"On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not 'legalized.' Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense. . .Notably, decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal's decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for 'drug tourists' — has occurred."
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Reproductive Technologies: Approaching the Moral Limits of Christian Ethics?
Several weeks ago, the Associated Press reported that Travis County probate judge, Guy Herman, ruled that a mother could harvest sperm from her dead son’s body. The mother, Marissa Evans, stated: “I want him to live on. I want to keep a piece of him.” Evans and her attorneys were attempting to save the sperm for a future surrogate pregnancy.
In many ways this type of story is becoming quite common; likewise, so are the moral complications that arise from it. Consider the story reported just a year ago regarding a doctor who donated his sperm to a gay couple. Even though it was over eighteen years ago, he is now being forced to pay child support. The reporter writes:
The donor was a married doctor at a Long Island hospital in the late 1980s when he donated his sperm to a female hospital resident who was trying to have a baby with her lesbian partner, the Post reported. Although the donor gave up all claims and rights to the child, he allowed his name to be put on the birth certificate.
For several years after the boy’s birth in 1989, the doctor sent the child gifts and money and cards signed “Dad” and had regular contact with the child, the Post reported. However, when the boy moved to Oregon with his mother and her partner in 1993, regular contact stopped. Since then, the man’s contact with the child consisted of seven phone calls and one brief meeting over the past 15 years.
A New York family court judge ruled last month that the man must now pay child support for the boy, now 18 and heading to college, the Post reported.
These reports remind us of the multiple moral and legal questions that arise from reproductive technologies. Indeed, writing in his The Ethics of Sex, Helmut Thielicke argued that artificial insemination is a “borderline” case that confronts the marriage relationship at the “extreme.” What is it about this type of reproductive technology that makes it “borderline” and “extreme” for Christians?
These reproductive practices, especially AID and surrogacy, have often been labeled extreme by Christian theologians because they separate procreation from marital conjugal relations. That is, rather than children being the offspring of a couple’s total love giving, they are seen as the product of a couple’s will. Although this may seem small on the surface, it reflects a deep theological understanding of the nature of humanity, namely that we are ‘begotten not made,’ as Oliver O’Donovan rightly argues in his book by the same title. By absolutely severing conjugal relations from reproduction, we have perhaps missed part of the meaning of love. Sex certainly represents more than just an act of the will; it is a passion that expresses our inner most desires. Meilaender argues that children are “God’s yes to such mutual self-giving.”
Leon Kass demonstrates best how our language regarding “making babies” exposes this moral deficiency in our thinking.
Ancient Israel, impressed with the phenomenon of transmission of life from father to son, used a word we translate as “begetting” or “siring.” The Greeks, impressed with the springing forth of new life in the cyclical processes of generation and decay, called it genesis, from a root meaning “to come into being.” . . . The premodern Christian English-speaking world, impressed with the world as given by a Creator, used the term “pro-creation.” We, impressed with the machine and the gross national product (our own work of creation), employ a metaphor of factory, “reproduction.”
Kass’s story beautifully and powerfully illustrates our culture’s thinking that children are the products of our will, not a “heritage from the Lord.” Consequently, reproductive technology of the type reported in Associated Press indeed is “extreme” and “borderline,” making evident our selfish desires rather than demonstrating our yearning to live for God’s glory.
In many ways this type of story is becoming quite common; likewise, so are the moral complications that arise from it. Consider the story reported just a year ago regarding a doctor who donated his sperm to a gay couple. Even though it was over eighteen years ago, he is now being forced to pay child support. The reporter writes:
The donor was a married doctor at a Long Island hospital in the late 1980s when he donated his sperm to a female hospital resident who was trying to have a baby with her lesbian partner, the Post reported. Although the donor gave up all claims and rights to the child, he allowed his name to be put on the birth certificate.
For several years after the boy’s birth in 1989, the doctor sent the child gifts and money and cards signed “Dad” and had regular contact with the child, the Post reported. However, when the boy moved to Oregon with his mother and her partner in 1993, regular contact stopped. Since then, the man’s contact with the child consisted of seven phone calls and one brief meeting over the past 15 years.
A New York family court judge ruled last month that the man must now pay child support for the boy, now 18 and heading to college, the Post reported.
These reports remind us of the multiple moral and legal questions that arise from reproductive technologies. Indeed, writing in his The Ethics of Sex, Helmut Thielicke argued that artificial insemination is a “borderline” case that confronts the marriage relationship at the “extreme.” What is it about this type of reproductive technology that makes it “borderline” and “extreme” for Christians?
