Activist CEO's. Is it any of your business?
When people were getting shouty about the same-sex marriage issue last year, it must have seemed like a great idea for a company to support a campaign calling for constructive and respectful debate.
What could go wrong?
Answer: for a proudly Christian-owned beer company, just about everything.
The Adelaide-based Coopers Brewery was dipping its toe into the pool of corporate social activism by supporting a Bible Society video debate. In it, two Liberal Party MPs were voicing opposing pro and anti same-sex marriage views. Instead of a diplomatic hurrah, the result was a painful and embarrassing public relations belly-flop.
In less than a week of making national news, the brewery had put out two press releases; one defending its involvement and the other distancing itself. This resulted in them facing community and social media backlash and a product boycott by both customer and publican.
Social commentator and advertising writer, Jane Caro, says companies and their CEOs have every right to state a point of view, but there is a wrong and a right way to go about it.
“What they didn’t do was ‘out’ themselves as a company with strong Christian values,” she says.
“You have to own up to who you are.”
“The ethical thing to do is own up to your bias. It doesn’t mean you can’t have one [a bias], it means you own up to it.”
You may be criticised for your view, she says, but you will not be branded a hypocrite.
‘Stick to your knitting’ – Dutton
During the same heated discussions leading to the Same-Sex Marriage referendum last year, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was publicly reprimanded for his outspokenness on the issue by former Immigration (now Home Affairs) Minister Peter Dutton, who said business leaders should “stick to their knitting”.
“Alan Joyce, the individual, is perfectly entitled to campaign for and spend his hard-earned money on any issue he sees fit, but don’t do it in the official capacity and with shareholders’ money,” said Dutton.
“And certainly don’t use an iconic brand and the might of a multi-billion-dollar business on issues best left to the judgment of individuals and elected decision-makers,”
Joyce, who also donated $1 million of his own money to the Yes campaign, has been an “out” gay man for a long time and there was no confusion about where he stood on marriage equality, says Caro.
He was also backed by the Qantas board, which had sought the views of major shareholders, staff and customers before he made his stand. His voice was also amongst another 131 large businesses who have publicly supported the marriage equality campaign.
Leaders have a social responsibility
Caro says it is part of a CEO’s job to look at the ethical basis of a company.
“You can’t go through life being a moral vacuum. You can’t go through life having no opinion. CEO’s have to have a point of view on climate change, they have to have a point of view on equal rights for LGBTQI people, for women and for people of colour,” she says.
“And, particularly, people are demanding to know what the attitudes of a company are before they got to work for them.
Research by Weber Shandwick and KRC Research backs this up. A poll of 1,021 adults in the US last year finds that the younger you are, the more likely it is that you will expect corporate leaders to speak up on social issues.
Around 47 percent of Millennials (aged around 22-37) say CEOs have a responsibility to speak up. Of their elders, 28 percent agreed with them. Younger people are also more likely to buy from a company where the CEO spoke out on an issue with which they agree.
Says Caro: “If you’re a gay person, and you’re married, you wouldn’t want to go work for a company which disapproved of that or where you had to pretend you weren’t.”
CEO’s should ‘grow a backbone’
But should CEOs speak out on topics that have little to do with their business?
American marketing professor, Gene Del Vecchio, advises CEOs to shut up, only fight when the issues have a direct impact on the business and not to pander in a shallow attempt to gain business. If CEOs decide to communicate their opinions, they should ensure they cannot be misunderstood.
They should also consider the unintended consequences of projecting their views and “grow a backbone” to resist threats, pressure groups and entreaties.
“Whether you are being threatened by activists on the left or the right, the more you yield to their demands today, the more they will demand of you tomorrow, which increases their control of your future business,” wrote Del Vecchio in the Huffington Post.
“ … if you are a CEO of a publicly held company, your fiduciary responsibility is to shareholders, many of whom are invested in your company via large mutual funds that reflect a wide swath of investors from the political spectrum. You owe it to them to make money to support their retirement, not to express your personal opinion on sensitive issues that many may not agree with.”
The rise of progressive activism
Corporate social activism is not new. CEOs have always played a role as moral standard-bearers. In 1914, industrialist Henry Ford doubled the salaries of his workers who lived “moral” lives and hired a department of 200 inspectors to ensure they were not getting drunk or neglecting their families. He also published an anti-smoking book.
In the UK, the Lever brothers built a company town, Port Sunlight, for factory workers to live in a welfare state-like utopia in the 1880s: “to socialise and Christianise business relations and get back to that close family brotherhood that existed in the good old days of hand labour”.
What has changed is that, in the past, activist CEOs tended to be socially conservative, says Caro. Today, they are more likely to be backing progressive points of view.
