Is debt learnt behaviour?
Debt means different things to different people. While some are confident to juggle huge amounts of debt spread across a few credit cards, others start hyperventilating at the mere notion of paying a bill a day late.
Debt is also intrinsically linked to our emotional state of mind. Purchasing a new outfit using Buy now, pay later services might trigger an immediate dopamine hit, and leave the trouble of those four pesky payments to a future version of yourself. Or on the larger scale, buying an apartment means taking on the biggest debt most will take on in their lifetime, but it marks a momentous life milestone.
Why is debt so emotional? And what hidden psychological forces shape our attitudes and relationships towards it?
Keep it in the family
Our attitudes towards debt are largely inherited from our family, according to Jess Brady, a financial advisor at Fox and Hare Financial and founder of online community Ladies Talk Money. Brady says debt is not just numbers on a spreadsheet, but rather a complex emotional relationship informed by how we saw our families and friends interact with their finances when we were kids. “It might be shaped by parents separating and having to move from middle class life, to potentially a period where things became really tight from a monetary perspective. And so now, fear and insecurity drive decision making in your money, beliefs or behaviour.”
“It might be that you watched your parents make reckless decisions, which has made you quite fearful about making any decisions. Or quite the opposite that you’re used to having a lot of money and a lot of freedom. Meaning that you spend money without really considering what the consequences are so often it is what we did or didn’t see in a home life environment.”
What’s clear is, there’s no rulebook when it comes to debt and financial management. Whether you’ve grown up with examples of responsible spending or not, the moment you get your first job and your own bank account – you’re on your own, which is why Brady thinks it’s important to supercharge your financial literacy.
“We wrap so much shame and guilt around debt.” If we’re going to start normalising talking about money, then the lessons of accepting and reflecting on the decision-making that got you to this point are valuable.
Jess Brady’s key financial messages for getting ahead of debt and improving financial literacy are:
- Stop identifying as someone who is, “bad with money”: this negative self-talk creates a belief system around excusing bad behaviour.
- The buck stops with you: don’t offload large financial decisions onto others whether that be a partner or a parent.
- Working 9-5: Take responsibility for your own income and embrace the mantra “I decide where and how to spend my own money.”
It’s all about the sell
For some, accumulating debt can feel like sacrificing freedom while for others it’s exactly the opposite. For a lot of people debt is an opportunity, it’s the promise of more, being one step closer to your dreams. Our differing perceptions of taking on debt has a lot to do with how it is marketed.
Taking on debt to go to university, to buy a car or an apartment are all seen as responsible debt associated with big life milestones, but debt is no longer just about buying your dream home, or taking out a credit card for the frequent flyer points. It’s about wanting a new pair of shoes… And thanks to Buy now, pay later services, getting them immediately.
According to Adam Ferrier, a behavioural psychologist and co-founder of Sydney based advertising agency, Thinkerbell, money is marketed with a sledgehammer. “Money used to be marketed by a promise of aspiration. But it feels like that aspirational side of money has been chipped away at, and it’s almost a bit gauche to promise an aspirational lifestyle with money. Debt in this country is marketed very much as an issue and something that you have to get out of and create a sense of urgency, often targeting the less financially literate people in the marketplace.”
But all debt was not created equal, and it’s the rise of Buy now, pay later type debts amongst the younger generations that have a number of financial advisors and writers concerned. According to Jonathan Shapiro, journalist and author of Buy now pay later, the extraordinary story of Afterpay, these services didn’t exactly set out to be unethical. “I think what’s happened is that we convinced ourselves that they are providing some sort of a win-win solution and they are of the belief that something so good and so popular cannot be bad.”
The introduction of companies like Afterpay to the financial lending market means it’s never been easier to fall into the red. And because of the clever way they’re marketed as payment services rather than lenders means they have largely dodged regulation, leading to heavy ethical scrutiny.
“A lot of its success is built around a behavioural hack. If something is $100, it might intimidate a consumer. But if it’s leading to $25 payments over six weeks, it makes it more palatable.”
The dangers of these services are that consumers will spend way more than they had originally intended because when a large price tag is divided over the span of six weeks it feels more manageable. “It’s put the burden on consumer groups to educate themselves. Those who use Afterpay need to be mindful of the risks of booting up a debt trap. Now they might not fall into a debt trap in the same way someone using a credit card might. But what tends to happen is Buy now, pay later users that have overextended themselves sign up for a myriad of other providers, or they stop paying other bills that are more important.”
What’s important is that we begin to normalise conversations about money, about investments, and about debt. We’re living in a time where the way debt is marketed is shifting dramatically, so it’s imperative to improve our financial literacy because our critical thinking skills and understanding what’s right for us has never felt more important.
Life and Debt is available to listen to on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is a project from the Young Ambassadors in The Ethics Centre’s Banking and Finance Oath initiative. Our work is made possible by donations including the generous support of Ecstra Foundation – helping to build the financial wellbeing of Australians.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
8 questions with FODI Festival Director, Danielle Harvey
After a two-year hiatus, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI), is returning live and unfiltered to Sydney from 17–18 September at Carriageworks.
