This essay is specific to the concept of a "National Institute of Global Bioethics" as an all-embracing, core component of American government. Within the context of American Democracy, such an institute could be as easily referred to as a "National Institute of Natural Philosophy and Ethics." Because there is only one people and only one earth, there is, in all final analyses, only one natural philosophy and ethics, properly evolving hand in hand.
The values beneath any National Institute would be the same reasoned values regardless of the sponsoring nation. In other words, any approach to a National Institute in the realm of global philosophy and ethics must be based upon the human values of natural philosophy and its political philosophy, democracy, unencumbered by the values of ancient western and eastern feudalism.
Based largely upon the human rights of nascent (before Rome) Christianity, these human values are derived logically by dialectic synthesis of complementary cultural opposites, i.e., the values of western religious systems and eastern ethical systems (Gerry Lower, "Jefferson's Eyes," Turtle Island Books, September, 2003 - www.jeffersonseyes.com/dialectics.html).
The purpose of any National Institute is properly the nourishment of human rights-based political philosophy through the dissemination of human knowledge in a natural philosophical (historical and evolutionary) context. These efforts in conceptual unification need be based entirely on the pan-cultural human knowledge of science, knowledge that is true for all people and accessible by all people.
The question at hand is this. Given the recent American affirmation of religious capitalism at the helm of the U.S. government, "Can Bioethics in the United States Rise above Politics?" (George Annas and Sherman Elias, "Politics, Morals and Embryos"Nature Vol. 431, September 2, 2004 - www.nature.com}.
The answer at hand is self-evident. With the political ascendency of religious capitalism in the U.S., no issue can be allowed to rise above religious justifications of political policy. Every issue in America must be politicized in the interest of maintaining Old Testament theological control over the answers to relevant "Why" questions, e.g., the "Why" of poverty, the "Why" of class warfare, the "Why" of political violence and preemptive war.
In contrast to natural philosophy and democracy, religious imperialism, colonialism and capitalism have never come to terms with the concepts of common human logic, honest empirical truth and shared human values. The denial of these facts of life is how religious capitalism came into dominion, i.e., by denigrating, dividing and conquering, and this is how it stays in dominion, i.e., by politicizing empirical reality with religious interpretations so as to remove it from honest discussion.
Under the dominion of "compassionate" conservatism, too many lines have been crossed in America, lines critical to the maintenance of a democracy (e.g., the lines between church and state and the lines between civilian and military authority). Once crossed, these lines cannot be re-established without an intellectual revolution similar in scope and consequence to the theological revolution inspiring the American Revolution of two centuries ago (Gerry Lower, "Jefferson's Eyes," Turtle Island Books, September, 2003 - www.jeffersonseyes.com/introduction.html).
Americans look upon their post-WWII religious embrace of capitalism (the pursuit of profits for profit's sake, aka greed) as part and parcel of their fiscal "success" story. That is true, of course, only insofar as the acquisition of money and power are seen as primary indicators of human "success." As Rifkin has pointed out, it has left a post-WWII America looking for belongings and a post-WWII Europe looking to belong.
Despite the massive accumulation of individual wealth in the U.S., however, the bulk of that fiscal "progress" has been made at the expense of family and community values, most notably the requirement of capitalism that families must have both parents to work at more than two jobs in order to survive, this being concurrent with capitalism's destruction of family farm and ranch economies. While Americans lament the meaninglessness of their over-commercialized Christmas celebrations, they remain in denial that capitalism might have had a role in this self-denigration.
In that sense, the entire post-WWII rise of religious capitalism in the U.S. has been a departure from the values of nascent Christianity and Jeffersonian democracy. As part of this cultural de-evolution, the rise of American bioethics in the U.S. has been a departure from the scientific ethics of Aldo Leopold with its solid and "in-your-face" theological content.
When Van Potter coined the term "Bioethics" and extended Leopold's "Land Ethic" into the medical realm ("Bioethics - Bridge to the Future," Prentice-Hall, 1970), it was in response to an already-emergent "crisis" in medical ethics. Despite the efforts of American bioethics in the 30 year interim, medicine in America has achieved a national posture that abides exclusionary medicine, over-priced services for the uninsured and profiteering in the clinic pharmacy. In America, medical priorities and approaches are established largely by the market place and the desperation that it nourishes.
Doing something about market place dominion will require that considerable philosophical maturation be brought to the current practice of bioethics, especially with regard to the relationships between bioethics and natural philosophical knowledge, specifically natural theological knowledge.
Van Potter knew full well that any intelligent ethics must be directly related to human knowledge, specifically the pan-cultural knowledge base of science which derives not only from answering What and How questions, but also Why questions. The failure of American bioethics to provide a natural philosophy embracing pan-cultural human knowledge, including the realm of "Why" and natural theology, has allowed the emergence of a shallowly-integrated bioethics, tangentially and intermittently-related to human knowledge. The pros and cons of stem cell research occupy the attention of American bioethicists. The ethics of an exclusionary medicine and the morality of preemptive war do not.
