Alasdair MacIntyre “Heedlessness” (Friday Oct 31- 1:30-2:45pm)
In his paper “Heedlessness,” Alasdair MacIntyre argues that poverty in the United States continues to exist due to human heedlessness, defined as the inattention to things that do not promote our own individual good. However, once people acknowledge the common humanity shared with the poor and begin to promote the common good, then solutions to poverty in the reform of education and of the workplace can be established.
MacIntyre begins his paper using the example of commonplace supermarkets to prove how easy it is to overlook the injustice to the poor. Supermarkets can provide cheap food, but only because of minimum wage employees and farmers. Additionally, middle class/wealthy geographic areas have numerous supermarkets, while poor areas are what MacIntyre refers to as food deserts (areas without supermarkets or grocery stores). MacIntyre establishes that the divide between the poor and the rich is vast and almost impossible to cross over. Money, power, and education form a cycle of success for the wealthy, while poverty breeds negative behavior and more poverty. But once one realizes the human function is to flourish in human community, it is only natural that individual flourish stems from communal flourishing.
To conclude his paper, MacIntrye demonstrates the interconnected relationship between family, school, and the workplace and offers solutions to the problem of poverty. First, the problem with the education system is the widespread belief that the end goal of education is to make money. Thus our most intelligent people become finance and engineering majors, as opposed to other countries where the most intelligent teach the youth. And second, MacIntrye proposes determining a necessary income: those above the necessary income will be taxed and that money will be used to augment the poor to the necessary income.
Overall, MacIntyre points out some solid issues with poverty in the United States. Poverty is a cycle and education is the only way out, but even high quality education must be bought. As a girl who has attended both Catholic elementary and Catholic college prep high school, which MacIntyre highly supports for the community aspect, I can say my fellow classmates were not very diverse. Quite honestly, almost all of our parents were successful and valued education thus instilling in us the value of work ethic and giving us the financial opportunity to attend high end universities like Notre Dame. Concerning his ideal uniform income idea, however, I strongly disagree. America was founded on freedom where one can succeed and prosper based on one’s own hard work. It is our duty, as Catholics and as human beings, to help the poor. But we must raise the poor up, not bring the rich down. What MacIntyre is proposing is socialism. Finally, while he emphasizes the interconnecting relationship of family, school, and the workplace, he does not offer any reform to family. Lack of families are a huge issue of why poverty is cyclical. Single parents, usually young in age, tend to end their education early to enter the workforce in order to support the child. Many times this leaves the child unsupervised, and without the parent’s example, higher education seems less attainable.
During the reading of “Heedlessness,” I was amazed with all the connections to our morality class. MacIntrye, like Mattison, emphasized that the function of the human is to flourish in community. He talked about selfishness and putting our goals in front of the common good, which relates to the readings we have been doing on charity. He also pointed out that the interconnected nature of the virtues. To have justice (which the entire paper was about), prudence, temperance, and courage are also needed.
(Please add this to my participation grade. Thank you! Also, I REALLY enjoyed this talk so thanks for informing us).
Moral Theology Blog 