Appealing to 12 Emotion and Ethics

Transcription

1 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 488 Appealing to 12 Emotion and Ethics The essence of an emotional appeal is passion. You write from passion, and you expect your readers to respond with equal fervor. I have a dream. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. We have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. The West wasn t won with a loaded gun! We shall overcome is illustrated both by the photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Joan Baez, and others escorting African-American schoolchildren to a newly-integrated school in 1966 (445), and here by the welldressed Chinese schoolgirl standing and waiting amidst rubble in an urban slum neighborhood in Shenghen, beyond which gleam the modern high rise buildings that signal renewal and hope of a way up and out. Both photographs make direct and indirect arguments about children, human rights, and society, appealing to arguments that intertwine appeals to reason, emotion and ethics. You ll be making your case in specific, concrete, memorable ways that you expect to have an unusually powerful impact on your readers. So your writing will probably be more colorful than it might 488

2 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 489 Appealing to Emotion and Ethics 489 be in less emotional circumstances, with a high proportion of vivid examples, narratives, anecdotes, character sketches, analogies ( Will Iraq or North Korea or X be another Vietnam? ), and figures of speech, including metaphors ( a knee-jerk liberal ), and similes ( The Southern Senator had a face like an old Virginia ham and a personality to match. ). You can t incite your readers, either to agree with you or to take action on behalf of the cause you favor, by simply bleeding all over the page. The process of writing and rewriting and revising again (see the chapter Writing: Re-Vision and Revision ) will act to cool your red-hot emotion and will enable you to modulate in subsequent drafts what you might have written the first time just to get it out of your system. Hell, no! We won t go! As the essays in this section and elsewhere reveal, writers who appeal most effectively to their readers emotions themselves exercise considerable control over the organization and examples they use to make their points. They also keep particularly tight rein over their own emotions, as revealed in the tone and connotations of their language, crucial in an emotional appeal. Tone, the prevailing mood of the essay, like a tone of voice conveys your attitude toward your subject and toward the evidence you present in support of your point. It is clear from the tone of all the essays in this chapter indeed, all the essays in the entire Essay Connection that the authors care deeply about their subjects. Matt Nocton s Harvest of Gold, Harvest of Shame (527 31) reports in a relatively objective tone on his personal experience with an aspect of farming in this case, the harvesting of tobacco by a business that employs migrant and contract laborers, racial and ethnic minorities overseen by white bosses. Keeping himself out of the essay, he does not say in the essay that as a teenager, after two days on the job he was promoted to bentkeeper over the heads of minority employees with far more experience. Nevertheless, Nocton s concern for the workers and anger over their exploitation is apparent in the way he recounts the harvesting process, detail by detail, dirty, dusty, hot, and humiliating: each worker must tie [a burlap sack] around his waist as a source of protection against the dirt and rocks that he will be dragging himself through for the next eight hours. Nocton s essay, like the creative nonfiction narratives by Amanda Cagle ( On the Banks of the Bogue Chitto, ), Meredith Hall ( Killing Chickens, ), and Kandi Tayebi ( Warring Memories, ), illustrate that these days, in nonfiction, anyway, unless it s satire, readers generally prefer understatement to overkill. To establish a climate that encourages readers to sympathize emotionally, you as a writer can present telling facts and allow the readers to interpret them, rather than continually nudging the audience with verbal reminders to see the subject your way. If you are appealing to your readers emotions through irony, the tone of your words, their music, is likely to be at variance with their overt message and to intentionally undermine it. Thus the narrator of Swift s A Modest Proposal ( ) can, with an impassive face, advocate that

3 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics year-old children of the poor Irish peasants be sold for a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled ; and, in an additional inhumane observation, I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. The connotations, overtones of the language, are equally significant in emotional appeals, as they subtly (or not so subtly) reinforce the overt, literal meanings of the words. Lincoln, shown (in the photograph on page 495) arriving at Gettysburg in 1863 to deliver the speech that would rank among the most memorable in American history, deliberately uses biblical language ( Fourscore instead of eighty ), biblical phrasing, biblical cadences to reinforce the solemnity of the occasion dedication of the graveyard at Gettysburg. This language also underscores the seriousness of the Civil War, then in progress, and its profound consequences. In contrast to the majesty of Lincoln s language, Swift s narrator depersonalizes human beings, always calling the children it, with an impersonal connotation, and never employing the humanizing terms of he, she, or baby. The it emphasizes the animalistic connotations of the narrator s references to a newborn as a child just dropped from its dam, further dehumanizing both mother and child. Language, tone, and message often combine to present an ethical appeal a way of impressing your readers that you as the author (and perhaps as a character in your own essay) are a knowledgeable person of good moral character, good will, and good sense. Consequently, you are a person of integrity, and to be believed as a credible, reasonable advocate of the position you take in your essay. Thus G. Anthony Gorry, in Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft? (512 15) and Peter Singer, in The Singer Solution to World Poverty (505 10) employ straightforward language, logic, and clear-cut examples to open their readers eyes to ethical issues that many people who consider themselves ethical either ignore or disregard. In a matter-of-fact way, Gorry, a business professor, identifies the student perspective: Students who saw theft when a student took a high-priced textbook from a bookstore did not see stealing in the unauthorized copying of music though the music industry regards such copying as theft. Singer, an ethicist who is considered controversial because of the logical extent (some would say extremes) his principles lead to, identifies a simple principle for supporting the world s poor: Whatever money you re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away. Although ethical appeals usually tap our most profound moral values, they can be made in humorous ways, often by satire, as implied even in the titles of Sherman Alexie s What Sacagawea Means to Me (93 95) and Martín Espada s The Community College Revises its Curriculum in Response to Changing Demographics (493). Alexie and Espada are using language common in academic writing (one type of establishment ) to criticize the establishment s treatment of minorities (Native Americans for

4 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 491 Appealing to Emotion and Ethics 491 Alexie, Hispanics for Espada). Social satire as we can see from these writings as well as from Swift s Modest Proposal always implies the need for reform. Self-satire, however, as Jason Verge presents his Montreal Canadien fanhood in The Habs (119 23) and Charles M. Young does in Losing: An American Tradition (517 25), may just be poking fun at one s human fallibilities, though Young s ultimate point about our culture that emphasizes winning at all costs makes losers of us all. Young identifies himself early in the essay: I may not be the worst college football player of all time.... I may be only the worst college football player of Thus he establishes his firsthand understanding of the subject and his orientation to it profound sympathy for the underdogs, thereby including most of his readers. Losing thus becomes an ethical analysis of the phenomenon of losing in sports (and by extrapolation, in the rest of life), the corruption of the language employed in calling people losers, and other negative consequences of losing. Losers (nearly everyone who plays any sport) suffer from the stigmatizing effects of shame, as depicted in the photograph (520) of two college football players, hunched over on the bench, faces hidden in their hands, suffering the effects of a loss. Winners lose as well, because The kids who win are being taught that they are good only to the extent that they continue to beat other people. The sense of community is destroyed: We re all losers in the race to win. Young is not opposed to playing sports per se, but to the emphasis on winning. Because they usually make their point indirectly, fables, parables, and other stories with subtle moral points are often used to appeal to readers emotions and ethical sense. The photographs of winsome (never repulsive, never ugly!) waifs often grace fundraising advertisements for famine relief, amplified by biographies of their pitiful lives; only our contributions can save them. One of the dangers in using such poster-child appeals is the possibility that you ll include too many emotional signals or ultraheavy emotional language and thereby write a paper that repels your readers by either excessive sentimentality or overkill. Works by student writers in this book, such as Amanda Cagle s On the Banks of the Bogue Chitto (191 95) and Megan McGuire s Wake Up Call (225 31), deal directly with the impact of very difficult issues (poverty, instability, divorce, disability, suicide) on their families, particularly as they affected the authors as children growing up resilient, resourceful, creative. Their language and examples, precise but unsentimental, are more appealing to readers and ultimately more moving than any alas, poor me approach would be. Appeals to emotion and ethics are often intertwined. Such appeals are everywhere for example, in the connotations of descriptions and definitions. Furthermore, if your readers like and trust you, they re more likely to believe what you say and to be moved to agree with your point of view. The evidence in a scientific report, however strong in itself, is buttressed by the credibility of the researcher. The sense of realism, the truth of a narrative, is enhanced by the credibility of the narrator. We believe Lincoln

