Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Kwame Anthony Appiah: How Moral Revolutions Happen

And so tonight. I am honored to introduce henry louis gates jr. Mr gates is a prominent literary critic scholar and author of many titles including colored people a memoir. In search of our roots one thousand next ordinary african americans reclaim their past. And the trial of phillis wheatley. Mr gates is the recipient of numerous awards. Was named him a macarthur fellow in one thousand nine hundred one was the first african-american to receive the andrea pia mellon foundation fellowship. And most importantly as one of our most beloved customers. We're thrilled. We're thrilled to have him with his evenings we please join me in welcoming henry louis gates jr. Thank you thank you so much thanks to all of you for coming out this evening to this. My favorite bookstore. In the whole wide world give it up for her book store in the great place. Now it's my pleasure to introduce kwame anthony appiah. Kwame anthony appiah is approached with the rarest combination of rigor and humanity. The philosophy of mind in language. African and african-american intellectual history and political philosophy. Apia.

As a thinker. And a writer. Is urbane. And as warm as reflective and. As it's accessible. As challenging. And as generous as he is as a friend. A premier scholar of contemporary philosophical thought. His work crosses disciplines. As it crosses. National boundaries. The honor code brings obvious concerns to the question of how moral progress happens. He looks at successful campaigns against practices. Now considered abhorrent. Foot binding. In china for example or duels. In aristocratic britain. And most powerfully for me. Slavery. In the british empire. And the united states and through intricate and illuminating inquiry. He helped. To understand the role that the appeal to honor. Plays in what he rightly calls. Moral revolution. The honor code has received some high praise for both reviewers and also from some giants.

In the field of moral inquiry. Whom i'll get to momentarily. Paul berman of slate. Wrote in a review and i quote that. Reading the honor code is like attending a lecture by lucid. And a bulent professor who chuckles over his colorful anecdotes. But it's all typically intent on making you think for yourself. Dwight garner in the new york times. Celebrated his quote. Malcolm gladwell like balance between. Argument and storytelling. In which he quote. Stirs in spoonfuls of narrative honey. To help his medicinal tea go down. Matthew yglesias. On think progress dot com. Calls the book quote. Monstrously interesting. And the exact reverse. Of all the stereotypes. Of academic overspecialized ation. And who cares i'm like that. So i'm hoping this my mother was english. And when people say nice things about you when you're english. You feel

embarrassed. But i'm half conahan. And then people say nice things about. About you when you're gone and you thank them. So i think i'll focus on that. Thank you very much and. That's good said i was going to resign the book and i'm happy to read from the book if you like but i thought i'd just talk about his little bit. And then this by the end of my talk you actually want me to read from it i will but i think by then you'll want to ask questions. So we'll see. Thank you very much for coming. So one way to sort of explain a book is to think about the that sort of intersections of questions that generated it so let me just say a little bit about. Two strands of thought that led me to the work in this book. One was. I was thinking about. Nasm which as skip said i wrote a book about. Some years ago and. I was looking for examples of conversation across society is about moral questions. And one of the most famous such conversations. Was the

dialogue between. Largely evangelical christian missionaries. Elite women who were wives of european and american businessmen and chinese intellectuals in china. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century about. Foot binding of girls in china. So i read that. Read some of the literature on that and regularly in that literature people say that the reason that the chinese mandarins the literati. Gave up. Foot binding was because it was a stain on the national honor of china. Now i don't know about you but i can think of a lot of. Better reasons for not causing intense pain to little girls. Which is what. Mining involves. It involves finding the fate of these girls at the age of two or three so tight that they're going to weep. And so tight that they may develop abscesses. They may in fact develop gangrene. And so tight that in the end. In the ideal case on this system. The foot is three inches long. In the adult woman. And then wrapped in a beautiful silk shoes which she's made herself usually.

So anyway i thought there are lots of reasons to not to do it and honestly michel we had one. I couldn't figure. Fit this into the book and cause a poem by put in the back of my mind to think about later. Then our alameda cambridge university the history department for some reason invited me to give some lectures. You know there was very kind of. And i thought well this is the right. Question so i've got to think about. This is my moment to think about this thing that i put aside. And in figuring out how to think about it it occurred to me that when i had been an undergraduate. Philosophy student. I had learned a lot about thinking about how human knowledge works. By. Reading the work of the great philosopher of science historian of sand. Thomas kuhn which was about scientific revolutions. So scientific and there are other people full fair robyn. From austria and. Some of the great french. Students and scientific revolution. Had i thought. Written things that helped us to understand. Knowledge. By studying revolutions and it occurred to me that. There are moral revolutions. So

maybe just asserted revolutions that help us to understand something important about non. Moral knowledge. Maybe moral revolutions would help us understand something about moral life. Now. So those two thoughts come together and i say i'm going to do historical project is going to be focused on the revolutions like the revolution. That ended foot binding and. It looks like the puzzling thing about binding. To me was this question of on it. So i need to understand on a. Need to and. I think of myself as a moderately honorable person. When i went to college my father said to me looked up over his glasses smoking a cigarette which he always had in his now. Reading the morning newspaper. A cup of tea beside him on the bed. He looked out there with glasses and he said to me. Remember that the family honor. When you go to university. It was kindly meant. But it was pretty scary thing to say. So i was brought up to think that there was. There was not just my own there but a family on a to bear.

