AI can slowly shift an organisation’s core principles. Here's how to spot ‘value drift’ early
The steady embrace of artificial intelligence (AI) in the public and private sectors in Australia and New Zealand has come with broad guidance about using the new technology safely and transparently, with good governance and human oversight.
So far, so sensible. Aligning AI use with existing organisational values makes perfect sense.
But here’s the catch. Most references to “responsible AI” assume values are like a set of house rules you can write down once, translate into checklists and enforce forever.
But generative AI (GenAI) does not simply follow the rules of the house. It changes the house. GenAI’s distinctive power is not that it automates calculations, but that it automates plausible language.
It writes the summary, the rationale, the email, the policy draft and the performance feedback. In other words, it produces the texts organisations use to explain themselves.
When a system can generate confident, professional-sounding reasons instantly, it can quietly change what counts as a “good reason” to do something.
This is where “value drift” begins – a gradual shift in what feels normal, reasonable or acceptable as people adapt their work to what the technology makes easy and convincing.
Invisible ethical shifts
In the workplace, for example, a manager might use GenAI to draft performance feedback to avoid a hard conversation. The tone is smoother, but the judgement is harder to locate, as is the accountability. Or a policy team uses GenAI to produce a balanced justification for a contested decision. The prose is polished, but the real trade-offs are less visible. For small businesses, the appeal of GenAI lies in speed and efficiency. A sole trader can use it to respond to customers, write marketing copy or draft policies in seconds.
But over time, responsiveness may come to mean instant, AI-generated replies rather than careful, human judgement. The meaning of good service quietly shifts.
None of this requires an ethical breach. The drift happens precisely because the new practice feels helpful.
The biggest ethical effects of GenAI don’t often show up as a single shocking scandal. They are slower and quieter. A thousand small decisions get made a little differently.
Explanations get a little smoother. Accountability becomes a little harder to point to. And before long, we are living with a new normal we did not consciously choose.
If responsible AI use is about more than good intentions and tidy documentation, we need to stop treating values as fixed targets. We need to pay attention to how values shift once AI becomes part of everyday work.
Hidden assumptions
Much of today’s responsible-AI guidance follows a straightforward model: identify the values you care about, embed them in GenAI systems and processes, then check compliance.
This is necessary but also incomplete. Values are not “fixed” once written down in strategy documents or policy templates. They are lived out in practice.
They show up in how people talk, what they notice, what they prioritise and how they justify trade-offs. When technologies change those routines, values get reshaped.
An emerging line of research on technology and ethics shows that values are not simply applied to technologies from the outside. They are shaped from within everyday use, as people adapt their practices to what technologies make easy, visible or persuasive.
In other words, values and technologies shape each other over time, each influencing how the other develops and is understood.
We have seen this before. Social media did not just test our existing ideas about privacy. It gradually changed them. What once felt intrusive or inappropriate now feels normal to many younger users.
The value of privacy did not disappear, but its meaning shifted as everyday practices changed. Generative AI is likely to have similar effects on values such as fairness, accountability and care.
In our research on leadership development, we are exploring how we teach emerging leaders to recognise and reflect on these shifts.
The challenge is not only whether leaders apply the right values to AI, but whether they are equipped to notice how working with these systems may gradually reshape what those values mean in practice.
Constant vigilance
The emphasis in New Zealand and Australia on responsible AI guidance is sensible and pragmatic. It covers governance, privacy, transparency, skills and accountability.
But it still tends to assume that once the right principles and processes are in place, responsibility has been secured.
If values move as AI reshapes practice, though, responsible AI needs a practical upgrade. Principles still matter, but they should be paired with routines that keep ethical judgement visible over time.
Organisations should periodically review AI-mediated decisions in high-stakes areas such as hiring, performance management or customer communication.
They should pay attention not just to technical risks, but to how the meaning of fairness, accountability or care may be changing in practice. And they should make it clear who owns the reasoning behind AI-shaped decisions.
Responsible AI is not about freezing values in place. It is about staying responsible as values shift.
This article was originally published in The Conversation.
BY Guy Bate
Guy is Thematic Lead for Artificial Intelligence, Director of the Master of Business Development (MBusDev) programme, and Professional Teaching Fellow in Strategy and Technology Commercialisation at the University of Auckland Business School.
BY Rhiannon Lloyd
Dr Rhiannon Lloyd is a Senior Lecturer in Leadership in the Management and International Business department at the University of Auckland Business School, and the Director of the Kupe Leadership Scholarship at the University of Auckland. She is also a member of the Aotearoa Centre for Leadership and Governance, UABS. Her research takes a critical look at the theory and practice of responsible and environmental leadership.
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The personal vs the political: Resistance in One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, widely considered to be the frontrunner in the Oscars race for Best Picture, shouldn’t really work.
It’s set in the future (kind of), and its characters rail against a government that the film doesn’t really try to draw or explain. Its tone freewheels about the place from black comedy to action film. Some of the performances, like Teyana Taylor’s turn as a revolutionary and reluctant mother, are tender and human; others, like Sean Penn’s vicious army officer, border on caricature.
But despite such a vast mish mash of ideas and styles, at its core the film explores the dangers of a perceived disconnect between the personal and the political – more broadly, how we choose to respond to disenfranchisement through our personal morality and interpersonal relationships.
Macro and micro
Films about politics tend to fall into one of two camps. They either pick the broadest possible canvas, looking at societal issues from a top-down view – take Oliver Stone’s JFK, or more recently, Adam McKay’s Vice. Or, they go micro, and fixate on the lives of individuals caught up in times of political unrest – Costa-Gavras’ Missing, or the spate of “serious men looking through files” films, with All The President’s Men being the clearest example. The focus of the former type of film is history itself; the focus of the second type of film is the people who are shaped by history.
Anderson’s film, however, sidesteps this binary entirely, by casting the personal as inherently political. In his film, politics isn’t something that happens outside the characters’ houses, out in the “real world”. Instead, every single personal relationship is fraught with societal implications, and its characters are constantly juggling what is good “for the cause”, and what is good for their own lives.
Take the strained relationship between Leonardo DiCaprio’s frazzled revolutionary, Bob, and his daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti). Bob, once a firm believer in violent insurrection, has become addled by alcohol and pot, adrift in a world that he doesn’t understand. Willa, by contrast, is fully versed in that world; her group of friends freely explore their gender, much to Bob’s confused chagrin. Father and daughter squabble constantly, each subtly casting the other as ill-equipped to deal with the world and its horrors. Bob thinks that Willa is inherently vulnerable and naive; Willa thinks that Bob is a dusty relic of the past.
