The Silver Jews are a band I like very much. I think their album, American Waters, is a quintessential album for anyone who is interested in 90s indie music with blues influences.... This song, Random Rules, is the first song from this album. Oh, and David Berman, the lead singer, is also a poet (I have his poetry book) and that accounts for why the lyrics are so fantastic...
Random Rules
In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.
Slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction.
Broken and smokin' where the infrared deer plunge in the digital snake.
I tell you, they make it so you can't shake hands when they make your hands shake.
I know you like to line dance, everything so democratic and cool,
But baby there's no guidance when random rules.
I know that a lot of what I say has been lifted off of men's room walls.
Maybe I've crossed the wrong rivers and walked down all the wrong halls.
But nothing can change the fact that we used to share a bed
and that's why it scared me so when you turned to me and said:
"Yeah, you look like someone
Yeah you look like someone who up and left me low.
Boy, you look like somene I used to know."
I asked the painter why the roads are colored black.
He said, "Steve, it's because people leave
and no highway will bring them back."
So if you don't want me I promise not to linger,
But before I go I gotta ask you dear about the tan line on your ring finger.
No one should have two lives,
now you know my middle names are wrong and right.
Honey we've got two lives to give tonight
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
張雨生 － 永公街的街長
这是张雨生在《台北，卡啦OK和我》的一首歌。虽然这不是他最受欢迎的歌曲，不过却是我最喜欢的。张雨生在做这张专辑时，说过他想做一张完全不考虑商业销售的专辑。也许是因为这种想法，所以才有这首歌吧。
詞：張雨生 作曲：張雨生
口白: 文 英
我來唸歌 請您仔細聽
那個永公街上 說有一個奇怪的人
他每天行來行去 面黑黑又打赤腳
不過他都行去滿滿的垃圾桶
找垃圾桶裡面 別人拋棄的東西
他只在附近遊蕩
全村的人都知道他
我喜歡這樣稱呼他
說他是永公街的街長
他不痴 也不是傻瓜
他不狂 也不常說話
他的世界裡用著吊詭文法
他是永公街的街長
不可以世俗斗量的情感
(不可以~)
不可以世俗斗量的牽絆
永公街的街長
他是文明社會的罪與罰
永公街的街長
像隻漂鳥因固執的追尋而跌下
(阿雄啊....回來吃飯哦....)
(回來吃飯哦....)
永公街的街長
他是文明社會的罪與罰
永公街的街長
像隻漂鳥因固執的追尋而跌下
永公街的街長
他在櫻花繽紛裡玩耍
永公街的街長
像隻漂鳥因逆風迷失了方向
永公街
的街長
永公街
的街長
永公街
的街長
永公街...
詞：張雨生 作曲：張雨生
口白: 文 英
我來唸歌 請您仔細聽
那個永公街上 說有一個奇怪的人
他每天行來行去 面黑黑又打赤腳
不過他都行去滿滿的垃圾桶
找垃圾桶裡面 別人拋棄的東西
他只在附近遊蕩
全村的人都知道他
我喜歡這樣稱呼他
說他是永公街的街長
他不痴 也不是傻瓜
他不狂 也不常說話
他的世界裡用著吊詭文法
他是永公街的街長
不可以世俗斗量的情感
(不可以~)
不可以世俗斗量的牽絆
永公街的街長
他是文明社會的罪與罰
永公街的街長
像隻漂鳥因固執的追尋而跌下
(阿雄啊....回來吃飯哦....)
(回來吃飯哦....)
永公街的街長
他是文明社會的罪與罰
永公街的街長
像隻漂鳥因固執的追尋而跌下
永公街的街長
他在櫻花繽紛裡玩耍
永公街的街長
像隻漂鳥因逆風迷失了方向
永公街
的街長
永公街
的街長
永公街
的街長
永公街...
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
没有A片的日子
(This was published a few years ago in a Malaysian magazine... according to a friend who is a good friend with the editors of the magazine, this short story kind of got them into trouble, as they received "warnings" from certain authorities about obscene language and content....)
阿正冷静地脱下手套，并且把整理好的东西放入运动袋里。他刚才已经很谨慎地用一块湿布把光碟擦了一遍，把可能遗留在光碟上的指纹擦掉，然后再把每片光碟都各自放入四方形的信封里。阿正确定没有遗漏任何东西后，便把运动袋的拉链拉上，然后把运动袋挂在自己的肩上。他把皮包放入牛仔裤的口袋，把香烟和打火机放入衬衫前的口袋，从书桌上拿起了车钥匙，然后就把风扇和电灯关上。风扇在停止旋转时发出了零件磨擦的声音，听起来好像一只垂死挣扎的野兽的惨叫声。虽然此时房间一片漆黑，不过阿正却熟练地打开了房间的门，穿过无人的客厅走到大门去。为了不吵醒正在沉睡的家人，因此阿正小心翼翼地打开了大门，然后在出门后也以同样程度的谨慎把大门锁上。他走下楼梯时点燃一根烟，并且在脑海中回想起刚才与好友康为之间的对话。
“已经决定这么做了？” 即使是通过电话交谈，不过阿正却可以想像康为在问这个问题时不可思议的表情。
“我考虑很久了。” 阿正用肩膀和头把电话听筒夹着，一边擦着光碟，一边对康为说。 “不会感到可惜吗？毕竟都已经收集很久了……” 康为对于阿正的嗜好最清楚了，因为他们彼此可以说在同时闯入这个世界。康为还记得当时的情形，两个中学生在非法在路边摆的摊子发现了三级片的光碟，踌躇了一阵后还是决定抛开在公民教育课时老师所给予的训导，鼓起勇气买下了其中一部三级电影。康为还记得那部三级片的名称，《太太的情人》。
“不会。我都说是考虑很久后的决定了。” 阿正坚决的声音把康为的思绪打断。
当阿正塞到四楼的住户时，他的心情已经没有刚开始时紧张了，也没有再神经质地四处张望了。他甚至开始地哼着一个轻松的调子，自言自语地描述着自己现在所做的事。嗯，给四楼的多数是欧美的色情片。这些都是真枪实弹的。嗯，这些光碟是康为、振国和我到新山买的。哈哈，我们第一次还亲自带过关卡，当时好不紧张，还差一点发誓从此以后不要冒这么大的险了。哈哈，后来知道原来有专送服务，才敢放胆去购买。哦，五楼的住户真幸运，得到了白石瞳的AV光碟。嗯，那是我最喜欢的AV女优哦。虽然身材不如饭岛爱或者吉野莎莉棒，脸孔也没有小圆泽可爱，不过却散发出了与其她AV女优不同的成熟气质。嗯，我最喜欢她的学生造型，天真无邪中带着狂野。哦，来到第六楼了，看看有什么。哎呀，这些都是从网上下载的A片，品质没有这么棒，都是一些没有什么剧情，直接就进入状况的剪接片段。当然，这也得看个人的喜好，就好像康为是像我一样比较喜欢有剧情的色情片，而振国就比较喜欢那种直接进入状况的片子。好了，到了七楼了。哦，是香港的三级片，做假的那种片子。哈哈，这类的片子看了不会让人兴奋，反而会让人觉得非常滑稽。嗯，这些香港的A片有多数都是徐锦江主演的吧。唉，这些住户真幸运，能够有人免费替他们提供A片。我以前就没有这么幸运了，十多岁的男生为了看A片，还省吃俭用呢。哈哈，或许那些原本不想生小孩的夫妇在看了我所赠送他们的A片后，会欲罢不能而不小心生出一个小孩。嗯，那我不就是在帮忙政府推动他们的生育计划吗？哦，他们应该颁发感谢状给我。哈哈。第九楼是饭岛爱的A片。嗯，虽然有些旧，是从VHS拷贝过来的，不过看了还让人有些怀旧。哈哈，我送是A片的邮差。
阿正冷静地脱下手套，并且把整理好的东西放入运动袋里。他刚才已经很谨慎地用一块湿布把光碟擦了一遍，把可能遗留在光碟上的指纹擦掉，然后再把每片光碟都各自放入四方形的信封里。阿正确定没有遗漏任何东西后，便把运动袋的拉链拉上，然后把运动袋挂在自己的肩上。他把皮包放入牛仔裤的口袋，把香烟和打火机放入衬衫前的口袋，从书桌上拿起了车钥匙，然后就把风扇和电灯关上。风扇在停止旋转时发出了零件磨擦的声音，听起来好像一只垂死挣扎的野兽的惨叫声。虽然此时房间一片漆黑，不过阿正却熟练地打开了房间的门，穿过无人的客厅走到大门去。为了不吵醒正在沉睡的家人，因此阿正小心翼翼地打开了大门，然后在出门后也以同样程度的谨慎把大门锁上。他走下楼梯时点燃一根烟，并且在脑海中回想起刚才与好友康为之间的对话。
“已经决定这么做了？” 即使是通过电话交谈，不过阿正却可以想像康为在问这个问题时不可思议的表情。
“我考虑很久了。” 阿正用肩膀和头把电话听筒夹着，一边擦着光碟，一边对康为说。 “不会感到可惜吗？毕竟都已经收集很久了……” 康为对于阿正的嗜好最清楚了，因为他们彼此可以说在同时闯入这个世界。康为还记得当时的情形，两个中学生在非法在路边摆的摊子发现了三级片的光碟，踌躇了一阵后还是决定抛开在公民教育课时老师所给予的训导，鼓起勇气买下了其中一部三级电影。康为还记得那部三级片的名称，《太太的情人》。
“不会。我都说是考虑很久后的决定了。” 阿正坚决的声音把康为的思绪打断。
“真的吗？唉，随便你吧。哈哈，振国听到你这个决定时还真有些不相信。他还以为你发疯了。” 康为笑着说。
“哈。我看他是因为少了一个可以交换A片的人而觉得可惜吧？那个大色狼。” 阿正说。
“喂。老实说，你真的不是一时冲动？” 康为关心地问。
“我为什么会一时冲动？你这句话什么意思？” 阿正的语气变得有些防备。
“没有什么意思，你别这么敏感嘛。” 康为察觉了阿正的紧张，因此决定不说出原本想说出口的安慰话。
“我哪有敏感？哎呀，难道一个人不能决定从此以后就不看A片吗？天啊，如果这个宇宙有所谓的地狱天堂的话，我可不想因为嗜好是看A片而无法上天堂啊。” 阿正调整了自己的心情后，有些调皮地说。
“对，对，对。放下A片，立地成佛。” 康为也陪着阿正瞎胡闹。
“哎呀，人总要长大嘛，不能一直原地踏步。” 阿正在说这段话时语气有些感慨。
“不过你看A片时也会长大嘛。” 康为开玩笑说。
“好冷的笑话。” 阿正有些讥讽地回应说。
“好了，好了，说正经的事啦。你可别被捉到哦。如果你被捉到的话，可是非常麻烦的。虽然我不是读法律的，不过用屁股想也知道罪名不轻。” 康为提醒阿正说。
“知道啦。我会小心的。你别担心。”
“还有。更重要的。”
“什么？”
“如果你在干完那件事后觉得后悔，别担心。其实你以前借我的A片我都有拷贝，因此你如果后悔的话，我这里还有存档。” 康为半认真半开玩笑地说。
“少来了你，别使我的决心动摇。”
“哈哈。”
当阿正把车子开出停车场时，他其实也不知道自己应该往那里去。他只知道自己不想在附近实行事前就决定好的计划。他在这一带已经住了很久了，有许多人认识他。虽然说已经是半夜了，不过他所认识的人都是夜猫子，因此万一被熟人撞到就不好了。因为是一件非法的事，所以越少人知道越好。阿正现在只想一个人孤独地执行自己的计划，不想被任何人打扰。因此，阿正决定把车子开到这个岛国另一端的组屋区执行他的计划。因为在他并没有任何朋友住在那个地区，所以不会有人认识他。阿正现在只想一个人安静，因此他没有像平常把车上的收音机打开，也同时把手机关掉。车子在空荡的快速公路奔驰时，从车外溢入车内的引擎声突现了阿正此时的心境。
只不过是二十分钟的时间，阿正就抵达目的地了。他一边在组屋区的小路慢慢地行驶，一边寻找适合的组屋。他在心中默默地算了算，有大概两百张光碟，一般组屋每搂大概有七到八户家庭，所以必须找大约二十五楼左右的组屋。当然，也不可以靠近邻里警岗，要不然给发现就麻烦了。阿正在组屋区的小路上漫无目的地绕了大约十分钟后，终于物色到一座适合的组屋。看起来至少有二十多层楼，离其它的组屋有一段距离，好像寂寞的巨人独自一样站立在空地旁。阿正把车子停在那座组屋楼下的停车场。在下车前他把手套穿上，并且戴上了墨镜和鸭嘴帽，以免任何目睹他的行为的人可以把他认出。他深呼吸了十秒左右后，便提起了放在前座的运动袋下车。
阿正一边战战兢兢地走向所选定组屋的信箱，一边四处张望，以确定周围没有任何闲杂人等。当阿正确认四周只有他一个人后，他便在信箱前把运动袋的拉链打开，然后伸手进入运动袋里取出第一批光碟。他有些神经质地再度确认四周围没有人后，便开始把光碟一张张地塞入住户的信箱里。阿正从最底层的住户开始，按照顺序把光碟塞入。每个住户的信箱都塞一张，不多也不少。
当阿正把车子开出停车场时，他其实也不知道自己应该往那里去。他只知道自己不想在附近实行事前就决定好的计划。他在这一带已经住了很久了，有许多人认识他。虽然说已经是半夜了，不过他所认识的人都是夜猫子，因此万一被熟人撞到就不好了。因为是一件非法的事，所以越少人知道越好。阿正现在只想一个人孤独地执行自己的计划，不想被任何人打扰。因此，阿正决定把车子开到这个岛国另一端的组屋区执行他的计划。因为在他并没有任何朋友住在那个地区，所以不会有人认识他。阿正现在只想一个人安静，因此他没有像平常把车上的收音机打开，也同时把手机关掉。车子在空荡的快速公路奔驰时，从车外溢入车内的引擎声突现了阿正此时的心境。
只不过是二十分钟的时间，阿正就抵达目的地了。他一边在组屋区的小路慢慢地行驶，一边寻找适合的组屋。他在心中默默地算了算，有大概两百张光碟，一般组屋每搂大概有七到八户家庭，所以必须找大约二十五楼左右的组屋。当然，也不可以靠近邻里警岗，要不然给发现就麻烦了。阿正在组屋区的小路上漫无目的地绕了大约十分钟后，终于物色到一座适合的组屋。看起来至少有二十多层楼，离其它的组屋有一段距离，好像寂寞的巨人独自一样站立在空地旁。阿正把车子停在那座组屋楼下的停车场。在下车前他把手套穿上，并且戴上了墨镜和鸭嘴帽，以免任何目睹他的行为的人可以把他认出。他深呼吸了十秒左右后，便提起了放在前座的运动袋下车。
阿正一边战战兢兢地走向所选定组屋的信箱，一边四处张望，以确定周围没有任何闲杂人等。当阿正确认四周只有他一个人后，他便在信箱前把运动袋的拉链打开，然后伸手进入运动袋里取出第一批光碟。他有些神经质地再度确认四周围没有人后，便开始把光碟一张张地塞入住户的信箱里。阿正从最底层的住户开始，按照顺序把光碟塞入。每个住户的信箱都塞一张，不多也不少。
当阿正塞到四楼的住户时，他的心情已经没有刚开始时紧张了，也没有再神经质地四处张望了。他甚至开始地哼着一个轻松的调子，自言自语地描述着自己现在所做的事。嗯，给四楼的多数是欧美的色情片。这些都是真枪实弹的。嗯，这些光碟是康为、振国和我到新山买的。哈哈，我们第一次还亲自带过关卡，当时好不紧张，还差一点发誓从此以后不要冒这么大的险了。哈哈，后来知道原来有专送服务，才敢放胆去购买。哦，五楼的住户真幸运，得到了白石瞳的AV光碟。嗯，那是我最喜欢的AV女优哦。虽然身材不如饭岛爱或者吉野莎莉棒，脸孔也没有小圆泽可爱，不过却散发出了与其她AV女优不同的成熟气质。嗯，我最喜欢她的学生造型，天真无邪中带着狂野。哦，来到第六楼了，看看有什么。哎呀，这些都是从网上下载的A片，品质没有这么棒，都是一些没有什么剧情，直接就进入状况的剪接片段。当然，这也得看个人的喜好，就好像康为是像我一样比较喜欢有剧情的色情片，而振国就比较喜欢那种直接进入状况的片子。好了，到了七楼了。哦，是香港的三级片，做假的那种片子。哈哈，这类的片子看了不会让人兴奋，反而会让人觉得非常滑稽。嗯，这些香港的A片有多数都是徐锦江主演的吧。唉，这些住户真幸运，能够有人免费替他们提供A片。我以前就没有这么幸运了，十多岁的男生为了看A片，还省吃俭用呢。哈哈，或许那些原本不想生小孩的夫妇在看了我所赠送他们的A片后，会欲罢不能而不小心生出一个小孩。嗯，那我不就是在帮忙政府推动他们的生育计划吗？哦，他们应该颁发感谢状给我。哈哈。第九楼是饭岛爱的A片。嗯，虽然有些旧，是从VHS拷贝过来的，不过看了还让人有些怀旧。哈哈，我送是A片的邮差。
当阿正把最后一张光碟塞入信箱后，他点燃了一根烟，并且迅速地离开现场，走回自己的车子去。虽然他很肯定自己在把光碟塞入信箱时并没有被任何人瞧到，不过做事还是谨慎一些比较好。他上车子后把手套、墨镜和鸭嘴帽脱下，然后放下了车窗抽着烟。刚才所分发的A片光碟比那座组屋的住户的数量少了一些，所以第二十四楼以上的住户都没有分到。阿正看了看车前的电子时钟。凌晨一点零五分。这比预期的还早了许多。阿正原本以为这个计划会需要几个小时的时间，没想到竟然一个小时左右就搞定了。他不想现在回家，因为还没有倦意的他如果回家的话，反而只会被自己房间所散发出的压迫感弄得闷闷不乐。因此，他决定开车四处兜风去，直到自己的情绪比较稳定为止才回家。
从今以后，就得过着没有A片的日子了，他漫无目的在马路上行驶时想。
