(Warning: Spoiler alert if you've not yet seen 'The Road' but plan to!)
More and more research discloses that ethics arose naturally out of human community-building, long before the first organized religions. For example, in the earliest hunter- gathering culture, the sort of "survival of the strongest" shtick, where the largest and mostly male tribe members grabbed their chunks of meat first - would never have enabled human survival later. No, a basic tribal ethics had to emerge, which ensured a sharing of scarce resources - whether for food or fuel. Those tribes that adopted such basic ethical sharing (such as we now observe in the lab with chimps and Capuchin monkeys) were found to endure and survive while the "Me first, 'cause I'm biggest" didn't last. Thus, a rudimentary ethics was adopted as a means of ensuring better adaptation and survival.
When the change occurred from hunter-gatherer culture to agrarian this became even more critical. The bounty of growing large food crops meant an even more enhanced chance of survival since every manjack of the tribe contributed. It would be anathema therefore to exclude any member, weak or small, female or child - from receiving his or her fair share.
Thus, ethical emergence never was founded on absolutist principles or precepts. These only arrived later as organized religions sought to impose their own brands of mind control - and found that absolute edicts were the best way to do that. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church - rather than permitting some forms of sex before marriage (e.g. masturbation) absolutely ruled out all. Meanwhile, a provisional ethics (the midway pragmatic ethics between absolutist and relativist) would allow masturbation for hormone-beseiged adolescents to gain relief but no intercourse. (Which presumes a level of maturity they lack).
Of course, the most extreme testing ground for any ethics inheres in the most extreme situations. Then, what does one do, how does one apply ethics? We have seen examples of the provisional and pragmatic basis for example, given by Kai Neilsson in his brilliant Ethics Without God. As one extreme example, he considers four spelunkers who are exploring a deep cave, 1,500' below the surface. A rockfall closes the cave at one end while one member - a very obese guy - has found himself trapped in the only other available opening. The group has two choices: all die of oxygen deprivation or find some means whereby most can escape.
Absolutist ethics rules that all must die rather than any one sacrifice his or her life for the benefit of the others. Provisional ethics, meanwhile, argues that the optimum outcome is for most of the party to survive- however that is achieved. In Neilsson's example, one of the spelunker's happens to have a stick of dynamite and a match and inserts it into the obese guy's boot to detonate him - thereby opening the only available path so the remaining three can escape. Yes, there's a risk of another cave in, but it's the only shot the group has and it works, since all more prosaic efforts to dislodge the obese man were for naught.
In the same way we beheld an application of provisional ethics in the case of a nun doctor who was summarily excommunicated from the RC Church because she saved a pregnant mom and permitted her fetus to die. The issue was that the mom's blood pressure was increasing malignantly and would have surely killed her if she'd been forced into labor. The nun had two choices: save the fetus and let the mom die, or spare the mom and let the fetus die (without any birth). The nun reasoned the fetus was nascent human life but the mom was full fledged human life- manifested as an autonomous thinking and fully conscious person. Therefore, the mom had the greater claim to life. Meanwhile, absolutist ethics would have argued that an effort to save both ought to have been made, despite the fact that medically both would have died.
Now, we move consideration to the nature of any ethics in a post-apocalyptic world. A recent scenario to consider is from the controversial film, 'The Road'. In the film we behold a family of three- mom, Dad and baby- suddenly thrust into a world where everything has collapsed. The story doesn't make the cause of civilization's collapse specific, but the narrator ('the Man' or husband) informs us there were multiple "percussions" and "flares of light" - leading us to think of nuclear war. As we see the world outside turn cold and gray this cause is reinforced by what we know about the "nuclear winter" effect.
There are no animals to speak of, all the plant life has died, and the trees are collapsing one by one as they wither from lack of sunlight. Basically, over ten septillion tons of debris and dust released by the nuclear explosions into the atmosphere has blocked out almost all sunlight, thereby paving the way for food chain collapse - since there is no more photosynthesis. This means no food, and the nuclear blasts themselves - via the EMP or electromagnetic pulse effects- would have shut down all power grids. So people, to keep warm, have to break up their furniture and use it for firewood. Once that's exhausted they've no choice but to leave home and hearth and move on, looking for whatever food and fuel available. This is where we pick up the Man and Boy in the opening sequence.
When the film joins the post-apocalyptic scene, it is ten years (roughly) after the original events and the Man and the boy are scrounging for food and near starvation. At every turn they must also dodge and hide to avoid the eyes of roving predatory cannibal gangs. These gangs round up whoever they see that's vulnerable, rape them if they're mothers or kids, then chop them up and devour them for food.
