Circular Thinking

In what might be called “classical” medicine, a great many diseases came to be seen to be caused by bacteria or viruses of one sort or other. If you got typhoid or cholera, it was because it had been your misfortune to have these bacteria or viruses enter your body, possibly through a small wound, or perhaps by ingesting or inhaling them. And this is a very forgiving model of disease: It’s not your fault that you’re ill.

And this new medicine ousted – or at least temporarily sidelined – an older, medieval idea of disease as punishment from God, as punishment for sin. In this older model of disease, if you got typhoid or cholera, it was because you had committed a sin, and cholera was your just reward. Immorality led to ill health, and ill health was a sure sign of immorality. You were to blame for your own infirmity.

Modern lifestyle medicine represents a revival of this medieval mentality. If you drink or smoke or eat too much, you’re greedy and self-indulgent and sinful. And your punishment will be lung cancer and heart disease and any other malady you may care to mention. You will be to blame for your own misfortune. It’s exactly the same as the medieval mindset, except that God has been replaced by Nature.

Modern lifestyle medicine is utterly unforgiving. You’ve got what you deserve. The role of the doctor is simply to inform you of the cause of your disease (smoking), and to make it worse, by excluding and marginalising you. The sick are not to be healed, but to be further punished.

This medieval model of disease actually grows out of a Christian cosmos in which the sinful are rewarded in the hereafter with eternal torment in the fires of Hell, while the righteous are rewarded with eternal bliss in Heaven. Misbehaviour results in everlasting physical agony. And so modern lifestyle medicine recreates the Christian cosmos, only minus God, and minus the Christian idea of the forgiveness of sin.

It is a belief that moral failure must be attended by real physical consequences. Smoking and drinking and gluttony are sinful and wrong, and so they must have dire consequences in the form of disease and ill health. And equally, whenever you find disease and ill health, you may be sure that people are doing wrong in some way.

Immorality brings its own retribution, and retribution signals immorality. And a process of circular reasoning is thereby set up, which leads to the steady re-inforcement of conviction.

So, for example, in the case of smoking, the new medievalist may start out with a conviction that smoking is a dirty, self-indulgent pastime – i.e. morally wrong -. And he then becomes convinced that there must be some consequential retribution. And he finds that most lung cancer patients are smokers. And so he quickly concludes that smoking causes lung cancer. And then, once he has found that smoking causes lung cancer, he becomes all the more convinced that smoking is wrong. And the more convinced he is that smoking is wrong, the more certain he is that it must be attended by disease and death. And, lo, he finds that smoking also causes heart disease and cot deaths and all sorts of other diseases. And this convinces him even more or the moral evil of smoking, that it results in so much disease. And with every circuit of this particular piece of circular reasoning, hatred and loathing for smoking grows stronger and stronger.

It may well be that this piece of medieval, circular reasoning only managed to gain a foothold in medicine because “classical” medicine was unable to explain cancer and heart disease. And in the absence of a rational, scientific explanation, an ancient religious conviction returned to the fore: if it was not caused by bacteria or viruses, then it must’ve been caused by sin.

And once this sort of process of circular reasoning has been set up, it feeds on anything that verifies it, and ignores anything that falsifies it. And as the circle of reason spins, it grows and expands to become a hurricane.

Belief in global warming follows a functionally identical logic. It starts out with a belief that modern civilisation is corrupt, unfair, greedy, wasteful – i.e. immoral -. It then proceeds to look for the inevitable dire consequences which must follow from such immoral conduct. And, lo, it is found that this greedy civilisation is slowly filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which creates a greenhouse effect, and global warming, and a great deal of physical suffering (just like lung cancer). It’s divine natural retribution. And it is of course inescapable. And once this consequence has been identified, it enhances the original conviction that modern industrial civilisation is greedy and wasteful and wrong, and brings a search for new terrible consequences, in the form of floods, storms, etc. The same sort of vicious circle is set up as it has been with smoking and lung cancer.

This sort of vicious circle can be broken in two ways. If it can be shown that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer, then half of the re-inforcing rationality will have been removed. Same with carbon dioxide. If carbon dioxide doesn’t produce a greenhouse effect, or only an insignificant one, then half the force goes out of the global warming argument.

But equally, the circle can be attacked on the other side. It might be questioned whether smoking actually is a dirty, self-indulgent, and immoral pastime. And it might be asked whether modern industrial civilisation actually is dirty and self-indulgent and immoral as well. It might be argued that, far from being immoral, both of them are good things which confer many benefits on those that use them. Or, equally, it might be pointed out that any behaviour whatsoever might be construed to be dirty, self-indulgent, and immoral. The righteous, for example, are forever showcasing sports and athletics as good, clean, and healthy. But in a game of football or rugby, the players often end up totally covered in mud. And sometimes blood as well. What could be dirtier than that? And what’s healthy about a game that ends with several players limping off with torn ligaments and broken noses? What’s so good about that. And what can be discovered in football can be discovered in anything else. Absolutely any activity can be defamed.

But almost all those who contest the dogmas of smoking and global warming do so by contesting the physical (medical) consequences. They fix their attention on the physical right hand side of the circle, and disregard the moral left hand side.

But really they ought to argue both sides. They ought to argue that smoking is good and wholesome and right. And that modern industrial civilisation is also good and wholesome and right. There should be no apologies for either. It should be argued that both of these are good things, and that consequently there cannot be any evil consequences expected from either, as well as arguing that no evil consequences actually do flow from them anyway.

For while it is tacitly consented that smoking is a bad habit, and that modern industrial civilisation is greedy and wasteful and unequal, half the argument has been lost. And half of the braking force upon the furiously spinning circle is not being applied as it might be. People should not hesitate to enter into moral dispute, any more than they hesitate to enter into physical disputes. If nothing else, it is only through moral disputation that we sharpen and renew morality – just like scientific knowledge only grows through dispute.