Dr. Strangelove or: How I Killed God and Learned to Love the Nihilism

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us?

—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882.[1]

You could say Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 Cold War black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb was a wakeup call for America. The New York Times’ film reviewer at the time, Bosley Crowther, suggested the film was, “based upon a modicum of truth.”[2] But was this just a spoof having a bit of fun at the expense of America’s Cold War political and military leadership, or a work of art that had a more serious message? The film was based on Peter George’s novel, and more serious treatment of nuclear policy, Red Alert (1958), but as Kubrick was crafting the screenplay he attempted to keep it somewhat serious. “Ideas kept coming to me which I would discard because they were so ludicrous,” said Kubrick in a 1970 interview, “I kept saying to myself, ‘I can’t do that—people will laugh’. But after a month or so I began to realize that all the things I was throwing out were the most truthful.”[3] Dr. Strangelove can be read as Kubrick not just offering a political critique of nuclear policy, but also offering a deeper moral critique. In doing so Kubrick took the core tenets of political realism and pushed them beyond their limit to reveal their moral nihilism.[4] While the scenario Kubrick painted was entirely hypothetical and bent the reality of nuclear policy, it nevertheless reveals historical fragments that suggest that the push towards hyper-realism, which in turn lead to a sense of moral nihilism by the early 1960s in the United States, was indeed real. Dr. Strangelove can be understood as emblematic of a growing trend in the early 1960s to question and expose that moral nihilism. The political realism of the Cold War was not primarily pragmatic, but also rooted in ideology—an assertion that is also made by Dr. Strangelove.

One of the most thorough analyses of America's atomic culture is Margot Henriksen's Dr. Strangelove's America (1997), which systematically challenges the assertion that substantial dissent towards nuclear weapons did not occur until the 1980s. Henriksen argues that the arrival of the bomb in the 1940s split American culture into two distinct groups: a culture of consensus and a culture of dissent. The bomb became the, "unifying symbol of American safety and security in the culture of consensus," she argues, while, "at the same time the bomb became the disunifying symbol for American insecurity, immorality, insanity, and rebelliousness in the culture of dissent."[5] When Dr. Strangelove is viewed through this framework, Kubrick can be seen as highlighting these two cultures by playing them off one another. Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper insanely puts his faith in the bomb while Group Captain Lionel Mandrake challenges his authority by appeal to universal morality. Similarly, President Merkin Muffley is faced with the flippant attitude of General Buck Turgidsen and his reluctance to give up strategic and ideological presuppositions for the sake of avoiding apocalypse. In the 1940s and 1950s the cultural consensus reigned supreme only to be fragmented during the 1960s, fuelled by the Berlin crisis, the craze for bomb shelters, and the Cuban Missile Crisis—allowing for visible emergence of the culture of dissent.[6] This shifting public discourse and culture toward dissent also fits with the periodisation developed by Scott Zeman and Michael Amundson in their collection of essays, Atomic Culture (2004). Zeman and Amundson break down the post-war period in an effort to highlight the shifting attitudes towards nuclear technology through an analysis of popular culture. Early, High, Late, and Post Atomic Culture are the four distinct periods they identify, which I will briefly describe in order to place Dr. Strangelove within this framework.[7]

Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove

Early Atomic Culture spanned the years 1945 to 1948, and embodied a sense of hope for the future and a celebration of the benefits of nuclear technology. Little Boy and Fat Man brought World War II to an end and spared America from a costly invasion of Japan. Atomic Culture included a fascination with nuclear technology and a desire to understand nuclear physics. These years allowed America to enjoy prosperity under a nuclear monopoly. High Atomic Culture, spanning the years 1949 to 1963, was initiated by the first successful Soviet nuclear test. The Second Red Scare, inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and the threat of mutually assured destruction, were some of the defining features that shaped this age. Atomic Culture shifted into overdrive, albeit a romanticisation of the bomb. Nuclear jargon seeped into many facets of popular culture from Skip Stanley's sci-fi rockabilly hit 'Satellite Baby' (1956) to The Atomic Kid (1954) starring Mickey Rooney. The horrors of nuclear war's reality become lost in its illusory popularisation. Late Atomic Culture, from 1964 to 1991, entailed the fracturing of the culture of consensus Henriksen refers to. The arms race and its tension manifested itself as the cusp of Hot War. The moral righteousness of America's foreign, and indeed nuclear policy, became the subject of scrutiny, especially in the wake of the Vietnam War. The Three Mile Island accident in 1979 certainly did no favours to the nuclear consensus. Post Atomic Culture, from 1992 to the present, could be defined as a period of ambiguity, sense of loss, or even of nostalgia. The collapse of the Soviet Union certainly eased nuclear tension, but raised uncertainties about America's nuclear role. The nostalgia for an earlier Atomic Culture was jokingly portrayed in the 1990s on the popular television cartoon The Simpsons.[8]