These reproductive practices, especially AID and surrogacy, have often been labeled extreme by Christian theologians because they separate procreation from marital conjugal relations. That is, rather than children being the offspring of a couple’s total love giving, they are seen as the product of a couple’s will. Although this may seem small on the surface, it reflects a deep theological understanding of the nature of humanity, namely that we are ‘begotten not made,’ as Oliver O’Donovan rightly argues in his book by the same title. By absolutely severing conjugal relations from reproduction, we have perhaps missed part of the meaning of love. Sex certainly represents more than just an act of the will; it is a passion that expresses our inner most desires. Meilaender argues that children are “God’s yes to such mutual self-giving.”
Leon Kass demonstrates best how our language regarding “making babies” exposes this moral deficiency in our thinking.
Ancient Israel, impressed with the phenomenon of transmission of life from father to son, used a word we translate as “begetting” or “siring.” The Greeks, impressed with the springing forth of new life in the cyclical processes of generation and decay, called it genesis, from a root meaning “to come into being.” . . . The premodern Christian English-speaking world, impressed with the world as given by a Creator, used the term “pro-creation.” We, impressed with the machine and the gross national product (our own work of creation), employ a metaphor of factory, “reproduction.”
Kass’s story beautifully and powerfully illustrates our culture’s thinking that children are the products of our will, not a “heritage from the Lord.” Consequently, reproductive technology of the type reported in Associated Press indeed is “extreme” and “borderline,” making evident our selfish desires rather than demonstrating our yearning to live for God’s glory.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Visual (and musical) of the day - Inflation or Deflation
I saw this at Greg Mankiw's blog.
(by the way, in case you wonder why they mention Zimbabwe, the reason is this: Zimbabwe's inflation rate is currently at about 516 Quintillion percent.)
My answer to the question "inflation or deflation" is - deflation in the short run and inflation in the long.
UPDATE: The other video might be even better as far as country-singing-economist-humor is concerned. And who doesn't like country-singing-economist humor?
Notes Toward a Theology of Comedy
This may seem like a strange post to apply to our obesity discussion today, but I think that the bodily nature of our limitations and the comedy of what Francis of Assisi called Brother Mule (i.e. the body) make this material applicable. Enjoy.
"Humor is a grace. It's absolutely a grace because, if people laugh, willy-nilly they make commitments to what's going on. They make good commitments, too. They covenant. Laughter is a kind of covenant, a spiritual covenant."-- Walter Wangerin
"You will find that you survive humiliation/ And that's an experience of incalculable value."--Edward Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party
"Humor is a grace. It's absolutely a grace because, if people laugh, willy-nilly they make commitments to what's going on. They make good commitments, too. They covenant. Laughter is a kind of covenant, a spiritual covenant."-- Walter Wangerin
"You will find that you survive humiliation/ And that's an experience of incalculable value."--Edward Chamberlayne in The Cocktail Party
- Playfulness and a creativity are character traits and actions which the Christian can affirm that God created us for. God's playful creativity is expressed in the universe, and our human dominion of creation is also playful. Surely, then, we can affirm that we were created in part to enjoy the whimsical and ironic.
- Good humor practices the virtue of truth-telling. Humor reverses our expectations, showing the wise to be foolish and the foolish, wise. This is a good thing, for we should always be about the pursuit of truth and honesty.
- Peter Berger suggests that a comic debunking of society actually allows us to love our enemies because we take them less seriously than they do.We may learn to love the political braggart or the boasting literary type. We may have compassion on the hypocrite.
- Comedy often stresses the burly, eccentric bodily world as a worthwhile emphasis. God's creation of the world and Christ's incarnation remind us that God created the physical, bodily world and called it good, even if it is now also subject to sin and corruption. The Christian is one who exists in this world with its eating, defecating, and procreating. Christian comedy, then, should affirm and laugh at human life.
- Robert Roberts suggests that comedy's perception of incongruity arises from the "perspectivity" of the perceiver. There must be a vantage point from which something appears incongruous. He goes on to distinguish 1) "having a perspective," which is "to be capable of adopting" the perspective since it is "available or accessible" to you, from 2) "owning a perspective," which implies a tendency towards regularly adopting the perspective, and from 3) "adopting a perspective," which implies the actual activity of having a perspective present in oneself. In this sense, one can temporarily experience another perspective through humor without necessarily being convinced by or abiding by it in any habitual way.
- Roberts also argues that this disassociation that humor produces makes humility possible, for the person who finds his or her own behavior funny is able to see its dangers. More specifically, for the Christian, there is always the incongruity between one’s sinful, current self which will only be complete in the eschaton, and one’s positional, justified self, the self that God sees us as in Christ.
