The really scary thing about the current environmental crisis

Environment buzzwords have been on everyone’s lips recently. Global warming, carbon footprints, eco-friendly, sustainability – you can’t open a newspaper or magazine without seeing them. More people are thinking about the environment than ever before. We are walking to work, buying reusable shopping bags, eating organic, replacing incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient fluorescents and countless other small measures we hope will add up and save the environment. The United States government is promising the EPA will step up to the plate and save us from ourselves, while the president – in the name of Homeland Security – sets aside more than 30 environmental regulations [Richard Marosi and Nicole Gaouette, “Environmental rules waived for Mexican border fence,” Los Angeles Times, April 2, 2008, News section, Online edition.] to finish the precious Mexican border fence before the Mexican economy collapses when we’ve burned through all their oil. Television advertisements show how you can be green while wearing cotton – that oh-so-environmentally-friendly fabric – and offset the carbon emissions from your totally unnecessary SUV by purchasing recycled paper. It’s chic to be environmentally conscious.

But I’m actually not here to talk about the efficacy of small steps taken by consumers, or how both the government and the corporations talk out of both sides of their mouths on this issue. I’m not even here to try to convince you of the reality – and gravity – of global warming. My question is even more serious, I feel. What if the government imposed – and took more steps to enforce – stricter environmental regulations. Would large corporations comply? Does the government, in this age of outsourcing and endless litigation, have the power to make the business world stand at attention anymore?

There are several factors I think it important to discuss while I explore answers to this question. First, I will explore a brief description of globalization, then an outline of views on what the government’s role in environmental protection should be, followed by a description of the goals of corporations and how these relate to concerns for the state of the environment. I will use Martin Wolf’s opinions, expressed in Why Globalization Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004], to contrast my own on the given topics.

Wolf defines globalization as the “free movement of goods, services, labour and capital, thereby creating a single market in inputs and outputs; and full national treatment for foreign investors so that, economically speaking, there are no foreigners.” [pp. 14] For the purposes of my discussion, it is appropriate to point out that this includes the ability of corporations to outsource their labour.

There are as many views on how involved the government should be in people’s lives as there are people, it seems. They range from a government limited to only protecting from force, fraud and theft and enforcing contracts to a government that controls everything from business to religion. I am going to assume, for the sake of space and time, that we can agree environmental regulations, at least to some degree, are beneficial to us all, and therefore compliance with them and enforcement of them is desirable.

At this time it becomes relevant to describe the two broad economic categories into which the world falls: the centre and the periphery. The centre has also been referred to as the First World or the developed world, and includes mostly democratic industrialized countries such as the US, the EU and Japan. The periphery has been known as the Third World or the developing world, and includes sub-Saharan Africa, some Asian and Latin American countries, such as Nigeria, Indonesia and Guatemala.

A common concern with increasing globalization is that corporations will move their unskilled manufacturing away from centre countries that have higher environmental regulation standards to periphery countries that have lower standards. Besides just having lower standards in general, several factors, including lack of infrastructure and, in some cases, abundant corruption, cause periphery countries to have a harder time enforcing their laws, including those regarding taxes and environmental regulations. [pp. 274]

So what do the corporations want to do? I think it is quite clear that, no matter what the PR department says, no matter what shows up in the ‘mission statement,’ corporations are here to make money. That is what capitalism is all about, after all. So, when trying to imagine what a corporation will do in a given situation, just remember that bottom line. In fact, let’s imagine a typical American corporation (we’ll call it TAC). For each scenario I describe, we can use the corporate prime directive to figure out what the course of action for TAC would be.

The government imposes new, costly environmental regulations. TAC can choose to stay in the US and abide by the new regulations – either through new technologies or new procedures; stay in the US, disobey them and tie the government up in litigation; or move the offending processes to a country that either doesn’t have strict regulations and/or can’t enforce them. While Wolf thinks TAC will usually decide to go with the former [pp. 266], I don’t see this being cheaper a vast majority of the time, because if they choose to move labour costs are less and they wouldn’t have to follow any of those expensive regulations. If they choose to litigate and stay, they’re probably not changing their practices. Wolf suggests that leaving may tarnish their public image [pp. 272], but as we tend to be as financially motivated as TAC, I don’t see it being a problem as long as the product stays cheap and they throw us a feel-good advertising bone or two (such as the ‘green’ cotton ad).