5 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics and Nocton, and we trust the spirit of satirist Swift, even if we believe he is exaggerating, if not downright inventing, the substance of his narrative. Hearts compel agreement where minds hesitate. Don t hesitate to make ethical use of this understanding. STRATEGIES FOR WRITING APPEALING TO EMOTION AND ETHICS 1. Do I want to appeal primarily to my readers emotions (and which emotions) or to their ethical sense of how people ought to behave? (Remember that in either case the appeals are intertwined with reason see the chapter Appealing to Reason: Deductive and Inductive Arguments. ) 2. To what kinds of readers am I making these appeals? What ethical or other personal qualities should I as an author exhibit? How can I lead my readers to believe that I am a person of sound character and good judgment? 3. What evidence can I choose to reinforce my appeals and my authorial image? Examples from my own life? The experiences of others? References to literature or scientific research? What order of arrangement would be most convincing? From the least emotionally moving or involving to the most? Or vice versa? 4. How can I interpret my evidence to move my readers to accept it? Should I explain very elaborately, or should I let the examples speak for themselves? If you decide on the latter, try out your essay on someone unfamiliar with the examples to see if they are in fact self-evident. 5. Do I want my audience to react with sympathy? Pity? Anger? Fear? Horror? To accomplish this, should I use much emotional language? Should my appeal be overt, direct? Or would indirection, understatement, be more effective? Would irony saying the opposite of what I really mean (as Swift does) be more appropriate than a direct approach? Could I make my point more effectively with a fable, parable, comic tale, or invented persona than with a straightforward analysis and overt commentary?

6 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 493 Martín Espada, The Community College Revises its Curriculum 493 MARTÍN ESPADA Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York, in Although he has worked at a variety of jobs, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer, Espada published his first book of poetry, The Immigrant Iceboy s Bolero, when he was twenty-five years old. He is currently an English professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, teaching creative writing, Latino poetry, and the work of Pablo Neruda. His poetry has won numerous awards. Rebellion Is in the Circle of a Lover s Hands (1990) received the PEN/Revson Fellowship. Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996) won the American Book Award. His most recent book is Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, (2003). His work is characterized by its strong sympathy for the immigrant and working-class experience. Whether it be Puerto Ricans and Chicanos adjusting to life in the United States or Central and South American Latinos struggling against their own repressive governments to achieve social justice, Espada has put their otherness, their powerlessness, poverty, and enmity into poetry distinguished by powerful imagery and a strong voice. Espada speaks for those who cannot, as in the ironically titled poem that follows. The Community College Revises Its Curriculum in Response to Changing Demographics SPA 100 Conversational Spanish 2 credits The course is especially concerned with giving police the ability to express themselves tersely in matters of interest to them

7 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics ABRAHAM LINCOLN Lincoln ( ) was a self-made, self-taught son of Kentucky pioneers. He served four terms in the Illinois state legislature before being elected to Congress in As sixteenth president of the United States ( ), Lincoln s supreme efforts were devoted to trying to secure the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to outlaw slavery and to preserve the still young United States of America from the forces expressed through and beyond the bloody Civil War that threatened to destroy its young men, its economy, and the very government itself The Gettysburg Address Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that the nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate we cannot consecrate we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Content 1. What principles of the founding of the United States does Lincoln emphasize in the first sentence? Why are these so important to the occasion of his address? To the theme of this address? 2. What does Lincoln imply and assert is the relation of life and death? Birth and rebirth?

8 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 495 Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address 495 This classic photograph of President Abraham Lincoln arriving at Gettysburg, a significant event in American history, requires the viewer to know and understand both the event at hand and its historical context. Drawing on your understanding of the events that goes well beyond this photograph, interpret its emotional as well as its historical impact. Strategies/Structures/Language 3. Why would Lincoln, knowing that his audience expected longer orations, deliberately have decided to make his speech so short? Lincoln s speech commemorated a solemn occasion: the dedication of a major battlefield of the ongoing Civil War. Wouldn t such a short speech have undermined the significance of the event? 4. Identify the language and metaphors of birth that Lincoln uses throughout this address. For what purpose? With what effect? 5. Why did Lincoln use biblical language and phrasing conspicuously at the beginning and end of the address, such as four score and seven years ago instead of the more common eighty-seven? 6. Lincoln uses many antitheses oppositions, contrasts. Identify some and show how they reinforce the meaning. 7. Another important rhetorical device is the tricolon, the division of an idea into three harmonious parts, usually of increasing power, for example, government of the people, by the people, for the people.... Find others and show why they are so memorable. For Writing 8. Write a short, dignified speech for a solemn occasion, real or imaginary. Let the majesty of your language and the conspicuous rhetorical patterns of your

9 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics sentences and paragraphs (through such devices as antithesis and parallelism) reinforce your point. 9. Rewrite the Gettysburg Address as it might have been spoken by a more recent president or other politician, using language, paragraphing, and sentence structures characteristic of the speaker and the times. One such speech, a parody, is William Safire s Carter s Gettysburg Address, which begins: Exactly two hundred and one years, five months and one day ago, our forefathers and our foremothers, too, as my wife, the First Lady, reminds me our highly competent Founding Persons brought forth on this land mass a new nation, or entity, dreamed up in liberty and dedicated to the comprehensive program of insuring that all of us are created with the same basic human rights. For comprehension, writing, and research activities and resources, please visit the companion website at <college.hmco.com/english>. JONATHAN SWIFT Swift, author of Gulliver s Travels (1726) and other satiric essays, poems, and tracts, was well acquainted with irony. Born in Dublin in 1667, the son of impoverished English Anglicans, he obtained a degree from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1685 only by special grace. When James II arrived in Ireland in 1688, he initiated pro-catholic, anti-protestant policies that remained in force until the ascendancy of William III. Swift, along with many Anglo- Irish, was forced to flee to England, was eventually ordained as an Anglican priest, and rose prominently in London literary and political circles until Although he had hoped for a church appointment in England, his desertion of the Whig Party for the Tories was ironically rewarded with an appointment as dean of St. Patrick s (Anglican) Cathedral in Dublin, which he regarded as virtual exile. Nevertheless, despite his religious differences with the Irish people, Swift became a beloved leader in the Irish resistance to English oppression, motivated less by partisan emotions than by his own savage indignation against injustice. He died in Swift wrote A Modest Proposal in the summer of 1729, after three years of drought and crop failure had forced over 35,000 peasants to leave their homes and wander the countryside looking for work, food, and shelter for their starving families, ignored by the insensitive absentee landowners. The Proposal carries the English landowners treatment of the Irish to its logical but repugnant extreme: if they are going to devour any hope the Irish have of living decently, why don t they literally eat the Irish children? The persona Swift creates is logical, consistent, seemingly rational and utterly inhumane, an advocate of infanticide and cannibalism. Yet nowhere in the Proposal does the satirist condemn the speaker; he relies on the readers sense of morality for that. This tactic can be dangerous, for a reader who misses the irony may take the Proposal at face value. But Swift s intended readers, English (landlords included) as well as Irish who