Ahead of the eleventh festival’s program release, we sat down with Festival Director, Danielle Harvey to get a sneak peek into the 2022 program and what it takes to create Australia’s original disruptive festival.
Our world has so rapidly changed over the past few years. How do you determine what makes an idea truly dangerous in this climate?
The thing with dangerous ideas is that they react and change with what’s going on in the world. When we consider FODI programming we always look to talk about the ideas that perhaps we’re not addressing in the mainstream media enough. The quiet, wicked ideas, that will be snapping at our heels before we know it!
FODI is about creating a space for unconstrained enquiry — for both audiences and speakers, so we aim to find different ways of talking about things; a different perspective or angle — whether that comes from putting people from different backgrounds or disciplines together or encouraging speakers to push their idea as far as it could possibly go.
The 2022 program will explore an ‘All Consuming’ theme. How do you feel this reflects our world at the moment?
This year’s theme responds to and critiques an age consumed by environmental disaster, disease, war, identity, political games and 24/7 digital news cycle.
It considers the constant demands for our attention and our own personal habits formed to deal with an avalanche of information, opportunity, and distraction. In an all-consuming time where there is so much vying for our attention, what exactly should we give it to?
How do you ensure a balance of ideas when putting a program together?
Our team has such a range of diverse roles and practices that provide us access to a very complementary range of experts across the arts, academia, business and politics. Some of us have worked together for over a decade which has meant we’ve developed an enduring dialogue that facilitates building a program in an exciting and agile manner.
After 10 festivals, we also have a fabulous and engaged speaker alumni network who keep us informed of any interesting developments in their respective fields.
FODI has been dubbed as Australia’s original disruptive festival, what is it about disruption that makes it important to base a festival around?
Progress happens when we are bold enough to interrogate ideas — when we’re able to have uncomfortable conversations and be unafraid to question the status quo. Holding the space open for critique without censure is incredibly important. It’s your choice if you come, if you want to sit in the uncomfortable, if you want to be curious about the world around you.
This year the festival will be held at Carriageworks. How does the festival align with this choice of site?
FODI has been privileged to have been housed in so many iconic Sydney venues, from Sydney Opera House to Cockatoo Island and Sydney Town Hall. Carriageworks is now a new home for FODI, that has empowered us to be bolder and provides a fantastic canvass for creating a truly ‘All Consuming’ experience for audiences, speakers and artists.
How would you reflect on the festival’s journey over the past few years to where it is now?
Obviously coming out of COVID in the last couple of years we’ve had some time to reflect, and perhaps the 2020 theme ‘Dangerous Realities’ was a little too prophetic! During that time we were one of the first festivals to turn that program digital, which aired over one weekend. We ended up having 10,000 people tune in live and then another 15,000 and a few days after it. I don’t think I’ve really seen any other festival that moved online and get those sorts of numbers that quickly. It’s a real credit to the FODI team and audiences.
Then in 2021 we embarked on a special audio project, ‘The In-Between’ which saw us pair unlikely people together to have a conversation about what this moment — pandemic, global power shifts, social shifts — might mean. That more open questioning was really enlightening, with some feeling afraid — like it is the end of an era. While others were more hopeful or unconvinced that it is anything new at all.
We’ve also been mining many of our FODI archival talks and released them as podcast episodes, which now have over 165,000 listens globally. It’s been fantastic to be reminded of how eerily relevant so many of these ideas were and how often we should look to the past in order to look forward.
As a result of our great digital programming and on demand content, we’ve now got this huge extended audience now and it’s been a joy to engage with people who weren’t physically able to join us previously.
What’s the most dangerous idea out there for you right now?
For the past two years we’ve been told that being with other humans is one of the most dangerous things you can do! So, I’m excited to see us come together, in person, this year and connect in a festival setting.
And finally, what are you most excited to see at FODI this year — what do you think sets this year’s program apart from others?
2022 heralds a return to public gatherings. We’re thrilled to support the arts and a return to live events and cultural activity after a very challenging time for so many in NSW and nationally.
I’m excited by bringing so many international speakers to Sydney, to hear some deep global analysis and different voices. The experiential elements we are planning will also provide another fabulous reason to get out of the house and back into our unique festival setting.
The Festival of Dangerous Ideas returns 17–18 September 2022. Program announcement and tickets on sale in July. Sign up to festivalofdangerousideas.com for latest updates.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Big Thinker: Matthew Liao
Matthew Liao (1972 – present) is a contemporary philosopher and bioethicist. Having published on a wide range of topics, including moral decision making, artificial intelligence, human rights, and personal identity, Liao is best known for his work on the topic of human engineering.
At New York University, Liao is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Director of the Center for Bioethics, and holds the Arthur Zitrin Chair of Bioethics. He is also the creator of Ethics Etc, a blog dedicated to the discussion of contemporary ethical issues.
A Controversial Solution to Climate Change
As the climate crisis worsens, a growing number of scientists have started considering geo-engineering solutions, which involves large-scale manipulations of the environment to curb the effect of climate change. While many scientists believe that geo-engineering is our best option when it comes to addressing the climate crisis, these solutions do come with significant risks.