“So I don’t think it is possible to escape the fact that CEOs have to take a lead. They always have – it’s just that they used to be a lot more conservative.”
Often that meant actively discriminating against others depending on their lifestyle, religion or denomination (anti-Catholic prejudice was rife in the Menzies era), race or gender.
“To see CEOs actively working not to discriminate against a whole lot of people is, in my view, ethically the way it should be.”
Leaders try to maintain the centre
Activist CEOs may seem to be coming from the left, but this is generally because they are usually responding to a backlash from the “right” side of politics, says Harvard Business School Professor of Business Administration, Michael Toffel.
If they are merely taking a conservative approach of sticking to their corporate values – which commonly emphasise equality, diversity and sustainability – that pits them against those who may not support movements such as same-sex marriage, quotas for gender equality, limits on free speech to protect against hate speech, or global warming.
“If we start to see some policies from the ‘sharp left’ starting to emerge, you may see some of these same CEOs say that’s not the right way to go either,” says Toffel. “They [the CEOs] are trying to maintain the centre, but it is being perceived as leftist because they are reacting to Right-side responses”.
Toffel warns that activist CEOs may look perfectly acceptable – if you happen to agree with what they are saying.
“For those who are cheering CEO activism because they happen to agree with the politics, I think they have to be careful about wondering about whether this is really something they would endorse if the shoe were on the other foot”.
What difference does it make?
Researching CEO activism with Toffel is Duke University Business professor, Aaron Chatterji, who says corporate social activism can both boost and batter business. Outdoors company Patagonia reported a revenue surge after announcing a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the size of Bears Ears national park in Utah.
However, when airline Delta cut its discounts to members of the National Rifle Association after a school mass shooting in a Florida, it was punished by US State of Georgia, which stripped proposed tax breaks.
The US-based Webber Shandwick poll shows 70 percent of respondents approve of outspokenness about job training, but far fewer wanted their corporate leaders to tackle hot-button topics such as refugees (26 percent), gun control (26 percent) and LGBTQI rights (29 percent).
Australians are less reticent. Around 36 percent support CEO outspokenness, with 32 per cent saying “it depends …”. This is almost twice as many as those who think CEOs should stay shtum.
While a minority (13 percent) said activist CEOs had an influence on government, almost half of Americans say corporate leaders who avoid contentious issues will face criticism from the media, customers and employees and 21 percent said those companies may face declining sales or boycotts.
Even though Joyce’s stance attracted some return fire, it would be hard to see there was any damage to the Qantas brand. Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford said, after the vote, that the customer net promotion score had “never been higher”.
Says Caro: “Most people have more respect for those who stand up for what they believe in, than those who don’t. And think about who Qantas employs. A very sizeable percentage of their employees are gay men”.
Perhaps, like a dog whose bark is worse than its bite, a backlash can sometimes have little real-world impact. In its 2017 annual report, Coopers admitted that its beer-and-Bible storm was “a trying time, but had little impact on trading, with beer sales between April and June being stronger than in previous years.
Image take from CEO Activism infographic by Webers and Wick
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With great power comes great responsibility – but will tech companies accept it?
Technology needs to be designed to a set of basic ethical principles. Designers need to show how. Matt Beard, co-author of a new report from The Ethics Centre, demands more from the technology we use every day.
In The Amazing Spider-Man, a young Peter Parker is coming to grips with his newly-acquired powers. Spider-Man in nature but not in name, he suddenly finds himself with increased reflexes, strength and extremely sticky hands.
Unfortunately, the subway isn’t the controlled environment for Parker to awaken as a sudden superhuman. His hands stick to a woman’s shoulders and he’s unable to move them. His powers are doing exactly what they were designed to do, but with creepy, unsettling effects.
Spider-Man’s powers aren’t amazing yet; they’re poorly understood, disturbing and dangerous. As other commuters move to the woman’s defence, shoving Parker away from the woman, his sticky hands inadvertently rip the woman’s top clean off. Now his powers are invading people’s privacy.
A fully-fledged assault follows, but Parker’s Spider-Man reflexes kick in. He beats his assailants off, sending them careening into subway seats and knocking them unconscious, apologising the whole time.
Parker’s unintended creepiness, apologetic harmfulness and head-spinning bewilderment at his own power is a useful metaphor to think about another set of influential nerds: the technological geniuses building the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’.
Sudden power, the inability to exercise it responsibly, collateral damage and a need for restraint – it all sounds pretty familiar when we think about ‘killer robots’, mass data collection tools and genetic engineering.
This is troubling, because we need tech designers to, like Spider-Man, recognise (borrowing from Voltaire) that “with great power comes great responsibility”. And unfortunately, it’s going to take more than a comic book training sequence for us to figure this out.
