, not because society or religion has told me it’s right.  Subconsciously, I remember times when I have been carrying a lot of stuff and felt grateful that someone opened the door for me, or when I felt more welcome in a building because someone had thought to do that.  That moral is based off of feeling.  It feels good to do it for someone else, because you know that it helped that person, and you can remember feeling good when someone helped you in that way.  When deciding whether or not to cheat on a test, how are we supposed to understand that it is wrong to do that if we wouldn’t feel guilty in doing so?  I suppose that Mr. Huston would argue that I can simply consider that I might get caught, or that cheating, based on principle, would be taking advantage of another person.  But what does that information do for me if I am not taking emotions into account?  Getting caught would not benefit me, so I might choose not to based on that decision, but that is still a selfish decision then, even if I am choosing what is deemed to be the right thing.  Suppose that I can get away with it though; thinking of the other person’s point of view would require me to care about their rights, and therefore feel guilty for violating them.

I just don’t see how we can wipe emotion out of the process of decision making.  Even thinking I’ll get caught is me worrying about the consequences, and anxiety is an emotion.  Too literal?  How about I am considering that I might end up with a bad outcome, and therefore not feel so great?  Decision making requires caring, and caring requires emotion.  Without emotion and experience, we wouldn’t understand why we have the morals we have.  I’m not saying that decision making is based solely on feelings, but emotions definately factor into the process.

“Ethics in America” November 8, 2007

     Someone in class the other day said that the parents in the “Ethics in America II” seminar were being selfish when they refused to give their baby, who had severe brain damage but could see, feel, and hear, a surgery that she needed in order to live.  There is the doctor’s concerns that the parents see this child as a burden, as she will most likely never talk or get out of diapers.  In this case, the parents not wanting to deal with the hassle of raising such a child is stripping the baby of her rights.  The baby has the right to live, and now that this child has the ability to suffer, the doctors and lawyers can now consider what is in her best interests.  The case was that the baby will see, hear, learn, and recognize caregivers, but nothing more.  Were the parents being selfish?

If the parents are merely not wanting the burden of this child in their lives, then yes, I would consider them selfish in thinking only of their own best interests.  But the case was that these parents had been trying to have a baby for a long time, so it’s more likely that they wouldn’t be picky about their child’s health.  I think that more often deciding to allow your child to die when he or she is in such a state is based on the life the child would have otherwise.  If it were me, I couldn’t bear it.   If this were my child, and I was choosing to not have the surgery, that decision would be made out of the baby’s best interests.  Sure, not having the surgery would cause the child to suffer and eventually die, but I would rather that than have her live her life in a hospital bed, never being able to mature,  to go to school, to make friends, to have a family and a job and a life.  This baby might not even be able to talk or leave diapers, and if she does her life is still strictly limited.  That is not a life that I would ever wish on anyone, especially my own daughter.  The decision to allow the child to die, even if she suffers, is in my opinion in her best interests, and therefore not selfish.

A Life for a Life October 28, 2007

The other day we were talking about the death penalty and Mr. Huston brought up a good point.  One of the arguments for the death penalty is “A life for a life.”  In other words, you take one life away, we take your life away.  But this isn’t the case for any of our other crime punishments.  Like Mr. Huston said, if you rob someone’s house, you don’t as a punishment get your house robbed.  That wouldn’t make sense.  Yet, that argument for capital punishment exists.

  I understand that giving someone the death penalty stops them from killing again.  But really, killing someone who robbed a bank stops them from ever doing that again.  Why don’t we just kill someone for speeding?  That way it’s one less law breaker to deal with on the road.  We believe that by giving punishment, people can learn from their actions… unless they killed someone.  Can a murderer not learn from his or her actions?  Is that what we believe in our society when we support capital punishment?

Fair is Fair October 28, 2007

Life isn’t fair, though we want it to be.  The truth is that human nature is too flawed for life to be consistently fair.  Everyone wants fairness and justice.  But what if being fair or being just doesn’t benefit you?  What if it even results in your death?  It’s like when Mr. Huston said that he wouldn’t mind slavery coming back because he would love to have a couple of slaves, but when it came down to him having an equal chance of becoming a slave, he had to rethink his statement.  He wanted slavery as long as he was  the one to recieve a slave, not become one.

In a life that is based on pleasure, in other words a selfish life, fairness would not comply.  Fairness is splitting the last cookie with your younger sibling, but if you want the whole cookie and your life is based off of pleasure, then you would eat the whole cookie.

  How can fairness and justice fit into the Utalitarian way of thinking?  In Utalitarian way of thinking, it only matters that the majority of people are happy.  But who is to tell me that my happiness doesn’t matter because the majority is happy so that’s all that counts?  I mean, how do we determine who makes up the majority?  If the majority is happy, do we just stop striving for benefitting more people then?

Homosexuality is Natural October 19, 2007

    Why is it that we associate something being natural to be a good thing?  There are plenty of unnatural things in the world that people use and enjoy every day.  Some examples are air conditioning, computers, or vehicles.  Even cooking our meat isn’t a natural process.  Mr. Huston brought up the example of jealousy being a natural thing, but the consequences that come from it are not always good. 

           Moreover, why can’t we consider homosexuality as being natural?  If we can accept and understand that it is not a choice, that people are born gay, then wouldn’t it follow that it’s natural?  Homosexuality has occurred over centuries, and it also occurs between other mammals.  I think the real problem people have with gay marriage or gay relationships is that they’re not used to it.  Yes, it has occurred for a long time now, but it is recent that people have started to be openly gay.  Not wanting a homosexual marriage to be called “marriage” has nothing to do with keeping marriage sacred, it has to do with people being in denial, because like it or not, call it what you want, it’s a marriage.