Liao, however, believes that there might be a better option: human engineering.
Human engineering involves biomedically modifying or enhancing human beings so they can more effectively mitigate climate change or adapt to it.
For example, reducing the consumption of animal products would have a significant impact on climate change since livestock farming is responsible for approximately 60% of global food production emissions. But many people lack either the motivation or the will power to stop eating meat and dairy products.
According to Liao, human engineering could help. By artificially inducing mild intolerance to animal products, “we could create an aversion to eating eco-unfriendly food.”
This could be achieved through “meat patches” (think nicotine patches but for animal products), worn on the arm whenever a person goes grocery shopping or out to dinner. With these patches, reducing our consumption of meat and dairy products would no longer be a matter of will power, but rather one of science.
Alternatively, Liao believes that human engineering could help us reduce the amount of food and other resources we consume overall. Since larger people typically consume more resources than smaller people, reducing the height and weight of human beings would also reduce their ecological footprint.
“Being small is environmentally friendly.”
According to Liao, this could be achieved several ways for example, using technology typically used to screen embryos for genetic abnormalities to instead screen for height, or using hormone treatment typically used to stunt the growth or excessively tall children to instead stunt the growth of children of average height.
Reception
When Liao presented these ideas at the 2013 Ted Conference in New York, many audience members found the notion of wearing meat patches and making future generations smaller to be amusing. However, not everyone found these ideas humorous.
In response to a journal article Liao co-authored on this topic, philosopher Greg Bognar wrote that the authors were doing themselves and their profession a disservice by not adequately considering the feasibility or real cost of human engineering.
Although making future generations smaller would reduce their ecological footprint, it would take a long time for the benefits of this reduction in average height and weight to accrue. In comparison, the cost of making future generations smaller would be borne now.
As Bognar argues, current generations would need to devote significant resources to this effort. For example, if future generations were going to be 15-20cm shorter than current generations, we would need to begin redesigning infrastructure. Homes, workplaces and vehicles would need to be smaller too.
Liao and his colleagues do, however, recognise that devoting time, money, and brain power to pursuing human engineering means that we will have fewer resources to devote to other solutions.
But they argue that “examining intuitively absurd or apparently drastic ideas can be an important learning experience, and that failing to do so could result in our missing out on opportunities to address important, often urgent issues.”
While current generations may resent having to bear the cost of making future generations more environmentally friendly, perhaps it is a cost that we must bear.
Liao says, “We are the cause of climate change. Perhaps we are also the solution to it.”
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Social philosophy
Social philosophy is concerned with anything and everything about society and the people who live in it.
What’s the difference between a house and a cave, or a garden and a field of wildflowers? There are some things that are built by people, such as houses and gardens, that wouldn’t exist without human intervention. Similarly, there are some things that are natural, such as caves and fields of wildflowers, that would continue to exist as they were without humans. However, there is a grey area in the middle that social philosophers study, including topics like gender, race, ethics, law, politics, and relationships. Social philosophers spend their time parsing what parts of the world are constructed by humans and what parts are natural.
We can see the beginnings of the philosophical debate of social versus natural through Aristotle’s and Plato’s justifications for slavery. Aristotle believed that some people were incapable of being their own masters, and this was a natural difference between a slave and a free person. Plato, on the other hand, believed that anyone who was inferior to the Greeks could be enslaved, a difference that was made possible by the existence of Greek society.
Through the Middle Ages, attention turned to questioning religion and the divine right of monarchs. During this era, it was believed that monarchs were given their authority by God, which was why they had so much more power than the average person. British philosopher John Locke is well known for arguing that every man was created equally, and that everyone had an equal right to life, liberty, and pursuit of property. His conclusion was that these fundamental rights were natural to everyone, which contradicted the social norms that gave almost unlimited power to monarchs. The idea that a monarch naturally had the same fundamental rights as someone who worked the land would have to fundamentally change the structure of society.
During the 19th century, some philosophers began to question social categories and where they came from. Many people at the time held that social classes, or groups of people of the same socioeconomic status, were a result of biological, or natural, differences between people. Karl Marx, known for his 1848 pamphlet The Communist Manifesto, proposed his own theory about social classes. He argued that these socioeconomic differences that formed social differences were a result of the type of work that someone did and therefore social classes were socially, not biologically, constructed.
Today social philosophers are concerned with a variety of questions, including questions about race, gender, social change, and institutions that contribute to inequality. One example of a social philosopher who studies gender and race is Sally Haslanger. She has spent her time asking what are the defining characteristics of gender and race, and where these characteristics come from. In other cases, social philosophy is blended with cognitive psychology and behavioural studies, asking which of our behaviours are influenced by the society we live in and which behaviours are “natural,” or a product of our biology.
Social philosophy and ethics
Many of the questions social philosophers are concerned with are intertwined with ethics. Part of living in a society requires an (often unwritten) ethical code of conduct that ensures everything functions smoothly.
Thomas Hobbes’ social contract theory spells out the connection between a society and ethics. Hobbes believed that instead of ethics being something that existed naturally, a code of ethics and morality would arise when a group of free, self-interested, and rational people lived together in a society. Ethics would arise because people would find that better things could come from working together and trusting each other than would arise from doing everything on their own.
