A Return to Another Theology of the Body, Part 4--On the Morality of Crawling and Scuba Diving
Let's think for a moment about how we get around. Human beings are clearly designed to walk upright. Our spine is optimized for an upright posture, and is on a relative basis stronger than our quadruped cousins to handle the higher load at the top of the body. Our head is set on top of the spine in a manner that has us looking forward naturally only when standing upright (and, conversely and unhelpfully, looking down when on all fours). Our hips have a different design than most four-legged mammals, allowing for a greater range of motion but putting our legs in an awkward position relative to our torso if we are on all fours. Our arms are shorter than our legs, forcing us either to "walk" with our knees as points of contact (which they are manifestly not designed to do), or else to arch our backs in an awkward and unstable posture. Our hand bones are small and fragile, clearly not designed to take the repeated pounding involved in being a point of contact with the ground. And so on.
Given all of this, we should ask the question--is crawling immoral? After all, it is clearly inconsistent with the design of the human body. Every bit of the "language of the body" suggests that God's design is for us to be upright, and every relevant feature of the human body points toward that divine plan. If God wanted us to crawl, he would have made us more like a dog or a cow or any one of the vast majority of mammals than move around on all fours. But, God didn't, and who are we to question the divine mind?
Or take one of my favorite passtimes--scuba diving. One of the things you learn very quickly the moment you take up scuba diving is how ill-suited the human body is to exist underwater. The most obvious problem, of course, is that we can't breathe the water, and so you must either hold your breath or utilize a mechanical solution like scuba gear. But scuba is an awkward solution by definition. In order to keep your lungs expanded to be able to breathe, the scuba system must provide pressurized air matched to the ambient pressure. But the human body is not designed to breathe pressurized air. At a certain partial pressure, oxygen is toxic to the human body--you will have a seizure and die. And breathing pressurized air causes nitrogen to dissolve in your blood, which then comes out of solution as bubbles when the pressure is relieved, which is also potentially fatal. So, by definition, scuba diving involves walking this knife edge between these potentially fatal conditions, involving techniques that include breathing gas mixtures not found in nature, and in some cases not breathable at all if used at the surface. And all of this is to overcome the fact that the human body is simply not designed on any level to function underwater, especially has compared to an enormous panoply of life that is designed for living in the water and has no difficulties with any of the problems discussed above.
So, again, I ask the question--is scuba diving immoral? After all, it is clearly "contrary to nature."
Now, most would view my claim that crawling and scuba diving are immoral as unserious. Of course crawling is not immoral. It is certainly not an optimized mode of travel--it's slow, it will hurt your hands and your neck and your back if you do it for an extended period of time. But it is clearly not immoral to crawl around with a little kid on the floor, or squeeze yourself into a tight space. We use our bodies in all sorts of ways that our bodies are not designed for or optimized to do. Likewise, we have a whole set of physical activities--scuba diving, parasailing, windsurfing, basejumping, etc.--that are predicated on using technological solutions to allow the human body to do things that other members of the animal kingdom do naturally. Unwise as some might see those activities, no one argues that they are immoral because they allow a person to do something his or her body is not designed to do. The fact that these activities involve overcoming or neutralizing the natural operation and parameters of the human body is the whole point of these activities in the first place, and no one has a problem with that.
And yet, the moment the conversation becomes one about sex and sexuality, there is a segment of folks who want to immediately talk about the "natural purposes" of certain sexual organs or activities. Friend of the blog Frank Strong directed me to a conversation along those lines, summed up by the charming line (directed at Frank's grandmother's approving comments about a lesbian couple) "[a]nd any grandma who thinks that two women masturbating on each other is a marriage, has a bit of a problem with created order." One can say that is simply homophobia adopting a cloak of moral and philosophical reasoning, and that's true, but it is worth talking about the cloak that facilitates this move. And the cloak is always tied into "natural purposes" and/or the "created order."
As I have discussed in some previous posts in this series, I think they are in large measure misreading what the "natural" state of the human body actually is with regard to sexuality. But before you even reach those questions, I think you have to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question--why is it the case that engaging in sexual activity in a way that the human body is not "designed for" (however that is framed or understood) is necessarily immoral?
