thoughts on pernicious epidemics...

To Sarah-Juliet: thanks again for taking the trouble to put this together for everyone.


This posting comes out of some thoughts I've been having over the last few weeks, as I prepped to come up to the SCT. Some of the thoughts may be pretty elementary and rough, but that tends to be my method, to think through something from the ground up, and then revise it to hell afterward. Also, I'm not, at this point, citing any particular secondary work, so if anyone has any suggestions for related readings, I'd be glad to hear them.


So one of the things that interests me most about this course comes out of the draft syllabus that Professor Gandhi provided to us: "do [the readings] designate a coherent global ethics that we might draw upon to counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness in the present world?"


Big words, tall order. How do we counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness in the world? How do we "imagine peace?"


Let's start with a story:


One fine evening in May, a not-so-young-as-he-used-to-be scholar finds himself in the middle of an argument between two friends who've been imbibing whiskey since two o'clock in the afternoon. As the argument threatened to turn violent (as arguments will do when fueled by four hours of whiskey), the scholar sought to impose himself bodily between the potential combatants and called for peace, brotherhood, goodwill toward men and all that. One of his friends then threw the scholar bodily into a wall, before tripping over his own stool and falling down. As it turned out, the scholar suffered (and is in fact still suffering) from three bruised ribs, not to mention the serious abrasion to his dignity. But the shock of the violence on the potential combatants did lead to the realization that matters were indeed (as the scholar had suggested) getting out of hand, and peace was thereafter established.


Now, the scholar was understandably angry, humiliated, etc. Although he walked away from the situation without initiating a reprisal, the matter festered in his mind for some days thereafter. How to respond to this act of harmfulness which seems to be part of a pernicious epidemic in the world?


Naturally, thoughts of retributive justice came to mind: a good solid smack to the kneecaps with a ball-peen hammer would go a long way toward assuaging the scholar's offended sense of his own dignity. Quite rightly, however, such an action is deemed illegal in the scholar's jurisdiction, and the scholar, although enjoying his imaginings, is essentially a peaceful person. The thought of actually and willfully causing harm with malice aforethought is physically nauseating to the scholar.


So what else to do? Procedural justice? File a police report and all of that, pressing criminal or civil charges against the drunken friend? Although condoned by society, this course is likely to be time-consuming and expensive, with depositions and lawyers and hearings and what-all. The scholar is not interested in adding any more time-consuming burdens to his already hectic life, and he is a scholar in a time of economic recession: money is no longer flowing from fountains as it once did. No, procedural justice, that is not for this scholar, not for something like this.


So, with direct retributive justice and indirect procedural justice off the table, what other forms of social remedy are available to the offended person of the scholar? There is the petulant "take-one's-ball-and-go-home" approach, popular in kindergartens across the world: the scholar simply cuts off the offender, who is not forgiven, but is forgotten. A damnatio memoriae, so to speak. Or, the scholar could approach the offender and express his "feelings" on the matter, and the two could constructively and rationally work through their differences and come to a settlement, an understanding. Perhaps there would be an exchange of goods, a wergild or honor price of some sort, the buying of a drink for the scholar by the offender, or a paying of emergency room bills, or something of the sort, negotiated directly between the offender and the scholar, perhaps with a neutral third-party to witness this mediation.


Or, the scholar could simply forgive. After all, he stood up for peace, and although he took a few lumps for it, peace was achieved by his actions, or at least by the action of harmfulness upon him. That the peace between these two friends was achieved by the bruising of a few of the scholar's ribs (which will heal, and which have the added benefit of qualifying the scholar for a percoset prescription) seems like a small price to pay for peace. After all, that's the goal, isn't it? Peace on earth, goodwill toward persons (at least)? Isn't that the point of the exercise of Being-together-in-the-World? Live and let live, and everyone enjoys their 18 inches of personal space as an inviolable right, right? Just forgive. It's what Yeshua would have done, or so the story goes.

So, these are all ethical decisions the scholar must make, and if that scholar has been charged with exploring whether a global ethics exists that can counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness in the present world, then what is that scholar to do?


Why, he theorizes, of course. And having been knee-deep in Heidegger's Being and Time for the last year and a half, he tends to theorize in a very Heideggerian manner, for which he hopes he will be forgiven.

So: How do we counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness in the present world?


I don't like the terms of the argument. The present world is the one in which we live, always and already in Being at the moment of the present. It is the world frozen in time, not yesterday's nor tomorrow's world, but the present world: today, this hour, this minute. So let us imagine for a moment a djinn in a bottle capable of granting this wish: "In the present world, the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness is hereby countered." Poof. Worldwide, international, unilateral peace in the present world.


Did you blink? If so, you probably missed it, as the present world detached itself and elided into the past and was replaced, in the seemingly endless sequence of time, with an Other present world, in which harmfulness remains epidemic, or even endemic. But it was a glorious, peaceful microsecond, wasn't it? Children under school desks, writing poetry and playing guitar. Golly, those were the days, weren't they?


So instead of "in the present world," I would suggest: "How do we counter the pernicious epidemic of harmfulness in the world as it presents itself to us, or as we present ourselves together in the world?"


For one does have to have an understanding of the value of time here. The world is not present. It is presenting and also absenting, like a white rabbit. "No time to say hello, goodbye! I'm late I'm late I'm late." So as the world presents itself to us from future-time, how do we counter the harmfulness which is carried with it from the future like jetsam on a wave? Since we cannot stop harmfulness from coming to us and presenting itself to us with the world from out of the fog of future-time, clearly "countering" this harmfulness is the only appropriate term, finding ways to overcome or avoid harmfulness when it presents itself.