At one point, the Man and boy narrowly escape one such gang, as the Man (Viggo Mortensen) is forced to shoot one predator who has grabbed the boy.
By way of flashback, we also see what happened to the wife. In that scene, maybe a year earlier she's shown holding a pistol with only two shells left. She berates the Man (none of them are given names) about not letting her use the pistol to kill herself and the boy when they had more shells. She points out to him: "All the other families are doing it. Killing themselves. If we wait here and do nothng you know what will happen! They will first rape me, then our boy, then eat us!" (And indeed, in an earlier, pre-flashback scene, Man and boy encounter a farm where the family have hung themselves. The boy asks "Why?" and the Man responds, "You KNOW why!"
It is here the first hint of provisional ethics enters. Clearly, this world without food has only two classes of people remaining: predators and prey. One may choose to live by becoming a predator and eating his fellow humans, or live as prey - to be endlessly pursued by the cannibal predators (no other kind are depicted) and scrounging always for anything to eat in the throes of gnawing hunger and the edge of starvation. (One problem with the film is Man and Boy are depicted as "above it all" and able to live beyond this base polarity by simply ordinary food scrounging. They happen to luck out once and find an underground cache of canned goods. (Then leave, carrying some of them away, when they hear noises above.) But one must be realistic here: in this world only so many such concealed canned stores can be available and everyone - including predators - will be competing to find them!)
Two scenes in the film reinforce this predator-prey paradigm to different degrees, and why one must conclude that familial suicide is actually a rational ethical option in this world:
1) The Man and Boy happen into a home or mansion that at first sight appears like it may have provisions. While inside they spy a trap door which has been locked and smash it open. They enter and wend their way along when they come upon a most grisly sight: naked and starving people screaming for help- manacled in chains- and covered in blood, with body organs scattered over the floor. Man and boy make a run for it and barely escape to a top floor when a trio of scruffy looking renegades enter. These are the cannibals, and what they do is keep the people that originally lived in the home chained downstairs so they can lop off their limbs and body parts when needed, to cook and eat them (there are large pots in the yard for cooking the parts and inside the tub and sink are blood spattered from chopping up limbs).
After Man and boy escape the house of horrors they hide in the woods as the predators use a telescope to survey the landscape and try to locate the intruders. Minutes later, loud chopping sounds and screams fill the air - obviously the cannibals have gone to work to chop up more parts of living bodies to barbecue in their cooking pots for food.
2) Sometime later, in a wood, while headed south (for warmth) the Man and boy hear a noise and hide then see a gang of predators pursuing a lone mother and child. After the gang catches up to them, all that can be heard are piteous screams and cries. Then silence.
The Man, based on these events, understands that it's better for the Boy to learn how to kill himself - if and when the critical time comes - then be captured alive and multiple horrors practiced on him. To that end, he shows the Boy how to hold the pistol with the lone shell left in it. He is to point the barrel directly down his throat then pull the trigger. (The mother's choice, since she wanted the two remaining bullets to be left for husband and son, was simply to walk into the night and - presumably- drown herself in a nearby river.)
Some absolutists, of course, will try to argue that the "morally right" thing is to live at all costs. But if they say that, I invite them to see this film, not just merely parse it from the brief descriptions here. Both my wife and I agreed that if such an aftermath ever befell the planet, suicide would definitely be the most ethical and rational option. It certainly would not be ethical to slay others and eat them to live!
What we see then is that it is from extreme cases and examples that a true ethical structure can be tested. Many will say that the depictions of life in 'The Road' are fanciful, but they'd be most unwise to jump to that conclusion. We have a set of possible events that could lead to exactly the scenario confronted in the movie, including: 1) a nuclear exchange - of at least 30% of all the world's existing nuclear stockpiles, 2) an asteroid strike - Torino scale 8 or larger, 3) rapid change in the Gulf current incepted from climate change and disruption of thermohaline circulation leading to a new ice age precipitated.
Other scenarios to consider would arise from: 4) Peak Oil (which would limit energy sources, and hence food output - but not eliminate food sources entirely since animals would exist in multifold areas), and 5) Phase just preceding full immersion into the runaway Greenhouse effect. (Of course, in the runaway Greenhouse itself - with temperatures approaching 100 C, no organic life or very little would survive, and clearly few humans. But just before the critical threshold, human life would greatly resemble that depicted in The Road, except with fierce heat dominating as opposed to cold.
Whatever the future, it would do well for any rational human to have a provisional ethics back up to lean on!