So i feel i had some sense of it but i didn't feel i really understood the kind of logic of honor in the way to understand it i thought especially if i'm beginning to talked to historians. Is to examine the historical to some some historical episode in the obvious one to start one where there is a clear involvement of on or. And where the honor involved is a relatively parodic matic form of honor is dealing. And that was what led me then. To begin. Inspired by these two are related thoughts. To think about. Dual and. How to think about the deal well i happened upon a particular duel which happened in eight hundred twenty nine. Which struck me as absolutely amazing. Absolutely fascinating as fascinating as the thought that. On i might have ended up buying. It was a duel between the prime minister of england. The duke of wellington the picture of waterloo. And a man with the. Marvelous english name.

Finch hatton his name family name was. And his name and he but his style was. Earl of winchell c. and nottingham. I think he was the tenth all of which will see which will see in the fifteenth of nottingham or something like that. Anyway. So these two guys. Both obviously members of the house of lords. The duke of wellington at the time as prime minister of england. These two guys for a famous deal. What was it about. In one sense my answer that is. I've no idea. I mean i've read a great deal about it. I know what they said. But in some sense dueling makes no sense to us anymore so i can tell you something that makes. Makes you think ok that was a reasonable thing to do. But here's what they said it was about. There was a debate going on in parliament. About whether catholics should be given the vote to call catholic emancipation. Very important for britain not so much because of catholic that is in england. Because the majority the virgin islands are catholic and after and at that point. Alan was on the verge of civil war. And the british had to figure out something to do about it. That wellington by the way

was born in ireland. And the other when jesse said it up in a letter to the newspaper. That the duke of wellington. Who was in favor of catholic emancipation even though he was a devout anglican and had been opposed to catholic emancipation in the past the duke of wellington who is now prime minister was in favor of it was leading the charge to have it happen. And had made a very good speech about it in the house of lords was. Was covering up. His crypto papers sympathies. The fact that he was secretly. A sympathizer with rome. And that the. The way he was covering this up was by pretending to support the foundation of king's college london. Which was founded as a in an anglican university. In competition with the secular university london university which had just been founded a little while earlier. Right. To do violent and the other going to see a both involved in setting up this university. It is going to help you understand the deal i don't know. They're both involved in setting up. Universities. When chelsea accuses wellington of concealing his paper sympathies and. Wellington is naturally speaking.

A poor. First of all because he's a lot of the church of england. And agreeing to kalak emancipation was a big deal for him it was hard for him to accept that catholics should be allowed to vote. And he was only in favor of it because that was the alternative the civil war in ireland. Which was where he was born. So anyway. So he says to the liberal see this is. You have to apologize. You publish this accusation and. weldments i'm sorry i can't. And so well when jesse calls his second. Who he was a very very distinguished soldier also he lost his arm the few days before waterloo so he didn't actually fight at waterloo. But he went on to be commander in chief. His second of the british forces in the crimean war. And was also viceroy of india later. Very distinguished englishman he asked him to go and talk to when you'll see second and they arrange this deal. And they had that he will. What happens in the dual. Lot of. Comical things. But one of them is by the way the fact is that from our point of view duels always look ridiculous and funny so even though this was serious and this was an episode in

which the prime minister of england could have been shot in the middle of a constitutional crisis. Nevertheless it looks ridiculous to us. I think for good reasons. So they have this fight. When she'll say as the. Wellington that's the person whose challenge. First he fires and this is. This is not surprising because the wellington was one of the great. Soldiers of his time he was a famously bad shot so nobody would've expected him to hit anybody. But the. What's really amazing is what happens next. It's now when traill sees turn. What does he do. Once the gun in the air and fires in the air. This is the man who didn't have to have this deal. Right. Why does he fire in the air. We don't know that. Soon as he started very second takes an apology at his pocket and says iraq you know can i will apologize. Why. Well. Here's the way to reconstruct it when chelsea felt that once the duke of wellington asked him to apologize in the context where he had appointed a second.