Zeman and Amundson's framework is useful for an analysis of Dr. Strangelove within Cold War culture, especially in synthesis with Henriksen's thesis. I would locate Dr. Strangelove at the transition between High and Late Atomic Culture, or, as a transition between a culture of nuclear consensus to a culture of nuclear dissent. This shift in culture is also exemplified by films such as Stanley Kramer’s On the Beach (1959), Rod Sterling and John Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964), and Sidney Lumet and Walter Bernstein’s Fail Safe (1964). The influence of the late 1950s to early 1960s political climate can be seen weaved vividly throughout Dr. Strangelove. There are many fragments of history that surface during the film, so a detailed analysis of all of them is beyond the scope of this essay. I will however elaborate on some of the major motifs Kubrick uses to contextualise this film historically, as well as a means to support my argument. As aforementioned, the common theme that ties all these motifs together is a manifestation of a moral nihilism guided by an ideologically driven political realism. Although the unfolding of events in Dr. Strangelove is entirely hypothetical, Kubrick nevertheless drew upon a myriad of contemporary sources to make his statement to America.

Grant B. Stillman has attempted to uncover the impetus for Dr. Strangelove by referring to the February 17th, 1961 issue of Time as the “Rosetta Stone”, which is somehow a revolutionary piece of evidence that unlocks the ingredients that made the film.[9] I would argue Stillman’s claim of a “Rosetta Stone”, as plausible as it may seem, is perhaps over-zealous, as the political milieu Kubrick would have been immersed in in the early 1960s was already saturated with discourse on nuclear policy. Being a former photo-journalist for Look, Kubrick is known to have been well-read on the subject, and merely being present in the late 1950s and early 1960s would certainly be enough for him to be fully aware of the politics of the bomb without simply picking up an issue of Time.[10] Kubrick also talked to military strategists Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn, and the influence of Kahn’s 1960 book On Thermonuclear War essentially serves as the cornerstone of the film’s main plot device, the Doomsday Machine.[11] Despite Kahn’s detailed explanation of the theoretical Doomsday Machine, he makes a rejection of such a system based on several arguments including an explicitly moral argument. “A failure [of the Doomsday Machine] kills too many people and kills them too automatically,” he argues, “there is no chance of human intervention, control, and final decision.”[12] Even if Kahn rejected the Doomsday Machine, the mere proposal of it, albeit hypothetical, as the ultimate end in nuclear strategy is enough for Kubrick to question the moral implication of making such a strategic jump by including it as the central plot device in the film. Kahn’s book deals with the nuclear strategy of deterrence that prevailed and set the tone of Cold War itself. In the film, Strangelove asserts, “deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack,” a concise summary of psychological impetus for mutually assured destruction.

The post-war nuclear arms race was the defining feature of American military and political policy. Michael Sherry argues that the, “1960s marked the apogee of America’s post-1945 militarization.”[13] The Kennedy administration ramped up defence spending, especially in contrast to Eisenhower’s cuts to conventional spending. The Eisenhower administration became reliant on the strategic power and cost efficiency of nuclear weapons rather than massive spending on large conventional forces. This increase in defence spending on conventional forces during Kennedy’s administration did not however mitigate the massive stockpiling of nuclear weapons. By 1967 the all-time high for nuclear warheads reached 32,500.[14] If we assume each warhead was several megatons in equivalent TNT, then the cumulative power of the stockpile can be imagined, if not visualised, in the hypothetical event it was used in a short space of time. In Dr. Strangelove the narrator comments in a news-like manner, “each B-52 can deliver a nuclear bomb-load of fifty megatons, equal to sixteen times the explosive force of all the bombs and shells used by all the armies in World War Two.” The devastation brought to Europe was still fresh in the minds of Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, so to have the power of that devastating war multiplied seemed so abhorrent it was almost incomprehensible.

