The Craziest Thing Happened To Me Today

At first I was very angry and a bit shaken, but I soon realized the absurdity of the situation and I laughed. I laughed hard.

I found myself in a difficult situation with a person I go to school with, and that person was being very uncooperative, refusing to deal with the situation as any adult would do. I don’t need the stress or the hassle of trying to work something out with someone who is unwilling, so I decided to drop it. But I am still angry, so I told her to go fuck herself.

Now, those of you who know me know that I am generally a nice person. Some even think I can be a bit of a pushover at times. I don’t make a habit of telling people off, but I think she deserved it. She really screwed me over. And to be entirely clear, I didn’t threaten to track her down and kick her ass or anything, I just told her to go fuck herself.

Well, two hours later I get a threatening email… from her mom! And this is what it said:

“Dear Tara,

This is not a threat. This is a fact. If you ever speak to my daughter again in print or verbally in the abusive manner which I have just witnessed you will never have to worry about what she will say or do. It will be me.

I suggest that you cease any and all correspondence and interaction with my daughter from this day forward.”

Wow — now I know how adults deal with their problems. The next time someone swears at me, I’m going to call in my mommy to defend me.

Really?

I can’t say I ever imagined myself suing a person. It always seemed to me like a despicable thing to do to a fellow human being. Not to mention, I think people are too quick to sue over the littlest things in modern society, whether it be a means of shrugging off responsibility for oneself or trying to take advantage of someone else out of financial desperation or greed.

But now I find myself in a situation where I may have to choose between swallowing a large expense resulting from someone else’s negligence or actually suing that someone. My sincere hope is that this person will approach the situation like an adult and take responsibility for their actions. My doubt is that it will be that easy.

The advice of my family is to drop it. “Keep your friends,” they say. Or, “it’s not worth the trouble it will cause you.” But what if this person isn’t my friend anyway? Maybe if we were friends it would be easier. Perhaps a friend would be more willing to be accountable rather than fuck over someone they are close to. I know if I were responsible for causing someone a huge expense I would find a means of paying them back without hesitation, whether they were my friend or not. Maybe it’s not worth the trouble it will cause me. The stress it has brought thus far has led to a lot of random outbursts and restless sleeps. But do I really want to be someone who can be pushed around that easily? The advice of my mechanic, my friends, even my partner, is to not back down, to not let someone get away with what they have done to me, regardless of what their intentions were.

How’s this for a question of ethics?

More on Ethics

Note: this is a continuation of a post from three days ago.

I had an interesting class on ethics yesterday and it occurred to me that I often use the words morals and ethics interchangeably though they are not exactly the same thing. Not that I didn’t know there’s a slight difference, but I suppose it didn’t occur to me the ramifications of not distinguishing between them. So first I will lay it out here: ethics is the study of morals, the field of morals, it is used to describe the morals by which a person lives. Ethical, as an adjective, is often used interchangeably with moral, but it can also simply describe the act of adhering to a moral code, whichever code that may be. By that definition, what is ethical for one person could be unethical for another. But the adjective ethical could also be universal and unbiased in that it simply describes the act of assuming a position in the world or in a situation.

It may seem that we have some universal morals — like, for example, it is immoral to kill a person. But what if that person is the Buddha? Apparently, if you meet the Buddha in the street you are supposed to kill him, to liberate him from this last life so he can become fully realized. So for Buddhists the act of killing someone is, in that particular case, morally right, even though it is wrong in every other case. Say you come across a mother drowning her child and you stop her. But what if that child was the Buddha? This means you have actually done the child a disservice. Not to say you shouldn’t save the child — you absolutely should. But the point is that we need to consider all possible outcomes and be aware that what we think is just could also be unjust in some way. Again, not to say we shouldn’t do it, but we should at least know that we are making a choice that can never be a fully right, fully decisive choice.

This is the argument put forth by Derrida in Specters of Marx. For him, the ethical is a way of positioning yourself and the only truly unjust act is one that we believe, nay – know, to be completely just. Acting ethically is constantly trying to improve the situations we find ourselves in while also being aware that our actions could make things worse. I like Derrida’s view of ethics. It encourages us to act in the best ways possible, but to also maintain an open mind so that we don’t forget about the various others we risk treating unjustly by accident.

Back to Margaret Somervile. Last night, in her third lecture, she said that she opposes same-sex marriage because it denies the child his or her given right to have (and be emotionally connected to) a biological mother and father. This coming from the woman who said two days earlier that a “shared ethics” would respect all human life, human dignity, and the human spirit. By denying gay people the right to marry and have families, she feels we would be treating the children justly. But she fails to acknowledge that we would then be denying gay people their right to live as they choose, to have their dignity, to embrace the shared values of their community — in short, we would be denying them a proper place in the world and in the law. How is that just if justice is as she defines it? It really brought home Derrida’s point to me — that there is always another other who risks being treated unjustly, even when we feel our actions are just.

It seems to me, after three days of listening, that Margaret Somervile is a conservative who believes that a return to an idealized Christian morality is the only way we can save ourselves. And that’s fine, she has as much right to feel that as I have the right to feel otherwise — but it can’t be the basis of a “shared ethics” in a global context.

A Shared Ethics?

I just spent the past hour listening to CBC Radio’s Ideas. This week they are running the 2006 Massey Lectures, a series of lectures delivered across the country last year by Margaret Somerville titled “The Ethical Imagination.” Her project is to outline a “shared ethics for an interdependent world.”

