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Driving home from work last month, I stumbled upon a remarkable piece of intellectual insight, which happened to come from a quite unexpected source. Right there in the middle of music’s most mindless genre, was as thorough a recognition of the link between evolution and ethics which I’d yet witnessed in a product of pop culture. And it all came by way of a sexually charged and unapologetically crass dance track titled “The Bad Touch”. The song boils down to the position that humans are nothing more than beasts whose sexual behavior should be therefore unrestricted. What that translates to in the language of “Top-40” radio is this:
You and me baby ain’t nothing but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.
If this chorus line could leave any doubt as to the song’s intent, the unflinching vulgarity of the verses make the message crystal clear. The more I sat and thought about the tragic message of this song, the more I marveled at both the intellectual consistency of those who penned it, and at the utter blindness of a culture which completely misses the significance of this staggering realization.
I grow weary of ethicists and educators who continue to maintain that there is no connection between science and ethics. Their thesis must be assumed rather than debated since it is a position which is wholly dependent on logical suspension. How maddening it is to listen to university professors such as Harvard’s renowned Stephen Gould say that “these two great tools of human understanding operate in complementary fashion in their totally separate realms”. How ironic it is that the basic ethical insights which escape the intellectual elite show up in the crude lyrics of a band of a twenty-somethings called The Bloodhound Gang.
Here’s the problem. From a logical perspective, “The Bad Touch” is flawless. It establishes a presupposition and moves quickly to the only sensible conclusion. The progression goes something like this: A) Human beings are qualitatively no different from “wild” animals. B) The same sexual freedoms which animals enjoy should be enjoyed by humans as well. Now while I will argue to the death as to the errancy of their initial presupposition, I can find no fault in the conclusion which they draw. There is none other which can be drawn. The problem most of society is making is that they gladly embrace proposition “A”, while refusing to accept the legitimacy of proposition “B”. In reality, the two cannot be separated. Nevertheless, popular thought goes like this: A) Human beings are qualitatively no different from “wild” animals. B) Whenever human beings behave as “wild” animals they should be thrown in jail or be killed. In other words while extreme violence and sexual assault is foundational in the animal kingdom, it cannot be tolerated amongst humans. But why? Doesn’t that assume that there is some type of qualitative moral difference between animals and humans? Logic would say, “yes”.
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