How can we travel more ethically?
I used to be an inveterate traveller – so much so that I would take, on average, a minimum of two flights per week. That is no longer the case.
I have trouble recalling the last time I was on an aeroplane. That will change this week, when I board a flight for Tasmania – my third attempt, in two years, to join family there. So, is this the beginning of a return to a life of endless travel – both at home and abroad? Or will a trip to the airport continue to be a relatively rare experience?
Of course, such questions apply to all modes of transport – whether they be by road, rail, air or sea. Perhaps we have become conditioned to think that the answers lie in the hands of public health officials and government ministers who, between them, can stop us in our tracks.
However, every journey begins with us – with a personal decision to travel. So, what should we take into account when making such a decision?
Perhaps one of the most important considerations is to do with who bears the burden of our decision. A 2018 article published in Nature Climate Change estimated that tourism contributes to 8% of the world’s climate emissions, with those emissions likely to grow at the rate of 4% per annum. Of these emissions, 49% were attributable to transport alone. And this was just tourism.
One also needs to add to this the emissions of people, like me, largely travelling for reasons of work rather than leisure. One of the effects of the current global pandemic has been to reduce, to a massive degree, the level of emissions caused by travel. This is welcome news to those most likely to be affected by predicted changes caused by anthropogenic warming – notably those living on low-lying islands and others whose lives (and livelihoods) are at risk of devastating harm.
Yet, it’s easy enough to find advertisements enticing us to travel to the very same low-lying islands whose economies rely on tourism. The paradoxes don’t end there. Another criticism of tourism is that it tends to commodify the cultures of those most visited – and in some cases does so to the point of corruption. Those who mount this criticism argue that we should value the diversity of ‘pristine’ cultures in the same way that we value pristine diversity in nature. Retaining one’s culture free from influences from the wider world is not necessarily the choice that people living within those cultures would make for themselves. Some hold fast to an unsullied form of life. Others are keen to share their experience with the world – not only as a source of income, but also out of a very human sense of curiosity and a desire to share the human experience.
To make matters even more complex, not all travel is for reasons of leisure or work. It is sometimes driven by necessity or a sense of obligation to others, such as when joining a loved one who is sick or dying, or to attend a family ceremony. Even those obliged to travel have, of late, been asked to ‘think twice’ or, in some cases, had the decision taken out of their hands due to border closures that have allowed few (if any) exemptions. And even those few exemptions tend to have been offered only to the very rich, powerful or popular.
This might seem to suggest that we should calibrate our decisions about travel according to its purpose. If one can achieve the same outcome by other means (such as using a video conference rather than meeting in person), then that should be the preferred option. However, I have discovered that this approach only gets you so far (excuse the pun). Some meetings only really work if people are in the same room – especially if the issues require nuanced judgement and there are some obligations (like those owed to a sick or dying relative) that can only be discharged in person.
Despite this, the causes of climate change or life-threatening viruses don’t have any regard for our motives for travelling. A virus can just as easily hitch a ride with a person rushing to the side of an ailing parent as a person off to relax on a beach. All other things being equal, they have the same impact on the environment.
Given this, how should we approach the ethical dimension of travel?
First, I think we need to be ‘mindful travellers’. That is, we should not simply ‘get up and go’ just because we can. We need to think about the implications of our doing so – including the unintended, adverse consequences of whatever decision we make.
Second, we should seek to minimise the unintended, adverse consequences. For example, can we choose a mode of travel that has minimal negative impact? It is this kind of question driving people to explore new forms of low-carbon transport options.
Third, can we mitigate unintended harm – for example, by purchasing offsets (for carbon) or looking to support Indigenous cultures where we might encounter them?
Finally, can we maximise the good that might be done by our travelling?
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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.
Why you should care about where you keep your money
Most of us try to do the right things in life.
From a young age we’re taught to treat people and the environment with respect, being conscious of the impact our actions have on the world around us. We’re often told of the importance of minimising single-use plastics or buying fair-trade products and, for some, these can be really important ways to spend our money consciously.
While we can spend our money on things that resonate with our personal values and the type of world we want to see in the future, we also need to consider the impact that the banks we support are having. As a conscious consumer, sometimes we can forget one simple thing that can make a bigger difference in this world than most of our other monetary choices – our bank.
