The bathroom dilemma: Yuck and Inconvenience

So last time, I presented the problem.  I've spent some time thinking about it, and in particular the false dilemma that I presented.

I presented the problem as a choice between the waterless urinal and the 1 gallon automatic flush urinal.  Many people have pointed out that I have a third option, the bushes by my office.  If I'm serious about saving water, and 2.5 minutes is too long to walk, then couldn't I water the bushes by my office as a compromise?  I did a little digging, and it turns out that it may actually beneficial to your plants (at least your tomato plants)!

But there is a pretty strong yuck factor involved in peeing in public.  So inconvenience versus yuck!  This is what ethicists are for!  First, generally, I don't think that yuck! is a justification.  If I said something like, "Peeing in public?  Yuck!"  That isn't good enough moral reason for me not to do it.  "Gays getting married?  Yuck!"  amounts to the same thing.  The argument from yuck is essentially:  This act disgusts me.  People should avoid doing disgusting acts.  Therefore I should not do this act.  Plug in anything that is disgusting and you have an argument.  But the relevancy of how an act makes us feel and whether we should do it is questionable.  I think barfing is disgusting, and cleaning up barf is probably more disgusting.  But I think I should do it (cleaning it up that is, not barfing per se).

But there is a difference between gay marriage and peeing in the bushes.  One issue has heavy "moral weight" and the other not.  I think something has "moral weight" when decisions made about x either affects a great deal of people, or affects some people in a great deal, in a significant way.  This is terribly vague I know, but I think the vagueness is necessary.  Gay marriage affects both a great deal of people, and some people in a great deal.  I'm not sure if peeing in the bushes would count in either sense.

So whats the point of this distinction?  I want to say that on issues that concern "everyday ethics," that is issues that have only a light "moral weight" do not require the same kinds of justifications as weighty moral issues.  "Yuck" may well be enough for me to  not to do something that that has little moral weight.  Why?  Yuck makes us unhappy, in a temporary sense, not in a lifelong sense.  When we engage in a something that is only yucky (cleaning up barf as opposed to torturing someone, which is both yucky and cruel), we usually don't think that this will ultimately affect our overall evaluation of our lives.  Everyday ethics deals with precisely that, a small wrong, not a wrong that will ultimately affect the overall moral evaluation of our lives.  The less weighty a moral issue, the more it can be affected by yuck!

So I'm not peeing in the bushes.  Why?  Because its not a morally weighty issue and it makes me go yuck! The burden of proof, I think, is on others to show why this is a morally weighty issue that forces me to discount yuck.   If we were talking about being a vegan versus being a vegetarian, would the yuck factor be enough to take veganism off the table?  I'm coming around to the possibility of it being morally light enough because the difference of moral weight between a vegan and a vegetarian is the difference between being a good person and a slightly better person.  But if we were talking about the difference between a vegetarian and a omnivore, even a conscientious one, the difference in weight is significantly larger because of reasonable doubts about where our food is coming from.  It turns the compassionate omnivore into a regular omnivore.

So what about the other possibility, that its too inconvenient?  If morally light issues can be overridden by yuck, could it be overridden by inconvenience?  I think it might.  But first we should compare yuck with inconvenience.  I think most people would pick something inconvenient over something yucky.  It may be inconvenient for me not to eat anything at this moment, but it sure beats eating something yucky.  So, yuck gives us better reasons to reject some moral proposition than inconvenience because it affects our lives in a greater magnitude than yuck (and remember I'm not saying that yuck or inconvenience is affecting our over all lives a great deal).  So if its merely inconvenient that I walk 2.5 minutes to the waterless urinal, then I should, since the ethical gain is worth it.  But what if I drank a cup of coffee at home, drove half an hour to work, and really needed to go?  I don't think people would typically label this an inconvenience.  We hyperbolically describe these situations as emergencies.  But what actually is happening is that we are faced with turning something inconvenient (walking 2.5 minutes) into something yucky (soiling ourselves).  The moral weight of the issue hasn't changed, but our justification for rejecting the 2.5 minute walk has.  Heck, even compared to the yuck of peeing in public and the yuck of soiling ourselves, peeing in public would be the more preferable option. 

So... unless I'm being pressed with a yucky situation, I have a moral obligation to use the waterless urinal.

LOST!!!!

So if you haven't seen last night's episode and don't want things spoiled, stop reading now.



So we finally know what this whole show is about...  And its not really surprising, since they told us early on in the series (maybe the second episode when Locke talks to Walt about backgammon).

