If you want to know why George Orwell is said to have noted that there “are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them,” look no further than one Professor Parker Crutchfield. A “bioethicist” at Western Michigan University, Crutchfield is disturbed that many “deplorables” are skeptical of COVID-19-inspired mask and social distance mandates — so disturbed, in fact, that he suggests secretly putting psychoactive “morality pills” in the water supply to ensure lockdown-measure compliance. Seriously.
As National File reported Friday, “‘To me, it seems the problem of coronavirus defectors could be solved by moral enhancement: like receiving a vaccine to beef up your immune system, people could take a substance to boost their cooperative, pro-social behavior,’ Crutchfield says, acknowledging that the idea is a ‘far-out proposal that’s bound to be controversial.’”
For sure, because we should also consider, the professor avers, making “moral enhancement compulsory or administer[ing] it secretly, perhaps via the water supply.”
Crutchfield presented his thesis in an article published this month in the Conversation, “a news site focusing on content ‘sourced from the academic and research community’ and supported by universities from around the world,” informed LifeSite. “The Conversation lists a number of U.K. universities as its ‘founding partners.’”
Yet this isn’t the first time Crutchfield has proposed such ideas. LifeSite points out that last year he penned a paper in which he argued “that if moral bioenhancement ought to be compulsory, then its administration ought to be covert rather than overt.”
The professor then defended his ideas in a subsequent paper, titled “It is better to be ignorant of our moral enhancement: A reply to Zambrano.” In other words, while he may to a degree be seeking attention (a very common motivation), Crutchfield does exhibit devotion to his thesis.
Of course, the academic isn’t the first to suggest using science to improve man’s condition. The eugenicists (e.g., writer George Bernard Shaw and the Nazis) — who endeavored to use selective breeding to improve the human race — were one example. Another is eugenics’ more sophisticated iteration: genetic engineering. Better-humans-through-science is common aim among those viewing man as just a soulless organic robot whose “problems” can be viewed as “dysfunction” (malfunction) — and remedied via repair.
To the end of ensuring SARS-CoV-2-regulation compliance, Crutchfield cites two drugs: oxytocin; and “psilocybin, the active component of ‘magic mushrooms.’” Yet he also states that there are “pitfalls to moral enhancement,” mentioning research indicating that oxytocin “appears to encourage ethnocentrism.”
(Question: If oxytocin really did increase morality and also ethnocentric feelings, wouldn’t it follow from this that “ethnocentrism” is moral?)
Whatever the drug, Crutchfield would like to enhance “the brain’s ability to cooperate with others.” There certainly are chemicals that can make people more compliant, too. Of course, this would increase the chances a person would cooperate with the good — and also with evil.
But the academic has that covered, sort of, writing that the “psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic” and can “make you more rational.”
There’s an irony here, though. Assuming such chemicals could have this goodness-and-rationality-increasing effect, the outcome may burst Crutchfield’s bubble. After all, there’s precious little science behind lockdown restrictions.
For example, the officially prescribed social distance in the United States is six feet, yet it’s 4.92 feet in Germany and three in Sweden. Does the Wuhan virus behave differently under the metric system?
Masks are also now part of COVID ritual. But Anthony Fauci and the World Health Organization were against them before they were for them (with the WHO flip-flopping more than once), Sweden’s top epidemiologist just said the mask prescription is “very dangerous,” and another expert suggested a while back that the face coverings may actually spread the virus.
As for lockdowns, research indicates that not only don’t they save lives, but that they actually cost lives. In fact, one study found that the lockdown in South Africa would cause 29 times as much death as the pandemic would.
Apropos to this, places such as Sweden and South Dakota, which never locked down, are generally doing better than nations/states that did restrict freedom.
In light of the above, imagine this: Professor Parker Crutchfield ingests his own morality pill.
Next scene: He’s at an anti-lockdown protest wearing a MAGA hat.
He also should consider that his morality plan may not yield the election outcomes he’d prefer, if the very interesting article “Don’t listen to the liberals — Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows” is any indication.
While I won’t hold my breath waiting for the academic to take his own medicine, the lesson here is that a prerequisite for doing good is knowing what the good is.
Speaking of which, Crutchfield has plenty of straitjacket-worthy company in our modern-day insane asylum called academia; in fact, he isn’t even the worst. For example, Professor Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz, Austria, actually proposed in 2012 that global-warming realists and the pope be executed — for society’s good.
This is what you get when academia is infested with moral relativists/nihilists, people who scoff at (absolute) Truth’s existence. It’s much like dietary advice coming from people who deny the laws of human nutrition. You’ll get lots of prescriptions — too many of them toxic.
Image: Thinkstock
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