People could have thought that winchell see was not fighting because he was afraid of the deal. So he had to have the duel and be shot at in order then to be able to apologize. Ok now this may make sense to you but it doesn't make much sense to me. And it's a but it certainly makes sense to them that was how they're things. By the way. Finn chatter in the early winter saying nothing and he's the grandfather of the guy that robert redford plays an out of africa. Dentist in chatham. So. So what. Now. So we can you can actually work you like about exactly what happened in this case but. Here's what i learned and i'm so glad i started with this case here's what i learned about honor. From thinking about this case. You know you may not know this but. Do you a link was illegal in england. From the time of queen elizabeth the first. It was against the common law or even that if you read blackstone he says. Do you willing. If you kill someone in a duel it's just ordinary murder. It's a capital crime.

So it's illegal. It's an question. Dueling was condemned by the christian church in the ninth century. After the nineteenth. The night. And that condemned action was repeated. At the council of trent at the end of the reformation and was a commonplace of. Of the protestant churches when they came into being as well as. Of the catholic church. No christian thought that there was every christian thought there was a serious christian argument against the ruling why. Because. For dealing to make sense. There has to be some connection between who's right and who wins. And the only person who can make that connection. To him and if you use the duel to force him to make his choice. You are tempting god and not tempting god it's something that. Christ himself explicitly said we must do. Remember he's on the temple. And he's asked the throne south down so that the engines will lift him up. And he said no the shalt not tempt the lord thy

god so it's tempting god and is therefore unacceptable for this perfectly good christian and by the way also jewish reason. So it's unchristian. It's illegal. It's plainly immoral. Plainly immoral because. One reason for having a deal. Is because somebody has accused you of being dishonest. Now falsely accusing you of being dishonest is bad. But it's not a capital offense. Morality does not think the appropriate punishment for lying about somebody is to his death. So it's illegal. It's un-christian it's immoral. And as i've said. It's also crazy. Because there's no connection between who wins and who is right as i said god isn't going to make it happen. You can try to tempt god it is not going to succumb. So you have this practice which is irrational. Unchristian. Illegal and immoral. And yet for three hundred years. Any gentleman in england who was john's challenge to do. Said yes. The beginnings of resistance happened in the late eighteenth century when people actually like wilberforce whom we know.

For another reason. The new surge of a new kind of. Morality evangelical christian morality in england. Wilberforce wouldn't accepted it he was a gentleman. He was entitle to. Fighters. But he would have he would have denied and he was very cross with his friends and they accepted that he thought it was wrong for the christian reason. And so he thought that was a good enough reason not to do it but all these other people said well i know it's not christian but. I have to defend my honor. So what do you learn. The really important. First lesson of the deal is that people on i will make people do things that are illegal immoral. And christian and jewish and. Are crazy. That makes sense on the part of your reason. And nevertheless they'll do it. That's a very important lesson about our it's a very powerful. Discovery i think. For me because i hadn't thought about it before that this is this isn't about this suddenly learned is that. So the duke of wellington fights his fight nine hundred thirty nine. In eight hundred fifty.

If you challenge somebody to a duel in england people laugh. It's ridiculous. In twenty years and this is when i talk about moral revolutions it goes from being something that gentleman. Can probably should do. To something that is not just now recognised to be wrong. It's recognised to be a source of dishonor. Goes from being the honorable thing to do. To being the ridiculous thing to do. There's nothing more or dishonorable than being ridiculous. Right so it goes from an honorable thing to a ridiculous thing. Just like in twenty years. Why it's a complicated story with a book but that a lot of it has to do. But. But a great deal of it has to do with the fact that it was an heiress to graphic practice and england is democratizing. And it only works to sustain your honor. If only eristic rats do it. If anybody can do it then it doesn't distinguish you from him and. One of the things that happens in the early nineteenth century is that. What francis bacon three

hundred years ago called. Earlier. At called. In predicting this. Francis bacon project. He said. Once. Butchers and something like barber than butchers and other rude mechanicals he said. Remember that's what shakespeare calls the characters and. In midsummer night's dream bottom of his friends the written account of course. Bacon says. Already three hundred years before it comes to an end. Once. Regular people start doing it it won't work any more to do the thing that it doesn't come to an end now he said he thought it was going to happen a good deal sooner than have given i think century. But it did happen and that's one of the things that happened. Couldn't do its job any more but another thing was a say this is not is democratising. These are socratic privileges of becoming not just because it is wrong but ridiculous. And and. And so. As i say by a hundred fifty. You. You get mocked in the london times if you do.

