Moral expenditures.

Megan McArdle is writing about her decision to eat only humanely raised meat, on ethical grounds.    The comments on her posts are interesting.  Here's a selection of the relevant posts in chronological order:  1 2 3 4 5   

But it's not specifically humanely raised meat that interests me.  What she's writing about can be generalized to elective moral decisions of all types:  decisions to modify one's behavior in order to avoid remote co-operation with evil and to promote the good as we perceive it.  (Note I'm talking about remote, not direct, cooperation with evil -- the kind of choices that depend on our perception of a proportionate response.) 

First, does our behavior have to be logically consistent?  That is, let's say moral calculus A has logical consequence B.   If we change our behavior because we accept moral calculus A, are we hypocritical because we don't go farther and change our behavior further to accommodate B as well?    (In Megan's discussion, this type of question shows up as "Should vegetarians wear leather?")Second, does our choice to modify behavior in some ways and not in others imply a hierarchy of morality -- we "really care" about the things that we change our behavior for, and "don't really care" about the others?  If a person won't eat foie gras but doesn't bother boycotting Nestle products, does that mean he cares more about geese welfare than about worldwide breastfeeding?  Or does it simply mean that he enjoys chocolate milk more than he likes pate?   

Megan writes

Is it true that there is some implied censure in the decision not to eat meat, or not to eat factory-farmed meat? Well, given that I have concluded that refraining from the purchase factory farmed meat is the ethical thing to for me to do, then it is indeed logically implied that I also think it is the ethical thing for you to do.

However, polite society thrives on people with ethical differences agreeing to live and let live. I leave room for the possibility of errors in my own judgment, for differences in situations and priorities, and for the fact that no human relationship can survive a strict accounting of every value difference. I think it would be nice if everyone thought hard about how much moral weight to give to the suffering of animals, and gave up meat for a month or so in order to find out how hard it would be to live without it. (Answer: not nearly as hard as you think. I eat meat perhaps a few times a month, and honestly don't much miss it--and I like to eat.)

On the other hand, I also think it would be nice if everyone tried hard, every minute, to be as nice as possible to those around them; volunteered with homeless children in their spare time; and supported a robust free market regime. I don't live up to all of these ideals, however, and living in society means understanding that others make differing value judgments. I presume you know better than I do whether you are really doing your best to do what is right. I'm not going to lecture you on your moral obligations. In return, I would very much appreciate it if people would refrain from attempts to argue me out of doing what I believe is right because they would enjoy their own value judgments better if they had more company.

I wonder if most humans' moral effort -- what they would expend in behavioral changes in order to avoid remote cooperation with evil, or to promote good -- is a limited resource.   (Again, I'm not talking about avoiding direct evildoing or about meeting positive obligations.  I'm talking about the sorts of things we don't have to do but that we can choose to do.) Maybe a little bit analogous to  the money we donate to various charities.   

Our family gives away a certain fraction of our income each year as charitable donations.  Each year the church gets some; a certain pro-life charity gets some; the Catholic high school that gave Mark a scholarship gets some; a scholarship fund at the public university that gave both of us scholarships gets some; and other charities that catch our attention that year get the rest.  This year, for example, our local inner-city YMCA branch, where we have a family membership, had a capital campaign to update their facilities, which are woefully substandard.  This year we sent the largest proportion of our donations there.

If you asked me to name the number one most important evil to fight today, though, I wouldn't name substandard facilities at nonprofit community gymnasiums now, would I?  No, I'd say abortion -- what else could I say? So isn't it a bit hypocritical of us to give even one dime to the Y, or to the scholarship funds, when we could instead give more to fight the culture of death in its most horrible form?  We have limited resources but we can decide where to put them -- why aren't we sending all of them where they are needed most?

Maybe it is just hypocrisy.   

