Huw Spanner
Thoughts into words,
ideas into action
Welcome
Curriculum Vitae
Interviews
Columns
Scripts
Contact

 

 

A difficult question of priorities

A version of this piece was published in the Independent on the 4th May 2003, under the headline ‘People may not always be more important than things’.


It has been fascinating in recent weeks to observe the different priorities of the media in reporting the looting in Iraq. At the more populist end of things, the focus has been on the trashing of hospitals, but the higher-browed have rather concentrated on the pillaging of libraries and museums.

These different emphases suggest a moral question that is seldom addressed. In our culture, it is rare to find anyone who will not at least pay lip-service to the doctrine that human life is ‘sacred’ (whatever that means in a largely irreligious society). Certainly, almost everyone would agree with the proposition that the life of a man or woman is far more precious than any artefact. It is, however, a principle much more honoured in the breach.

Is it the popular press that has got its priorities right in this case? Do dying children matter more than lost antiquities? Or will the judgement of history be more apt? We can be sure that in a hundred years’ time – if not a thousand – the burning and plundering of Iraq’s national collections will still be lamented when the deaths of however many people denied treatment in its ruined hospitals have long been forgotten.

Some years ago I worked for Dulwich Picture Gallery, which boasts a painting by Rembrandt of an unidentified young woman which Denis Healey once described as ‘a thing of sublime mystery [and] spiritual depth’. One day, I asked the director what he would do if the gallery was on fire and he had to choose between rescuing ‘the girl’ and rescuing a member of the public. He gave me a queer look and the answer that any respectable person would give. I have wondered ever since whether it was true, or right.




In practice, of course, this sort of calculation is always going on in our society, if not explicitly. Politicians, for example, have to gauge what is an ‘acceptable’ number of deaths and serious injuries on the roads. In theory, it would be possible to cut the toll dramatically by allocating a lot more money to calming traffic and denouncing dangerous driving; yet no one imagines that the department of government concerned will ever be told to ‘spend whatever it takes’. There are other things that must be paid for besides saving lives, from education to Olympic bids.

To some extent, we can trace our ambivalence back to self-interest. Standing at the gateway to the Taj Mahal, with that famous view in front of me and behind me the slum that has stood there since the 1600s, I found myself wondering whether I was glad that the Mogul emperor Shah Jahan had chosen to pour his wealth into a memorial to his wife rather than the welfare of the poor. As a Christian, I have to believe that, then as now, their suffering was an offence in the eyes of God; but with the best will in the world I found it impossible, standing in sight of that breath-taking building, to wish that it didn’t exist and that, instead, so many thousands of unknown people had lived longer and happier lives three centuries before I was born.

Is the problem simply that at a distance, or in the abstract, human beings look anything but unique and irreplaceable? (Aren’t there, indeed, too many of us already, with too many more on the way?) The loss of even one great painting or one great building seems to make the world a measurably poorer place; and yet a thousand people can die and only their relatives feel bereaved.

The obvious Christian line is to reaffirm that even the most insignificant person is of far more consequence than even the most exquisite work of art. Didn’t Jesus himself say that not a single sparrow was forgotten by God, and we are ‘worth more than many sparrows’ – whereas not even the legendary ‘glory’ of King Solomon could compare with that of just one flower?

And yet I find myself unwilling to write off as unregenerate the side of me that feels distraught about the loss of ancient artefacts and manuscripts, though only a few weeks ago I didn’t even know they existed, let alone had any hopes of ever seeing them. It seems inadequate to dismiss these treasures as merely things, weighing nothing in the balance against a human life. But what if their price was set not by how much some antiquarian would give for them, still less some billionaire to add them to his private hoard, but by how much they say about, and to, a people loved by God?

Until last month, the heirlooms of a human family going back 7,000 years told the nations of Iraq, if not of half the world, who they are and where they have come from, how far they have travelled and by what route. They offered inspiration, challenge and rebuke. They could at once make ordinary people feel proud, to be the heirs of such a history, and humble, as they saw their own short lives and small achievements overshadowed by such ancient beauty. All these things have spiritual value.

So, back to Rembrandt. Perhaps the truly incisive moral question is not whether I would save from the fire the Girl at a Window rather than the person looking at her, but whether I would put my own life at risk to rescue her. I can’t help feeling that it is the better part of me that likes to think I would.

© The Independent 2003


Back to the top

 

Dying to kill

(Other) animal rights

Shafts of feeling

More precious than people?

Fair pay

Football and fair trade

On the 12th day of Christmas

Reality is magic

On Mothering Sunday

On Boxing Day

The vanishing sparrow

On the eve of the year 2000