Such personal clashes are stand-ins for a much broader clash concerning different approaches to revolution. Their ideologies aren’t snipped off from their day-to-day lives. Politics is something that they both embody, so it influences their every interaction; their every word. As a result, their beliefs cause constant friction in their home – and as their views stagnate, so too does their relationship.
Violence versus humanism
It’s not just Willa and Bob who struggle in this way, either. One of the film’s key plot strands is a relationship of sorts, conducted between Perfidia Beverly Hills (Taylor) and Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Penn). Ideologically, the two are as opposed as could be imagined; she’s a revolutionary, he’s a racist fascist. But interpersonally, they are constantly drawn together, an attraction that sits at cross-purposes to their views.
They’re not entirely different, however. Lockjaw has sacrificed any closeness with his fellow human beings – Perfidia included – in the pursuit of a sad, violent fascist wet-dream. His political ideology has led to a complete disconnection from those around him, sending him on a hateful rampage that culminates in him violently threatening his own daughter. And in Perfidia’s case, a belief that the political must come above and beyond the personal leads her to abandon her own family, and sell out her friends.
One Battle After Another makes it clear that Lockjaw’s warped understanding of the world is far more harmful than Perfidia’s – it doesn’t completely equate the two. But nonetheless, Anderson does consistently make a light mockery of those who abandon those closest to them in favour of “the cause”, whatever that might be.
There’s no victory in becoming a “perfect revolutionary” who doesn’t know how to interact with friends, parents, or lovers.
Moreover, he doesn’t seem to believe such a thing is even possible. When we meet Bob, for instance, his politics are good – he has not stopped stoking the fires of resistance and revolution – but his home life is a mess. As a result, he’s a figure of sad comedy; constantly befuddled, clad in his dressing gown, unable to meaningfully engage with a world that is filled with other human beings, not just revolutionary cries.
And in this way, we understand “politics” as just a way of describing the organisation of human lives – and so any political ideology that forgets about the value of a single human connection is inherently flawed. One Battle After Another advocates for a type of revolution that tackles the personal and the political, by acknowledging that they are one and the same thing.
Freedom is found at the film’s conclusion, not just because Willa is now a fully-fledged revolutionary, using a pirate radio to find new battles to fight. It’s found because she and Bob have now come to a place of true peace and understanding with one another. By contrast, Perfidia and Lockjaw fail to find such healing – Perfidia disappears from the film entirely, and Lockjaw ends up gassed to death by the very individuals that he considered his compatriots. Their ends are lonely, in a very literal sense.
In this way, Anderson reminds us that the macro is made up of the micro. As the old saying by activist Mariame Kaba goes, hope is a discipline that requires practice in every interaction, and in every sphere, whether we’re dealing with the broader world, or those closest to us. What changes tyranny? Not just the big battles. But the little ones too: one after another.
BY Joseph Earp
Joseph Earp is a poet, journalist and philosophy student. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume.
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Why I had a vasectomy at 30
At the end of a recent family visit, while trying to wrangle my crying niece and nephew out the door, my cousin’s husband joked, “Daniel’s gonna go home and get the snip after this!” All I could do was laugh and say, “Actually, I am.”
I’ve known for as long as I can remember that I don’t want to have children. Obviously, as a teenager, this kind of sentiment is barely acknowledged, let alone taken seriously. On the rare occasions that it came up, I was told over and over again that I’d feel differently when I was older, that I didn’t understand the magical feeling that ostensibly had most adults in a chokehold. I simply couldn’t understand the gravity of making such a claim, but I’d surely come round to it when I grew up.
However, those years came and went, and my feelings and the resulting comments remained. Even now, at 30, people still seem to think that if I just grow up a little bit more, I might feel different.
And they’re right – I might have a life-altering experience that changes my perspective at some point. I might also decide tomorrow that I should dress like a clown for the rest of my life. I might even get out of bed next week and walk in front of a car, rendering all my previous choices meaningless.
My point here is that I’m not in the habit of basing life choices on increasingly improbable outcomes that have little to no bearing on my previous experiences or motivations.
That is why I decided to have a vasectomy.
Surgical intervention
A vasectomy is a minor surgical procedure where the tubes that carry sperm are cut, preventing sperm from reaching the semen. It’s currently the only available long-term male contraceptive – the only other being short-term, in the form of condoms.
The decision to undergo surgery hasn’t been a light one. I’ve been contemplating a vasectomy for the better half of a decade, but to me it seems entirely reasonable. At some point, a more permanent and effective kind of contraception was always going to be the logical and preferred next step.
Women consistently take on the risk, expense and discomfort in the name of contraception. Comparatively, men rarely need to consider it, and equivalent male contraceptives have been “just a few years away” for decades – constantly shut down over side effects that pale in comparison to those of female contraception. I can advocate for male contraception research as much as I like, but that isn’t going to change the options I have in the next 10 years.
So, for now, we’re left with vasectomies, which are less expensive (around $500 out-of-pocket), permanent, more effective (99.95%), and have no common side effects. So, if I can relieve even just one of my future romantic and sexual partners of the burden of unwanted pregnancy or abortion, while also alleviating some of my own psychological stress about those things, why would I not?
The answer is, of course, “because you might change your mind!”
The social paternalism of parenthood
The worry that I’m unsure about my decision, or that I’m sure now but could change my mind in a few more years, seems kind on the surface. I do think, for example, that my mum is genuinely concerned about my wellbeing and that her anxiety is warranted (to a degree) as someone who has cared for me my whole life.
However, in many cases (sorry, mum, this includes you), I think this concern belies paternalism and a double standard between those with and without children.
It’s been common over the last few years, especially by well-meaning middle-aged people, for me to be met with a look of horror, disappointment, confusion or disbelief at the mention of my intentions.
Even after multiple conversations over long periods of time, many people seem unable to accept that it’s possible for a vasectomy to be a rational decision for anyone other than a 50-year-old with three kids.
This response seems mostly due to social conditioning. Children, pregnancy and parenting are, in general, viewed as positive, life-affirming, and mostly inevitable. To stray from this norm is to invite interrogation, disdain, pity, and sometimes, I suspect, envy. So, while parenthood remains a mostly unquestioned certainty, the childfree choice is a spectacle.
Let me demonstrate with a scenario: A friend has just confided in you and a few others that they’re aiming to have a child in the next year or two. There are some gasps and some squeals, some smiles and excited nods, and then someone says, “Woah. Are you sure? What if you regret it? Kids are a lot of work… They’ll flip your life upside down – you won’t know sleep for the next decade. My friend had a kid and she regretted it. Why don’t you just get a dog?”
