Ethics, institutions, and wasting your life reading The New York Times

Paperwight does an excellent job of limning Randy Cohen’s ridiculous “Ethicist” column from this Sunday in the NYT Magazine. The key is here:

Randy Cohen doesn’t even bother to address the first part of the question: “My daughter plays soccer where opportunities are uneven. Some teams have better facilities and coaching and draw on a larger player pool.” Maybe a better way to approach the problem might have been to suggest gently to Ms. Steinberger that although the “weaker” team (i.e., the team without the structural advantages that her daughter has) may be bending the rules beyond the breaking point, Ms. Steinberger herself should consider trying to change the team divisions to correct the structural problems which create guaranteed winners and losers in her daughter’s league.

This exemplifies a few of the worst and most persistent problems with this ridiculous column. Talk to a moral philosopher about that column sometime. Oh, boy, do they get animated (he’s got no training as an ethicist, as I understand it–not that it would be necessarily necessary to do a good job on a column like that, but a little truth in advertising would be nice).

This week he exemplified his two most annoying traits. First, his fetishization of splitting the difference. It’s not a bad impulse–fairness and compromise are elements of morality–but he pursues this kind of down the middling with a vigor and enthusiasm in situations where it’s woefully inappropriate. Ethics probably shouldn’t resembe Sandra Day O’Connor’s jurisprudence on congressional redistricting.

Second, as Paperwight notes, is Cohen’s unwillingness to council people on their responsibility to institutional structure. In his columns, people are awash in a sea of institutional arrangements and structures, utterly powerless to do anything but choose between a few reflexive responses to them. Now, this is often an accurate way of describing our (lack of) agency in big complex, powerful institions, but it’s never really entirely accurate. It’s a especially inaccurate in small local institutions like this, where one person could clearly effect institutional change with a relatively low level of effort, competence and luck, or find (or create) an alternative institutional structure.

Any understanding of ethics that approaches the basic structure of pretty much all institutions with shoulder-shrugging is hopelessly impovershed, and manages to be naive and cynical at the same time.

What do Maureen Dowd, David Brooks, Randy Cohen, Adam Naugourney, and Elizabeth Bumiller have in common?

They’re all a complete waste of time to read, but I keep doing it because they write for the NYT. Someone in that marketing department deserves a raise, because they’ve really done a number on me. I can’t begin to explain how my brand loyalty persists given the quality of the product.

Update: First rate mockery of this column from none other than Steve Martin (there are several more at the link:

Dear Ethicist:
Last week, while putting a man to death (I’m an executioner at a state prison), I noticed that several spectators were doing “the wave.” I felt that this was wrong, so afterward l executed them, too. Then I asked their spouses to join me for dinner. Here’s my question: When giving a dinner at home, is it the host’s responsibility to serve healthful, low-calorie food?

Response: When you are serving dinner to guests, remember that they are essentially a captive food audience. So, yes, it is wrong to offer only rich, fatty food. Generally, a host should ask his guests about their dietary preferences in advance — something you did not have time to do — or he should offer healthy alternatives.

 

Dear Ethicist,
l am going to a country where it is legal and socially acceptable to eat people. I would like to eat my brother-in-law, who will be on the trip with me and is Canadian. l am from Iowa. Would this be ethical?
Response: I am sure cannibalism is illegal in Iowa, but I’m not sure about Canada. I would suggest you stop in Canada first, take your brother-in-law to a police station and eat his foot, and see if anyone objects. If not, you can feel assured that the complete ingestion of your brother-in-law in a permissive country is perfectly ethical.

(and my personal favorite)

Dear Ethicist,
I am a sixth-grade teacher and would like to hang the Ten Commandments on the wall of my classroom. However. I am told that this is illegal. I’m not sure whether I should honor the Great God Jehovah, Lord of the Universe, or the Constitution of the United States. What should l do?

Response: Easy. Change all the “Thou shalt nots” to “Don’ts.” Cut the one about coveting your neighbor’s wife (now regarded as “too little too late”). Change the word “Commandments” to “Suggestions.” You now have “The Nine Suggestions.” This should make everyone happy.