TAC has decided to stay in the US, but not follow the regulations. Eventually, the government catches on – probably only after it affects some third party in a major way. TAC could pay up ASAP or litigate ad infinitum; meanwhile, are they going to stay and shape up or leave?

Although I think these few examples have shown quite nicely that it’s money, not upholding the law, that concerns TAC, there are a few other objections to my position I wish to address.

What am I complaining about? Wolf would ask; after all, “[e]nvironmental laws are generally much tougher than they were twenty years ago.” [pp. 254] Shouldn’t I be glad about that and stop wishing for the stars? I don’t think it is unreasonable to reach for the stars in this case. Yes, laws are tougher than they used to be – but we also know so much more about the effect we have on the environment than we used to. The pace of our law-tightening is not keeping up with our research advances. The point is not to get away with as much pollution as we possibly can, the point is to do as much as we can to eliminate negative externalities in the future, and make up for all past ones.

But what about factors dependent upon location? I am not saying that every corporation will move everything to the periphery. What I am saying is that those factors that are cheaper to do overseas, will be done overseas. And when factors are moved to the periphery, they will be executed in a way that is less environmentally conscious than it would be in the centre. This doesn’t affect every corporation, every field, every sector, but it affects enough of them to be concerned. And I would like to remind everyone that communication is only going to become faster and more streamlined. It will become easier and easier to do in the periphery what you once needed to do around a hotbed of research and development.

I want to make it clear that it is not outsourcing itself that is of chief concern here – while that might also be unethical, it is a debate for another time. I am just as outraged at the corporation that stays and ignores regulations as I am at the corporations that outsource so they don’t have to bother with piddledy regulations. The environment is a collective, global entity. Raping Mother Earth in China is just as bad as raping her in the US, even if we Americans don’t feel the effects right away.

All that is gold does not glitter

I'm going to level with you, and hope that gets me somewhere I haven't gotten yet.

I've been feeling guilty for not posting to my blog more often. After a brief spurt months and months ago of metaphysical exploration in the manner of Descartes (which, by the way, was very important to me at the time), the extent of my posts has basically been course essays with a few poems thrown in.

And this is not what I want.

I'm not especially busy, as the amount of time I spend on Facebook attests, so why haven't I been doing what I say I want to do with my life - talk to people through the written word and motivate change - instead of playing Scrabulous? I seem to have gotten caught up in the mechanism of my life and displaced my goals. Ugh!

This is not to say I haven't been progressing at all. I was recently informed that I am to be published in my university's literary journal. I am keeping up in my classes (for the most part) and am excited about writing an essay due next week. I have been participating in high-stress social situations and partially enjoying them (or at least going back for more). I have a new job, at which I am "kicking ass" (my boss' words, not mine). I have been keeping up with the blogs I read. So, my life is going pretty well on several fronts. Not that you want to hear about that. How people's lives are going well is not nearly so interesting as when catastrophe strikes.

But. Goal displacement. Right.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't understand why I can't seem to motivate myself to do this thing I know I want to do. Hypotheses, anyone?

I want to think of myself as flouting the goals and means of mainstream American society, but here I am, sitting on my ass getting high, scarfing pizza, and watching cyst videos on YouTube (which, if you have a strong stomach, can eat up hours) in between days of going to my public university and sitting through classes which really don't have any bearing on real life, when what I want to be doing is preparing organic, local, sustainably-raised quiche while talking about metaphysics with my beloved before sitting down to write poetry between the love-making and bed. After a day of saving the world.

Damn socialization to instant gratification.

So I guess my conclusion is...that I'm going to try to post more often, but give myself some slack as to the content/subject matter.

Women in Roman love poetry: mistress, poet, and letter writer

As a woman of the 21^st century who has always felt like she perhaps once belonged to another time period, the study of the lives of women of multiple cultures and eras has always held a special place in my scholastic interests. When trying to figure out how Roman women of the Augustan era actually lived, a vital resource is the literature featuring or at least mentioning them. Although much can of course be discerned through other archaeological media, literature remains a primary means for study.