Today, much of how we act is determined by the societies we live in. The kinds of clothes we wear, the media we interact with, and how we talk to each other change depending on the norms of our society. This can complicate ethics: should we change our ethical code when we move to a different society with different norms? For example, one culture may say that it’s morally acceptable to eat meat, while a different culture may not. Should a person have to change the way they act moving from the meat-eating culture to the non-meat-eating culture? Moral relativists would say it is possible for both cultures to be morally right, and that we should act accordingly depending on which culture we are interacting with.
A significant reason that social philosophy is still such a nebulous field is that everyone has different life experiences and interacts with society differently. Additionally, different people feel like they owe different levels of commitment to the people around them. Ultimately, it’s a serious challenge for philosophers to come up with social theories that resonate with everyone the theory is supposed to include.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
It’s time to talk about life and debt
It’s no secret that things are getting more expensive.
Over the last few months Google searches for “the cost of living” have increased by 10 fold, and it’s no surprise. The price of vegetables has increased by almost 30%, some used cars are up over 45%, petrol is at the highest rate in history, and a string of interest rate rises have hit for the first time in more than a decade. Millions of Australians are feeling the financial stress of keeping a roof over their head, keeping the lights on and putting food on the table. So what’s going on?
The answer is… it’s complicated. We have found ourselves in the perfect storm of frequent extreme weather events, the effects of climate change on crop production, pandemic-affected supply chains, and a war in Ukraine. And as a result of all of these factors which are very much out of our control, we are experiencing rocketing inflation and a cup of coffee will now set you back over $5. So how can young people, whose wages have been stagnating for years weather this storm and better understand their finances?
Let’s talk about debt
For as long as we have ascribed value to little disks of metal, we’ve been conditioned to believe that accumulating debt is a bad thing, and that we should aspire to have money squirrelled away for a rainy day. After all, the majority of us are paying off some form of debt whether it be a mortgage, a business loan, or a student debt – so owing money certainly shouldn’t be taboo.
Which is why our latest podcast, Life and Debt says it’s time we stopped demonising debt and started thinking of it as a part of life.
Created by the Young Ambassadors from our Banking and Finance Oath (The BFO) initiative, this four– part podcast series takes a deep dive into debt, what role it has in our lives and how we can make better decisions about it. According to Young Ambassador, Cameron Howlett we need to rethink our relationships with being in the red. “We wanted to encourage people to think, discuss and engage with the topic because if you’re uncomfortable with debt, you’ll never really have a healthy relationship with it.”
Howlett hopes the podcast will encourage a more nuanced discussion about debt, “we all have some good experiences and bad, but what we have found consistently was that we were all a bit nervous about debt.” The series, which features financial advisors, journalists, finfluencers, psychologists and historians hopes to debunk the shame and stigma around debt especially for younger listeners. Cameron continues, “we want to get people from that step of being too terrified of debt or credit to be able to think whether or not it’s right for them”, so how can we be a little more discerning when it comes to different types of debt?
“If you’re uncomfortable with debt, you’ll never really have a healthy relationship with it.”
The good the bad and the ugly debt
During the pandemic, we all did our share of online shopping. Buy now, pay later services made it easy for us to get that instant gratification hit that comes with receiving parcels in the mail, without the ensuing depression that results from looking at one’s negative bank balance. These services posted huge profits during the pandemic, and because they’re so easy to set up and use, people are now using apps like AfterPay and ZipPay to purchase everything from a new outfit for the weekend, to groceries, and childcare. Unlike credit cards and banks, Buy now, pay later companies don’t ask any questions about whether their customers can actually afford to make the repayments, and as a result a lot of young people are racking up thousands of dollars in debt using these financial services.
So what exactly is good debt and bad debt, and how can we differentiate between the two?
According to Iqra Bhatia, a Young Ambassador from the Banking and Finance Oath initiative, “attitudes towards debt are changing, young people need to educate themselves more on debt and be aware of the resources available”. Instead we need to shift our thinking, “Afterpay is not that different from credit cards – it’s essentially the credit card of our generation.”
“Attitudes towards debt are changing, young people need to educate themselves more on debt and be aware of the resources available.”
It’s not all doom and gloom
It’s clear we need to start understanding money from a younger age. While lessons in financial management traditionally consisted of a few pointers offered by parents at the dinner table, we are now starting to see financial literacy programs introduced in the high school curriculum. But more work needs to be done.
Debt is something that, at different points throughout all our lives we will all encounter and take on, whether it be small, like agreeing to buy the next round at the pub, or a little more daunting like taking on a HECS debt at university or taking out a mortgage to buy an apartment.
Debt can be emotional, it can feel like you’re signing away a little piece of your freedom, but it can also be empowering and necessary. And debt is changing, we’re grappling with the buy now, pay later industry now, and what form debt will take over the next few years. Which is why it’s important to stay educated and in touch with our values so we can make decisions for our bank balances and our futures.
