f anything is true, it is true that with a child just about anything can go wrong in the blink of an eye.  Children dart about here and there, exploring this and that.  Unlike adults, children have almost no genuine sense of anticipated danger.  Children live in the present.  So with even the best of parents, a child is apt to suffer a misfortune that in no way whatsoever reflects upon the parents as inadequate parents.   

But I have tried, with no success whatsoever, to imagine just how it is that a parent could get out of a car that she or he was driving and forget that her or his infant had been left in the car unattended, where the child is forgotten about for so long that the child dies or suffers considerable damage.  I can understand a momentary distraction of several minutes even.  But I cannot fathom being so distracted that I get out of the car and hours pass before I realize that I did not have my child with me.  It is reported that Kevin Kelly did just that, because he was much distracted.  As a result, his daughter Frances Kelly died from the oppressive heat. 

Naturally, there is a respect in which has a great deal of compassion or pity for Kelly.  After all, he has suffered a terrible lost.  And certainly traditional punishment seems misguided in that there is no straightforward sense in which it can be said that he intended the harm of his daughter. 

However, there is a famous line by the late philosopher Bernard Williams that seems quite applicable here, although the context is somewhat different, namely: One thought too many.  In a word, the move is that if a person reflections need to pass by way of Kant’s moral theory in order for the person to be motivated to save his spouse, then that is one thought too many. 

In a like manner, then, if a person is so distracted that he can go for hours without remembering that he left his child unattended in the car, then that person one thought too many.  As a spouse or even a dear friend, there is something terribly unfit about me as a person if my reflections need to pass through Kant’s moral theory in order for me to be motivated to save my spouse or dear friend.  So much so that while a person would understandably be happy that she was rescued, she would nonetheless be miffed—and rightly so—over the reasoning that occasioned the rescue. 

Significantly, a single instance of inappropriate motives can suffice to raise grave concern regarding a person’s moral fitness.

My thought, then, is really a very simple one.  People who could be so distracted that they could forgot for hours that they had left their child in a car unattended are not fit to be parents.  Let me explain.

To begin with, there is the straightforward fact that it strikes as impossible to drive with a child in a car and not be continually conscious of that reality.  I am in general a decent driver, but whenever I drive with a child in a car there is a level of concern that I have that I would not have otherwise.  Just as it is a given that I do not want to harm myself, it is also a given that I do not want to be the moral cause of the harm that a child suffers.  Short of being possessed, it is not conceivable to me that I could forget that I am driving with a child in the car (given that this is indeed the case).  Accordingly, it is not possible that I could arrive at my destination and lose sight of the reality that I had driven with a child in the car.  So, the very idea of forgetting for hours that I had left a child unattended in a car is simply incomprehensible to me.  Not even an event like 9/11 could cause that to happen, precisely because in that case there would be absolutely nothing more important to me than protecting the child. 

Of course, I am not a parent.  But I have the pleasure of knowing some wonderful parents with young children: The Simon and Leslie Saks Family and the Laurent and Céphora Rougemont Family.  Not even all the prophets of the three monotheistic religions—Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed—shouting in unison could get these parents to forget for hours that they had left their children unattended. 

Part of what constitutes being a good parent is that there are certain sensibilities that are always in place.  These sensibilities do not get overridden or pushed aside owing to the stress of the moment.  Indeed, if that is all it takes, namely great stress, in order for the appropriate sensibilities to be pushed into the background, causing one’s child to be in harm’s way, then precisely what follows is that one is not fit to be a parent. 

In the case of Kevin Kelly, I remarked earlier that we may naturally have some passion or pity for him, because he has obvious suffere4d a loss.  Just so, we should not hesitate to draw the quite appropriate conclusion ineluctably warranted by his own behavior, namely that he was unfit to be a parent.  His loss should not blind us to this reality.  And insofar as it does, then appropriate compassion turns into misplaced compassion.  For you see, he is the reason for why he suffered the loss.  It is not that the sky suddenly opened up and a giant bird descended and swooped up his child and then consumed the baby.  Nor, more prctically speaking, is the loss of the child owing to, for example, Kelly’s car being hit by an inebriated driver. 