Roman love elegy holds a wealth of information particularly about the relationships between these women and their extramarital lovers. Selected works of the poets Catullus, Propertius, Sulpicia, and Ovid are what I will focus on for the purpose of this essay. Each of these poets has a lover to whom they address poems or about whom they write poems: Catullus’ Lesbia, Propertius’ Cynthia, Sulpicia’s Cerinthus, and Ovid’s Corinna. Each of these subjects may or may not have corresponded closely to a historical figure. I am not particularly interested in whether or not scholars can point to a particular person and say ‘Aha! This is the real Lesbia!’ I am concerned with how closely these poetical works corresponded to reality in general. There is quite a bit of difference in saying that my lover visited Germany and while she was there I wrote her love poetry telling her how her cat was faring while she was away and saying that often lovers have to be separated and correspondence is able to pass between them assuring them of conditions back at home, even if a more common theme in Latin elegy is complaints of a separation as can be seen in Sulpicia’s tale of her ‘hateful birthday’ which is to be celebrated in the country without Cerinthus[1] and Propertius’ numerous grumblings that Cynthia is purposely spending time away from him with little care for his feelings.[2]

Still, attention must be taken to realise that a male poet’s portrayal may have considerable discrepancy between how they perceived and described these women’s lives and what their lives were actually like. Unless you have experienced a situation yourself, a certain amount of imagination must be utilized. This is part of what makes writing interesting and enjoyable to do, but can be a bit tricky to carry out accurately as well as believably. Even with female poets, there is the difference between reality and fiction that characterises all poetry. The audience of these authors must also be considered. Writing works for their poet friends to read would be different than writing things to be spread at large in the forum and different from writing things directly to their lovers – even as they realise that these epistles may well have had audiences that they did not intend or expect. Sulpicia herself acknowledges this particular dilemma, voicing a wish for the courage to blatantly send ‘unsealed tablets’ to her lover.[3]

Then again, if the literature bore absolutely no resemblance to reality, would it have had the audience that it must have had to have survived this long? The best fiction is often said to come from experience, so it holds that fiction bearing little or no resemblance to real experience would be of lesser quality and thus less likely to be preserved these two millennia. The strategy then, perhaps, to take is one of acceptance that nonetheless holds a healthy scepticism in the wings: observing everything carefully while noting the context. There are a few specific aspects of Roman women which I wish to explore in this way: how they behaved as mistresses and what sort of cultured skills they had especially as poets and letter writers as represented in Latin love elegy. Because I am considering the work of both men and women I will be able to discuss these aspects from the male viewpoint and from the perspective of a woman herself.

Unsurprisingly, the main of the poetry describes the qualities these women displayed as mistresses. A closely related string of themes is that the lovers are being kept physically apart in some way, whether by distance, chaperones, or infidelity.

The very way in which some of the poems are written suggests correspondence between the lovers in written form, telling us that women wrote to their lovers at least sometimes. These were educated women. Ovid demands a ‘long letter’ from Corinna via her hairdresser Napë, only to change his mind a few lines later, not wanting to ‘tire her fingers pushing a stylus,’ letting us know that it would have indeed been Corinna herself writing to him, not a learned slave transcribing her words.[4] As mentioned above, several of Propertius’ poems lament that Cynthia is off gallivanting in faraway places without him, which we can presume would necessitate letter writing.

Ovid beseeches a stoic ‘poor wretch’ of a porter who will not let him in to see his beloved.[5] Surely if she had wished to see him she would have instructed the porter to allow him in? Propertius speaks in the voice of his mistress’ doorway, which complains about all it has to endure, including the ‘long vigils of a tragic supplicant’ who cannot gain entrance.[6]

The lover often has to abide interference from the husband, to which he reacts jealously, conveniently forgetting that he is the “other man.” My favourite example of this is Ovid’s dinner party poem in which he instructs Corinna on how to behave while dining with her boorish husband: signal her thoughts to Ovid with ‘the language of eyebrows and fingers,’ and ‘refuse all food he has tasted first,’ but ‘above all don’t kiss him!’[7] And besides these horrid husbands, the women will insist on taking lovers other than the poets. Lesbia, with ‘her adulterers, three hundred together’ provokes Catullus to retort (semi-) publicly, sending her a message through his two friends.[8] In adorning herself in a way that suggests she is ‘preparing to go to a new man,’ Cynthia causes Propertius ‘so much pain.’[9] Infidelity is not limited to the women, however, as Cerinthus goes ‘chasing after hookers and spinning-girls and whores’ in a most vulgar fashion, neglecting his high-born mistress.[10]