This would undoubtedly cause a lot of discomfort for everyone present. You would probably, and rightly, be pulled up for being so blunt and rude. But that courtesy is often completely overlooked when you are childfree – variations of each of these questions are a common response to anyone deciding to remain without children, especially when more permanent things like vasectomy are mentioned.
But there are plenty of valid reasons a person may choose against bringing a child into the world – and the very simple justification of ‘I don’t want to’ should be enough. Though for me, there was more to it.
A definitive list of why I don’t want kids
1. I just don’t!
I am, first and foremost, a consequentialist. I care about doing things within my psychological and physical ability to reduce suffering. Pretty much all my thinking stems from this general framework.
The first of these is that I simply don’t want to change my life in the ways it needs to change to have children. Parenting is difficult. I’ve known this for a long time, and having friends and family with children has only cemented this knowledge. I have no desire to revolve my life around another person and their needs, deal with years of excruciatingly little sleep, or sacrifice my admittedly few resources, motivations and plans.
I am a firm believer that if you aren’t aching to have a child, you probably shouldn’t. You might be overcome with a love that completely overpowers everything if you do. But you might not! And to me, gambling with ambivalence or apathy when it concerns the life of another being is not ethical. You need much more than that to raise someone in a loving, supportive home.
The caveat to this is that, of course, some parents do provide loving homes while regretting their decision. This still seems to me to be a net negative outcome, as the child would not have suffered for never having been born, while the parent/s have suffered potentially decades of otherwise avoidable harm.
And I truly do mean harm. Even the most loving, kind, supportive, enthusiastic parents I know have struggled through pregnancy and early childhood. And I respect them for it, but it’s not for me.
2. Vasectomies are reversible – children are not
When it comes to regretting decisions, things that affect others will always be worse.
I don’t deny that I might change my mind about the vasectomy in 5 years – that is technically a possibility. But even at that point, I will still have options. Vasectomies have a very high reversal success rate, and in the scenario where the procedure doesn’t work, I can try IVF instead. While both these procedures are expensive, I would argue that if I cannot afford them, then I also cannot comfortably afford to raise a child.
The statistics also don’t bear out the disproportionate amount of concern about vasectomy regret. Even in studies that isolate men without children, less than 7% experienced regret five years post-surgery, with 3-6% opting to reverse the procedure. The rates are higher for under-30s, but so are the safeguards (mandatory evaluations prior to surgery, with most clinics refusing people under 25).
Comparatively, parents have consistently similar or higher rates of regret. In the UK, approximately 8% of parents regret having children – this increases to 13% if you isolate for 25–34-year-old parents. In the US, about 7% of parents said they’d have none if they could do it all over again. A Polish study showed up to 13% regret, and in Germany, a large 2016 survey showed as high as 20%. Yet having a child in your late 20s is still a highly encouraged, celebrated and common practice.
I see this as a much more serious concern. As the Polish study put it:
“Among the difficulties that can be experienced by a person who has decided to have a child, one of the most serious is to arrive at the conclusion that it was a bad decision because one cannot withdraw from parenthood at one’s own request, and because regretting parenthood can lead to mental problems and negative attitudes towards children.”
If you have a child, and come to regret your choice, there is little that can be done to change your situation. You cannot wish away a human being, and the decision will impact you for your entire life. Even in cases where children are put into the foster system or adopted by extended family, the fallout is still painful for everyone involved.
On the other hand, sterilised people have options available if they change their mind.
3. I would rather foster existing children
One of the options that sterilised people have is to foster children who require out-of-home care. This is one of the major principled stances I have that informed my decision to get a permanent contraception solution. Especially now, as the number of available out-of-home care facilities are decreasing significantly. My logic is as follows:
- There are many, many children in Australia who cannot live with their birth parents for various reasons and need care into adulthood.
- It is prima facie more ethical to provide care for someone currently suffering than to create a new person to provide care for.
- Especially for white, upper-middle class people, having biological children is mostly a selfish choice, as this demographic has the least social and financial barriers to fostering children.
- If I were to eventually form the desire to support and raise another person, I feel compelled to make the most difference I can.
- Having biological children would preclude me improving the lives of children who I could otherwise foster.
Therefore, I am ethically motivated to foster children instead of having biological children. There are plenty of reasons why fostering is inaccessible or improbable for lots of prospective parents. But if you reasonably can, then I think you should.
3. (b) I also don’t find the common arguments to have children morally compelling
To be clear, having a selfish motivation doesn’t inherently make someone a bad person. This is not necessarily a value judgement – but selfish motivations cannot be their only or main motivations, and yet they seem to be the first things people reach for when questioning vasectomy, or indeed anyone’s choice not to have children.
“Who will look after you when you’re old?”
“How else will you find purpose in life?”
“But they’ll make you so happy!”
“Don’t you want a little mini-me?”.
All of these reasons put an inordinate amount of pressure on children to fulfil something in their parents’ lives that they never signed up for and may not be in their best interests. If you have a child, they should not ever feel like they owe you something simply for existing. The main priority, the foundation of all of these wishes, should simply be to provide them with emotional and financial resources to live happily and healthily. If those are not underlying priorities, then we have an ethical problem.
4. It’s tough out there
Living involves suffering – especially in the current political and future literal climate. One of my guiding principles in life is to reduce suffering. Therefore, if I do ever want to raise a child, I’d try to help someone who is already suffering, rather than bring someone new into the world.
This could mean fostering, but it could also look like community. One huge consequence of not raising children is having the time and resources to be present with and support friends and family who do have children. This can be an enriching experience for everyone involved, meaning more freedom for parents, deeper friendships, and broader socialisation and bonding for kids.
Hopefully by this point it’s clear that I’m not a complete hater. Children are a headache – they can be loud, annoying, dirty and stupid; they can ruin a flight or a friendship; put strain on a marriage or make you rethink your life at 2am. But I also think they deserve the best. They deserve every ounce of support, love, friendship and encouragement that their parents and guardians are capable of giving them.
This article was originally published by Cheek Media Co.
BY Daniel Finlay
Daniel is a philosopher, writer and editor. He works at The Ethics Centre as Youth Engagement Coordinator, supporting and developing the futures of young Australians through exposure to ethics.
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Big Thinker: Marcus Aurelius
If you became a Roman Emperor, would you have maintained your humility? That’s one of the things Marcus Aurelius (121-180 CE), the “Stoic philosopher king”, was known for.
Adopted by his uncle, the Emperor of Rome, when he was a young man, Marcus spent his adult life learning the business of government, including serving as consul (chief magistrate) for three separate years.
Prior to becoming Emperor, Marcus also began forming an interest in philosophy. In particular, the writings of the former slave Epictetus (55 BCE–135 CE), a renowned thinker of Stoic moral philosophy. This would turn out to be the influence of one of Marcus’ greatest legacies, the Meditations.