But the memory of the war, especially in the face of the perceived threat from the Soviet Union, did not dampen the Kennedy administration’s thirst for nuclear superiority. Throughout his presidential election campaign Kennedy alluded to America’s lack of vigilance in the nuclear arms race. Referring to the Eisenhower administration, on August 14th, 1958 Kennedy argued that a mutual deterrence scenario that created a “balance of terror”, was no longer the case, rather, the United States was, “rapidly approaching that dangerous period which General [James M.] Gavin and others have called the ‘gap’ or the ‘missile-lag period’”[15] Kubrick satirised this desperate need to close the missile gap when General Turgidsen implores with President Muffley after Strangelove suggests that they shelter Americans in mineshafts after the nuclear holocaust, “Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!” Turgidsen is concerned, even after the unthinkable, that the Russians will also have mineshafts to shelter their population, and that if they have an advantage in a post-apocalyptic world they may strike back. His belief in the ideological superiority of the United States is not even dampened by nihilism of the situation.

George C. Scott as General "Buck" Turgidson

Kubrick creatively uses several instances of juxtaposition and irony as an immanent critique of the absurdities of militarism—absurdities that when they are treated with a dose of flippancy and black comedy, and from the perspective of the fourth wall, allow questions regarding their moral legitimacy to be raised. One of the most memorable lines from the film is President Muffley shouting at General Turgidsen and the Soviet Ambassador, Alexi de Sadesky, “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room.” It is ironic that these men can unleash untold death on humanity but must not ‘war’ with each other in a room whose very purpose is war. The fictitious Burpelson Air Force Base, commanded by the war-mongering General Ripper, displays a slogan that shows similar irony that is squarely pointed at moral nihilism of strategic deterrence and mutually assured destruction. As friendly forces spill their blood to stop Ripper’s madness, signs scattered around the base declare, “Peace is Our Profession.” It stands in stark contrast to the actual purpose of a military. Nuclear deterrence may create peace, but it is a paradoxical peace, because in hypothetical event of war, its justification rests on highly unstable moral ground. Kubrick’s use of this phrase was not mere fiction: the slogan of Strategic Air Command for the entirety of the Cold War was actually “Peace is Our Profession.”[16] Similarly, A promotional single distributed with the film, ‘Love That Bomb’ by Dr. Strangelove and the Fallouts captures this same sense of juxtaposition that exposes a deeper moral nihilism. Its campy music, melody, and lyrics sound like a goofy dance-floor shaker from the 1950s rather than a moral critique: “Love that bomb. I’ve got a strange love for that bomb. I can hardly wait for World War Three. Here’s the way we think it’s gonna be.”[17] The song offers more explanatory power to Kubrick’s choice of name for the eponymous doctor. The love for the bomb, within the context of a paradoxical peace, was indeed strange, if not morally vacuous.

The seemingly complex intertwining of morality and religion, and the question of their inextricability is a persistent theme that also runs throughout Dr. Strangelove. Doubt is implicitly raised about the homogeneity of Christianity and the universality of Christian morality. General Ripper is evidently a devoutly religious man who fears the supposed atheism of communism—without God how can communists be moral? Despite Ripper’s insanity justified by piety, Mandrake also displays a religious faith that hopes and prays for a peaceful resolution to the situation. How can their two faiths be incompatible if they believe in the same God? Whose God is the real God? Henriksen has drawn upon similar themes from the early to mid 1960s to suggest that there was indeed a moral and spiritual crisis in America in response to the height of the nuclear threat. The paranoia of humanity’s annihilation pushed morality to its limit, and led to, “an extensive questioning of the nature and relevance of God, of all spiritual and political authority”.[18] Henriksen refers to a starkly conceived article from Time two years after the release of Dr. Strangelove that took Nietzsche’s famous aphorism and posed it as a question to its readers: “Is God Dead?”[19] The article asserts that the fundamental nature of God must be readdressed in light of the shifting currents of history and that, “Christian atheists are waking the churches to the brutal reality that the basic premise of faith—the existence of a personal God … —is now subject to profound attack.”[20] The doubts expressed regarding the diminished nature of God in the article did not however mitigate its ideological entrenchment, allowing the writer to declare by recalling Marx’s aphoristic attack on religion, “nearly one in every two men on earth live in thralldom to a brand of totalitarianism that condemns religion as the opiate of the masses.”[21] Similarly, General Turgidson’s fear of the atheism of communism pushes him to loudly protest the Soviet ambassador’s acceptance into the War Room—a fear that offers a shrill juxtaposition to his cavalier acceptance of casualties for the sake of the ultimate game of one-upmanship.