不知不觉，阿正把车子开到了红灯区。他起初还没有留意到自己已经来到了红灯区，直到他看到沿着路边站着的花枝招展的女郎们，才意识自己无意间闯入了这个城市诱惑最深的一条街。妓女们有些无趣地站在钟点酒店前面，偶尔对路过的男人招揽。阿正看着打扮妖媚和穿得让人不自禁有遐想的妓女，下半身突然有一股冲动。
也因为这股冲动，阿正把车子停了下来，检查钱包里所剩的钱，嘴里叼着烟走向刚才经过的暗巷子去。
“先生，要吗？全套服务。”其中一名妓女看到阿正时靠上来推销自己。
阿正打量了那位妓女，然后脸带微笑地摇了摇头。那不是他喜欢的类型，因为胸部太大了，好像一头母牛。她的胸部让阿正想起了日本的AV女优大浦安娜。嗯，天使的脸孔，J罩杯的魔鬼身材，都给了二十楼的住户了。
阿正一边继续走，一边打量着站在路旁的妓女。她们有些只是站在原地对着走过的男人微笑，有些就比较主动地上前推销自己。阿正一边打量着路边的妓女，一边暗自在脑海里把她们与在荧幕上看过的AV女优们比较。嗯，这个脸孔的有些像小圆泽。哦，那个身材跟叶玉卿有得比。哇，那个长得真像星野流宇，振国看了一定会喜欢。啊，没想到金沢文子也来这里卖了。
然后阿正看到了。长得像白石瞳的妓女。一张成熟的脸孔。瘦削的身材。大小刚好的胸部。没有像母牛一样巨大，也没有如同飞机场跑道一样平坦，只是让人看得舒服的B罩杯的大小。
“先生，有兴趣吗？”长得像白石瞳的她靠上前问。这大概是阿正一直看着她的关系吧。
“啊……这个嘛……呃，多少钱？”阿正有些犹豫地问。这是他有生以来第一次跟妓女说话。尽管他经常看A片，不过却没有嫖过妓。
然后阿正看到了。长得像白石瞳的妓女。一张成熟的脸孔。瘦削的身材。大小刚好的胸部。没有像母牛一样巨大，也没有如同飞机场跑道一样平坦，只是让人看得舒服的B罩杯的大小。
“先生，有兴趣吗？”长得像白石瞳的她靠上前问。这大概是阿正一直看着她的关系吧。
“啊……这个嘛……呃，多少钱？”阿正有些犹豫地问。这是他有生以来第一次跟妓女说话。尽管他经常看A片，不过却没有嫖过妓。
“七十块钱。”
“嗯……五十块。”阿正口吃地讨价还价。
“六十块钱。这是最低价了，我不能再压低了。”
“呃……好吧，成交。六十块钱。”阿正盘算着自己钱包里的存款。六十块再加上酒店费，应该不会超过一百块钱吧。
“跟我来。”长得像白石瞳的她说。
那位长得像白石瞳的妓女带领阿正到不远处的一个钟点酒店。阿正随着她走到酒店的柜台前。柜台后的中年妇女看到了阿正和那位妓女后，便看着阿正问：“一个钟头吧？”
阿正有些不知所措，只是转过头看着那位妓女。她稍微地点了点头。
“嗯，对。”
“十五块。要安全套吗？”
“要。”阿正有些害臊地说。
“几个？”
“呃……两个吧。”
“嗯。全部十九块。现在结帐，谢谢。”
阿正从皮包里拿出了两张十元的钞票，交给了那位中年妇女。
“房间号码是504。现在两点正。请在三点钟退房。”那位中年妇女一边把一块的零钱和房间钥匙交给了阿正，一边对他说。
那位妓女看到阿正拿了钥匙后，便说：“交给我吧。”
阿正把房间钥匙交给了那位妓女后，她就非常熟练地带领阿正搭电梯到五楼的房间去。打开了房门后，妓女就非常专业地向阿正要求先付款。阿正把钱交给了她后，她便开始脱衣，然后要求阿正先去洗个澡。阿正有些腼腆地脱下了衣服，走入浴室随便用水冲洗了自己的身躯。阿正在冲洗自己的身躯时望着浴室里的镜子。也不知道是不是灯光的关系，自己在镜子里的倒影显得比平常更苍老了许多。或许岁月这几年一直在自己年轻的脸孔上留下不显著的痕迹，直到今晚才全部爆发出来吧。
阿正走出浴室时，那位已经赤裸的妓女用毛巾把他的身体擦干。她特别注重地擦着阴茎的部分，把包皮的内侧也擦了一遍。虽然她在擦阿正的阴茎时并没有用力，以非常轻柔的手法擦着，不过阿正却没有因此勃起。那位妓女在确认已经把阴茎擦干净后，便走进浴室里洗澡。她非常认真地洗刷着自己的身躯，并且还用了酒店提供的廉价肥皂把自己的身躯彻底地洗了一遍。阿正躺在床上望着正在认真洗澡的妓女。透过浴室里橙黄色灯光的照射和从这个斜着四十五度的视角，那位妓女的长相还真的非常像白石瞳。
嗯，阿正心想，这不就是白石瞳在《应召女郎》里的情节吗？嗯，等一会她将会用白色毛巾擦着身子走出浴室，然后把安全套套在自己的阴茎上。阿正在回想起A片里的这段情节时，不禁感到有些兴奋。他下意识用右手抚摸着渐渐硬了起来的阴茎。
果然，白石瞳走出浴室时用毛巾擦着自己的身躯。她走到了在床边的桌子，拿起了阿正放在那里的其中一个安全套。她把安全套的包装撕开，把里头粉红色的塑胶安全套取出，然后慢慢地爬上了床上。这时阿正的阴茎已经硬得好像一根铁棒了。白石瞳熟练地把安全套放在龟头上，然后把卷起来的圆形安全套往下拉。当有些黏湿的塑胶接触到阿正的皮肤时，他的阴茎不禁抽缩了一下。虽然这并不是他第一次穿上安全套，不过他以前都没有时常穿的习惯。
“你要怎么样呢？”白石瞳把安全套弄好后问阿正。
“随便。”阿正回答说。
“好吧。那你躺下。”
阿正躺下后，白石瞳就爬到阿正的身上，用手捉着阿正的阴茎，把它放在阴道的入口。白石瞳慢慢地把臀部往前推，阴茎也理所当然地插入了阴道里。当白石瞳确认阴茎已经完全插入了阴道后，她便开始蠕动自己的下半身。阿正一动也不动地躺在床上，然后把双眼闭上。他在这片自我放逐的黑暗中听见了妓女所发出的呻吟声。那种呻吟声一听就知道是在做假的，完全缺少了所谓的协调感，就好像是粗劣的A片配音一样，声音与画面无法同步播出。明明A片女主角的嘴巴是闭着的，不过呻吟声却依然发出，唯恐看A片的人不知道男主角的功夫有多棒和女主角的性欲有多被满足。这种有些义务的呻吟声大概是妓女为了满足客户的虚荣心而刻意搬演的一场好戏吧。
也不知道是不是以前都没有穿安全套的习惯，阿正的阴茎并没有以往做爱时的那种美妙的感觉。虽然他可以感觉到对方的阴道非常刻意和努力地挤压着自己的阴茎，不过还是缺少了什么决定性的东西。阿正睁开了眼睛，凝视着白石瞳的脸孔。虽然她的眼睛是闭上的，不过脸孔却摆出了一副淫荡又满足的表情。那个表情就如同呻吟声一样，一看就知道是做假的。哪里有人可以这么快就进入状况呢？
也不知道是不是以前都没有穿安全套的习惯，阿正的阴茎并没有以往做爱时的那种美妙的感觉。虽然他可以感觉到对方的阴道非常刻意和努力地挤压着自己的阴茎，不过还是缺少了什么决定性的东西。阿正睁开了眼睛，凝视着白石瞳的脸孔。虽然她的眼睛是闭上的，不过脸孔却摆出了一副淫荡又满足的表情。那个表情就如同呻吟声一样，一看就知道是做假的。哪里有人可以这么快就进入状况呢？
由于觉得有些无聊，因此阿正决定开口说些话。
“呃……这是我的第一次。”
“啊！” 白石瞳惊讶地睁开了眼睛，有些慌张地看着阿正说：“你难道是一个处男？”
“不，不，不。我当然不是。我指的是，这是我第一次嫖妓。” 阿正补充说，并且更正了白石瞳。
“哦，还真吓了我一跳。我还以为你是个处男呢。幸亏。” 白石瞳有些庆幸地说。
“怎么了？难道你们这行对所谓处男有些忌讳吗？” 阿正好奇地问。
“没有，这只是我个人的喜好罢了。我不喜欢跟处男上床。” 白石瞳一边说，一边非常专业地继续摆动她的臀部。
“这样啊。”
然后阿正就想不出应该说些什么话了。房间里除了那个与画面不同步播出的不协调呻吟声外，就没有听到什么声音了。阴道依然机械似地搓揉着自己的阴茎，还有所谓的节奏。如果是在弹钢琴的话，大概可以用阴道搓揉阴茎的节奏来打拍子吧？一二，一二，一二，一。一二，一二，一二，一。阿正在心中随着这个节奏默数。那不协调的呻吟声却好像道路施工所发出的噪音一样干扰着阿正。
“呃，你每天工作到几点呢？” 阿正实在无法忍受只有呻吟声的房间，于是随口找了个问题问白石瞳。
“啊？” 白石瞳被阿正的问题弄糊涂了。
“没有，我是问你每天工作到几点，好奇。”
“这个嘛。大概三点到四点左右吧。看有没有客户。” 白石瞳有些不耐烦地回答。她大概没有碰过这么喜欢问东问西的客户吧。
“哦，这么说我今天大概就是你最后一个客户了吧？”
“嗯。”
然后话题就好像失去翅膀的纸飞机一样再度停顿了。白石瞳的冷漠使到谈话无法进行下去。一二，一二，一二，一。一二，一二，一二，一。呻吟声和画面不协调。阿正开始在心里暗自地胡思乱想。嗯，我是她今天最后一个客户了。或许她只是想赶快让我射精，然后可以尽快去休息，所以才不想讲话吧。毕竟工作了一整晚，也会累了。事情就是这样子吧，无论什么人，都需要休息吧？如果一直反覆做着同样的东西，或者面对着同样的人，谁都会感觉腻吧？嗯，节奏还真准到没有话说。一二，一二，一二，一。嗯，她今天到底接了多少个客户呢？三个？五个？那些是什么人呢？和我同样年纪的吗？或者是那种四五十岁的中年男子？她在与他们做爱时也发出这种让人听了讨厌的呻吟声吧？做假的呻吟声。然而，那些其他的客户会在意吗？会吗？他们大概只在乎阴道非常有节奏感地搓揉着阴茎吧。一二，一二，一二，一。他妈的，我到底在这个地方做什么呢？
“啊，软下来了。” 白石瞳有些懊恼地说。她大概想自己必须花多一些功夫把阴茎再度弄硬，然后使到阿正射精，因此无法早一点休息了。
“哦，是吗？” 阿正有些蛮不在乎地问。
“是的。嘿，先生，你可以不要讲这么多话吗？就是因为你说这么多话，所以才会软下来的啊。” 白石瞳一边用手搓揉着软下来的阴茎，一边对阿正抱怨说。
“是吗？”
“是啊。别说这么多话，只要做爱就行了。”
“那么，不需要把它弄硬了，到这里就可以了吧。” 阿正已经没有心情再继续下去了。
“啊？” 白石瞳有些惊讶。她大概无法相信自己的耳朵吧。
“我是说你可以走了。我不想再继续下去了。” 阿正的声音听起来异常平淡和冷静。
“真的吗？没有射精唉。钱我还是会照收的，不会还给你的哦。”
“没关系。真的没关系。到这里就好了。”
“好吧，你说的。”
然后白石瞳便下了床，走到浴室里再度冲凉。她依然非常认真地洗刷自己的身躯。阿正躺在床上望着天花板。他可以感觉到安全套因为阴茎的缩小而渐渐脱落下来。阴茎再度接触到冰冷的空气。阿正听到那位妓女走出浴室的声音。当他坐起来看着她时，她已经在穿着内衣裤了。
“对了，你叫什么名字呢？” 阿正问。
“名字？甜甜。” 那位妓女一边把短裙穿上，一边回答阿正。那听起来显然也是一个虚构的名字，就如同做假的呻吟声一样。
“甜甜啊……不是白石瞳吗？” 阿正也不知道自己为什么会问这个问题。
“谁是白石瞳？” 那位妓女以怪异的眼神看着阿正，并且加快了她穿衣的速度。她大概是害怕阿正是个精神不正常的疯子，所以想尽快离开吧。
“哦，谁也不是。我随便问的。”
当妓女离开后，阿正慢慢地下了床，走向浴室去。他打开了水龙头，让温水透过淋浴器洒在自己的身上。他看着镜子里的自己，那张有些认不出的脸孔了，然后泪水便再也忍不住地夺眶而出了。阿正慢慢蹲了下来，左手依然握着淋浴器，对着自己的头，右手就用来捂着自己的嘴巴。他咬了自己的下唇，以防止自己哭出声音来。我是坚强的，我是坚强的，我是坚强的，阿正一直在心里对自己说。
当妓女离开后，阿正慢慢地下了床，走向浴室去。他打开了水龙头，让温水透过淋浴器洒在自己的身上。他看着镜子里的自己，那张有些认不出的脸孔了，然后泪水便再也忍不住地夺眶而出了。阿正慢慢蹲了下来，左手依然握着淋浴器，对着自己的头，右手就用来捂着自己的嘴巴。他咬了自己的下唇，以防止自己哭出声音来。我是坚强的，我是坚强的，我是坚强的，阿正一直在心里对自己说。
当阿正在五分钟后走出浴室时，他拿起了丢在床边的毛巾把身体擦干。他走到了放着自己衣服的桌子，准备穿衣离开这个地方。这时，他看到了放在自己衣服旁那个依然还留在包装里的安全套。阿正拿起了那个安全套，然后慢慢地把包装纸撕开。他把圆形的安全套拉成空心的条状形，然后把安全套的开口的那端拿到自己的嘴边。阿正用力一吹，安全套就膨胀起来了，就好像一个长形汽球一样。阿正把安全套开口的那一端绑了起来，然后把膨胀起来的安全套握在手中端详。嗯，最后一次把安全套当做汽球吹是两年前，在振国的生日舞会吧，一时兴起做的无聊事，阿正心想。他慢慢地走到了窗口旁，把窗口打开，然后俯视着窗外凌晨的街景。阿正一边看着空无一人的小巷子，一边回想起今天晚上所发生的事。嗯，二十五楼的住户没有得到免费的A片。嗯，要戒掉这个坏习惯了。没有A片的日子。嗯，总不能这样子下去。不能够。我是坚强的。我是坚强的。一二，一二，一二，一。我是坚强的。阿正闭上了眼睛，做了一阵深呼吸，然后把握着膨胀安全套的右手往窗外伸出。
接近凌晨三点的时分，有一个膨胀的安全套好像断线的风筝一样从这个城市的红灯区上空飘落。
Monday, February 25, 2008
支持的理由
(刊登于2008年2月24日)
或许是因为年少叛逆，本人在高中时期对有关当局非常排斥，并且在某种程度上同情和支持反对人士，因为我一直认为国会里面应该有多一些反对的声音。如果当时我有机会投票的话，我想自己应该会不假思索地投给反对人士一票吧。
不过，我的看法却因为2001年的大选而改观。当时，我陪伴朋友一起到某个反对党的公共演讲集会。我记得当时群众的情绪非常激昂，而时不时都喊出反对有关当局的口号，尤其是当反对党候选人上台演讲时。然而，我当时却意识到某个现象，观众的情绪不会因为演讲者的表现而改变。就算是有些演讲者的演讲只是缺乏内容的煽动性话语，或者是其演讲近乎语无伦次，台下的人都拍手叫好，仿佛只是为了支持而支持。这个发现对我而言带来巨大的震撼，因为我开始意识到自己过去也都如此，在支持或者反对某个政治人物时没有深思熟虑，只是仰赖着自己的非常不理性的感觉。
在这次美国的初选当中，本人在自己的校园内再度从某些候选人的支持者看到此现象，尤其是奥巴马的支持者。由于奥巴马本身富有亲和力以及能言善道，因此赢得了许多年轻人的青睐。本人在询问一些大学生为何支持他时，所得到的答案是因为他给人带来希望的感觉，或者是因为觉得他给人很好的印象。 然而，当本人进一步询问他们对于奥巴马所提出的政策的看法，以及与其他候选人所提出的政策有何不同时，许多人都无法回答出来。或许更可怕的是当本人指出奥巴马所提出的有些政策或许没有其他候选人好时，其支持者的语气就变得非常不客气。
无独有偶，本人也从许多支持马英九的台湾朋友口中听到类似的理由。同样地，询问到有关政策的具体问题时，鲜少有人让我听到满意的答案。同时在听到合理的批评后发飙。没有记错的话，8年前布什和陈水扁分别在他们的国家竞选时，也有许多支持他们的人提出同样的理由，以及对批评者非常不友善。至于这两个总统在任内的成绩如何，或许咱们可以从他们现在的民调看出些端倪吧。
有时候，许多政治人物的支持者的言行举止让我联想到支持偶像歌手的疯狂歌迷的情绪。我承认自己有时对于某些歌手的偏好或者厌恶也没有合理的解释，只是凭着一股感觉。然而，这些歌手却不会对我的生活有太大影响，因为他们无法实行政策，也无法修改国家的法律。如果我不喜欢的话，只要关掉电视或者收音机就可以了。政治人物就不同，就算我不翻开报纸或者对时事漠不关心，他们的决定还是会影响到我。在这种情况下，用对待偶像歌手的情绪来对待政治人物，似乎就显得有些危险了。
应该有所声明。本人并非针对某些政治人物或者团体。本人也并非指责一个政治候选人如果给人很好的印象就等同这些候选人如同偶像歌手没有半点内涵。本人更不是说所有印象亲切的候选人的支持者都是依靠肤浅和表面的理由。本人只是认为任何民主国家的选民在投票之前，应该针对某位候选人或者政党所提出的政策的利弊为自己支持该候选人或者政党的理由，而非只是因为某位候选人或者政党给你很好的印象。
或许是因为年少叛逆，本人在高中时期对有关当局非常排斥，并且在某种程度上同情和支持反对人士，因为我一直认为国会里面应该有多一些反对的声音。如果当时我有机会投票的话，我想自己应该会不假思索地投给反对人士一票吧。
不过，我的看法却因为2001年的大选而改观。当时，我陪伴朋友一起到某个反对党的公共演讲集会。我记得当时群众的情绪非常激昂，而时不时都喊出反对有关当局的口号，尤其是当反对党候选人上台演讲时。然而，我当时却意识到某个现象，观众的情绪不会因为演讲者的表现而改变。就算是有些演讲者的演讲只是缺乏内容的煽动性话语，或者是其演讲近乎语无伦次，台下的人都拍手叫好，仿佛只是为了支持而支持。这个发现对我而言带来巨大的震撼，因为我开始意识到自己过去也都如此，在支持或者反对某个政治人物时没有深思熟虑，只是仰赖着自己的非常不理性的感觉。
在这次美国的初选当中，本人在自己的校园内再度从某些候选人的支持者看到此现象，尤其是奥巴马的支持者。由于奥巴马本身富有亲和力以及能言善道，因此赢得了许多年轻人的青睐。本人在询问一些大学生为何支持他时，所得到的答案是因为他给人带来希望的感觉，或者是因为觉得他给人很好的印象。 然而，当本人进一步询问他们对于奥巴马所提出的政策的看法，以及与其他候选人所提出的政策有何不同时，许多人都无法回答出来。或许更可怕的是当本人指出奥巴马所提出的有些政策或许没有其他候选人好时，其支持者的语气就变得非常不客气。
无独有偶，本人也从许多支持马英九的台湾朋友口中听到类似的理由。同样地，询问到有关政策的具体问题时，鲜少有人让我听到满意的答案。同时在听到合理的批评后发飙。没有记错的话，8年前布什和陈水扁分别在他们的国家竞选时，也有许多支持他们的人提出同样的理由，以及对批评者非常不友善。至于这两个总统在任内的成绩如何，或许咱们可以从他们现在的民调看出些端倪吧。
有时候，许多政治人物的支持者的言行举止让我联想到支持偶像歌手的疯狂歌迷的情绪。我承认自己有时对于某些歌手的偏好或者厌恶也没有合理的解释，只是凭着一股感觉。然而，这些歌手却不会对我的生活有太大影响，因为他们无法实行政策，也无法修改国家的法律。如果我不喜欢的话，只要关掉电视或者收音机就可以了。政治人物就不同，就算我不翻开报纸或者对时事漠不关心，他们的决定还是会影响到我。在这种情况下，用对待偶像歌手的情绪来对待政治人物，似乎就显得有些危险了。
应该有所声明。本人并非针对某些政治人物或者团体。本人也并非指责一个政治候选人如果给人很好的印象就等同这些候选人如同偶像歌手没有半点内涵。本人更不是说所有印象亲切的候选人的支持者都是依靠肤浅和表面的理由。本人只是认为任何民主国家的选民在投票之前，应该针对某位候选人或者政党所提出的政策的利弊为自己支持该候选人或者政党的理由，而非只是因为某位候选人或者政党给你很好的印象。
Friday, February 22, 2008
How Did The Coke Cans Turn Out This Way?
Ans: By leaving them in your car and forgetting about it in subzero (i.e. -30 degrees) temperature
Straits Times Report Amuses Me...