One matter that Propertius and Ovid in particular like to write on is their mistress’ anger. Cynthia’s tongue is cutting and witty (also a fantastic quality in a poet, by the way), most notably when she catches Propertius sneaking in after a night of debauchery her enjoyed without her.[11] She actually speaks in the first person in this poem, giving yet another dimension to the “he said she said” nature of these men reporting on women’s personalities, qualities and activities. Ovid relates Corinna’s jealous anger over supposedly the most innocent of things – glances, compliments – although he himself is carrying on with her maid.[12] In another poem he talks about an old crone, Dipsas, giving Corinna lessons on how to balance her life, keeping her suitors and husband in their proper places.[13] You can imagine how her anger over one of Ovid’s misbehaviours could drive her to this measure.

A perhaps more pleasant theme shows happy times spent together. Ovid recounts a sultry summer afternoon spent on a couch with Corinna, who is – for him – the embodiment of perfection, with ‘faultless beauty.’[14] Catullus highly values Lesbia’s kisses, completely devoting two poems to them, both relating to desire for uncountable numbers of her sweet kisses.[15]

Still one more recurring subject is the mistress’ illness, which lends an opportunity for the dutiful lover to dote upon her. A fevered Sulpicia sends for Cerinthus, needing to know if he’s worried about her, for if he isn’t, it’s not worth getting better.[16] Propertius prays to Jupiter to save his ‘afflicted girl,’ citing Jove’s interest in beautiful girls as motivation enough to turn the tides of illness.[17] Ovid asks Isis for intervention as Corinna’s self-inflicted abortion has gone horribly awry, even as, in the next poem, he chastises Corinna for being so vain and rash.[18]

Propertius works the hardest to remind his readers of the cultivated talents of Roman women, as Cynthia is an accomplished poet and avid correspondent. He makes numerous references to her talent with the lyre[19] and refers to her as ‘sophisticated’ more than once.[20] Sulpicia is an extremely talented poet, as we have remnants of her work even though she was a woman, and most of her poems are in epistle form.[21]

Clearly, close inspection of Latin love elegy reveals women multidimensional and complex. Unfortunately, we learn almost exclusively of high class women through this genre but the various themes of elegy demonstrate their personalities and talents to us quite thoroughly. Whether or not the women described in the poems correspond precisely to historical figures, Augustan women would have possessed similar characteristics.

Sources for English Translation of the Text

(for easy reference on the part of the author)

Corelis, Jon. Roman Erotic Elegy. Salzburg, Austria: University of Salzburg Press, 1995. http://www.geocities.com/romanelegy (accessed December 27, 2007).

Katz, Vincent. The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius. Woodstock, UK: Princeton University Press, 2004.

Lee, Guy. Ovid’s Amores. New York: Viking Press, 1968.

---. The Poems of Catullus. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998.

---

[1] Sulpicia 2, ln 1

[2] Propertius 1.8, 1.11 and 1.12

[3] Sulpicia 1, ln 7-8

[4] Ovid 1.11, ln 19, 23

[5] Ovid 1.6, ln 1

[6] Propertius 1.16, ln 14

[7] Ovid 1.4, ln 19, 33, 38

[8] Catullus 11, ln 17-18

[9] Propertius 1.15, ln 8, 3

[10] Sulpicia 4, ln 3-4

[11] Propertius 1.3, especially ln 35-46

[12] Ovid 2.7-8

[13] Ovid 1.8

[14] Ovid 1.5, ln 17-18

[15] Catullus 5, 7

[16] Sulpicia 5

[17] Propertius 2.28

[18] Ovid 2.13-14

[19] Propertius 1.2 ln 28, 1.3 ln 42

[20] Propertius 1.2 ln 26, 1.7 ln 13

[21] Sulpicia 3, 4, 5, 6

71119

it’s morning

I’m sitting here feeling the weight

of my maiden’s breasts in my hands

trying

to imagine what they would feel like

pendulous and heavy with milk

how it would feel to nourish a baby

with these

because I’ve fed children

but never from my own body

everyone talks about the great connection it forges,

breast-feeding a baby

when does that tie grow weak?

fray

sever?

and who feels it more

the child or the mother?