And of course by the end of the nineteenth century. There's a wonderful line in one of even wars novels officers and gentlemen wear a sort of an english officer from a sort of scottish background is asked what he would do if he would challenge to a deal and he gives a one word one word sentence answer. He says. The laugh. All right. So the story teaches another thing. Which is that if honor is reformed. As it was. If you have new ideas about what it is to be a gentleman. Then you can turn on or. In the right direction. So in eighteen in the eighty fifties cardinal newman. Writing about the idea of university says. A gentleman about all this someone who will do no harm. So you've come from the model of a gentleman is a. Is a warrior noble. To the bottle. Moral of a gentleman as a as a victorian high born respectable person who has got a stiff upper lip you can insult him and you know think that it reflects badly on you.

So there's a. Just go on and they have very fast. Ok. So i talk much a lot about the one case there are two or three other cases in the book. And maybe you can ask me questions about the case of questions about the slavery case. I just want to make one final point there. About how this applies in the present. If you want to defend on a. There are. There are sort of. Some obvious objections the first obvious objection is it looks undemocratic i've argued that it can be democratized. The second is that it's associated with balance i thought of you that it can be turned against violence. But the third is. Look what it's doing in the world today the third is example is arguments from cases. One is on the doing today. It's killing a thousand women in pakistan a year on the killing. It's killing at least five thousand women in the world that way and. That's terrible. But much worse than that i think is the fact that millions of women are there fight terrorized. So the dead women are only a small proportion of the victims. And because of our times and because of the world.

Situation today i should say i talk about honor killing in pakistan. Which is a muslim country and i talk about muslim on the killings. It is not a muslim practice. It is condemned by islam. It is condemned by a grand ayatollah as it is. Them by scholars and allies are in cairo it's condemned by a factor of forty. Pakistani religious leaders it's not a muslim practice. And indeed of course in other parts of south asia where it's carried out by sikhs and hindus. And indeed in the in the mediterranean world in the nineteenth century was done by christians. So it's a pre-christian. Pre muslim practice. Which survived. And in some places. Of course there are large parts of the muslim world where it doesn't happen at all it doesn't happen in indonesia. So. So i don't want to say. It's not a muslim practice and indeed that's important to my argument. Because what i want to say is this first. There's an internal tension in the notion of on at least on a killer. The notion of all of these so unappealing. Associates a man with the honor of men with the fiddle with the sexual pure. Of their women. Voluntary or not. I mean.

You can get on a kill because you were raped. So it's not has nothing to do with whether you were. You're a good person that has to do with whether you have been. You've been marked with the stigma of this of this kind of dishonor. But those very same systems of honor. Say that men are responsible for the safety of their women right. So there's a deep tension there. And the first thing i think. And this is happening already. People like asthma jonkheer in pakistan. It's a very distinguished woman lawyer. Say. There is no honor an honor killing. The that is she's not saying that now on are you saying there's no order in on a killing. If you think that a woman in your family has done something that's pretty by. And that's. As i say. Then there's a mechanism that is prescribed for dealing with it is to go to the courts it is not to kill your daughter. Your mother your sister your wife. First think second thing. That's individual level of individual and family honor. But there's another

huge argument to be made in the name of honor against on a killer once this. Like is done was created to be. The country. Of the muslim south asia. It's a muslim state. By definition. It has been established as an established religion. It brings this on the to islam. For a muslim state to allow this. On muslim practice which. Which damages. The muslim women. Of pakistan. So it's. It's and. It's so. Pakistani honor. And muslim honor all tied up in stopping this practice. Seems to me. Now. I don't think anyone in pakistan should take any notice of me saying that i'm not saying that that. But. They're saying it that. And if you want to support somebody who is fighting against on the killing a bunch then support the people who are making these arguments. Support the people who are saying look. Look how it makes us look. And notice that in order to see what's bad about. It may. It makes us look. You have to understand that it's wrong.

So ana here is working to reinforce the moral argument. That's now not working against reality. So collective owner i believe can be mobilized against on the killing i think i think. Honor itself. The conception of all of that the so unappealing can be reformed. And those two moves. I'm confident and hopeful. Will lead to the end of on a killing in about the same amount of time as it's up to and foot binding which is about twenty years. If we do it right. A similar process in west africa. Led by an organization called tosca has led to the abandonment of female genital cutting in thousands. I repeat that. Thousands of villages. So it can be made to work. In the sense of the lives in the bodies of women. So i reject the idea that on the can't be turned in this case. To good service. And finally. If you think it should be rejected. I tell you.