Life and Debt is available to listen to on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
This podcast is a project from the Young Ambassadors in The Ethics Centre’s Banking and Finance Oath initiative. Our work is made possible by donations including the generous support of Ecstra Foundation – helping to build the financial wellbeing of Australians.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Meet Joseph, our new Fellow exploring society through pop culture
From The Matrix to Euphoria, writer, philosopher and poet Joseph Earp has profiled some of the greatest philosophers, TV shows, films, music and pop culture moments to date, discussing what they can tell us about ourselves and the world.
Which is why we’re excited to share we’ve recently appointed Joseph as an Ethics Centre Fellow. Currently undertaking his PhD at The University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume, we sat down with Joseph for a brief get-to-know-you chat to discuss ethics, his favourite philosophers, and the role of pop culture in society.
Tell us, what attracted you to becoming a philosopher?
You learn the language of institutional philosophy by reading it, and – as long as your financial and geographical circumstances allow for it – by studying it in an academic setting. But the central questions that drive philosophical work are innate to almost all people, regardless of academic study.
I am a pragmatist, so I don’t believe that philosophers hold insight that stretches beyond the understanding of those who haven’t studied the discipline. As philosophers, we are merely using a certain vocabulary to ask our questions. I grew to love that vocabulary in my late twenties through university study, under the guidance of my honours and PhD supervisor, Anik Waldow and those academics I studied closely with throughout my undergraduate degree. Most notably, these academics include Caroline West, who I believe to be one of our country’s most unique, inspired, and challenging thinkers – even and especially as I disagree with her – and David Macarthur. My study with these people is what drew me to being a philosopher in the strictest sense. But I think we philosophers are, thankfully, just doing what everyone else is doing.
Do you specialise in any key areas?
Generally, I write about popular culture, emotion, and virtue ethics, but my key area of specialisation is the philosophy of sex. I think that we sadly retain, in many cultures, a suspicion and fear of sex – one that infringes on our ability to self-describe and live our most flourishing lives.
I often think of a story about Pablo Picasso. Towards the end of his life, he was so rich and famous that he could draw any object in the world, whether it be a Ferrari or a mansion, and his drawing would be worth more than the object itself. He could sell a sketch of an object, and use the accrued capital to buy that object – which is a way of saying he could create changes by charting what he felt had already changed. It seems to me that’s the potential, and the potential harm, of philosophical thinking. We construct the world by calling it what we think it is, and for a long time, our views on sexuality have created a world that contains a lot of fear and sexual repression, both internally and externally maintained.
Your honours thesis focuses on emotional contagion. What place does emotion have when it comes to ethics?
Personally, I think it’s emotion all the way down when it comes to ethics, as with most things. David Hume is the philosopher that much of my work has operated in the framework of, and I agree with Hume that when we talk about “rationality” – a word that is sometimes conceived as being opposed to emotion – we are really just talking about a certain kind of emotional work.
What have you been working on this year?
One of the most profound experiences of both my intellectual and personal life has been connecting with a community of thinkers whom I met largely through my university work – all of them world-class philosophers, some of them write for, and work with, the Ethics Centre; and some of them no longer consider themselves strictly philosophers at all. In particular, Georgia Fagan, Danielle Turnbull, Finola Laughren, Eleanor Gordon-Smith, Grace Sharkey, Oscar Sannen, Mitch Flitcroft, Alexi Barnstone, Elle Lewis, Mitchell Stirzaker, Henry Barlow, Zach Wilkinson, Finn Bryson, and Henry Hulme.
All of these people have work that you can, and should, find online through an easy Google search, and work which I believe in every case benefits the world, and drives real change. What else is philosophy for? I am continually astonished by the intellect and bravery of these collaborators and friends. I consider myself useless without them. When I think about the real work that I have done this year, it is not anything I have written, but conversations with these people, and the ways I have learnt from them.
Do you have a favourite philosopher or writer?
Hume is the philosopher whose writing I know best, but I believe the thinker you apply the greatest amount of study to is usually the one who you have the strangest, most frequently frustrated relationship with. So my favourite – as in, the philosopher who serves as the background to almost all of what I think and do, and who I have the most uncomplicated connection to – is the pragmatist Richard Rorty. It’s Rorty who cuts through the chaff by asking, again and again, one of the simplest questions: what is the real-world application of our work? And it’s Rorty who tells us that we should remember we can make ourselves whoever we want to be.
Your writing covers a lot of tv series, films and music. Why is pop culture important?
Again – it’s Rorty. Rorty believed that social change isn’t led by philosophers, particularly those analytic philosophers who consider their work to be sorting through “falsehoods” and “truths”. For Rorty, philosophers inspire prophets and poets, and prophets and poets are the ones who do the work of change. That is, for me, the importance of pop culture. That form of art is guided by philosophical questions, and led by prophets and poets, and represents a way of understanding a culture and a vocabulary. It’s how lives are changed, and possibilities for self-description are opened up
What are you reading, watching or listening to at the moment?
The poetry collection The Cipher, by Molly Brodak, a writer who means a great deal to me; the pornographic film Corruption by perennial sadsack and visionary Roger Watkins, which I try to return to every month or so; and the song ‘Lark’ by Angel Olsen, often enough that I should probably take a break.