For one thing, Peter Parker didn’t seek and profit from his powers before realising he needed to use them responsibly. For another, it’s going to take something more specific and meaningful than a general acceptance of responsibility for us to see the kind of ethical technology we desperately need.
Because many companies do accept responsibility, they recognise the power and influence they have.
Just look at Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before the US Congress:
It’s not enough to connect people, we need to make sure those connections are positive. It’s not enough to just give people a voice, we need to make sure people aren’t using it to harm other people or spread misinformation. It’s not enough to give people control over their information, we need to make sure the developers they share it with protect their information too. Across the board, we have a responsibility to not just build tools, but to make sure those tools are used for good.
Compare that to an earlier internal memo – which was intended to be a provocation more than a manifesto – in which a Facebook executive is far more flippant about their responsibility.
We connect people. That can be good if they make it positive. Maybe someone finds love. Maybe it even saves the life of someone on the brink of suicide. So we connect more people. That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs a life by exposing someone to bullies. Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools. And still we connect people.
We can expect more from tech companies. But to do that, we need to understand exactly what technology is. This starts by deconstructing one of the most pervasive ideas going around called “technological instrumentalism”, the idea that tech is just a “value-neutral” tool.
Instrumentalists think there’s nothing inherently good or bad about tech because it’s about the people who use it. It’s the ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ school of thought – but it’s starting to run out of steam.
What instrumentalists miss are the values, instructions and suggestions technologies offer to us. People kill people with guns, and when someone picks up a gun, they have the ability to engage with other people in a different way – as a shooter. A gun carries a set of ethical claims within it – claims like ‘it’s sometimes good to shoot people’. That may indeed be true, but that’s not the point – the point is, there are values and ethical beliefs built into technology. One major danger is that we’re often not aware of them.
Encouraging tech companies to be transparent about the values, ethical motivations, justifications and choices that have informed their design is critical to ensure design honestly describes what a product is doing.
Likewise, knowing who built the technology, who owns it and from what part of the world they come from helps us understand whether there might be political motivations, security risks or other challenges we need to be aware of.
Alongside this general need for transparency, we need to get more specific. We need to know how the technology is going to do what it says it’ll do and provide the evidence to back it up. In Ethical by Design, we argue that technology designers need to commit to a set of basic ethical principles – lines they will never cross – in their work.
For instance, technology should do more good than harm. This seems straightforward, but it only works if we know when a product is harming someone. This suggests tech companies should track and measure both the good and bad effects their technology has. You can’t know if you’re doing your job unless you’re measuring it.
Once we do that, we need to remember that we – as a society and as a species – remain in control of the way technology develops. We cultivate a false sense of powerlessness when we tell each other how the future will be, when artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence and how long it will be until we’ve all lost our jobs.
Technology is something we design – we shape it as much as it shapes us. Forgetting that is the ultimate irresponsibility.
As the Canadian philosopher and futurist Marshal McLuhan wrote, “There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.”
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Big Thinker: Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Threatened by Muslim extremists, boycotted by Western activists, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969—present) has literally put her life on the line to promote her ideals of rational thinking over religious dogma.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali born Dutch American writer best known for her fierce criticism of Islam – the religion of her birth.
She sprung to international notoriety in 2004, when a Muslim extremist killed her Dutch filmmaker colleague Theo Van Gogh, knifing a hand written letter into his chest which called for Hirsi Ali to die next. The extremist targeted the pair for making a film mocking Islam’s treatment of women.
This brush with death only strengthened Hirsi Ali’s resolve to champion her ideals of enlightenment values over religious intolerance. She went on to author four books condemning Islamic teaching and practice.
Fluent in six languages, Hirsi Ali regularly travels the globe on speaking tours, skewering Islam and its local defenders in her articulate, charming style.
She doesn’t appeal to everyone though. The controversial writer has drawn the ire of Muslims and left wing groups who accuse her of anti-Islamic bigotry. Loathed by fundamentalists, she is forced to travel with armed security.
From believer to infidel
Hirsi Ali’s 2006 autobiography Infidel chronicled her extraordinary life journey from devout Somali child to Dutch politician to celebrity atheist intellectual.
Born to a Muslim family, Hirsi Ali says she was five years old when her grandmother ordered a man to undertake a female genital mutilation procedure on her. As a child, she was a believer who read the Qu’ran, wore a hijab and attended an Islamic school.
Looking back, the writer could see all that was wrong with her upbringing – violent beatings, unquestioning faith and rigid enforcement of gender roles.
Hirsi Ali says she sought asylum in the Netherlands in 1992 to flee her father’s attempt to arrange her marriage.
In her new home, the avid reader devoured the writing of enlightenment thinkers like Voltaire, Mill and Locke. These authors taught her to question blind faith and instead embrace science and rational thought.