You have no chance. On or is too deep in us. What we have to do is not abandon it but reform it. To restructure itself it's serving. Purposes that we can applaud. Thank you thank you on the first question. This is really a question about how honor needs reform. Because the right question to ask when in on a practice the man something or someone is first of all. Is it is what they're demanding consistent with morality is what i wanted to mount a system with morality. Now i think that self-sacrifice for your country is consistent with morality i don't think there's a moral objection to it. There may be an objection of. Prudence to it. A different set. Different kind of value that is it's not in your self-interest. To throw yourself on the grenade in order to protect your buddies. But. But i don't believe that. Prudence's is the right way to morality and i think that it's an honor it's not just an honorable thing to do to save

your buddies it's a good thing. In the context of a war that is itself. Just and so on obviously. So the first thing is we look at all the practices i think we should look at on the practices and ask how can we reform. To be consistent with morality not the same as morality they don't have to be the same as reality they wouldn't be interesting if they were the same as roughly. But consistent with amount then when they're. As in the case of on a killing a grievously immoral. Then. Reform is clearly an order that's the first point. The second point is that. In focusing on the moral cases which i do in the book you maybe lose track of something else that on and. Which is that it does. It serves to support. All kinds of values that have nothing at all to do with morality. We give honorary degree. One of the honorary degrees each year is for the philanthropist so i guess that person gets to be regarded as morally superior. But the rest of the. Hundred degrees are given to people whose moral bona fide is. Nobody's

warrant guaranteeing. When i give. When we give you a target or we present give an honorary degree to a nobel laureate. It's not because we think he's a super terrific good person. It's because he's a great scholar or a great writer. He or she. So on or was used to sustain values other than moral values. It's very important. I think fact about honor that we honor. Great. We are on a great movie makers are going to great documentary makers we on the great actors. We honor. We honor. Excellence and excellence. Is not all moral excellence as all kinds of excellence all kinds of values. Indeed it seems to me. I should say a little bit about as it were a little bit of fear. On the right. I think of all there is essentially involving. Rights to respect to be honorable is to be entitled to respect to have a right to respect. And to care. About your honor it is to care about being entitled to respect. Now of course if you care about being entitled to respect you want to be respected. Too. But it's the

entitlement to respect that comes first for an honorable person right. Someone who just want to be respected is just of course bernie madoff. Bernie madoff wants to be respected but he doesn't care about whether he deserves the respect is getting right. An honorable person. Want to be respectable want to be respected because she is entitled to the respect. And i think that. That means that. When you care about something when you have a value like scholarly concern and respect for scholarly values all of the respect that we probably all have a great artistic achievement. One way you manifest. Your respect for that value is by honoring those who are who beyond the norm. In that domain. Indeed i wouldn't understand someone who said i respect the value of music but i don't respect the people who are good at it. What would that mean. So. Honoring great. x.'s athletes

musicians scholars. Nurses who do go above and beyond the call of duty in their workers nurses. And so on. Honoring those people. Soldiers who do not just what they have to do but go way beyond what they want to do on her as it is as it were the ideal way of responding to these people. Think about this. We ask soldiers to do things that you couldn't possibly require them to do. Because offering your life is not something that you can require someone to do. But. But it's as it were a good thing. If soldiers are willing to give all risked their lives. So we can punish them for not giving up their lives because they don't have a duty to give up their lives you go to punish people for doing things that they're that they have to do. Nor is it usually possible to get people to risk their lives by offering them money. I mean not the kind of money that we have available. I suppose if we said

to every soldier in the world. You know. For billion dollars. You want to billion dollars or a medal of honor. Maybe some of them would take the billion dollars. But many of them would take the medal of honor. And honor is perfect for this only gets soldiers to do the thing we can't command them to do we can't tell them that they have to get out well. But they will do it for honor. And if it's in a good cause if the cause is just. Then it's these we honor is now serving to get people to do something that is worth getting people to do that which we couldn't possibly. Require them to do. Because giving up your life is not the kind of thing you can require someone to do it seems to me it's always as the philosophers say super rugged terrain it's always going beyond the call of duty. To offer your life. Oh yes this is so. So now. One of the things that i think they'll say what were they thinking about. In the hundred years or less. Well there's a long list. But. Here's here's a couple. That i think you might find interesting. One i think is. I think

you would all come up with. If a skip asked the question ten minutes ago you would have all come up with it by now. I think there's a revolution going on in our attitude. To the treatment of animals in the production of food. It's already begun. Many people who have to eat meat i ate i have sheep actually. But i just think that the cruelty. Involved in the production particularly if. For can beef. In on income on a commodity just. If you look at it you cannot endorse it. And i think our grandchildren and great grand nephews and nieces are going to look back and say. What did they think they would do it. You know they will still they'll see videotapes of feedlots. And they'll just say. I mean. Never mind the environmental disaster the feel outside just the suffering of the ants right. Also worry about the environment and they'll wonder why we went to a more about that. So that's one example and i think lots of environmental issues. There are animal rights issues i think they're environmental issues where they'll just say why couldn't they get their act together.