I let down my hair, cascading, around my shoulders

covering me

I wish it could hide me

an invisibility cloak

sheltering me so that blows

physical and emotional

may miss their mark

instead of lodging,

an aching arrow,

between my breasts

I want to rip it out, this arrow,

tear it from my flesh

break the shaft over my knee

and hurl the point far away from me

so I never have to feel it again

but I am afraid

that in removing it

I may destroy my own heart

or worse, that I might see,

reflected on the razor-sharp point,

myself

and what is yet to be

so what do I do with this

this bond

forged in the womb and stretched across the years

it used to be strong

stronger than reason

now all I can see are the holes, the innumerable patches,

tattered and hoary with age

culminating finally with this arrow

this wretched arrow

in my heart

The Ecology of World Hunger

Salutations, dear reader. I don’t know your name, your gender, the color of your hair, your ethnicity, or your political ideology, but I do know one thing about you (with 99.9999% certainty, through sheer probability alone, but we’ll get to that later): you and I are of the same culture. Now, don’t get offended. Yes, I am your average 5^th-generation American mongrel, and you may be pure Japanese going back for as long as there has been a Japan, but that’s not what I’m talking about. While our ethnicities may be very different, what we share is a common cultural world view, a world view that has been around for the last 10,000 years, give or take. This world view that has spread throughout the East and West alike, leaving only tiny pockets of other cultures untouched, numbering somewhat less than 100,000 people total, making this vast culture the culture of 99.9999% of the globe. I first became aware of the commonality of global culture while reading different works by author Daniel Quinn. Where relevant, I will refer to specific examples and terms Quinn has used, but as much as possible I will try to explain the situation in my own way, as it relates to the specific issue with which I am presently concerned, that is, world hunger.

Ah, finally, I’m getting to the point. This is what I’m really talking about, world hunger, just another of the problems we’ve been trying to fix, like global warming or the destruction of the rainforests. Surely I don’t need to draw this global culture idea into the fray, do I? Sit back, my friend, and listen.

Before I begin to explain how we came to have this massive hunger problem, I must explain a concept or two. When I say that a certain group will not do Z because Z is not evolutionarily stable, this does not mean that no one has ever done Z. It means that those who have done Z are no longer around because doing Z results in elimination from the gene pool. Therefore, if a certain group is around, they have not been doing Z. Please remember that we are speaking on an evolutionary scale, where it may take hundreds of thousands of years to weed a trait completely out of the gene pool.

The first modern humans appeared about 100,000 years ago somewhere in Africa. They spread out over the globe, developing their own ways of living each suited to their particular locales. There were as many ways to live as there were peoples. Some peoples hunted for all of their food, some hunted a little and gathered a little, some gathered a lot and planted a little, some planted a lot and gathered a little and hunted a little. Diversity is, after all, the key to an evolutionarily stable ecology. This life was fine for them, for 90,000 years. I am not saying that it was a paradise, that humans during this period were free from any negative emotions, that they were free of problems inside the tribe caused by jealousy or anger, such as murder or infidelity.

What I am saying is that there was tolerance between tribes - indeed, between species. That is to say that humans, like lions and deer and trout, respected the law of limited competition. Quinn has phrased the law as follows: “You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food.”[1] Tribe A might give a show of force to Tribe B to protect their territory and their resources, but they won’t massacre Tribe B or take over their territory, because such a course of action is not evolutionarily stable.

I am speaking here of the law of limited competition with regard to humans, but it applies to all of nature. Humanity is not exempt from the effects of disobeying the law of limited competition, any more than they are exempt from the effects of disobeying the law of thermodynamics. This is what makes something a law of nature: its universality. Natural law theory as a formal philosophical theory was expressed first by the Greeks, saying that “the world is a rational order with values and purposes built into its very nature.”[2] Natural law theory is not merely a metaphysical theory however: it is often applied to ethics. What is natural is equated with what is right, what is unnatural is equated with what is wrong. The Christians took well to natural law theory, with one addition: their God, God being the one who built this purpose and value into nature. And because God had created this order, God was the one who had decided what was right and wrong.