This paranoid fear and its accompanying devaluing of all human life for the sake of ideological and individual ends was an all-too-apparent thread running through American society in the early 1960s. The Bay of Pigs Invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis pushed the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war and fuelled a real fear of an impending apocalypse. An August 18th 1961 article in Time highlighted this fear—a fear that a post-apocalyptic world would become highly invidualised and certainly compatible with American ideology—but questioned the legitimacy of its moral righteousness.[22] The contrast between the Second Amendment and the Christian ethic of reciprocity, ‘love thy neighbour’, are highlighted as paradoxical and radically incompatible in American society.[23] The author reported on the increase in Americans arming their bomb-shelters with extensive caches of weaponry not only to fend off any Soviet attack, but to defend themselves from fellow Americans, neighbours, who failed to adequately prepare for war. The article focused on Texan hardware store owner Charles Davis, who was prepared to unleash tear gas on his neighbours if they claimed his shelter before him. A photograph shows Davis posing with his family in their shelter openly displaying rifles and handguns.

In response to the article, on August 25th Time readers either gave their support for Davis or were reviled by his supposed lack of value for human life. Of the first four responses, three were penned by men, all in favour of Davis’ heavily armed shelter. Cecil R. Coale Jr. from Austin, Texas commended Davis by suggesting, “It is indeed wonderful to see there are still some Americans around who are able to think for themselves without aid from the Federal Government,” he then concludes, “Guns are man’s best friend”.[24] Concerned by his own apartment block’s lack of a shelter, Bill Francis, a Californian, nevertheless found solace in the fact Davis would survive a nuclear attack. Aside from two women debating the finer points of Christian theology and its relationship to shelters, one lone woman’s voice, Marjorie Hoffman of Detroit, finds Davis’ attitude monstrous and suggests, “I, for one, would not knock on his [shelter] door”.[25] The fear of nuclear attack not only made some Americans vigilant, but it turned them on each other. This highly individualised paranoia plays itself out in Dr. Stangelove when General Ripper virulently defends his base against fellow American troops by ordering, “I would sooner accept a few casualties through accidents rather losing the entire base and its personnel through carelessness.” These are similar to the amoral sentiments expressed by General Turgidson regarding acceptance of millions of casualties for the sake of a proactive strike. President Muffley in response scoffs at Turgidsen, “I will not go down in history as the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler.” War, especially not nuclear war, cannot simply be regarded a dehumanised exercise in game theory, it has serious moral consequences that when taken into consideration trump any perceived strategic benefits.

The plot of Dr. Strangelove could be interpreted as analogous to the technical explanation of a nuclear weapon’s detonation. When read in this manner it can offer further layers of moral questioning to what was the unleashing of the most awesome power ever achieved by humanity. Kubrick follows the consequences of a deliberate, yet unwarranted, and unstable decision by General Ripper to attack the Soviet Union. The decision was precise and calculated but soon spiraled beyond control—one small decision by a single human unleashed its own doomsday. This is where the parallel between the plot and nuclear detonation can be observed: it begins with a small, deliberate, and calculated act, to produce a chain reaction that goes vastly beyond the control of the individual who started it. Two unstable and enriched subcritical masses of uranium-235, initially separated, are forced together at a very high velocity with a small but controlled conventional explosion. The two masses of uranium reach a critical mass and undergo a fission chain reaction. Anyone who has had to deal with Einstein’s famous equation, E = mc², in their high school physics class knows that even a small amount of mass can unleash a disproportionally enormous quantity of energy—and when released, it is essentially unstoppable. Again, Kahn’s comments regarding the Doomsday Device, “there is no chance of human intervention, control, and final decision,” expressed the out-of-control nature of nuclear weapons.[26]

Sterling Hayden as Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper

Can spitting the atom be the ultimate moral barrier? Was Kubrick implying that the ability to unleash power hitherto reserved for God, simultaneously killed God and left a moral vacuum? Dostoyevsky elaborated similar sentiment in The Brothers Karamazov (1880) by suggesting that without God, everything is permitted. In an article in The New York Times on February 17th 1964, Brooklyn based minister Reverend Donald W. McKinney suggested that Dr. Strangelove could be understood in Freudian terms: it was an example of a nightmarish dream and humanity’s inherent death drive.[27] Kubrick insinuated, “… the only way to tell the story was as a black comedy, or better, a nightmare comedy, where the things you laugh at are really at the heart of the paradoxical postures that make nuclear war possible.”[28] Einstein himself knew all too well the power of the bomb, and he, along with several other Nobel laureates, including prominent British philosopher Bertrand Russell, issued a manifesto in 1955 publicly condemning nuclear weapons by appeal to universal morality. Without restraint, the manifesto declares, any future war involving nuclear weapons would almost certainly bring, "universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration."[29] This is one of the earliest public condemnations of nuclear weapons, a bursting forth from an undercurrent of unease and moral outrage. This progressing of the Atomic Age can be understood as the quiet cementing of a alternative voice of reason that occasionally broke through the surface of the disillusioned moral nihilism of status quo and manifested itself publicly as bold statements such as Dr. Strangelove. The remainder of the 1960s opened the floodgates for moral critique, not just regarding nuclear policy, but issues of class, race, gender, homosexuality, freedom of speech, and war. Paul Coates, writing for The Los Angeles Times on May 10th, 1964, praised Dr. Strangelove in response to conservative criticism, a sure sign of shifting political discourse, by arguing, “… we may hope that these occasional glimpses of a democracy correcting its errors will make them think more aggressively about freedom before long.”[30]