No, the problem is that Kelly was so distracted that hours went by without him remembering that he had left his infant child in the car unattended.  And that entails a fundamental defect in his character at least when it comes to parenting—a form of depravity, if you will, at least with regard to parenting. 

Am I being too harsh here?  I think not.  As a single individual without children, I can choose to stay out all night and dance, whenever it pleases me to do so.  But if I decide to take care of your children for the weekend, then choosing to go out and dance all night, while the children are sleeping in my home, reveals a level of moral depravity on my part. 

As I noted earlier, a single instance of behavior can in some instance reveal a deep, deep depravity.  An adult does not need to touch a child sexually three or more times in order for us to be warranted in drawing the conclusion that she or he is morally depraved in a certain respect.  No, a single instance of such behavior suffices. 

Surely, then, the point cannot be that when it comes to forgetting for hours that one has left a infant in a car unattended, we need several instances of such behavior before we are warranted in drawing the conclusion that we have a lack of sensibility here that bespeaks a depravity.  Kevin Kelly’s own loss must not blind us to his moral depravity.  Indeed, it is his depravity that occasioned the loss.  Nothing else did.  And we must not lose sight of this moral reality. 

Let me see: How many times may a sexually starved professor make sexual advances towards a college student before we contend that that the professor’s behavior is entirely unacceptable?  Do I hear: One time more than suffices?  Well, if we think that protecting a college student from sexual advances is more important than protecting an infant from death, then Kevin Kelly’s behavior and the concomitant commitment to being so understanding of his pain may reveal a greater moral problem, namely a morally depraved society. 

he very idea that gaining or losing weight is contagious is utterly preposterous.  At any rate, the way in which gaining or losing weight is contagious is rather like the way in which a smile is contagious.  So when a study by Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, entitled “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network Over 32 Years, appears in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (26 July 2007), which claims that gaining or losing weight is contagious, what we know is that this characterization is none other than a metaphorical way of speaking.  What we have here is not an instance of contagion, but something more pernicious, which I shall identify below.

What is true, of course, is that most of us are influenced significantly by the social network with which we identity.  This truth is quite significant.  However, this truth is a very long ways from being identical to the claim that gaining or losing weight is contagious.  Diseases can be contagious, patterns of behavior cannot be. 

What concerns me is the language of the study.  Consider.  It is certainly true that I am more likely to laugh around friends who laugh a lot than around friends who frown a lot.  In that sense we can say, metaphorically, that laughing is contagious.  But wait a minute.  Suppose I join my friends for an evening out and they become horrendously drunk, whereas I remain sober.  In that drunken state, my friends witness a child being brutally beaten and start laughing uncontrollably.  Would their laughing excuse my laughing?  I should hope not.  If while fully sober, I also start laughing at the child being physically abused, then my behavior is without question morally despicable.  Suppose that in their drunken state my friends join in and start hitting the child.  If anything is true, it most certainly is true that my joining in would be utterly inexcusable. 

The point of the preceding story is exceedingly simple: Immoral behavior on the part of our friends does not excuse morally inappropriate behavior on our part.  There is a term for this sort of independence.  It is called free will.  Admittedly, free admits of degrees.  There is a straightforward sense in which an entirely inebriated person has less free will.  And if I am bound and gagged, then my free will has been reduced even more.  I am even prepared to allows that certain sorts of mental states, such as severe depression may reduce a person’s free will. 

But here is my question:

If all my friends are fat, exactly how is it supposed to follow that truth that I am now rather likely to become fat in a way that is analogous to the fatness on the part of my friends being contagious? 

In what follows, I am now going to no doubt offend a few folks.  But let me admit at the outset that I am rather fortunate in that I have never really had to worry about being fat.  Indeed, I can in general take very little credit for being thin.  Well, perhaps that is not quite right.  My being thin is may be more tied to my lifestyle than first meets the eye.  I take the steps and I walk a lot.  As a matter of principle, I walk up the steps unless I am going pass the fifth floor.  Even in a steep public subway system such as the one found in Washington, D.C., I use the steps rather than follow the crowd and ride the escalator.  Nature may have given me an edge, but I have adopted quite a few modes of being in my life that reinforce the edge that nature has given to me.