In other words, yes, there is a sense in which human sexuality is "designed" for a penis to go into a vagina so as to potentially produce a child, but so what? Why is it thus morally mandatory for all sexual activity to follow that script? In no other field of human activity do people assert that we are morally limited to only those activities for which we are optimized in an evolutionary sense. If you applied the standard used in the sexual context to every form of human activity, there would be an enormous laundry list of activities that would have to be seen as immoral. On the flip side, if you apply the more casual approach that we use in every other context to sex, most of the activities that generate so much heat in the conservative discourse are actually relatively modest interventions in the normal operation of the human body. I mean, the pill "tricks" the body of a woman into a phase in the menstrual cycle that occurs normally; scuba diving allows you to be underwater and not die, which but for the tank and the regulator would be totally impossible. Scuba diving is a much more radical technological intervention into human functioning than the pill, and yet no one bats an eye regarding scuba diving.
If we want to dig toward the heart of the disagreement in play in these sorts of conversations, it is between a set of people who by-and-large see sex as a human activity among other human activities, to be judged by the same rules and standards as other facets of the human experience, and a set of people who insist that sex is sui generis. What is frustrating, as someone in the first camp, is that the people in the second camp generally refuse to acknowledge that this is their position. Instead, they pitch their position as a straight forward application of universal principles, when in fact if you applied those principles to other human activities, you would get absurd results, such as that crawling and scuba diving are per se immoral. If you want to take the position that in the context of sex (and only in the context of sex) we are limited to some account of the "natural purposes" of sex in a way that doesn't apply to crawling, then OK. But then you need a framework or formula for why sex is different from all other human activities. I have not seen any coherent account along those lines, and certainly not in Theology of the Body discourse. And I think this is because, in large measure, they just keep repeating mantra "natural purposes," without thinking through the consequences of the assumption that the "natural purposes" of the body necessarily generate moral obligations to conform to those purposes.
Human beings are both rational and passionate (in the sense of being motivated by complex emotional and spiritual drives and longings) creatures. We put our bodies in service of those ends all the time, even in ways that are not, strictly speaking, the way those bodies are designed. We can learn about our purpose from our physical design, but we are not limited to that design. That's one of the best things about being human.
Given all of this, we should ask the question--is crawling immoral? After all, it is clearly inconsistent with the design of the human body. Every bit of the "language of the body" suggests that God's design is for us to be upright, and every relevant feature of the human body points toward that divine plan. If God wanted us to crawl, he would have made us more like a dog or a cow or any one of the vast majority of mammals than move around on all fours. But, God didn't, and who are we to question the divine mind?
Or take one of my favorite passtimes--scuba diving. One of the things you learn very quickly the moment you take up scuba diving is how ill-suited the human body is to exist underwater. The most obvious problem, of course, is that we can't breathe the water, and so you must either hold your breath or utilize a mechanical solution like scuba gear. But scuba is an awkward solution by definition. In order to keep your lungs expanded to be able to breathe, the scuba system must provide pressurized air matched to the ambient pressure. But the human body is not designed to breathe pressurized air. At a certain partial pressure, oxygen is toxic to the human body--you will have a seizure and die. And breathing pressurized air causes nitrogen to dissolve in your blood, which then comes out of solution as bubbles when the pressure is relieved, which is also potentially fatal. So, by definition, scuba diving involves walking this knife edge between these potentially fatal conditions, involving techniques that include breathing gas mixtures not found in nature, and in some cases not breathable at all if used at the surface. And all of this is to overcome the fact that the human body is simply not designed on any level to function underwater, especially has compared to an enormous panoply of life that is designed for living in the water and has no difficulties with any of the problems discussed above.
So, again, I ask the question--is scuba diving immoral? After all, it is clearly "contrary to nature."
Now, most would view my claim that crawling and scuba diving are immoral as unserious. Of course crawling is not immoral. It is certainly not an optimized mode of travel--it's slow, it will hurt your hands and your neck and your back if you do it for an extended period of time. But it is clearly not immoral to crawl around with a little kid on the floor, or squeeze yourself into a tight space. We use our bodies in all sorts of ways that our bodies are not designed for or optimized to do. Likewise, we have a whole set of physical activities--scuba diving, parasailing, windsurfing, basejumping, etc.--that are predicated on using technological solutions to allow the human body to do things that other members of the animal kingdom do naturally. Unwise as some might see those activities, no one argues that they are immoral because they allow a person to do something his or her body is not designed to do. The fact that these activities involve overcoming or neutralizing the natural operation and parameters of the human body is the whole point of these activities in the first place, and no one has a problem with that.