I nearly died laughing when I read the report below from Straits Times (here), not because it was anything funny, but because it reminded me of a clip from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart a while back (see video below). I think Jon Stewart made the best mockery (and criticism) of this idea in his show. Oh, and by the way, this is not original (see here).
Feb 22, 2008
SPH to launch novel interactive web TV
By Chua Hian Hou
MEDIA group Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) will launch a novel, free interactive web TV service later this year, offering net-savvy users 'hyperlocal' news about their country and neighbourhood.
The Straits Times Razor TV will deliver 'live' studio content and on-demand videos over a real-time interactive platform, as well as user-contributed videos.
SPH Chairman Dr Tony Tan announced the new digital initiative at the opening of the group's Multimedia Centre at its Toa Payoh North News Centre on Friday.
He said Razor TV will also allow third-party developers to create innovative applications to enhance the website for a more engaging Web 2.0 experience.
The channel will also offer unprecedented interactivity to users, for instance, allowing users to join in the show via webcams or video calls from their mobile phones.
SPH will also make public the software it uses to build the site.
This will allow other users to create their own add-ons, the same way third-party software makers are creating add-ons for popular social networking site Facebook.
The Straits Times Razor TV will operate from the SPH's new Multimedia Centre, which also houses AsiaOne and Stomp.
Dr Tan said the new initiatives underline the company's commitment to achieve its vision of becoming much more than just a successful print media company.
'We are keeping pace with the latest online developments and creating an exciting interactive environment across the print, mobile and Internet platforms,' he added.
'In the near future, an Innovation Laboratory will be added to the Multimedia Centre so that the latest, cutting-edge ideas can be nurtured and developed. The laboratory will become a showcase of how news will be delivered and consumed in the future.'
Dr Tan also disclosed that last month, Stomp, AsiaOne and straitstimes.com (the website of SPH's English flagship newspaper) attracted record pageviews. Total pageviews reached 10.5 million, 10.1 million and 8.8 million respectively for the three English websites - an increase of 30 per cent, 50 per cent and 35 per cent respectively, since the beginning of SPH's financial year in September.
Mr Felix Soh, Digital Media Editor for the English and Malay Newspaper Division, will spearhead the latest web TV venture.
Mr Soh said The Straits Times Razor TV will have sharp and edgy angles to its news and lifestyle features, to be delivered from a new web studio to be built in the Multimedia Centre.
'As Dr Tan noted in his speech this morning, our presentation style will be young and hip, in tune with the culture of the Internet,' said Mr Soh, who was also Stomp's chief architect.
In his speech, Dr Tan also noted that Stomp's innovations and achievements have gained recognition internationally. For instance, the International Newspaper Marketing Association's book 'Forging Deeper Audience Connections', to be released in May at its World Congress, will have a chapter on Stomp's success.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Age of Unreason
A few days ago, I posted a link to a New York Times article regarding Americans getting dumber and dumber. One of the main interviewees was Susan Jacoby, who recently wrote a book called The Age of Unreason. This is an interview by the author who is making the claim on PBS: link.
Inspired by Richard Hofstadter's trenchant 1963 cultural analysis Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Jacoby (Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism) has produced an engaging, updated and meticulously thought-out continuation of her academic idol's research. Dismayed by the average U.S. citizen's political and social apathy and the overall crisis of memory and knowledge involving everything about the way we learn and think, Jacoby passionately argues that the nation's current cult of unreason has deadly and destructive consequences (the war in Iraq, for one) and traces the seeds of current anti-intellectualism (and its partner in crime, antirationalism) back to post-WWII society. Unafraid of pointing fingers, she singles out mass media and the resurgence of fundamentalist religion as the primary vectors of anti-intellectualism, while also having harsh words for pseudoscientists. Through historical research, Jacoby breaks down popular beliefs that the 1950s were a cultural wasteland and the 1960s were solely a breeding ground for liberals. Though sometimes partial to inflated prose (America's endemic anti-intellectual tendencies have been grievously exacerbated by a new species of semiconscious anti-rationalism), Jacoby has assembled an erudite mix of personal anecdotes, cultural history and social commentary to decry America's retreat into junk thought.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Happiness Is A Warm Contentment
A recent documentary on 60 minutes in USA about the pursuit of happiness. While the country in questions are Denmark and USA, I think a lot of us Singaporeans might take lessons from the views of some of the people in this video clip and apply it to our society. The full video is here on the 60 Minutes website.
Manchester United beats Arsenal 4-0
Arsenal may still nick the league... but I don't care. Manchester United's performance on saturday against them was just superb and sensational.
House Vs God
This is a summarized episode from the TV series "House", from the episode "House Vs. God". No guesses for why I am posting it here.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Links For Your Musings 16 Feb 2008
Dumb and Dumber: Are Americans Hostile to Knowledge?
Gecko 'begs' insect for honeydew
A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?”
Ms. Pickler threw up both hands and looked at the large blackboard perplexed. “I thought Europe was a country,” she said. Playing it safe, she chose to copy the answer offered by one of the genuine fifth graders: Hungary. “Hungry?” she said, eyes widening in disbelief. “That’s a country? I’ve heard of Turkey. But Hungry? I’ve never heard of it.”
Gecko 'begs' insect for honeydew
The day gecko, which lives in the forests of Madagascar, has been recorded begging a bug for its dinner. The lizard repeatedly nods its head at the insect, called a plant hopper, until it flicks over small balls of honeydew for the gecko to dine upon. It is not yet understood why the insect so willingly offers up honeydew at the lizard's behest. Some believe that the presence of the hungry geckos may keep other predators away from the insect.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
The Divine Comedy -- Sunrise
One of the few songs that brought a tear to my eyes. Neil Hammond is singing about the situation in Ireland in the 80s and 90s. The recording in this clip isn't really fantastic and does not do credit to the greatness of this song. However, the lyrics is one of the most touching ones that I have read.
I was born in Londonderry
I was born in Derry City too
Oh what a special child
To see such things and still to smile
I know that there was something wrong
But I kept my head down and carried on
I grew up in Enniskillen
I grew up in Inis Ceathlain too
Oh what a clever boy
To watch your hometown be destroyed
I know that I could not stay long
So I kept my head down and carried on
Who cares where national borders lie
Who cares whose laws you're governed by
Who cares what name you call a town
Who'll care when you're six feet beneath the ground
From the corner of my eye
A hint of blue in the black sky
A ray of hope, a beam of light
An end to thirty years of night
The church-bells ring, the children sing
What is this strange and beautiful thing
It's the sunrise
Can you see the sunrise?
