Writing this week's blog

This blog assignment asks you to read Wendell Berry's essay "What Are People For?" and a selection from Bill Thomas's What Are Old People For, and then identify three points of agreement and three points of disagreement in the two pieces.

 In this blog, I want to focus not on the content of what you will write, but on the way you should go about writing this.  First, make sure that you have done the reading carefully and understand their overarching arguments as well as the details they use to support those arguments.

Then, identify the points of agreement and disagreement and make sure they are accurate.  Look for claims with some substance, not just vague or very broad points.  Throughout, focus on the ethical dimensions of these writings.  Neither author is an ethicist but both pieces are very relevant to the big questions we ask in social ethics:  what is a good society?  what obligations do we have to others?  What makes a human life good, valuable, and worthwhile?  And so forth.  Feel free to go back to Weston for some reminders about these points.

Outdoor cats, birds, and values

The question for this week asks you to identify the values at stake in both sides of the feral cat controversy and then to explain how this is an ethical dilemma.

While this dilemma is hardly black-and-white, it is possible to identify two pretty clear-cut sides.  The first includes environmental advocates, ecological scientists, and bird lovers who believe that outdoor cats kill many native wild birds and thus cause a great deal of harm to ecosystems.  This group values ecological integrity, native wildlife, and the overall good of the environment.

On the other side are people who value individual cats.  They do not think that primary moral good lies in a collective, such as an ecosystem or even a species.  Instead, the main good for this group is individual life.

 

The interesting thing about this debate, or controversy,  is that people on both sides consider themselves animal lovers and nature lovers.  Their different positions on outdoor cats come in art from their different beliefs about the damage that cats do to bird populations and the effectiveness of lethal and non-lethal management strategies for outdoor cats.  Thus the conflict between values is also a conflict about information or data. 

The same is true for many issues in social ethics.  Often people share some core values -- they value democracy, or freedom of religion, or children, for example -- but they disagree about the best way to support and protect what they value. 

Mothering.

 

 
For Sara Ruddick, “mothering” means something very different from the familiar definitions.  To understand the ways that mothering might contribute to social and political ethics, it’s necessary first to clarify what mothering in fact means to her.

First, mothering is not confined to women.  As a feminist, Ruddick does not believe that nurturing and caring are naturally – or should be – limited to women.  Mothering as she describes it is a powerful and positive practice that men and women alike should undertake.  In contrast to “fathers,” who are hierarchical, authoritarian, and sometimes violent in their exercise of power, “mothers” seek to help the people they care for be safe and thrive.

Last, mothering is as much a political practice as much as it is a personal one. Like all care ethicists, Ruddick defines care and nurture in social and political terms.  This means that care entails not only direct personal interactions with vulnerable and needy humans but also work to create the conditions that those people need in order to thrive.  This may require explicitly political actions, such as changing laws, protesting wars, or redistributing public funds.

For Ruddick, "mothering" provides a strong foundation for social and political ethics in a couple of ways.  First, mothering clarifies primary political and moral goals:  a society in which children can be safe, healthy, well-cared for, and adequately prepared for adulthood.  Second, mothering provides the means for achieving these goals: in and through relationships of care and reciprocity.  It suggests a way to build a good society through personal as well as political means, and further, that these different approaches are ultimately united.