How to be good?

If there's one person who makes me feel really bad about myself, it's Peter Singer. As an undergraduate I learnt that I should be a vegetarian. Simply put, Singer convinced me that non-human animals have a capacity for pain, just as humans do. Killing animals for my consumption obviously causes animals avoidable pain, therefore I should not eat them. Its also no good to argue that by the time the meat gets into the supermarket its already dead so I may as well eat it, because we all know that is a terrible argument. There is no completely suffering-free way to kill animals so Singer therefore concludes we should all be vegetarians. I can't see any major problems with his argument. Humans don't need to eat meat to survive, we eat it because we like it, not out of necessity. Eating meat therefore makes me not quite as moral as I should be. So I am a vegetarian. Oh, er...actually, I'm not.

As if that wasn't enough, I also became aware of a website called  Giving What We Can which is where people pledge to give away a substantial portion of their incomes. The founder of this website Toby Ord, gave a lecture at King's College London where I was convinced that yes, me and everyone else should be giving away A LOT more of our incomes. The argument I was convinced by is Singer's example in Famine, Affluence, and Morality. He says that “if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.” The example he gives is that if he is walking past a shallow pond where he sees a child drowning, he ought to wade in and pull the child out. Although this will mean that his clothes will get muddy, this is insignificant, as the death of the child is obviously considerably worse than muddy clothes. It is hard to argue against this, it seems simple and true. If I can do something to save a life, I should do it. To add insult to the injury that Singer is causing me, he also says that saving lives by giving aid should not be considered generous, or even praiseworthy. It is simply our duty as moral human beings. Therefore, I give away 10% of my income to this website. Oh, er...actually, I don't.

I should be a vegetarian, and I'm not. I should give away 10% of my income and I don't. I do try though, I don't eat non-free range meat or eggs, and every couple of months I donate about 30 pounds to a different charity. When I turn down cheap chicken, or press the 'donate now' button I feel good about myself, yet I know that this doesn't make me moral. I am not fulfilling my duty. I am not as 'good' as I could be, I know this, and yet I'm doing very little about it. I feel bad, but obviously not bad enough.

One reason why I let myself off the hook is that I know that however little I'm doing, there are still people doing less than me. While most people are not giving any money to charity, I can feel good that I am giving at least a little. While this might alleviate some psychological stress, philosophically I know that other people's actions cannot make my actions more or less moral. If a group I belong steals 1000 pounds each, and I only steal 100 pounds, that does not make me good.

It is therefore morally arbitrary how much other people are giving. It is also arbitrary how far away these 'needy' people are, and it is arbitrary how much 'like' me they are. All these factors may be morally arbitrary but it can't be denied that they are impacting on my choices. If I knew everyone was giving away 10%, or that those that needed saving were my next door neighbours, I would undoubtedly be giving more. Similarly, if I knew that I was the only meat-eater in the world, I would feel much worse about eating meat. So these factors make a difference to how bad I feel, and how much impetus I feel to do something about it. But that doesn't change the fact that these feelings are morally irrelevant.

So what can be done about this? How can we make people like me ignore the feelings that let them off the hook, and get them to do something about it? How can we make those who 'want to be good ' actually fulfil the duties that would make them 'good'? I don''t know, I wish I did because I would apply it to myself and I'd be giving away 10%. I suppose I can least feel better that I at least fell guilty about it. There are people who don't even feel bad that they aren't being as 'good' as they could be. Oh dear, that sounds like letting myself off the hook again by comparing to the actions of others. Guilt, however, is the fist step to action, so I propose we make people feel really guilty.... at best maybe people will start fulfilling their duties, and at worst I'll have some company in feeling pretty disappointed in myself.

The problem with spirituality

Recently my sister and I have been discussing the subject of spirituality. It all began after a stressful day at work when she suggested I do an hour of yoga with her. After ten minutes it became clear I was not in her words “taking this seriously.” I began to laugh at the point where the video instructor informed me that by breathing in a certain way, I was 'connecting' to all the other people doing yoga around the world. My response sparked a debate on what spirituality actually is and whether I am closed-minded in being suspicious of it.

I admit I have little knowledge of yoga, or understand the tenets of certain Eastern traditions which go back thousands of years, nor have I extensively researched 'chakras'. My thoughts here are based purely on discussions I've had with people who endorse the idea that yoga (and similar 'spiritual' activities) can 'change your life'. I therefore apologise if I have misrepresented certain ideas and would welcome correction.

My problem is with the kind of spirituality which claims that by reaching this certain mystical state - a state where thought is suspended, where one is simply 'existing', neither doing or thinking - I am somehow 'connecting' to something in a real ontological sense. The claim seems to be not only that in this state I can experience a connection to the universe, but that I actually am connecting to the universe. I asked my sister what this 'connecting' means. She replied that it is simply being a part of the universe, where you become less conscious of your ego and simply experience the absoluteness of a timeless and infinite universe.

This is a problem because I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to the question, What is this connection? If I am experiencing something real when I enter this spiritual state, what precisely is it? If the spiritualists want to claim this is more than my imagination, more than complex brain processes, then they must show how it is more than that.

It appears therefore, that a spiritual state of 'connectedness', or a sense of the 'Absolute' is actually no different from many other human experiences. These experiences are real in the subjective sense that the statement, “I am experiencing the feeling of such and such” is true, but they do not correspond to anything objectively real in this world, or any other world.

An example of this could be Love. When I love someone, I experience a variety of feelings and thoughts. These feelings are real in the sense that they exist in my brain. I can experience love, and it is real in the sense that it is true that I am experiencing love. Yet this experience is purely subjective, it cannot be said to exist in any objective way. There is not a transcendent place I need to access where the love between me and another exists, yet where our actual experience of love is not yet present. My experience of it is all that there is.

Spirituality is arguably no different from this. I can feel and experience moments of intense tranquillity, a sense of my own smallness, the removal of my ego, no concept of past or future, or any other way in which spiritualists describes this state, yet I remain unconvinced I am 'accessing' anything other than a part of my imagination and the corresponding feeling this imagined state creates in my mind. I am certainly not 'accessing' another realm of spirits, souls, chakras or energies. Just as my experience of love cannot exist somewhere before I actually experience it, the spiritual world cannot be 'experienced' prior to my imagination of it. By imagining it we create it in the only way it can be said to exist: in our imagination.

The spiritualists have two choices: Either they claim that the spiritual world is real in an objective sense and is not simply created in my mind by my imagination, in which case I would kindly ask them to provide some evidence. Or they can claim that they do not deny that spiritual experiences are subjective imaginative experiences, in which case I would ask them how they think they can teach it through yoga lessons and the like. Spiritual gurus claim to be able to teach the way to these spiritual experiences, but if they are merely subjective imaginative experiences, how can they? Can you teach someone to dream a particular dream, can you teach someone to love a particular person in a particular way, and can you teach someone to imagine another world exactly the way you do? I don't think so, and I wouldn't even want someone to try.