I can see the sunrise
I was born in Londonderry
I was born in Derry City too
Oh what a special child
To see such things and still to smile
I know that there was something wrong
But I kept my head down and carried on
I grew up in Enniskillen
I grew up in Inis Ceathlain too
Oh what a clever boy
To watch your hometown be destroyed
I know that I could not stay long
So I kept my head down and carried on
Who cares where national borders lie
Who cares whose laws you're governed by
Who cares what name you call a town
Who'll care when you're six feet beneath the ground
From the corner of my eye
A hint of blue in the black sky
A ray of hope, a beam of light
An end to thirty years of night
The church-bells ring, the children sing
What is this strange and beautiful thing
It's the sunrise
Can you see the sunrise?
I can see the sunrise
Dj Shadow -- Six Days
If the directing and cinematography of the MTV seems familiar, that is because Wong Kar Wai directed it...
Lewis Black on Gay Relatives
He is going to have his own show on Comedy Central soon... I hope we still get "Back In Black" segments on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Stephen Colbert -- Better Know A Lobbyist
Stephen Colbert interviews a lobbyist for the gay movement in USA. This is just hilarious.
Part 2
On Homophobia
There is a theory out there: people who are afraid of homosexuals usually harbor some homosexual tendencies as well. If you have been following recent USA events, you would have known that several prominent anti-gay proponents have been "outed" as being closeted homosexuals. Two of the most prominent examples that come to mind are Larry Craig and Ted Haggard (both of them who are damn hypocrites).
Imagine to my surprise when I found out a few days ago that there were some evidence in support of this theory in a study conducted nearly a decade ago. Below is a video description of the study, and if you are interested in reading the original research, you can download the pdf version here.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Comics On The Absurdities of Life
Cectic.com (here) is a website that I enjoy going to, for it is a website with comics lampooning the absurdities of life, including those of the superstitious. My guess is the author of all the comic strips found on the website is someone like me: an atheist, someone who subscribes to the tenets of logical reasoning and attempts to think in a rational manner. Incidentally, there are lampoons on scientist and atheists as well (we have unreasonable atheists that walk amongst us too) and so it is not just aimed at a specific group of people, but at the absurdities in life.
Friday, February 08, 2008
Richard Feynman -- The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
This is a video of Richard Feynman's interview, dubbed The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. It was filmed in 1981, but the things that Feynman says seems refreshing even up to this day. I enjoy this video very much and is inspired by the greatness of this man's words.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Steven Pinker on The Stuff of Thought
Steven Pinker on The Stuff of Thought. I am currently reading this book and it is somewhat surprising to find this on YouTube, which Pinker talks about his book a few months before it was actually published. Oh, and I recommend this book to anybody who is interested in the relationship between language and thought.
Steven Pinker on A History of Violence
Remember the "good old days" which seemed like a golden age? Where everybody loves everyone else and there are no excessive violence perpetuated via video games and movies? Steven Pinker talks about a brief history of violence and shows that the so-called "good old days" might not be so good at all.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Are we such a fragile nation?
A few hours after reporting the halal school canteen online, The Straits Times disabled all user comments on the incident online (see picture below). To me, that is almost saying: oh this is regarding religion issues, a sensitive issue, and hence let's keep quiet and not discuss this like responsible adults, lest we offend somebody...
Are we such a fragile nation? After so many years of multi-cultural education, can we not discuss this issue (yes it is a sensitive issue) like sensible adults? Is it the case that we have to sweep everything that might be deemed offensive under the carpet, lest we do not offend the sensitive "feelings" of some?
Maybe I should cut some slack to ST. I have read some of the comments before commenting was disabled, and to be fair, there were some childish and immature accusations as well. However, I would rather have some immature individuals making the fool out of himself (and possibly offending others) than to not have anyone discussing on issues at all, however sensitive these issues might be.
Just a thought.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Feynman on Honours
Another classic Feynman clip... Here he talks about why he doesn't like honors... I will try to find the original clips of this whole interview and post it up here some day...
Richard Feynman on Uncertainty
This man speaks so lucidly... and you know the last two lines, he was referring to a lot of people who blindly belief in an "answer" because they are afraid to admit that they don't know shit...
Some Fat Looking Dude...
If I may say, one of my favorite recent photos, even though it does show my weight...
Chng & Me -- god (or the anti-god song)
Yeah, for some reason I am getting rather pissed by religion today... and hence I dug up a song written way way way back (> 5 years ago) when I was an undergraduate (in collaboration with my good friend Chng).... I knew that when some religious folks heard this song in the past, they were pretty pissed by it. And I do think this might be one of the few things that I have written that will eventually get me into trouble one of these days (you know, when the religious folks takes control of the world again and then decide to do another Spanish Inquisition, 21st century styled)... but I don't give a shit. I am pissed today.
Music: Chng
Lyrics: Tan Wah Pheow
god is an atheist and he knows it
Ties you up with his fucked-up creed
Your wisdom is bullshit but not his
Your knowledge is useless against him
So god help me and let my soul be free
god is a mortal and he knows it
Cut him up and he'll surely bleed
For one that falls there is still another
And the words will bend and he's still your father
So god help me and let my body be free
god does not exists and he knows it
Although god will help the faithful indeed
For he knows a miracle can spread his deed
And on their hope he will sow the seeds
So god redeem me and let ME be free
Music: Chng
Lyrics: Tan Wah Pheow
god is an atheist and he knows it
Ties you up with his fucked-up creed
Your wisdom is bullshit but not his
Your knowledge is useless against him
So god help me and let my soul be free
god is a mortal and he knows it
Cut him up and he'll surely bleed
For one that falls there is still another
And the words will bend and he's still your father
So god help me and let my body be free
god does not exists and he knows it
Although god will help the faithful indeed
For he knows a miracle can spread his deed
And on their hope he will sow the seeds
So god redeem me and let ME be free
John Lennon -- Imagine
Somewhat irritated by what I have read in the newspaper today (see post below), I have decided to post John Lennon's "Imagine". Listen to the lyrics and you will understand why.
A Halal School Canteen?
Are you fucking kidding me?? This is happening in Singapore??? (See Straits Times report below)
Many a times, when I try to discuss religion with my religious friends, and because the fact that I am an agnostic, and whenever I try to bring up the possibility that there might not be a god, the biggest reaction that I get from most (but not all, to be fair) friends was that I was being rude and disrespectful to their religion. Even though sometimes I think some of the questions that I bring up are quite legitimate (e.g., if you had to choose between feeding a starving man with 'forbidden meat' or letting him starve to death, which will you choose?), I am still labeled as the 'disrespectful atheist' with 'no spirituality' and in one instance, was yelled at for 'trying to be funny'.
However, I do think these are legitimate questions, and if the newspaper report below is true, then the question is where the hell do we draw the line between what is religious insensitivity? Or to put it another way, how much illogical and irrational beliefs can we hide behind the guise of 'religion' before the society as a whole say 'enough is enough?'
Singapore has always been quite a secular state, at least in terms of her official policies. This is something that I am very glad for, and used to but will never again take for granted. Trust me, if this incident had happened in another country where the religion in question is the religion of the majority in that country, the government officials would have used this as political token to manipulate people's sentiment. Don't believe me? Look the useless debates they are having in the United States over the simple phrase 'One Nation Under God'.
Is making a 'Halal school canteen' inappropriate? How about stoning to death anybody who works on Sunday? Or burning papers money that increases greenhouse gas emission and pollution? Or sewing up or mutilating women's private parts? Or not allowing blood transfusion for an injured person even though this might be the only way to save his or her life? Or killing someone just because he or her does not believe in your god (read the bible, both old and new testament, or the koran if you think I am making this up)? I could go on and on and on (like the Energizer bunny), but I think you get my point. Within every religion there are a whole lot of irrational and sometimes very cruel rituals or beliefs that just will scare the shit out of us, and I think we are particular lucky that we live in a secular society, that these rituals doesn't get carried out to the letter of the law. Hey, as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris has argued, and I am paraphrasing here, since we are cherry-picking the 'laws' of each religion anyway, why don't we just throw the whole damn thing out and make up our own laws... I am almost certain that they will be more humane and more rational than the ones that most religions have anyway....
I have gone off-track here... time to stop...
====================================================
School's 'halal zone' ruling causes stir Parents upset; MOE says school's decision wrong; principal reverses his position
By Sandra Davie
A PRIMARY school in Jurong West that upset non-Muslim parents by insisting that only halal food could
be eaten or taken into its canteen will now overturn its policy.
The Ministry of Education (MOE) told The Straits Times yesterday that Boon Lay Garden Primary had
made a mistake, and would let its pupils' parents know.
In a letter to all parents last Friday, principal Wan Imran Woojdy said that since the school canteen had
been certified halal, children would not be allowed to bring non-halal food onto the premises.
The school security guard and discipline master had also been checking lunch boxes since last week to
ensure pupils complied.
About 20 per cent of the school's 1,700 pupils are Muslims.
Halal refers to what is permissible for consumption by Muslims. A product is not halal if it contains, for
example, pork or alcohol, both forbidden to Muslims.
Boon Lay Garden Primary's move to declare its canteen a halal zone left some non-Muslim parents
unhappy.
Three who spoke to The Straits Times said they did not mind that the school canteen sold only halal
food, but they felt the ban on taking in non-halal food amounted to discrimination.
Madam Esther Chia, 36, who has two daughters in the school, said one of them resorted to hiding a pork
floss bun in her pocket last week to avoid being caught for flouting the new rule.
Another parent, Mr Edward Ang, said: 'I have nothing against the school stalls selling only halal food, but
they shouldn't restrict kids from eating non-halal food.'
When contacted earlier yesterday, principal Imran said the rule forbidding non-halal food in the canteen
had been in place since 2002, when all eight food stalls were certified halal by the Islamic Religious
Council of Singapore (Muis).
He said that the school decided to enforce the rule as it had a new canteen contractor and had to get
recertified by Muis.
'We decided to make the whole canteen halal to provide a common eating space for all our children,
whatever their race,' he said.
'Our stalls provide all the different types of food - Chinese, Indian, Malay and Western.'
He said that four parents had called to complain about the ruling.
When contacted, the MOE said the school had made an error and regretted the concern caused to
parents.
Its spokesman added: 'Schools will continue to ensure the preservation of common space for all pupils,
and educate them on the multiracial and multi-religious nature of Singapore.'
Last night, Mr Imran called The Straits Times to say he regretted that an error had been made, and that
he would be sending a letter to all parents today.
A spokesman for Muis clarified yesterday that the council certifies only the food stalls in a school canteen,
not the premises as a whole.
'Once a stallholder has obtained his halal certificate, non-halal foods cannot be brought in or out of that
halal-certified stall,' the spokesman said.
'As for the dining area in the canteen, it is up to the school to decide whether to allow non-halal foods to
be brought in.'
The council's records show that only one other school, Millenia Institute, has all eight canteen stalls
certified halal, but the school said there is no ban on bringing in non-halal food.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Red House Painters -- Have You Forgotten?
This is a light and refreshing song by Red House Painters. Not their usual "sadcore" style...
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Voters In United States...
Oh mine... I mean, even though this is for a comedy show, but then if these are the type of people who are voting...
金钱政治
(刊登于联合早报2008年2月3日)
美国前副总统戈尔在他写的书《理性的攻击》(The Assault On Reason)里指出美国的公共谈论空间已经被扭曲了。由于电视媒体在近年来取代报纸成为了散播讯息的主要媒介，因此许多总统或者参议院候选人在竞选时，或者是某个政治组织想要向大众传达某些讯息时，很多时候都是透过向电视台购买广告时间来散播他们的政治讯息。
由于电视台的广告空间是昂贵的产品，因此这些带有政治讯息的广告都非常简短，几乎都在30秒之内。要在如此短的时间全面地传达某个政治理念或者是立场几乎是不可能了，更别说是做深入讨论。因此，许多公共的谈论都只是停留在30秒影像的层次上。换句话说，整个公共讨论的素质和层次都降低了，以致许多传达政治讯息的电视广告最后都沦为某种变相和不正确的人身攻击。
不仅如此，透过电视媒体来进行公共讨论也在某种程度使到整个政治过程被金钱占据。昂贵的电视广告意味着只要有钱购买这些广告空间，在某种程度上就可以主导公共谈论的空间和方向。说明白些，民意不再是透过理性的分析形成、或者是被有力的论据说服，而是谁有钱谁就可以操纵民意。
戈尔在他书中所提到的事物都全面地体现在2008年的美国总统初选当中。许多候选人在竞选期间的开销不仅打破了以往的纪录，而且在政治筹款也同时打破以往的纪录的情况下，许多候选人依然面临资金短缺的问题。每当本人在报章上读到候选人们在竞选当中所花费的庞大资金，心里都不禁会想这些资源是否可以运用在更有意义的事物上。如果说花费这么多钱可以换得更高素质的公共谈论也就罢了，不过事实却非如此。根据媒体的报道，这些候选人的竞选资金多数都花在购买电视的广告空间。 这产生了一个微妙的状况：候选人在急需竞选资金的情况下，很多时候都必须在首几回的初选有不错的表现才可以说服资金贡献者继续捐款，好让这些候选人可以继续参选。撇开这些资金贡献者是否会在某位候选人当选后形成某种不良的影响的问题不谈，此局面完全突显了金钱左右竞选结果的可悲局面。
以上推论所隐含的事实是在被金钱主导的竞选过程中，最后选出来的候选人未必是对一般民众和国家利益而言最好的人选。本人在近几个月阅读美国的政治网站时，发现许多网民都有同一个看法，就是他们觉得许多非热门候选人对于治理国家和经济改革的见解远比热门候选人来得更好。然而，因为这些候选人没有足够资金购买让自己的政治讯息透过主流媒体散播，所以知名度远远不及几位热门的候选人，尤其是在许多民众都依然仰赖电视来吸取讯息的情况下。
综观美国的竞选过程后，本人对于本地的竞选规则开始有更深一层的领会。长期以来，本地许多反对党的支持者都指责有关当局对于选举的众多管制和规则都是为了巩固自身势力的手段。然而，本人对于本地拥有限定竞选经费的法令感到庆幸，至少这确保较为有钱的政党不能够主导公共谈论。或者说，有关当局在强制各政党必须公布超过某个现额的政治捐款的条例在考虑到贡献者日后所可能产生的影响下就显得合理了。虽然本人也不完全赞同有关当局对于透过电子媒体散播政治讯息的管制，不过在考虑到上述的状况后，多少也可以体谅有关当局的做法。在某种层面上，这迫使候选人不能仰赖30秒的电视广告来传达自己的政治讯息，而间接使到公共谈论素质的提升。
当然，最重要的是有关当局必须想办法让一般大众更轻易和有效地参与公共谈论的过程吧？就算有再多措施确保咱们的公共谈论的素质，如果一般大众对这些事都没有兴趣的话，再好的措施和管制也都是徒劳无功的。
美国前副总统戈尔在他写的书《理性的攻击》(The Assault On Reason)里指出美国的公共谈论空间已经被扭曲了。由于电视媒体在近年来取代报纸成为了散播讯息的主要媒介，因此许多总统或者参议院候选人在竞选时，或者是某个政治组织想要向大众传达某些讯息时，很多时候都是透过向电视台购买广告时间来散播他们的政治讯息。
由于电视台的广告空间是昂贵的产品，因此这些带有政治讯息的广告都非常简短，几乎都在30秒之内。要在如此短的时间全面地传达某个政治理念或者是立场几乎是不可能了，更别说是做深入讨论。因此，许多公共的谈论都只是停留在30秒影像的层次上。换句话说，整个公共讨论的素质和层次都降低了，以致许多传达政治讯息的电视广告最后都沦为某种变相和不正确的人身攻击。
不仅如此，透过电视媒体来进行公共讨论也在某种程度使到整个政治过程被金钱占据。昂贵的电视广告意味着只要有钱购买这些广告空间，在某种程度上就可以主导公共谈论的空间和方向。说明白些，民意不再是透过理性的分析形成、或者是被有力的论据说服，而是谁有钱谁就可以操纵民意。
戈尔在他书中所提到的事物都全面地体现在2008年的美国总统初选当中。许多候选人在竞选期间的开销不仅打破了以往的纪录，而且在政治筹款也同时打破以往的纪录的情况下，许多候选人依然面临资金短缺的问题。每当本人在报章上读到候选人们在竞选当中所花费的庞大资金，心里都不禁会想这些资源是否可以运用在更有意义的事物上。如果说花费这么多钱可以换得更高素质的公共谈论也就罢了，不过事实却非如此。根据媒体的报道，这些候选人的竞选资金多数都花在购买电视的广告空间。 这产生了一个微妙的状况：候选人在急需竞选资金的情况下，很多时候都必须在首几回的初选有不错的表现才可以说服资金贡献者继续捐款，好让这些候选人可以继续参选。撇开这些资金贡献者是否会在某位候选人当选后形成某种不良的影响的问题不谈，此局面完全突显了金钱左右竞选结果的可悲局面。
以上推论所隐含的事实是在被金钱主导的竞选过程中，最后选出来的候选人未必是对一般民众和国家利益而言最好的人选。本人在近几个月阅读美国的政治网站时，发现许多网民都有同一个看法，就是他们觉得许多非热门候选人对于治理国家和经济改革的见解远比热门候选人来得更好。然而，因为这些候选人没有足够资金购买让自己的政治讯息透过主流媒体散播，所以知名度远远不及几位热门的候选人，尤其是在许多民众都依然仰赖电视来吸取讯息的情况下。
综观美国的竞选过程后，本人对于本地的竞选规则开始有更深一层的领会。长期以来，本地许多反对党的支持者都指责有关当局对于选举的众多管制和规则都是为了巩固自身势力的手段。然而，本人对于本地拥有限定竞选经费的法令感到庆幸，至少这确保较为有钱的政党不能够主导公共谈论。或者说，有关当局在强制各政党必须公布超过某个现额的政治捐款的条例在考虑到贡献者日后所可能产生的影响下就显得合理了。虽然本人也不完全赞同有关当局对于透过电子媒体散播政治讯息的管制，不过在考虑到上述的状况后，多少也可以体谅有关当局的做法。在某种层面上，这迫使候选人不能仰赖30秒的电视广告来传达自己的政治讯息，而间接使到公共谈论素质的提升。
当然，最重要的是有关当局必须想办法让一般大众更轻易和有效地参与公共谈论的过程吧？就算有再多措施确保咱们的公共谈论的素质，如果一般大众对这些事都没有兴趣的话，再好的措施和管制也都是徒劳无功的。
Feist -- I Feel It All
This song is from her album "Reminder". As I mentioned before, Feist reminds me of Franciose Hardy. Also, whenever you here a lot of mainstream artist spends a lot of $$$ on making MTV, and then you look at Feist's MTV and the MTV for 1-2-3-4, and you might suddenly realise that it is not the amount of $$$, but the amount of creativity that matters.
