Where can I go from here?

In the latest round of campaigning for the federal election, opposition leader Tony Abbott has announced that he wants to reduce the number of boats of asylum seekers coming to Australia to a maximum of three boats per year (see article). Apparently there were only 3 boats a year during the last years of John Howard's government (1996-2007), and that's his model.

The proposal is to stop offering residency to people who are recognised as refugees. He reckons he can get it down to that level within the first term of government if his party wins the election this September. That's three years.

But wait, what's a refugee? According to the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951 - which Australia is a signatory of), a refugee is: “Any person who owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the protection of that country.” (see here for more information).

It seems to me that in all the media hype and politicising of "the boats", we have lost sight of the fact that there are human beings on the boats and they are seeking refuge from something. This is not a holiday cruise for them, but a last-ditch resort to save their lives. It is absolutely no surprise to me that, after assessment of their request for asylum, 90% of asylum seekers arriving by boat are considered to be genuine refugees. Surely, only those who are genuinely in need of getting out of a desperate, life-threatening situation would consider a perilous boat journey (and the other parts of the journey before that) worth the risk.

In many cases, a family can only afford to pay the people smugglers to get one member of the country, so the rest of the family stays behind in the hope that one day they might be able to follow. I often sense that people misinterpret this as a cunning, manipulative plan to get one family member in and then the others will follow. They almost certainly hope they will follow, but the motives are for the preservation of life, not the subversion of an immigration policy.

Perhaps we have too high a view of life in Australia. I love it here just as much as any of us, but I think some people assume that everyone in the world would naturally want to live here and people will make up any story to be able to come and live here. That may be true in some cases (and is probably historically the reason that my husband and I have had to spend a lot of money and time applying for a 'temporary partner visa' for him to be able to stay here). But in other cases, and certainly in the case of people seeking asylum, it is definitely not their preferred choice. Entrusting yourself to a people smuggler is a huge risk, and starting life in a new country with an unfamiliar language and culture is a huge upheaval. Next time you meet someone who is seeking or has been granted refugee status, ask them - if the circumstances in your home country were different, would you rather be there or here?

Maybe there are now more places in turmoil causing more people to flee for their lives than there were during Howard's government. In that case there needs to be attention paid to the reasons for people needing to flee their countries - more diplomatic pressure, perhaps. And maybe the whole industry of people smuggling has grown exponentially since then, particularly because Australia and other countries are not offering resettlement of many people applying offshore for asylum. Whatever the reason for the increase in the number of people coming by 'irregular maritime arrival', if people really need to flee where they live, I'm not convinced that Australian "border protection" policies will stop people smugglers from trying to bring them here while there's money to be made from it.

The meaning of murder

Here's a cheery topic for May: Murder - what does it mean? Can you murder something that is not human? A plant, say? I have sometimes thought of myself as a plant-murderer because I'm not much of a green thumb.

What about insects? If so, then I must confess to being a mass-murderer! Spiders (especially huntsmen!), cockroaches, flies, mosquitoes, ants... the list goes on. 

Or what about a goldfish or other kind of aquatic creature? When I was little my family looked after a yabby for my mum's friend who was a primary school teacher. The yabby was a class pet. It was a hot summer. The poor yabby couldn't withstand the heat and when we came home one day we found it had died.

Mammals? I've orchestrated the killing of numerous rats and mice. Maybe the odd possum on the road.

Of course, it's ridiculous to think that murder includes plants and insects. It's possibly less ridiculous to include fish and reptiles, and getting a bit more uncomfortable once we get to mammals. And that's probably because mammals are getting closer to humans in terms of being warm-blooded.

Any dictionary will tell us that murder is when one person kills another person. It has to be unlawful (i.e. not with the permission of someone legally authorised to give that permission, as with capital punishment - and that's a topic for another day). It has to be premeditated, not accidental, otherwise it's considered manslaughter instead.

I was prompted to think about this after the recent disturbing news of the man in Ohio who had kidnapped three young women and held them hostage in his house for a decade. He probably fathered the 6-year-old child found with the women, and the reports talked about accusations of him forcing one of the women to miscarry other pregnancies. The report in the Sydney Morning Herald said this:

As more grim details emerge about the long captivity of the three women rescued from imprisonment in a dilapidated home in Cleveland, prosecutors said they would seek murder charges, potentially carrying the death penalty, against Ariel Castro, accusing him of forcing at least one of the women to miscarry.