But the other one that i think that's people. Won't necessarily come up with these quickly by themselves is this and i think that the fact that the home of the free. This four percent of humanity. With american citizenship. Has twenty five percent of the world's incarcerated people. It's just preposterous. It's it's it's. Never mind. Forget about the morality of it but don't forget about it. It is immoral. Ok. I mean it just can't be right that you cannot be right to set up a system that ends up with that result. And it can't be right. Having produced a system that says that result. Not to do anything about it. I mean maybe we maybe we sort of. We slumbered our way into it but we jolly well. To be getting our way out of it all right. But. Forget about that just to waste. The waste of human lives in those prisons. And the waste of the things that they could be doing for the rest of us. I think that they could be contributing to our gross domestic product for god's sake. So i think i think it's completely. And i think people will look back into say. We have

no idea how it could have been. That a society. One of one of two central liberties could have ended up being the largest incarcerated. On the planet. Actually on the history of the planet. Nobody else has ever locked up this larger proportion of its citizens and. It's not just that. We have a cause of our first citizen. Prisoners. We have lots of people who aren't in prison who been in prison. And whose lives have been ruined because when i don't need to go on about this i mean. She's to me. They will look back and when we will. They will say what we would say about slavery. They would say. Shame on you shame. On you for allowing this seminar. So there are others obviously and there are and there are disputed cases when i wrote this piece in the in the watching but i did not include abortion i don't think. I have a different view about what the right answer is in that case. But there are many people who think that people. And it may be that abortions will disappear. I think. Not. I think this

reason for technological reasons. Well no. See what i think is that in the cases at least that i looked at. Nobody was going to argue the other moral side people weren't going to offer a moral defense of slavery there were a few. There were propagandists with slavery in the american south in the eighteenth forty's and fifty's. People like. Cannibals or. What's his name. You know. The guy who wrote cannibals all but. But i just. Don't think they were saying. And certainly other people didn't believe them. They just said things that no reasonable person of the time to believe. So there was no serious. What there was was a sense of the necessity of the practice. Right. To the to the life of both of. Plantations and therefore from the point of your plantation out of them. To the life of a society. But the idea that it was morally did i don't so i don't think. What happens when people realize that it's wrong. Is not that they defend it is they do two things one is they say things that they don't believe. Which is. I mean that's a kind of defense but it's not.

Insincere defense and the other thing they do is they try very hard not to think about it. They engage in what i call strategic ignorance. And i think i mean incarceration is something where there's a vast amount of strategic ignorance in the united states people just don't want to think about what's going on in the prisons they don't want to think about the fact that. In the in the prisons of this. Advanced industrial society. You're more likely to have t.v. when you come out than when you went in and more likely to have aids when you came out when you went in you're more likely to be raped but as a man in an american prison. Actually as a woman to. Then you are in almost any other. I mean not for women or for men. It's the most likely place to be raped in the united states. Now i don't think that we in the senate. People to prison were sentencing them to being raped. And we all and it was very our prisons. There are a responsibility and they shouldn't be raped and if they are we should we have to accept responsibility for this thing about it. So i don't think. I think from. Well. This is a complex question because. This notion of morality that i'm using is a bit of a technical. As it were

notion. What i mean by morality. Is the set of norms we have about what we owe to other people that's what i mean by morality. The problem with. Doing is actually morally. Very complicated from the point of view. Of morality understood that way. Because whatever you can say about doing. It is in the end. Between consenting adults. And normally. While we can think that what consenting adults do. Is crazy or. Silly or even wrong. We sort of. Are inclined to think it's sort of up to them. So it's a complicated case from that point of view but let me let me try and answer your question about how you shift the norm because i think that is the question. I think the answer is this. And this is the most the best example of this i think is what happened in the in the in the foot binding case. You have to have a social movement. They had foot

binding societies. And the foot binding societies had to commit themselves to the new norm. Right. So you had to have societies of people say. I'm not going to vote for someone who. Increases. The rate of incarceration. Or i'm not going to i'm not going to eat food. That's produced this. This. This means of production. Not just i. We write. We are. And that's what happened in the money case. They got together an anti foot binding societies which are actually modeled on something that they've done before which where the anti opium society. And they made a double promise. If you. Join the and it's not going to sell you made two promises. I won't find the feet of my daughters and i won't marry myself or a woman who speaks about. That way. In getting rid of foot binding which for elite families have been a condition of marriage. You created the husbands for these. At the same time as changing the practice. Was a brilliant. I mean i don't know who thought of this this very same clear to me. I mean i don't know because i can't read the chinese sources. But it was a brilliant design and. This is similar