Stanley Kubrick on the set of Dr. Strangelove

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[1] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science; With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann, New York, 1974.

[2] Bosley Crowther, 'Hysterical Laughter: Further Thoughts on 'Dr. Strangelove' and it's Jokes About the Bomb', in The New York Times, February 16th, 1964.

[3] Stanley Kubrick quoted in Grant B. Stillman, ‘Two of the MADdest Scientists: Where Strangelove Meets Dr. No; or, Unexpected Roots for Kubrick’s Cold War Classic’, Film History, 20, 4, 2008, p. 488.

[4] Iain McLean and Alistair McMillan have asserted realism, “emphasises the competitive on conflictual side of international relations. The idea of the balance of power is one of the most long standing analytical tools in realism … and the more specific analysis of military relations in strategic studies.” Oxford Concise Dictionary of Politics Third Edition, Oxford, 2009, s.v. ‘realism’.

[5] Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age, Berkeley, 1997, p. xxii.

[6] ibid., pp xxii-xxiii.

[7] Scott C. Zeman and Michael A. Amundson, Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Boulder, 2004, pp. 2-6.

[8] The Simpsons creator Matt Groening is also known for being an avid Kubrick fan. Many of the memorable motifs from Kubrick's films have been parodied on the show including Dr. Strangelove.

[9] Stillman, ‘Two of the MADest Scientists’, p. 488.

[10] Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War Second Edition, Baltimore, 1996, pp. 219-221.

[11] ibid.

[12] Herman Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, Princeton, 1961, p. 147.

[13] Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s, New Haven, 1995, p. 241.

[14] ibid.

[15] John F. Kennedy, ‘Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy, in the Senate, August 14, 1958’, John F. Kennedy Presidential Museum, retrieved October 6th, 2015, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/United-States-Senate-Military-Power_19580814.aspx

[16] Warren Kozak, The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay, Washington D.C., 2009, p. 314.

[17] Louis Carter and Paul DeWitt, ‘Love That Bomb’, [audio recording], 1964.

[18] Henriksen, p. 189.

[19] ibid.

[20] ‘Theology: Toward a Hidden God’, in Time, April 8th, 1966.

[21] ibid.

[22] ‘Gun Thy Neighbor?’, in Time, August 18th, 1961.

[23] The parallels between nuclear deterrence and the conservative pro-gun arguments can be discerned in this sense. If all are armed, then there is no incentive to attack another.

[24] ‘Letters’, in Time, August 25th, 1961.

[25] ibid; Dr. Strangelove was perhaps a film that resonated the absurdity of nuclear war with women more profoundly. Women Strike for Peace sponsored a benefit showing of the film in Washington to raise funds to send two delegates to The Hague to take part in the Women’s Multinational Peace Rally. ‘Strangelove Benefit’, in The Washington Post, March 4th, 1964. See also Lawrence S. Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement 1954-1970, Stanford, 1997, p. 299.

[26] Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p. 147.

[27] 'Minister Praises 'Dr. Strangelove': Unitarian Sees Harsh Truth Beneath Film's Fantasy' in The New York Times, February 17th, 1964.

[28] Stanley Kubrick quoted in Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, p. 220.

[29] Russell, Bertrand, and Albert Einstein, et al., ‘The Russell-Einstein Manifesto’, July 9th, 1955.

[30] Paul Coates, 'A Thing You Can Think About', in The Los Angeles Times, May 10th, 1964.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.

An Application of Utilitarian Moral Theory to the Well-being of Future People

“… I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
 … Ignorance is bliss.”