So back to my question:

If all my friends are fat, exactly how is it supposed to follow that truth that I am now rather likely to become fat in a way that is analogous to the fatness on the part of my friends being contagious?

First of all, how often do we see a fat person and say to ourselves: “I sure as hell want to look like that fat person!”  Or, “If I could move like that fat person moves, I would be in 7th heaven!”  To be sure, I have seen a few heavy-set people who, as we say, know how to carry their weight.  But I have never looked upon such a person with envy, because I found the individual’s body-size to a model of what I might want in a body.  By contrast, I have seen a fair number of women look at me with considerable appreciation (which more than suffices to keep me walking up those steps).  I have seen a few women take give me that look of appreciation although I would hardly characterize myself as handsome. 

This is why I have the question that I have.  To the put the question, another way: Why isn’t it that fat people repulse us rather than “cause” us to become fat?  The language is harsh, but it is very important to speak that way.  We may very well be—indeed, we should be—nice and kind and considerate to a person who is fat, but thinking that such a person is physically attractive seems rather implausible. 

So if the study in the NEJM is correct, then what we are to believe is that being around fat people inclines us to acquire a body form that we actually find repulsive. 

The thinking behind the study, by Christakis and Fowler, is presumably that what have here must constitute a contagion; otherwise, thin people who are around fat people would not become fat.

Alas, there is a much simpler explanation that draws its inspiration from Milgram’s classic work, Obedience to Authority, namely that human beings do not have the moral fiber that one would think they have, given how much they clamor for freedom; accordingly, we often use the unacceptable behavior of others as an excuse for like unacceptable behavior on our part.  Hence, the more fat people we associate with the more likely we are to excuse our becoming fat.  By contrast, if our friends become thin, then the more difficult it becomes to excuse our own behavior.  So we, too, become thin.

The explanation, in the end, is simply that we fail to take full responsibility for our own lives.  There is nothing remotely resembling any kind of causal relation between one person’s being fat and another person (a non-family member) being fat.  So we can’t possibly have a contagion in this sort of case. 

Alas, if the study is right, then things simply do not bode well for democracy.  For what the study portends is that human beings are far more like lemmings than not, in that we follow others even when the course leads to our own demise.  Otherwise, no one should get fat owing merely to being around fat friends, precisely because there is nothing whatsoever about the behavior of fat friends that is even remotely appealing—if, that is, one is a healthy person who is not fat.  The language of “contagion” masks this insight. 

There is not a single dimension of human behavior from sexual attraction to sheer movement that comes even remotely close to suggesting that being fat is the way to go.  What is more, no one goes to bed skinny and wakes up fat.  Accordingly, it is not as if there are not clear warning signs: like the entire former wardrobe no longer fits.  So if merely being around fat friends is all it takes to render us unable to control our becoming fat, then we human beings are indeed quite a pitiful species. 

The NEJM study is a profound indictment of the lack of will on the part of human beings to pursue their own moral and physical well-being.  Most changes in life are not nearly as straightforward, on every dimension, as is becoming fat.  So if all it takes to lose our will to remain non-fat is being surrounded by fat friends, as the study suggests, then much of the moral behavior that we should exhibit towards one another has simply no chance at all of remaining a part of the social fabric of our lives.  That is what the study in the NEJM really shows.  And that is frightening.  Indeed, the proof of just how morally vapid we have become is that the authors of the study should characterize becoming fat as a contagion. 

n recent years, it seems to me that Syracuse University has become more like a pit-bull that indiscriminately biting at anything rather than a majestic eagle that inspires us by the soaring heights that it attains.  There is a vast difference between, on the one hand, getting people to accomplish an end by coercing and manipulating them (the pit-bull indiscriminately biting) and, on the other, getting people to accomplish that end because one inspires them to appreciate the richness of the end in question (the soaring eagle). 

