Thought experiment: There’s a very clever man-eating lion on the prowl, so clever that we might just as well accept that it will never be caught. We can take some precautions to minimise the likelihood that our child will be its next victim. But nothing we can do will prevent some child being killed tonight. And every night hereafter. 

I won’t say “Not to worry!” But I will observe that it’s not that this predator is threatening the survival of the community. We number in the millions, and we’re reproducing in the tens of thousands. It’s unfortunate, but no more so – in fact considerably less so – than the ravages of cancer, or any number of ineliminable misfortunes that we’ve simply accepted as part of what it is to be an organism among myriad other organisms. Or as Alfred Lord Tennyson put it, “nature red in tooth and claw.”

Thought experiment: There’s a very clever serial killer on the prowl, so clever that we might just as well accept that he will never be caught. We can take some precautions to minimise the likelihood that we’ll be his next victim. But nothing we can do will prevent someone being killed tonight. And every night hereafter. 

I won’t say “Not to worry!” But I will observe that it’s not that this predator is threatening the survival of the community. We number in the millions, and we’re reproducing in the tens of thousands. It’s unfortunate, but no more so – in fact considerably less so – than the ravages of cancer, or any number of ineliminable misfortunes, including that man-eating lion, that we’ve simply accepted as part of what it is to be an organism among myriad other organisms. Or as Alfred Lord Tennyson put it, “nature red in tooth and claw.”

So, I want to ask, what’s the difference between the two cases, such that the first invites nothing more than a shrug, whereas the second triggers our moral outrage? In both cases, the lion and the man, each is simply doing what it is its or his nature to do. So is it because we think that in the second case, but not the first, that nature is susceptible to some kind of ‘super-natural’ interference, where by ‘super’ we mean something that should, and can, transcend that nature? That is, is it because – in just the way we once thought homosexuality was – we think sociopathy is contra natura? That somehow we failed in our duty to either correct the sociopath’s sociopathy or we failed to have properly socialised him in the first place?

Perhaps. But just as there will always be cancers that fall between the cracks of whatever prophylactics or treatments we might develop, there will always be that neighbour who “seemed like such a pleasant young man. He used to cut my grass for me.” 

Meteorites strike. Lightning strikes. Cancers strike. Animals strike. People too are animals. If we want to stay alive – and I certainly do – I say we cut all feckless spending on gun control and put it towards cancer. Because the odds are a million to one that that’s what’s going to kill me. And you.

Categories: Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: cancer, gun control, serial killers, sociopathy