And yet, the moment the conversation becomes one about sex and sexuality, there is a segment of folks who want to immediately talk about the "natural purposes" of certain sexual organs or activities. Friend of the blog Frank Strong directed me to a conversation along those lines, summed up by the charming line (directed at Frank's grandmother's approving comments about a lesbian couple) "[a]nd any grandma who thinks that two women masturbating on each other is a marriage, has a bit of a problem with created order." One can say that is simply homophobia adopting a cloak of moral and philosophical reasoning, and that's true, but it is worth talking about the cloak that facilitates this move. And the cloak is always tied into "natural purposes" and/or the "created order."
As I have discussed in some previous posts in this series, I think they are in large measure misreading what the "natural" state of the human body actually is with regard to sexuality. But before you even reach those questions, I think you have to take a step back and ask a more fundamental question--why is it the case that engaging in sexual activity in a way that the human body is not "designed for" (however that is framed or understood) is necessarily immoral?
In other words, yes, there is a sense in which human sexuality is "designed" for a penis to go into a vagina so as to potentially produce a child, but so what? Why is it thus morally mandatory for all sexual activity to follow that script? In no other field of human activity do people assert that we are morally limited to only those activities for which we are optimized in an evolutionary sense. If you applied the standard used in the sexual context to every form of human activity, there would be an enormous laundry list of activities that would have to be seen as immoral. On the flip side, if you apply the more casual approach that we use in every other context to sex, most of the activities that generate so much heat in the conservative discourse are actually relatively modest interventions in the normal operation of the human body. I mean, the pill "tricks" the body of a woman into a phase in the menstrual cycle that occurs normally; scuba diving allows you to be underwater and not die, which but for the tank and the regulator would be totally impossible. Scuba diving is a much more radical technological intervention into human functioning than the pill, and yet no one bats an eye regarding scuba diving.
If we want to dig toward the heart of the disagreement in play in these sorts of conversations, it is between a set of people who by-and-large see sex as a human activity among other human activities, to be judged by the same rules and standards as other facets of the human experience, and a set of people who insist that sex is sui generis. What is frustrating, as someone in the first camp, is that the people in the second camp generally refuse to acknowledge that this is their position. Instead, they pitch their position as a straight forward application of universal principles, when in fact if you applied those principles to other human activities, you would get absurd results, such as that crawling and scuba diving are per se immoral. If you want to take the position that in the context of sex (and only in the context of sex) we are limited to some account of the "natural purposes" of sex in a way that doesn't apply to crawling, then OK. But then you need a framework or formula for why sex is different from all other human activities. I have not seen any coherent account along those lines, and certainly not in Theology of the Body discourse. And I think this is because, in large measure, they just keep repeating mantra "natural purposes," without thinking through the consequences of the assumption that the "natural purposes" of the body necessarily generate moral obligations to conform to those purposes.
Human beings are both rational and passionate (in the sense of being motivated by complex emotional and spiritual drives and longings) creatures. We put our bodies in service of those ends all the time, even in ways that are not, strictly speaking, the way those bodies are designed. We can learn about our purpose from our physical design, but we are not limited to that design. That's one of the best things about being human.
Comments
I was attending a Jesuit high school while being raised by two Protestant parents who straddled the line between mainline and Evangelical. (In later years they would step firmly into the Evangelical camp, but that's another story.) In ethics classes and schoolyard discourse, the natural law argument was used persistently and, to me, persuasively, until I ran into a simple point I could not answer.
In the context of Gavin Newsome's 2004 same-sex weddings in San Francisco, I was discussing the topic with a classmate. I made the "it's not natural" argument but my heart wasn't in it. I earnestly wanted to love my gay classmates and accept them unconditionally, but had not been equipped with the rhetorical knowledge to do so.
And but so, I had made the "it's not natural" argument and was waiting for a compelling counter. My classmate simply responded with "I like to think we don't always have to do what's natural."
That has stuck with me ever since. I doubt he even remembers it, but for me that was an important breakthrough and a doorway to a new understanding of humanity and morality based around mutual thriving and dignity in place of a fuzzy authoritarianism of natural law.
All this is to say I like your post very much and pray it will be read by someone in need of a similar breakthrough.
- @philmuses