The provocative family

For someone who is about to, as the saying goes, “start a family”, I found the following to be very thought provoking:

“Formerly the strength of the family has been its social, economic, and political significance.  The fact that the economic and political significance of the family is now secondary has the ironic effect of making an idealized account of the family too important in our lives. In a world of strangers, we cling to the family as the one place that supplies us with relationships that we have not chosen.  As a set of relationships that are “given” rather than the ones we choose to opt into or out of, family relationships at least seem to promise to give our lives, if not purpose, at least an “anchor”.  The problem, however, is that the family is generally unable to bear the burden of such intense psychological and moral expectations.”

The italics are mine, at the points where I thought the point was made most incisively.

Stanley Hauerwas, “The Radical Hope in the Annunciation: Why both single and married Christians welcome children” , in The Haauerwas Reader, p.510

Filed under: Family, ethics, quotations , Family, relationships, political significance of the family, ethics, theological ethics, Stanley Hauerwas

Trickling down

I received a letter today from Tear, an organisation that Ell and I are interested in.  It described the very real and sudden changes that the world financial situation has prompted for developing countries, and the many NGO’s that seek to work in them.

If you think times are tough here, it only gets worse as you go down the line.  Lay offs here, entire factories or markets dry up there.  Along with this, as people tighten the belts – even perhaps from the talk of hard times that is in the air rather than from any change in income – generosity dires up too.  Tear’s ‘useful catalogue’ that you may have seen around (buying water pumps for villages, and so on) suffered a considerable drop in ’sales’ over Christmas. Likewise, the pressure on Governments will probably result in a reduction of aid to foreign countries as well.

Given that the only impact so far for us of the whole situation is that we get richer at a slower rate, it makes you think differently about the $950 the government is going to be dishing out in a couple of months time.

Suffering doesnt deal in comparisons.  There is no point comparing the faring of a laid off worker here to a small plot farmer somewhere else.  But I am in neither of those positions.  Whatever the case, I wonder what it takes to think of generosity as an essential in life, rather than the cream skimmed off the top when things are going well?

Filed under: Politics, economics, ethics, experiences , global economy, poverty, TEAR

Sci-fi becomes reality, unsurprisingly

Way back here I spent a little time thinking about robots, and about how stories about ‘robots’ make us think hard about what it means to be ‘human’.  Funny thing, is now it looks like it is becoming reality.  No kidding – check out this article in the SMH.  The article considers briefly the possibly ethical difficulties involved with robots that are involved with the care of humans.

With prices plunging by 80 per cent since 1990, consumer sales of robots have surged in the 21st century, reaching nearly 5.5 million in 2008, and are expected to double to 11.5 million in the next two years.  “They are set to enter our lives in unprecedented numbers,” said [Professor of AI & Robotics] Noel Sharkey, expressing fear that an absence of ethical rules fixed by international bodies could mean the machines’ control will be left to militaries, the robot industry and busy parents.

Of course, laws regarding robots are important, and there is plenty of stuff around that considers all of this anyway.  Isaac Asimov’s three laws were originally intended as a way of thinking through these things, way back in 1940.  The Wiki article is pretty good, and there’s also this extensive page.  This also means the comment about Asimov’s stories being ‘doomsday scenarios’ is completely beside the point – they are just a fictional frame.  That is to say, the SMH article is not really “news”, but rather a synopsis of an academic science article, and seemingly hardly original at that.    But laws take time to make, and technology advances rapidly – the analogy with internet and copyright for music is a good analogy; legal consideration for loading up your iPod took a long time to catch up.

But will the laws really change much?  There are still humans somewhere along the line, whether employing robots, or building them, and, for the present at least, robots are just clever tools.  Sharkey (the Robot scientist) seems to have a view of Government as a kind of big parent, needing to control what people do with their robot toys.  Reprint Asimov’s books, I say, and lets have some fun reading them (publishers, are you listening?).  And then think hard about what it means to be human, or post human, or whatever.

Filed under: Isaac Asimov, books, ethics, technology , Asimov, books, moral reflection, Politics, Robots, technology