Natural law theory has not had many adherents in recent years, due at least in part, albeit perhaps unconsciously, to David Hume’s criticism. He thought it the height of foolishness to equate what is natural with what is right; that move was, in his opinion, completely unphilosophical.[3] Other critics of natural law theory have also regarded negatively the move of drawing morality into natural laws. Nature is what it is, there is no sense, indeed no compelling reason or rationale for placing ethical labels on natural states. I do think there is some merit to this view, but for different reasons than the holders of the view themselves might have. However, we need to return to the story of humanity.

This was how the stage was set 10,000 years ago. In different places all over the globe, within a few hundreds or thousands of years of each other, a few cultures decided to pursue a different kind of agriculture, called totalitarian agriculture by Quinn. It has a new set of precepts, which are contrary to the law of limited competition. They are: 1) food dedicated to human use may be denied to all other species, 2) any species that would compete for human food may be destroyed at will, and 3) food needed by other species may be destroyed at will to make room for the production of human food.[4] This culture change is generally called the First Agricultural Revolution, or the Neolithic Revolution.

The reasons for this sudden shift in food management are not always examined by the average person. You know that this revolution happened of course, but perhaps you have not found it necessary to think too carefully about why it did or what the immediate effects were. One thing is definite: our cultural ancestors did not embrace totalitarian agriculture because it was easier. Two or three hours of labor per day is enough to sustain the average hunter-gatherer, while we zip about with our eight or nine hours workdays – not forgetting, of course, that our farmer forebears often worked 10, 12, or even 16 hour days, and that in some areas of the world people still work those kinds of hours just to make ends meet. The immediate effect of totalitarian agriculture is a population explosion, necessarily followed by a rapid geographical expansion. Now remember that at this time there were thousands of cultures living in relative peace alongside one another. A culture who embraced totalitarian agriculture would soon outgrow its boundaries and need to spread out, obliterating surrounding (and incompatible) cultures. And so the revolution continued, and continues to this day, swelling and swallowing every other culture in its path. This is what I meant when I said we are of the same culture. The food we eat, the way we gain our sustenance, is based on the principles of totalitarian agriculture.

Examining totalitarian agriculture from an evolutionarily stable standard is almost horrifying, and certainly cause for alarm. Not only does it flaunt the law of limited competition at every point, it decreases biodiversity exponentially, leaving the involved ecosystem vulnerable to complete obliteration. It is not surprising to hear that each day more than 200 species are lost to the juggernaut of totalitarian agriculture. The population explosion continues to this day, and we continue to outstrip our resources. We are producing enough food to feed all the people on earth, only for some reason not all the people who need it are getting it: it’s not being distributed equally. So we produce more food. Except you and I know what more food production yields: population growth. Every time. We look at the world around us and we see that people are starving and rather than allow our population numbers to fall so that our current food supply is accurate, we respond with public outcry and take steps to increase our food production. The problem is increased food supply equals still greater population growth. So once again our numbers rise, outstrip our food sources, and people starve.

In producing more food, we are not alleviating the problem of unequal distribution, we are just fuelling population expansion, which will amplify the effects of the unequal distribution problem and continue to have devastating consequences for the sustainability of the global ecosystem. Because charity is constantly a part of our world, so too is population explosion, disparity of wealth, and starvation.

Common explanations of natural law theory justify this egotistical cultural movement by saying that that humans are the natural apex of the world, or that God made the world for man to use. I find this world view to be part of totalitarian agriculture. In taking the whole of worthy food production into our own hands, we are in effect saying that it is our right to do so, that it is right to do so. I am here to offer a breath of life for natural law theory, and a ray of hope for the world as a whole. What is natural is not right merely because it is natural; it is right because it is what works, it is what has worked, by definition. Sometimes we don’t remember that what is natural is the result of billions of years of refining – why would you want to mess with that? The world is in the state that it is because our culture has forgotten or ignored this. The way to reduce world hunger in the future is not to produce more food, it is to allow the population of the world to come back into balance with the resources sustainably available to it.

Sources:

Quinn, Daniel. (1992). Ishmael. New York: Bantam.

--- (1996). The Story of B. New York: Bantam.

Rachels, James. (2003). The Elements of Moral Philosophy. New York: McGraw-Hill.

---

[1] Quinn, Ishmael, p. 129

[2] Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy, p. 53

[3] Ibid, p. 56

[4]Quinn, The Story of B, p. 260