Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Death metal shows and moral intuition

It's probably a good bet that you've never heard of a Polish death metal band called Behemoth. Until recently, I haven't either (even though they are apparently world-famous in their niche). The reason I've heard of them is because one of their shows in Poland made the news nationwide. During that show, its front man Adam Darski went on a long rant about the evils of Christianity, and concluded it by tearing up the Bible. Publicly offending religious sensibilities is criminalized in Poland, and charges were filed against Darski. I don't know if he was convicted or not, and it isn't really relevant here; the point is that the incident spurred a discussion about how the law should be dealing with, well, situations of this sort.

I remember a TV talk show in which a bunch of Polish celebrities were arguing over Darski's case. One of the participants pointed out that the incident happened during a death metal concert, which meant that it was very unlikely for the audience to contain anyone who would be offended by this sort of thing, and at any rate those who are offended by this sort of thing have a simple choice of avoiding Mr. Darski's live shows. To this, an entertainer and Catholic publicist Wojciech Cejrowski replied that it doesn't matter because "just knowing that someone in my country is disrespecting the Bible like this is enough for me to feel offended."

What should happen in those situations? I feel very strongly that Darski's right to tear up the Bible is much more important than Cejrowski's right to know that no one is tearing up the Bible "in his country." But, to be honest, I am not entirely sure why I think that. I'm big on the efficiency criterion and cost-benefit analysis; but if you assume that the right to publicly tear up the bible is worth $50 to Darski, while the comfort of knowing that tearing up the Bible is prohibited by law is worth $100 to Cejrowski, then cost-benefit analysis says we should ban tearing up the Bible. I'm unwilling to accept this conclusion, though don't have much in way of a rational argument why. The only thing I can think of is that in situations when we're weighing banning things versus allowing things, and in which both alternatives hurt someone, we should err on the side of allowing things. Much of progress is achieved through trial and error, so it seems to me that banning things can have an externality in that many potentially beneficial things will not be tried. But then again, many potentially harmful things will not, either. So this is really just a moral intuition that I have, which makes me feel uncomfortable because moral intuitions are not a good guide of ethical choices. Moral intuitions are often wrong. In fact, some people's moral intuitions are downright repugnant to me.

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