After working as a translator and researcher, Hirsi Ali was elected to Dutch Parliament in 2002. She used her platform to criticise Islam and Muslim immigration.
Islam ‘is the problem’
Hirsi Ali holds the view that the problem with Islam is not simply a minority of extremists who give the religion a bad name:
“The assumption is that, in Islam, there are a few rotten apples, not the entire basket. I’m saying it’s the entire basket” – Ayaan Hirsi Ali
She argues violence is inherent in the core Islamic text and this is something most Muslims fail to recognise.
According to Hirsi Ali, Muslims can be categorised into three groups.
First, there are “Medina Muslims”, who seek to force extreme sharia law out of their religious duty.
Second, “Mecca Muslims”, are a majority of the faith who are devout but don’t practice violence. The problem with this group, says Hirsi Ali, is they fail to acknowledge or reject the violence in their own religious text.
The third group, “Muslim reformers”, explicitly reject terrorism and promote the separation of religion and politics.
Hirsi Ali argues this third reformer group must overcome the extremists to win the hearts and minds of a majority of Muslims.
Feminist hero or anti-Muslim bigot?
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was initially seen as a feminist activist who championed the cause of oppressed Muslim women. After moving to the US in 2006, she’s associated herself more with right wing groups than women rights’ activists. She became a fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and a regular interviewee on Fox News.
Married to historian Niall Ferguson, the couple have been described as “the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of the intellectual right”.
She has also tweeted her support for Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the US Supreme Court despite allegations of past sexual assault.
Hirsi Ali’s right wing views and harsh criticism of Islam has seen Western activists target her alongside Muslim fundamentalists.
In 2014, Brandeis University in the US reversed its decision to award her with an honorary degree following objections from students.
In 2017, she cancelled a planned visit to Australia amid security concerns and a petition protesting her speaking appearance.
The Southern Poverty Law Center – a US advocacy group famous for defending civil rights – once categorised her as an anti-Muslim extremist.
Hirsi Ali says she can’t understand why she’s become the enemy:
“It has always struck me as odd that so many supposed liberals in the West take their side rather than mine … I am a black woman, a feminist and a former Muslim who has consistently opposed political violence”.
But if terrorists don’t deter her, activists have no chance. Hirsi Ali will continue to tread her dangerous path to promote what she believes are true liberal values.
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In Review: The Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2018
Being tied in a knot of lies, the danger of scepticism, micro-dosing LSD and dismantling bi-partisan politics were just some of the themes threaded throughout this year’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas.
Thousands crossed the threshold into the Festival’s new home on Cockatoo Island. Two days, 31 sessions, and 45 speakers later, they left with a feast of ideas and new perspectives.
For the first time, the island’s unique location and new full-day festival pass meant that you could delve deeper into FODI than ever before.
Caliphate host Rukmini Callimachi shared aching stories of violence and honour in ISIS camps; conservative historian Niall Ferguson forced us all to rethink before we retweet; and pop-culture savant Chuck Klosterman had us empathising with the unlucky aliens who colonise us.
“Hard truths, fleshy realities, blunt edged disagreement and sharp new ideas – all mixed together with a throng of people in an iconic location that spoke alongside the artists and speakers. It was a brilliant amalgam, FODI at its best,” said Dr Simon Longstaff, co-founder, co-curator, and executive director of The Ethics Centre.
For the first time, the island’s unique location and new full-day festival pass format allowed FODI-goers to attend a number of the 31 sessions and delve deeper into different topics and viewpoints while enjoying talks and panels, art installations, ethics workshops and even a touch of cabaret!
Even the master-of-all-trades, Stephen Fry, couldn’t avoid the glamour. A standing ovation roared through Sydney’s Town Hall for his delivery of the inaugural keynote, The Hitch. In honour of his dear friend, the late Christopher Hitchens, Fry had the sold-out venue in oscillating between stitches of laugher and solemn agreement when he lamented the lost art of disagreement in an age of deepening extremes.
Thinkers from around the globe tackled issues of truth, trust and technological disruption, including Caliphate podcast host and New York Times ISIS foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, British conservative commentator Niall Ferguson, AI man-of-the-moment Professor Toby Walsh, and pop-culture savant Chuck Klosterman.
The sold out festival drew crowds of over 16,500 seats across the weekend, with #FODI trending across social media channels all weekend.
The Centre is enormously proud of this festival which we started a decade ago to provide a space to talk about the issues that divide and baffle us without tearing tearing ourselves and each other apart. And we’re thrilled it’s been a continued success in 2018 with a fantastic new partner, The University of New South Wales Centre for Ideas, and a fitting new home.
If you weren’t able to join us, many of our sessions were recorded and we’ll be releasing them over the coming weeks and months.