10 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 497 Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal 497 could act to alleviate the people s suffering, understood very well what he meant. The victims themselves, largely illiterate, would probably have been unaware of this forceful plea on their behalf. A Modest Proposal It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes. I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation. But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets. As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropped from its dam may be supported by her milk for a solar year, with little other nourishment; at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner as instead of being a charge upon their parents or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall on the contrary contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing, of many thousands. There is likewise another great advantage in my scheme, that it will prevent those voluntary abortions, and that horrid practice of women murdering their bastard children, alas! too frequent among us! sacrificing the poor innocent babes I doubt more to avoid the expense than the shame, which would move tears and pity in the most savage and inhuman breast

11 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couple who are able to maintain their own children (although I apprehend there cannot be so many, under the present distress of the kingdom); but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand for those women who miscarry, or whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, how this number shall be reared and provided for? which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land; they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing, till they arrive at six years old, except where they are of towardly parts; although I confess they learn the rudiments much earlier; during which time they can, however, be properly looked upon only as probationers; as I have been informed by a principal gentleman in the country of Cavan, who protested to me that he never knew above one or two instances under the age of six, even in a part of the kingdom so renowned for the quickest proficiency in that art. I am assured by our merchants, that a boy or a girl before twelve years old is no saleable commodity; and even when they come to this age they will not yield above three pounds, or three pounds and a half a crown at most on the Exchange; which cannot turn to account either to the parents or kingdom, the charge of nutriment and rags having been at least four times that value. I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection. I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old the most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or broiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout. I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages; therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned

12 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 499 Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal 499 with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty-eight pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children. Infant s flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after: for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us. I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he has only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among the tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen. As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting: although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife as we do roasting pigs. A very worthy person, a true lover of his country, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement upon my scheme. He said that many gentlemen of this kingdom, having of late destroyed their deer, he conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding fourteen years of age nor under twelve; so great a number of both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of work and service; and these to be disposed of by their parents, if alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due deference to so excellent a friend and so deserving a patriot, I cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience that their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our schoolboys by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable; and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the females, it would,

13 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics I think, with humble submission be a loss to the public, because they soon would become breeders themselves: and besides, it is not improbable that some scrupulous people might be apt to censure such a practice (although indeed very unjustly), as a little bordering upon cruelty; which, I confess, has always been with me the strongest objection against any project, how well soever intended. But in order to justify my friend, he confessed that this expedient was put into his head by the famous Psalmanazar, a native of the island Formosa, who came from thence to London about twenty years ago: and in conversation told my friend, that in his country when any young person happened to be put to death, the executioner sold the carcass to persons of quality as a prime dainty; and that in his time the body of a plump girl of fifteen, who was crucified for an attempt to poison the emperor, was sold to his imperial majesty s prime minister of state, and other great mandarins of the court, in joints from the gibbet, at four hundred crowns. Neither indeed can I deny, that if the same use were made of several plump young girls in this town, who without one single groat to their fortunes cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at the playhouse and assemblies in foreign fineries which they never will pay for, the kingdom would not be the worse. Some persons of a desponding spirit are in great concern about that vast number of poor people, who are aged, diseased, or maimed, and I have been desired to employ my thoughts what course may be taken to ease the nation of so grievous an encumbrance. But I am not in the least pain upon that matter, because it is very well known that they are every day dying and rotting by cold and famine, and filth and vermin, as fast as can be reasonably expected. And as to the young laborers, they are now in as hopeful a condition: they cannot get work, and consequently pine away for want of nourishment, to a degree that if at any time they are accidentally hired to common labor, they have not strength to perform it; and thus the country and themselves are happily delivered from the evils to come. I have too long digressed, and therefore shall return to my subject. I think the advantages by the proposal which I have made are obvious and many, as well as of the highest importance. For first, as I have already observed, it would greatly lessen the number of papists, with whom we are yearly overrun, being the principal breeders of the nation as well as our most dangerous enemies; and who stay at home on purpose to deliver the kingdom to the Pretender, hoping to take their advantage by the absence of so many good Protestants, who have chosen rather to leave their country than stay at home and pay tithes against their conscience to an Episcopal curate. Secondly, The poor tenants will have something valuable of their own, which by law may be made liable to distress and help to pay their landlord s rent, their corn and cattle being already seized, and money a thing unknown.

14 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 501 Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal 501 Thirdly, Whereas the maintenance of a hundred thousand children from two years old and upward, cannot be computed at less than ten shillings a piece per annum, the nation s stock will be thereby increased fifty thousand pounds per annum, beside the profit of a new dish introduced to the tables of all gentlemen of fortune in the kingdom who have any refinement in taste. And the money will circulate among ourselves, the goods being entirely of our own growth and manufacture. Fourthly, The constant breeders beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year. Fifthly, This food would likewise bring great custom to taverns, where the vintners will certainly be so prudent as to procure the best receipts for dressing it to perfection, and consequently have their houses frequented by all the fine gentlemen, who justly value themselves upon their knowledge in good eating; and a skillful cook who understands how to oblige his guests, will contrive to make it as expensive as they please. Sixthly, This would be a great inducement to marriage, which all wise nations have either encouraged by rewards or enforced by laws and penalties. It would increase the care and tenderness of mothers toward their children, when they were sure of a settlement for life to the poor babes, provided in some sort by the public, to their annual profit instead of expense. We should see an honest emulation among the married women, which of them would bring the fattest child to the market. Men would become as fond of their wives during the time of their pregnancy as they are now of their mares in foal, their cows in calf, their sows when they are ready to farrow; nor offer to beat or kick them (as is too frequent a practice) for fear of a miscarriage. Many other advantages might be enumerated. For instance, the addition of some thousand carcasses in our exportation of barreled beef, the propagation of swine s flesh, and improvement in the art of making good bacon, so much wanted among us by the great destruction of pigs, too frequent at our table; which are no way comparable in taste or magnificence to a well-grown, fat, yearling child, which roasted whole will make a considerable figure at a lord mayor s feast or any other public entertainment. But this and many others I omit, being studious of brevity. Supposing that one thousand families in this city would be constant customers for infants flesh, besides others who might have it at merrymeetings, particularly at weddings and christenings, I compute that Dublin would take off annually about twenty thousand carcasses; and the rest of the kingdom (where probably they will be sold somewhat cheaper) the remaining eighty thousand. I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal, unless it should be urged that the number of people will be thereby much lessened in the kingdom. This I freely own, and it was indeed one principal design in offering it to the world. I desire the reader