Meditations and Stoicism
The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is a series of twelve books containing personal notes and ideas for self-guidance and self-improvement. Scholars believe it’s unlikely that it was ever written to be seen, but rather that the books are akin to a journal, written in private for his own moral improvement, to reinforce in himself the Stoic doctrines that he aimed to live and rule by.
Marcus wrote these meditations during the second decade of his reign and last decade of his life, during which he was campaigning to take back and expand parts of his empire after enduring years of plague and invasion.
He saw the philosophy of Stoicism as the principal guidance for his life and writing, though quotes from many other philosophies can be found in his books.
Stoicism is an ancient philosophy whose ethics propose a focus on reason and happiness (flourishing). It says, like many philosophies at the time, that the rational person’s ultimate goal is to live happily.
Unique to Stoicism, though, is the idea that the only thing needed for happiness is virtue. To live perfectly virtuously is to be happy, regardless of external constraints or effects. This leads to a difficult conclusion, but one that the Stoics maintain: a virtuous person being tortured for example, is still maximally happy, since they still possess the one beneficial quality, virtue.
It follows from this, say the Stoics, that happiness is fully within our personal control. Marcus’ writing to himself reinforces this idea in various ways, supporting himself through the difficulties of Roman life, not to mention a ruler during conflict.
“Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.”
One of the main teachings of Stoicism is acceptance. This is where the common misunderstanding of Stoicism being restraint comes from. Many believe that it encourages the bottling or rejecting of emotion. Rather, it says that virtuous people are not overcome by impulsive and excessive emotion.
This is not because Stoics believed that we must restrain ourselves. Instead, they believed that we find virtue through knowledge. Then, once we properly obtain the knowledge that coincides with our rationality and nature, we will freely accept the reality of things that once may have caused us grief (or joy).
“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”
Marcus used these teachings to guide himself, as is evident in the many quotes that continue to circulate in pop culture. Some of these speak of the importance of endurance in the pursuit of virtue, believing that challenges are an opportunity to strengthen character. Others speak of the importance of gratitude in responding to the perceived highs and lows of life.
“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the chief of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”
Marcus Aurelius left a legacy that has lingered across cultures and centuries to continue guiding people on their journeys of self-improvement.
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.
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Our dollar is our voice: The ethics of boycotting
Boycotts can be an effective mechanism for making change. But they can also be weaponised or harmful. Here are some tips to ensure your spending aligns with your values.
There I was, strolling through campus as an undergraduate in the 1990s, casually enjoying a KitKat, when I was accosted by a friend who sternly rebuked me for my choice of snack. Didn’t I know that we were boycotting Nestlé? Didn’t I know about all the terrible things Nestlé was doing by aggressively promoting its baby formula in the developing world, thus discouraging natural breastfeeding?
Well, I did now. And so I took a break from KitKats for many years. Until I discovered the boycott had started and been lifted years before my run-in with my activist friend. As it turned out, a decade prior to my campus encounter, Nestlé had already responded to the boycotters’ concerns and had subsequently signed on to a World Health Organization code that limited the way infant formula could be marketed. So, while my friend was a little behind on the news, it seemed the boycott had worked after all.
Boycotts are no less popular today. In late 2025, dozens of artists pulled their work from Spotify and thousands of listeners cancelled their accounts after discovering that the company’s CEO, Daniel Ek, invested over 100 million Euros into a German military technology company that is developing artificial intelligence systems. In 2023, Bud Light lost its spot as the top-selling beer in the United States after drinkers boycotted it following a social media promotion involving transgender personality, Dylan Mulvaney. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement has been promoting boycotts of Israeli products and companies that support Israel for over a decade, gaining greater momentum since the 2023 war in Gaza. And there are many more.
As individuals, we may not have the power to rectify many of the great ills we perceive in the world today, but as agents in a capitalist market, we do have power to choose which products and services to buy.
In this regard, our dollar is our voice, and we can choose to use that voice to protest against things we find morally problematic. Some people – like my KitKat-critical friend – also stress that we must take responsibility for where our money flows, and we have an obligation to not support companies that are doing harm in the world.
However, thinking about whom we support with our purchases puts a significant ethical burden on our shoulders. How should we decide which companies to support and which to avoid? Do we have a responsibility to research every product and every company before handing over our money? How can we be confident that our boycott won’t do more harm than good?
Buyer beware
Boycotts don’t just impose a cost on us – primarily by depriving us of something we would otherwise purchase – they impose a cost on the producer, so it’s important to be confident that this cost is justified.
If buying the product would directly support practices that you oppose, such as damaging the environment or employing workers in sweatshops, then a boycott can contribute to preventing those harms. We can also choose to boycott for other reasons, including showing our opposition to a company’s support for a social issue, raising awareness of injustices or protesting the actions of individuals within an organisation. However, if we’re boycotting something that was produced by thousands of people, such as a film, because of the actions of just one person involved, then we might be unfairly imposing a cost on everyone involved, including those who were not involved in the wrongdoing.
Boycotts can also be used threaten, intimidate or exclude people, such as those directed against minorities, ethnic or religious groups, or against vulnerable peoples. We need to be confident that our boycott will target those responsible for the harms while not impinging on the basic rights or liberties of people who are not involved.
There are also risks in joining a boycott movement, especially if we feel pressured into doing so or if activists have manipulated the narrative to promote their perspective over alternatives. Take the Spotify boycott, for example. It is true that Spotify’s CEO invested in a military technology company. However, many people claimed that company was supplying weapons to Israel, and that was a key justification for them pulling their support for Spotify. However, Helsing had no contracts with Israel and was, instead, focusing its work on the defence of Ukraine and Europe – a cause that many boycotters might even support.
Know your enemy
The risk of acting on misinformation or biased perspectives places greater pressure on us to do our own research, and it’s here that we need to consider how much homework we’re actually willing or able to do.
In the course of writing this article, I delved back into the history of the Nestlé boycott only to find that another group has been encouraging people to avoid Nestle products because it doesn’t believe that the company is conforming to its own revised marketing policies. Even then, uncovering the details and the evidence is not a trivial undertaking. As such, I’m still not entirely sure where I stand on KitKats.
While we all have an ethical responsibility to act on our values and principles, and make sure that we’re reasonably well informed about the companies and products that we interact with, it’s unreasonable to expect us to do exhaustive research on everything that we buy. That said, if there is reliable information that a company is doing harm, then we have a responsibility to not ignore it and should adjust our purchasing decisions accordingly.