From the factory our shoes were made in, to the houses we want to buy and the energy that powers them. Everything in this world costs money. But where does this money come from? Most finance tends to come from banks, and other financial institutions. And it’s your choice of financial institution that actually influences where that money goes.
Sometimes we can feel as though we don’t have the power to change things, that we are part of a larger system and people in positions of power behave in a way that conflicts with our own values and principles. As individuals, we can make a difference.
Where we choose to put our money matters. And as Liza Minnelli so eloquently puts it – money makes the world go round.
Most of us probably still have the same bank account we had as a kid. There seems to be this combination of taboo and apathy that makes talking about money, frankly, a bit awkward. However, it shouldn’t be and it’s a conversation that we should have more openly. We have choice and agency when it comes to where we bank and finding an institution that aligns with our values and principles is really important.
There’s something tragic and ironic as a conscious consumer when we spend so much effort to live a more sustainable life only to have our bank, and inadvertently our money, undo all our hard work by funding, for example, a battery hen farm. It’s a moral contradiction that is very real and needs our attention.
To illustrate this point more clearly, a recent survey by the Lowy Institute found that roughly 6 in 10 Australians believe climate change is a very serious issue that needs to be dealt with. Despite this majority opinion, Australian banks have lent more than $44B to the fossil fuel industry since the 2015 Paris Agreement (to limit global warming to 1.5C), with more than $8.9B coming in 2020 alone. Overlay the fact that the four major banks in Australia hold more than 80% market share and we can immediately see that there’s a strong moral contradiction at play.
As we become more aware of the issues that are important to us it’s important to ask the question – is the money in my bank contributing to the problem or helping to solve it?
Banks can create a lot of good, but they can also create a lot of bad. For example, they can use their customer’s money (our money) and the interest paid to them on loans to help move young people with disabilities out of nursing homes and into purpose-built disability accommodation. And equally, they can just as easily provide funding to gambling companies to open new facilities.
There are plenty of examples on both sides and it can be complicated and difficult to find out what your institutions is doing (and it’s most likely a combination of both). But we do have the power to ask. There are also websites like MarketForces.org.au and Dontbankonthebomb.com that provide information that can assist in our decision-making.
We all need to realise the responsibility and opportunity that we have as customers of these large financial institutions. They need our money and our loyalty to operate at the scale they desire. We can use our power as customers to hold them to account and to drive change that positively effects people and the environment.
If there’s one thought to leave you with, it’s that what you choose to do with your money will have an impact on what the world looks like in 20-years. Where are you going to put your money?
Jack Thompson is a Banking and Finance Oath Young Ambassador. If you’re interested in taking the Oath visit www.bfo.org
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BY Jack Thompson
Jack is a purpose driven marketer currently working in finance [and proud pawrent to two groodles]. He is also a Banking and Finance Oath Young Ambassador.
Of what does the machine dream? The Wire and collectivism
This week, a group of more than a dozen Rohingya refugees launched a civil suit against Facebook, alleging that the social media giant was responsible for spreading hate speech.
The victims of an ongoing military crackdown in Myanmar, the refugees claimed not merely that Facebook allowed users to express their anti-Rohingya views, but that Facebook radicalised users – that, in essence, the platform changed beliefs, rather than merely providing a conduit to express them.
The suit is, in many ways, the first of a kind. It targets the manner in which systems – whether they be social media giants, video streaming sites like YouTube, or the myriad of bureaucracies that we all engage with in one way or another almost every day – warp and change beliefs.
But what if the suit underestimates the power of these systems? What if it’s not merely that social and financial enterprises alter beliefs, but that these enterprises have belief sets entirely of their own? More and more, as capitalism continues to ratify itself, we are finding ourselves swept up in communities that operate on the basis of desires that are distinct from the views of any one member of those communities. We are all part of a great, groaning machinery – and it doesn’t want what we want.
Pawns in a Game
There is a key sequence in David Simon’s critically adored television series The Wire that sums up this perspective perfectly. In it, three young men, all of them members of a rickety enterprise of crime, find themselves playing chess. The least experienced man does not understand the game – how, he wants to know, does he get to become the king? He doesn’t, the most experienced man explains. Everyone is who they are.
Still, the younger man wants to know, what about the pawns? Surely when they reach the other side of the board, and get swapped out for queens, they have made it – they have beat the system. No, the experienced man explains. “The pawns get capped quick,” he says, simply.