We’ll keep you posted in our enews or follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn for more release updates.
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From capitalism to communism, explained
Everything, from your clothes to your phone to the train you last caught, has gone through what economists call ‘the means of production’.
This is the way a commercial good or service is created and sold, all the way from its raw materials to how it arrives in your hands… or to your platform.
Most of these things (also referred to as capital) can only be created as a result of collective effort. No individual can reliably ensure everyone in a country of twenty-five million has a safe way to dispose of their waste or a place to go to when they’re sick. One person can’t even meet the most basic requirement of that population and ensure sure everyone is fed.
Of course, these things cost money to maintain. Whenever cost is involved, people want to know who pays. This is where it gets hairy. If one person owns ‘the means of production’, they have to pay for everything – and keep any and all profit made. If everyone involved owns ‘the means of production’ collectively, they share the cost – and any profit.
This is where the branches of different economic systems begin.
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic systemwhere the ‘means of production’ and resulting capital are owned by private individuals and businesses. It is based on voluntary relationships of supply and demand instead of centralised (usually government) planning.
This system is rooted in classical liberal philosophy and its conception of the rational, freethinking, autonomous individual. It claims market competition forces people to act in a way that benefits others, regardless of their intention.
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system borne out of opposition to capitalism where the ‘means of production’ are collectively owned and shared. It prioritises production for use rather than profit and achieves this through centralised planning – like a government.
The value of whatever is produced is determined by the amount of time and labour required, not market supply and demand. Socialism claims sharing resources and work according to need, rather than competition, creates a more equitable and secure society.
Communism
Communism is a utopian political economic system where a society is reorganised without hierarchy, states, money or class. The ‘means of production’ are shared communally and private property is non-existent or severely restricted. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published the seminal political pamphlet on this, A Communist Manifesto in 1848.
Communism’s modern adherents claim it has not happened yet, while its critics cite Maoist China, Stalin’s Soviet Union, the Cold War, and many other historical crises to signal its danger.
Fascism
Fascism is an economic system based on self-sufficiency of the state, ethnic purity, and one-party ownership over the means of production. There’s usually a dictatorial leader and little to no tolerance of political opposition. Fascism claims the strength of a nation comes from unity and unity depends on fixed identities.
Though commonly associated with Nazi Germany, many other countries have been considered fascist at some point too, such as Brazil, Iraq and Japan.
Laissez-faire
Laissez-faire translates to ‘leave alone’ or ‘let them do’. Laissez-faire is an economic system that leaves transactions and trade free from government regulation, subsidies, tariffs, and privileges. It claims the economy is a natural system and the market is an organic part of it. Government interference hinders something nature can mediate.
Which economic-political system is best?
When discussing what economic system we prefer, it’s important to know what we’re talking about. The economies of most modern countries today are rarely pure capitalism or pure socialism. Most have a mixed capitalist system where private individuals or businesses make profit off labour, while operating within government regulations.
At the bare bones of economic theory, you find philosophy. Questions like ‘What is the purpose of government?’, ‘What is a human right?’, ‘What can we expect from our relationships?’, or ‘What does equality and justice look like?’ inform the different perspectives that manifest into policy.
Which one would you stand for?
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You don’t like your child’s fiancé. What do you do?
Your child is getting married. A mixture of pride, grief and trepidation have been gathering steam for a while now.
You don’t know how you’re going to feel on the day, but when you see your child go through one of the most ubiquitous rites of passage there is, you can’t guarantee there won’t be tears of love.
Except for one snag.
You don’t like their fiancé.
It’s heartbreaking. What should have been a moment of elation at your child’s joy is soured. You don’t understand why they’re making such a huge commitment to their partner or how you will live with that choice.
Perhaps you don’t think they’re good enough, or you don’t get along with them as much as you’d like. Maybe you see them bringing unhappiness into your child’s life – now or in the future. They might have strange attitudes to parenting or relationships. They might seem plain dangerous. Either way, there’s one question you’re asking…
What should you do?
In this situation, consider what a good parent looks like. Do they support, protect, and nurture their child? Do they allow them to make their own mistakes? Are they honest and fair?
Being honest may mean causing great hurt. Being fair may mean accepting the consequences of your child’s independence. Protecting your child may mean treating your fears as truth. But to what end? And by what means?
Wedding dilemmas splitting you in two? Book a free appointment with Ethi-call. A non-partisan, highly trained professional will help you see through chiffon to make decisions you can live by.
On one hand, what actions present you as the person you want to be? Are they the actions of someone courageous, patient, and wise? Or someone petty, panicky, and controlling?
On the other hand, what actions risk damaging the relationship between you and your child? Or your future child-in-law? What situation necessitates speaking up? Or more drastic measures?