15 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics will observe, that I calculate my remedy for this one individual kingdom of Ireland and for no other that ever was, is, or I think ever can be upon earth. Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients; of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound: of using neither clothes nor household furniture except what is of our own growth and manufacture: of utterly rejecting the materials and instruments that promote foreign luxury: of curing the expensiveness of pride, vanity, idleness, and gaming in our women: of introducing a vein of parsimony, prudence, and temperance: of learning to love our country, in the want of which we differ even from Laplanders and the inhabitants of Topinamboo: of quitting our animosities and factions, nor acting any longer like the Jews, who were murdering one another at the very moment their city was taken: of being a little cautious not to sell our country and conscience for nothing: of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy toward their tenants; lastly, of putting a spirit of honesty, industry, and skill into our shopkeepers; who, if a resolution could now be taken to buy only our native goods, would immediately unite to cheat and exact upon us in the price, the measure, and the goodness, nor could ever yet be brought to make one fair proposal of just dealing, though often and earnestly invited to it. Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like expedients, till he has at least some glimpse of hope that there will be ever some hearty and sincere attempts to put them in practice. But as to myself, having been wearied out for many years with offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal; which, as it is wholly new, so it has something solid and real, of no expense and little trouble, full in our own power, and whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it. After all, I am not so violently bent upon my own opinion as to reject any offer proposed by wise men, which shall be found equally innocent, cheap, easy, and effectual. But before something of that kind shall be advanced in contradiction to my scheme, and offering a better, I desire the author or authors will be pleased maturely to consider two points. First, as things now stand, how they will be able to find food and raiment for a hundred thousand useless mouths and backs. And secondly, there being a round million of creatures in human figure throughout this kingdom, whose subsistence put into a common stock would leave them in debt two millions of pounds sterling, adding those who are beggars by profession to the bulk of farmers, cottagers, and laborers, with the wives and children who are beggars in effect; I desire those politicians who dislike my overture, and may perhaps be so bold as to attempt an answer, that they will first ask the parents of these mortals,

16 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 503 Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal 503 whether they would not at this day think it a great happiness to have been sold for food at a year old in the manner I prescribe, and thereby have avoided such a perpetual scene of misfortunes as they have since gone through by the oppression of landlords, the impossibility of paying rent without money or trade, the want of common sustenance, with neither house nor clothes to cover them from the inclemencies of the weather, and the most inevitable prospect of entailing the like or greater miseries upon their breed for ever. I profess, in the sincerity of my heart, that I have not the least personal interest in endeavoring to promote this necessary work, having no other motive than the public good of my country, by advancing our trade, providing for infants, relieving the poor, and giving some pleasure to the rich. I have no children by which I can propose to get a single penny; the youngest being nine years old, and my wife past child-bearing. 33 Content 1. What is the overt thesis of Swift s essay? What is its implied (and real) thesis? In what ways do these theses differ? 2. What are the primary aims and values of the narrator of the essay? Identify the economic advantages of his proposal that he offers in paragraphs How do the narrator s alleged aims and values differ from the aims and values of Swift as the essay s author? 3. What do the advantages that the narrator offers for his proposal ( s 21 26) reveal about the social and economic conditions of Ireland when Swift was writing? 4. Why is it a very knowing American who has assured the narrator of the suitability of year-old infants for food ( 9)? 5. Swift as the author of the essay expects his readers to respond to the narrator s cold economic arguments on a humane, moral level. What might such an appropriate response be? Strategies/Structures/Language 6. What persona (a created character) does the speaker of Swift s essay have? How are readers to know that this character is not Swift himself? 7. Why does the narrator use so many mathematical computations throughout? How do they reinforce his economic argument? How do they enhance the image of his cold-bloodedness? 8. Why did Swift choose to present his argument indirectly rather than overtly? What advantages does this indirect, consistently ironic technique provide? What disadvantages does it have (for instance, do you think Swift s readers are likely to believe he really advocated eating babies)? 9. What is the prevailing tone of the essay? How does it undermine what the narrator says? How does the tone reinforce Swift s implied meaning? 10. Why does Swift say a child just dropped from its dam ( 4) instead of just born from his mother? What other language reinforces the animalistic associations (see, for instance, breeders in 17)?

17 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics For Writing 11. Either individually or as part of a team, write a modest proposal of your own. Pick some problem that you think needs to be solved, and propose, for a critical audience, a radical solution perhaps a dramatic way to bring about world peace, preserve endangered species, dispose of chemical or nuclear waste, or use genetic engineering. 12. Write an essay in which a created character, a narrative persona, speaks ironically (as Swift s narrator does) about your subject. The character s values should be at variance with the values you and your audience share. For instance, if you want to propose stiff penalties for drunk driving, your narrator could be a firm advocate of drinking, and of driving without restraint, and could be shown driving unsafely while under the influence of alcohol, indifferent to the dangers. For comprehension, writing, and research activities and resources, please visit the companion website at <college.hmco.com/english>. PETER SINGER Designated in 2005 by Time magazine as one of the world s most influential people, philosopher Peter Singer is known for challenging conventional notions of ethical correctness. Born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1946 to a family decimated by the Nazi holocaust, Singer was educated at the University of Melbourne (BA, 1967; MA, 1969) and Oxford University (B Phil, 1971). After teaching at Oxford and New York University, he served as Chair of the Philosophy Department at Monash University in Australia and led the Centre for Human Bioethics there ( ). Currently, he is a professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer first gained attention as a protector of animal rights with Animal Liberation (1975), in which he criticized speciesism the valuing of human rights above those of other species. He continued to explore the ethics of human animal relations with In Defense of Animals (1985), Animal Factories (1990), and The Great Ape Project (1994). In Making Babies (1985), Should the Baby Live? (1985), and Rethinking Life and Death (1995), he addressed problems of science, technology, conception, and human life. Singer s views on end-of-life issues are consistent with his utilitarian approach to wealth advocated in The Singer Solution to World Poverty that what is the greatest good for the greatest number should prevail. Their application, to animals, infants, and the elderly has aroused considerable controversy. More recent books include One World (2002), about globalization, and President Of Good & Evil (2004), about George Bush s ethical stance. The Singer Solution to World Poverty is a wake-up call for ethical responsibility a reminder that serious questions of right and wrong behavior lie just beyond the horizon of middle-class awareness. Singer starkly presents the death and degradation that come with child poverty, creates

18 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 505 Peter Singer, The Singer Solution to World Poverty 505 the Bugatti senario to test the reader s ethical commitments (to saving an expensive car or a child s life), and even provides an 800 number for immediate action. The Singer Solution to World Poverty In the Brazilian film Central Station, Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket a thousand dollars. All she has to do is persuade a homeless nine-year-old-boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set, and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation. Perhaps Dora knew this all along, but after her neighbor s plain speaking, she spends a troubled night. In the morning Dora resolves to take the boy back. Suppose Dora had told her neighbor that it is a tough world, other people have nice new TVs too, and if selling the kid is the only way she can get one, well, he was only a street kid. She would then have become, in the eyes of the audience, a monster. She redeems herself only by being prepared to bear considerable risks to save the boy. At the end of the movie, in cinemas in the affluent nations of the world, people who would have been quick to condemn Dora if she had not rescued the boy go home to places far more comfortable than her apartment. In fact, the average family in the United States spends almost one third of its income on things that are no more necessary to them than Dora s new TV was to her. Going out to nice restaurants, buying new clothes because the old ones are no longer stylish, vacationing at beach resorts so much of our income is spent on things not essential to the preservation of our lives and health. Donated to one of a number of charitable agencies, that money could mean the difference between life and death for children in need. All of which raises a question: in the end, what is the ethical distinction between a Brazilian who sells a homeless child to organ peddlers and an American who already has a TV and upgrades to a better one, knowing that the money could be donated to an organization that would use it to save the lives of kids in need? Of course, there are several differences between the two situations that could support different moral judgments about them. For one thing, to be able to consign a child to death when he is standing right in front of you takes a chilling kind of heartlessness; it is much easier to ignore an appeal for money to help children you will never meet. Yet for a utilitarian philosopher like myself that is, one who judges whether acts are right or wrong

