I would agree that most people *want* to do good, the question is
whether they have a strong enough internal rudder to cut through the
opposing currents. That experiment in the 50s that made ordinary
people think that they were in charge of electrical shock
applications in a human behavior study (though they didn't realize
the study was of *them* and not the people they were "shocking")
shows that seemingly good and "moral" people are capable of immense
cruelty and "immoral" behavior. The purpose of that experiment was
to understand what might have happened in Nazi Germany, and I'm quite
convinced that the bulk of any population is susceptible to such
evilness not because the people are inherently "bad" or that they do
not desire "good," but because they are not strong enough in their
own self-awereness and moral grounding. It takes unusual strength of
character and courage to say "the buck stops here" in most of the
morally ambiguous environments that are most often found in daily
life. There are peer pressures, societal pressures, pressures from
your boss, etc. Many times, the pressure is to do what you know to
be *not* "good," or at least what you would know to be not good if
you were to really challenge yourself about it. We're also all well
equiped with the mechanism of denial which can make distinction of
"good" and "not good" (or even "evil") quite fuzzy. Decision making
is rarely black and white to the people who are in the middle of
them, and sometimes all it takes is a little denial and
self-deception to tip the balance. I may think that it's perfectly
clear that building a nuclear bomb or working in a weapons-grade
plutonium factory (or developing more agrochemicals) is patently
evil, but people who are actually in these professions may not see
the alternative as much better due to issues of professional
reputation and prestige (a PhD in nuclear physics, say), fear of
unemployment and poverty, fear of social isolation, and on and on. I
would venture to say that LOTS AND LOTS of people are employed doing
things they don't enjoy and don't feel right doing (and therefore
making a dubious moral decision becomes just one more bad decision)
and even more people don't even THINK about what their passions,
interests, beliefs, and moral boundaries are or where they lie. In
such an environment, it is not enough to say that chemists,
agronomists, politicians, nuclear physisits or whoever are
"Christian" (which is usually more a reference to church attendence
or a self-proclaimed lable which may not have much to do with a
persons committment to a Christ-like life) or that they desire to do
"good." That is just not enough. Much more is required. There may
indeed be people who think that they can do *good* through
agro-chemicals, GMOs, and the like, but I think that the criticism is
that not enough people in these industries are actually paying any
attention to the moral ramifications of their work. I'd say it's a
pretty valid criticism, since I would guess that most people at some
point make a trade off of scrutinizing their work for moral content
in favor of getting a paycheck which allows them to do all the other
things they desire to do in thier lives. Do you think that a burger
flipper at McFood questions the significance or morality of his job?
Does the architect who designs golf courses think about the effect
this has on chemical runoff? Does the real estate broker think about
what it means to sell a piece of wild or agricutural land for a strip
mall or a casino? Does the person selling the land? Does the
fisherman think about his participation in the overfishing of the
marine resources? Dale, why should the people you work with be any
different? The desire to do good and the committment to do it
even in the face of difficulty and adversity are quite different.
Anita
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