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The No-Hope Fallacy: That's No Excuse for Failing to Act

by Kathleen Dean Moore, September 20, 2010 10:51 AM
Forget fear of public speaking. Forget fear of flying. My biggest fear on this book tour for Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril is of that moment toward the end of the evening when a student ? it's always a student ? stands up in the back of the auditorium and says, "There's no hope. Nothing I do will make any difference. I can't save the world from climate change or ecological collapse. So I'll just keep on buyin' and burnin', the way I always have. There's no point in sacrificing for nothing."

First I want to shake the student. Then I want to give him a hug. But I'm a philosophy professor, so I challenge his reasoning. "What kind of logic is that? You don't do the right thing because it will have good results. You do the right thing because it's the right thing. What would you say to a slave-owner who made the same kind of argument? Alas, I could free every one of my slaves and it wouldn't make a dent in the slave trade. The institution of slavery is so much bigger than one little owner. So I'll just keep on working these people in the day and chaining them up at night. No point in sacrificing for nothing. What would you say to that? You'd say, It doesn't matter whether you can or cannot change the world. What matters is that you can change yourself. And that's what I say to you."

If it's wrong to take more than your fair share of the Earth's resources and possibilities, leaving what's left of a degraded and destabilized world for people in other nations or other times (and I believe it is); if it's wrong to reap the benefits of the profligate use of fossil fuels and foist off the costs on other people, especially future people who are completely powerless to defend themselves (and I believe it is); if it's wrong to bulldoze what is beautiful and life-giving and billions of years in the making (and I believe it is); if poisoning the water and the air is an utter betrayal of the children, whom we love more than anything else in the world (and I know it is) — then we shouldn't do it. Period. End of question.

We in the western world have inherited a bizarre moral tradition. It's an aberration in the moral history of the universe. But because it has infused our ways of thinking, we think it's the normal — or the only — way to think. The name of the tradition is consequentialism, and its central principle is that an act is right if it has good consequences; otherwise it is wrong. If that's how we judge right and wrong, by this complicated cost-benefit analysis, then we have to be always "fixated on the future," as my friend and co-editor Michael P. Nelson writes, "perpetually...justifying means by their ends. So we have built a society that can be readily disempowered." And of course, the student is completely disempowered — but not by hopelessness. He's disempowered by this bizarre idea that the only acts worth doing are those that will have some sort of payoff.

What I want to tell the student is that there is a huge, essential middle ground between hope and despair. This is not acting-out-of-hope, or failing-to-act-out-of-despair, but acting out of virtue, an affirmation of who we are and what is worthy of us as moral beings. This is integrity, which is consistency between belief and action. To act lovingly because we love. To act justly because we are just. To live gratefully because this life is a gift.

If you are horrified by the gyre of plastic in the middle of the Pacific, I want to tell the student, don't buy plastic. If you think it's terrible what beef cattle are doing to the rivers, don't buy beef. If you don't like the thought of Chinese children boiling out the heavy metals in a junk pile of discarded electronics, don't buy the latest in electronic equipment. If you are sickened by reports of oil slathering the ocean floor, use alternative energies. Like conscientious objectors in any other war, do not allow yourself to be made into an instrument of death and injustice. When all is said and done, make sure that you are able to say you lived a life you believe in, conscientiously refusing what is wrong and destructive, exhibiting in your life choices what is compassionate and just. Even if hope is rapidly failing that you can make a difference to the future of the Earth, you can always make a difference to who you are.

Standing at the podium, trying to steady my voice, here's what I say to the student: "Don't ask, will my acts save the world? Maybe they won't. But ask, do my actions match up with what I most deeply believe is right and good? This is our calling — the calling for you and me and everybody else in the room: To do what is right, even if it does no good; to celebrate and care for the world, even if its fate breaks our hearts."




Books mentioned in this post

Moral Ground Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

Kathleen Moore

Wild Comfort The Solace of Nature

Kathleen Dean Moore
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3 Responses to "The No-Hope Fallacy: That's No Excuse for Failing to Act"

John Roberts September 25, 2010 at 01:18 PM
Interesting article but I think it misses a larger and more complex point. If we all tomorrow stop driving our cars, using plastic, buying electronics, etc. The impact to children in China will be far more devestating than toxic smoke from smelting. Millions the world over depend on the western world's consumption for the ability to survive. Yes, there are complex questions that needed to be answered. Like how do we process the waste that we are producing. But sometimes the right thing is far more complicated to understand and decern. Even the example of slaves is not so simple. Allowing your salves to go free in the early 18th century almost certainly meant their reenslavement or death.

Miss Gretchen September 20, 2010 at 01:34 PM
Wonderful essay! I will look into your book -- sounds as if it could fit on my bookshelf next to Sam Smith's Why Bother? Getting a Life in Locked Down Land, and Ram Dass and Paul Gorman's How Can I Help? Stories and Reflection on Service. I think one problem people have, I know I do, is "all or nothing" thinking. Thinking that if circumstances cause me, (in my opinion) to use plastic take-out containers regularly, that unless I can eliminate the need entirely, that I might as well not think about it, throw up my hands. Whereas, I can actually reduce my need for these containers if I try, slowly but surely -- and understanding that there will be some backsliding from time to time.

monkeywomantoo September 20, 2010 at 12:02 PM
thank you kathleen dean moore. this book is desperatly needed. i would like to see it included in every general education curriculum and the concept of personal integrity stressed beginning in gradeschool. we "adults" have not been talking about this nearly enough and everyone suffers as a result. bless you.

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