Scientism is a world view that promotes natural science as the only legitimate authority over all other interpretations of life. If it can't be explained in naturalistic terms that make sense within the materialist frame within which science operates, there is no plausible or legitimate explanation. Personalism (see also here) affirms the absolute value, dignity and freedom of every human person. And a corollary is that the weakest and most vulnerable need the protection of the stronger.
In American society the first is dominant, but it operates in a kind of tension with the second. "No man left behind" is a personalist motto used in the military and echoed in the Bush administration's education policy. These slogans suggest that the strong have a profound responsibility toward those who are weak or hurt, and almost all Americans would affirm the ideal. If Americans were completely utilitarian in their thinking, these slogans would have no bite--Americans would rationally take for granted that the weak and wounded should be left to die so as not to burden those who are strong and healthy. If someone were to be completely rational in a utilitarian mindset, it would make no sense to risk the lives of the strong to save the lives of the weak. Some people in fact think in these utilitarian rationalist terms, but normal people think of them as morally retarded.
Scientism, insofar as it justifies itself in humanistic terms, relies on utilitarian logic. It propounds to be an agent of progress in developing technologies that promote the material convenience and happiness of human beings and defines happiness as the diminution of pain and the maximization of pleasure. This fundamental frame of mind provides the foundation for consumer capitalism and the technological innovations it finances. And it is fundamental to the worldview of all Americans who live and work in its mainstream culture. It promotes the kind of soft nihilism that was lampooned in film WALL-E, which takes this kind of scientistic consumerism to its logical conclusion in the depiction of life on the starliner space ships. I see the film an attempt to dramatize in popular terms the conflict between Scientism and Personalism. The film would have no dramatic heft if viewers didn't feel the tension between these competing frames of mind, even if most viewers have no idea what the terms scientism and personalism mean.
I don't know if there is any other place in contemporary experience where the scientistic and personalist paradigms come into more intense conflict than in the debate over abortion and stem-cell research. Both abortion and stem-cell research make sense in terms of fostering humanistic objectives in the scientistic consumerist frame of mind. The status of the human fetus in this framework is an abstraction most people have no feelings about--it's just a cell mass whose value lies primarily in its social utility in promoting scientific progress toward cures for diseases like Parkinson's. The human fetus has no value as an end in itself; it is valuable only as a means to other ends. And if a part of some people suspects the fetus is more than that, they can easily suppress the discomfort it causes, especially if they and their friends are Liberals or think of themselves as feminists. In my opinion, Liberals create the same kind of self-reinforcing bubble mentality about abortion that Christian fundamentalists create about evolution. There's evidence they don't want to deal with, so they just filter it out or find ways to minimize its importance.
The fact is that most people have opinions about abortion and stem-cell research that are a lot like their political and religious opinions, more about tribal groupthink than grounded in experience or clear thinking. And it remains on that level until a reality punches them in the face or otherwise challenges their unconsciously assimilated assumptions. Liberals are conservatives who haven't been mugged. Conservatives are liberals who haven't lost their jobs. There are lots of Pro-Lifer's who become Pro-Choicers when faced with an unwanted pregnancy, and, it's interesting to point out there are many Pro-Choicers who become Pro-Lifers when the human fetus becomes more than a cell mass.
Ross Douthat excerpts some grafs from a 2006 Mother Jones article about the dilemma parents face regarding the "extra" embryos produced by in vitro fertilization. I was struck by how this conflict between personalism and scientism becomes very dramatic: Is the fetus a life with whom I have a deep personal connection, or is it just a cell mass? If it is a life, can I just "leave it behind"?