- Reinhold Niebuhr argues that our "provisional amusement" with the world’s incongruities must either move to faith and joy or bitterness and incredulity. Humor has its limits; if laughter seeks to deal with ultimate issues, it turns bitter because it is overwhelmed. Humor alone cannot find a way to deal with human sin and wickedness.
Monday, May 11, 2009
Visual of the Day - Spending in average US family
This nifty graphic shows the spending of an average American household by major category (per year). Click to zoom. Graphic comes from Time Magazine's Curious Capitalist blog.
An Analogy to Explain Derivitives
I received this story to help explain how derivitives work. What do you think? Is this helpful or distorted?
Derivative markets explained. An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets:
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit ... She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He soinforms Heidi. Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being nemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lies off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, and non-drinkers.
Now, do you understand?
Derivative markets explained. An Easily Understandable Explanation of Derivative Markets:
Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Detroit ... She realizes that virtually all of her customers are unemployed alcoholics and, as such, can no longer afford to patronize her bar. To solve this problem, she comes up with new marketing plan that allows her customers to drink now, but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans). Word gets around about Heidi's "drink now pay later" marketing strategy and, as a result, increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar. Soon she has the largest sales volume for any bar in Detroit. By providing her customers' freedom from immediate payment demands, Heidi gets no resistance when, at regular intervals, she substantially increases her prices for wine and beer, the most consumed beverages. Consequently, Heidi's gross sales volume increases massively.
A young and dynamic vice-president at the local bank recognizes that these customer debts constitute valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit. He sees no reason for any undue concern, since he has the debts of the unemployed alcoholics as collateral.
At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert traders transform these customer loans into DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then bundled and traded on international security markets. Naive investors don't really understand that the securities being sold to them as AAA secured bonds are really the debts of unemployed alcoholics. Nevertheless, the bond prices continuously climb, and the securities soon become the hottest-selling items for some of the nation's leading brokerage houses.
One day, even though the bond prices are still climbing, a risk manager at the original local bank decides that the time has come to demand payment on the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar. He soinforms Heidi. Heidi then demands payment from her alcoholic patrons, but being nemployed alcoholics they cannot pay back their drinking debts. Since, Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations she is forced into bankruptcy. The bar closes and the eleven employees lose their jobs.
Overnight, DRINKBONDS, ALKIBONDS and PUKEBONDS drop in price by 90%. The collapsed bond asset value destroys the banks liquidity and prevents it from issuing new loans, thus freezing credit and economic activity in the community. The suppliers of Heidi's bar had granted her generous payment extensions and had invested their firms' pension funds in the various BOND securities. They find they are now faced with having to write off her bad debt and with losing over 90% of the presumed value of the bonds. Her wine supplier also claims bankruptcy, closing the doors on a family business that had endured for three generations, her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor, who immediately closes the local plant and lies off 150 workers.
Fortunately though, the bank, the brokerage houses and their respective executives are saved and bailed out by a multi-billion dollar no-strings attached cash infusion from the Government. The funds required for this bailout are obtained by new taxes levied on employed, middle-class, and non-drinkers.
Now, do you understand?
Multiple Enlightenments
I, like most people, tend to paint with a broad-brushstroke, and in this blog I have several times referenced "the Englihtenment" as a broad historical change that Christians should challenge. We should keep in mind, however, that the Enlightenment was not a monolithic conspiracy. It was and is a multifaceted movement, existing in tandem with its Christian and non-Christian predecessors. Historian Henry May has suggested that there were four Enlightenments:
- The Moderate Enlightenment (Locke, Newton): mechanistic and mathematical models of nature and humanity are empirical and no threat to religion or traditional morals.
- The Skeptical Enlightenment (Voltaire, Hume, Rousseau): mechanistic and naturalistic models do call into question traditional religion, morals, and claims for human knowledge.
- The Revolutionary Enlightenment (Paine, Godwin): direct attacks on traditional religious, familial, economic, and political structures.
- The Didactic Enlightenment (Reid, Stewart): softens radical implications of Enlightenment thought, a preference for natural and inductive explanations over supernatural and deductive ones.
The Enlightenment in its moderate form, and to some extent in its didactic form, I have far less trouble with than the more skeptical and revoluntionary strains. Likewise, it is important to remember that no form of the movement was (or is) so airtight and doctrinaire that it contains no truths to learn from, and that the various strains of the movement were often for a time bedfellows, strange or otherwise, with movements in the 18th to 20th centuries that as a Christian I could at least be a co-belligerent with. (For example, abolitionism, women's suffrage, or the protection of human rights.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)