to what they've done. Touchdown is done in west africa. When these women and men in these villages commit themselves to and female genital cutting. What they say is the. First of all. They only do it at the same time in the village. And the village from which the husbands come. Of the daughters of the village. Right they do they work them out they have the conversation together. That's the first thing and then they say. We won't do it and we won't allow. We won't marry into families. And that. And then if enough people do it. There's a there's what my friend on about electrical if they're being void. At some point. At some point. There's a new normal. And when there's a new normal. All the social pressure that was on the side of doing of. Binding or sort of. Going along with slavery. Flips. And suddenly you feel bad about yourself or go along with it. And i think that's so. This is this is a book about honor and its role in this. But if you want to make a. If you want to make the changes there are other things you have to do and. Among them i think

is a real social organization that's of social movements of. Groups of people who commit themselves to a new you convention. A new norm. And then. If you know once enough people do it. You can start talking about it because nobody's going to do it anymore. Except you know where there's. So the question is what's going to make the flip happen. In relation to moving to a post carbon economy to a world in which we're not. Sensually. Falling the nest. And making it much harder for the biological survival of our own kind. Which is the sort of thing that our grandchildren. In particular if they. If there are any should be particularly inclined to say what they what were they thinking about. Well look. This one is. Is i think. A little bit different from some of the others. In the following sense. It's. It's got a collective action problem in it. In a way that the others. Don't write.

That is to say. It's really true that my s.u.v. isn't doing it right. If everybody else stopped and i went on with my. Everything would be fine right. When you have to to listen to the sound of your daughter weeping. Or when you have to see the slaves at your table and watch him being whipped by overseer. It's. It's kind of a does a direct feed back to you. And when you are wounded or killed or lose a friend in a deal. There's a direct feed back to you and i think. So there's an extra dimension of difficulty. I believe in this case. Which we have to solve of course. I'm not saying it's not an excuse. So the snubs of variation. We have to figure out and honor is actually the ideal mechanism for doing that because what on earth does is to notice what happened in the doing case right. The reason doing. What was doing

about. Well. One of the things it was about was defining the distinction between gentleman and everybody else there was a kind of class boundary made. Mechanism but another of the things that it was explicitly about was maintaining civility. Among the aristocracy right. Because the idea was. With all these people who are very prickly about their own are you better people. Because otherwise you'll end up the end of a sword. But. Why. Should i risk my life. In order to make my friends polite. Right. Well although. Once you've got me concerned about my honor i forget about the fact that i'm having the side effect of making my friends polite. If we can make it desirable if we can shame the people in the in the in the s.u.v.s. Then as it were. Each time they drive around and that's one case there are lots of all of us are doing something that we should be ashamed of in the spirit actually vs just a kind of monstrous visible example that we're all. None of us i think. Is is is can excuse ourselves. We are all engaged in

practices that are part of the problem. If we can get ourselves to see. To to sort of. Have the feeling that as i drive down mass out of a nice s.u.v. people are thinking. What kind of a schmuck is that. You know. And yes so. But but but but but but the trouble is the driver of this you really think that. And also the dr doesn't care that you're thinking. Because the driver of this movie hasn't yet been converted to the norm according to which. There is a problem with what he's doing. But the sort of the point about the collective action problem is it's not going. It's not just a matter of telling people things. You do have to produce a cost. A social cost. That's such and that we can do but only. Collectively you can't do it. One of the time. We have to. Again create a movement. Which is willing to say to people. You know you're.

Poisoning the human. Nest. This is. This is absolutely crucial to the question is isn't it important that. In the slave case. There was an alternative. The free labor was a genuine alternative the slave labor it could produce. It could produce the cotton and so on so. Yes. That's that's the other thing. Telling people that what they're doing. Bad or even shameful. Isn't helpful unless you tell them the something else they can be doing. And that is on rable. And so it's not enough. You're absolutely right and i should have said this because it's a very important part. Actually is part of the argument. The end of the book on cosmopolitanism you can't just tell people they're bad. That's hopeless. It's just i mean they'll ignore you. They'll dislike you. But they won't change if you just tell them they're bad what you have to do is to say you know you're doing a bad thing but here's a good thing you could be doing instead. It would satisfy many of the same interests. But it would do so in a way that was that's morally preferable. And i think that when we think about these things.

