Experiments of living

"As it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so it is that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to different varieties of character, short of injury to others; and that the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically...[This is] quite the chief ingredient of individual and social progress." -- John Stuart Mill

The first thing that came to my mind when I read that was -- wow, what a risky thing to do. Dare you experiment with your own life, Mr Mill? (Ok that was the crappy part of me emerging). The next thing that came to my mind was -- I didn't know that lesbian/gay rights had such a champion spokesperson. Most probably he didn't mean it to be such (after all he implicitly believes in continual human progress, and I wonder if that intepretation will agree with him -- the irony if he's viewed in 'modern' terms) but society has evolved.

Which leads me on to my many questions. What is progress? Is it being more morally righteous as a whole society, more egalitarian, or more technologically advanced? Is it greater or even all-encompassing tolerance to different attitudes and modes of living, short of injury to others? Or is it greatest happiness for the greatest number of people? If so I see a tenuous link between encouraging experimentation and increasing the happiness of the most number of people.

Let's examine the human pysche, since we're obviously both emotional and rational beings. I believe it's not very controversial to claim that we find comfort in what is familiar, for whatever reasons it became familiar to us in the first place (God-given, like our family, or whatever that interests us so much in the first place that we want to be more familiar with it). What is familiar to us may in time become a habit, or even if it doesn't, we identify with it. For example heterosexual unions.

Experimentation implies a deviation from the norm, or paraphrased, what is familiar to a substantial number of people. This means that the exhibition of such different ways of living not only exposes or increases one's awareness to a different way that one can live, but if one rejects it, will also create a certain degree of discomfort. This is the emotional side of people that most will agree is rather hard to control. Take for example, my rational atheist side has no objections to homosexual unions between consenting adults, but when faced with a picture of my girl friend kissing another girl, I invariably cringe. It's not as if I don't know she is happier, but I feel discomforted all the same. I may champion lesbian/gay rights, but when it comes to the crunch, if I ever had to participate in a heterosexual union involving my loved ones, or worse, my children (as I saw one father on National Geographic do), I don't think I will be able to do it. I am not even a drop in the ocean, but I think it's an example of how great a discomfort this single deviation can cause to quite a number of (rational, sane, reasonable) people.

But just as there are discomforting deviations there can also be 'good' deviations, so to speak. Afterall emotions are complex, and comfort is not the only emotion to be had. So there can be deviations that appeal to our moral, aesthetic, economic etc etc systems, or emotions like love, kindness and so on, which I am assuming here are positive emotions to very very many. And who am I to say that the norm is not discomforting to a substantial number of people anyway, such that a situation of flux actually creates the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people?

And so I've gone round in a full circle. After so long, all I want to say is....


I don't know the answer!

(and also, please wish me luck in oxford. i do need it terribly if this is going to be the typical ending to my essays.)