And at the same time that the world presents itself to us, it also absents itself from us into past-time. [there's more of a thought here, about the perceived unitary subject as a product of memory, about the memory of harmfulness returning from past-time through the doorway of memory to reinfect the present... but I haven't thought it through yet...]


But what is "harmfulness"? Before we look at the thoughts of the many great and influential thinkers that we've been reading, let me first establish my own base-line, my own vulgar understanding of the meaning of what it is to be "harmful."


Firstly, "harmful" means to be full of harm, as if "harm" were some liquid quantity contained by a being-in-the-world, poisoned water in the bucket of objectivity called "thingness." For example, the scorpion is not a harmful creature just because it is an ugly, ill-tempered, entomorphic brute. It is harmful because of its venom sac, which is full of a poison which is inimical to life. Note that it is not inimical to un-life, to those things which we deem to be inanimate and not possessing a conscious faculty or the other qualities of growth and senescence that we associate with "living" things. If scorpion venom were only inimical to rocks, no doubt we'd find scorpions to be quite delightful company. Perhaps they even have an interest in the arts. Baby scorpions under a rock, writing poetry and playing guitar.


So "harm" has the quality of being-against-Dasein. Not being-against-the-world, nor again being-against-being, but specifically of being-against-Dasein. The only manifestation of "harm" is in its ability to make Being an issue for Dasein, which is what constitutes Dasein as such, the being whose being is an issue for itself.


But harm is a quality, or an attribute. Although it can be manifest in the being of materiality (scorpion's venom), it can also be present or manifest in purely symbolic (or perhaps I should say metaphysical) terms: the current global economic crisis of 2008-2009 is "harmful," and yet "the economy" is the abstract fiction established by the strange alchemies of economists, and the trade and fluctuations of the values assigned to this fiction are nothing more than arbitrary signs on paper, invested only with meaning, and not with materiality. We could as easily say "Pluto, god of wealth" as "Economics," for all the physical reality that either concept has. They are representative only of the ability (in real terms, and to greater or lesser degree) to "make a living," the ability of Dasein to resolve the issue of its being in its own favor, to overcome those "things" which have the quality of being-against-Dasein.


A curious quality of harm is that it is fickle. As the saying goes, "one man's meat is another man's poison." A Hershey's chocolate bar is, for my Dasein, a delicious treat which also catalyzes a neurochemical response akin to the emotion of "love." But to the Dasein of my cocker spaniel, the confectionary-industrial complex is a pernicious epidemic of harmfulness, since chocolate consumption can be fatal to canine-Dasein.


Hence, "harmful" is not a quality actually inherent in the being-in-the-world of things, it is a quality which Dasein invests in the being-in-the-world of other beings. Dasein encounters "thing-in-the-world-number-nine," six-legged, long-bodied, with crab-like claws and a segmented prehensile tail dripping with a neurotoxin that may cause the continued being-in-the-world of Dasein to be painfully curtailed. Ergo, "thing-in-the-world-number-nine" is assigned the quality of harmfulness, of being-full-of-harm, being-against-Dasein.

But notice the singular multiplicity of harm. Harm can be "done" to many, even millions, but harm "happens" (manifests eminently) to Dasein alone. Harm manifests in and is assigned signification by Dasein itself. One race's holocaust is six million individual oven-fires. And it is also the countless emotional, psychological, moral, ethical and spiritual traumas which radiate outward from those fires like a wave of heat.


It is important to see here that harm is both intensely individuated and widely distributed. A particular act of harmfulness might occur to a particular Dasein, but the effect of that harm is then carried outward from the direct victim, radiating along relational lines to harm other-Dasein to a greater or lesser degree. Breaking the kneecaps of a man with wife and kids to feed makes Being much more of an issue for an entire family of Daseins in addition to just the victim of the kneecapping himself, even if those other family members are never themselves kneecapped. Harm is the gift that keeps on giving.


Nevertheless, in each of these transmissions of harm, first to the victim-Dasein and then to related Other-Dasein, the harm occurs to each Dasein individually, and the degree of harm varies, relative to the strength of the interrelations, and the force of the harm in direct material terms.


So what is "harmful"? Any thing (animate or inanimate, material or non-material (metaphysical?)) which is inimical to the being-in-the-world and becoming-in-duration of Dasein. And what is "harm"? Actual damage (physical and otherwise) done to Dasein in the course of its being-in-the-world. The harmful thing is not harm itself, it merely conveys harm to Dasein, which is both the only site where harm occurs, as well as the site for additional transmission of harm to Others. The man who was kneecapped earlier becomes himself "full of harm" to his family when his ability to support them is made less efficacious, but that "harm" occurs to each family member differently, and may yet again be transmitted to others, or back toward its source ("you shiftless layabout, stop moaning about your knees and get out and get a job, you worthless, good for nothing etc. ...").


Thus, one could say that the only place where harmfulness can be countered is at the site of harm, the injured individual subject. There may be some wisdom to the old jingoistic slogan: "if you want peace, prepare for war." If harm happens at the site of the victim, then it is only the potential victim who must be prepared to counter harmfulness.


Alternatively, one could say that harmfulness comes out of future-time, and that a certain degree of "risk-management" can be undertaken to avoid harmfulness when it arrives. One can't be harmed if one is not present at the spatio-temporal site of harmfulness when it presents itself from out of the future, and one can take certain precautions against a foreseeable harmfulness to lessen or negate the harm that it engenders.

So that's what I've got so far. Most of it's crap, I'm sure, but it's a start. If anyone has any thoughts, please feel free to let me hear them. --med