Boycotts also shouldn’t last for ever; an ethical boycott should aim to make itself redundant. Before blacklisting a company, consider what reasonable measures it could take for you to lift your boycott. That might be ceasing harmful practices, compensating those who were impacted, and/or apologising for harms done. If you set the bar too high, there’s a risk that you’re engaging in the boycott to satisfy your sense of outrage rather than seeking to make the world a better place. And if the company clears the bar, then you should have good reason to drop the boycott.
Finally, even though a coordinated boycott can be highly effective, be wary of judging others too harshly for their choice to not participate. Different people value different things, and have different budgets regarding how much cost they are willing to bear when considering what they purchase. Informing others about the harms you believe a company is causing is one thing, but browbeating them for not joining a boycott risks tipping over into moralising.
Boycotts can be a powerful tool for change. But they can also be weaponised or implemented hastily or with malicious intent, so we want to ensure we’re making conscious and ethical decisions for the right reasons. We often lament the lack of power that we have individually to make the world a better place. But if there’s one thing that money is good at, it’s sending a message.
BY Tim Dean
Dr Tim Dean is a public philosopher, speaker and writer. He is Philosopher in Residence and Manos Chair in Ethics at The Ethics Centre.
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On policing protest
I was not there when police confronted people at Sydney Town Hall, protesting against the visit of Israeli President Herzog. So, the best I can do is offer a way of assessing what took place – once all of the evidence is before us.
A fundamental principle of policing is that it is most effective when practised with the consent of the community. With that consent in hand, police are accorded extraordinary powers that may not be exercised by ordinary citizens. Those powers include the right to use force in the discharge of their duties. However, these are not ‘unbridled’ powers. Rather, the use of force is hemmed in by a series of legal and ethical boundaries that must not be crossed.
The application of such boundaries is especially important when police are authorised to use lethal force. However, whether armed or not, the ethos of policing is supposed to be conditioned by two fundamental considerations.
First, all police in Australia exercise what is known as the ‘original authority of the constable’. This is a special kind of authority intended to ensure that police uphold the peace in an even-handed manner, without regard to a person’s wealth, status or office. Originally conceived in medieval times, it ensures that all are equal before the law. One aspect of this ‘original authority’ is the right (or, perhaps, the duty) to exercise discretion when employing the special powers conferred on police. It is for this reason that there is a general expectation that police should warn rather than punish people when that would be sufficient to achieve the proper ends of law enforcement.
And what are those ends? To the surprise of many (including some police) the role of policing is not to apprehend criminals so that they may be brought before the courts. Nor is it simply to ‘enforce the law’. Both of those elements of policing are important. However, they are in service of a more general purpose which is to uphold the legal and moral rights of citizens (only some of which are codified in law). This is why society frowns on the actions of those rare police who, say, plant evidence on a suspect in hope of proving their presumed guilt. You cannot uphold the legal and moral rights of citizens by violating the legal and moral rights of citizens! It is only when police act in a manner consistent with their overarching purpose that the community extends the trust required for policing to be maximally effective.
The main point to note here is that the best way to prevent crimes and other harms is for communities to be intolerant of those who engage in harmful (and especially criminal) conduct. In turn, the communities that most trust their police are also those most intolerant of crime and other antisocial behaviour. For the avoidance of doubt, let me make it clear that I do not consider peaceful protesting to be ‘antisocial behaviour’. Rather, it plays a vital role in a vibrant democratic society.
The second basic fact that conditions policing is related to the asymmetry of power between police and citizens. The most obvious sign of that asymmetry is that, with only a few exceptions, only police may be armed in the course of daily civic life. However, with great power comes great responsibility. In this case, the use of force, by police, must be proportionate and discriminate. That is, force may only be applied to the minimal degree necessary to secure the peace.
Policing is dangerous work. But beyond the risk of physical harm, police are often taunted and insulted – especially by seasoned provocateurs who are trying to bait police to lose control. That is why police require training to resist the all-too-human tendency towards self-protection or retaliation. Again, this is essential to maintaining community trust and consent.
The public needs to be convinced that police have the training and discipline to apply minimal force – no matter what the provocation.
Given all of the above, what questions might we ask about the way police engaged with protesters gathered at the Sydney Town Hall? Did police exercise discretion in favour of the citizens to whom they are ultimately accountable? Was their use of force discriminate and proportional? Did the police exercise maximum restraint – no matter what the provocation?
As to where we might go from here, I think that we would all be well served if the politicians who set the laws within which police operate and the leadership of NSW police all stopped for a moment to ask, “Will the thing we next do build or undermine the trust and consent of the community as a whole?”.
BY Simon Longstaff
Simon Longstaff began his working life on Groote Eylandt in the Northern Territory of Australia. He is proud of his kinship ties to the Anindilyakwa people. After a period studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, he pursued postgraduate studies as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.” Simon is an Adjunct Professor of the Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW, a Fellow of CPA Australia, the Royal Society of NSW and the Australian Risk Policy Institute.
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What it means to love your country
The idea of patriotism has become increasingly contentious in Australia, particularly on January 26, with much wariness and controversy over what to call the day itself.
January 26 is a reopening of the deep wound of colonisation for many Indigenous Australians. It can also be, to a lesser extent, a confusing day to be an Australian patriot who is simultaneously ashamed of their country’s colonial past.
Australia’s colonial roots have always loomed large in its young history, but it is helpful to know that the experience of being conflicted about one’s allegiance to country is not new.
In 1943, the Jewish-heritage French philosopher Simone Weil wrote her last text dissecting the difficulty of patriotism while in WWII France. France had built its modern identity on Enlightenment ideals of liberty, equality and universal human rights. Yet at Weil’s time of writing, it was actively building a colonial empire and collaborating with the German fascist state which violated these principles.
In a similar vein, modern Australia prides itself on a narrative of multiculturalism, wealth and safety, whilst also being built on the injustices of colonialism. It is increasingly suffering from fraying social cohesion as a result of this inconsistency. The controversy around January 26 is one clear recurring symptom of this.
Weil would have classified herself as a French patriot, but she was also one of its harshest critics. In her philosophy, love of country and criticism of its past are not mutually exclusive; in fact, love of country can only be authentic if it also includes honest criticism.
Patriotism in its best form is the compassionate love of one’s country and the people, communities, history and memories that comprise it.
But to Weil, this patriotism becomes maligned when it is not based in compassion, and instead entails blind allegiance to an abstract nation or symbol – something she called ‘servile love’, which she names as the ugly shadow of patriotism: nationalism.
In her vocabulary, nationalism is more extreme than loving your country; it is about engaging in idolatry and worshipping a false image of one’s country that is based on wishful thinking, rather than truth.