There is a letter dated (to see the letter, click on the date) 1 July 2007 that was sent to Syracuse University faculty members from a division of the SU Bookstore.  The first paragraph, as you can confirm, reads as follows:

To better insure proper implementation regarding copyright issues and NCAA compliancy, all course readers will need to be directed to the University Bookstore (my italics).

Now, what do you think the words “ . . . all course readers will need to be directed to the University Bookstore” mean?  On the most straightforward reading of those words, the idea seems to be that all faculty members are now obligated (in some sense or the other) to have their course readers prepared by the University Bookstore rather than by other alternatives available in the campus area.  Why?  In order to insure both that matters of copyright are properly addressed and that NCAA compliancy is met.  No one with an adequate command of the English language would suppose that those italicized words mean something different.

As it turns out, I have been told that the italicized word do not mean what they appear to mean on a most straightforward reading of them.  But what do they mean?  Alas, I was not able to get a straightforward answer to that question. 

Syracuse University is one of the two or three most powerful economic forces in the Syracuse area; and that is not about to change.  What is more, there is simply no reason to suppose that requiring course readers to be prepared by a division of the SU Bookstore is going to make a tremendous economic difference (for the better) to the Bookstore.  After all, one can by clothing with the SU logo on it throughout the Syracuse area; and enormous sums of money are spent on such paraphernalia. 

So what we seem to be getting with the Syracuse University Bookstore is not an aggressive and marvelous sales strategy.  Rather, what we are getting is simply an abuse of power that employs manipulative and misleading tactics.  What is more, this is being done in a way that is characteristic of small-mindedness. 

There is no indication whatsoever that the letter has the approval of the main administration of the University.  I contacted the Provost Office of Syracuse University; and there was no obvious familiarity on the part of those with whom I spoke of the letter sent out by the Electronic Printing Center of the SU Bookstore. 

This should come as no surprise.  Any number of alternative facilities can certify that copyright requirements are met.  Publishing houses with no university affiliation whatsoever do that sort of thing all the time.  There is no extraordinary competency involved here that requires anyone to have a Ph.D. along with an additional certificate of training.

As for NCAA compliance, this simply means that those who are on athletic scholarships do not have to put out money for textbooks required by the courses for which they are enrolled.  Instead, the seller of the materials to the college athlete is independently reimbursed by the university at which the student is enrolled.  Once more, there is no extraordinary competency involved here that requires anyone to have a Ph.D. along with an additional certificate of training. 

All of this so manifestly obvious that it invariably invites the question: Why would Syracuse University Bookstore resort to such manipulative and misleading tactics? 

My general view is that Syracuse University, with perhaps the exception of the Maxwell School and the Newhouse School, suffers from an inferiority complex. Obviously, I am speaking here of the overall ethos of the University as opposed to every aspect of the University.  

On my view, Syracuse University has become the pit-bull that indiscriminately bites in order to assert itself.  Syracuse University is not the majestic eagle that inspires us by the breathtaking heights at which it soars time and time again.   Needless to say, it is only with the latter that we have enduring greatness.  With the former, what we have is none other than people cowering into submission.

A university’s bookstore is a marvelous reflection of the ethos of a university.  This is because the bookstore tells us what people expect of it in terms of excellence or the lack thereof.  So the irony is this: Syracuse University undergraduates often complain that Syracuse University is about nothing much but money.  Well, if the tactics of the bookstore are any indication, then I must confess that the undergraduates have gotten the point exactly right, although their reasoning here is mistaken.  

Most major private universities charge about the same.  So Syracuse University are mistaken in thinking that SU is comparatively more expensive.  At the Ivy League schools, however, it is clear to most that they receive in return a intangible intellectual benefit that is itself priceless.  There is very little evidence of this sentiment among undergraduates at Syracuse University. 

Most unexpectedly, the SU Bookstore is a reminder of this painful truth. 

magine a world in which, from the standpoint of adults, the differences between pets and children had for all practical purposes had disappeared.  Presumably, some differences would prevail.  Human beings cannot, for instance, give birth to dogs or cats or rabbits or what have you; whereas human beings can give birth to human infants.  And one imagines that, even in a world where having test-tube babies is a complete option, parents of children will generally prefer giving birth to their children. 