19 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics How typical is this scene in an electronics store? May we assume that this is taking place in America? At any particular time of year? Interpret as many aspects of this scene as you can: the numbers, age range, and income level of the shoppers, what they re buying, how you think they ll pay for their purchases, what lifestyle and/or occupations their purchases represent. Then use your interpretation to comment on The Singer Solution to World Poverty. Is there any material item you use regularly that you d be willing to forgo in order to alleviate another s poverty? Is there a category of expensive items say, diamond jewelry, luxury yachts that is disposable in the interest of implementing Singer s solution? by their consequences if the upshot of the American s failure to donate the money is that one more kid dies on the streets of a Brazilian city, then it is in some sense just as bad as selling the kid to the organ peddlers. But one doesn t need to embrace my utilitarian ethic to see that at the very least, there is a troubling incongruity in being so quick to condemn Dora for taking the child to the organ peddlers while at the same time not regarding the American consumer s behavior as raising a serious moral issue. 6 7 In his 1996 book, Living High and Letting Die, the New York University philosopher Peter Unger presented an ingenious series of imaginary examples designed to probe our intuitions about whether it is wrong to live well without giving substantial amounts of money to help people who are hungry, malnourished, or dying from easily treatable illnesses like diarrhea. Here s my paraphrase of one of these examples: Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to

20 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 507 Peter Singer, The Singer Solution to World Poverty 507 insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can t stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents. Bob s conduct, most of us will immediately respond, was gravely wrong. Unger agrees. But then he reminds us that we too have opportunities to save the lives of children. We can give to organizations like UNICEF or Oxfam America. How much would we have to give one of these organizations to have a high probability of saving the life of a child threatened by easily preventable diseases? (I do not believe that children are more worth saving than adults, but since no one can argue that children have brought their poverty on themselves, focusing on them simplifies the issues.) Unger called up some experts and used the information they provided to offer some plausible estimates that include the cost of raising money, administrative expenses, and the cost of delivering aid where it is most needed. By his calculation, $200 in donations would help a sickly two-year-old transform into a healthy six-year-old offering safe passage through childhood s most dangerous years. To show how practical philosophical argument can be, Unger even tells his readers that they can easily donate funds by using their credit card and calling one of these toll-free numbers: (800) for UNICEF; (800) for Oxfam America. Now you too have the information you need to save a child s life. How should you judge yourself if you don t do it? Think again about Bob and his Bugatti. Unlike Dora, Bob did not have to look into the eyes of the child he was sacrificing for his own material comfort. The child was a complete stranger to him and too far away to relate to in an intimate, personal way. Unlike Dora too, he did not mislead the child or initiate the chain of events imperiling him. In all these respects, Bob s situation resembles that of people able but unwilling to donate to overseas aid and differs from Dora s situation. If you still think that it was very wrong of Bob not to throw the switch that would have diverted the train and saved the child s life, then it is hard to see how you could deny that it is also very wrong not to send money to one of the organizations listed above. Unless, that is, there is some morally important difference between the two situations that I have overlooked

21 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics Is it the practical uncertainties about whether aid will really reach the people who need it? Nobody who knows the world of overseas aid can doubt that such uncertainties exist. But Unger s figure of $200 to save a child s life was reached after he had made conservative assumptions about the proportion of the money donated that will actually reach its target. One genuine difference between Bob and those who can afford to donate to overseas aid organizations but don t is that only Bob can save the child on the tracks, whereas there are hundreds of millions of people who can give $200 to overseas aid organizations. The problem is that most of them aren t doing it. Does this mean that it is all right for you not to do it? Suppose that there were more owners of priceless vintage cars Carol, Dave, Emma, Fred, and so on, down to Ziggy all in exactly the same situation as Bob, with their own siding and their own switch, all sacrificing the child in order to preserve their own cherished car. Would that make it all right for Bob to do the same? To answer this question affirmatively is to endorse follow-the-crowd ethics the kind of ethics that led many Germans to look away when the Nazi atrocities were being committed. We do not excuse them because others were behaving no better. We seem to lack a sound basis for drawing a clear moral line between Bob s situation and that of any reader of this article with $200 to spare who does not donate it to an overseas aid agency. These readers seem to be acting at least as badly as Bob was acting when he chose to let the runaway train hurtle toward the unsuspecting child. In the light of this conclusion, I trust that many readers will reach for the phone and donate that $200. Perhaps you should do it before reading further. Now that you have distinguished yourself morally from people who put their vintage cars ahead of a child s life, how about treating yourself and your partner to dinner at your favorite restaurant? But wait. The money you will spend at the restaurant could also help save the lives of children overseas! True, you weren t planning to blow $200 tonight, but if you were to give up dining out just for one month, you would easily save that amount. And what is one month s dining out compared to a child s life? There s the rub. Since there are a lot of desperately needy children in the world, there will always be another child whose life you could save for another $200. Are you therefore obliged to keep giving until you have nothing left? At what point can you stop? Hypothetical examples can easily become farcical. Consider Bob. How far past losing the Bugatti should he go? Imagine that Bob had got his foot stuck in the track of the siding, and if he diverted the train, then before it rammed the car it would also amputate his big toe. Should he still throw the switch? What if it would amputate his foot? His entire leg? As absurd as the Bugatti scenario gets when pushed to extremes, the point it raises is a serious one: only when the sacrifices become very significant indeed would most people be prepared to say that Bob does nothing

22 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 509 Peter Singer, The Singer Solution to World Poverty 509 wrong when he decides not to throw the switch. Of course, most people could be wrong; we can t decide moral issues by taking opinion polls. But consider for yourself the level of sacrifice that you would demand of Bob, and then think about how much money you would have to give away in order to make a sacrifice that is roughly equal to that. It s almost certainly much, much more than $200. For most middle-class Americans, it could easily be more like $200,000. Isn t it counterproductive to ask people to do so much? Don t we run the risk that many will shrug their shoulders and say that morality, so conceived, is fine for saints but not for them? I accept that we are unlikely to see, in the near or even medium-term future, a world in which it is normal for wealthy Americans to give the bulk of their wealth to strangers. When it comes to praising or blaming people for what they do, we tend to use a standard that is relative to some conception of normal behavior. Comfortably off Americans who give, say, 10 percent of their income to overseas aid organizations are so far ahead of most of their equally comfortable fellow citizens that I wouldn t go out of my way to chastise them for not doing more. Nevertheless, they should be doing much more, and they are in no position to criticize Bob for failing to make the much greater sacrifice of his Bugatti. At this point various objections may crop up. Someone may say, If every citizen living in the affluent nations contributed his or her share, I wouldn t have to make such a drastic sacrifice, because long before such levels were reached the resources would have been there to save the lives of all those children dying from lack of food or medical care. So why should I give more than my fair share? Another, related objection is that the government ought to increase its overseas aid allocations, since that would spread the burden more equitably across all taxpayers. Yet the question of how much we ought to give is a matter to be decided in the real world and that, sadly, is a world in which we know that most people do not, and in the immediate future will not, give substantial amounts to overseas aid agencies. We know too that at least in the next year, the United States government is not going to meet even the very modest United Nations recommended target of 0.7 percent of gross national product; at the moment it lags far below that, at 0.09 percent, not even half of Japan s 0.22 percent or a tenth of Denmark s 0.97 percent. Thus, we know that the money we can give beyond that theoretical fair share is still going to save lives that would otherwise be lost. While the idea that no one need do more than his or her fair share is a powerful one, should it prevail if we know that others are not doing their fair share and that children will die preventable deaths unless we do more than our fair share? That would be taking fairness too far. Thus, this ground for limiting how much we ought to give also fails. In the world as it is now, I can see no escape from the conclusion that each