The wishful thinking of nationalism means making oneself ignorant through selective memory: erasing the difficulties of the past in a hurry to create a new, sanitised future. It uses boastful pride to cover up past shames.
In the same way that it is difficult to respect the integrity of an individual who is insecure about admitting their wrongs and will only assert the ways in which they are right, a nation that also cannot integrate its failings will find it hard to sustain respect.
It’s important to note that this is a collective responsibility: generational injustice requires generational reparation, and it is not possible for sole individuals to bear the whole burden of either harm or reparation for entire generations.
What makes a patriot?
In Weil’s framework, the distinction between patriotism (healthy) and nationalism (unhealthy) is ‘rootedness’, which Weil identifies as one of the deepest but most difficult to identify human needs.
A ‘rooted’ individual, community, or nation is one that is mature and connected to its history deeply enough that it has the resilience to withstand criticisms and accommodate the nurturance of many types of people.
Weil writes: “A human being is rooted through their real, active and natural participation in the life of a collectivity that keeps alive treasures of the past and has aspirations of the future.”
To Australia’s credit, there are many ways in which collective participation is healthy and available to many, which allows people from many walks of life to be rooted here.
Some often-cited reasons: being able to enjoy relative peace and comforts; fond memories of swimming at the beach or hiking nature trails (“Australia is the only country proud of its weather” – the allegations are true!); its cultural diversity. There are many patriots to whom the flag does not represent racism and exclusion, because in it they see genuine, cultivated attachments to their country. They are not focused on asserting the superiority of an identity, but on honouring a meaningful relationship with one’s community and environment – strong roots.
Yet social cohesion feels more fragile lately, partly because of the belief that the ‘rootedness’ of other communities comes at the expense of theirs. Acknowledging that bigotry and a history of colonialism still gnaw at Australia’s national identity feels like a concession or weakness to other communities – but strength can only be built from integrity rather than denial.
It is not talking about a nation’s injustices that threatens its identity, but rather, lies. Weil writes: “This entails a terrible responsibility. Because what we are talking about is recreating the country’s soul, and there is such a strong temptation to do this by dint of lies and partial truths, that it requires more heroism to insist on the truth.”
To those who have been uprooted – whether they are displaced from actual homes, felt excluded or otherised by their fellow neighbours, or felt seething hatred and even violence towards their community – it is difficult to engage with collective life when it lacks common ground built from truth.
If we accept Weil’s claim that rootedness is a fundamental human need, love and criticism of one’s country could be understood as separate species that grow from the same fertile ground: a desire to belong to and steward the country they share.
When it comes to January 26, a call to recognise it as ‘Invasion Day’ is a legitimate criticism because it is truthful to historical events. Australian patriots should not feel threatened if their love of country is deep and sincere; they should take courage that there is a way to mature the national identity in a way that is based in truth, which can allow for the roots of many to grow in its soil.
To Weil, diverse co-existence enriches a community such that “external influences [are not] an addition, but … a stimulus that makes its own life more intense.”
For any patriot, prejudice and lies are the enemy, not their own community.
BY Marlene Jo Baquiran
Marlene Jo Baquiran is a writer and activist from Western Sydney (Dharug land), Australia. Her writing focuses on culture, politics and climate, and is also featured in the book 'On This Ground: Best Australian Nature Writing'. She has worked on various climate technologies and currently runs the grassroots group 'Climate Writers' (Instagram: @climatewriters), which won the Edna Ryan Award for Community Activism.
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Should your AI notetaker be in the room?
It seems like everyone is using an AI notetaker these days. They’re a way for users to stay more present in meetings, keep better track of commitments and action items, and perform much better than most people’s memories. On the surface, they look like a simple example of AI living up to the hype of improved efficiency and performance.
As an AI ethicist, I’ve watched more people I have meetings with use AI notetakers, and it’s increasingly filled me with unease: it’s invited to more and more meetings (including when the user doesn’t actually attend) and I rarely encounter someone who has explicitly asked for my consent to use the tool to take notes.
However, as a busy executive with days full of context switching across a dizzying array of topics, I felt a lot of FOMO at the potential advantages of taking a load off so I could focus on higher-value tasks. It’s clear why people see utility in these tools, especially in an age where many of us are cognitively overloaded and spread too thin. But in our rush to offload some work, we don’t always stop to consider the best way to do it.
When a “low risk” use case isn’t
It might be easy to think that using AI for something as simple as taking notes isn’t ethically challenging. And if the argument is that it should be ethically low stakes, you’re probably right. But the reality is much different.
Taking notes with technology tangles the complex topics of consent, agency, and privacy. Because taking notes with AI requires recording, transcribing, and interpreting someone’s ideas, these issues come to the fore. To use these technologies ethically, everyone in each meeting should:
- Know that that they are being recorded
- Understand how their data will be used, stored, and/or transferred
- Have full confidence that opting out is acceptable.
The reality is that this shouldn’t be hard – but the economics of selling AI notetaking tools means that achieving these objectives isn’t as straightforward as download, open, record. This doesn’t mean that these tools can’t be used ethically, but it does mean that in order to do so we have to use them with intention.
What questions to ask:
What models are being used?
Not all AI is built the same, in terms of both technical performance and the safety practices that surround them. Most tools on the market use foundation models from frontier AI labs like Anthropic and OpenAI (which make Claude and ChatGPT, respectively), but some companies train and deploy their own custom models. These companies vary widely in the rigour of their safety practices. You can get a deeper understanding of how a given company or model approaches safety by seeking out the model cards for a given tool.
The particular risk you’re taking will depend on a combination of your use case and the safeguards put in place by the developer and deployer. For example, there’s significantly more risk of using these tools in conversations where sensitive or protected data is shared, and that risk is amplified by using tools that have weak or non-existent safety practices. Put simply, it’s a higher ethical risk (and potentially illegal) decision to use this technology when you’re dealing with sensitive or confidential information.
Does the tool train on user data?
AI “learns” by ingesting and identifying patterns in large amounts of data, and improves its performance over time by making this a continuous process. Companies have an economic incentive to train using your data – it’s a valuable resource they don’t have to pay for. But sharing your data with any provider exposes you and others to potential privacy violations and data leakages, and ultimately it means you lose control of your data. For example, research has shown that there are techniques that cause large language models (LLMs) to reproduce their training data, and AI creates other unique security vulnerabilities for which there aren’t easy solutions.
For most tools, the default setting is to train on user data. Often, tools will position this approach in terms of generosity, in that providing your data helps improve the service for yourself and others. While users who prioritise sharing over security may choose to keep the default, users that place a higher premium on data security should find this setting and turn it off. Whatever you choose, it’s critical to disclose this choice to those you’re recording.