There is a deep, sad irony to the scene: the three men are all pawns. They have no way of beating the system. They will not even live to become queens. When one of them dies a few episodes later, shot to death by his friend, there is a grim finality to the murder. He did, as expected, get capped quick.
This is the focus of The Wire – the observation that members of any community are expendable when weighed against the desires of that community. The game of chess is bigger than any of the pawns could imagine, a system with its own rules that they are merely contingent parts of. And so it goes with the business of crime.
Not only crime, either. The genius of The Wire is the way that it draws parallels between those who operate outside the law, and those who uphold it. The cops who spend the series cracking down on the drug trade are also pawns, in their way: lowly members of a system that they are utterly unable to change. No matter what side of the law that you fall on, you will find yourself submerged in bureaucracy, The Wire says – in the machinations of a vast system of power relations with a goal to constantly perpetuate itself, at your expense.
These are the systems that Sigmund Freud wrote of in his seminal work, Civilization and Its Discontents. For Freud, there is an essential disconnect between the desires of individuals and the desires of the social communities that they unwillingly become a part of. There are things at foot that are bigger than any of us.
Bureaucracies are not the sum total of the desires and beliefs of the members of those bureaucracies. These systems have a life – a value set – entirely of their own.
Image: HBO
The Game Never Changes
If that is the case, then how does change occur? The Wire offers only dispiriting answers. The show’s idealists – renegade cop Jimmy McNulty, rogue crime boss Omar Little – either find themselves subsumed by the system that lords over them or eliminated. There is a hopelessness to their rebellion. They uselessly throw themselves into the path of a giant piece of machinery, hoping that their mangled bodies slow the inevitable march of progress.
It doesn’t work. Those who thrive are those who give themselves over entirely to the system, who align their values perfectly with the values of their community and embrace their own insignificance. Snoop, the show’s most hideous and intimidating villain, is a happy pawn, one who has never once considered changing the rules of the game that will send her too into an early, dismal grave.
But what if we all stop playing? That is the solution that The Wire never considers. If these systems, whether they be criminal or judicial, are to be changed, then it requires a different kind of collectivism. We are all part of many communities, not just one. If we remember this – if we understand that we have the power and solidarity that comes from being a member of a particular class, a particular race, a particular gender – then we can fight collective power with collective power. The solution isn’t to get the pawn to the other side of the board. It’s to tip the board over.
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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.
Did Australia’s lockdown leave certain parts of the population vulnerable?
The pandemic has increased the duty we have to other members of our communities.
Different groups of people have different interests, but balancing these interests can cause conflict and friction.
Given Australia’s hard lockdown stance, many people could not wait to lift the restrictions and return to their daily routines. However, in relieving people from these restrictions, we also leave vulnerable populations exposed.
Who do we have a more significant duty towards?
There were discussions around school kids and their right to access education, conversations about teen and adult mental health, and calls to vaccinate the elderly. However, a group that was affected by all these considerations and needed further contemplation was ignored – those with disabilities.
While we are interested in protecting all people, if we do not ensure the safety of the most vulnerable in a population, we fail – we blatantly show that we do not value their needs in conjunction with evaluating a safe society.
The Ethics Centre’s Dr. Simon Longstaff stated recently on Q&A that ‘it is unforgivable that we have to have this conversation … where the most vulnerable members of our community have been left exposed. We should not … expect those people with … vulnerabilities to bear the burden of what we would prefer to do.’
While mental health costs of lockdowns are in favour of opening, Dr. Longstaff warned that ‘we as a society are going to have to accept that those who become infected and die will be something we have to wear on our own conscience.’
Phase 1A of Australia’s vaccine rollout, was initiated in February with the intention of targeting essential healthcare workers and those most vulnerable, such as the elderly and those with disabilities. However, in June only 1 in 5 people with a disability had been vaccinated, and less than 50% of support workers had received both doses of a vaccine. Yet, there was a dramatic increase in October to 70% of individuals being vaccinated.
The marked uptake was likely due to lockdown measures being lifted, as many people wanted the vaccine but could not receive it due to lack of accessibility.
In order to receive a vaccination, people had to contact their GP or later on could book one online.
On the face of it, these distribution procedures seem reasonable but there were significant problems that severely limited access. Having to make a GP appointment simply to obtain a vaccination referral was an unnecessary step that made it particularly difficult for those with disabilities, many of whom are dependent upon others to assist them.