What I am asking you to imagine, however, is a world in which from the standpoint of the child, there is not much difference between the way the child is treated by his parents and the way in which the parents treat the pet of the home—a dog, say.  The child is well-fed; the pet is well-fed.  Indeed, just as the parents would not dream of simply giving the child scraps off the table, they would not dream of giving scraps off the table to the dog.  Quite the contrary, they buy nothing but the best for the dog.

The child receives excellent medical care; the dog receives excellent medical care. 

The child has a very expensive nanny or quite expensive daycare arrangements.  Thus, the parents can attend to their very successful business with the confidence that their child is receiving the very best care possible.  And guess what: excellent arrangements are made for caring for the dog when the parents and child must be away. 

The child is sent to private schools; and the dog is routinely a part of a special training and grooming program. 

There are, to be sure, ineliminable differences between the child and the dog.  After all, the parents have conversations with the child and not the dog.  They talk to the child about her future; and not to the dog about its future.  Indeed, the dog is not in their will; whereas the child is. 

Still, there is this unsettling thought.  Just as no expense has been spared in caring for the dog, no expense has been spared in caring for the child.  But wait a minute.  Shouldn’t the point that I have just made go the other way around: “Just as no expense has been spared in caring for the child, no expense has been spared in caring for the dog”.  After all, isn’t there some fundamentally important sense in which the child is supposed to be ontologically prior to the dog?

But the question that I am asking, alas, is this: Given the way in which parents care for the family pet and the way in which parents care for their child, do the parents actually underwrite the ontological priority of the child?  Both the child and the pet eat well.  They both have excellent medical care.  Moreover, for both the dog and the child (Surely the order does not really matter, right?) no expense is spared in having someone to attend to them while the parents carry on with their lives.  To be sure, the dog may not quite need daily daycare, but if the dog did the parents would most certainly provide it. 

I assume that, morally speaking, parents should child value their child more than the family pet.  The question is this: What should parents do in terms of how they treat their child, on the one hand, and how they treat the family pet, on the other hand, that would underwrite the child’s conviction that her parents value her more than they value the family pet? 

Most significantly, the answer cannot be simply that the parents spend more money on the child than they do the family pet.  For suppose that the family has two pets: a dog and a gold fish.  The care required by a dog is far more expensive than care required by a gold fish.  From this truth, however, what surely does not follow is that the family values the dog more than the gold fish.  So while it is true that more money is spent on the child than the dog, it does not thereby follow that this is enough to establish in the child’s mind that the parents care more for her than they do the family dog. 

Now, it is my view that, between a child and the family dog, there should never even be the slightest doubt on the child’s part that she has first-place in the hearts of her parents.  And my very problem with modernity is that it is undermining the possibility of children having this simple conviction. 

What is the difference between, on the hand, giving birth to a child and then putting it into daycare a mere 6 weeks later while one is at work and, on the other, buying a pedigree puppy and then putting into a first-class kennel service while one is at work? 

Many seem to think that it would be wrong to bring a puppy home and then, from the very outset, leave it alone while one goes to work.  Of course, many have the same view with regard to a newborn infant.  Surely, the fact that daycare service is more expensive than daily kennel service hardly establishes that the parents accord the child far greater moral weight than they accord the puppy. 

It is a defining feature of human beings that their conviction that they are valued by another is inextricably tied to the experiences that they have with that other person.  And, alas, little things make all the difference in the world.  Indeed, the accumulative effect of the right set of little things is none other than a tidal wave of affirmation. 

Modernity has allowed people to entertain the delusion that the amount of money an individual spends on another suffices as a clear measure of that person’s love for the other.  But it is only a delusion.  To see this, consider the following example.

