Of duty, dogs and ethical dilemmas
When trying to do the right thing, our ethics columnist argues, generosity should trump fairness
Life is riddled with ethical dilemmas big and small. In his new ebook, Not Fair: A Week of Ethical Dilemmas, Star ethics columnist Ken Gallinger provides some guidance to those wanting to make the best, fairest choices. An excerpt:
“I’m a recent widow, 65, and writing my first will. It’s harrowing!! My son, who’s single, is a very successful businessman — he’s made a fortune in IT. My daughter has raised two kids and now devotes her working life to an animal welfare organization — a group whose work I support financially. I’m proud of both kids and we’re a close-knit family, but my son doesn’t need much, while my daughter would use any money left to do good work. Do I have to divide my estate equally?”
“Life is unfair!” So, famously, declared John F. Kennedy in March 1962. He went on to prove it by getting the top of his head blown off 18 months later.
It is necessary neither to be president of the United States nor to lose your head to understand this uncomfortable truth. So long as:
babies are born in leafy neighbourhoods of North Toronto and the dusty streets of Kinshasa, Harare or Attawapiskat,
Canadians remember the name Terry Fox,
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives treat veterans as if they’d lost the war,
Maple Leaf fans pay the highest ticket prices in the NHL,
there can be no arguing this obvious truth: life is unfair.
And yet there abides within us a deep, lingering conviction that, dammit, life should be fair. If God were in her heaven and the world were as it should be, we’re all convinced at some visceral level, things would be a whole lot fairer than they are right now. Our guts may reluctantly concede that absolute fairness will forever evade us, but we’re convinced that we could get a darned sight closer to that ethical Holy Grail.
Our earnest, failed pursuit of fairness begins when we’re little kids. Remember that nasty trick Mom played when there was a chocolate bar to be split between you and your sister? One kid got to break it; the other got to choose which piece she wanted. It was always better to be the chooser than the breaker, because even then we knew that nothing could ever be exactly equal, and advantage fell to the one upon whom the burden of creating equality did not rest. But the exercise, like so many others in childhood (eeny-meeny-miny-moe), was excellent training for the lifelong, futile pursuit of the utopian world of fairness that defines so much of our thinking about ethics.
Over eight years writing the Toronto Star column “Ethically Speaking,” I’ve received a couple of thousand questions, and they divide neatly into two roughly equal piles: half are about issues of “fairness” and the other half, everything else.
Our obsessive quest for fairness is quite staggering, really. A few samples, paraphrased:
There’s a new family in our church and their daughter got to be Mary in the Christmas play. We’ve been going for years; our kid was a sheep. Is that OK?
Mom inherited some money. She wants to share it with her kids. My sister hasn’t seen Mom in years and completely ignores her. Does Mom have to give her any?
When our two daughters got married, we paid for their weddings. Our son is next and his fiancée’s parents are paying. Should we give him the same amount we spent on the girls?
I have a gift for my grandson. My husband says I can’t give it to him unless I buy one for the other grandkid in the same family. Is he right?
Obviously, these questions were written by kids who had to break the chocolate bar, not those who chose the larger piece. But not only do these letters and so many more share the fundamental flaw of believing life should be fair (who said? why? how? when? to whom?), they express the more serious fallacy of thinking that fairness equals equality. Yearning for a world fairer than our own is a noble aspiration and, after all, Pollyanna was a sweet kid. But yearning for a world in which we are all somehow equal is appalling. Try taking a train ride from the former West Germany into the previously Communist eastern part of the country: you’ll know the moment you’ve crossed the border into the once-and-former land of legislated equality, when everything turns grey, flat, utilitarian, oppressively boring.
A world in which equality wins the gold medal has no room for three Dufour-Lapointe sisters, whose brilliance on the moguls inspired this nation on a cold February morning. A world of equality has no place for Mozart or Hawking, Gandhi or Orr, either. Equality, after all, is for losers, for those who measure their lives by comparing them to the lives of others and whose highest aspiration is to be as good as someone else. Success, happiness, achievement, legacy in such a world is measured by reaching the median of whatever group you claim to be part of. Congratulations!! Long live mediocrity!!!