Further, despite being a part of Phase 1A, many people with a disability could not receive the vaccine until lockdown had been lifted and support networks were reinstated. There was no follow-up, reassurance, or support to ensure that those who wanted to receive the vaccine could promptly do so. Therefore, as vaccine distribution moved from one phase to the next, it left an increasing number of those with disabilities behind.
Secondly, for similar reasons, internet access is more difficult for many of those with disabilities and the Department of Health website was not particularly user-friendly. It did not include larger, more legible text or have text to speech which would have helped those with limited sight or those who have trouble reading. Additionally, the high demand for vaccination meant that timeslots were severely limited and if they were available, they were usually inconvenient.
This was especially problematic for those with disabilities because it was not always clear which facilities were equipped with accessible features. To obtain informed consent, centres would need to have staff who are able to understand sign-language and provide information leaflets in braille. Much of this burden of providing additional support and care fell on already stretched family members and carers who, because of lockdown, may already have been working from home and home-schooling children.
What should Australia have done?
First and foremost, the relevant authorities should have ensured that almost 90%+ of each phase was vaccinated before moving to the next phase. In doing so, they would have needed to provide adequate support for those in Phase 1A and set up additional measures as required.
- Vaccine facilities should have been situated close to care facilities.
- Carers and parents should have been able to book their vaccines with individuals.
- Vaccine facilities ought to have implemented “safe” times or locations whereby those with disabilities could show up with no appointment.
What is perhaps irreconcilable is that while these requests/services were prepared during the pandemic, they were simply unavailable due to lack of federal organisation. There are many hospitals around Australia that have rehabilitation medical departments, all of which have specialised members and facilities. Despite notifying the government that they have experience and the equipment to convert into vaccination sites for those living with disabilities, they were not used.
The distribution of the vaccine in Australia was not organised in a manner that was empathetic to individuals living with a disability. I agree with the Royal Commission and Dr Longstaff that ending lockdown and opening without first ensuring high vaccination rates in this vulnerable community was unconscionable and unforgivable.
The lockdown was organised in a manner that did not respect the needs of particular populations. It once again highlights the inequity that people with disabilities face and places the responsibility of any harm to these individuals squarely on society. It was our duty to protect one another from harm during the pandemic, and we have failed a significant group within Australia’s population.
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BY Mehhma Malhi
Mehhma recently graduated from NYU having majored in Philosophy and minoring in Politics, Bioethics, and Art. She is now continuing her study at Columbia University and pursuing a Masters of Science in Bioethics. She is interested in refocusing the news to discuss why and how people form their personal opinions.
The self and the other: Squid Game's ultimate choice
In the world of Netflix’s smash hit Squid Game, a collection of desperate people must make a terrible choice: they can either keep living their lives, which are filled with debt and suffering, or they can submit to the titular competition, a series of contests based on children’s games. If they win these contests, their debts will be absolved. If they lose, they will die.
*Spoiler warning for Squid Game
The Australian philosopher Peter Singer would call this an “ultimate choice.” Although on the surface, it is a decision as to whether or not to live with debt, in a much deeper sense, it’s a decision about how to live. The very foundational beliefs of Squid Game’s frantic characters are being challenged. What matters to these people? What do they want out of life? And, just as importantly, how far will they go to get it?
The State of Nature
Squid Game depicts a world of pure barbarism: guided by their desperation, its characters form alliances only when it is mutually beneficial to them, and are often as quick to betray one another. In episode three, for instance, Sang-woo uses insider knowledge of the next contest to get himself ahead, concealing from his supposed allies that he is already aware of what is about to occur.
True acts of kindness sometimes flash through like fish glimpsed at the bottom of a river – consider Hwang Jun-ho, whose participation in the world of Squid Game is guided by the love of his brother – but such moments of empathy are few and far between.
The depiction of such a blood-thirsty, self-interested world is one the philosopher Thomas Hobbes played upon in his construction of the “state of nature.” According to Hobbes, human beings who exist in this state live in a way that is “nasty, brutish, and short.” In such a primal state, one without government, there is no centralised means of understanding or enforcing what is right and wrong, and self-interest is the name of the game.
“So long a man is in the condition of mere nature, (which is a condition of war,)” Hobbes wrote, “private appetite is the measure of good and evil.”
Hobbes believed that the only way to avoid this state of nature was to submit to a governing force – to hand oneself over to a power that could create and enforce a set of rules, known as the social contract. The world of Squid Game contains such a governing force, the shadowy world of the VIPs, who run the games for their own amusement.