Suppose that I claim that you are my best friend.  Whenever we go out for a meal, I invariably pick pay for diner—no matter what the price tag.  That is, no doubt, very nice of me.  There is only one small problem.  I never call you or otherwise initial contact with you.  Rather, if you did not call me, then there would be very little contact between us.  True, I am always gracious when you call.  But I never make a point of contacting you.  Not by phone; not by email.  Well, to put the matter quite simply: You would be a fool to believe that I really regard you as my best friend, merely because I always pick up the check. 

It is interesting to me that just about everyone immediately sees the truth of preceding example.  Yet, many people who unequivocally grasp that point somehow manage to think that the proof that they love their children is shown by the amount of money they spend on daycare or nanny-care for them.  I claim that no child will really think that—the child’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

There is, I believe, no emptiness on the face of this earth like the emptiness that comes with not having been loved by one’s parents. 

Once upon a time, modes of parental behavior at every turn would have affirmed the moral worth of the child over the family pet, making it utterly otiose for the parents to have to point to the sums of money that they spend on their child as evidence of their love for the child. 

That so many parents nowadays take money spent on the child as a measure of their love for the child is precisely what gives the question with which I opened this essay the very plausibility that it has—so much so that we no longer have to imagine the possibility of the moral difference between the child and the family pet being obliterated.  No, the absence of a moral difference between the two has become a reality in way too many instances.

It is not enough that parents are clear about the difference between their child and the family pet.  Nothing is more important to child development than that the child comes to be equally clear about the difference, where the parental embodiment of that difference is that the child is valued vastly more than the family pet.

f I were writing a novel, and a section was about parents who so addicted to video games that they seriously neglected their children, most people would probably think that is way too silly of an idea for anyone to take it seriously.  Such a premise might make for bad science fiction, but it would be very much in keeping with reality.  For this is the story of Michael and Iana Straw, who jointly and individually neglected their 22 month old baby boy and 11 month old baby girl.  Their explanation: Addicted to video games. (the article is attached below).

It is striking that newspaper story reports that the couple neglected their children.  It does not report that the couple neglected themselves.  Had the story read “The couple was found undernourished and in clothes that they had been wearing for weeks on end”, I might buy claim of addiction.  But if, while playing video games, these two adults managed to take of their own needs while neglecting the needs of their two children, then we what have as an explanation for their neglect of their children is not video addiction but unvarnished child neglect.

As I reflected upon the story, I asked myself time and time again the following question: What is the difference between the absence of self-discipline and addiction?  I am going to offer an answer.  But first a few remarks. 

Like so many people nowadays, I absolutely enjoy the internet and computers and various programs.  And it may very well be argued that I spend more time doing things in this area than I ought to.  But am I addicted?  I think not.  Here is why.  I have never missed a flight, because I was on-line.  Nor have I been late to a meeting or failed to show up for class, and so on, owing to my involvement with some computer activity.  So if, against the foregoing backdrop, I am spending time playing computer games when I should be writing articles, then I should think that what I have is not an addiction problem but a self-discipline problem. 

For if I were really addicted to games, then I really ought to show up late for some of my important dates, even when it was clear that doing so would be rather costly to me in some way or the other.  But since that sort of thing has never happened, then the absence of self-discipline would the best explanation available for why it turns out that I playing video games when I should be writing articles.

Iana and Michael Straw had no trouble attending to their own needs.  Neither, for instance, was glued to the computer screen in a pool of their own feces.  Nor were they malnourished.  So clearly, some things other than the video games mattered to them.

The simple truth of the matter is that their children did not matter to them as much as their video games.  This truth does not the scaffold of an addition.  It needs only indifference coupled with the utter lack of self-discipline.  I mention self-discipline because one of the defining features of good parenting is that meeting a child’s basic needs unequivocally takes precedent over the parents doing what might give them mere pleasure. 

Two parents could be in the middle of having the most extraordinary sex that humankind has ever known; and if they hear the baby choking, then the sex most certainly should come to an abrupt ending, at least momentarily.  I mention sex because sex at its best speaks to a veritable mountain of desires.  Sex at its best is certainly a good competitor to whatever satisfactions video games might afford. 