The virtual silence of the American bioethical community in evaluating the Bush administration's nation-bombing "war on terrorism" and its unprovoked war on Iraq is apparent to all. In making "public bioethics the servant of politics," Annas and Elias have correctly concluded that "it is the narrow focus of American bioethics, both geographically and philosophically, that permitted terrorism and war to be placed ethically 'off-limits.'" The roots of this failure, however, go back to the beginnings of Bioethics in America.
In the interest of a politically-acceptible survival under marketplace dominion, American bioethics has maintained an overtly and devoutly agnostic stance over the past 30 years. It is this atheological posture that has effectively removed bioethics from being able to pass judgment on religion-based political violence in the world. While this has allowed bioethics to survive an increasingly religious capitalism in America, it has also made American bioethics quite ineffectual in dealing with the theological issues beneath cultural crime, corruption and violence.
Bioethics is clearly in need of further extension, from its current politicized and capitalized realms into the larger realms of individual and social medicine, into the socioeconomic and political realms. Bioethics is in need of further conceptual extension, from the realm of Newton's process-oriented, deductive thought to the realm of Einstein's systems-oriented, reductive thought.
In making these extensions, one immediately encounters, at the bioethical core, Jeffersonian Democracy (as the political philosophy of science and natural philosophy). One also immediately encounters Jefferson's Deist theology, based in nascent Christian human rights and intentionally devoid of the values of Old Testament Roman religion that, by Jefferson's time, were seen to have inspired millennia of imperialism and centuries of colonialism.
Extending Bioethics into the realm of "Why" questions and natural theology would provide bioethics with the knowledge and arguments required to confront the causes of religion-based terrorism in the world. It would deliver Bioethics from its 30 year dalliance with agnosticism and return bioethics to its proper theological roots in Leopold's "Land Ethic."
Recognition of the clear distinction between the values of nascent Christianity and the values of Old Testament Roman religion was the genius of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Recognition that the King James Version of western scriptures exists in open promotion of mutually-exclusive value systems and moralities was the genius of the their Declaration.
This recognition cannot come from within the allowable conceptual frameworks of contemporary American bioethics. It can only come from within the larger and more highly-integrated frameworks of postmodern natural philosophy.
Bioethics and Global Bioethics were birthed in America's heartland, in Wisconsin, where there is a tradition of natural ethics in the work of John Muir and Aldo Leopold and Van Potter. It is really no one's obligation but that of the American bioethical community to realign itself with the natural philosophy it needs to become whole and one with human knowledge. In doing so, it will establish itself as the means to a National Institute of Knowledgeable Ethics.
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Dear Global Bioethics Seminar Participants and Friends,
Maggie Schneider & Olga Trubetskoy have recently brought a core issue to the front in pointing out the now recognized failure of the American bioethical community to adequately address major ethical issues in America and the larger world (letter of November 2, 2004). These shortcomings include the failure to respond to religion-based political violence (aka terrorism), the failure to respond to the politicization of American reality, and the failure to respond to America's recent departures from the values of Democracy.
The subject line of Maggie and Olga's email communique was filled with the provocative title, "Towards a National Institute of Global Bioethics" and they proceeded to call for the creation of a National Institute within the Academy of Sciences, independent and de-linked from political ideologies (excepting, of course, the self-correcting, evolutionary political philosophy of Democracy itself).
Having known Van Potter for over 40 years as my mentor and friend, I could not help but respond to Maggie and Olga in the interest of Van Potter's many gifts to those with an interest in ethics on the global scale and those with an interest in world peace. The idea of a National Institute is, of course, more than timely and entirely relevant to the functioning of an American democracy based (originally) in nascent (before Rome) Christian human rights and the values of science and natural philosophy, e.g., honesty, truth, integrity, freedom and fairness. Anything less is in the direction of what we already endure, i.e., dishonesty in the name of religious despotism.
It is critically important that Americans awaken to the historical and evolutionary significance of their current position in the world. Regardless of the immediate outcome of efforts to promote a National Institute of Global Bioethics, the effort will have been more than worth it. Of that much, we can all be certain. It will help establish a precedent for having something other than a greed-driven marketplace define American socioeconomics. The marketplace is, after all, utterly mindless in every way that matters. Of that much, we can all be certain as well. In a democracy, the people properly define and control the marketplace. Otherwise they are defined and controlled.
Like his predecessors in "The Wisconsin Tradition" of natural ethics (Muir and Leopold), Van Potter was not atheological. He just had his own theology, as ought we all, a theology that embraces all of us. Van was a realist, like Jefferson, a spiritual man without faith in supernaturalism and superstition but with immense faith in the human mind and in humankind. I can't imagine Van being afraid of nonsense, religious or otherwise. Neither ought any of us be afraid of going for the honest human truth in our hopes to tip the world right side up. It must happen and will happen. As we stand on the edge of the abyss, we stand on the threshold of a dream.
Blue skies to all,
Dr. Gerry Lower
421 Old Cemetery Road, PO Box 906
Keystone, South Dakota 57751
(605) 666-4336
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