On second thought

In a recent post, I contrasted the philosophy of Peter Singer with that of Hitler and the Eugenicists, commenting that Singer's philosophy is a kinder, gentler form of rational belief once one eliminates God and the concomitant belief about the dignity and worth of a human life that emanates from God's laws (made in his image and likeness, you are gods, and all that). I said Peter Singer's nice, touchy-feely, warm-and-tender, animals-are-people-too philosophy is to be preferred over Hitler's (and the eugenicists') philosophy that some races are inferior and it would be best for the Fatherland (or for the species) if man acts as agents of natural selection and simply prevent them from reproducing -- by sterilizing them in the case of the eugenicists, or by mass murder, in the case of Hitler. Not so fast:

I stumbled upon a blog that reports about Dinesh D'Souza's account of his debate with Peter Singer. He (D'Souza) writes:

Here are some choice Singer quotations on the subject which I get
from his books Rethinking Life and Death and Writings on an Ethical
Life.

On how mothers should be permitted to kill their offspring until the age of 28 days:
“My colleague Helga Kuhse and I suggest that a period of twenty-eight
days after birth might be allowed before an infant is accepted as
having the same right to life as others.”

On why abortion is less morally significant than killing a rat:
“Rats are indisputably more aware of their surroundings, and more able
to respond in purposeful and complex ways to things they like or
dislike, than a fetus at ten or even thirty-two weeks gestation.”

On why pigs, chickens and fish have more rights to life than unborn humans:
“The calf, the pig, and the much-derided chicken come out well ahead of
the fetus at any stage of pregnancy, while if we make the comparison
with a fetus of less than three months, a fish would show more signs of
consciousness.”

On why infants aren’t normal human beings with rights to life and liberty:
“Characteristics like rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness…make
a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing them,
therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings.”

He contends that God is dead and we should recognize ourselves as
Darwinian primates who enjoy no special status compared to the other
animals. In the animal kingdom, after all, parents sometimes kill and
even devour their offpsring. Singer argues that the West can learn from
the other cultures like the Kalahari where children are routinely
killed when they are unwanted, even when they are several years old.

To be fair, I havent read any of those books that D'Souza is quoting from. But as they are a matter of public record, I would have to assume the quotes are accurate. And that Singer's philosophy isnt so touchy-feely after all. But still, eminently rational, once you eliminate the source of the worth of a human life.

The attraction of power

In his column in the Inquirer, Defending God, Conrado De Quiros hits upon an idea inadvertently already attributed to him:

But now that they mention running Tony Meloto for president in 2010,
why in God's name didn't I think of that? That is brilliant. I myself
have not been in election mode simply because I've never bought the
idea we'll have one in 2010-unless we remove the usurper first. But
granting we do, yes, by all means count me in, Meloto for President!
You can't have a better candidate, one who has head and heart, a wealth
of insight and a well of compassion. The only problem is that unlike
the leaders of CFC-FFL who will grab at any chance to aggrandize
themselves, Meloto will probably decline it.

And therein lies the problem of government, why it is one of the most pernicious institutions ever invented by man. We have invested it with too much power and would not hesitate to give it more because of our misguided belief that it is the solution to our problems. The problem is this: Power is more attractive to the evil man than it is to the good man. An evil man will actively seek it, a good man will shun it. Good men (and women) who are thrust into positions of power do so reluctantly, and would give it up as soon as they can. Evil men (and women) seek it, chase after it, and cling to it if allowed to do so by the people whom they govern; would cling to it if they could get away with it. And if they couldnt, would see to it that their ilk, their cronies, their relatives, their friends, their coterie of evil, would continue in their stead. We are more likely to have a bad government than a good one.

To quote Ronald Reagan, government isnt the solution to our problems. Government is the problem.

Update: Manuel L. Quezon III, quotes Confucius on good government, an increasingly oxymoronic premise in my opinion, and yet as his illustrious grandfather recognized, the preference of the the overwhelming majority: The Filipino prefers good government over self-government.

"Tzü Kung asked for a definition of good government. The Master replied: It consists in providing enough food to eat, in keeping enough soldiers to guard the State, and in winning the confidence of the people. And if one of these three things had to be sacrificed, which should go first? The Master replied: Sacrifice the soldiers. And if of the two remaining things one had to be sacrificed, which should it be? The master said: Let it be the food. From the beginning, men have always had to die. But without the confidence of the people no government can stand at all."

The other blog

It's called A Blog About Nothing and is a group blog maintained by some comic book reviewer from Brooklyn who goes by the handle grifter, with contributions from yours truly, and a couple of other expat blokes. We used to work in the same company, and used to terrorize quiz nights in the old Blarney Stone/ O'Reilly's in Palanca street.

The blog is several orders of magnitude more popular than this one based on the number of hits, because its often irreverent, prurient, and politically incorrect content often turn up in Google searches. But most of all it's just a lot of fun. That's how we were when we were together IRL and that's what we try to recapture in that blog.

Not for the faint of heart most of the time, but we try to keep it classy. Although most of the time we fail.

Ramdam nila ang asenso

I have to say things are going quite well for our colleagues in the head office, and for the city of Nanjing as a whole. I was last here about three years ago, and back then most of our colleagues, the ones who didnt commute, came to work on their bicycles. But now, those who used to come on bikes now come on motorbikes or electric bikes; those who used to come on motorbikes now come in cars. Before the only cars on the parking lot were those of the head honchoes. Now the office parking lot is occupied by employee's cars.