The ability to turn away from what we find most physically satisfying in order to do what is morally important is one of the defining features of a human being.  There are indeed substances that can impede our doing this.  But nothing impedes our so behaving more than the lack of self-discipline itself. 

Now, once upon time the self-discipline for parents to behave in the right way towards their children received enormous reinforcement from the community in which people lived.  There were prevailing standards of what counted as a good parent; and a person could not thwart those standards without being the object of considerable scorn. 

The community helped many a set of parents to do right by their children even when the parents were sorely inclined to behave differently.  To be sure, the burden fell primarily upon the mother.  This reality, however, does not count against the substance of the point, namely that prevailing community standards often served as a bridge-over-troubled-waters when the mother was sorely inclined to be irresponsible. 

It is a defining feature of self-discipline that those who lack it simply cater to their desires, even when there are fundamentally important reasons not to do so.  An enormously wealthy person with no responsibilities at all who played video games from sun-up to sun-down has problems.  But the absence of self-discipline, as such, is not first among them. 

So the absence of self-discipline does have something in common with being addicted.  But there is this difference.  The addicted person is, with respect to the addiction in question, no longer in control of her or his own will.  Accordingly, the addicted person seeks satisfaction of the relevant desire (1) even though he knows that doing so would be exceedingly and immediately harmful to him and (2) even though he recognizes that he ought to behave otherwise and (3) even though he grasps that unless he acts on his own behalf then he is simply doomed.  That is, a defining feature of the addicted person is his ability to discount immediate harm of great significance to him, even when it is clear that unless he acts on his own behalf he is doomed.  All of us can be quite good at discounting distant harm of great significance to us. 

If my analysis of addiction points in the right direction, then much of what passes for an addiction these days is not that all.  Moreover, the analysis explains why a paradigm example of being addicted remains the case of, say, being addicted to cocaine.  It seems that even at the risk of losing his life at gun point a cocaine addict will seek to satisfy his desire for the drug. 

Needless to say, what most people countenance as an addiction does not come even close to being anything like being addicted to cocaine.  Road rage has been called an addiction.  Others claim to have an addiction to sex or to shopping.  I am willing to bet that no person claiming to be so would ever give a single thought to having sex while being awarded the Nobel Prize.  And I bet no one who claims to “suffer” from a road rage addiction would manifest such behavior in traffic if someone offered the person several hundred thousand dollars.  By contrast, a person addicted to cocaine might act out regardless of the circumstances in which he finds himself.

Likewise, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iana and Michael Straw have an addiction to video games that is even close to being on a par with an addiction to cocaine. 

Modern technology does not afford us more ways to become addicted to things.  Rather, it has become an increasingly greater challenge to self-discipline.  No more; no less. 

o one in antiquity could possibly have grasped the anonymity that is a defining feature of modernity.  In antiquity, the utter anonymity of modernity was possible only if one lived apart from others as a hermit.  And, if truth be told, the anonymity of a hermit is quite like the anonymity of modernity.  In antiquity, the very idea of two psychological healthy people living next door to one another for years on end all the while knowing next to nothing about one another would have been all but conceptually incoherent.  And, of course, there is the extraordinary anonymity afforded to internet users with virtual rooms and social environments (chat rooms, message boards, and the like). 

This is interesting because it means that however the great moral thinkers conceived of responsibility they simply did not think of it from the standpoint of being an entirely anonymous person. 

If nothing else anonymity shifts lowers the bar of temptation.  There are lots of things that people never gave any thought to doing, even a few centuries ago, if only because it was very difficult to do those things without it becoming known that one did them.  People have never been perfect, but the community of yesteryear in which people lived provided a form of moral suasion—a very high barrier to temptation, if you will—that no longer exists.  This the community of yesteryear did if only because no one wanted to be known for having done that sort of thing. 

In a word, there was the issue of shame that came with being known for having violated the widely held standards of the community.  This applies even to situations that we do not normally countenance as a moral wrong. 

When communities thrived, then parents showed up at meetings for the publicly scheduled meetings between parents and teachers because, among other things, no one wanted to be known as the parent who was not concerned enough to show up.  No one wanted the shame that not showing up occasioned. 