Let’s finish up close to home. What does ethics mean to you?
We all play the game of ethics, and we all want to play it better, and we’ll never play it well. That, in fact, is the joy – the trying, and the starting again.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Trust
Trust forms the foundation for relationships, cooperation, social interaction and the development of societies, but it is equally important as it is dangerous.
From hunter-gatherers to globalised societies, trust is the essential lubricant of social functioning at any scale.
Imagine something as simple as driving to get groceries. You leave your house, get in your car and drive to the shops. In doing so, you’re relying on several overlapping layers of trust that are engrained in our society. You trust that:
- your neighbours won’t break into your house while you’re gone
- the police will deal with them appropriately if they do
- the insurance company will deal with you fairly if they do
- the manufacturer of your car was responsible and competent
- the other drivers on the road will all obey the traffic laws
- your money has retained its value and that the shopkeeper will take it
and so on. Almost every aspect of our lives depends on these underlying relationships of trust with the people around us, and when they are betrayed – especially repeatedly – they can crumble and leave behind instability.
When we trust others, we’re depending on them to fulfil expectations that aren’t guaranteed to be met and that leaves us vulnerable or at risk.
Vulnerability is an important aspect of trust; it creates a tricky tension between our need to rely on others and our need to protect ourselves from risk and harm. To avoid vulnerability and guard against betrayal, we might decide not to trust anyone, but that leads to a miserable life: a life devoid of friendship or intimacy, and ultimately of convenience too, as we need to trust strangers on an almost daily basis, from taxi drivers to teachers to police.
So, we must trust others and learn how and when to be vulnerable to live a fulfilling life.
We trust people by giving them the space and freedom to do what they have been trusted to do, without necessary observation or oversight, with the expectation that they’re:
- Competent enough to do what they have been trusted to do and
- Willing to do it.
“Trust is an ability to rely on somebody to do what they have said they will do, even when no one is watching them” – Simon Longstaff AO
Trust and trustworthiness
An important distinction is the difference between trust and trustworthiness. Trust is an attitude that we have towards others (or sometimes ourselves!) that indicates our hope or expectation that the object of our trust is trustworthy.
Trustworthiness is a property or characteristic of others and in ideal situations has a reciprocal relationship with trust. That is, ideally, trust is an attitude towards trustworthy people, and trustworthy people will be trusted.
Of course, we have all experienced that we don’t live in an ideal world. Often untrustworthy people are perceived to be trustworthy because of lies, clever marketing or overwhelming charisma. Equally, trustworthy people can often be misrepresented to appear untrustworthy.
Interpersonal trust and institutional trust
There are two kinds of trust, the most common and intuitive kind being interpersonal trust – that is, trust between individuals. We might trust our friends with secrets or trust our family with babysitting or trust other drivers with our lives on the road.
A trickier kind of trust is that of institutions and government. They’re not as directly accessible as individual people
Nevertheless, we can and do trust institutions and governments to do as they say they will do, or what they are supposed to do: act in the interests of their people. This is a hallmark of society. But when this trust is eroded, we are left with an eroded society.
The ethics of trust
One of the first practical problems is knowing whom to trust. It’s easy to rely on perceived authority figures in our lives, and often we will simply need to trust that the people who are close to us are looking out for us, but in general we should be on the lookout for consistent moral behaviour.
Ultimately, there is no way to know whom to trust with certainty, but there are many indicators we can use to decide. Are they an honest person? Have they been reliable in the past? Are they self-centred or do they concern themselves with the wellbeing of others? Answering questions like these can help to minimise the risk you take on if you choose to trust someone.
- How do we rebuild trust?
- How should we act if we don’t trust someone?
- If someone breaks our trust, should we distrust them?
- When or how often should we re-examine our trust of someone?
- When is trust a good thing? When is it bad?
- What’s so important about vulnerability?
Answering these questions involves a complex mix of knowing how trust works, knowing the habits, motives and values of others, and knowing ourselves.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Big Thinker: Sally Haslanger
Sally Haslanger (1955-present) is one of the most influential feminist philosophers in contemporary philosophy. She is one of the pioneers of social philosophy and works to make the field of philosophy more inclusive.
She has some interesting life experiences, to say the least. Haslanger was born in 1955 in Connecticut, but moved to Los Angeles in 1963, where Jim Crow laws legalising racial segregation were still in effect. Moving from an unsegregated to a segregated part of the US as a child had an impact on her philosophical interests.
Her mother and grandmother were Christian Scientists, a small sect of Christianity that doesn’t believe in modern medicine, and she grew up attending their church. Later, her family moved to Texas where she attended an Episcopal boarding school, and started college before she had finished high school.
In a Q&A with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT), Haslanger says that her interest in feminist philosophy was catalysed when she was sexually assaulted as an undergraduate student at Reed University. Afterwards, she became involved in feminist activism, especially during her time as a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley. Later in life, she and her husband adopted and raised two African-American children. Haslanger says that these life experiences have played an important role in directing her philosophical interests.
