On Reading Chris Hedges

I have been reading Chris Hedges' book The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress. In a long introduction Hedges delivers an impassioned (I am tempted to say “agonized”) attack on the current journalistic delusion of “balanced” or “objective” reporting and the destruction it has wrought on the institution deemed so valuable it received special protection in our Constitution. In this denunciation it becomes quite clear why he left the New York Times. He candidly admits that journalism is a moral undertaking for him. This situation of a moral person trying to function effectively in a large and very complex world, increasingly run on the only common currency it has been able to find, i.e. money, is a paradigm for the current state of mankind.

This raises the question of whether social morality is limited by the size of the society and hence can we expect to create a global society accepting a common moral system.

One way that humans have coped with the dilemma of moral sentiments in a complex and large society is to make a virtue of cosmopolitanism, which allows a society to continue a kind of cultural identity by downgrading what it considers moral parochialism. The cosmopolitanism of large cities succeeds by either disregarding the moral sentiments of smaller groups or by a courteous bow of recognition without any hint of belief.

However, cosmopolitanism requires a degree of cultural sophistication not commonly available. It is also vulnerable to the passions aroused by that kind of morality commonly found in small groups usually raising some aspect of cultural tradition to a high level of immediate moral intensity. You may recall how the Equal Rights Amendment had all but passed both houses of Congress until Phyllis Schlafly and a small group of right wing anti-feminists mounted an impassioned attack on it. All that is needed is to remind a society of some ancient relevance and harp on it until the old sentiments are revived.

One of the things most obvious about Hedges' moral sentiments is that they are concerned with social injustice in many of its ramifications. But social injustice arises as an issue between human beings. What about perilous issues that confront mankind as a whole such as global warming? My reading of Hedges, which is not encyclopedic, is that he is less morally outraged with these issues, catastrophic though they may be. He has an excellent article in this book on human overpopulation,which has the potential to be lethal to our species sooner rather than later. However, the outrage that would call for mass protests, etc. is not there. My point is not that Hedges is falling short in any unique fashion, but, like the rest of us, finds it difficult to make these large issues affecting human survival a source of moral outrage commensurate to what we bring to, say, the gross inequality of resource access taking place on our planet. In this, even though he has a more developed moral sensibility than most, he is like most of mankind. Why, for instance, has not global warming and its increasingly adverse impact on human food and water supply not been made a moral focus? Where are the massive protests elicited by unemployment or issues of war and peace? Chris has an excellent article on overpopulation in this book, but makes no call for street protests even though he sees the end of the human species if this issue is not dealt with promptly. A UNICEF report that can be found at http://library.thinkquest.org/C002291/high/present/stats.htm?tql-iframe says that “Every year 15 million children die of hunger. Where is the moral outrage at food-reducing global warming or religion-motivated overpopulation? Our moral sentiments born in tribal societies remain egregiously inadequate in the world mankind now inhabits. A moral reach born in small groups has apparently reached its limits and a revaluation of moral values is called for which should be focused on humanity itself and its survival. A major effort at consciousness-raising is required. Once again, progressives are not devoid of opportunity to be of substantial service to human well being and Chris Heges can convert some of his justified moral outrage to making these issues of human survival the moral concerns they should be.

Bob Newhard