How and where is the data stored and protected?
The process of transcribing and translating can happen on a local machine or in the “cloud” (which is really just a machine somewhere else connected to the internet). The majority will use a third-party cloud service provider, which expands the potential ethical risk surface.
First, does the tool run on infrastructure associated with a company you’re avoiding? For example, many people specifically avoid spending money on Amazon due to concerns about the ethics of their business operations. If this applies to you, you might consider prioritising tools that run locally, or on a provider that better aligns with your values.
Second, what security protocols does the tool provider have in place? Ideally, you’ll want to see that a company has standard certifications such as SOC 2, ISO 27001 and/or ISO 42001, which show an operational commitment to security, privacy, and safety.
Whatever you choose, this information should be a part of your disclosure to meeting attendees.
How am I achieving fully informed consent?
The gold standard for achieving fully informed consent is making the request explicit and opt in as a default. While first-generation notetakers were often included as an “attendee” in meetings, newer tools on the market often provide no way for everyone in the meeting to know that they’re being recorded. If the tool you use isn’t clearly visible or apparent to attendees, the ethical burden of both disclosure and consent gathering falls on you.
This issue isn’t just an ethical one – it’s often a legal one. Depending on where you and attendees are, you might need a persistent record that you’ve gotten affirmative consent to create even a temporary recording. For me, that means I start meeting with the following:
I wanted to let you know that I like to use an AI notetaker during meetings. Our data won’t be used for training, and the tool I use relies on OpenAI and Amazon Web Services. This helps me stay more present, but it’s absolutely fine if you’re not comfortable with this, in which case I’ll take notes by hand.
Doing this might feel a bit awkward or uncomfortable at first, but it’s the first step not only in acting ethically, but modelling that behaviour for others.
Where I landed
Ultimately, I decided that using an AI notetaker in specific circumstances was worth the risk involved for the work I do, but I set some guardrails for myself. I don’t use it for sensitive conversations (especially those involving emotional experiences) or those where confidential data is shared. I start conversations with my disclosure, and offer to share a copy of the notes for both transparency and accuracy.
But perhaps the broader lesson is that I can’t outsource ethics: the incentive structures of the companies producing these tools aren’t often aligned to the values I choose to operate with. But I believe that by normalising these practices, we can take advantage of the benefits of this transformative technology while managing the risks.
AI was used to review research for this piece and served as a constructive initial editor.
BY Aubrey Blanche
Aubrey Blanche is a responsible governance executive with 15 years of impact. An expert in issues of workplace fairness and the ethics of artificial intelligence, her experience spans HR, ESG, communications, and go-to-market strategy. She seeks to question and reimagine the systems that surround us to ensure that all can build a better world. A regular speaker and writer on issues of responsible business, finance, and technology, Blanche has appeared on stages and in media outlets all over the world. As Director of Ethical Advisory & Strategic Partnerships, she leads our engagements with organisational partners looking to bring ethics to the centre of their operations.
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Ask an ethicist: Should I tell my student's parents what they've been confiding in me?
A high school student has recently confided some personal information. Should I share this confidential information with their parents, even if doing so may breach their trust?
Teachers may be a lot of things, but they’re not therapists, bound by strict confidentiality codes. Nor do they have a parent’s automatic access to everything happening in a child’s life. They occupy a unique middle ground – trusted enough that students tell them things, but facing different calls to make depending on what they hear. A falling-out with friends requires a different response than cyberbullying in a group chat, which differs again from signs of disordered eating or disclosures of abuse. Schools have distinct procedures for each situation, and teachers must balance their duty of care against overreaching into personal advice or counselling – territory that belongs to trained professionals with their own, clearer confidentiality frameworks.
When a student chooses to confide in a teacher, it usually means something. They’ve decided that teacher offers safety. That trust opens up space for them to work through what’s going on, or to practise reaching out for help on their own terms. It’s actually an important part of how young people learn to handle difficult things – sussing out who to talk to and knowing what to share and when. When we decide to share information, the consequence of breaking confidence isn’t a small thing. No doubt you’ve experienced it yourself – we feel betrayed and we shut down. When it comes to students there is a double jeopardy. The message they take away is that confiding in grown-ups isn’t actually safe, that it just gets you in trouble or reported. That’s a lesson that can stick with them for years.
It’s important that a young person’s ownership of their own story is respected. They should be in a position to choose what to tell and what to hold back. But there are obvious limits. If a student discloses that they haven’t eaten in three days, or that they’re scared to go home, those aren’t conversations that can be sat on. ‘Should I respect their privacy?’ is subordinated to ‘what does this child need right now?’ Mandatory reporting laws exist for exactly this reason – confidentiality can’t outweigh safety when the confidential information involves harm to themselves or to others, or if there is serious risk or abuse.
But grey areas remain – especially around confidential information – and context matters enormously. Teachers operate within a formal Duty of Care framework that establishes clear professional and legal obligations, yet this regulatory requirement doesn’t always map neatly onto a teacher’s personal sense of moral duty – what ‘doing right by a student’ feels like in the moment. What that looks like depends enormously on the student. A thirteen-year-old whose parents are still heavily involved in day-to-day decisions is in a different position than a seventeen-year-old who’s six months from being a legal adult. Parents have both a legal and moral stake in their child’s wellbeing, but that argument carries different weight depending on where the child is developmentally and the type of information being shared.
Questions to help clarify the decision
A teacher colleague once described the profession of teaching as ‘ethically rich.’ When facing ethically rich situations, asking some questions may help clarify what’s at stake:
- Is this about something that’s already happened, or something that might happen? The distinction matters. A student venting about a past argument with their mum is different from a student hinting they’re planning to run away.
- Was there a promise or an implication that this would stay confidential? If this is the case, breaking that promise comes with real costs but never at the cost of the student’s or anyone else’s safety.
- If we’re being honest, is the hesitation because of genuine uncertainty, or about dreading an awkward conversation?
- Can the student be involved in what happens next? Could they tell their parents themselves, with the teacher’s support or could they give permission before anyone is contacted?
Principles for navigating the decision
No single rule can cover every situation a teacher might face outside of the legal requirements of mandatory reporting. Here are some ‘rules of thumb’ – ethically informed guidelines that can sometimes help shape how you approach a situation like this without prescribing a rigid answer. They can offer a framework rather than a formula.
Start with the least intrusive option: Many professional codes and guidelines emphasise involving students in disclosure decisions where possible. That doesn’t mean never telling anyone. It means not going over a student’s head unless you have to.