Cypher, The Matrix.[1]

At the twilight of the twentieth century The Wachowski Brothers sparked our philosophical imagination by positing a terrible future that involved a virtual reality that was imposed on humanity by a self-aware system of complex machinery. Their film, The Matrix, challenged us to think about what we want our future to be like and whether is it morally acceptable for us to impose a morally dubious world on those in the distant future. The Wachowski Brothers’ film also challenges to think about our obligations to future people and if we have any. One of our greatest present moral challenges, anthropogenic climate change, is a moral issue that questions our obligations to future people and their well-being. In determining our obligations to future people, especially with regards to large scale and far reaching public and economic policy that affects the environmental scale of climate change, it can be difficult to see what these obligations are with respect to their well-being. This essay however, is not an epistemological argument regarding the validity of anthropogenic climate change theories.[2] A myriad of peer-reviewed scientific evidence has proven beyond doubt the causes and consequences of climate change.[3] Rather, this essay will focus on our moral responsibility to responding to the human consequences of climate change. This will be done by linking the future well-being of people with our moral obligations to climate change. Obligations aside, it is firstly difficult to define what exactly constitutes as well-being for humans. A substantive and conclusive moral understanding of what well-being is would be a key component in understanding our obligations to future generations thus highlighting the morally correct public policy choices that will safeguard their future well-being.

Defining well-being has been a difficult exercise for philosophers for thousands of years; from Aristotle's concept of Eudaimonia to Jeremy Bentham's unit of pleasure, the hedon. Tim Mulgan has argued that well-being can not be easily linked exclusively to either happiness or welfare as this gives rise to objections and intuitively negative implications.[4] Happiness has the implication being linked to pleasure; but not all pleasures are empirically constitutive of what could be regarded as well-being. The consumption of drugs or alcohol may bring temporary pleasure but overuse will create negative health effects that most would agree would be detrimental to well-being. Welfare is unnecessarily tied to material wealth. Monetary value, although easily measurable, is not explicitly an indicator of well-being either. A person on a modest income could be a picture of health whereas a multi-millionaire could over-indulge in fatty foods or suffer from a lack of meaningful personal social relationships. These do not capture what our intuition tells us what well-being is. What is constituent of well-being is what is regarded as intrinsically valuable; a value that is not merely instrumental for human lives but valuable in itself.[5] This essay will approach theories of well-being from an rule-utilitarian perspective. Utilitarianism posits that the correct moral choices are those that create the greatest happiness for the greatest number, whereas rule-utilitarianism argues that the correct moral choices are the creation of institutional rules (or in our case public policy choices) that bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number.[6]

Classical utilitarianism regards hedonism, the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain, as the only intrinsically valuable constituent of human well-being.[7] A hedonist public policy would seek to ensure the augmentation of pleasure for the greatest number. The difficulties hedonism faces are its subjectivity as well as its phenomenological implications. John Stuart Mill refined Bentham's original concept of pleasure with higher and lower pleasures.[8] Mill sought to define higher and lower pleasures with competent judges, something that immediately manifests thoughts of subjectivity as well as paternalism. Robert Nozick has argued against a hedonistic view of well-being by saying pleasure is not the only intrinsically valuable aspect of human lives. Nozick proposed a thought experiment that speaks to our intuition and challenges us to reject hedonism. His "Experience Machine", which one had the choice to plug into or not, consisted of a kind of virtual reality that was phenomenologically indifferent from reality. Its user could choose any experience possible from being a successful athlete to completing a great novel. But the intuitions of those who reject the Experience Machine suggest that there are more valuable aspects to human experience than purely sensuous experience. A rejection of the Experience Machine suggests that we need a greater connection with reality; we want our experiences to be genuine.[9] Another possible objection to hedonism is similar to the aforementioned objection to a welfarist, or monetary, conception of well-being. Not all pleasures are positive: consumption of certain foods, alcohol, or drugs bring temporally brief sensuous pleasures but in excess would detrimentally affect a person’s health and therefore well-being. The same could be said of sadistic pleasures one might acquire from morally objectionable activities such as torture or rape—psychologically these would be detrimental if they were regarded to be constituent of well-being.