I have spent the past hour squirming in my seat, coming up with a “but what about…” every 10 seconds in my head. My discomfort came right at the beginning when she started talking about the “human philosophico-spiritual heritage” that exists in opposition to science, making clear of course that by “spiritual” she meant religious. She presents the phrase “the secular sacred” as a way of making it seem she is not talking about religion – but she verifies over and over again throughout that she is in fact talking about religion. She even says that we need to develop a new “shared ethics” since we can no longer rely on a shared religion for moral support in this new global world.

Was there ever a point when we could rely on a shared religion for a universal ethical code?

Part of my being on guard here no doubt comes from having (coincidentally) just read Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer. “Homo sacer” is “sacred man.” Agamben traces the history of the idea of life as sacred to show that the origin of “sacred man” is inextricably linked to the idea of sovereign power. In ancient times, the man legally labeled “sacred” was a criminal — he was the man who was banished, placed outside the law, protected from ritual or state killings but whose straight murder was not considered homicide. He was called sacred because he belonged already to the underworld. “Sacred man” is an originary site of political power, being that he represents the primary instance of power operating outside the law, or power creating a state of exception. Ultimately Agamben argues that the “sacredness” of life and the totalitarian state were born out of the same moment and they rely on each other for their existence. This is my abridged version of Homo Sacer, but hopefully it is enough to explain why Margaret Somervile’s mention of the “sacred” element of humanity made me immediately skeptical.

Maybe I am unnecessarily skeptical – negative even – but anyone who uses the phrase “mosaic of sharing” is suspect in my books.

So in her vision of “shared ethics,” we would all adhere to the following three rules: respect all life, respect human dignity, and respect the human spirit. That sounds nice but let’s speak in practical terms here. I’m all for respecting life — but how exactly do you define “human dignity” or “the human spirit”? Isn’t it plain to see that everyone has a different perspective on what is dignified, honest, and valuable? She says we need to figure out where all of our values overlap and eliminate everything that falls in the grey area in between. But really, isn’t just about anything justifiable to someone out there? And who are these someones whose values we need to acknowledge — are we talking governments or individuals here? She actually tried to argue that ethics and morality are not social constructs, but that they are natural elements of humanity. And that one, I just plain don’t buy.

Of course she pre-empted people like me being in the audience. When she says we must appeal to the “innate moral element in humans” she immediately qualifies it by adding that, though some of us may not believe morality is a natural given, we’re better off believing in it than not. Again, that’s nice, but entirely unrealistic.

Not to mention, doesn’t our current world crisis result so much from globalization? So why then are we looking for a global ethics? Shouldn’t we be moving towards localization instead? That’s just my bias — and I suppose that’s my idealism too. Somervile has a global idealism and I remain nostalgic for a more local community-based existence.

My biggest criticism of Agamben was that he spent 199 pages talking about the failings of our political system and our lack of ethics and 1 page talking about how we could change it. And that 1 page was of course completely vague. But I sincerely hope that Ms. Somervile’s “shared ethics” is not the best solution we can come up with.

The lectures will continue each night for the rest of the week and she will be talking about imagination, literature, poetry, art, etc, and how those things can contribute to constructing a “shared ethics.” She may win me over yet — but it will be a difficult task.

If you are still reading this, well, thanks for indulging me. This is all very half-baked and reactionary and I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning with a new perspective on the whole thing. But hopefully someone out there also heard the show or has some thoughts about ethics and global politics cause I am in the mood for a debate!

Inevitabilities

1 – When you get a group of girls together and add alcohol, there will be drama. Why do we do that to ourselves exactly? I always wonder. This may be one of the great mysteries of womanhood. We just love to torture ourselves and each other for no apparent reason.

2 – When guys and girls try to be friends, there will be drama. Can’t we just be friends already??!! Aren’t we grown up enough for this? My best friend in the world is a guy so I always have high hopes for these things working. It seems I may be deluding myself there. The next time one of my guy friends decides I need to be rescued from my ’sad life’ by a knight in shining armour who is not the knight of my choosing, I am giving up on friendship with the entire male race. Well, except you Dave – you rock.

3 – Effectively balancing grad school and a social life so that nothing slips through the cracks may be impossible. Either the pile of books on my desk gets taller and more daunting, or the gap between me and the people in my life widens. Something will always have to come second.

4 – Despite the drama, the chaos, the madness that is life, things always work themselves out so no need to be disheartened. Just gotta roll with it.

My Materialism

I am having a bad run with things. I’ve always claimed not to care much about material things so long as life was comfortable. I suppose if that were true I wouldn’t be quite so angry about the following:

Last week, someone who is not me dropped my digital slr camera in a mud puddle and broke it.

Yesterday, someone who is not me KILLED my clutch during a badly failed attempt at trying to drive my car.

Given that I can’t afford these kinds of repairs, I think my new policy is to never let anyone else touch anything that belongs to me ever again. I hate to be possessive – but until I truly don’t care about material things that much, I can’t help but feel this way.

I can forgive the camera because it was a genuine accident, but I am having a hard time not turning this into a hate-on for the someone who destroyed my clutch. Either you know how to drive a standard or you don’t, it’s not that ambiguous a choice. And if you knew how to drive at all you’d know that when you redline a car and smoke starts pouring out from under the hood, IT IS TIME TO STOP. But I guess if you are that person who consistently misrepresents yourself as “cooler” than you are, you wouldn’t want to admit to not knowing the first thing about driving standard.

I could turn this into a much uglier rant but I don’t want to hate myself in the morning.