Could causing a woman to miscarry constitute murder, according to the basic definition I put forward above? What was killed? An unborn human child. Was it unlawful? Presumably no one gave him authorised permission to do so. Was it pre-meditated? Hard to say, if it's true that he would 'starve Ms Knight for weeks, then repeatedly punch her in the stomach ''until she miscarried''', that would probably be considered pre-meditated.

One interesting factor in all this is the status of the unborn child (or possibly children) miscarried during those terrible years. If the prosecutors want to bring a charge of murder against Castro, they will have to establish that the unborn child should be considered human. I wonder if their case against him will be made difficult by the Abortion Laws in Ohio that allow abortion of foetuses up to 24 weeks (more than half the usual full-term gestation period). Foetuses at 24 weeks (but sometimes earlier) are usually considered 'viable', that is, able to survive outside the womb.

It seems that it's partly also a conflict of wills. In most cases the murderer wants the other person dead, but the person who dies doesn't usually want to die (except in the case of euthanasia - again, a topic for another day). In this case, it was the will of the man who caused the miscarriage and the mother's will was not taken into account - much less the 'will' of the unborn child.

The Language of God

I had some days off sick this week, which gave me the opportunity to do a bit of long-awaited leisure reading. So I started reading 'The Language of God' (2006, Free Press), which I found amongst the small collection of books my husband already owned before I moved in with my several extra bookshelves worth!

I was initially attracted by the title, as you can imagine - but it's not really about 'language' of the kind that I study. It's written by Dr Francis Collins, who is the head of the Human Genome Project, and the title is taken from US President Bill Clinton's speech at the official public launch of the findings of the Human Genome Project, the human DNA sequence, in 2000. Clinton said: "Today we are learning the language in which God created life. We are gaining ever more awe for the complexity, the beauty, and the wonder of God's most divine and sacred gift." (see full transcript here).

Collins' aim in the book is to dispel the notion that a rigorous science precludes serious belief in a transcendent God "by arguing that belief in God can be an entirely rational choice, and that the principles of faith are, in fact, complementary with the principles of science" (p.3). As part of this, he gives his own testimony as a scientist with a firm faith in God.

I haven't finished reading it yet (only up to chapter 3) but I have thoroughly enjoyed reading the first two chapters. In the first chapter, Collins shares the story of his interesting childhood, his growing thirst for scientific knowledge, his studies in chemistry and then medicine, and ultimately, sparked by the simple question of a dying woman, his discovery of a God who is there, and who takes a personal interest in human beings.

He also shares some of the trains of thought he went through during this time of discovery, inspired by the writings of C.S. Lewis, another academic who had taken a very similar path from atheism to faith. These included the perplexing fact that "the concept of right and wrong appears to be universal among all the members of the human species" and that "this law appears to apply peculiarly to human beings" (p.23). I was encouraged and excited to read his reflections on the differences between humans and animals on this point, as this is an issue that has been on my mind, as seen in last week's blog post. I was glad to find some support for my ideas from a more knowledgeable source. It's nice to know I might be thinking on the right track!

Humans and animals

I've been saying in other blog posts that humans are created in God's image (Genesis 1:26-27) and are communicative and relational. But we can also observe communication and relationship in some, if not all, animal species. The Genesis account makes it clear that animals are not created in God's image. So what is the difference between the kind of communication and relationships that humans and animals have? What is it about human communication and relationships that is special and particularly reflects our status as God's image-bearers?

I think it's love. When I think about what we see as relationships between animals, they are really utilitarian, rather than characterised by love. Animals enter into relationships with other animals mainly for procreation (only for very few is this an exclusive relationship) and for cooperation related to food sourcing etc. But the procreating kind of relationship is driven by hormones and instinct rather than love. While hormones and instincts are also involved in human relationships, humans are also able to override their hormones and instincts when necessary for the sake of another person. As far as I know, animals do not have the option of exercising self-control for the sake of another. As far as I know, they do not make choices which sacrifice their own desires for the sake of another, to put the other first. To do that would seem to go against the 'survival of the fittest' principle.

