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Interesting Ideas

This week we look at some interesting ideas. This "lesson" is more of a "radical thinking practice," to see how well you apply assumption-challenging, deep questioning and other techniques we have covered. The following collection should contain a few new ideas you have not been exposed to before. Give them some thought and see what you can do with them.

Animal Rights And Human Morality

A friend, who admittedly would never hurt an animal on purpose, once told me people should be allowed to torture their pets. His moral philosophy couldn't justify ascribing rights to animals, so he couldn't support laws which prevented people from doing anything they want with them. From this example, we can see that following only the logic of our current philosophies can lead to some ugly places.

Most of us feel sympathy for animals - even if we kill and eat them. We don't want them to suffer, and we're comfortable with laws which criminalize abusing them. Does this suggest that all sentient beings have some "rights," perhaps differentiated only be the degree of their development?

The fundamental questions this leads to are about our moral relationship to animals and other humans, as well as about the concept of rights in general. While logic alone may mislead us, as shown above, feeling also seems like a shaky basis for moral rules. At one time, some European communities "felt" perfectly fine burning bags of living cats for entertainment. So, do animals have rights, and on what basis, and what does that say about our morality?

Problems As Solutions

Sometimes a problem is not really a problem at all, but a solution to a larger problem. For example, consider the issue of high gasoline prices. This is seen as a bad thing by most people. But when looked at from a broader perspective, we can see that it's exactly what is needed. It is those high prices, after all, which spur the invention and production of other transportation options.

Imagine if governments used subsidies and price controls to gas at a dollar per gallon. We would use more and more for years, until one day it would all be gone (we know reserves are limited). No electric cars or new fuels would be available as alternatives, because they would never have been able to compete with dollar-gas. Economies would almost shut down. However, this potential disaster is avoided because of the supposed "problem" of high gas prices.

If gas costs four dollars per gallon, fuels which can be profitably sold for three dollars could be developed. They couldn't be if they had to compete with artificially cheap gas. Once gasoline reaches ten dollars per gallon, new kinds of cars and other transportation options will surely be created. High-priced gas is exactly what we need to solve our future transportation problems.

See if you can identify "problems" in other areas of life, which are actually solutions to larger problems. Look at "bad" situations or processes, and see if a broader perspective gives a different view. By the way, high gas prices might spur new technologies more than any amount of laws or research grants, which suggests that helping gas prices rise faster may be useful. In a similar way, other problems which are really necessities may suggest even better solutions.

Defining A Disease Into Existence

What is a disease? Specific pains, bodily changes and symptoms that people suffer are very real. But a "disease" is often an arbitrary labeling of a collection of these various factors. For example, we see that people are anxious in public. That's a reality. So we create the name "social anxiety disorder," and decide that anyone who has "intense fear during social interactions," "fear of being judged," and "trembling and sweating when thinking of meeting with others" has this disorder.

You can see that the process of defining the "disease" is largely arbitrary. For example, people suffering from an inflammatory bowel disease may have many different specific symptoms, but those with certain ones will be diagnosed as having crohn's disease. Of course, some diseases are defined by the presence of a specific pathogen, like mononucleosis (a virus in this case). However, many are effectively defined into existence.

For example, we know that acne is real, as is obesity. The feelings teenagers have about these are real as well. We could easily create a condition called "body-esteem disorder." The symptoms could be "avoidance of public activities due to concerns about one's appearance," and "extreme anxiety when being observed by others." A new drug could then be created (beer might work too) to relieve the symptoms of this illness.

This process of identifying, or creating new diseases can be very profitable for the companies which then develop and market new drugs to treat them. But does it go too far? Here are a couple questions to consider: Should behaviors be defined as diseases or disorders? (Choosing to drink too often is labeled as the disease of alcoholism.) Should ways of thinking be called "symptoms?" (And if one "trembles and sweats when thinking of meeting with others," couldn't he choose not to think of that, or do we have no way to control our thoughts without drugs?)

More Interesting Ideas To Ponder

Name any principle, whether a mundane one like, "Clear nights are colder," or a more philosophical one like, "Using force to silence a person is always a violation of his rights." You can probably imagine a realistic scenario or real case that contradicts whichever principle you name. This raises the question of whether there are any absolute principles, what they are, or if there only probabilities?

Albert Einstein said, "Authority slavery is one of the biggest enemies of truth." What does this suggest about how we should relate to leaders in the various fields of knowledge? We tend to believe those who know more about a subject than us, yet we know these "experts" can be - and often are - wrong. In order to benefit from their expertise while being open to new ideas, could we train ourselves to see such people not as authorities, but as "higher probability sources?"

People are often said to be "under the influence" of alcohol or other drugs. However, we don't really have a similar expression for those who are intoxicated by an idea or philosophy. Apparently we see the powerful effects drugs have on people, but do we underrate the addictive and potentially destructive power of ideas over humans?

Until next time,

Steve

www.RadicalNewThoughts.com