23 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics one of us with wealth surplus to his or her essential needs should be giving most of it to help people suffering from poverty so dire as to be lifethreatening. That s right: I m saying that you shouldn t buy that new car, take that cruise, redecorate the house, or get that pricy new suit. After all, a thousand-dollar suit could save five children s lives. So how does my philosophy break down in dollars and cents? An American household with an income of $50,000 spends around $30,000 annually on necessities, according to the Conference Board, a nonprofit economic research organization. Therefore, for a household bringing in $50,000 a year, donations to help the world s poor should be as close as possible to $20,000. The $30,000 required for necessities holds for higher incomes as well. So a household making $100,000 could cut a yearly check for $70,000. Again, the formula is simple: whatever money you re spending on luxuries, not necessities, should be given away. Now, evolutionary psychologists tell us that human nature just isn t sufficiently altruistic to make it plausible that many people will sacrifice so much for strangers. On the facts of human nature, they might be right, but they would be wrong to draw a moral conclusion from those facts. If it is the case that we ought to do things that, predictably, most of us won t do, then let s face that fact head-on. Then, if we value the life of a child more than going to fancy restaurants, the next time we dine out we will know that we could have done something better with our money. If that makes living a morally decent life extremely arduous, well, then that is the way things are. If we don t do it, then we should at least know that we are failing to live a morally decent life not because it is good to wallow in guilt but because knowing where we should be going is the first step toward heading in that direction. When Bob first grasped the dilemma that faced him as he stood by that railway switch, he must have thought how extraordinarily unlucky he was to be placed in a situation in which he must choose between the life of an innocent child and the sacrifice of most of his savings. But he was not unlucky at all. We are all in that situation. Content 1. What was your reaction to the Bugatti scenario, which Singer describes as a hypothetical example designed to test the reader s ethics? Do you agree that Bob s conduct was gravely wrong ( 8)? What about the incremental version of the scenario how much is the child s life worth? A toe, a foot, a leg? ( 16). 2. Singer describes his philosophical stance as utilitarian; he judges whether acts are right or wrong by their consequences ( 5). How does the utilitarian point of view inform The Singer Solution? What actions and what consequences is the article concerned with? Where does Singer stress consequences as a criterion for decision making?

24 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 511 G. Anthony Gorry, Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft? 511 Strategies/Structures/Language 3. Emotion can lead to motion: Authors can move readers to action by arousing intense feelings and then providing an outlet for them. Singer appeals to emotion with the Central Station example and the idea of children starving to death. However, he expects the reader to rationally test their ethics in the Bugatti scenario and the call for overseas aid donations. Did your emotional reactions to the portrayals of poverty help you make up your mind, or did they get in the way of your ethical deliberations? 4. Consider to what extent Singer uses visual images in his argument. What are some scenes or pictures that remained in your mind after you read the article? Why does Singer rely on imagery? Do you think his use of imagery is effective? For Writing 5. Do you think that Singer presents a highly effective solution to world poverty? Should his ideas perhaps replace current methods of poverty relief? Write an argument explaining why you agree with Singer s program, or explain how you disapprove of the Singer Solution and why. 6. To what extent do you sympathize with the utilitarian philosophy on which Singer bases his argument? (see question 1). Can you give an example of an ethical problem, aside from world poverty, that can be addressed using the utilitarian perspective? Is there any ethical situation to which you feel that a utilitarian point of view does not apply? 7. With a classmate, develop an ethical test to help readers confront an issue that you feel is important. Using Singer s methods, construct a hypothetical example that offers the readers choices and helps them come to a decision about a difficult moral problem. Test it out on several classmates, and write a paper reporting and interpreting your findings. What values do these allocations represent? Do you share these? Why or why not? For comprehension, writing, and research activities and resources, please visit the companion website at <college.hmco.com/english>. G. ANTHONY GORRY G. Anthony Gorry is a leading expert on the impact of information technology on organizations, society, and living systems. A graduate of Yale (BA, 1962), he earned advanced degrees at the University of California at Berkeley (MS, 1963) and MIT (PhD, 1967). Currently a professor of business management at Rice University, Gorry also directs Rice s Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning and the Center for Computational Biology. He has been elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National

25 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics Academy of Sciences (1991). Gorry has researched how artificial intelligence can be applied to the practice of medicine and how decision support systems can be developed to assist managers. His publications include articles on computer applications in organizations and in classroom settings. Gorry explains that he is interested in the ways in which information technology is changing the ways in which we know about the world and about each other. Steal This MP3 File, published in Chronicle of Higher Education (2003), claims that advances in computer technology have changed people s ethical perception of theft. Specifically, is it wrong to copy and share music files? Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft? Sometimes when my students don t see life the way I do, I recall the complaint from Bye Bye Birdie, What s the matter with kids today? Then I remember that the kids in my class are children of the information age. In large part, technology has made them what they are, shaping their world and what they know. For my students, the advance of technology is expected, but for me, it remains both remarkable and somewhat unsettling. In one course I teach, the students and I explore the effects of information technology on society. Our different perspectives on technology lead to engaging and challenging discussions that reveal some of the ways in which technology is shaping the attitudes of young people. An example is our discussion of intellectual property in the information age, of crucial importance to the entertainment business. In recent years, many users of the Internet have launched an assault on the music business. Armed with tools for ripping music from compact discs and setting it free in cyberspace, they can disseminate online countless copies of a digitally encoded song. Music companies, along with some artists, have tried to stop this perceived pillaging of intellectual property by legal and technical means. The industry has had some success with legal actions against companies that provide the infrastructure for file sharing, but enthusiasm for sharing music is growing, and new file-sharing services continue to appear. The Recording Industry Association of America recently filed lawsuits against four college students, seeking huge damages for an emporium of music piracy run on campus networks. However, the industry settled those lawsuits less than a week after a federal judge in California ruled against the association in another case, affirming that two of the Internet s most popular music-swapping services are not responsible for copyright infringements by their users. (In the settlement, the students admitted no wrongdoing but agreed to pay amounts ranging from $12,000 to $17,500 in annual installments over several years and to shut down their file-sharing systems.)

26 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 513 G. Anthony Gorry, Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft? 513 With so many Internet users currently sharing music, legal maneuvers alone seem unlikely to protect the industry s way of doing business. Therefore, the music industry has turned to the technology itself, seeking to create media that cannot be copied or can be copied only in prescribed circumstances. Finding the right technology for such a defense, however, is not easy. Defensive technology must not prevent legitimate uses of the media by customers, yet it must somehow ward off attacks by those seeking to liberate the content to the Internet. And each announcement of a defensive technology spurs development of means to circumvent it. In apparent frustration, some companies have introduced defective copies of their music into the file-sharing environment of the Internet, hoping to discourage widespread downloading of music. But so far, the industry s multifaceted defense has failed. Sales of CDs continue to decline. And now video ripping and sharing is emerging on the Internet, threatening to upset another industry in the same way. Music companies might have more success if they focused on the users instead of the courts and technology. When they characterize file sharing as theft, they overlook the interplay of technology and behavior that has altered the very idea of theft, at least among young people. I got a clear demonstration of that change in a class discussion that began with the matter of a stolen book. During the 60s, I was a graduate student at a university where student activism had raised tensions on and around the campus. In the midst of debates, demonstrations, and protests, a football player was caught leaving the campus store with a book he had not bought. Because he was well known, his misadventure made the school newspaper. What seemed to be a simple case of theft, however, took on greater significance. A number of groups with little connection to athletics rose to his defense, claiming that he had been entrapped: The university required that he have the book, the publisher charged an unfairly high price, and the bookstore put the book right in front of him, tempting him to steal it. So who could blame him? Well, my students could. They thought it was clear that he had stolen the book. But an MP3 file played from my laptop evoked a different response. Had I stolen the song? Not really, because a student had given me the file as a gift. Well, was that file stolen property? Was it like the book stolen from the campus bookstore so many years ago? No again, because it was a copy, not the original, which presumably was with the student. But then what should we make of the typical admonition on compact-disc covers that unauthorized duplication is illegal? Surely the MP3 file was a duplication of the original. To what extent is copying stealing? The readings for the class amply demonstrated the complexity of the legal, technical, and economic issues surrounding intellectual property in the information age and gave the students much to talk about. Some students argued that existing regulations are simply inadequate at a time when all information wants to be free and when liberating technology