What is race? What is gender?
While these seem like straightforward questions, Haslanger has spent a large part of her academic career trying to answer them. Race and gender are categories that allow us to group people in particular ways, predominantly based on physical characteristics. However, she doesn’t believe that the categories of race and gender refer to just physical characteristics, they also refer to social positions. Social positions refer to where someone fits into their society: – they could be in a privileged position or a more marginalised one.
“On my view,” she said, “both race and gender are social positions that individuals occupy by virtue of their body being interpreted a certain way.”
In 2000, Haslanger published what is now one of her most well-known and controversial papers: Gender and Race: (What) are they? (What) do we want them to be? In her paper, one of the things she tried to do is find a characteristic that all women have or experience. The characteristic she finds and defends in her paper is systematic subordination. On Haslanger’s view, to be a woman is to occupy a lower position in society because of the way that her body is interpreted by others.
Her definition sparked controversy amongst transgender rights activists. Some people identify as women, but are not necessarily perceived by society as women. Haslanger’s definition of a woman excludes these people, – namely, trans women who have not yet transitioned.
Since the paper was published, Haslanger has taken on a lot of the criticism and worked to make her definition more inclusive. However, she still holds that gender and race refer to more than physical characteristics; they also refer to positions within society.
Advocacy and inclusivity
Haslanger feels strongly about promoting feminist causes outside of the field of philosophy. During the 2016 US presidential election, she wrote about some of the ways Hillary Clinton’s campaign was being undermined by sexism.
“As long as ‘being presidential’ and ‘looking presidential’ are about being and looking masculine, we will be unable to address what is ripping [the US] apart as a country.”
Within the field of philosophy, she is a strong advocate for inclusivity and making the field a more inviting space for women and people of colour. Now, as a philosophy professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Haslanger predominantly teaches courses in social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, philosophy of race, and history of philosophy.
To boost participation from traditionally underrepresented groups in philosophy, Haslanger worked to create a summer program alongside a few other philosophers in 2014. Philosophy in an Inclusive Key Summer Institute (PIKSI) creates a space for underrepresented undergraduate students to work in more formal areas of philosophy (such as logic and metaphysics) or in areas that may be seen as less important and rigorous (such as the philosophy of gender and race).
Haslanger is also the founder of the Women in Philosophy Task Force (WPHTF), which is a group of women who work to coordinate initiatives and intensify the efforts to advance women in philosophy.
“Philosophers spend a lot of time worrying about the mind: what is it? How does the mind relate to the body? They can hardly get a handle on the mind, so the social is completely out of reach. I’m a little impatient. I’m not going to wait until the mind is figured out to figure out the social world.” – MIT Q&A
Sally Haslanger has had a considerable impact on inclusivity in philosophy. Her work has encouraged philosophers and activists to investigate and question what we thought we could take to be truths about race and gender. Her work today continues to facilitate important discussions on how society functions and what we might be able to do to make it more equitable.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Big Thinker: Tyson Yunkaporta
Tyson Yunkaporta is a researcher, arts critic, poet, and traditional wood carver. He works as a senior lecturer in Indigenous Knowledges and is the founder of the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab at Deakin University.
A scholar of free-ranging ideas
Yunkaporta is not your typical academic. In a recent interview, he said:
“I try to avoid naming anything. And I try to avoid making too much sense, and I try to say things a bit differently every time and to mix it up. And I’ll make points that you can’t put together. I do that quite deliberately because I don’t want the things I’m thinking or working on to become an ideology or a brand, or something that people can use as a name… you’ve got to avoid that packaging and repackaging of ideas and let these things be free-range.”
Yunkaporta tries to keep his writing and discussions “free-range” because he doesn’t want to give complex ideas or concepts an “artificial simplicity.”
According to Yunkaporta, when we simplify complex ideas, they can become easily distorted or manipulated and the original intention behind them can become lost. But more problematically, when we simplify complex ideas, we fail to see how they connect to the larger patterns of creation at work.
“There is a pattern to the universe and everything in it.”
Nothing is really created or destroyed, it merely moves and changes. When we start to pay attention to the way that things move and change, and take note of the patterns that they make, we gain a better understanding of the world around us.
This is important, Yunkaporta states, because “future survival of all life on this planet will be dependent on humans being able to perceive and be the custodians of the patterns of creation again.”
Indigenous thinking can save the world
Yunkaporta’s recent book Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World, is all about identifying and learning from the patterns of creation.
Sand Talk has sometimes been described as an exercise in “reverse-anthropology”, because rather than looking at Indigenous knowledge systems and practices from a Western perspective, Yunkaporta examines Western knowledge systems and practices from an Indigenous perspective.
He is careful about what knowledge he shares in the process, explaining that symbolic knowledge is often restricted (for example, by age or birth order) or is only appropriate for a specific places or groups (for example, members of particular clans).
However, he shares enough to help his readers start to recognise patterns in the world around them and to “come into Aboriginal ways of thinking and knowing, as a framework for the understandings needed in the co-creation of sustainable systems.”
Although Yunkaporta believes that sustainable systems cannot be manufactured by individuals (this is something that we must undertake collectively), he does think that each of us plays an important role as an agent of sustainability.