If you decide your concerns aren’t that serious, is there a way you could use this situation to build a stronger relationship with your child and a better understanding of the partner they love?
A lot of the time, when we are faced with an ethical dilemma, we see in binaries. Black or white, either or. Taking the time to slow down our thinking and consider the situation in different ways can help new pathways emerge – even if that means stepping back and living with the decisions another person has made.
So, before you end up expressing your reservations in panic, blame, and threats to boycott the wedding, take a breath. Step back, contemplate who you aspire to be as parent, what actions you feel are right and available to you and get creative.
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Big Thinker: Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky (1928—present) is one of the foremost scholars and activists of our time.
With over a hundred books, thirty honorary degrees, and a generation of aspiring leftists behind him, Chomsky’s life puts a practical lens on the motto ‘protest is patriotic’.
The human tendency towards freedom
Chomsky earned a PhD in linguistics for his theory of “universal grammar”, a theory where all people are “born knowing” shared properties that underpin all human language. These properties, which create what he calls a “language acquisition device”, are what helps babies pick complex languages up instinctively.
According to Chomsky, while language’s laws and principles are fixed, the manner in which they are generated are free and infinitely varied. This view of human nature is one that runs through Chomsky’s attitudes to linguistics or politics: we must protect the innate human tendency towards freedom.
Pessimist of intellect
Chomsky’s opposition to war and totalitarianism started early. He wrote his first paper on the threat of fascism at ten. He opposed the Vietnam War while working at MIT, a military-funded university. He called Gaza the world’s “largest open-air prison” and said the US bears full responsibility for Israel’s war crimes.
Chomsky’s public denunciations of US foreign policy in Central America and East Timor, its interference in Middle Eastern elections and the shoot-first-ask-later’ type of diplomacy have drawn widespread ire and admiration. At the height of his fame in the 70s, it was discovered the CIA was keeping tabs on him and publicly lying about doing so.
Noam Chomsky’s consistent and vocal criticism of the US government comes from the belief that he, as a member of that country, holds a moral responsibility to stop it from committing crimes. That, and it’s far more effective than criticising a government that isn’t responsible for him.
“States are not moral agents; people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.”
Manufacturing consent
In what is arguably Chomsky’s most famous work, ‘Manufacturing Consent’, he outlined mainstream media’s complicity with government and business interests. He traced the capitalist formula of selling a product at a profit to the highest bidder in relation to the media. Here, people are the product and advertisers are bidding for our attention. Compare this with the monopoly social media has over our time and the ensuing competition for available ad space, and you’ll notice this line of argument growing in prescience.
Chomsky argued the advertising market is shaped by the external conditions of the state. It’s in their best interests to placate their ‘product’ and water down anything that would spur them to act against it. Any dissenting opinion is either ignored or presented as an anomaly. This is anti-democratic, said Chomsky, for a nation is only democratic insofar as government policy accurately reflects informed public opinion.
“If we don’t believe in free expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”
Speak truth to power
Fred Halliday, an Irish academic, has criticised Chomsky for overestimating the power and influence of the US. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, Oxford historian Stephen Howe, and linguist Neil Smith, have called him a fierce and aggressive moral crusader, who dismisses critics as unqualified, mistaken, or even “charlatans“.
Today, Chomsky is outspoken on what he considers the two greatest threats to humanity: nuclear war and climate change. But with NEG scrapped, the Doomsday Clock inching to midnight, and Congress split, it looks unlikely that decisive action against either of these threats will be carried out anytime soon.
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Big Thinker: Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884—1962) was an American diplomat and longest serving First Lady of the United States, best known for her work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
She was affectionately dubbed “The First Lady of the World”. The thread running through her massive body of work is the single idea: fear threatens our lives and our democracies.
To live well means to live free from fear
Roosevelt lived in a world reeling from fascism. Though the Second World War had ended, the horrors of Nazism, the Holocaust and Stalinism revealed the depths people would succumb to out of fear and insecurity.
It wasn’t your garden variety type of fear she was concerned with. It was the type of widespread fear that debilitates courage, rewards conformity and stifles “the spirit of dissent”. By succumbing to this immobilising fear, Roosevelt said, we waste our lives.
“Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one’s own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.”
Roosevelt wanted all people to know their values. As an influential public figure and patriotic American, she especially wanted this for her country.
This wasn’t without reason. The growing fear of political others (McCarthyism) and racial others (the push for segregation) mobilised Roosevelt and emboldened her stance. She didn’t want conformity to win.
“When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else or a community or a pressure group, you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your own surrender, less of a human being.”
Find a teacher in every person you meet
Roosevelt felt the danger of fear and conformity went beyond the trauma of war. It could quash “a spirit of adventure”, a way of viewing and experiencing everyday life that made you a better person.