Dissing fairness, of course, isn’t fair — not unless one is prepared to present another standard against which behaviour can be measured. So now (drum roll, please), let me do just that. I hereby declare: Fairness is as dead as Python’s parrot! Long live generosity!
Many will recoil from the word generosity because it suggests a scheme in which one gives their last dime to the Salvation Army. But the generosity of which I speak, and for which I will argue, is more of the “That was a generous portion of roast beef” variety. While the call for fairness is born inevitably from a grudging sense of scarcity or injustice, generosity is the natural response of a person who experiences life as abundant, full of possibilities, bursting with opportunity. Fairness asks, “What am I required to do?” Generosity asks: “What am I able to do?” Fairness demands: “What are you going to do for me?” Generosity wonders, “Is there something I can do for you?” Fairness yearns for equality. Generosity celebrates abundance.
What was it about those Dufour-Lapointe sisters that so moved Canadians during the early days of the Sochi Olympics? Was it just that they are pretty, vivacious and fun — well, yes, they are all those things.
But there was more: when these three young women came hurtling down those moguls, knees pumping like pistons in a Kia, it was obvious they were pouring every ounce of training, nerve and sheer guts into what they were doing. They insisted on being the best. What’s that saying in sports? “They left it all out there.” Indeed they did, and a nation loves them for it.
That’s what it means to live generously, to leave it all out there. Generosity refuses to worry about what other people have, get, give or do; it focuses only on the possibilities within one’s reach — or even beyond one’s reach.
As 2013 wound to a close, Toronto experienced the worst ice storm in recent history. In its wake, several Ethically Speaking readers wrote; here’s a condensed version of one letter:
Years ago my husband purchased an expensive generator capable of powering the entire house. When the storm hit, he wanted to let our neighbours run an extension cord; that would keep them warm. These neighbours drive expensive cars and take yearly vacations, so money is not an issue. They also ignore us when they pass on the street. Why should we let them plug into our generator?
And this is how I responded, basically:
You have no obligation, as such, to help your neighbours in the scenario described. These are people who have the resources to be ready for events such as this — they just didn’t get around to it.
But fairness and obligation are tawdry, soul-sucking concepts. The storm provided an opportunity for you and other ready-for-anything types to rise above obligation’s shabby confines and soar into the realm of generosity. Those with chainsaws cut trees off neighbours’ Lexuses. Those with snow tires pulled boneheads with summer rubber out of snow banks. Those with propane in their barbecues hosted neighbourhood cookouts.
That kind of generosity and sense of “belonging” creates communities, I continued. If, during that storm, you’d allowed your neighbour to plug into your generator, he wouldn’t ignore you anymore when he drove by. The connections made by such a gesture are almost always more than electrical.
Is it fair for people to expect others to take care of them, especially when they refuse to take care of themselves? Absolutely not. But generous people don’t waste time worrying about silly questions like that.
“I am debating putting my dog to sleep because I don’t want to spend another $6,000 to surgically remove an object from his stomach. He is 4 years old and a fabulous pet. But this is the second time he has swallowed a ball. I have to borrow the money to pay for the operation and I still haven’t finished paying for the last one. I will feel bad if I put him down, but is it ethical?”
It was a trap. Innocently set. Naively sprung.
“We’re planning a full section on pets,” said my earnest editors, and we’d like you to address this question from a woman who has already spent a fortune having a ball removed from her dog’s stomach and is wondering if she should do it again? Being, well, stupid, I said, “No worries. I’ll handle that.”
To me the answer was obvious, This woman had already borrowed six grand for surgery and was still in debt; spending another six big ones was (and is) to me patently absurd. Enough, already.
When the promised pet section appeared in print, there were nice little articles about the importance of pets and the tranquility a loving pet can bring, ads from purveyors of highquality pet products, interesting pieces about animal training and the latest in veterinary medical marvels, and the article from the Ethics Guy saying, “Just kill the son of a bitch and buy a new one.”
