(no subject)

[proximoception]

I remember disagreeing with my father about that scene with the pen in Schindler's List, about twelve years ago. He found it de trop, I guess. Oskar Schindler has been found out, and he and his Jewish factory workers are getting into cars and trucks to make their getaway--as I recall--and he's holding a gold pen and suddenly realizes aloud that he could have saved x number of additional Jews by selling it, y number more if he'd sold his fancy car etc. He'd saved over a thousand human lives already but you see his point. And that's what's too much about the scene, I guess: there's people you could save right now if you looked carefully. Then more people after that, and so on. Any philosophical or religious acceptance of the equality of your own life with that of another person (as a whole, moment by moment, whatever) renders this realization intolerable. Ben Kingsley's character's response was of course pragmatic--Schindler had done far more than his share, i.e. more than what others were doing, and what had been saved surpassed valuation.

But not against a larger quantity of similar invaluables. And not more than what he should have done, given his own beliefs. Schindler's pain, the pain of pure regret, is the sudden exposure to a nauseating gulf between what you say about yourself and what you are.

And that opens every can of worms at once, doesn't it?

More on which later but I'll be happy for any input meanwhile.

Comments

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

Peter Singer's controversial and I think powerful article on what to do with any extra money you have, above reasonable comfort, in The New York Times Magazine seven years ago. I'll email it to you if you like. Let me know. You once emailed me, and I have that address -- I can send it there.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Please do, and thank you. I love Singer, though I'm not sure his "equality of interest" concept holds water. Wrote a paper about that once. Seemed to me you could only arrive at his position by wanting to arrive at that position, i.e. if it were so that all pain-avoidance interests were equally compelling, moral issues would stop being vexing. But you can't insist on others buying it and behaving that way, it's just a principle you're reaching for so as to not be in the pain of confusion. I suppose institutions could, but then you get into whether they have a right. Imaginative identification with members of one's own species seems to be a more "natural" resting place than identification with all pain-feeling entities. It's one more people, in more cultures, seem to reach on their own, and solves most of the same social problems that the cleaner but less human (because more humane) Singerian position does. Though I have some attacks reserved for that one too. I'm starting to think all worthwhile thought has to be against, or anyway through, one's own sympathies, at this late date.

Hope some sense was made above.

[nightspore.livejournal.com]

I seem to have lost your address. Email me again and I'll send the piece.

I pretty much agree with you, but add: that Singer doesn't take seriously enough the unequalled human capacity for anticipation (pain as fear of death; fear of death as painful) and mourning (on the lifeboat, the mother of the severely retarded child suffers more -- I think -- than mother of chimp). I think humane slaughter of animals who don't know what's about to happen is much less vile than "humane" slaughter of people, because people know they're going to die. But I am totally against factory farming; something of a vegetarian (like Kinbote!); and also I admire a recent observation of Singer's, that going vegan = cutting back your carbon use to the tune of 1.5 SUVs (year for year). I think people who don't struggle with Singer are evading something they need to think about.