She wasn’t talking about a thrill seeking, you-only-live-once, way of navigating the world. She meant close mindedness – denying your life experiences the opportunity to change your mind and mould your actions.
“Learning and living are really the same thing, aren’t they? There is no experience from which you can’t learn something. When you stop learning you stop living in any vital or meaningful sense. And the purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
Roosevelt believed that everyone has something to teach you, and you are the ultimate beneficiary. Your character, your actions and your democratic polity.
And some might find being motivated by self-betterment alone to be selfish. After all, shouldn’t we do good simply because it is good? Isn’t it more noble to be motivated by what Kant called “good will”, or a moral duty?
Even if it’s possible that realizing motivation from a place of moral obligation is a higher ideal, Roosevelt was grounded in the everyday. She wasn’t concerned with principles the vast majority of a traumatised, distrustful nation would find out of reach, so she focused on the individual.
A principled life
The most remarkable thing about Roosevelt aren’t necessarily her ideals. It was her moral gumption to act on them even if they were unorthodox for the times or grossly unpopular.
She lobbied for greater intakes of World War II refugees when immigration was not supported by many Americans still reeling from the hardships of the Great Depression. She criticised her husband, President Franklin Roosevelt, for a policy intended to address the post-Depression housing market crash that segregated black and white citizens.
She broke with tradition by inviting African American guests to the White House. She spoke out against the internment of Japanese soldiers to the very population grieving the 2403 Americans they killed at Pearl Harbour (in comparison, it’s reported 55 Japanese lives were lost).
Roosevelt’s reputation for loving all has not gone unchallenged. She has been accused of taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a way that contravenes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights she worked on. While famous for wanting to protect displaced post WWII refugees, who were often Jewish, she felt the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict was to resettle indigenous Palestinians in Iraq – the suggestion being she had a Zionist bias.
Roosevelt nevertheless maintains her name as a pioneer in humanitarian efforts who walked her talk. Fast forward to today’s polarised political spectrum, and her story reminds us the tools to make it through are there.
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Ethics Explainer: Scepticism
Scepticism is an attitude that treats every claim to truth as up for debate.
Religion, philosophy, science, history, psychology – generally, sceptics believe every source of knowledge has its limits, and it’s up to us to figure out what those are.
Sometimes confused with cynicism, a general suspicion of people and their motives, ethical scepticism is about questioning if something is right just because others say it is. If not, what will make it so?
Scepticism has played a crucial role in refining our basic understandings of ourselves and the world we live in. It is behind how we know everything is made of atoms, time isn’t linear, and that since Earth is a sphere, it’s quicker for planes to fly towards either pole instead of in a straight line.
Ancient ideas
In Ancient Greece, some sceptics went so far as to argue since nothing can claim truth it’s best to suspend judgement as long as possible. This enjoyed a revival in 17th century Europe, prompting one of the Western canon’s most famous philosophers, René Descartes, to mount a forceful critique. But before doing so, he wanted to argue for scepticism in as holistic a fashion as possible.
Descartes wanted to prove certain truths were innate and could not be contested. To do so, he started to pick out every claim to truth he could think of – including how we see the world – and challenge it.
For Descartes, perception was unreliable. You might think the world around you is real because you can experience it through your senses, but how do you know you’re not dreaming? After all, dreams certainly feel real when you’re in them. For a little modern twist, who’s to say you’re not a brain in a vat connected up to a supercomputer, living in a virtual reality uploaded into your buzzing synapses?
This line of thinking led Descartes to question his own existence. In the midst of a deeply valuable intellectual freak out, he eventually came to realise an irrefutable claim – his doubting proved he was thinking. From here, he deduced that ‘if I think’, then I exist.
“I think, therefore I am.”
It’s the quote you see plastered over t-shirts, mugs, and advertising for schools and universities. In Latin it reads, “Cogito ergo sum”.
Through a process of elimination, Descartes created a system of verifying truth claims through deduction and logic. He promoted this and quiet reflection as a way of living and came to be known as a rationalist.
The arrival of the empiricist
In the 18th century, a powerful case was made against rationalism by David Hume, an empiricist. Hume was sceptical of logical deduction’s ability to direct how people live and see the world. According to Hume, all claims to truth arise from experiences, custom and habit – not reason.
If we followed Descartes’ argument to its conclusion and assessed every single claim to truth logically, we wouldn’t be able to function. Navigating throughout the world requires a degree of trust based on past experiences. We don’t know for sure that the ground beneath us will stay solid. But considering it generally does, we trust (through inductive reasoning) that it will stay that way.
Hume argued memories and “passions” always, eventually, overrule reason. We are not what we think, but what we experience.