Consult with others before you act: If in any doubt, talking to the school counsellor, year coordinator, or head of year yourself may help you think through options – you don’t have to figure it out alone. Sharing information with colleagues will also help triangulate potential areas of emerging risk.
Know where the legal red lines are: Teachers are mandatory reporters – they have a legal duty to report suspected abuse or neglect. But mandatory reporting is about safety, not general parental notification. Outside those clear-cut situations, there may be more discretion than can sometimes be assumed.
Let them keep some control over the process if you can: Even if disclosure is necessary, a student doesn’t have to feel blindsided. ‘I think your parents need to know about this – would you like to tell them yourself, or would you prefer I do it?’ are very different options than calling a parent out of the blue.
Respect where students are developmentally: Adolescents need to practise regulating what they share with parents as part of healthy development. Routinely overriding a teenager’s choices about disclosure can actually undermine that process. But that doesn’t mean it’s a blank check. Teenagers do need practice deciding what to share and with whom – that’s part of how they learn to navigate adult relationships.
Write things down: Keep a brief, factual record of what was disclosed, what you considered, and what you decided. If questions come up later – from parents, principals, or anyone else – you’ll have a record of what guided your reasoning, and it is typically a legal requirement of your jurisdiction’s Code of Conduct.
BY John Neil
As Director of Education and Innovation at The Ethics Centre, John collaborates closely with a talented team of specialists and subject matter experts to shape the tools, frameworks, and programs that drive our work forward. He brings a rich and varied background as a consultant, lecturer, and researcher, with expertise spanning ethics, cultural studies, sustainability, and innovation. This multidisciplinary perspective allows him to introduce fresh, thought-provoking approaches that energise and inspire our initiatives. John has partnered with some of Australia’s largest organisations across diverse industries, to place ethics at the heart of organisational life. His work focuses on education, cultural alignment, and leadership development to foster meaningful and lasting impact.
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Does 'The Traitors' prove we're all secretly selfish, evil people?
For decades, Alan Carr has been one of British TV’s most unfailingly friendly faces. He’s carved out his niche thanks to a persona modelled on your best friend after a few chardonnays; fun and occasionally rude, but always deeply, resolutely kind. Which is precisely why his maniacal turn on Celebrity Traitors was such a headline-grabbing event.
The highly successful reality show is essentially a glorified game of heads down thumbs up: out of a group of contestants, a select few are secretly designated as “the traitors”, able to dispatch other contestants. The non-traitors must work together to identify the bad apples in their midst – if they do, then they walk home with prize money. If they don’t, then the traitors win.
Almost as soon as he discovered he was a traitor, Carr went to work dispatching his other contestants with a single-minded intent. In an early shocking moment, he even booted off his real-life good mate Paloma Faith, the speed and severity with which he went about his work rivalled only by his masterful manipulation of those around him. Time and time again, he actively leveraged his kindly persona, playing up his inherent trustworthiness. And in the face of accusations, he pleaded his innocence.
It worked. Carr ended up walking away with the biggest haul of the season – but not without breaking down in tears, a sudden flash of guilt overwhelming him.
Which begs the question: does self-interested behaviour actually benefit the self? And moreover, is it really true that when given the slightest motivation for unethical action, most of us would sell out, and “murder” our best mate?
The social contract and the state of nature
The question of what incentive people have to remain ethical is oft-debated in the annals of philosophy. One answer, provided by the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, is based on the perceived inherent nastiness at the heart of human beings. According to Hobbes, we organise ourselves into societies where we all agree not to harm or steal from one another, in order to avoid what he called “the state of nature.”
According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a fundamentally lawless societal structure, where individuals do what they want, when they want: this, he says, is how it goes in the natural world, where birds steal each other’s eggs, and lions tear sick zebras limb from limb. There’s total freedom in the state of nature, sure, but it’s not particularly pleasant.
The social contract is a means, therefore, of playing to people’s self-preservation drive, rather than their compassion for their fellow human beings. In the social contract, we all collectively agree not to harm or steal from the other, but only because we want to ensure a world where they don’t harm or steal from us. On this picture of human nature, we’re all chomping at the bit to go full Alan Carr, and betray those around us for our own good – but we don’t, simply in order to avoid getting Alan Carr’d by someone else.
One second away from nastiness
This belief in our fundamentally selfish nature was reinforced throughout the post-war period, where a number of psychological studies aimed to prove that human beings will unleash unkindness with only the lightest of pressures. The most famous such study was the Stanford Prison Experiment, where a group of unassuming civilians were ordered to roleplay being either a jailor or an inmate. Quickly, the jailors went mad with power, escalating the roleplay to such a dangerous level that the whole experiment had to be aborted.
The Stanford Prison Experiment was precisely so shocking because the jailors didn’t even have a pot of gold waiting for them at the end of the experiment: they appeared to wield their power for no other reason than they enjoyed it.
A similar conclusion was reached with the Milgram experiment. In that trial, a group of random civilians were ever-so-gently pressured into delivering what they believed were fatal electric shocks to other civilians that were getting answers in a test wrong (the whole thing was actually a set-up; no-one was harmed). Almost all of them went along with the proceedings happily.
Take these conclusions, and the likes of Alan Carr don’t seem as much like the exception to the rule, but the rule itself.
The better angels of our nature
But should we accept these conclusions? For a start, it’s worth noting that participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment were explicitly instructed to behave badly: it wasn’t something that they came up with by themselves. And in the face of Rousseau’s fundamentally lonely and cruel picture of humanity, let’s consider our extraordinary capacity for empathy.
Because here’s the thing: while we do have evidence that people can be led away from their fundamental values by either money or pressure from an authority figure, a la the Milgram experiment, we also have a great deal of evidence that most people feel an automatic, unthinking empathy towards their fellow human beings. Even Philip Zimbardo, one of the key architects of the Stanford Prison Experiment, advanced the theory of “the banality of heroism”. According to such a view, we all have unbelievable reserves of courage and fellow-feeling within us – heroic acts aren’t, actually, outside of the norm, but something that we’re all capable of.
It is worth noting, after all, that people who are led to act in a self-interested way are exactly that: led astray. Without intervention, people have a fundamentally collective view of humanity. Sure, we can be manipulated. But we all have a natural, unthinking goodness.
Which might then explain Alan Carr’s tears at the end of the traitors. While it’s true he was incentivised to behave “badly”, he knew that it was bad. And in an era where individualism and egomania is being pushed down our throats more than ever, we should remember that within us lies a strong sense of right and wrong, and a deep reserve of concern for our fellow human beings – Rousseau be damned.
BY Joseph Earp
Joseph Earp is a poet, journalist and philosophy student. He is currently undertaking his PhD at the University of Sydney, studying the work of David Hume.
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