27 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics is at hand. Others pointed to differences in the economics of the music and book businesses. In the end, the students who saw theft in the removal of the book back in the 60s did not see stealing in the unauthorized copying of music. For me, that was the most memorable aspect of the class because it illustrates how technology affects what we take to be moral behavior. The technology of copying is closely related to the idea of theft. For example, my students would not take books from a store, but they do not consider photocopying a few pages of a book to be theft. They would not copy an entire book, however, perhaps because they vaguely acknowledge intellectual-property rights but probably more because copying would be cumbersome and time-consuming. They would buy the book instead. In that case, the very awkwardness of the copying aligns their actions with moral guidelines and legal standards. But in the case of digital music, where the material is disconnected from the physical moorings of conventional stores and copying is so easy, many of my students see matters differently. They freely copy and share music. And they copy and share software, even though such copying is often illegal. If their books were digital and thus could be copied with comparable ease, they most likely would copy and share them. Of course, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, along with other laws, prohibits such copying. So we could just say that theft is theft, and complain with song, Why can t they be like we were, perfect in every way?... Oh, what s the matter with kids today? But had we had the same digital technology when we were young, we probably would have engaged in the same copying and sharing of software, digital music, and video that are so common among students today. We should not confuse lack of tools with righteousness. The music industry would be foolish to put its faith in new protective schemes and devices alone. Protective technology cannot undo the changes that previous technology has caused. Should the industry aggressively pursue legal defenses like the suits against the four college students? Such highly publicized actions may be legally sound and may even slow music sharing in certain settings, but they cannot stop the transformation of the music business. The technology of sharing is too widespread, and my students (and their younger siblings) no longer agree with the music companies about right and wrong. Even some of the companies with big stakes in recorded music seem to have recognized that lawsuits and technical defenses won t work. Sony, for example, sells computers with ripping and burning capabilities, MP3 players, and other devices that gain much of their appeal from music sharing. And the AOL part of AOL Time Warner is promoting its new broadband service for faster downloads, which many people will use to share music sold by the Warner part of the company. The lesson from my classroom is that digital technology has unalterably changed the way a growing number of customers think about recorded music. If the music industry is to prosper, it must change, too perhaps

28 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 515 G. Anthony Gorry, Steal This MP3 File: What Is Theft? 515 offering repositories of digital music for downloading (like Apple s newly announced itunes Music Store), gaining revenue from the scope and quality of its holdings, and from a variety of new products and relationships, as yet largely undefined. Such a transformation will be excruciating for the industry, requiring the abandonment of previously profitable business practices with no certain prospect of success. So it is not surprising that the industry has responded aggressively, with strong legal actions, to the spread of file sharing. But by that response, the industry is risking its relationship with a vital segment of its market. Treating customers like thieves is a certain recipe for failure. Content 1. What evidence does Gorry provide to support his claim that technology affects what we take to be moral behavior ( 10)? 2. Copying MP3 files is illegal, yet many people do it. What arguments do people use to justify copying music files, according to Gorry? Have you or people you know used any of these? Are these arguments appropriate? If so, according to what criteria? If not, why not? 3. Gorry details several legal and technological measures that the music industry has adopted to prevent the illegal reproduction of music files. Why haven t these methods been successful? 4. Students have told Gorry that the music file on his laptop should not be considered stolen because it was a copy ( 9). This implies a clear ethical distinction between copying and stealing. However, if copying is okay, explain why copying a classmate s exam answer is an infraction of academic rules. 5. Gorry s title, Steal This MP3 File is a reference to 1960s radical Abbie Hoffman s book entitled Steal This Book. According to Gorry, many of his classmates in the 1960s didn t blame a student who took a book without paying for it ( 8). Gorry s students, however, consider it a crime. How do you account for the shift in ethical standards? Strategies/Structures/Language 6. Gorry uses specific examples, such as the anecdote about the student who stole a book ( 8) and students reactions to the pirated MP3 file on Gorry s laptop ( 9). Explain the role these examples play in supporting his argument. 7. To what audience is this article addressed? How can you tell? How might the wording and the ideas be different if it were written for Rolling Stone magazine or your campus newspaper? For Writing 8. Do you copy music files or accept them from friends? Discuss this issue with a classmate, and in collaboration, write an essay explaining why doing so should or should not be considered a crime. Specify the principles on which your argument is based, and illustrate the potential consequences.

29 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics 9. Are musical and visual artists and industry employees victimized when their products are illegally reproduced? Research the impact of copying from musical or visual sources on various individuals or groups, and write an argument persuading the reader that this should be either stopped, or allowed to continue, depending on your findings. 10. Write a paper about Gorry s claim that advancements in technology are changing the ways people view their ethical choices. Discuss a technological change that has impacted ethical decision making. For example, you might focus on whether the availability of contraceptives is changing attitudes about sexual conduct or whether the production of steroid drugs is changing sports. Support your claims with evidence and detailed arguments. For comprehension, writing, and research activities and resources, please visit the companion website at <college.hmco.com/english>. CHARLES M. YOUNG Young (born 1951), grew up in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and graduated from Macalester College in For two years, as the only guy on third string on the Macalester Scots, a football team with barely enough players for one string, Young says although he may not have been the worst college football player of all time, he may be only the worst player on the Macalester College Scots in But, he says, I do think I made a huge contribution to the atmosphere of despair and futility that led to the team s NCAA record losing streak of fifty straight losses. Cutting his own losses, he headed for Columbia University, where he earned an MS in 1975 and soon got a job as an editor at Rolling Stone magazine. At the time he commented, I try to write from a rock and roll sensibility, which at its best finds humor in the absurdity of life. A friend once accused me of liking punk rock because I never outgrew being fourteen. This is true, and there is nothing more absurd than being an adolescent in America. Losing, first published in Men s Journal, was selected for inclusion in Best American Sports Writing Young says he s grateful to win an award for losing. In this essay Young analyzes the concepts embedded in the language of losing to call someone a loser is probably the worst insult in the United States today, the shame associated with losing, and the hypocritical paradox of athletic contests that produce losers in abundance, yet stigmatize the losers, those who call them losers, and the winners as well. We re all losers in the race to win.

