Are We Really More Humane Than Others?
In Response to some of things my friends have posted on this site
Discussions on America’s role in the world often turn on twin assumptions that if we don’t act, someone else will, and they will make things worse.
Such assumptions rest on a further belief—the superiority of our methods and motives in using power, often military, to force people to comply with our plans for their lives.
I’ve been trying to wrap my mind around this in a more general sense, leaving specific examples for more detailed analysis.
Our government, in part at least, represents the interests of our economic elites. (They provide most of the campaign money for the people who run in our elections.)
I think we can assume that as flawed humans their motives are mixed as they make and implement decisions that affect the lives of people in far corners of the world.
What’s best for America? What’s best for the planet? What’s best for their own and their allies’ economic interests? What’s best for their own wellbeing and careers?
Each motive tends to overlap with others, but not withstanding some nuanced differences, it is hard for me to believe that the governing elites of other nations are, or would be, different. People everywhere are much the same when they are tested in action. There are a lot of reasons why we often talk as if Americans are better than other peoples—in their moral vision and wisdom (know-how). But a neutral reading of history doesn’t support this ideal.
I’m not attacking the intelligence or integrity of those who believe in such an “American Exceptionalism,” not least because I have probably sounded this way myself. Nevertheless, let’s acknowledge that it is largely a myth. (There are extreme cases and the Taliban are perhaps such an example. At least their likelihood to stay in power for any length of time and their actual role in governing a land of war lords would require further analysis.)
Perhaps there is another way in which we can justify military interventions? While accepting that we are no more altruistic than others, is it possible that we might have less reason to exploit those that we control? Let’s say that county X has a rare mineral and we have less need for it, or have more alternative sources, than other States. Might we not, therefore, be less ruthless in obtaining it? Or not? Perhaps this is too simplistic an example?
Or perhaps our occupying forces will be more disciplined and treat those that they control with more decency. Perhaps, but again history doesn’t come to our aid.
Or are we likely to be more considerate of traditional beliefs, less demanding that an occupied people (because this is what we are talking about –boots on the ground) accept our values and serve our God(s)? Not, I imagine, if you accept the fact that our Gods are secular values offered to others with a good deal of old fashioned religious zeal.
On the whole, our puppet regimes have been as corrupt and self-serving as any other. Puppet regimes? In those states where we support governments that share our global economic and security objectives, leaders receive both formal and informal assistance to retain power.
Their regimes become what social scientists call rentier states, societies where the government receives sufficient outside financing that it can exist without dependence upon internal financial support, i.e. without a genuine democratic culture.
Be critical, therefore, of the argument that our military or diplomatic incursions are “rescues” from worse alternatives.
RE: "...not withstanding some nuanced differences, it is hard for me to believe that the governing elites of other nations are, or would be, different. People everywhere are much the same when they are tested in action."
There are two logically unrelated propositions here. The first might be true while the second is false, and vice versa. The first statement is an empirical claim that strikes me as prima facie false. Surely, there is a stark difference between the governing elites of, say, Germany, and Iran.
I take the second thesis to be that there is some sort of universal human nature. This is a very old philosophical chestnut, of course. I don't propose to know the answer, but the evidence isn't overwhelming for a universal human nature that is indifferent to individual survival. So, I doubt that there is much use in speculating about a universal human nature that goes beyond the capacity for reason, sensitivity to pain and pleasure, a fear of death, reproductive instincts, and the desire to protect those who are close to us. There are more specific features such as compassion, anger, malice, envy, respect, contempt, love, hatred, etc. All of these are highly variable from person to person and susceptible to modification by internal and external causes.
This extreme malleability of basic features of human nature is likely the basis for Hume's famous observation that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave to the passions." Hume's natural virtues such as courage, kindness, and benevolence are natural in the sense that we all have the capacity for them, but also control over whether we choose to develop them.
So, not even having sympathy for the suffering of others is universally distributed, although Hume clearly believed that most people do in fact have sympathy for others. But, the passions can incorporate one another:
Since passions, however independent, are naturally transfus'd into each other, if they are both present at the same time; it follows, that when good or evil is plac'd in such a situation, as to cause any particular emotion, beside its direct passion of desire or aversion, that latter passion must acquire new force and violence. This happens, among other cases, whenever any object excites contrary passions. (A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part III, Section IV)
I argue that some features of human nature--universal or not; malleable or not--are worth promoting and some are not. Some are contrary to human flourishing and some advance human flourishing. Any nation that would advocate indifference to another nation that attacks fundamental conditions of human flourishing would be morally untethered and a truly failed state.