So here are my thoughts on last night's episode:
-Alpert gets one heckuva baptismal experience from Jacob.  This reinforces the idea that Jacob is the good guy and The Man in Black is the bad guy. 
-The exchange between Alpert and Jacob really is more telling than anything else.  Jacob says that he can't absolve Alpert of his sins... But  he's God....  Why can't he?  Simply put, because Jacob wants people to be responsible for their own actions.  If absolution of sins came for no reason, then the free will that Jacob so desperately wants people to exercise on the island is meaningless.
-The Man in Black tried the direct approach.  Ask Alpert to kill Jacob.  That clearly didn't work.  So his next attempt... the Long con.  Manipulate the people that Jacob brings to the island, to prove to the Man in Black (El Diablo) that people will choose to do the right thing, when faced with temptation, to show that people are not as good as Jacob believes they are. 
-But Jacob is dead....  And now that we know the motivations behind bringing people to the island, we might understand this to be an even larger allegory of Nietzschean philosophy.  God is dead.  Its the ultimate test of free will and morality.  Without Jacob there to provide guidance, to tell Richard how to advise the islanders, will they choose good over evil still?  Or will the islanders open up Pandora's box and let smokey leave the island?
-Finally... a future hope...  I really hope that Hurley takes Jacob's place.  Hurley represents the everyman throughout the show.  Hurley being promoted to the guardian of the island would be symbolic of the everyman being capable of triumphing over evil, overcoming themselves (Nietzsche again), transcending mere humanity into the director of their own fate and values.

one more on food

Jamie Oliver, the naked chef, on his one wish.  He is not a vegetarian, but he is emphasizing that what we eat is killing us.

Factory Farming

Today I presented vegetarianism to my ethics class.  Here are some more links to help people understand factory farming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_farming
http://www.idausa.org/facts/factoryfarmfacts.html
http://www.humanesociety.org/issues/campaigns/factory_farming/

And a couple of links to vegetarian health
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/vegetarian-diet/HQ01596
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16441942

I tried to avoid any site that is obviously biased (PETA etc,) and included sites that have good reputations (the humane society, mayo clinic).  And for the other side:

http://www.amazon.com/Vegetarian-Myth-Food-Justice-Sustainability/dp/1604860804

Although, I don't think that this book really presents the arguments fairly.  Cherry picked statistics and straw man arguments seem to miss the point about animal suffering.  Instead she focuses on the quacks (All animals should live, and we should protect animals from each other), and sympathy (animals die in making your lettuce).  I don't have a problem with animals dying.  They die all the time.  I just don't think that humans should inflict unnecessary suffering, which she doesn't seem to give much justice to, and seems to believe that if we all became vegetarians, that we would have need more farmland, rather than less, which even government statistics point out is plainly false.

More on poop

Living in California near the bay, I'm particularly concerned about what goes down the drain.  I think one of the greatest assets that California has is its spectacular coast line!  Recently, sea otter deaths have been linked to toxoplasmosis parasites found in cat feces that is either flushed into the toilet, or gets into the bay through runoff.  And although its not conclusive, its the likeliest source.  Last summer when I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I started thinking about how I could reduce my cats' impact on the environment.  I wanted to do something about their litter waste.  We switched from a clay litter to a compostable litter, and started throwing away the litter in biodegradable bags.  But ultimately, I wanted to make sure that their poop didn't make it into the bay at all.  The easy way of doing this, was ensuring that the cats' poop never left my charge.  So last weekend I built an underground digester.

Essentially, its just a hole in the ground, with a plastic lid over it, so that I can keep animals (like the cats) out.  I drop their used litter into the hole, add some septic tank enzymes into the hole, a bit of water, and voila!  The litter gets broken down, liquefied, and fertilizes the soil around it.  I'm still waiting for the first bag to break down, that I put in there.  Supposedly it should only take a few days.  Its been in there for now 2 days and I'm getting impatient.  If this works well, then maybe I'll start collecting my own waste and dropping it down the hole.  ;)  Or maybe not....  Some things really are too gross for me too. 

Everyday Ethics: How far for a gallon?

So my last post got me thinking about how much we are willing to sacrifice for something that isn't worth all that much...  Clearly, people are willing to chip in when it isn't a big sacrifice (recycling).  The perceived gain from recycling is far greater than the actual gain. 

But there are real gains from small acts sometimes.  I think water conservation is a good example of this.  Small amounts of water saved every day could have dramatic effects on the local and extended environment.  So here's a real dilemma here for you.  The campus that I work on has recently opened a new building.  The new building is built with a green philosophy, so the men's bathrooms have waterless urinals.  However, my office is on the other side of campus.  It would take about 5 minutes to walk to the use the urinal, which would save exactly 1 gallon of water every time I did this.  A 10 minute round trip.  If I used the closest bathroom to my office, I could be done and back in probably 2 minutes.

Do I have a moral obligation to use the waterless urinal?   

Being green makes you mean?

There's a great post on Practical Ethics on how being green might just make a person more selfish.  This is not a new phenomenon, as it happens with world poverty as well.  Is it a bad phenomenon?  Savulescu suggests that it is because it distracts us from the problem.  We think we're doing good, when recycling has only a minor effect on the environment.  What we should really be doing is walking, biking, and taking public transit, rather than driving.  But because we sort our trash, we feel as if we've done our part. 

No doubt this is true...  but I hesitate to call it a bad thing.  We need positive reinforcement, otherwise we may not do anything at all.  We need to incentivize people to become exemplars for others.  Once we have done the some good, we should be encouraged to do more.