Evaluating Ethical Systems

Rachel's Musings Posted on by

It is hard to find common ground with people who are denying basic human rights, like health care or asylum, life itself, really. They are driven by a philosophy that centers something other than life – and such an ethic is morally bankrupt.

Why?

We can evaluate ethical systems on a meta level. In order for an ethical system to be humane, to be valid for humans, it needs to respect, honor really, life. Because without life this system would be superfluous. We need ethical systems to enable communities, to enable living together. So, an ethical system that ultimately destroys life cannot be moral on a meta level because it would destroy what it is supposed to ensure.

More concretely, ethical systems that center property are immoral. Property does not exist without life; property is a contract between living humans. Unfortunately, the people in power, mostly white men, are driven by such an immoral ethical system. They are merely interested in maintaining their power – and in order to do so build a pseudo ethics that pretends to justify their power. In reality, they are undermining their power from within because they cannot have power over dead people, which is where their system ultimately leads. It is not centered on life, it does not value life (unless it can be abused to maintain their power, such as in the case of an anti-choice stance to abortion).

I am not sure if the meta-ethical sketch above is correct. Probably not yet. I have been grappling with figuring out why I have this strong sense that the philosophies that center property – from Ayn Randism to libertarianism – feel deeply immoral to me. I sense it has something to do with their blatant disregard of life – human and otherwise. Property and power seem more important – and that’s a sand castle because neither would exist without life. So the system is unsustainable and has to eventually collapse on its own – except in reality, of course, it can be maintained by brutal force, intensified by this hallow system. Self-justification.

An alternative ethical system, one that could self-maintain, centers life. Everything is driven by respecting life. Sadly, this system – or such systems – seem to be very vulnerable to the brutal systems. How can we help the inhumane system collapse? And do this without creating more suffering than the system itself? How are we maintain that system every day? By holding onto beliefs that divide us, that make some life more valuable than others. By focusing our work on accumulating power, by making power and money the measure of achievement, of morality itself thus turning ethics into an absurdum.

Open Letter to the GOP Leadership in Congress

Rachel's Musings Posted on by

I have faxed the following letter to GOP members of Congress who hold leadership positions. I am disgusted with their complicit support of the undemocratic changes the president is making to U.S. democracy as symbolized by his comments about the European Unions, supposedly our allies, and his visit in Russia.

As a German-American, naturalized U.S. citizen since 1998, I am deeply concerned about how President Trump talks about our European allies, Germany in particular. What I am even more worried about is Congress’ silence, especially the GOP’s silence. It is as if that party is perfectly willing to go along with the destruction of the post-World War II alliances that have brought peace and prosperity to the United States (though not always to other countries). As much as these alliances had their problems, their strength lay in their cooperation based on liberal and democratic principles.

Are you, as Congress, now willing to throw this all into the wind to openly align the U.S. with authoritarian regimes? Instead of working toward true democracy, toward implementing the liberal promises of the U.S. constitution, you are standing by as Trump undermines it. For what? Just to maintain your power? Are we, the people, really that unimportant to you? Do you really care so little about U.S. democracy?

This is certainly no longer the United States that I joined as a citizen! It is long past time that you stand up to Trump and show him that his words and actions are unacceptable in the United States of America! It is Congress’ responsibility to provide checks and balances. Please do your job!

Some of the background for this letter is expressed here by the European council president. Some other concurring voices: John Brennan, The Guardian reporting, even the Republican Speaker, David Frum.

Ambulante Reha und geplante Großfamilie

Rachel's Musings Posted on by

Aus persönlichen und familiären Gründen denke ich im Moment sehr viel über Altenpflege nach (deswegen schreibe ich jetzt auch mal wieder auf Deutsch…). Ich möchte jetzt anfangen, meine Ideen vorzustellen, um dadurch hoffentlich auch andere zu finden, die auch Lust haben, sie umzusetzen.

Mein Vater hatte Ende Januar einen Schlaganfall. Nach einem Monat im Krankenhaus wurde er in eine Rehabilitationsklinik entlassen. Dort ist er immer noch, also fast drei Monate. Da es klar ist, dass besonders älter Menschen besser leben und heilen, wenn sie in ihrer gewohnten Umgebung sind, erscheint mir, dass das nicht so viel wie möglich zur Heilung beitragen kann. Die Pflege ist zwar, soweit ich das aus der Ferne abschätzen kann, gut, aber nicht optimal, weil sie eben an das jetzige Altenpflegen-System gebunden ist. Wäre etwas anderes, besseres möglich? Könnten wir ein System entwickeln, dass letztendlich für alle besser ist? Ich schlage eine ambulante Reha mit letztendlichem Ziel einer geplanten Großfamilie vor. Im Rest diese Blog-Beitrags werde ich beide Ideen skizzieren.