Tori Amos -- Josephine
This is my favorite song from her album, To Venus And Back. The "Josephine" refers to Napoléon Bonaparte's wife.
Not tonight Josephine.
In an army's strength therein
lies the denouement. I can feel
you're haunting me. By
the Seine so beautiful, only
not to be of use-- impossible.
so strange, victory- 1200 spires
the only sound, moscow burning.
empty like the Tuileries. Like a dream
Vienna seems, only not to be of use- impossible.
in the last extremity -- to
advance or not to advance- I
hear you laughing
even still you're calling me
"not tonight, not tonight
not tonight"
Josephine
Not tonight Josephine.
In an army's strength therein
lies the denouement. I can feel
you're haunting me. By
the Seine so beautiful, only
not to be of use-- impossible.
so strange, victory- 1200 spires
the only sound, moscow burning.
empty like the Tuileries. Like a dream
Vienna seems, only not to be of use- impossible.
in the last extremity -- to
advance or not to advance- I
hear you laughing
even still you're calling me
"not tonight, not tonight
not tonight"
Josephine
Saturday, February 02, 2008
The Moral Instinct
This is an article by Steven Pinker published in The New York Times Magazine recently. However, most of the points are taken from Marc Hauser's Moral Minds, which is a book I highly recommend as Marc touches the topic of morality in much more details (i.e. all 400++ pages of it). However, if you feel that you do not have the time or patience to sit through a 400 odd pages book, then this article is kind of a nice and short summary of the main points in that book.
=====================================================
The Moral Instinct
By STEVEN PINKER
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
It’s not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd’s nerd and the world’s richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle’s eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.
I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish. It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines that trick the eye on cereal boxes and in psychology textbooks. Illusions are a favorite tool of perception scientists for exposing the workings of the five senses, and of philosophers for shaking people out of the naïve belief that our minds give us a transparent window onto the world (since if our eyes can be fooled by an illusion, why should we trust them at other times?). Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense. Moral intuitions are being drawn out of people in the lab, on Web sites and in brain scanners, and are being explained with tools from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary biology.
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” These days, the moral law within is being viewed with increasing awe, if not always admiration. The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations.
These quirks are bound to have implications for the human predicament. Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. We seek it in our friends and mates, nurture it in our children, advance it in our politics and justify it with our religions. A disrespect for morality is blamed for everyday sins and history’s worst atrocities. To carry this weight, the concept of morality would have to be bigger than any of us and outside all of us.
So dissecting moral intuitions is no small matter. If morality is a mere trick of the brain, some may fear, our very grounds for being moral could be eroded. Yet as we shall see, the science of the moral sense can instead be seen as a way to strengthen those grounds, by clarifying what morality is and how it should steer our actions.
The Moralization Switch
The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (“killing is wrong”), rather than merely disagreeable (“I hate brussels sprouts”), unfashionable (“bell-bottoms are out”) or imprudent (“don’t scratch mosquito bites”).
The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted. One can easily say, “I don’t like brussels sprouts, but I don’t care if you eat them,” but no one would say, “I don’t like killing, but I don’t care if you murder someone.”
The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished. Not only is it allowable to inflict pain on a person who has broken a moral rule; it is wrong not to, to “let them get away with it.” People are thus untroubled in inviting divine retribution or the power of the state to harm other people they deem immoral. Bertrand Russell wrote, “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell.”
We all know what it feels like when the moralization switch flips inside us — the righteous glow, the burning dudgeon, the drive to recruit others to the cause. The psychologist Paul Rozin has studied the toggle switch by comparing two kinds of people who engage in the same behavior but with different switch settings. Health vegetarians avoid meat for practical reasons, like lowering cholesterol and avoiding toxins. Moral vegetarians avoid meat for ethical reasons: to avoid complicity in the suffering of animals. By investigating their feelings about meat-eating, Rozin showed that the moral motive sets off a cascade of opinions. Moral vegetarians are more likely to treat meat as a contaminant — they refuse, for example, to eat a bowl of soup into which a drop of beef broth has fallen. They are more likely to think that other people ought to be vegetarians, and are more likely to imbue their dietary habits with other virtues, like believing that meat avoidance makes people less aggressive and bestial.
Much of our recent social history, including the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, consists of the moralization or amoralization of particular kinds of behavior. Even when people agree that an outcome is desirable, they may disagree on whether it should be treated as a matter of preference and prudence or as a matter of sin and virtue. Rozin notes, for example, that smoking has lately been moralized. Until recently, it was understood that some people didn’t enjoy smoking or avoided it because it was hazardous to their health. But with the discovery of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, smoking is now treated as immoral. Smokers are ostracized; images of people smoking are censored; and entities touched by smoke are felt to be contaminated (so hotels have not only nonsmoking rooms but nonsmoking floors). The desire for retribution has been visited on tobacco companies, who have been slapped with staggering “punitive damages.”
At the same time, many behaviors have been amoralized, switched from moral failings to lifestyle choices. They include divorce, illegitimacy, being a working mother, marijuana use and homosexuality. Many afflictions have been reassigned from payback for bad choices to unlucky misfortunes. There used to be people called “bums” and “tramps”; today they are “homeless.” Drug addiction is a “disease”; syphilis was rebranded from the price of wanton behavior to a “sexually transmitted disease” and more recently a “sexually transmitted infection.”
This wave of amoralization has led the cultural right to lament that morality itself is under assault, as we see in the group that anointed itself the Moral Majority. In fact there seems to be a Law of Conservation of Moralization, so that as old behaviors are taken out of the moralized column, new ones are added to it. Dozens of things that past generations treated as practical matters are now ethical battlegrounds, including disposable diapers, I.Q. tests, poultry farms, Barbie dolls and research on breast cancer. Food alone has become a minefield, with critics sermonizing about the size of sodas, the chemistry of fat, the freedom of chickens, the price of coffee beans, the species of fish and now the distance the food has traveled from farm to plate.
Many of these moralizations, like the assault on smoking, may be understood as practical tactics to reduce some recently identified harm. But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the “moral” setting isn’t just a matter of how much harm it does. We don’t show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles.
Reasoning and Rationalizing
It’s not just the content of our moral judgments that is often questionable, but the way we arrive at them. We like to think that when we have a conviction, there are good reasons that drove us to adopt it. That is why an older approach to moral psychology, led by Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, tried to document the lines of reasoning that guided people to moral conclusions. But consider these situations, originally devised by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt:
Julie is traveling in France on summer vacation from college with her brother Mark. One night they decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. Julie was already taking birth-control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy the sex but decide not to do it again. They keep the night as a special secret, which makes them feel closer to each other. What do you think about that — was it O.K. for them to make love?
A woman is cleaning out her closet and she finds her old American flag. She doesn’t want the flag anymore, so she cuts it up into pieces and uses the rags to clean her bathroom.
A family’s dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog’s body and cook it and eat it for dinner.
Most people immediately declare that these acts are wrong and then grope to justify why they are wrong. It’s not so easy. In the case of Julie and Mark, people raise the possibility of children with birth defects, but they are reminded that the couple were diligent about contraception. They suggest that the siblings will be emotionally hurt, but the story makes it clear that they weren’t. They submit that the act would offend the community, but then recall that it was kept a secret. Eventually many people admit, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.” People don’t generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.
The gap between people’s convictions and their justifications is also on display in the favorite new sandbox for moral psychologists, a thought experiment devised by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson called the Trolley Problem. On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”
Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge? Both dilemmas present you with the option of sacrificing one life to save five, and so, by the utilitarian standard of what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number, the two dilemmas are morally equivalent. But most people don’t see it that way: though they would pull the switch in the first dilemma, they would not heave the fat man in the second. When pressed for a reason, they can’t come up with anything coherent, though moral philosophers haven’t had an easy time coming up with a relevant difference, either.
When psychologists say “most people” they usually mean “most of the two dozen sophomores who filled out a questionnaire for beer money.” But in this case it means most of the 200,000 people from a hundred countries who shared their intuitions on a Web-based experiment conducted by the psychologists Fiery Cushman and Liane Young and the biologist Marc Hauser. A difference between the acceptability of switch-pulling and man-heaving, and an inability to justify the choice, was found in respondents from Europe, Asia and North and South America; among men and women, blacks and whites, teenagers and octogenarians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and atheists; people with elementary-school educations and people with Ph.D.’s.
Joshua Greene, a philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist, suggests that evolution equipped people with a revulsion to manhandling an innocent person. This instinct, he suggests, tends to overwhelm any utilitarian calculus that would tot up the lives saved and lost. The impulse against roughing up a fellow human would explain other examples in which people abjure killing one to save many, like euthanizing a hospital patient to harvest his organs and save five dying patients in need of transplants, or throwing someone out of a crowded lifeboat to keep it afloat.
By itself this would be no more than a plausible story, but Greene teamed up with the cognitive neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen and several Princeton colleagues to peer into people’s brains using functional M.R.I. They sought to find signs of a conflict between brain areas associated with emotion (the ones that recoil from harming someone) and areas dedicated to rational analysis (the ones that calculate lives lost and saved).
When people pondered the dilemmas that required killing someone with their bare hands, several networks in their brains lighted up. One, which included the medial (inward-facing) parts of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in emotions about other people. A second, the dorsolateral (upper and outer-facing) surface of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in ongoing mental computation (including nonmoral reasoning, like deciding whether to get somewhere by plane or train). And a third region, the anterior cingulate cortex (an evolutionarily ancient strip lying at the base of the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere), registers a conflict between an urge coming from one part of the brain and an advisory coming from another.
But when the people were pondering a hands-off dilemma, like switching the trolley onto the spur with the single worker, the brain reacted differently: only the area involved in rational calculation stood out. Other studies have shown that neurological patients who have blunted emotions because of damage to the frontal lobes become utilitarians: they think it makes perfect sense to throw the fat man off the bridge. Together, the findings corroborate Greene’s theory that our nonutilitarian intuitions come from the victory of an emotional impulse over a cost-benefit analysis.
A Universal Morality?
The findings of trolleyology — complex, instinctive and worldwide moral intuitions — led Hauser and John Mikhail (a legal scholar) to revive an analogy from the philosopher John Rawls between the moral sense and language. According to Noam Chomsky, we are born with a “universal grammar” that forces us to analyze speech in terms of its grammatical structure, with no conscious awareness of the rules in play. By analogy, we are born with a universal moral grammar that forces us to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness.
The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos.
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress. And according to the psychologists Elliot Turiel and Judith Smetana, preschoolers have an inkling of the difference between societal conventions and moral principles. Four-year-olds say that it is not O.K. to wear pajamas to school (a convention) and also not O.K. to hit a little girl for no reason (a moral principle). But when asked whether these actions would be O.K. if the teacher allowed them, most of the children said that wearing pajamas would now be fine but that hitting a little girl would still not be.
Though no one has identified genes for morality, there is circumstantial evidence they exist. The character traits called “conscientiousness” and “agreeableness” are far more correlated in identical twins separated at birth (who share their genes but not their environment) than in adoptive siblings raised together (who share their environment but not their genes). People given diagnoses of “antisocial personality disorder” or “psychopathy” show signs of morality blindness from the time they are children. They bully younger children, torture animals, habitually lie and seem incapable of empathy or remorse, often despite normal family backgrounds. Some of these children grow up into the monsters who bilk elderly people out of their savings, rape a succession of women or shoot convenience-store clerks lying on the floor during a robbery.
Though psychopathy probably comes from a genetic predisposition, a milder version can be caused by damage to frontal regions of the brain (including the areas that inhibit intact people from throwing the hypothetical fat man off the bridge). The neuroscientists Hanna and Antonio Damasio and their colleagues found that some children who sustain severe injuries to their frontal lobes can grow up into callous and irresponsible adults, despite normal intelligence. They lie, steal, ignore punishment, endanger their own children and can’t think through even the simplest moral dilemmas, like what two people should do if they disagreed on which TV channel to watch or whether a man ought to steal a drug to save his dying wife.