30 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 517 Charles M. Young, Losing: An American Tradition 517 Losing: An American Tradition Somebody s got to lose. Don t we all know the feeling? B.C. Just north of the north end zone of Blackshear Stadium at Prairie View A&M University in Texas is an unmarked grave. We buried last season, said Greg Johnson, the Prairie View Panthers coach, during a break in football practice. In March, just before the start of spring practice, we had them write down everything they didn t like about the past being 0 9 last season, the record losing streak. We used the example of Superman, this guy that nobody could stop unless you got him near some green kryptonite. We asked them, Well, what s your green kryptonite? What is it that keeps you from doing what you need to do in the classroom and on the football field? Is it a female? Is it your friends? Is it a drug? Is it alcohol? Lack of dedication? Not enough time in the weight room? You got a nagging injury that you didn t rehab? Whatever they wanted to bury, they wrote it down on a piece of paper. And the last thing we did, we looked at the HBO tape. The segment that Bryant Gumbel did on us for Real Sports, where they laughed at us and ridiculed us as the worst team in the country How does it feel to be 0 75 since 1989? or whatever it was at that point. I said, That s the last we ll ever see of that tape, and I put it in a big plastic trash bag with the paper. We took it to a hole I had dug near the gate, and we threw it in. All the players and all the coaches walked by. Some of them kicked dirt on it, some of them spit on it. Some of them probably thought I was crazy. I said, This is the last time we re going to talk about last year. This is the last time we re going to talk about the losing streak. The past is dead, and anything that s dead ought to be buried. It s history. It s gone. That took place in September 1998, when Prairie View s NCAArecord losing streak stood at Now skip ahead to the postgame interviews of the January 9, 1999, AFC playoff game, in which the Denver Broncos beat the Miami Dolphins Shannon Sharpe, the Broncos tight end, called Miami s Dan Marino a loser. Universally, this was viewed as a mortal insult, far beyond the bounds of acceptable trash talk. I cringed when I read that, said Mike Shanahan, the Broncos coach. I was really disappointed. Dan Marino s no loser. So Sharpe, much humbled (and probably at Shanahan s insistence), groveled after the next Denver practice: In no way, shape, or form is Dan Marino a loser. Dan, if I offended you or your family, your wife, your kids, your mother or father, your brothers or sisters, I apologize. I stand before you and sincerely apologize. I would never disrespect you as a person By Charles M. Young from Men s Journal, April Copyright 2000 Men s Journal. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.

31 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics Which is odd. Football, along with every other major sport, is constructed to create losers. On any given game day, half the teams win, and half the teams lose. By the end of the playoffs, exactly one team can be called a winner, while thirty other teams are, literally, losers. So given that 96.7 percent of the players in the NFL can t help but be losers, why should calling somebody a loser be considered such an egregious violation of propriety that the guy who won must debase himself in public for pointing out that the guy who lost, lost? Consider Patton, winner of the 1971 Academy Award for Best Picture and a favorite of coaches, team owners, and politicians ever since. It opens with George C. Scott standing in front of a screen-size American flag in the role of General George S. Patton, giving a pep talk to his troops. Using sports imagery to describe war (mirroring the sportswriters who use war imagery to describe sports), Patton delivers a succinct sociology lesson: Americans love a winner, and will not tolerate a loser. Americans play to win all the time. I wouldn t give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That s why Americans have never lost, and will never lose a war because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans. Which is a view of most Americans that s shared by most Americans. Certain women of my acquaintance refer to men who score low on the Multiphasic Boyfriend Potentiality Scale as losers. Cosmopolitan has run articles on how to identify and dump losers before they have a chance to inseminate the unwary. In Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise suffers his worst humiliation when he spots his former girlfriend dating a rival agent at a Monday Night Football game. She makes an L with her fingers and mouths, Loser. In American Beauty, Kevin Spacey announces during his midlife crisis: Both my wife and daughter think I m this gigantic loser. In Gods and Monsters, Lolita Davidovich, playing a bartender, dismisses the possibility of sex with her sometime lover, played by Brendan Fraser: From now on, you re just another loser on the other side of the bar. In 200 Cigarettes, set in the ostensibly alternative subculture of Manhattan s Lower East Side, Martha Plimpton works herself into a state of despair considering the idea that no one will come to her New Year s Eve party. Then, considering an even worse possibility, she weeps: All the losers will be here! At the real-life sentencing last February of Austin Offen for bashing a man over the head with a metal bar outside a Long Island night club, Assistant District Attorney Stephen O Brien said that Offen was vicious and brutal. He s a coward and a loser. Offen, displaying no shame over having crippled a man for life, screamed back: I am not a loser! In his book Turbo Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy, Edward Luttwak equates losing with poverty and observes that Americans believe that failure is the result not of misfortune or injustice, but of divine disfavor.

32 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page 519 Charles M. Young, Losing: An American Tradition 519 I could list a hundred more examples, but you get the point. Shannon Sharpe, in using the word loser, implied that Dan Marino was: unworthy of sex or love or friendship or progeny, socially clueless, stupid, parasitical, pathetic, poverty-stricken, cowardly, violent, felonious, bereft of all forms of status, beneath all consideration, hated by himself, hated by all good Americans, hated by God. And Dan Marino is one of the best quarterbacks ever to play football.... The literal truth is, I may not be the worst college football player of all time. I ve claimed that occasionally in the course of conversation, but I may be only the worst college football player of I was definitely the worst player on the Macalester College of Scots of St. Paul, Minnesota, and we lost all of our games that season by an aggregate score of The team went on to win one game in each of the following two seasons (after I graduated), then set the NCAA record with fifty straight losses. So, strictly speaking, the losing streak wasn t my fault. I do think I made a huge contribution to the atmosphere of despair and futility that led to the losing streak. I think that as Prairie View was to the 90s, Macalester was to the 70s. But in the final analysis, I think that over two decades at both schools, some athlete may have failed more than I did. I may therefore merely be one of the worst, a weaker distinction that makes me even more pathetic than whoever it is who can make the case for sole possession of the superlative if someone wants to make that case.... A couple weeks after I left PVU, the Panthers won a football game, 14 12, against Langston University, ending the losing streak at eighty. The campus erupted in a victory celebration that was typical of the orgiastic outpourings that people all over the world feel entitled to after an important win. I was happy for them. I felt bad for Langston, having to carry the stigma of losing to the losers of all time. There being virtually no literature of losing, I became obsessed with reading books about winning, some by coaches and some by self-help gurus. All of them advised me to forget about losing. If you want to join the winners, they said, don t dwell on your past humiliations. Then I thought of George Santayana s dictum: Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. So if I remembered losing, I d be a loser. And if I forgot losing, I d be a loser. Finally, I remembered a dictum of my own: Anybody who quotes George Santayana about repeating the past will soon be repeating even worse clichés. That Christmas, my local Barnes & Noble installed a new section called Lessons from the Winners. Publishers put out staggering numbers of books with win in the title (as they do with Zen and Any Stupid Thing), and they make money because there s a bottomless market of losers who want to be winners. Almost all of these books are incoherent lists of aphorisms and advice on how to behave like a CEO ( Memorize

33 304415_ch_12.qxd 11/14/05 12:35 PM Page Appealing to Emotion and Ethics How do you know that this photograph depicts losers? Could it represent anything else? Although it depicts two Florida State players in 1997, do the date, location, even the sport itself, actually matter in this portrait of losing? the keypad on your cell phone so you dial and drive without taking your eyes off the road ). Most of these books are written by men who have made vast fortunes polluting the groundwater and screwing people who work for a living, and these men want to air out their opinions, chiefly that they aren t admired enough for polluting the groundwater and screwing people who work for a living. I thought of the ultimate winner, Howard Hughes, who was once the richest man in the world, who had several presidents catering to his every whim, who stored his feces in jars. I got more and more depressed. Maybe I was just hypnotized by my own history of failure, character defects, and left-wing politics. Maybe what I needed was a pep talk. Maybe what I needed was Ray Pelletier, a motivational speaker who has made a lot of money raising morale for large corporations and athletic teams. Pelletier, a member of the National Speakers Association Hall of Fame, wrote a book, Permission to Win, that Coach Johnson had recommended to me. Basically an exhortation to feel like a winner no matter how disastrous your circumstances happen to be, the book deals with losing as a problem of individual psychology. I asked Pelletier if he thought that the emphasis American culture places on competition was creating vast numbers of people who, on the basis of having lost, quite logically think of themselves as losers. I don t think you have to think of yourself as a loser, he said. I think competition causes you to reach down inside and challenges you to be at your very best. The key is not to beat yourself. If you re better than I am and