Die Idee für die ambulante Reha ist durch eine ambulante psychologische Betreuung inspiriert worden (siehe Teil 3). Menschen, die psychologische Herausforderungen haben, werden rund um die Uhr unterstützt, damit sie nicht in einer Klinik sei müssen, sondern zu Hause leben können. Die Psychologin kommt zu ihnen. Das hat den großen Vorteil, dass, was sie in der Therapie lernen, gleich umgesetzt werden kann. Der oft krasse Unterschied zwischen Leben in der Klinik und außerhalb, in der “wirklichen Welt,” wird dadurch vermieden. Und es wird verhindert, dass Menschen zurück in die Klinik müssen nur weil sie die Umstellung nicht schaffen. Langfristig wird ihnen dadurch besser geholfen – und nebenbei wird auch noch Geld gespart (was ja leider oft wichtiger ist, als Menschen wirklich zu helfen…).

Ich denke, dass im Prinzip so etwas auch in die Rehabilitation von alten Menschen umgesetzt werden könnte, obwohl die Betreuung wahrscheinlich intensiver sein müsste. Es gibt schon Ansätze zu solchen ambulanten Angebote (z.B. hier zum Beispiel), die auf schwierigere Fälle erweitert werden könnten.

Ohne praktische Erfahrung zu haben, überlegte ich weiter (wie das PhilosophInnen ja oft machen). Wenn PflegerInnen 24 Stunden mit ihren Patienten zusammen sein müssen, wie könnte das ambulant geschehen? Natürlich ähnlich, wie im Krankenhaus oder einer Rehabilitationsklinik: Mit Schicht-Arbeit. Wie könnte das erleichtert werden? Naja, Kinder können mit alten Leuten oft besser umgehen als Erwachse. Anstelle die Kinder der PflegerInnen, wenn sie welche haben, zur Kindertagesstätte zu schicken, vielleicht könnten sie in die Pflege integriert werden. Nicht alle alten Menschen leiden an Demenz, also sind sie durchaus fähig bei Hausaufgaben, zu helfen. Es könnte ja auch sein, dass es Demenz gut tut, helfen zu müssen. Also die geplante Großfamilie kann hier schon anfangen: Menschen, alt und jung und dazwischen, werden bewusst zusammengebracht damit Kindern mehr als nur ihre biologischen Eltern zur Verfügung stehen. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy nennt das “alloparents,” Erwachsene, die für Kinder mitverantwortlich sind, obwohl sie nicht verwandt sind. In ihrer Forschung hat sie gezeigt, dass alloparents, Kindersterblichkeit reduzieren, zumindest für Affen. Da ich weiß, wie schwierig, dass Alleinerziehen eines Kindes ist, denke ich, dass dies sehr gut für die Eltern ist!

Eine Frage, die ich auf jeden Fall noch beantworten muss (außer den Details für die Ideen oben…): Wie kann so etwas an alle angeboten werden, nicht nur Leute, die, z.B., genug Platz haben? Letztendlich erwarte ich das solch eine Pflege-Umstrukturierung nur möglich ist, wenn unsere Gesellschaft das Wohlgehen von Menschen in den Mittelpunkt stellt, anstelle Profite.

Finding my Activism Niche

Rachel's Musings Posted on by

Coming back to this blog after not having posted for almost half a year is hard. My mind says I should have a good reason – and I don’t. My mind tells me that I should have something profound to say – and I don’t. Even coming up with a heading seemed treacherous. I’ve learned a lot since the selection of Donald. Mostly, I’ve learned that I don’t know a lot. This journey has been humbling. And yet when I was looking at someone else’s vision earlier today, I realized that maybe I do have something to contribute. Most people don’t look at marriage as something that bestows a privilege. Maybe I can add that to a vision. At minimum, I can use my work to update my vision. So here’s a start, using questions from a workshop I attended as a framework.

Where does your passion to take action to end racism come from?
I think my passion comes from a profound dissatisfaction with the world we live in and a yearning for what it could be like. The world I envision, as a sketch to be fleshed out, is built on deep democracy, the kind feminist pragmatists wrote about, whose ideas I incorporated in my thesis. This democracy is filled with cooperation and collaboration, community, dance, and joy. This democracy is not corrupted by capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. This democracy does not center hierarchical institutions such as corporations and the nuclear family, instead it centers institutions that support democracy like cooperatives and intentional families.

How can this rooting sustain you in taking action toward racial justice for the long haul?
The most important thing to remember is to remember the most important thing! This vision and rooting myself in it can only sustain me if I remember it and notice how it is already emerging in my life. So, I want to create ways I can reconnect myself daily to this vision. And I want to remember to live this vision consciously by building (and noticing!) communal outlets of pieces of that vision.

What are ways that this rooting might not sustain you or lose your passion for taking action about racial justice?
It might not be concrete enough. The path from where we are to the vision might not be clear or too meandering (I get impatient easily!). I might lose hope that we’ll ever get there because my vision is big. Something also became clear to me during the workshop: I often don’t see the connections, the support, I do have, so I might be more focused on the vision than on the ways it is already realizing in my life. It is experiencing how this vision is emerging in my life that sustains me the most.