But rather than guiding the games’ participants out of the state of nature, the VIPs further deepen and enforce it. The rules that they develop are explicitly designed to keep the desperate players in a world of confusion and barbarism, where self-interest is rewarded, and chaos is the name of the game. The lives of the participants are nasty, brutish, and short, and their spurning of ethics in favour of desperate attempts to get ahead is actively rewarded by a system that runs, above all else, on violence.
Image: Netflix
The suspension of the moral code
This system, vicious as it is, pushes ordinary people to extraordinary lengths. The characters of Squid Game are, for the most part, simply and vividly drawn – they are defined above all else by their desire to absolve their debts and live freely. That one desire is all it takes for them to suspend the usual moral code that most of us live by, and to act in frequently horrific ways.
Even Sang-Woo, one of the more honorable characters in the show, ends up making deeply immoral choices, culminating in his decision to hurl the glassmaker off a platform in a final act of desperation. He has no stable set of ethics – his code is shaped by a system that thrives on horror and pushes human beings to consider their fellow brethren as little more than tools to be used and discarded at whim.
In this way, Squid Game offers a gleefully cruel riposte to the notion of virtue ethics. Its characters do not act in consistent, moral ways, as virtue ethics imagines that agents do. Although it takes a combination of financial ruin and a system deliberately designed to sow mistrust and horror for them to abandon their usual moral principles, it still brings up some uncomfortable questions about how easily we might abandon our ethics in the real world.
With a kind of horrifying elegance, the show also reveals just how fragile our notion of solidarity can be. We might want to believe that there are bonds between ourselves and even total strangers that cannot be broken – a kind of communal well-spring of trust that stops abject violence from breaking out. But dangle the mere proposition of a debt-free life in front of people willing to do anything to save themselves and their families, and this sense of community breaks horribly down. The show’s participants are alienated not only from their own moral code, but from each other. They are strangers in the deepest sense of the term, the simple, child-like games of the show’s title obliterating any sense of shared humanity.
But can these participants be blamed for their actions? Derek Parfit, the English philosopher, would argue not. It was he who developed the notion of “blameless immorality”, conditions under which people can be forced into vicious actions for which they are not culpable. The heroes of Squid Game are propping up a system that perpetuates further horror, certainly, but their autonomy has been radically diminished. They are little more than puppets, guided by powers outside of their control, their actions no longer their own.
Image: Netflix
Ethics Versus Self-Interest: The False Choice
Squid Game rests on the principle that self-interest and ethics are at loggerheads with one another – that choosing to do good for others leads necessarily to a sacrifice for oneself. Yet, it’s worth analysing this supposed dichotomy between self-interest and a good, ethical life.
Certainly, the notion that helping others requires us to sacrifice something for ourselves is an old, pervasive myth – it’s why we can view do-gooders as suckers, wasting time on the help of others instead of getting ahead. As Singer notes, such a view was particularly prevalent in the ‘80s with the rise of Wall Street, a world where duping the market – and even your supposed friends – had considerable benefits.
Act immorally – lie, cheat and steal – and you too could become a power player, with more wealth than you dreamed of.
But is there really such a distinction between being self-interested and acting ethically? Could it not be that this is merely an old capitalist myth, designed to perpetuate a system that thrives on “othering” and isolation? After all, viewing our interests as separate from those around us requires us to believe that we are sealed off from the social world, that there is some kind of line to be drawn between behaviours that are meaningfully “ours” and those that belong to others.
In actual fact, it is worth moving away from such an individualist notion of the self, and towards a more communal one. As it happens, the characters of Squid Game are actively hurt by the ways that they are forced to view themselves as alienated from their fellow competitors. It benefits only the show’s mysterious villains, explicitly capitalist and murderous sociopaths, for the heroes of Squid Game to believe in the line between what will help them, and what will help their friends. When, in the penultimate episode, Gi-hun suggests to Sae-byeok that they team up against Sang-Woo, Gi-hun makes the fatal mistake of believing that she has anything to gain through Sang-Woo’s misfortunes.