And yet we feel a certain specific obligation to the Y, to the schools, because we ourselves have received direct benefit from them.   This Y, not any other, is the Y in our neighborhood; and this year, not any other, is the year they're asking for extra money.  My children take swimming lessons there.  My neighbors' children receive child care and hot lunches there.   The neighborhood teenagers can use it as a safe after-school hangout.  As for the schools we mention, they provided scholarships to me and to my husband personally.   The personal connection gives us a certain personal obligation.  Subsidiarity in action:  going out from me are concentric circles of people and connections, and I have the most responsibility toward the individuals (and organizations) who fall within the nearer circles.   

At least that's one theory.  Hypocrisy is still a big possibility.   Anyway, what I'm getting at is that money is limited; and maybe moral effort is too; and so maybe we expend effort on causes that we feel we are  personally moved by, even personally called to work for, rather than on causes that we view intellectually as most important.   Still, there's a certain disconnect there, and I can't deny that it is troubling.

The answers here aren't clear, but then, nobody said either morality or economics was easy to map; and so why should the intersection be?

ADDED.  I'm not really happy about the structure of this blog post and would like to rewrite it, especially to give a little more emphasis to the unwiseness of judging each other's priorities based on what we do and don't boycott, on what we do and don't give to charity.    But I don't really have time to rewrite, and so it's going to have to stand for now.  

Comments

[Derek]

Wow, what a topic - A great topic, which requires thought. A few initial ones...

A large part of the problem, I think, lies in the definition of a hypocrite. It is the easiest charge to make against another person, and people who actually try to believe something (e.g. religious people) are particularly subject to this kind of psychological critique. The only way to completely avoid the charge of hypocrisy is to give all you have to the poor and devote your life to God and the service of humanity. But then again, if you secretly resent it or occasionally wish for something different, are you a hypocrite? Clearly, we are in the tall grass, here. In the end, then, the whole world is full of hypocrites - every one of us. But, that is not the test of moral character. You mention that money and moral effort are limited - very true. Respond according to your moral instincts. Your moral instinct is just like training in any other field - eventually you develop a sense of how things work, which often operates below the surface. If you train your moral sense by frequent and honest examination of your conscience, then you will do the right thing. It may not be the best, but it will be good, and it will be enough.

So, don't worry about the charge of hypocrisy - after all, in the time you spend worrying about whether you're a hypocrite, you could instead be doing any number of things that could be directly morally productive. Don't be a hypocrite by wasting time worrying about hypocrisy. :) Just train your conscience, try to live by it, and remember that God is merciful.

[bearing]

My favorite bit of writing about hypocrisy appears in Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, in which a neo-Victorian character explains to an amused interlocutor how it was that "back in the day" when relativism ruled, the only possible sin was hypocrisy. Found most of the quote at the link below:

"You know, when I was a young man, hypocrisy was deemed the worst of vices…It was all because of moral relativism. You see, in that sort of a climate, you are not allowed to criticise others-after all, if there is no absolute right and wrong, then what grounds is there for criticism? Now, this led to a good deal of general frustration, for people are naturally censorious and love nothing better than to criticize others’ shortcomings. And so it was that they seized on hypocrisy and elevated it from a ubiquitous peccadillo into the monarch of all vices. For, you see, even if there is no right and wrong, you can find grounds to criticize another person by contrasting what he has espoused with what he has actually done. In this case, you are not making any judgment whatsoever as to the correctness of his views or the morality of his behavior-you are merely pointing out that he has said one thing and done another. Virtually all political discourse in the days of my youth was devoted to the ferreting out of hypocrisy."

(at the link http://www.boxxet.com/Neal_Stephenson/Neil_Stephenson_on_Hypocrisy.12o0zs.d )

[bearing]

BTW, I'm glad to get some feedback on the idea that moral effort is limited. In one sense it's not -- because we can keep improving our characters such that it's less and less difficult to figure out our priorities, and easier and easier to make sacrifices that honor those priorities. Basically, the idea is to get closer and closer to perfection throughout life, hopefully attaining it at the end of all things.

But at any given time in your life/point on your journey/whatever, there is only so much you can do on top of the obligations you already have proper to your state in life. AT least that's my theory. The question is -- is this a cop-out?