The moral sense, then, may be rooted in the design of the normal human brain. Yet for all the awe that may fill our minds when we reflect on an innate moral law within, the idea is at best incomplete. Consider this moral dilemma: A runaway trolley is about to kill a schoolteacher. You can divert the trolley onto a sidetrack, but the trolley would trip a switch sending a signal to a class of 6-year-olds, giving them permission to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Is it permissible to pull the lever?
This is no joke. Last month a British woman teaching in a private school in Sudan allowed her class to name a teddy bear after the most popular boy in the class, who bore the name of the founder of Islam. She was jailed for blasphemy and threatened with a public flogging, while a mob outside the prison demanded her death. To the protesters, the woman’s life clearly had less value than maximizing the dignity of their religion, and their judgment on whether it is right to divert the hypothetical trolley would have differed from ours. Whatever grammar guides people’s moral judgments can’t be all that universal. Anyone who stayed awake through Anthropology 101 can offer many other examples.
Of course, languages vary, too. In Chomsky’s theory, languages conform to an abstract blueprint, like having phrases built out of verbs and objects, while the details vary, like whether the verb or the object comes first. Could we be wired with an abstract spec sheet that embraces all the strange ideas that people in different cultures moralize?
The Varieties of Moral Experience
When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it’s bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.
The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. Haidt asks us to consider how much money someone would have to pay us to do hypothetical acts like the following:
Stick a pin into your palm.
Stick a pin into the palm of a child you don’t know. (Harm.)
Accept a wide-screen TV from a friend who received it at no charge because of a computer error.
Accept a wide-screen TV from a friend who received it from a thief who had stolen it from a wealthy family. (Fairness.)
Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe) on a talk-radio show in your nation.
Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe) on a talk-radio show in a foreign nation. (Community.)
Slap a friend in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit.
Slap your minister in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit. (Authority.)
Attend a performance-art piece in which the actors act like idiots for 30 minutes, including flubbing simple problems and falling down on stage.
Attend a performance-art piece in which the actors act like animals for 30 minutes, including crawling around naked and urinating on stage. (Purity.)
In each pair, the second action feels far more repugnant. Most of the moral illusions we have visited come from an unwarranted intrusion of one of the moral spheres into our judgments. A violation of community led people to frown on using an old flag to clean a bathroom. Violations of purity repelled the people who judged the morality of consensual incest and prevented the moral vegetarians and nonsmokers from tolerating the slightest trace of a vile contaminant. At the other end of the scale, displays of extreme purity lead people to venerate religious leaders who dress in white and affect an aura of chastity and asceticism.
The Genealogy of Morals
The five spheres are good candidates for a periodic table of the moral sense not only because they are ubiquitous but also because they appear to have deep evolutionary roots. The impulse to avoid harm, which gives trolley ponderers the willies when they consider throwing a man off a bridge, can also be found in rhesus monkeys, who go hungry rather than pull a chain that delivers food to them and a shock to another monkey. Respect for authority is clearly related to the pecking orders of dominance and appeasement that are widespread in the animal kingdom. The purity-defilement contrast taps the emotion of disgust that is triggered by potential disease vectors like bodily effluvia, decaying flesh and unconventional forms of meat, and by risky sexual practices like incest.
The other two moralized spheres match up with the classic examples of how altruism can evolve that were worked out by sociobiologists in the 1960s and 1970s and made famous by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” Fairness is very close to what scientists call reciprocal altruism, where a willingness to be nice to others can evolve as long as the favor helps the recipient more than it costs the giver and the recipient returns the favor when fortunes reverse. The analysis makes it sound as if reciprocal altruism comes out of a robotlike calculation, but in fact Robert Trivers, the biologist who devised the theory, argued that it is implemented in the brain as a suite of moral emotions. Sympathy prompts a person to offer the first favor, particularly to someone in need for whom it would go the furthest. Anger protects a person against cheaters who accept a favor without reciprocating, by impelling him to punish the ingrate or sever the relationship. Gratitude impels a beneficiary to reward those who helped him in the past. Guilt prompts a cheater in danger of being found out to repair the relationship by redressing the misdeed and advertising that he will behave better in the future (consistent with Mencken’s definition of conscience as “the inner voice which warns us that someone might be looking”). Many experiments on who helps whom, who likes whom, who punishes whom and who feels guilty about what have confirmed these predictions.
Community, the very different emotion that prompts people to share and sacrifice without an expectation of payback, may be rooted in nepotistic altruism, the empathy and solidarity we feel toward our relatives (and which evolved because any gene that pushed an organism to aid a relative would have helped copies of itself sitting inside that relative). In humans, of course, communal feelings can be lavished on nonrelatives as well. Sometimes it pays people (in an evolutionary sense) to love their companions because their interests are yoked, like spouses with common children, in-laws with common relatives, friends with common tastes or allies with common enemies. And sometimes it doesn’t pay them at all, but their kinship-detectors have been tricked into treating their groupmates as if they were relatives by tactics like kinship metaphors (blood brothers, fraternities, the fatherland), origin myths, communal meals and other bonding rituals.
Juggling the Spheres
All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life — sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on — depends on the culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity), the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible — what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?
The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.
Reassigning an activity to a different sphere, or taking it out of the moral spheres altogether, isn’t easy. People think that a behavior belongs in its sphere as a matter of sacred necessity and that the very act of questioning an assignment is a moral outrage. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has shown that the mentality of taboo — a conviction that some thoughts are sinful to think — is not just a superstition of Polynesians but a mind-set that can easily be triggered in college-educated Americans. Just ask them to think about applying the sphere of reciprocity to relationships customarily governed by community or authority. When Tetlock asked subjects for their opinions on whether adoption agencies should place children with the couples willing to pay the most, whether people should have the right to sell their organs and whether they should be able to buy their way out of jury duty, the subjects not only disagreed but felt personally insulted and were outraged that anyone would raise the question.
The institutions of modernity often question and experiment with the way activities are assigned to moral spheres. Market economies tend to put everything up for sale. Science amoralizes the world by seeking to understand phenomena rather than pass judgment on them. Secular philosophy is in the business of scrutinizing all beliefs, including those entrenched by authority and tradition. It’s not surprising that these institutions are often seen to be morally corrosive.
Is Nothing Sacred?
And “morally corrosive” is exactly the term that some critics would apply to the new science of the moral sense. The attempt to dissect our moral intuitions can look like an attempt to debunk them. Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested — to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes. The explanation of how different cultures appeal to different spheres could lead to a spineless relativism, in which we would never have grounds to criticize the practice of another culture, no matter how barbaric, because “we have our kind of morality and they have theirs.” And the whole enterprise seems to be dragging us to an amoral nihilism, in which morality itself would be demoted from a transcendent principle to a figment of our neural circuitry.
In reality, none of these fears are warranted, and it’s important to see why not. The first misunderstanding involves the logic of evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary biologists sometimes anthropomorphize DNA for the same reason that science teachers find it useful to have their students imagine the world from the viewpoint of a molecule or a beam of light. One shortcut to understanding the theory of selection without working through the math is to imagine that the genes are little agents that try to make copies of themselves.
Unfortunately, the meme of the selfish gene escaped from popular biology books and mutated into the idea that organisms (including people) are ruthlessly self-serving. And this doesn’t follow. Genes are not a reservoir of our dark unconscious wishes. “Selfish” genes are perfectly compatible with selfless organisms, because a gene’s metaphorical goal of selfishly replicating itself can be implemented by wiring up the brain of the organism to do unselfish things, like being nice to relatives or doing good deeds for needy strangers. When a mother stays up all night comforting a sick child, the genes that endowed her with that tenderness were “selfish” in a metaphorical sense, but by no stretch of the imagination is she being selfish.
Nor does reciprocal altruism — the evolutionary rationale behind fairness — imply that people do good deeds in the cynical expectation of repayment down the line. We all know of unrequited good deeds, like tipping a waitress in a city you will never visit again and falling on a grenade to save platoonmates. These bursts of goodness are not as anomalous to a biologist as they might appear.
In his classic 1971 article, Trivers, the biologist, showed how natural selection could push in the direction of true selflessness. The emergence of tit-for-tat reciprocity, which lets organisms trade favors without being cheated, is just a first step. A favor-giver not only has to avoid blatant cheaters (those who would accept a favor but not return it) but also prefer generous reciprocators (those who return the biggest favor they can afford) over stingy ones (those who return the smallest favor they can get away with). Since it’s good to be chosen as a recipient of favors, a competition arises to be the most generous partner around. More accurately, a competition arises to appear to be the most generous partner around, since the favor-giver can’t literally read minds or see into the future. A reputation for fairness and generosity becomes an asset.
Now this just sets up a competition for potential beneficiaries to inflate their reputations without making the sacrifices to back them up. But it also pressures the favor-giver to develop ever-more-sensitive radar to distinguish the genuinely generous partners from the hypocrites. This arms race will eventually reach a logical conclusion. The most effective way to seem generous and fair, under harsh scrutiny, is to be generous and fair. In the long run, then, reputation can be secured only by commitment. At least some agents evolve to be genuinely high-minded and self-sacrificing — they are moral not because of what it brings them but because that’s the kind of people they are.
Of course, a theory that predicted that everyone always sacrificed themselves for another’s good would be as preposterous as a theory that predicted that no one ever did. Alongside the niches for saints there are niches for more grudging reciprocators, who attract fewer and poorer partners but don’t make the sacrifices necessary for a sterling reputation. And both may coexist with outright cheaters, who exploit the unwary in one-shot encounters. An ecosystem of niches, each with a distinct strategy, can evolve when the payoff of each strategy depends on how many players are playing the other strategies. The human social environment does have its share of generous, grudging and crooked characters, and the genetic variation in personality seems to bear the fingerprints of this evolutionary process.
Is Morality a Figment?
So a biological understanding of the moral sense does not entail that people are calculating maximizers of their genes or self-interest. But where does it leave the concept of morality itself?
Here is the worry. The scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world. The qualitative difference between red and green, the tastiness of fruit and foulness of carrion, the scariness of heights and prettiness of flowers are design features of our common nervous system, and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes, our reactions could go the other way. Now, if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring, why should we believe it is any more real than the distinction between red and green? And if it is just a collective hallucination, how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone, rather than just distasteful to us?
Putting God in charge of morality is one way to solve the problem, of course, but Plato made short work of it 2,400 years ago. Does God have a good reason for designating certain acts as moral and others as immoral? If not — if his dictates are divine whims — why should we take them seriously? Suppose that God commanded us to torture a child. Would that make it all right, or would some other standard give us reasons to resist? And if, on the other hand, God was forced by moral reasons to issue some dictates and not others — if a command to torture a child was never an option — then why not appeal to those reasons directly?
This throws us back to wondering where those reasons could come from, if they are more than just figments of our brains. They certainly aren’t in the physical world like wavelength or mass. The only other option is that moral truths exist in some abstract Platonic realm, there for us to discover, perhaps in the same way that mathematical truths (according to most mathematicians) are there for us to discover. On this analogy, we are born with a rudimentary concept of number, but as soon as we build on it with formal mathematical reasoning, the nature of mathematical reality forces us to discover some truths and not others. (No one who understands the concept of two, the concept of four and the concept of addition can come to any conclusion but that 2 + 2 = 4.) Perhaps we are born with a rudimentary moral sense, and as soon as we build on it with moral reasoning, the nature of moral reality forces us to some conclusions but not others.
Moral realism, as this idea is called, is too rich for many philosophers’ blood. Yet a diluted version of the idea — if not a list of cosmically inscribed Thou-Shalts, then at least a few If-Thens — is not crazy. Two features of reality point any rational, self-preserving social agent in a moral direction. And they could provide a benchmark for determining when the judgments of our moral sense are aligned with morality itself.
One is the prevalence of nonzero-sum games. In many arenas of life, two parties are objectively better off if they both act in a nonselfish way than if each of them acts selfishly. You and I are both better off if we share our surpluses, rescue each other’s children in danger and refrain from shooting at each other, compared with hoarding our surpluses while they rot, letting the other’s child drown while we file our nails or feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. Granted, I might be a bit better off if I acted selfishly at your expense and you played the sucker, but the same is true for you with me, so if each of us tried for these advantages, we’d both end up worse off. Any neutral observer, and you and I if we could talk it over rationally, would have to conclude that the state we should aim for is the one in which we both are unselfish. These spreadsheet projections are not quirks of brain wiring, nor are they dictated by a supernatural power; they are in the nature of things.
The other external support for morality is a feature of rationality itself: that it cannot depend on the egocentric vantage point of the reasoner. If I appeal to you to do anything that affects me — to get off my foot, or tell me the time or not run me over with your car — then I can’t do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours (say, retaining my right to run you over with my car) if I want you to take me seriously. Unless I am Galactic Overlord, I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind. I can’t act as if my interests are special just because I’m me and you’re not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.
Not coincidentally, the core of this idea — the interchangeability of perspectives — keeps reappearing in history’s best-thought-through moral philosophies, including the Golden Rule (itself discovered many times); Spinoza’s Viewpoint of Eternity; the Social Contract of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke; Kant’s Categorical Imperative; and Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. It also underlies Peter Singer’s theory of the Expanding Circle — the optimistic proposal that our moral sense, though shaped by evolution to overvalue self, kin and clan, can propel us on a path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings.
Doing Better by Knowing Ourselves
Morality, then, is still something larger than our inherited moral sense, and the new science of the moral sense does not make moral reasoning and conviction obsolete. At the same time, its implications for our moral universe are profound.
At the very least, the science tells us that even when our adversaries’ agenda is most baffling, they may not be amoral psychopaths but in the throes of a moral mind-set that appears to them to be every bit as mandatory and universal as ours does to us. Of course, some adversaries really are psychopaths, and others are so poisoned by a punitive moralization that they are beyond the pale of reason. (The actor Will Smith had many historians on his side when he recently speculated to the press that Hitler thought he was acting morally.) But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other guy is acting from moral rather than venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground. One side can acknowledge the other’s concern for community or stability or fairness or dignity, even while arguing that some other value should trump it in that instance. With affirmative action, for example, the opponents can be seen as arguing from a sense of fairness, not racism, and the defenders can be seen as acting from a concern with community, not bureaucratic power. Liberals can ratify conservatives’ concern with families while noting that gay marriage is perfectly consistent with that concern.
The science of the moral sense also alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup can get in the way of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels.
Though wise people have long reflected on how we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, our public discourse still fails to discount it appropriately. In the worst cases, the thoughtlessness of our brute intuitions can be celebrated as a virtue. In his influential essay “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” Leon Kass, former chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, argued that we should disregard reason when it comes to cloning and other biomedical technologies and go with our gut: “We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings . . . because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. . . . In this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done . . . repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”
There are, of course, good reasons to regulate human cloning, but the shudder test is not one of them. People have shuddered at all kinds of morally irrelevant violations of purity in their culture: touching an untouchable, drinking from the same water fountain as a Negro, allowing Jewish blood to mix with Aryan blood, tolerating sodomy between consenting men. And if our ancestors’ repugnance had carried the day, we never would have had autopsies, vaccinations, blood transfusions, artificial insemination, organ transplants and in vitro fertilization, all of which were denounced as immoral when they were new.
There are many other issues for which we are too quick to hit the moralization button and look for villains rather than bug fixes. What should we do when a hospital patient is killed by a nurse who administers the wrong drug in a patient’s intravenous line? Should we make it easier to sue the hospital for damages? Or should we redesign the IV fittings so that it’s physically impossible to connect the wrong bottle to the line?