Such a move away from individuation is not easy. Indeed, Squid Game has a breathtaking nihilism to it –there is no easy way for the characters to escape this deep alienation from one another. The system does not permit it. In the words of Audre Lorde:
“…the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
As philosopher Mark Fisher once wrote in his explication of capitalist realism (the notion that capitalism has pervaded every aspect of human life and is now essentially inescapable), even the ways in which Squid Game’s doomed characters attempt to overthrow their bonds are subsumed as part of those very bonds themselves.
Just as anti-capitalism becomes tainted by capitalism, the means of overthrowing the system sold as one more product, the characters of Squid Game have no recourse by which to escape the individuation that they are fatally trapped in. Their very attempts to connect with one another are undermined by the rules of each game, like the marble game, where voluntarily made pairs are then forced to kill each other.
Squid Game is thus a word of warning. In its terror and violence, it is a reminder to always strive for community, away from individuation and towards a system in which we see fellow agents as more alike us than not. Hope might not be possible for the show’s protagonists, whose very rebellion is neutered at every turn. But, if we resist the moral alienation and deep individuation thrust upon us by capitalism, it might be possible for us.
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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.
Do organisations and employees have to value the same things?
You’re at your desk when a complaint comes in about a comment by a senior employee on their social media account.
The post had nothing to do with their job, yet the complainant was able to track the person down at work – helped by the fact the same photo appeared on both the employee’s personal account and your company’s website.
What should you do? How do you reconcile the employee’s right to express their personal views with the need to protect your organisation’s good name?
At a recent gathering of The Ethics Alliance, members agreed that such dilemmas are increasingly common.
It’s a complex and rapidly shifting environment. Organisations are or are expected to be driven by purpose, one which considers society as a whole in its pursuit of success and can lose community trust if they fail to satisfy their multiple stakeholders. In parallel employers encourage diversity and inclusion, while asking staff to be authentic and “bring your whole self to work”. Tensions will inevitably arise.
In today’s organisations, people need to do more than just comply with rules – they are often required to make judgment calls. This became more formalised in the early 2000s when codes of conduct started being replaced by codes of ethics.
This stems partly because of the rapid rate of change in business: products and services can be replicated so quickly that companies are known not so much for what they make, but for what they “mean” and how they behave.
So what happens when differing values between individual and organisational values play out through social media?
One key insight shared at the Ethics Alliance gathering is that both risk and responsibility are greater for people who are more senior in the hierarchy. There was a consensus that clear policies are crucial, but that there is no one-size-fits-all solution, incidents need to be seen through multiple lenses and considered on a case-by-case basis.
For example, an organisation has an obligation to protect staff who speak out on its behalf from trolling, and to recognise that just as corporate values evolve, so too do the personal values of individuals. And if a complaint is judged to be trivial or mischievous, a representative might offer an apology on behalf of the organisation but not even inform the person targeted, because that would be neither necessary nor helpful. In such a grey area, flexibility is vital.
Law firm Gilbert + Tobin’s social media policy prohibits posts that are illegal, are derogatory of G+T, its employees or clients, or constitute serious misconduct such as disclosure of confidential information. As well, staff must not publish or post material that may reasonably be considered offensive, obscene, defamatory, threatening, harassing, bullying, discriminatory, hateful, racist, sexist or homophobic.
The policy has flexibility built in. Anna Sparkes, Chief People Officer says that if a post could be associated with Gilbert + Tobin, the poster must add a disclaimer stating that their views do not represent those of the firm. And if a complaint were received, the outcome would depend on the actions, whether the individual could be identified as being an employee, and whether there was a direct breach of the social media policy.
For property investment fund Charter Hall, if a senior executive has views that do not accord with major tenants or investors, there is the potential to affect the business. This is true of many organisations.
Charter Hall’s Head of People Emma Stewart says: “If I sign a contract that says, I’m signing up for this, knowing that I’m agreeing to not bring the brand and reputation of the organization into disrepute, then unfortunately or fortunately I’ve got to accept that that may come with some compromises, and I’ve got to be okay with that if I’m prepared to continue the employment arrangement.”
Organisations also need to be aware that if the compromise is too great within the workplace, the employee may be at risk of “moral injury”. Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay, the foundational voice on the subject, describes it as “the soul wound inflicted by doing something that violates one’s own ethics, ideals, or attachments”.
In such a case, both the organisation and the individual may need to decide whether the relationship is tenable. For the employee, prolonged pressure to act in ways that feel inauthentic and not aligned with personal values may also affect their ability to perform well in other aspects of their job. For both psychological safety and practical reasons, it may be better to part ways.