Perhaps you don’t question the nature of existence at the level of Descartes, but on some level, we are all sceptics. Scepticism is how we figure out who to confide in, what our triggers are, or if the next wellness fad is worth trying out. Acknowledging how powerful our habits and emotions are is key to recognising when we’re tempted to overlook the facts in favour of how something makes us feel.
But part of being a sceptic is knowing what argument will convince you. Otherwise, it can be tempting to reduce every claim to truth as a challenge to your personal autonomy.
Scepticism, in its best form, has opened up mind-boggling ways of thinking about ourselves and the world around us. Using it to be combative is a shortsighted and corrosive way to undermine the difficult task of living a well examined life.
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Inside The Mind Of FODI Festival Director Danielle Harvey
We sat down with Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2018 festival director Danielle Harvey to take peak into the inspirations, motivations and challenges behind creating one of the most confronting and thought-provoking events in Australia.
1. It’s been said FODI was Australia’s first disruptive festival. What is it about the festival that resonates so strongly with audiences?
People want more than a headline. They want to hear more in depth analysis and a range of perspectives. To hear straight from the academics, scientists, researchers and not have it filtered, distorted. A live festival doesn’t get more direct.
2. There are so many different ideas, themes and perspectives out there that matter. How do you narrow it down to land this year’s line up?
A lot of vigorous discussion! Myself and the co-curators are always looking at the next thing that’s going to hit, we’ve been very good at looking at the horizon in past festivals, discussing things like Russia, surrogacy and banking all before a scandal breaks.
We also look to the superstars of the non-fiction world, the academics and researchers doing great work and are great communicators. And we look for a multitude of perspectives, beyond politics. A discussion that involves people from across disciplines, experts in their field that bring to light a focus on a particular aspect and when combined help to show the complex nature of many of our biggest ideas and problems.
3. The festival has been going strong for 9 years now. What gets easier, what doesn’t?
This is my 7th FODI. I feel very lucky to have been able to grow my own understanding of the world in a very public way! The easier and harder is the same – finding great people.
Easier because people around the world know about this festival and we have great alumni and reputation, harder because we’ve presented so many amazing people and so many ideas… I look forward to next year… 10 feels like a good ‘best of’ opportunity!
4. What does it take to be a great festival director?
Curiosity about the world. I’ve curated and created a number of festivals – FODI, Antidote, All About Women, BingeFest and Mardi Gras and they always start about thinking about audiences and what they should be able to see/hear/experience. I am insatiably curious and I love finding connections between things.
5. What’s it like to produce a festival like FODI? What does a typical day look like for you?
Talking. Talking. Appreciating the amazing team around me. (I have the best people who do so much). More talking. Noodling on the internet, reading, watching. Talking some more. (I talk to people from all different walks of life to hear what is interesting them).
6. What do you think sets the 2018 festival apart from recent years?
The island! The opportunity to fully immerse yourself in a program sans distractions. It’s all about the ideas and engaging with them deeply this year. The opportunity to include more large scale art and theatre has also made this a very different festival. We have the space and time to do these things on Cockatoo.
7. Why the move to Cockatoo Island and what are the challenges or surprises in setting up a festival in the middle of Sydney Harbour?
Everything has to be barged on! That’s the biggest challenge. It’s an amazing site, full of potential, but it is an island with no real infrastructure. The history of the place is incredibly evocative and any time we go there we are amazed at this little gem sitting on our doorstep. It’s a great place to let your mind and feet wander (and wonder)!
8. Finally, we have to ask. Which bit are you most to looking forward to? What are the must-see events?
That is tough, it will all be great! I am really looking forward to Chuck Klosterman, to Rukmini Callimachi and of course Stephen Fry! I think the ‘Too Dangerous’ panel will also be full of excellent take-aways.
I am also excited about the two art installations – ‘Submission’ and ‘The Hand That Wields It’ these installations are excellent opportunities to see ideas represented in a different way rather than via a talk.
Everything you need to know: The Festival Of Dangerous Ideas 2018
From sex robots to sex clowns, to tying yourself up in lies and rope, this year’s festival on 3 – 4 November takes you beyond the hype and deep into the issues that confront and divide us.
Embrace the festival experience on Cockatoo Island with one-day or full weekend passes. All passes include free return ferry transport.
Featured speakers include ex Westboro Baptist Church follower Megan Phelps-Roper, conservative historian Niall Ferguson; iconoclast Germaine Greer; rock star of AI Toby Walsh; micro-dosing advocate Ayelet Waldman; pop culture critic Chuck Klosterman; academic and activist Mick Dodson and so many more!
To crown FODI 2018, join Stephen Fry at a special event at Sydney Town Hall, where he will deliver an oration on the lost art of fabulous disagreement.
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