That is not, of course, exactly what I said. What I said, in part, was this: “Ethical principles that govern how we care for sick children, parents — each other in general — don’t apply. When people are ill, our first response must be to throw every resource at healing. When animals are sick, a more measured approach is not merely justified but necessary.
“You ask whether it’s ethical to put your pet down instead of spending $6,000. You’ve got the question backwards. The real question is: is it ethical to spend so much money and put yourself in debt to keep a dog alive? “The answer is no. “Obviously, if he’s swallowed a ball before and now this one, he’ll swallow one again. So this expenditure won’t solve the problem — it’s just a contribution to your vet’s retirement fund (this last phrase was edited out before publication; pity).
“And it’s an expenditure you can’t responsibly afford. You already have an unpaid loan . . . Most of us live on defined budgets; we try to make re- sponsible decisions about what we can spend on housing, food and other essentials. Most also set aside a little to help others and improve the world in which we live.
“And what kind of world is that? It’s one in which countless children go to bed hungry, where kids die of diseases that could be controlled by dirt-cheap vaccines, where community services are chronically underfunded, where food banks are a growth industry, where hospitals and schools cry for volunteer donations — this is a list that goes on forever.
“I hope Fido slides gently into puppy paradise . . . a place where balls come out as easily as they go in. But you still have to pay for housing and food, so where would this six grand come from? Money you might otherwise give to help other human beings? That’s an appalling prospect.”
The response was predictable, and having written previously on pet-related issues, I should have anticipated it. Still, I was stunned by the vigour, bordering on verbal violence, of much that jammed my inbox with expletives.
Many said horrible things like, “If this woman can’t afford to spend the money, she shouldn’t have a dog in the first place.” Apparently, alongside all the other things “them po’ folk” aren’t entitled to in our society (like decent housing, fair wages and quality food), pets are now to be restricted to those who can shell out $12,000 to extract rubber balls from dogs too stupid to stop swallowing them. Sheesh.
Many who wrote offered an argument that went something like this: “Yes, dogs are animals. But people are animals, too. So the rules that apply to our pets should be the same as those that apply to other people.”
These letters were written by people who flunked Logic 100. So let’s review the rule. If A is a subset of C, and B is a subset of C, that does not imply that A = B. Or, to say it more simply: the sky is blue, petunias are blue; that doesn’t mean the sky is full of petunias. Or, yes, another way: people are animals, dogs are animals, but it’s not OK to treat people like dogs. Or
“Here’s the thing,” I had written in my column. “Pets are not our children. People say, ‘Pookie is my baby.’ But this is nonsense — precious Pookie is an animal, no more, no less.”
Of course, we should treat all animals — the spaniel, the snake and all the rest — with respect and care. Of course we should fight against the destruction of natural habitats, against the wickedness of some forms of factory farming, against the use of animals to test cosmetics and other discretionary consumer goods, against the cruel treatment of captive animals in zoos and aquaria. We should tend to our pets to the best of our abilities.
But we should do these things because we love creation, care about the natural order and respect the beauty of the Earth — not because we’ve turned Fido into the child we never had.
When we get confused about the difference between pets and people, we begin to make bad ethical decisions. According to the Worldwatch Institute, North Americans and Europeans spent $17 billion on pet food alone last year — more than enough, if added to current expenditures, to provide food, sanitation and education for every last one of the world’s disadvantaged people. How can that make sense? One of the saddest aspects of our desire to humanize our pets is that it deprives the animals of the joy that comes from living as they were intended to live. Honest to Dog, Pookie doesn’t want to be pushed around in a baby carriage or dressed in booties or to wear a Santa hat. She doesn’t want to live in a condo, ride an elevator or attend Woofstock. She wants to run free, chase squirrels, jump in the water, eat her own vomit, smell Rover’s bum and generally act like a dog. It’s really unacceptable if your daughter acts that way, but for Pookie it’s what Mother Nature intended.