No false dichotomies, please (I had some for breakfast)
I'm a big believer in there (almost!) always being a "third option". It just takes a little creativity, and some exploring of options.
In other words, I'm generally skeptical of the dichotomies that are presented to me: I tend to think there's a work-around that's better than either of the two existing options.
"You're either with us, or you're against us!" How about I'm ambivalently on your side for most issues, but against you in other issues? How about you're both idiots, and I want new friends?
"Either we invade [name of country] -- or the terrorists win!" How about we send a **few** troops, but also send them a lot of food -- so much that the local warlords can't possibly hoard it and keep it from the local villagers -- and so much that "food" becomes a devalued commodity and there's enough for all. With a sticker that says "Love, the U.S.A. We may be different, but we're still your friends. Feed your children."
"Either we let everyone have abortions, or no-one have abortions!" "Either we allow people to have abortions that aren't medically necessary, or we ruin young women's lives!" Surely there's a third way? Maybe the folks that want to ban abortions could therefore facilitate carrying the fetus to term, through various ways of minimizing the impact on the woman's life for the next five to seven months? (The first few months, no one but you knows you're pregnant. Barring morning sickness.) Instead of saying "Tough noogies; live with it"?
Yeah, that's probably enough for now...
--GG
posted by Gye Greene @ 1:40 PM
4 Comments:
Agreed on false dichotomies and the "third option", which often involves reasonable compromise but eventually leads to a better arrangement overall. In the case of abortion, there's no compromise that I would accept that forces a woman to carry a fetus to term--no matter what. There's the line. Outside of that, I haven't thought of any creative solutions.
Realistically, my biggest challenge is that I don't perceive abortion to be immoral or even necessarily bad for society. So, coming up with a third option seems like less of a priority to me than trying to get people to see things the way I see them.
I keep going back and forth on my abortion blog survey. It's only worth doing if people could use it for rational dialog. The problem I've seen is that rational dialog is far too uncommon (and impossible for some). And those who favor legislating abortion can be freakishly virulent, so costs and benefits might not weigh in favor of implementing the survey.
Abortion, as an issue, tends to not be particularly related to well-reasoned, logical thought -- from any of the sides addressing it.
In my observation. :)
--GG
Interesting that you say that because it seems to be a subject that would lend itself well to logical thought, insomuch as it begs several questions:
1. How do we, as a society, determine the meaning of life?
2. What are our social priorities as regards quality of life?
3. How do we balance social and individual good?
It seems to me that these questions lie at the heart of a society's culture and can be thought out and discussed, at length. The trick is whether or not we can agree to the basic, most fundamental, terms of the discussion. Based on your observation, it would seem that we can't. And that's the bigger issue. We're divided into subcultures that rationalize certain issues using different frameworks that might be inherently contradictory.
That may be why "compromise" is so difficult in this respect. Compromise can't negate core principles. And if our core principles are different, there's not much we can do to overcome that.
I like your thoughts about sending food. I think the inhabitants of other countries would hate us a lot less (they might actually like us) if we sent them food (and plenty of it) instead of bombing and torturing them.
It seems like during WWII a lot of the inhabitants of the countries the American troops were occupying (or trying to occupy) actually liked the U.S. soldiers, because they fairly routinely shared chocolate and biscuits and such with the native kids and cigarettes with the native adults. It's hard to dislike a nation that treats you well....
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