Nozick, however, is not rejecting an individual's right to choose the Experience Machine, but is deferring to an individual the choice rather than insisting the machine as a hedonist would. This leads us to the second utilitarian conception of well-being, preference theory, which regards an individual's right to choose what they prefer as the only intrinsically valuable aspect of human well-being.[10] The utilitarian approach to preference theory would seek to maximise the opportunities for preferential moral decisions for the greatest number. This theory posits that the only morally acceptable way for people to decide well-being is have them decide for themselves. The theory is popular with libertarians such as Nozick, because of the emphasis of individual free choice, as well as economists because it is easily measured—a stronger preference for a resource or commodity will elicit a higher price therefore show that that particular item is more preferred for an individual's well-being.[11] Public policy choices in this regard would cater to an individual's preferences and thus avoid any accusations of paternalism. Preference theory however faces similar problems to hedonism: preference is also subjective and can be based on uninformed choices or ignorance of consequences. Preference theory can also unfortunately be linked with monetary power and therefore return the measure of well-being to mere monetary terms rather than something with objective moral significance; the implication that the preferences of affluent European or North American choices have more moral worth than those of Latin American or African choices seems, intuitively, to not grasp the concept of well-being. The aggressive commodification of all aspects of life in capitalist economies would have more worth to well-being within preference theory than the self-sustainability of communal pre-industrial economies because of mere monetary value—something itself which is instinctively Eurocentric.

The final theory to be addressed, objective-list, takes a different approach to well-being than the subjectivism of hedonism and preference theory. Objective-list theory presupposes a list of items that are intrinsically, as well as objectively, valuable to human well-being.[12] These items are based on the independent value of each item rather than a preference for each item; this creates a desire based on value rather than value based on desire.[13] The list might include items such as: healthy food and water; appropriate clothing and shelter from the elements; positive family and social relationships; opportunities for education and knowledge; opportunities for exercise and physical activity; freedom from fear and intimidation; the right to personal expression. These are just some of the basics that might be included on a list. Many objectivists might also encompass the above theories by including positive pleasures and the ability to exercise preferences, however, these are not the only intrinsically valuable constituents of what well-being is.

Objective-list theory relies on empirically measurable proxies for constituent items.[14] For example, a comprehensive analysis of health would include, but not be limited to, data concerning rates of disease, mortality, obesity, or mental illness. A utilitarian approach to objective-list would attempt to augment the positive aspects in subsequent data for the greatest number, such as lowering rates of disease or increasing access to healthy food. An advantage objective-list offers over hedonist and preference theories are that it is less risk-averse at both an individual and societal level. An adherence to an objectively measurable standard of well-being is less likely to encounter the shortcomings of hedonism and preference theory; individuals and societies are no longer subject to an arbitrary blissful ignorance when it comes to moral choices concerning their needs. This is especially critical in determining our moral obligations to future people, more of which will be outlined below.

The obvious objection objective-list theory immediately faces is accusations of paternalism. Why should I be told what is good for me? This makes individuals subject to somebody else’s, often elitist, concept of what well-being is. Certain individuals might not feel an obligation to adhere to a preconceived notion of what is good for them; it takes away individuals’ faculties to rationally choose for themselves what they determine to be adequate for the well-being of their own lives. Why should an individual not choose Nozick’s Experience Machine if for them it would make them better off? Objective-list seems to trample on individual freedoms; something most, if not all, people value intrinsically, even if some choices may be detrimental. The idea of being coerced into living a certain way we have been told that it is for our own good seems, intuitively, to make us anxious. There is also difficulty in determining what exactly goes on the list and where the list stops; any preconceived list is inevitably arbitrarily subject to its author’s bias. It might also be less palatable if the author’s list reflects affluent conceptions of well-being. Objective-list is just as at risk of accusations of subjectivity as hedonism or preference theories.

Despite these objections to an objective conception of well-being it is a more suitable moral theory for determining our obligations to future people. Subjective theories breakdown and produce undesirable consequences temporally, especially when present moral choices drastically affect the well-being of future people. Mulgan has given more impetus to Nozick’s Experience Machine to demonstrate this; a further thought experiment called the Virtual Future. Mulgan’s thought experiment is similar to Nozick’s in the sense that a virtual reality phenomenologically indifferent to an actual reality is projected onto its user. Where it differs, is that the Virtual Future is an alternative to a broken world: a world so damaged by the effects of human activity that it becomes almost uninhabitable; it is a simultaneously shared user experience within the virtual world (Mulgan does not mention what portion of the population is engaged in the Virtual Future machine but it is likely that its use would elicit a significant expense); every user is aware the reality projected on them is false but they are also aware that it is preferable to their actual reality; finally, this is not a reality chosen by its users but imposed on them by a past generation of people.[15]