Tim Costello, the Director of Ethical Voice and former CEO of World Vision Australia, shares these concerns about “the interdependence and the extraordinary shared vulnerability between a corporate reputation and an employee’s own convictions”.
“You’re so entwined. It’s got really tricky in my own mind now,” he said.
Tim also feels the online world has hampered his ability to tailor a speech to a particular audience. “It has profoundly limited free speech.”
And he laments the loss of “that private area where you work out where you’re at, rock on rock, stone on stone, sharpen and revise”.
“I’m an extrovert, I process things aloud,” he said. “Anything can be tweeted in real time while you’re talking, before you’ve even finished your point.”
Ideas about social media and the public expression of values are being put to the test with a federal government bill suggesting changes to governance standard three in the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Regulation 2013 to expand the scope of impermissible activities that registered charities must not engage in or promote others to engage in.
Consequences are that charities will be stripped of their Deductible Gift Recipient status if an employee or volunteer commits a minor offence.
For example, a charity could lose DGR status if a staffer put up a social media post in support of a rally that turned violent, or if a volunteer put stickers on private property.
While it is widely understood that the proposed law is aimed at environmental groups, Tim Costello says the bill is “legislative over-reach” that would stifle all organisations’ ability to do advocacy.
Certainly, such a law would impose a “one size fits all” approach to a varied sector and a huge range of behaviours when multiple lenses are vital.
For organisations navigating these waters, it is essential first to clarify what they stand for and then to communicate these values to all stakeholders, particularly employees. When it comes to resolving problems, policies on social media and other out-of-work-hours behaviour provide a strong foundation, but complex situations require a flexible approach. Today’s solutions may need to be adapted to work in the evolving world tomorrow.
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BY Cris Parker
Cris Parker is the former Head of The Ethics Alliance and a Director of the Banking and Finance Oath at The Ethics Centre.
Anti-natalism: The case for not existing
Partway through the New Yorker’s profile of leading philosopher David Benatar, there is an anecdote that sums up his ethical position neatly.
A colleague at Benatar’s university announces to the department that she is pregnant. Benatar is pushed by the colleague as to whether he is happy about the news. Benatar thinks, then replies: “I am happy,” he says. “For you.”
Benatar is a leading advocate for the philosophical school known as anti-natalism. For such thinkers, being born is a harm. As it is so cleanly put in the title of his best-known work, Benatar believes that for each of us, it would have been better for us to never have been – non-existence is preferable to existence. Benatar might be happy for his colleague, but he is not happy for the conceived child who now faces a future of pain, distress and fear.
For such a seemingly pessimistic outlook, Benatar’s arguments in favour of anti-natalism are shockingly elegant. Take, for instance, his foundational view: the asymmetry of pleasure and pain. According to Benatar, pain is bad; pleasure is good. An absence of pain is good. But an absence of pleasure is not bad for the person for whom that absence is not a deprivation.
Imagine, for instance, that one day, on a morning stroll, you encounter a branching path. You take the left road. A few metres ahead, you spot a $100 bill lying on the ground. This brings you a deep pleasure. But now let’s say that you never took the left road – that you instead veered right. In this possible world, you do not encounter the $100 bill. If you had taken the left path, you would have. But you don’t know that. You have not been promised any money; you are not aware of what you have lost. Thus, Benatar thinks, you have not been harmed.
This is the key to the anti-natalist position. The child who is never born does not know that they are missing out on the pleasures of life; there is no entity who has been deprived, because there is no entity that exists. Moreover, the child who is born might encounter these pleasures, but they will also encounter a great number of pains. For Benatar, life is a myriad of tiny, complicated discomforts, from being hungry to needing the bathroom. Not bringing a child into the world means avoiding the perpetuation of suffering, saving an entity from a long, painful life for which the only escape – suicide, death, illness – is more pain.
These views may sound, for some, deeply psychologically distressing, and Benatar acknowledges that these are not easy pills to swallow. But he believes that they are necessary truths; that they are, in a sense, inevitable conclusions to be drawn from the nature of being a conscious entity in the world.
“I think that there is something hopeless and psychologically distressing about the nature of sentient life that makes anti-natalism the correct position to hold,” he explains.
Benatar’s position has been criticised by a number of thinkers, most recently by the stoic philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, who argued against the asymmetry of pleasure and pain in a recent blog post. According to Pigliucci, pain need not be morally bad; pleasure need not be morally good. For the stoic, these are “indifferents”, their moral value neutral.