We have succeeded in a certain sense right the prius is sexy. Now the prius is not the be all and end all of. But i don't mean it's a price carbon pollution. But the point is we have made a lot more environmentally. Slightly more mentally except for. The kind of one that you can feel proud about driving at least if you were sort of thinking about the environment again there are people who are proud of driving s.u.v.s and we have to work very hard to explain to them why that's not a good frame of mind to be in. And just so that i repeat back the gist of the question. For the recording. So she was talking about having read the piece i wrote in the in the times new york times magazine in which one of the things i stressed about the role of outsiders in helping to bring about change. Is that. Least in the chinese case. The reason i believe it worked. Was because the relevant outsiders were people who had and. Could be seen to have a deep respect for chinese civilization. Timothy

rashad the evangelical. He was a baptist minister who was one of the important people in this. He learned his. Confucian tax. He knew his. Confucian tax. He wrote beautiful classical chinese and published in it published a. Paper in it he said they couldn't think this is some ignorant outsider who doesn't respect us so why should we take any notice of him right. Now. So the first duty is someone who wants to be helpful. I think from the outside. Is to make sure you know what the heck you're talking about. And not just know what the heck you're talking about but show that that that wing what you're talking about is rooted in. Nothing contempt for these other people but it concerns of them. Right and a concern for the girls whose. Genitalia. Are being cut off or the girls whose feet. Are being bound for the women who risk being assassinated by members of their own family. But also for the family. Because in killing your daughter you lost something. You. And.

She's lost. The most important thing was that she's not somebody you've got something to do. And so your society. All of you will be better off. If you don't do this thing. Unless you can let the outside his look like that. What you'll get as i pointed out in that face. Is the opposite reaction you get the nationalist backlash. Which we got in relation to female genital cutting in kenya. When the presbyterian missionaries in the one hundred thirty s. mounted a massive campaign against it and it was that was the kicker you left the church which is from the independent churches. And it became an item. Of faith of the kids because i knew that you had to maintain this practice. As a sign of because your identity. I mean. Profoundly to put it mildly counter productive intervention. So now. Let me underline a point. Given what most muslims in the world. Reasonably believes about. Rightly or wrongly but. Reasonably believe. About

many american. American voices on these questions don't sound like they're coming from a place of respect. And concerned. They sound like they're coming from a place of disrespect. Contempt and ignorance. And often. We have to admit they are. So those of us who believe that it's very important in american citizen i'm glad to be an american citizen i'm likely why i chose to be an american american citizen by choice. It's very important for those of us who who represent i can because we're americans represent our country a different way. It's very important for that for us to say. When idiots. Want to burn korans. Or idiots want to oppose the creation of a prayer center. Press center. Between which. And the world trade center there are women with that. With no tops on. In this place the west both regard as a place of great sanctity

and all that. I mean. When people do things like that we have to make it clear that some of us at least just. Are in a different place with respect to these things and. And it. And that it's those of us that they might want to seek help from. And maybe even discuss with about these things. I don't want them to talk to the guy in florida. Who was burning korans. Of course they don't want to talk. So that's all right but i don't want to talk to him. I don't think any reason why they should take any notice that little. They should ignore him. And in fact i think they should have contempt for him. The very content that he has for them. But it would be better if both of them could change in ways that made it possible for them to have respect for each other as i try to have respect for what i can respect. In the traditions of its not no i can respect everything in the churches of islam but i disagree with some of the traditions of islam. I'm not saying you shouldn't pretend that you agree with things you don't agree with. But it's. You can. You can manifest respect for someone while still telling them. You

think they're wrong. And by the way. Just to take a point from my. Talk about causing problems and. In this conversation. Which i'm not modeling very well. You have to listen as well as talk. I mean one of the great problems we have with the muslim world is just that we don't hear anything. You know ralph. Who is the guy who is the sort of head. Religious figure in the center for them to be filled. The world trade center. You know morales. Took the trouble to write a book about the relationship between islam and his american identity. And it is true is glenn beck said that he believes that we should have sharia law or in the united states. That's because he thinks we have sherry although already well that's what glenn beck thinks and it's found lee dishonest. It's profoundly dishonest. To misrepresent. In this way right. Not that it's a surprise to you that. Occasionally glenn beck is a little bit dishonest. But i'm saying this because the back is the body's been talking about our owner and

and our owner is its stake in these matters. American honor is at stake his honor is at stake when he lies about these things. He knows this truth. By the way. I mean it's not that he's mistaken. Confused. You know. This. He was actually doing things then on rough before this all happened so we know he knows it. So. My point is this is work for us all to be doing in this. But like all the work that has to be done in these areas. You can't do it one at a time. I mean we need to organize ourselves to be doing these things and i'm glad to say that. Lots of people are organized to be doing it. The amount of ralph is one of the key figures in the face debates in this country a discussion in this country a dialogue in this country and i'm roscoe's to the churches and synagogues all the time ross was there when danny pearl's funeral happened in the synagogue in his own right. So there. There are. And he's an american muslim by the

way he's. He's one of us in that very important respect. So i do think that. Back to your question i'm sorry i got a bit sidetracked there and i exactly about this particular topic but i do think that we. There's something for us to be doing. Which is to create the context in which there is a productive dialogue. In that productive dialogue. We will as well as. I hope. Change their minds.