To demonstrate that objective-list theory is the best moral theory regarding both our obligations of future people as well as our obligations to responses to climate change Mulgan’s Virtual Future thought experiment could be approached both literally and metaphorically. Each well-being theory and its implications must be tested to provoke our intuitive response. A literal interpretation of the Virtual Future that is not unlike the aforementioned film The Matrix, in the sense that it presupposes that humanity in the future has indeed somehow destroyed their natural environment beyond repair, that the technology exists to create (or more disturbingly, impose) an artificial reality for humanity, and the virtual reality appears to be better for humanity than the reality of their actual world. The choice faced by a present generation of people is to decide not for themselves but for their descendants whether or not to impose this virtual reality on them: a choice between a broken reality and blissful ignorance. Hedonist and preference theories would no doubt be useful in providing a better, albeit false, reality for future generations but distorts what we value phenomenologically. It is forcing us to make a difficult choice where either option makes us uncomfortable. Our imposition of a Virtual Future is an easy option to avoid obligations as well as a disturbing manipulation of the intrinsic values of future generations.[16]

It is another, metaphorical, interpretation of the Virtual Future thought experiment that evokes our intuitive reaction to outright dismiss subjective moral theories regarding obligations to future generations. Mulgan’s thought experiment teases our train of thought back to the reality of the actual situation humanity faces: a choice between the imposition of the chaotic effects of climate change on humanity or a mitigation of these effects to a liveable environment—a decision that its recipients have to live with but have absolutely no say in effecting. This is where subjective moral theories break down. There is an unbridgeable gap between the desires of present people and the desires future people (it becomes more apparent when subsequent generations no longer overlap the present generation and as the effects of climate change become increasingly drastic). If the present generation desires to defer costly responses to environmental disaster for the sake of economic growth they fail, temporally, to meet the desires of future generations. Future generations would desire the same natural environment and all its benefits we enjoy here in the present (or past) over a destroyed environment especially if they had been given the choice. It is this imposition where better choices could have been made that seems morally disturbing in the sense that present choices are both arbitrary and naïvely authoritarian across time as well as space. Unfortunately, future people cannot make present decisions and this forces us to rethink our moral responsibilities in the present to objectively capture what is intrinsically valuable to well-being across time as well as space. If we think about our list of objectively valuable items, many of which preference theorists would agree would contribute to their well-being, it is almost certain that an irrevocably damaged environment would fail to provide many of these items or a the very least make them very difficult to provide. Only an application of objective-list theory is congruent in transmitting what is intrinsically valuable across time. If we are genuinely concerned about fulfilling the well-being of future people we must abandon temporally myopic subjective moral theories that are imposing with regard to our responses to anthropogenic climate change.

The subjective-objective dichotomy is often contentious in moral philosophy, and subjective moral theories can certainty accommodate individuality in many circumstances in the present where present people are affected. But it is this subjectivity that has dangerous implications when applied to moral decisions for future people. Subjective moral theories exponentially fail to be conductive across time. The idea that our moral subjectivity can impose drastic consequences for future generations is deeply unnerving. Anybody who was born into undesirable conditions where the decisions regarding those circumstances were self-regarding (inter-generational rather than inter-personal) expresses some regret towards their ancestors. If we genuinely believe that it is our moral obligation to leave future generations better off than the present generation it is imperative that we adopt an objective account of what human well-being is. Only then can our present decisions regarding climate change policy aim to meet the well-being of our descendants without being bogged down in the myopia of trivial present pursuits.

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[1]  Joe Pantoliano, The Matrix. Motion picture. Directed by The Wachowski Brothers. United States: Warner Bros. Pictures, 1999.

[2] For the purpose of this essay any mention of climate change can be regarded as anthropogenic i.e. caused by human activity.

[3] Jim Salinger, ed. Living in a Warmer World: How a Changing Climate Will Affect Our Lives, (Collingwood, Victoria: CSIRO Publishing, 2013), 10-2.

[4] Tim Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World: Imagining Philosophy After Catastrophe (Montreal, Québec: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011), 100.

[5] ibid., 101.

[6] Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 388.

[7] Roger Crisp. "Well-Being," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Accessed April 11, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/well-being/.

[8] John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty and Considerations on Representative Government, (London, UK: Everyman's Library, 1984), 10-1.

[9] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 42-5.

[10] Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World, 104.

[11] ibid., 111.

[12] Crisp, “Well-being”.

[13] Mulgan, Ethics for a Broken World, 108.

[14] ibid., 111.

[15] Tim Mulgan, "Ethics for Possible Futures," in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, (London: The Aristotelian Society, 2014), 7-9.

[16] ibid., 10.

———————————————————————————————————————— "... we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace." —W. M. Hicks.