Doubt is Healthy

Remarkable how often I see items germane to my most recent discussions:

One of the more dramatic recent revelations was the letters of Mother Teresa. Apparently all those people who express shock that the dear woman had doubts never heard of St. Thomas. Rather than bring down her stock in my opinion these discoveries serve to further increase my regard for her. A bit of self-doubt and self-examination never hurt anyone. Some of the most frightening people in history lacked self-doubt—take Hitler for example. What makes these release of Mother Teresa’s private correspondence impress me is the fact that despite her private misgivings she soldiered on and achieved and inspired others to achieve great things. These disclosures serve to reveal her humanity and rather than denigrate her reputation reveal her as an ordinary mortal whose actions may be emulated by the rest of us. Taking the Saint off her pedestal doesn’t make her any less a saint, it just serves to increase our responsibility to emulate her service by removing the excuse that we couldn’t do what she did because she was in some way super-human.

To return to my own demons let’s get back to the discussion of poverty. Remember these are discussion points; not policies I necessarily advocate.

In the animal kingdom overpopulation results in starvation, sickness and death. For moral and philosophical reasons we choose to attempt to prevent this from happening among the human population. However even modern science has its limits in terms of how much food can be produced and if population growth continues unchecked a breaking point will be reached if it hasn’t already. When creatures live in too densely packed numbers environmental degradation is inevitable. As horrific as Ebola, Aids, and an impending Bird Flu epidemic, (caused by too intimate contact between fowl and humans), may be; they could also be seen as the environment’s natural means of dealing with over-population. Indeed a Pandemic of an entirely new strain of influenza has the potential to wipe out hundreds of millions of people world-wide and in particular the young and healthy individuals of child bearing age who will have the least built-up immunity through past exposure.

Eugenics has a chequered past however let’s play devil’s advocate. Without invoking the debate over Creationism vs. Evolutionary theory it is hard to deny that selective breeding when applied to the food we eat has made it possible to vastly increase agricultural productivity. When we start thinking of survival of the fittest in human terms moral, social, and ethical considerations come into play. We know that Nineteenth Century American Slave Owners practised it and what effect that practise had upon the modern crop of elite athletes is an extremely touchy subject. In the animal kingdom predators pick off the week and diseased and the females of the species select the males they breed with for their superior abilities as providers. It has been argued that modern medicine has allowed those with genetic weaknesses and abnormalities to survive to breeding age. While the compulsory sterilization of the mentally deficient is socially and morally repugnant; ultra-sound scans of the unborn has led parents to agonize over the termination of pregnancies. The same technology has led to less savoury decisions when male progeny are prized; and in vitro fertilization has led to sperm banking and attempts to breed “super-kids”. Put in simpler terms science has out-stripped theology, philosophy and law when it comes to forming policies to deal with it. Cloning, Stem-Cell research, and cryogenics are just a few examples.

To get back to issues of poverty it is a truism to say that no one should have to go hungry or die of thirst. How we deal with the political, societal, and environmental causes are quite another question. Tied up with this are issues of prejudice, ethnic cleansing, human greed, tribal infighting, and war. While I don’t advocate hand-ringing; I do claim that international geo-political action is necessary in many cases. Even in the case of purely natural disasters response times are pitiful. Take the American response to flooding in New Orleans. Or Canada’s Disaster Response Unit that takes six months to deploy if we can find someone to get it there as our military lacks the resources to do it themselves. Even when people are dying of hunger, thirst, and exposure parochial considerations rear their ugly heads. One can think of numerous examples in Africa, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the East Timorese; all of whom have claimed that central governments have acted to prevent aid in reaching them. When do humanitarian issues trump political sovereignty and who gets to make those decisions? The United Nations General Assembly moves to slowly to take effective action and the permanent members of the Security Council have been at loggerheads over the issue for decades.
What to do? We need education but even that has its limits. Teaching a man to fish may feed him for the future but if too many fish the resource will be depleted and collapse—just ask Newfoundlanders about that one. In the end it still boils down to over-population. Forcing people not to have more babies may be morally repugnant; but the alternative is providing effective education and means that will lead people to choose to make these decisions for themselves. Unfortunately this will take time; time we may not have. We are already confronted with the spectre of malaria borne infections and Aids; and the struggle to make economical drugs available to fight them. When the next influenza pandemic strikes the only effective treatments are going to be immunization and antiviral drugs. Vaccine production takes time and a viral agent to react against, deploying sufficient stores of that vaccine and waiting for resistance to become effective takes even longer; millions will die in the meantime. Antiviral drugs are extremely expensive and have a short shelf life; therefore only the rich and socially advantaged will be able to access them. Need I say more?
As my discussion serves to illustrate finding effective, morally supportable solutions takes a great deal of delving as well as soul searching. Throwing money at the problem simply to assuage our guilt is not guaranteed to provide the result we would want. There are hundreds of agencies out there that capitalize on our guilt but serve only to employ themselves while providing minimal aid to the needy. Finding volunteer organizations that provide practical assistance to relieve poverty takes some digging. We need to work at finding what the root causes of the problem are, decide what action needs to be taken to alleviate it, and work to influence governments worldwide to recognize that action needs to be taken. If this means shaming governments into taking effective action so be it. Sometimes it takes losing face to force governments to ‘face up’ to social issues. Finding the will to fight poverty at home as well as abroad would seem to be the first step; finding effective means to that end will take longer but come only after we’ve made that first step. That I have doubts that this is possible does not mean that I give up all hope that the goal may be attained.