I doubt that folks will ever stop debating the nature and
meaning of good and evil, right and wrong. Principles derived from God and/or nature? Subjective whims that gather normative
force when experienced en masse among like-minded individuals? Concepts that can only be expressed in
unsatisfying and ultimately meaningless tautologies? Who knows? I
don’t even have a hunch, and I suspect that ethicists only pretend to know what
they’re talking about in order to keep their jobs. But I am fairly certain that we all have the capacity for
shame, that we all have a conscience.
I don’t mean the babies and the sociopaths, of course, but most of
us. And I’m fairly confident that
researchers have or soon will have ways of identifying patterns of brain
activities that occur when a subject self-reports experiences of shame. Also, I’ll bet that toxicologists could
develop some sort of neurological agent that could temporarily paralyze people
without causing any lasting bodily damage. Perhaps we could put these elements together to enable folks
to create a better society by enforcing their own moral judgments upon themselves.
I’m thinking that we ought to create a tiny chip that
performs two functions: first, it detects the presence or absence of a
subject’s shame and, second, it releases paralysis-inducing chemicals whenever
the presence of shame is detected.
We’d inject the chip into the subject and, voila, we’d have a citizen
who must navigate according to her own moral compass!
Imagine the benefits.
Picture the miscreant who, after transgressing, feels guilty about her
crime and is paralyzed and, therefore, easily apprehended. Better yet, picture the ambivalent,
would-be evildoer stopped in her tracks by her own pangs of conscience before
ever even coming close to committing her foul deed.
For instance, take this past week’s Boston Marathon bombers: speculation has it that the younger brother seemed a halfway decent fellow who may have been driven to murder out of loyalty to his wicked and dominant older brother, and if this was the case then he (the teenager, that is) likely would have been overcome with shame at some point(s) during his atrocious rampage. I can think of many scenarios in which the younger brother’s paralysis might have prevented some or all of his and/or his brother’s various violent actions. (And, while we’re at it, let’s not rule out a capacity for shame on the elder brother’s part.) This technology would enhance the polity’s capacity for law enforcement as it simultaneously reduced the need for such capacity, freeing up public resources that could be applied to other pressing social problems.
For instance, take this past week’s Boston Marathon bombers: speculation has it that the younger brother seemed a halfway decent fellow who may have been driven to murder out of loyalty to his wicked and dominant older brother, and if this was the case then he (the teenager, that is) likely would have been overcome with shame at some point(s) during his atrocious rampage. I can think of many scenarios in which the younger brother’s paralysis might have prevented some or all of his and/or his brother’s various violent actions. (And, while we’re at it, let’s not rule out a capacity for shame on the elder brother’s part.) This technology would enhance the polity’s capacity for law enforcement as it simultaneously reduced the need for such capacity, freeing up public resources that could be applied to other pressing social problems.
Of course, this technology could never completely obviate
civilization’s need for systems of criminal justice. As I’ve mentioned above, there are those without
consciences, people who would be impervious to the powers of this new shame
chip (which I’m assuming we’d inject into the populace at birth or maybe as
part of the application for a Social Security number). Moreover, the process of natural
selection might, over time, favor that segment of the population that lacks a
conscience (as freedom from the shame chip’s effects would surely increase
one’s options when it came to executing survival and procreation strategies). Plus, there would be other unintended
consequences. For example, there’d
undoubtedly be traffic accidents caused by getaway drivers freezing up in
remorse while speeding away from crime scenes. But, still, even with all of these shortcomings the shame
chip would afford us a chance to make some real progress (in the short and
medium terms, at least) toward ethical living, which we all, at least when in
public, profess to be our aim.
It’s true that some individuals experience misplaced shame,
and so some useful and advantageous activities that would have occurred without
the shame chip would not occur with the shame chip. But certainly we can assume a net gain; surely the shame
chip would prevent more bad actions than good actions. After all, humankind has never been a
race given to undue scrupulousness.
A couple of my more libertarian friends have told me that my
plan for implanting shame chips in everybody is creepy, that it’s “Orwellian”
and “Clockwork Orange-esque” and that “legislating morality” is not only impossible
but also inadvisable. But these
objections are without merit. Once
the shame chips have been implanted, the authorities would pretty much stay out of
everyone’s hair. Unlike in A
Clockwork Orange, the government would not be imposing its notions of right and
wrong on anyone. Nobody would be
foisting any ethical norms on anybody; each of us would judge for ourselves the
rightness or wrongness of any given course of conduct. As for whether it’s legitimate to
complain about not being able to do things that we know damn well we
shouldn’t do…well, surely there are principles of estoppel that apply.
There's one Ted Kopacki word in here: "tautology," and even I must admit when you, despite my obviously massive vocabulary, have sent me to the dictionary. Estoppel. Good one.
ReplyDeleteAbout this chip: I say, good plan, but let's work on the execution a little bit. For example, I would've been frozen solid from roughly age eight until 17, when I came out. Clearly, I accomplished many wonderful things during that nine-year span -- none of which could have happened, had my "shame chip" been invoked.
Fortunately, I have a workaround. We carve out a niche exception for atheists. They're not chipped. I'm not being biased, because I'm not exempting LGBT people (there are many homosexuals I've met who, I believe, should in fact be frozen solid). But we atheists tend to be a thoughtful bunch -- scrupulous, even -- so I'm basically saying that we should be permitted to shamelessly run the world.