More and more research discloses that ethics arose naturally out of human community-building, long before the first organized religions. For example, in the earliest hunter- gathering culture, the sort of "survival of the strongest" shtick, where the largest and mostly male tribe members grabbed their chunks of meat first - would never have enabled human survival later. No, a basic tribal ethics had to emerge, which ensured a sharing of scarce resources - whether for food or fuel. Those tribes that adopted such basic ethical sharing (such as we now observe in the lab with chimps and Capuchin monkeys) were found to endure and survive while the "Me first, 'cause I'm biggest" didn't last. Thus, a rudimentary ethics was adopted as a means of ensuring better adaptation and survival.
When the change occurred from hunter-gatherer culture to agrarian this became even more critical. The bounty of growing large food crops meant an even more enhanced chance of survival since every manjack of the tribe contributed. It would be anathema therefore to exclude any member, weak or small, female or child - from receiving his or her fair share.
Thus, ethical emergence never was founded on absolutist principles or precepts. These only arrived later as organized religions sought to impose their own brands of mind control - and found that absolute edicts were the best way to do that. Thus, the Roman Catholic Church - rather than permitting some forms of sex before marriage (e.g. masturbation) absolutely ruled out all. Meanwhile, a provisional ethics (the midway pragmatic ethics between absolutist and relativist) would allow masturbation for hormone-beseiged adolescents to gain relief but no intercourse. (Which presumes a level of maturity they lack).
Of course, the most extreme testing ground for any ethics inheres in the most extreme situations. Then, what does one do, how does one apply ethics? We have seen examples of the provisional and pragmatic basis for example, given by Kai Neilsson in his brilliant Ethics Without God. As one extreme example, he considers four spelunkers who are exploring a deep cave, 1,500' below the surface. A rockfall closes the cave at one end while one member - a very obese guy - has found himself trapped in the only other available opening. The group has two choices: all die of oxygen deprivation or find some means whereby most can escape.
Absolutist ethics rules that all must die rather than any one sacrifice his or her life for the benefit of the others. Provisional ethics, meanwhile, argues that the optimum outcome is for most of the party to survive- however that is achieved. In Neilsson's example, one of the spelunker's happens to have a stick of dynamite and a match and inserts it into the obese guy's boot to detonate him - thereby opening the only available path so the remaining three can escape. Yes, there's a risk of another cave in, but it's the only shot the group has and it works, since all more prosaic efforts to dislodge the obese man were for naught.
In the same way we beheld an application of provisional ethics in the case of a nun doctor who was summarily excommunicated from the RC Church because she saved a pregnant mom and permitted her fetus to die. The issue was that the mom's blood pressure was increasing malignantly and would have surely killed her if she'd been forced into labor. The nun had two choices: save the fetus and let the mom die, or spare the mom and let the fetus die (without any birth). The nun reasoned the fetus was nascent human life but the mom was full fledged human life- manifested as an autonomous thinking and fully conscious person. Therefore, the mom had the greater claim to life. Meanwhile, absolutist ethics would have argued that an effort to save both ought to have been made, despite the fact that medically both would have died.
Now, we move consideration to the nature of any ethics in a post-apocalyptic world. A recent scenario to consider is from the controversial film, 'The Road'. In the film we behold a family of three- mom, Dad and baby- suddenly thrust into a world where everything has collapsed. The story doesn't make the cause of civilization's collapse specific, but the narrator ('the Man' or husband) informs us there were multiple "percussions" and "flares of light" - leading us to think of nuclear war. As we see the world outside turn cold and gray this cause is reinforced by what we know about the "nuclear winter" effect.
There are no animals to speak of, all the plant life has died, and the trees are collapsing one by one as they wither from lack of sunlight. Basically, over ten septillion tons of debris and dust released by the nuclear explosions into the atmosphere has blocked out almost all sunlight, thereby paving the way for food chain collapse - since there is no more photosynthesis. This means no food, and the nuclear blasts themselves - via the EMP or electromagnetic pulse effects- would have shut down all power grids. So people, to keep warm, have to break up their furniture and use it for firewood. Once that's exhausted they've no choice but to leave home and hearth and move on, looking for whatever food and fuel available. This is where we pick up the Man and Boy in the opening sequence.
When the film joins the post-apocalyptic scene, it is ten years (roughly) after the original events and the Man and the boy are scrounging for food and near starvation. At every turn they must also dodge and hide to avoid the eyes of roving predatory cannibal gangs. These gangs round up whoever they see that's vulnerable, rape them if they're mothers or kids, then chop them up and devour them for food.