And nowhere is moralization more of a hazard than in our greatest global challenge. The threat of human-induced climate change has become the occasion for a moralistic revival meeting. In many discussions, the cause of climate change is overindulgence (too many S.U.V.’s) and defilement (sullying the atmosphere), and the solution is temperance (conservation) and expiation (buying carbon offset coupons). Yet the experts agree that these numbers don’t add up: even if every last American became conscientious about his or her carbon emissions, the effects on climate change would be trifling, if for no other reason than that two billion Indians and Chinese are unlikely to copy our born-again abstemiousness. Though voluntary conservation may be one wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.
Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of “The Language Instinct” and “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.”
The Moral Instinct
By STEVEN PINKER
January 13, 2008
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
It’s not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd’s nerd and the world’s richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle’s eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.
I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish. It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines that trick the eye on cereal boxes and in psychology textbooks. Illusions are a favorite tool of perception scientists for exposing the workings of the five senses, and of philosophers for shaking people out of the naïve belief that our minds give us a transparent window onto the world (since if our eyes can be fooled by an illusion, why should we trust them at other times?). Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense. Moral intuitions are being drawn out of people in the lab, on Web sites and in brain scanners, and are being explained with tools from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary biology.
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them,” wrote Immanuel Kant, “the starry heavens above and the moral law within.” These days, the moral law within is being viewed with increasing awe, if not always admiration. The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations.
These quirks are bound to have implications for the human predicament. Morality is not just any old topic in psychology but close to our conception of the meaning of life. Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. We seek it in our friends and mates, nurture it in our children, advance it in our politics and justify it with our religions. A disrespect for morality is blamed for everyday sins and history’s worst atrocities. To carry this weight, the concept of morality would have to be bigger than any of us and outside all of us.
So dissecting moral intuitions is no small matter. If morality is a mere trick of the brain, some may fear, our very grounds for being moral could be eroded. Yet as we shall see, the science of the moral sense can instead be seen as a way to strengthen those grounds, by clarifying what morality is and how it should steer our actions.
The Moralization Switch
The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (“killing is wrong”), rather than merely disagreeable (“I hate brussels sprouts”), unfashionable (“bell-bottoms are out”) or imprudent (“don’t scratch mosquito bites”).
The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted. One can easily say, “I don’t like brussels sprouts, but I don’t care if you eat them,” but no one would say, “I don’t like killing, but I don’t care if you murder someone.”
The other hallmark is that people feel that those who commit immoral acts deserve to be punished. Not only is it allowable to inflict pain on a person who has broken a moral rule; it is wrong not to, to “let them get away with it.” People are thus untroubled in inviting divine retribution or the power of the state to harm other people they deem immoral. Bertrand Russell wrote, “The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists — that is why they invented hell.”
We all know what it feels like when the moralization switch flips inside us — the righteous glow, the burning dudgeon, the drive to recruit others to the cause. The psychologist Paul Rozin has studied the toggle switch by comparing two kinds of people who engage in the same behavior but with different switch settings. Health vegetarians avoid meat for practical reasons, like lowering cholesterol and avoiding toxins. Moral vegetarians avoid meat for ethical reasons: to avoid complicity in the suffering of animals. By investigating their feelings about meat-eating, Rozin showed that the moral motive sets off a cascade of opinions. Moral vegetarians are more likely to treat meat as a contaminant — they refuse, for example, to eat a bowl of soup into which a drop of beef broth has fallen. They are more likely to think that other people ought to be vegetarians, and are more likely to imbue their dietary habits with other virtues, like believing that meat avoidance makes people less aggressive and bestial.
Much of our recent social history, including the culture wars between liberals and conservatives, consists of the moralization or amoralization of particular kinds of behavior. Even when people agree that an outcome is desirable, they may disagree on whether it should be treated as a matter of preference and prudence or as a matter of sin and virtue. Rozin notes, for example, that smoking has lately been moralized. Until recently, it was understood that some people didn’t enjoy smoking or avoided it because it was hazardous to their health. But with the discovery of the harmful effects of secondhand smoke, smoking is now treated as immoral. Smokers are ostracized; images of people smoking are censored; and entities touched by smoke are felt to be contaminated (so hotels have not only nonsmoking rooms but nonsmoking floors). The desire for retribution has been visited on tobacco companies, who have been slapped with staggering “punitive damages.”
At the same time, many behaviors have been amoralized, switched from moral failings to lifestyle choices. They include divorce, illegitimacy, being a working mother, marijuana use and homosexuality. Many afflictions have been reassigned from payback for bad choices to unlucky misfortunes. There used to be people called “bums” and “tramps”; today they are “homeless.” Drug addiction is a “disease”; syphilis was rebranded from the price of wanton behavior to a “sexually transmitted disease” and more recently a “sexually transmitted infection.”
This wave of amoralization has led the cultural right to lament that morality itself is under assault, as we see in the group that anointed itself the Moral Majority. In fact there seems to be a Law of Conservation of Moralization, so that as old behaviors are taken out of the moralized column, new ones are added to it. Dozens of things that past generations treated as practical matters are now ethical battlegrounds, including disposable diapers, I.Q. tests, poultry farms, Barbie dolls and research on breast cancer. Food alone has become a minefield, with critics sermonizing about the size of sodas, the chemistry of fat, the freedom of chickens, the price of coffee beans, the species of fish and now the distance the food has traveled from farm to plate.
Many of these moralizations, like the assault on smoking, may be understood as practical tactics to reduce some recently identified harm. But whether an activity flips our mental switches to the “moral” setting isn’t just a matter of how much harm it does. We don’t show contempt to the man who fails to change the batteries in his smoke alarms or takes his family on a driving vacation, both of which multiply the risk they will die in an accident. Driving a gas-guzzling Hummer is reprehensible, but driving a gas-guzzling old Volvo is not; eating a Big Mac is unconscionable, but not imported cheese or crème brûlée. The reason for these double standards is obvious: people tend to align their moralization with their own lifestyles.
Reasoning and Rationalizing
It’s not just the content of our moral judgments that is often questionable, but the way we arrive at them. We like to think that when we have a conviction, there are good reasons that drove us to adopt it. That is why an older approach to moral psychology, led by Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, tried to document the lines of reasoning that guided people to moral conclusions. But consider these situations, originally devised by the psychologist Jonathan Haidt:
Julie is traveling in France on summer vacation from college with her brother Mark. One night they decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. Julie was already taking birth-control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy the sex but decide not to do it again. They keep the night as a special secret, which makes them feel closer to each other. What do you think about that — was it O.K. for them to make love?
A woman is cleaning out her closet and she finds her old American flag. She doesn’t want the flag anymore, so she cuts it up into pieces and uses the rags to clean her bathroom.
A family’s dog is killed by a car in front of their house. They heard that dog meat was delicious, so they cut up the dog’s body and cook it and eat it for dinner.
Most people immediately declare that these acts are wrong and then grope to justify why they are wrong. It’s not so easy. In the case of Julie and Mark, people raise the possibility of children with birth defects, but they are reminded that the couple were diligent about contraception. They suggest that the siblings will be emotionally hurt, but the story makes it clear that they weren’t. They submit that the act would offend the community, but then recall that it was kept a secret. Eventually many people admit, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong.” People don’t generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification.
The gap between people’s convictions and their justifications is also on display in the favorite new sandbox for moral psychologists, a thought experiment devised by the philosophers Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson called the Trolley Problem. On your morning walk, you see a trolley car hurtling down the track, the conductor slumped over the controls. In the path of the trolley are five men working on the track, oblivious to the danger. You are standing at a fork in the track and can pull a lever that will divert the trolley onto a spur, saving the five men. Unfortunately, the trolley would then run over a single worker who is laboring on the spur. Is it permissible to throw the switch, killing one man to save five? Almost everyone says “yes.”
Consider now a different scene. You are on a bridge overlooking the tracks and have spotted the runaway trolley bearing down on the five workers. Now the only way to stop the trolley is to throw a heavy object in its path. And the only heavy object within reach is a fat man standing next to you. Should you throw the man off the bridge? Both dilemmas present you with the option of sacrificing one life to save five, and so, by the utilitarian standard of what would result in the greatest good for the greatest number, the two dilemmas are morally equivalent. But most people don’t see it that way: though they would pull the switch in the first dilemma, they would not heave the fat man in the second. When pressed for a reason, they can’t come up with anything coherent, though moral philosophers haven’t had an easy time coming up with a relevant difference, either.
When psychologists say “most people” they usually mean “most of the two dozen sophomores who filled out a questionnaire for beer money.” But in this case it means most of the 200,000 people from a hundred countries who shared their intuitions on a Web-based experiment conducted by the psychologists Fiery Cushman and Liane Young and the biologist Marc Hauser. A difference between the acceptability of switch-pulling and man-heaving, and an inability to justify the choice, was found in respondents from Europe, Asia and North and South America; among men and women, blacks and whites, teenagers and octogenarians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians, Jews and atheists; people with elementary-school educations and people with Ph.D.’s.
Joshua Greene, a philosopher and cognitive neuroscientist, suggests that evolution equipped people with a revulsion to manhandling an innocent person. This instinct, he suggests, tends to overwhelm any utilitarian calculus that would tot up the lives saved and lost. The impulse against roughing up a fellow human would explain other examples in which people abjure killing one to save many, like euthanizing a hospital patient to harvest his organs and save five dying patients in need of transplants, or throwing someone out of a crowded lifeboat to keep it afloat.
By itself this would be no more than a plausible story, but Greene teamed up with the cognitive neuroscientist Jonathan Cohen and several Princeton colleagues to peer into people’s brains using functional M.R.I. They sought to find signs of a conflict between brain areas associated with emotion (the ones that recoil from harming someone) and areas dedicated to rational analysis (the ones that calculate lives lost and saved).
When people pondered the dilemmas that required killing someone with their bare hands, several networks in their brains lighted up. One, which included the medial (inward-facing) parts of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in emotions about other people. A second, the dorsolateral (upper and outer-facing) surface of the frontal lobes, has been implicated in ongoing mental computation (including nonmoral reasoning, like deciding whether to get somewhere by plane or train). And a third region, the anterior cingulate cortex (an evolutionarily ancient strip lying at the base of the inner surface of each cerebral hemisphere), registers a conflict between an urge coming from one part of the brain and an advisory coming from another.
But when the people were pondering a hands-off dilemma, like switching the trolley onto the spur with the single worker, the brain reacted differently: only the area involved in rational calculation stood out. Other studies have shown that neurological patients who have blunted emotions because of damage to the frontal lobes become utilitarians: they think it makes perfect sense to throw the fat man off the bridge. Together, the findings corroborate Greene’s theory that our nonutilitarian intuitions come from the victory of an emotional impulse over a cost-benefit analysis.
A Universal Morality?
The findings of trolleyology — complex, instinctive and worldwide moral intuitions — led Hauser and John Mikhail (a legal scholar) to revive an analogy from the philosopher John Rawls between the moral sense and language. According to Noam Chomsky, we are born with a “universal grammar” that forces us to analyze speech in terms of its grammatical structure, with no conscious awareness of the rules in play. By analogy, we are born with a universal moral grammar that forces us to analyze human action in terms of its moral structure, with just as little awareness.
The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos.
The stirrings of morality emerge early in childhood. Toddlers spontaneously offer toys and help to others and try to comfort people they see in distress. And according to the psychologists Elliot Turiel and Judith Smetana, preschoolers have an inkling of the difference between societal conventions and moral principles. Four-year-olds say that it is not O.K. to wear pajamas to school (a convention) and also not O.K. to hit a little girl for no reason (a moral principle). But when asked whether these actions would be O.K. if the teacher allowed them, most of the children said that wearing pajamas would now be fine but that hitting a little girl would still not be.
Though no one has identified genes for morality, there is circumstantial evidence they exist. The character traits called “conscientiousness” and “agreeableness” are far more correlated in identical twins separated at birth (who share their genes but not their environment) than in adoptive siblings raised together (who share their environment but not their genes). People given diagnoses of “antisocial personality disorder” or “psychopathy” show signs of morality blindness from the time they are children. They bully younger children, torture animals, habitually lie and seem incapable of empathy or remorse, often despite normal family backgrounds. Some of these children grow up into the monsters who bilk elderly people out of their savings, rape a succession of women or shoot convenience-store clerks lying on the floor during a robbery.
Though psychopathy probably comes from a genetic predisposition, a milder version can be caused by damage to frontal regions of the brain (including the areas that inhibit intact people from throwing the hypothetical fat man off the bridge). The neuroscientists Hanna and Antonio Damasio and their colleagues found that some children who sustain severe injuries to their frontal lobes can grow up into callous and irresponsible adults, despite normal intelligence. They lie, steal, ignore punishment, endanger their own children and can’t think through even the simplest moral dilemmas, like what two people should do if they disagreed on which TV channel to watch or whether a man ought to steal a drug to save his dying wife.
The moral sense, then, may be rooted in the design of the normal human brain. Yet for all the awe that may fill our minds when we reflect on an innate moral law within, the idea is at best incomplete. Consider this moral dilemma: A runaway trolley is about to kill a schoolteacher. You can divert the trolley onto a sidetrack, but the trolley would trip a switch sending a signal to a class of 6-year-olds, giving them permission to name a teddy bear Muhammad. Is it permissible to pull the lever?
This is no joke. Last month a British woman teaching in a private school in Sudan allowed her class to name a teddy bear after the most popular boy in the class, who bore the name of the founder of Islam. She was jailed for blasphemy and threatened with a public flogging, while a mob outside the prison demanded her death. To the protesters, the woman’s life clearly had less value than maximizing the dignity of their religion, and their judgment on whether it is right to divert the hypothetical trolley would have differed from ours. Whatever grammar guides people’s moral judgments can’t be all that universal. Anyone who stayed awake through Anthropology 101 can offer many other examples.
Of course, languages vary, too. In Chomsky’s theory, languages conform to an abstract blueprint, like having phrases built out of verbs and objects, while the details vary, like whether the verb or the object comes first. Could we be wired with an abstract spec sheet that embraces all the strange ideas that people in different cultures moralize?
The Varieties of Moral Experience
When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it’s bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.
The exact number of themes depends on whether you’re a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. Haidt asks us to consider how much money someone would have to pay us to do hypothetical acts like the following:
Stick a pin into your palm.
Stick a pin into the palm of a child you don’t know. (Harm.)
Accept a wide-screen TV from a friend who received it at no charge because of a computer error.
Accept a wide-screen TV from a friend who received it from a thief who had stolen it from a wealthy family. (Fairness.)
Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe) on a talk-radio show in your nation.
Say something bad about your nation (which you don’t believe) on a talk-radio show in a foreign nation. (Community.)
Slap a friend in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit.
Slap your minister in the face, with his permission, as part of a comedy skit. (Authority.)
Attend a performance-art piece in which the actors act like idiots for 30 minutes, including flubbing simple problems and falling down on stage.
Attend a performance-art piece in which the actors act like animals for 30 minutes, including crawling around naked and urinating on stage. (Purity.)
In each pair, the second action feels far more repugnant. Most of the moral illusions we have visited come from an unwarranted intrusion of one of the moral spheres into our judgments. A violation of community led people to frown on using an old flag to clean a bathroom. Violations of purity repelled the people who judged the morality of consensual incest and prevented the moral vegetarians and nonsmokers from tolerating the slightest trace of a vile contaminant. At the other end of the scale, displays of extreme purity lead people to venerate religious leaders who dress in white and affect an aura of chastity and asceticism.