What are some capacities or skills or practices that you think might help you to sustain your passion to fight for racial justice for the long haul?
I want to set up ways I could practice reconnecting to this vision in community. I also am recommitting to my meditation practice, which can undermine my tendency to isolate myself (including in a group by focusing on what makes me different from the rest of the group instead of seeing what connects us).

United Fantasy

Rachel's Musings Posted on by

Coming back to the United States from Europe is always hard for me. There seems to be something different about Europe that I am missing in the U.S. Europe feels more like home. There is more of a social contract there (although it’s being dismantled partly because of the destructive influence of U.S. corporations). Of course, I am on vacation, which helps. Somehow there is “something” different – and I can’t articulate exactly what that something is.

Yesterday, I listened to a discussion with Kurt Andersen about his new book Fantasyland – and something clicked. Because I haven’t actually read this book (though listened to a second interview), I won’t attempt to summarize his argument here. I will, however, run with his idea, which may or may not be true to his points (for that we’ll have to read his book…): The fundamental thing that differentiates the United States from Europe is that people in the U.S. tend toward living in Fantasyland. The white people who came to the colonies way back when self-selected based on the fantasy (as it turned out to be for many) that their lives would dramatically improve, so this is in the very fabric of the U.S..

And I see it everywhere from the fantasy that the U.S. is a country of the free (when that’s true only in the sense of a limited kind of freedom) to Facebook’s contention that the people I am connected to are friends (probably even the idea that it provides connections is a fantasy…). The U.S. self-image is largely based on fantasy. In reality, the promise of the country was (and still mostly is) limited to a very small group of rich white men. The U.S. was founded on stolen land with the blood and exploitation of people not even deemed fully human. The central idea of capitalism in the U.S. is also a fantasy: Hard work does not lead to success and happiness (at least not most of the time) – and it is becoming less so as what upward mobility was there is eroding.

Of course, Europeans aren’t immune to fantasy (their support of homeopathy is just one example) but they seem to be more grounded in reality, including less religious. Maybe the biggest fantasy has also prevented more of a social contract in the U.S.: Individualism. In Europe, workers are more likely to form and support unions because they know that individual success depends on others. They are less likely to subscribe to the fantasy of the “self-made man.”

All this typed, I am even more eager to read Andersen’s book because I want to see the evidence he presents, especially since I am realizing how I don’t yet fully understand his argument of how the U.S. went haywire in recent years. However, based on my own experience and limited research, the idea that USAmericans tend toward more pie-in-the-sky living resonates. And that idea might be very detrimental to us and the planet as a whole.

Travel Insights

Rachel's Musings Posted on by

Two books, a conversation, lots of experiencing and thinking – that’s what influenced an inner change during my recent vacation – or rather a recommittment to things I’ve explored before, even long before Donald was made president.

The first book is Naomi Klein’s “No is not enough.” The second is Anthony Flaccavento‘s “Building a Healthy Economy from the Bottom Up.” Both books make similar arguments: It is not enough to resist the current system, we also need to build a new one. While Klein’s book (despite the title) is more of an analysis of how we got Donald – an analysis that I’ve found tremendously helpful as Klein is articulating a lot of what I’ve been thinking – Flaccavento presents examples of this bottom-up economy that serves as an alternative to the capitalist and socialist systems most of us are familiar with and that have failed most of us so thoroughly. Clearly, Donald is just a symptom. He is a symptom of a system that is built on exploitation and hierarchy. Understanding this is just the first step. Klein’s book is very helpful in gaining that understanding. Flaccavento’s book is pushing us further by suggesting actions to take.

Maybe Flaccavento’s book is also so helpful to me because it is building on some of the things I’ve noticed – again – during my trip. I start to thrive when living in community and closer to nature. Although the sense of community might’ve been a bit more complicated by being with my parents and being on vacation, clearly being with others is helpful for me. Since I am single, I too often end up isolated and lonely. Plus, there’s something about the basic interactions, the basic cooperation that communal living brings: Sharing meals, doing dishes together, etc. Reading in Flaccavento’s book reinforced that building community isn’t just a personal preference. It’s also a way to resist. Again and again, loneliness is mentioned as one of the driving factors behind the shift to totalitarianism we’re seeing worldwide. Strengthening communities, rebuilding communal ties might thus be a crucial ingredient for building a true democracy (or the system we build as an alternative to the hypercapitalism that is destroying the world).

I also noticed how social media is sucking time out of my live without giving me what I want: Most connections on social media are superficial at best and yet it gives me the delusion of connection. While I was traveling, I had little desire to share on Facebook – because I was sharing in person! Back in my regular life, I keep going to Facebook with an almost desperate desire to connect – because I have so little in person connections.

Although I am still struggling to learn how to do it, I want to build community, create connections. After the election, I’ve already started to do more of that through book circles and knit-togethers. Because I’ve felt the difference this makes in my life (and body!), I want to build on what I have started and expand it, maybe even finding a place where this happens more often, more organically, than in a big city.