At one point, the Man and boy narrowly escape one such gang, as the Man (Viggo Mortensen) is forced to shoot one predator who has grabbed the boy.
By way of flashback, we also see what happened to the wife. In that scene, maybe a year earlier she's shown holding a pistol with only two shells left. She berates the Man (none of them are given names) about not letting her use the pistol to kill herself and the boy when they had more shells. She points out to him: "All the other families are doing it. Killing themselves. If we wait here and do nothng you know what will happen! They will first rape me, then our boy, then eat us!" (And indeed, in an earlier, pre-flashback scene, Man and boy encounter a farm where the family have hung themselves. The boy asks "Why?" and the Man responds, "You KNOW why!"
It is here the first hint of provisional ethics enters. Clearly, this world without food has only two classes of people remaining: predators and prey. One may choose to live by becoming a predator and eating his fellow humans, or live as prey - to be endlessly pursued by the cannibal predators (no other kind are depicted) and scrounging always for anything to eat in the throes of gnawing hunger and the edge of starvation. (One problem with the film is Man and Boy are depicted as "above it all" and able to live beyond this base polarity by simply ordinary food scrounging. They happen to luck out once and find an underground cache of canned goods. (Then leave, carrying some of them away, when they hear noises above.) But one must be realistic here: in this world only so many such concealed canned stores can be available and everyone - including predators - will be competing to find them!)
Two scenes in the film reinforce this predator-prey paradigm to different degrees, and why one must conclude that familial suicide is actually a rational ethical option in this world:
1) The Man and Boy happen into a home or mansion that at first sight appears like it may have provisions. While inside they spy a trap door which has been locked and smash it open. They enter and wend their way along when they come upon a most grisly sight: naked and starving people screaming for help- manacled in chains- and covered in blood, with body organs scattered over the floor. Man and boy make a run for it and barely escape to a top floor when a trio of scruffy looking renegades enter. These are the cannibals, and what they do is keep the people that originally lived in the home chained downstairs so they can lop off their limbs and body parts when needed, to cook and eat them (there are large pots in the yard for cooking the parts and inside the tub and sink are blood spattered from chopping up limbs).
After Man and boy escape the house of horrors they hide in the woods as the predators use a telescope to survey the landscape and try to locate the intruders. Minutes later, loud chopping sounds and screams fill the air - obviously the cannibals have gone to work to chop up more parts of living bodies to barbecue in their cooking pots for food.
2) Sometime later, in a wood, while headed south (for warmth) the Man and boy hear a noise and hide then see a gang of predators pursuing a lone mother and child. After the gang catches up to them, all that can be heard are piteous screams and cries. Then silence.
The Man, based on these events, understands that it's better for the Boy to learn how to kill himself - if and when the critical time comes - then be captured alive and multiple horrors practiced on him. To that end, he shows the Boy how to hold the pistol with the lone shell left in it. He is to point the barrel directly down his throat then pull the trigger. (The mother's choice, since she wanted the two remaining bullets to be left for husband and son, was simply to walk into the night and - presumably- drown herself in a nearby river.)
Some absolutists, of course, will try to argue that the "morally right" thing is to live at all costs. But if they say that, I invite them to see this film, not just merely parse it from the brief descriptions here. Both my wife and I agreed that if such an aftermath ever befell the planet, suicide would definitely be the most ethical and rational option. It certainly would not be ethical to slay others and eat them to live!
What we see then is that it is from extreme cases and examples that a true ethical structure can be tested. Many will say that the depictions of life in 'The Road' are fanciful, but they'd be most unwise to jump to that conclusion. We have a set of possible events that could lead to exactly the scenario confronted in the movie, including: 1) a nuclear exchange - of at least 30% of all the world's existing nuclear stockpiles, 2) an asteroid strike - Torino scale 8 or larger, 3) rapid change in the Gulf current incepted from climate change and disruption of thermohaline circulation leading to a new ice age precipitated.
Other scenarios to consider would arise from: 4) Peak Oil (which would limit energy sources, and hence food output - but not eliminate food sources entirely since animals would exist in multifold areas), and 5) Phase just preceding full immersion into the runaway Greenhouse effect. (Of course, in the runaway Greenhouse itself - with temperatures approaching 100 C, no organic life or very little would survive, and clearly few humans. But just before the critical threshold, human life would greatly resemble that depicted in The Road, except with fierce heat dominating as opposed to cold.
Whatever the future, it would do well for any rational human to have a provisional ethics back up to lean on!
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