-noun, the surrender or destruction of something prized or desirable for the sake of something considered as having a higher or more pressing claim.

It looks like President Bush is going to veto the new bill which would expand the use of embryonic stem cells in the United States. I, and a substantial majority of Americans, think that the purpose of the bill is a good thing. Setting aside democratic ideals for a moment, I have to wonder at the sheer inconsistency of the President’s actions from an ethical point of view.

Taking an argument from the book “The President of Good and Evil” by Peter Singer, I will take President Bush exactly at his word. I’m not going to look for hidden agendas, Orwellian doublespeak, or things I think are boneheaded. Rather, I’ll take him at his word - that embryos are human lives (or near enough to it) and that the deliberate destruction of those lives, even to help others, is prima facie morally wrong.

Let us suppose that the sentiment expressed above is an accurate (or relatively accurate) depiction of President Bush’s moral intuition. What ethical principle might we deduce from this thought? Well, for starters, we can abstract the moral statement from the particularized framework in which it is couched. The moral idea might then be expressed as “the deliberate destruction of human lives is morally wrong, even to help others.” In some sense, it appears that Bush is supporting the idea that ends do not always justify the means. Is that a principle which Bush applies generally?

Of course it isn’t. The very idea that Bush knowingly sent soldiers into war - irrespective of the reason given for the war - belies Bush’s consistent application of the above expressed principle. Whether we suppose that the United States went to war in Iraq to free the Iraqi people from a brutal dictator (helping them), that the United States went to war in Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein from using weapons of mass destruction against us or our allies (helping us or other people), or that the United States went to war in Iraq to gain a friendly nation who controls vast reserves of the world’s oil (helping us), all motives ultimately revolve around helping somebody. As Bush’s principle should predict, destroying human lives (even if to help somebody else) is morally wrong and that the moral case against destroying human lives should override democratic considerations.

Of course, whenever you send soldiers into war, some of them will die. Civilians in the country under attack will be killed, maimed, and broken. Children will be killed. Women will be killed. The elderly and infirm will be killed. Their deaths are not merely an unhappy surprise - they are predictable (even if their total numbers are not). Starting a war means signing the death warrant for many people.

Yet somehow, Bush manages to not apply the moral principle (“the deliberate destruction of human lives is morally wrong, even to help others”) in this context. Should he apply the principle, the war never would have been started in the first place.

Naturally, in war, human deaths are to be expected. Each death may be a tragedy, but ultimately, we all hope that their deaths will mean something in the end. We hope that they will not have died in vain, but will be part of the sacrifice necessary to achieve some desirable end which justified their sacrifice. Why is it more wrong to sacrifice lumps of tissue (which for the purpose of this argument are human lives, or near enough to it) than soldiers and civilians, when those lumps of tissue are 1) already slated to be destroyed (the only ones allowed to be used under the new bill), 2) appear in substantially smaller numbers than the human lives lost to the Iraq war, 3) do not have the physiological equipment necessary to feel any type of suffering (mental, physical, emotional, etc.), and 4) whose deaths will help just as many (if not more) people than could be helped under any theory of the Iraq war?

Once again, I cry ‘foul’ on the ethical consistency of President Bush’s administration.

My Melancholia (MM)

I find that I have dreams that are more story-like than a fair number of other people. I never have dreams where I’m flying, falling, or anything like that. My dreams have characters and stories, and because of this, I find that they are sometimes capable of leaving me with a lasting impact on my disposition for days after a particularly meaningful one occurs.

As much as I love the few dreams I have that carry particular stories which resonate strongly with me, I also resent them for making me confront the fact that I have psychological needs which are not fulfilled. I mean, here I am, in one of the continent’s larger metropolitan areas, but despite being surrounded by people, I’ve never felt so… isolated. That type of alienation, and the remedy for it, sometimes emerges while I’m asleep.

For instance, last night, I dreamed a scenario in which a woman I used to know asked me what I really felt about her. We sat down and talked for a while, and I told her that I always wished things were different between us. I explained that until I met her, I didn’t understand how anything could make somebody feel so much pain and yet inspire so much desire to be closer to the source of that unique suffering. I quietly told her of how I sometimes caught myself gazing at her from across the classroom and wishing that just for a few minutes that I could be someone else - just so that I could be good enough to be near her. I relived, in conversation, for her the one time that she had hugged me for writing her a card that she said was “the sweetest thing anyone had ever written” for her, and the elation that had followed me for days afterwards.

I told her all of this, knowing that it didn’t make a difference… knowing that nothing I said would make her want to reach out to take my hand the way I wanted to reach out to take hers.
And yet, somehow the words my psyche invented for her to say cleared the bittersweet feeling from the experience. She looked me in the eyes, her perfectly chocolate brown hair swinging lightly, and she hugged me. As she did, she whispered softly, “I counted on you.”

I’ve yet to decipher what any of this meant, since my psyche wouldn’t manufacture so detailed a conversation without cause, but the unfortunate consequence of all of this is that I am struck with a new wave of…

I was about to say ‘homesickness,’ but I just realized that I’m not wishing that I was at home right now. I’m wishing that someone was here with me, just for a few minutes so that I could see a smile. Perhaps I’ll just call it person-sickness.