For virtually all patients, he found, the disposition decision was torturous, the end result unpredictable. "Nothing feels right," he reported patients telling him. "They literally don't know what the right, the good, the moral thing is." In the fluid process of making a decision--any decision--some try to talk themselves into a clinical detachment. "Little lives, that's how I thought about them," said one woman. "But you have to switch gears and think, 'They're not lives, they're cells. They're science.' That's kind of what I had to switch to." Others were not able to make that switch, thinking of their embryos as almost sentient. "My husband talked about donating them to research, but there is some concern that this would not be a peaceful way to go," said one woman. Another said, "You start saying to yourself, 'Every one of these is potentially a life.'"
... Of the 58 couples Nachtigall and his group interviewed, the average couple had seven frozen embryos in storage. The average embryo had been in storage for four years. Even after that much time had elapsed, 72 percent had not decided what to do, and a number echoed the words of one patient: "We can't talk about it." The embryos keep alive the question of whether to have more children, a topic on which many spouses disagree. "I still have six in the bank," said one woman, who had not given up the idea of bearing them. "They call to me. I hate to talk about it. But they call to me."
I have come to think of attitudes toward abortion as a litmus test for cultural health of a society in its fight against techno-soullessness. It's an issue that dramatizes the conflict between consumerist expediency and the personalist loyalty of "no man left behind" in a way that cuts to the heart of the matter. Abortion is a technological solution to a deeply human problem--and from where I stand, its widespread acceptance is a win for the machine and our dehumanization.
I'm not concerned here with talking about how the issue should be litigated, but more about what our non-chalant consumerist/utilitariaan framing of the status of the human fetus says about us as a society. Our perception is clouded by the tribal virulence of the culture wars and whose side you're on in that catfight, but at some point we have to come to our senses about this issue. And my hope would be that a Personalist Humanist case against abortion can emerge to replace the traditionalist case, which is too freighted with baggage from these toxic, counterproductive culture wars. I believe that as long as the arguments against abortion remain primarily in the traditionalist frame, there is little hope for a change of attitude about it. They need instead to be framed in postmodern existentialist personalist argument that convinces elite thinking and then filters down into the broader culture. The heart of this argument lies in its alliance with those groups within the culture who see the central cultural struggle as a fight against the mechanization of the human, which is what scientistic humanism has always been about.
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Digby said yesterday:
I'm glad Digby is good with Dionne's suggestion, but I question whether pro-choice people have always been, as she says, "for those things". Is NARAL, which operates completely within the scientistic consumer choice frame, committed to reducing abortions, and is it a value in the scientistic culture of physicians in your typical obstetrics practice? In the early stages of my wife's pregnancy she had a sitdown with the doctor who told her about a possible complication in the pregnancy and that she should seriously consider aborting. It was done with professional punctilio from within the scientistic frame, and it was shocking to me how banal and cold-blooded it was. She wasn't talking about a life, nor did she have any sense for it as a tragic choice; she was talking about cells composing an object: This is your choice as a consumer--do you want to risk having a defective product? How soul numb she must have become to talk in the way she did. How soul numb are the rest of us who accept such talk as normal?
I'm not an anti-abortion activist in the sense that I think legislation is the short-term solution. I think this is a cultural task, not a political taks, and that its association with either party would be counterproductive. So I'm not going to rail against the stupidity and tragedy of Roe, and the last thing I want to do is support the appointment of right-wing judges like Scalia and Alito in the hopes of getting Roe overturned. Our problems are more fundamental, and they transcend the left/right divide that paralyzes us.
The more fundamental task as I see it is to fight the scientistic-consumerist mentality that is so "whatever" about this issue, that makes something so barbaric so banal. I think abortion and the kinds of dilemmas that stem-cell research present are complex and hard for a consumerist society to think about--the thinking process shorts out and people just revert to group allegiances. I would like to see as the long-range goal a shift so that the implicit personalism embedded in American culture and values becomes more explicit and gradually becomes the dominant frame in a way that would subordinate the agendas of science and technology to personalist ends. So the more fundamental task is to change that attitude and the underlying thinking, to promote a robust personalist alternative to scientistic consumerism, and the legislative aspect will take care of itself.