The good son

The moment the WHO declared the novel coronavirus a pandemic, I started worrying about India.  About my people in India.  About my parents.

What if something happened and I cannot go for months?

A year has passed.  The question remains.

As I noted in this post a few days ago, I am not the only one in the diaspora who is worried about these issues.  It is a surreal situation.

One person writes about this moral dilemma in her (his?) question to to the the NY Times ethics columnist, Kwame Appiah.  She writes about her husband who "is adamant that if his parents or sister become ill (with Covid or anything else), he will return to India to be with them."

She is, naturally, worried about her husband's stance.

In addition, if my husband got sick in India, I doubt he would be able to count on any medical care, and may be unable to return to the United States for many weeks, or even months, if the travel ban goes through and continues. I feel this risk is real, even though my husband is a U.S. citizen. The only things we have going for us are that we are both vaccinated and that we have a place in our home where he would be able to quarantine once he returns.

I have told him that if he goes, I will ready myself for the very real possibility that he may never return. Sadly, I do not think I am being irrational in thinking this.

She requests Appiah to "suggest a few things that both of us should consider so that we can make this decision together, carefully weighing and preparing for all the risks in the calmest state possible."

Before reading Appiah's response, or my excerpts below, think about what you would advise that woman.  Exercise your brain and mind on this ethical issue, which is real and not a hypothetical scenario.

Appiah being Appiah (there are other posts like this one in which I quote his wise words) he carefully weighs the issues and provides a reassuring response.  I am not going to excerpt anything from there; I encourage you to read it in full.

Appiah concludes with this:

[Relationships] have an ethics of their own, which isn’t reducible to a set of rational assessments. Love must be responsive to unreason. Your husband should take account of your own fears and needs, then, just as you should take account of his. In the end, however, the wisdom of preparing for the worst has its limits when — all things considered — it keeps us from doing what’s best.

Philosophy is for losers!

I shared with a few colleagues the higher-education related ethical issue that K.A. Appiah discusses in his NY Times column.

In his reply, one colleague wrote:

I am exceptionally pleased to discover that "The Ethicist" for the New York Times is finally employing an actual ethicist!

For almost three years, Appiah has been doing a phenomenal job discussing real-life ethical issues that we lesser mortals are often confused about.

There is a popular perception that philosophers tell us what to think.  If only!  Martha Nussbaum addresses this, too, when she says "I don’t like telling other people what to do."

Nussbaum, who is one of the sharpest intellectuals in my life, helps me out about my anti-trump emotions:

I think that the president has deliberately set out to feed fear of immigrants, racial minorities and of Islam and Muslims. These are ignoble fears, because they target large groups of people for sweeping condemnation without asking precisely who we are talking about and what the real issue is. They feed our ugliest tendencies—to scapegoat, to demonize, rather than to solve the real problem or even to ask what it is.

It is not that other politicians do not tap into our emotions.  They do.

The question is not whether politicians should appeal to emotions, but which emotions, and when, and in connection with which arguments. During the New Deal, FDR needed to convince Americans to accept a group of radical new proposals. He thought long and hard about how he could move voters to endorse the programs of the New Deal. We have Social Security because of the crafty ways in which FDR appealed to emotions. Similarly, we made much of our progress in civil rights through the ability of Dr. King to summon up positive emotions of hope and love in grim times. So it seems to me wrong-headed for liberals to say that we should not appeal to emotions. Imagine if Dr. King had spoken in the style of John Stuart Mill or John Rawls. He would have failed in the job he undertook.

I don't know how Nussbaum calmly states all those without getting emotional about trump!  Oh well ... but then it makes me feel good that even Appiah has taken to Twitter to vent about trump!

With Appiah and Nussbaum talking philosophy, it does not take much for any sensible person to understand the importance of philosophy.  If it were up to me, I would even make Appiah's columns a required reading for undergraduates.  But then, yes, there are all those people in the real world who believe that philosophy courses should not be required.  If people want to study philosophy, they should do that on their own dime.  Philosophy has no use.  We need welders, not philosophers!

I wonder when we will get out of this black hole!