Jotting #8 - Natural Law Applied

Question/Prompt: Apply natural law ethics to the situation which Durning describes.

My response: During’s main point in his article is that there is an over consumption of natural resources by consumers, specifically Americans. In order to apply the first point of Harris’s checklist the four fundamental values should be described: biological (preserve life, protect young), procreation, pursuit of knowledge, sociability.

In the comparison of During with Harris’ checklist we can determine that the action, reducing over consumption, is in accord with the biological inclinations of the natural law. Reducing our consumption to levels that are sustainable globally is a good thing for life everywhere. He does not say that we should kill off extra people in order to decrease the overall demands on the earth but rather a better use of resources available.

The area of forfeiture is more complicated. It is possible to consider those who consume too many resources as causing the eventual death of others; whether it is directly, through sweat shop labor or indirectly, through eventual environmental damage. If you consider their actions as causing death then by the qualifying principle of forfeiture their life is no longer valuable. This of course is a highly controversial view but the reasoning can be skewed to appear this way.

However, saying that consumerism is completely bad and leads to death is not entirely correct. According to During “once people join the consumer class, their impact ceases to grow as quickly because their attention tends to switch to high-value, low-resource goods and services.” (p563 8th ed.) Therefore those who feel that a completely “non-consumer” lifestyle is the only answer are not entirely right. There is a potential that consuming can be controlled in such a way that all humans can enjoy a certain standard of living that is both sustainable and fair.

The statistics presented in During’s piece illustrate that there is a wide gap between the poorest and the richest. The rich are consuming resources at a rate that is not possible for all to achieve. It is these people that could fall into the category of forfeiture in that their actions could potentially be causing the death of others. There are some however, that are consuming at a rate that the entire world could potentially survive at. It is this group that would ideally be the norm. However, there is the final group that are consuming nearly no resources relative to the wealthier people.