Agents of sustainability have four main protocols or guidelines, according to Yunkaporta: diversify, connect, interact, and adapt.
These guidelines tell us that we should diversify our interactions, so that we engage with people and systems that are dissimilar to ourselves and what we’re used to.
We should also aim to expand the networks of people that we currently engage with, so that we connect with as many new people and engage with as many new systems as we can.
Through these connections, we should also share knowledge, energy, and resources. But most importantly, we should allow ourselves to be transformed by the knowledge, energy and resources that are shared with us.
Ironically, Yunkaporta believes that frameworks are nothing more than “window dressing.” Yet, as he himself highlights, the four main protocols for sustainability agents are a kind of framework for sustainability.
This contradiction is, however, just part of Yunkaporta’s style. He describes his work as a “free-range ramble that should never be taken at face value.”
He writes to provoke thought and reflection in his audience, not to give them all the answers. After all, he muses, “perhaps the worst possible outcome of this work would be civilisation embracing these ideas.”
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Teleology
Often, when we try to understand something, we ask questions like “What is it for?”. Knowing something’s purpose or end-goal is commonly seen as integral to comprehending or constructing it. This is the practice or viewpoint of teleology.
Teleology comes from two Greek words: telos, meaning “end, purpose or goal”, and logos, meaning “explanation or reason”.
From this, we get teleology: an explanation of something that refers to its end, purpose or goal.
For example, take a kitchen knife. We might ask why a knife takes the form and features that it does. If we referred to the past – to the process of its making, for example – that would be a causal (etiological) explanation. But a teleological explanation would be something that refers to its end, like: “Its purpose is to cut”. Someone might then ask: “But what makes a good knife?”, and the answer would be: “A good knife is a knife that cuts well.” It’s this guiding principle – knowing and focusing on the purpose – that allows knife-makers to make confident decisions in the smithing process and know that their knife is good, even if it’s never used.
What once was an acorn…
In Western philosophy, teleology originated in the writings and ideas of Plato and then Aristotle. For the Ancient Greeks, telos was a bit more grounded in the inherent nature of things compared to the man-made example of a knife.
For example, a seed’s telos is to grow into an adult plant. An acorn’s telos is to grow into an oak tree. A chair’s telos is to be sat on. For Aristotle, a telos didn’t necessarily need to involve any deliberation, intention or intelligence.
However, this is where teleological explanations have caused issue.
Teleological explanations are sometimes used in evolutionary biology as a kind of shorthand, much to the dismay of many scientists. This is because the teleological phrasing of biological traits can falsely present the facts as supporting some kind of intelligent design.
For example, take the long neck of giraffes. A shorthand teleological explanation of this trait might be that “evolution gave giraffes long necks for the purpose of reaching less competitive food sources”. However, this explanation wrongly implies some kind of forward-looking purpose for evolved traits, or that there is some kind of intention baked into evolution.
Instead, evolutionary biology suggests that giraffes with short necks were less likely to survive, leaving the longer-necked giraffes to breed and pass on their long-neck genes, eventually increasing the average length of their necks.
Notice how the accurate explanation doesn’t refer to any purpose or goal. This kind of description is needed when talking about things like nature or people (at least, if you don’t believe in gods), though teleological explanations can still be useful elsewhere.
Ethics and decision-making
Teleology is more helpful and impactful in ethics, or decision-making in general.
Aristotle was a big proponent of human teleology, seen in the concept of eudaimonia (flourishing). He believed that human flourishing was the goal or purpose of each person, and that we could all strive towards this “life well-lived” by living in moderation, according to various virtues.
Teleology is also often compared or confused with consequentialism, but they are not the same. If you were to take a business that specialises in home security, for example, a consequentialist would tell you to look at the consequences of your service to see if it is effective and good. Sometimes, though, it will be hard to tell if the outcome (e.g., fewer break-ins or attempted break-ins) can be attributed to your business and not other factors, like changes in laws, policing, homelessness, etc., or you might not yet have any outcomes to analyse.
Instead, teleological approaches to business decision-making would have you focus on the purpose of your service i.e., to prevent home intrusion and ensure security. With that in mind, you could construct your services to meet these goals in a variety of ways, keeping this purpose in mind when making hiring decisions, planning redundancies, etc., and be confident that your service would fulfil its purpose well (even if it is never needed!).
But how do we decide what a good purpose is?
Simply using a teleological lens doesn’t make us ethical. If we’re trying to be ethical, we want to make sure that our purpose itself is good. One option to do this is to find a purpose that is intrinsically good – things like justice, security, health and happiness, rather than things that are a means to an end, like profit or personal gain.
This viewpoint needn’t only apply to business. In trying to be better, more ethical people, we can employ these same teleological views and principles to inform our own decisions and actions. Rather than thinking about the consequences of our actions, we can instead think about what purpose we’re trying to achieve, and then form our decisions based on whether they align with that purpose.
Ethics in your inbox.
Get the latest inspiration, intelligence, events & more.
By signing up you agree to our privacy policy
You might be interested in…