It is no coincidence, then, that with the rise of anonymity it turns out that moral shame has declined precipitously.  A most poignant example of this truth is the rise in pedophilia. 

Before the anonymity of the internet, pedophilia required making initial contact with a child; and this often required a degree of contact with the child in some sort of public venue.  But now, as the scenes from To Catch a Predator indicates, it is possible (thanks to the internet) to establish considerable rapport with an under-aged child via a chat room, where both the predator and the under-aged child are interacting anonymously by way of an alias. 

What I assume to be true is this: Many of the men who would never ever have gone on a school playground in order to seduce a child (because these men would not have wanted to be seen in that kind of public space) are now availing themselves of the anonymity of chat rooms in order to seduce children. 

With pedophilia the bar of temptation has been lowered mightily in a world where it is possible to interact routinely with children all the while remaining anonymously.  For those individuals with a sexual inclination for children, anonymity simply makes it easier to give in to the temptation to behave in that manner.

Let us consider a quite different example.  It is now possible to express anonymously quite horrendous and inappropriate outrage by way of the internet.  I may go to your site and create a pseudonym and then express my anger unwarranted anger to my heart’s content.  To be sure, you may delete my expressions of outrage.  Still, you will not have done before I have expressed my unwarranted and means-spirited outrage. 

So in terms of having simple self-control anonymity has been inimical to itself development or, in any case, its sustainment. 

Once upon a time, many a hostile word did not get said simply because those words had to be said directly to another’s face.  And we simply thought that it was better not to utter the words at all than to do so directly to the person’s face, especially if this meant doing so in a public venue.  Again, no one wanted the shame that came with doing such a thing.  Whatever satisfaction that came with having gotten it all out did not seem to make up for the shame that came with others witnessing such ugly behavior on our part.

Finally, anonymity has created one of the most horrendous one-line quips ever: “Who is to judge?”  This quip plays on a simple truth, namely that it is always possible that what looks like absolutely despicable behavior is not that once one properly attends to the circumstances of the behavior and the intentions with which the person acted.  And the point, of course, is that given the blanket of anonymity that prevails, who on earth has access to that sort of information?  Presumably no one. 

Anonymity, then, allows for a kind of deception that is simply not possible in the absence of anonymity.  When a grown man walks onto a play ground, there is a vividness to his actions that make it impossible for him to deceive himself with respect to his intentions.  But not so if he is in a chat room.  For there he can tell himself, that he does not really intend to do anything.  And there is a very real sense in which he has not done anything (even though he should not be in that chat room) until he actually makes contact with an under-aged child.  By contrast, there is a very real sense in which a man on the play ground, who is not there to pick up his own children, has indeed done something even he has not managed to make contact with a child; for there is the salient issue of his whereabouts, namely on the playground. 

In a world of anonymity and virtual reality, it strikes me as no accident that yelling as become so fashionable.  For increasingly, it would seem that reality is no more than what we make it; and yelling is one way, among others, to create a reality. 

The pressing question, of course, is whether we have the moral wherewithal to survive in a world of hyper-anonymity.  I am not persuaded that we do. 

To be sure, there are exceptions.  There are those who manage to pull themselves up by their bootstraps regardless of the circumstances in which they find themselves.  But what we can generally expect of people cannot be based upon the wherewithal of the particularly exceptional. 

Anonymity undermines what we may refer to as personal moral history.  It is that personal moral history that precludes a certain vapidity.  The more vapid folks are, the more easily manipulated they are and more easily self-deceived they are. 

Moral responsibility at is best entails the wherewithal to take the other seriously even when one is under considerable pressure or in great pain.  Moral responsibility, then, requires a very deep sense of self; and it is the development of precisely that deep sense of self that anonymity precludes in the case of most lives. 

If this is right, then we may need one another in ways that the great moral thinkers could never have fully appreciated, precisely because they did not imagine, and perhaps could not even have imagined, a world in which anonymity had become a part of the very fabric of the culture itself—so much so that we are perhaps more likely to know who did what on some television reality show than we are to know who our neighbors are.