Humans' ability to have loving relationships that display conscious, deliberate self-sacrifice seems to me to be a direct reflection of God's relational character. God's deep love is supremely demonstrated in the way God the Father sent his only Son to die as a sacrifice for the sake of those he loved (see John 3:16 and 1 John 4:9-10), and the way God the Son willingly sacrificed himself for the glory and honour of his Father, because he loved his Father and wanted to obey him (see Luke 22:41-42).

I speak, therefore I think, therefore I am?

Recently I became aware of the work of Walker Percy (1916-1990), an American writer who had an interest in human behaviour, in particular the peculiar ability of humans to use language. He wrote a number of novels between the 1961 and 1987, one of which I’ve read – The Thanatos Syndrome (1987), which is an interesting but at times disturbing read – and a few non-fiction ruminations on humankind, language, and the like, including one I am reading now. The one I’m reading now has the rather long and intriguing title: The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other (1975).

I came across Walker Percy by accident. I had been searching for papers about language and consciousness, and one of the ones that came up was an old (1993) but interesting article in the journal Language and Communication by Laura Mooneyham, who compared and contrasted the ideas of Percy and a psychologist of the same period, Julian Jaynes.

Like much of the biographical information I’ve seen about Percy (e.g. the entry on Wikipedia as a start), Mooneyham draws attention to Percy’s Catholicism, crediting this as a major influence on his ideas about humans and their unique capability for language and higher order consciousness (incorporating self-awareness and the ability to communicate with others through symbols). His search for a metaphysical explanation of events (that is, explaining phenomena from first principles, which include time, substance and existence) is contrasted with Jaynes’ materialistic explanation (that is, explaining phenomena only as the result of interactions of physical matter). Percy's dissatisfaction with such materialistic explanations is nicely captured in a question he poses (one of many presented one after the other over several pages!) in the opening chapter of The Message in the Bottle:

“Why is it that scientists know a good deal about what it is to be an organism in an environment but very little about what it is to be a creature who names things and utters and understands sentences about things?” (1975, p.8).

One of the main ideas discussed in Mooneyham’s paper is the distinction between primary consciousness (which animals have; 'bicamerality' in Jaynes' terms) and higher order consciousness (which humans have), and the notion that humans once had only this primary consciousness. The theory is that higher order consciousness came with the ability for complex, autonomous language (see also Halliday 2004 for a similar argument from systemic functional linguistics).

I was intrigued to learn that both Percy and Jaynes had drawn parallels between the Fall of Man and the shift from primary to higher-order consciousness in humans. The idea here was that for a time, humans were living in such a way that all their responses to external stimuli were dictated by God/gods (according to the various creation/fall narratives). They “could neither reflect upon their past nor future actions nor upon the possible consequences of those actions; therefore, they were without the moral consciousness which makes guilt possible” (Mooneyham, 1993, p.176). But then the ‘Fall’ happened (they tasted ‘the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’) and there was a shift, and their minds became capable of introspection and seeing how others saw them, so they felt guilt and shame.

 I'm still working out my views on how to read the story of Creation presented in Genesis in light of theories of human development, but there are some principles in the Genesis account, particularly about God's character, that are reiterated throughout the Biblical account and therefore can be trusted regardless of whether one takes the '6 day' narrative literally or figuratively.

One such principle is that humans were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). So I find it hard to accept this conception of the development of human consciousness because the Bible is consistent on the notion that God Himself has higher-order consciousness and the ability to communicate with others (see also related blog posts I wrote in August and October).

Another such principle is that God is inherently good and can't abide evil. The idea that humans went from being “neither good nor evil” in their state of primary consciousness to capable of both good and evil in their higher-order consciousness denies the pronouncement of God on the 6^th day, when he had created humans, that his creation was ‘very good’. God is good, and would not have been able to make this declaration if humans had not been ‘good’ from the beginning (at least until the Fall), not ‘neutral’ as supposed.

I welcome comments or clarifying questions on any of these thoughts.

References

Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). On Grammar as the Driving Force from Primary to Higher-order Consciousness. In G. Williams & A. Lukin (Eds). The Development of Language: Functional Perspectives on Species and Individuals, pp.15-44. London: Continuum.

Mooneyham, L. (1993). The Origin of Consciousness, Gains and Losses: Walker Percy vs Julian Jaynes. Language & Communication, 13(3), 169-182.

Percy, W. (1975). The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.