And as for the city itself, if the construction boom that has been going on here for the past five years isnt enough of an indication, there is the rather ubiquitous lack of bicycles on the roads. Whereas as recently as three years ago, the bike still ruled the bike lanes, the roads now belong to cars. The bicycle lanes are almost deserted. And this is quite depressing to me as the Nanjingites seem to have fallen into the dangerous consumption patterns of the West, a consumption pattern we Pinoys recognize as the ideal, as the standard to aspire to, the car being the obvious symbol that youre on your way to economic bliss. I had hopes that the Nanjingites would follow the Dutch at least in their choice of mode of transportation. The Dutch -- no Third World country that's for sure -- havent given up on their bicycles. In Utrecht everyday one sees people in business suits biking to and from work. The parking spaces for bikes were always full. And in Amsterdam I was floored by a multi-level parking space, three-stories high I think, filled to overflowing with bicycles. In Amsterdam now, and in Nanjing then, if you were to be in a road mishap, it would most likely involve a bicycle. Alas, those days are over in this city. "The City of All Around Opening Up" as a sign on a bus said.

But who knows? Maybe one day the now-affluent Nanjingites would rediscover their Confucian - Buddhist traits and give up going after the Western consumption patterns that has so seduced the rest of us and ravaged this planet.

=======

By the way, due to the network security features installed here, I can't reply to comments. I can read them via email, so dkny.ca, yes the canals are near the Confucius temple. And I prefer the apartment. I can't cook in the hotel and laundry rates are ridiculous. :-D We have better apartments now, too. Not like the one we used to stay in near the palengke. We now have rather posh apartments in Nanjing.

The slope, it slips!

In a rather longish Easter post on my blog, which I suppose grifter didnt get to the end of because it didnt have pictures, I said that

Without God there is no reason to believe we have these rights [life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and all that]. Without God our rights are no different from the rights of a chicken. Indeed that’s the whole philosophy of Peter Singer and PETA. It is the only rational thing to believe in if one denies the existence of the source of our rights.

That is a perfectly rational position to take. There is no reason to believe that humans are in any way special, and it is certainly more humane, pardon the pun, than the other rational belief (yes I did argue that this belief is rational) that some humans are inferior and therefore do not have the same rights as a superior race, in the same way that humans, being superior to animals, can slaughter them without guilt, which is the philosophy of Hitler and the Eugenicists. But why limit yourself to animals? Plants are living creatures too, are they not? Not to worry:

Plants deserve respect, a group of Swiss experts said Monday, arguing that killing them arbitrarily was morally wrong -- except when it comes to saving humans or maybe picking petals off a daisy.

In a report on "the dignity of the creature in the plant world," the federal Ethics Committee on non-human Gene Technology condemned the decapitation of flowers without reason, among other sins.

Next, after broccoli get the right to vote, we will then move on to protecting the rights of protozoa.

[Note: Im cross-posting this to my blog too since I cant figure out where this belongs. It's insane enough to belong in Nothing, but then it has something to do with what I wrote in Verisimilitude.]

Bloggers vs. Traditional Journalists

My take: Whodahell cares?

1) Traditional journalists see bloggers (Im not including those who are just publishing an online diary here, although technically they have a blog and are therefore bloggers) as an unruly bunch of barbarians running roughshod on journalistic standards and what-not. Yes, they are that.

2) Bloggers see traditional journalists as insecure little cry-babies who feel threatened that their monopoly in shaping public opinion, whether in politics, fashion, or what TV station is better, is at an end. Yes, they are that.

Get over it. Let's move on.

If you want a more serious discussion on the so-called debate (blek), check out Manuel L. Quezon III here and here, and the links therein, and Philippine Commentary's smackdown here.

Attention your head

When alone in the hotel I turn on the TV and start clicking the remote like crazy. It's an almost automatic and rather futile exercise but I can't help it. The reason behind the mindless clicking is that Im hoping that by some miracle, I'll finally understand what theyre saying, or at least land on someone speaking something I understand -- a phrase, a word, anything. They do have an English-language news channel and every Tuesday night, the movie channel shows an English language movie, but I clamor for more. (Some of the stuff on the English language news channel reminds me of those government ads, paid for by taxpayer money, proclaiming, "Ramdam ko ang asenso.") There's one channel that regularly shows foreign language movies all day, really bad ones, but beggars can't be choosers. On second thought, yeah I can be choosy. If the movie's exceedingly bad, I turn on the TV's Tetris mode and play. (I now have the official high score of all the residents of Room 208; the top three scores in fact.) The thing that struck me the most about going back to Nanjing after a 3-year absence, aside from the ubiquitous Pinoy brand Oishi in the supermarkets, is the presence of Filipino movies on Chinese television. Dubbed in Chinese of course. These are mostly 80s and 90s era action movies. So far, Ive seen a Ronnie Ricketts movie and a Zoren Legazpi movie. It's remarkable how similar they are to the Hong Kong action movies of the same era, stylized choreographed deaths and all.

But you can't fault the food in this place. Even if the hole-in-the-wall restaurants dont look all that inviting, they sure can cook. (If youre fussy about your food, try no to look at the chef -- he'll almost always look dingy, if not outright unhygienic.) I especially like the fried mushrooms. I dont know how they do it but it has the taste and texture of chicharon. The bagnet kind from Ilocos. My officemate has what everyone calls the 'magic book', a notebook with popular dishes written in Chinese, given to us by our Nanjing officemates three years ago. It is passed on from employee to employee; everyone who'll be assigned here for any length of time. When I first came here, we didnt have that book and didnt even think of getting the Chinese colleagues to write something like that for us. We were having too much fun walking into restaurants not knowing how to order. What we'd do is look at other tables and ask the waitress to bring us whatever the people at other tables were having. Sometimes she'd go over to the other table, point, and say 'Chi ge?' And we would walk over and say, 'Yes' to the utter amusement (or perplexity) of the eating patron. Now isnt that more fun than having a magic book?