The Genealogy of Morals
The five spheres are good candidates for a periodic table of the moral sense not only because they are ubiquitous but also because they appear to have deep evolutionary roots. The impulse to avoid harm, which gives trolley ponderers the willies when they consider throwing a man off a bridge, can also be found in rhesus monkeys, who go hungry rather than pull a chain that delivers food to them and a shock to another monkey. Respect for authority is clearly related to the pecking orders of dominance and appeasement that are widespread in the animal kingdom. The purity-defilement contrast taps the emotion of disgust that is triggered by potential disease vectors like bodily effluvia, decaying flesh and unconventional forms of meat, and by risky sexual practices like incest.
The other two moralized spheres match up with the classic examples of how altruism can evolve that were worked out by sociobiologists in the 1960s and 1970s and made famous by Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene.” Fairness is very close to what scientists call reciprocal altruism, where a willingness to be nice to others can evolve as long as the favor helps the recipient more than it costs the giver and the recipient returns the favor when fortunes reverse. The analysis makes it sound as if reciprocal altruism comes out of a robotlike calculation, but in fact Robert Trivers, the biologist who devised the theory, argued that it is implemented in the brain as a suite of moral emotions. Sympathy prompts a person to offer the first favor, particularly to someone in need for whom it would go the furthest. Anger protects a person against cheaters who accept a favor without reciprocating, by impelling him to punish the ingrate or sever the relationship. Gratitude impels a beneficiary to reward those who helped him in the past. Guilt prompts a cheater in danger of being found out to repair the relationship by redressing the misdeed and advertising that he will behave better in the future (consistent with Mencken’s definition of conscience as “the inner voice which warns us that someone might be looking”). Many experiments on who helps whom, who likes whom, who punishes whom and who feels guilty about what have confirmed these predictions.
Community, the very different emotion that prompts people to share and sacrifice without an expectation of payback, may be rooted in nepotistic altruism, the empathy and solidarity we feel toward our relatives (and which evolved because any gene that pushed an organism to aid a relative would have helped copies of itself sitting inside that relative). In humans, of course, communal feelings can be lavished on nonrelatives as well. Sometimes it pays people (in an evolutionary sense) to love their companions because their interests are yoked, like spouses with common children, in-laws with common relatives, friends with common tastes or allies with common enemies. And sometimes it doesn’t pay them at all, but their kinship-detectors have been tricked into treating their groupmates as if they were relatives by tactics like kinship metaphors (blood brothers, fraternities, the fatherland), origin myths, communal meals and other bonding rituals.
Juggling the Spheres
All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time. The five moral spheres are universal, a legacy of evolution. But how they are ranked in importance, and which is brought in to moralize which area of social life — sex, government, commerce, religion, diet and so on — depends on the culture. Many of the flabbergasting practices in faraway places become more intelligible when you recognize that the same moralizing impulse that Western elites channel toward violations of harm and fairness (our moral obsessions) is channeled elsewhere to violations in the other spheres. Think of the Japanese fear of nonconformity (community), the holy ablutions and dietary restrictions of Hindus and Orthodox Jews (purity), the outrage at insulting the Prophet among Muslims (authority). In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible — what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?
The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.
Reassigning an activity to a different sphere, or taking it out of the moral spheres altogether, isn’t easy. People think that a behavior belongs in its sphere as a matter of sacred necessity and that the very act of questioning an assignment is a moral outrage. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has shown that the mentality of taboo — a conviction that some thoughts are sinful to think — is not just a superstition of Polynesians but a mind-set that can easily be triggered in college-educated Americans. Just ask them to think about applying the sphere of reciprocity to relationships customarily governed by community or authority. When Tetlock asked subjects for their opinions on whether adoption agencies should place children with the couples willing to pay the most, whether people should have the right to sell their organs and whether they should be able to buy their way out of jury duty, the subjects not only disagreed but felt personally insulted and were outraged that anyone would raise the question.
The institutions of modernity often question and experiment with the way activities are assigned to moral spheres. Market economies tend to put everything up for sale. Science amoralizes the world by seeking to understand phenomena rather than pass judgment on them. Secular philosophy is in the business of scrutinizing all beliefs, including those entrenched by authority and tradition. It’s not surprising that these institutions are often seen to be morally corrosive.
Is Nothing Sacred?
And “morally corrosive” is exactly the term that some critics would apply to the new science of the moral sense. The attempt to dissect our moral intuitions can look like an attempt to debunk them. Evolutionary psychologists seem to want to unmask our noblest motives as ultimately self-interested — to show that our love for children, compassion for the unfortunate and sense of justice are just tactics in a Darwinian struggle to perpetuate our genes. The explanation of how different cultures appeal to different spheres could lead to a spineless relativism, in which we would never have grounds to criticize the practice of another culture, no matter how barbaric, because “we have our kind of morality and they have theirs.” And the whole enterprise seems to be dragging us to an amoral nihilism, in which morality itself would be demoted from a transcendent principle to a figment of our neural circuitry.
In reality, none of these fears are warranted, and it’s important to see why not. The first misunderstanding involves the logic of evolutionary explanations. Evolutionary biologists sometimes anthropomorphize DNA for the same reason that science teachers find it useful to have their students imagine the world from the viewpoint of a molecule or a beam of light. One shortcut to understanding the theory of selection without working through the math is to imagine that the genes are little agents that try to make copies of themselves.
Unfortunately, the meme of the selfish gene escaped from popular biology books and mutated into the idea that organisms (including people) are ruthlessly self-serving. And this doesn’t follow. Genes are not a reservoir of our dark unconscious wishes. “Selfish” genes are perfectly compatible with selfless organisms, because a gene’s metaphorical goal of selfishly replicating itself can be implemented by wiring up the brain of the organism to do unselfish things, like being nice to relatives or doing good deeds for needy strangers. When a mother stays up all night comforting a sick child, the genes that endowed her with that tenderness were “selfish” in a metaphorical sense, but by no stretch of the imagination is she being selfish.
Nor does reciprocal altruism — the evolutionary rationale behind fairness — imply that people do good deeds in the cynical expectation of repayment down the line. We all know of unrequited good deeds, like tipping a waitress in a city you will never visit again and falling on a grenade to save platoonmates. These bursts of goodness are not as anomalous to a biologist as they might appear.
In his classic 1971 article, Trivers, the biologist, showed how natural selection could push in the direction of true selflessness. The emergence of tit-for-tat reciprocity, which lets organisms trade favors without being cheated, is just a first step. A favor-giver not only has to avoid blatant cheaters (those who would accept a favor but not return it) but also prefer generous reciprocators (those who return the biggest favor they can afford) over stingy ones (those who return the smallest favor they can get away with). Since it’s good to be chosen as a recipient of favors, a competition arises to be the most generous partner around. More accurately, a competition arises to appear to be the most generous partner around, since the favor-giver can’t literally read minds or see into the future. A reputation for fairness and generosity becomes an asset.
Now this just sets up a competition for potential beneficiaries to inflate their reputations without making the sacrifices to back them up. But it also pressures the favor-giver to develop ever-more-sensitive radar to distinguish the genuinely generous partners from the hypocrites. This arms race will eventually reach a logical conclusion. The most effective way to seem generous and fair, under harsh scrutiny, is to be generous and fair. In the long run, then, reputation can be secured only by commitment. At least some agents evolve to be genuinely high-minded and self-sacrificing — they are moral not because of what it brings them but because that’s the kind of people they are.
Of course, a theory that predicted that everyone always sacrificed themselves for another’s good would be as preposterous as a theory that predicted that no one ever did. Alongside the niches for saints there are niches for more grudging reciprocators, who attract fewer and poorer partners but don’t make the sacrifices necessary for a sterling reputation. And both may coexist with outright cheaters, who exploit the unwary in one-shot encounters. An ecosystem of niches, each with a distinct strategy, can evolve when the payoff of each strategy depends on how many players are playing the other strategies. The human social environment does have its share of generous, grudging and crooked characters, and the genetic variation in personality seems to bear the fingerprints of this evolutionary process.
Is Morality a Figment?
So a biological understanding of the moral sense does not entail that people are calculating maximizers of their genes or self-interest. But where does it leave the concept of morality itself?
Here is the worry. The scientific outlook has taught us that some parts of our subjective experience are products of our biological makeup and have no objective counterpart in the world. The qualitative difference between red and green, the tastiness of fruit and foulness of carrion, the scariness of heights and prettiness of flowers are design features of our common nervous system, and if our species had evolved in a different ecosystem or if we were missing a few genes, our reactions could go the other way. Now, if the distinction between right and wrong is also a product of brain wiring, why should we believe it is any more real than the distinction between red and green? And if it is just a collective hallucination, how could we argue that evils like genocide and slavery are wrong for everyone, rather than just distasteful to us?
Putting God in charge of morality is one way to solve the problem, of course, but Plato made short work of it 2,400 years ago. Does God have a good reason for designating certain acts as moral and others as immoral? If not — if his dictates are divine whims — why should we take them seriously? Suppose that God commanded us to torture a child. Would that make it all right, or would some other standard give us reasons to resist? And if, on the other hand, God was forced by moral reasons to issue some dictates and not others — if a command to torture a child was never an option — then why not appeal to those reasons directly?
This throws us back to wondering where those reasons could come from, if they are more than just figments of our brains. They certainly aren’t in the physical world like wavelength or mass. The only other option is that moral truths exist in some abstract Platonic realm, there for us to discover, perhaps in the same way that mathematical truths (according to most mathematicians) are there for us to discover. On this analogy, we are born with a rudimentary concept of number, but as soon as we build on it with formal mathematical reasoning, the nature of mathematical reality forces us to discover some truths and not others. (No one who understands the concept of two, the concept of four and the concept of addition can come to any conclusion but that 2 + 2 = 4.) Perhaps we are born with a rudimentary moral sense, and as soon as we build on it with moral reasoning, the nature of moral reality forces us to some conclusions but not others.
Moral realism, as this idea is called, is too rich for many philosophers’ blood. Yet a diluted version of the idea — if not a list of cosmically inscribed Thou-Shalts, then at least a few If-Thens — is not crazy. Two features of reality point any rational, self-preserving social agent in a moral direction. And they could provide a benchmark for determining when the judgments of our moral sense are aligned with morality itself.
One is the prevalence of nonzero-sum games. In many arenas of life, two parties are objectively better off if they both act in a nonselfish way than if each of them acts selfishly. You and I are both better off if we share our surpluses, rescue each other’s children in danger and refrain from shooting at each other, compared with hoarding our surpluses while they rot, letting the other’s child drown while we file our nails or feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys. Granted, I might be a bit better off if I acted selfishly at your expense and you played the sucker, but the same is true for you with me, so if each of us tried for these advantages, we’d both end up worse off. Any neutral observer, and you and I if we could talk it over rationally, would have to conclude that the state we should aim for is the one in which we both are unselfish. These spreadsheet projections are not quirks of brain wiring, nor are they dictated by a supernatural power; they are in the nature of things.
The other external support for morality is a feature of rationality itself: that it cannot depend on the egocentric vantage point of the reasoner. If I appeal to you to do anything that affects me — to get off my foot, or tell me the time or not run me over with your car — then I can’t do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours (say, retaining my right to run you over with my car) if I want you to take me seriously. Unless I am Galactic Overlord, I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind. I can’t act as if my interests are special just because I’m me and you’re not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.
Not coincidentally, the core of this idea — the interchangeability of perspectives — keeps reappearing in history’s best-thought-through moral philosophies, including the Golden Rule (itself discovered many times); Spinoza’s Viewpoint of Eternity; the Social Contract of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke; Kant’s Categorical Imperative; and Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. It also underlies Peter Singer’s theory of the Expanding Circle — the optimistic proposal that our moral sense, though shaped by evolution to overvalue self, kin and clan, can propel us on a path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings.
Doing Better by Knowing Ourselves
Morality, then, is still something larger than our inherited moral sense, and the new science of the moral sense does not make moral reasoning and conviction obsolete. At the same time, its implications for our moral universe are profound.
At the very least, the science tells us that even when our adversaries’ agenda is most baffling, they may not be amoral psychopaths but in the throes of a moral mind-set that appears to them to be every bit as mandatory and universal as ours does to us. Of course, some adversaries really are psychopaths, and others are so poisoned by a punitive moralization that they are beyond the pale of reason. (The actor Will Smith had many historians on his side when he recently speculated to the press that Hitler thought he was acting morally.) But in any conflict in which a meeting of the minds is not completely hopeless, a recognition that the other guy is acting from moral rather than venal reasons can be a first patch of common ground. One side can acknowledge the other’s concern for community or stability or fairness or dignity, even while arguing that some other value should trump it in that instance. With affirmative action, for example, the opponents can be seen as arguing from a sense of fairness, not racism, and the defenders can be seen as acting from a concern with community, not bureaucratic power. Liberals can ratify conservatives’ concern with families while noting that gay marriage is perfectly consistent with that concern.
The science of the moral sense also alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup can get in the way of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels.
Though wise people have long reflected on how we can be blinded by our own sanctimony, our public discourse still fails to discount it appropriately. In the worst cases, the thoughtlessness of our brute intuitions can be celebrated as a virtue. In his influential essay “The Wisdom of Repugnance,” Leon Kass, former chair of the President’s Council on Bioethics, argued that we should disregard reason when it comes to cloning and other biomedical technologies and go with our gut: “We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings . . . because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear. . . . In this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done . . . repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”
There are, of course, good reasons to regulate human cloning, but the shudder test is not one of them. People have shuddered at all kinds of morally irrelevant violations of purity in their culture: touching an untouchable, drinking from the same water fountain as a Negro, allowing Jewish blood to mix with Aryan blood, tolerating sodomy between consenting men. And if our ancestors’ repugnance had carried the day, we never would have had autopsies, vaccinations, blood transfusions, artificial insemination, organ transplants and in vitro fertilization, all of which were denounced as immoral when they were new.
There are many other issues for which we are too quick to hit the moralization button and look for villains rather than bug fixes. What should we do when a hospital patient is killed by a nurse who administers the wrong drug in a patient’s intravenous line? Should we make it easier to sue the hospital for damages? Or should we redesign the IV fittings so that it’s physically impossible to connect the wrong bottle to the line?
And nowhere is moralization more of a hazard than in our greatest global challenge. The threat of human-induced climate change has become the occasion for a moralistic revival meeting. In many discussions, the cause of climate change is overindulgence (too many S.U.V.’s) and defilement (sullying the atmosphere), and the solution is temperance (conservation) and expiation (buying carbon offset coupons). Yet the experts agree that these numbers don’t add up: even if every last American became conscientious about his or her carbon emissions, the effects on climate change would be trifling, if for no other reason than that two billion Indians and Chinese are unlikely to copy our born-again abstemiousness. Though voluntary conservation may be one wedge in an effective carbon-reduction pie, the other wedges will have to be morally boring, like a carbon tax and new energy technologies, or even taboo, like nuclear power and deliberate manipulation of the ocean and atmosphere. Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing.
Far from debunking morality, then, the science of the moral sense can advance it, by allowing us to see through the illusions that evolution and culture have saddled us with and to focus on goals we can share and defend. As Anton Chekhov wrote, “Man will become better when you show him what he is like.”
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of “The Language Instinct” and “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.”
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