But Benatar believes that Pigliuicci has misattributed claims to him. “The asymmetry I describe is not itself a moral claim – even though it supports moral claims about the ethics of procreation,” he explains. “My claims about pain and pleasure are claims about their prudential value for the person whose pain and pleasure they are – or would be.”
“Anybody – and I am not suggesting that Professor Pigliucci is among them – who denies that pain is intrinsically bad for the person whose pain it is, and that pleasure is intrinsically good for the person whose pleasure it is, does not understand what pain and pleasure are, and how and why they arose evolutionarily. If pain does not feel bad, it is not pain. If pleasure does not feel good, it is not pleasure.”
Others still have compared Benatar’s positions to those held by ecofascists, thinkers who believe that humanity is a virus that is wreaking a havoc on the natural world, and that the only way to avoid this suffering is to force the extinction of the human race. Indeed, there is at least some overlap between ecofascist beliefs and anti-natalist ones – both argue in favour of the end of human life – but Benatar is untroubled by such a connection, for the same reason that “those of us opposed to smoking should not be troubled that the Nazis were also opposed to smoking.”
“Even though (some) anti-natalists think that humans are bad for the environment, this shows only that they agree with the ‘eco’ part of ‘ecofascism’,” Benatar explains. “Anti-natalists are not committed to the ‘fascism’ part – and should, I argue, be opposed to it.”
Benatar’s position might seem deeply cynical, even nihilistic, but there is a strange kind of hope in it too. “Part of the reason why some people may find anti-natalism unthinkable is that they cannot correctly imagine what a world without sentient life would be like,” he explains. For the anti-natalist, there is some comfort to be taken in this potential, consciousness-free world – a world without suffering, without pain, without suicide or famine or death. After all, what, paradoxically, is more optimistic than that?
David Benatar presents The Case for Not Having Children at The Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2024. Tickets on sale now.
Image by Aarón Blanco Tejedor
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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.
The case for reskilling your employees
Futureproofing the workforce doesn’t just make good business sense, it simply makes sense, writes Paul Rodger.
Like it or not, we’re in the middle of a skills revolution. The effects of digital transformation, environmental change and economic uncertainty have disrupted conventional career pathways, causing businesses to question what skills the workforce needs now and tomorrow.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, as many as 75 million jobs are expected to be displaced by 2022 in 20 major economies. The good news: the report predicts a net increase in jobs by next year – driven by a demand for new capabilities. The bad news: 54 per cent of all employees will need to reskill or upskill in order to meet the demand.
If the global pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that companies are capable of making decisions that can have a good social outcome, even if their motive is ultimately self-interest. Sometimes, doing the right thing just makes business sense.
“Most businesses are actually ethical in nature because to be otherwise is high risk,” says behavioural scientist Dr Attracta Lagan. “Businesses put systems and processes in place to maintain ethical standards, because it’s counter-productive for them not to do so.”
For James Mcilvena, Managing Director of Lee Hecht Harrison (LHH) South APAC, an employment advisory firm specialising in organisational transformation, the question of who should reskill workforces is a no-brainer. “Leaving aside for a moment the kudos that come with doing the right thing, it makes financial good sense for organisations to upskill and reskill their people,” he says.
Aside from keeping institutional knowledge within a business, there is the simple benefit that upskilling and reskilling workers can be done for significantly lower cost than undergoing a restructure, paying out redundancies, and then hiring new staff and onboarding them. Workers need to be considered renewable, not replaceable, Mcilvena says. “Treating people as single-use, like you would a plastic kitchen set, doesn’t make sense from a corporate social responsibility perspective,” he adds.
“Treating people as single-use, like you would a plastic kitchen set, doesn’t make sense from a corporate social responsibility perspective.”
– James Mcilvena, LHH South APAC
Employees who have worked for an organisation for several years have a knowledge of that organisation’s needs, protocols and partner relationships that can’t easily be replicated. An organisation with a flexible and committed workforce is also one that can readily adapt to new shifting business paradigms.
Retaining staff by equipping them with the means to take on new skills has the added advantage of helping a business attract new talent. Staff members who experience the benefits of ongoing career development will usually share their positive experiences with others. Instilling a culture of professional growth can thus help strengthen an organisation’s reputation and bring in new candidates who value reskilling and upskilling opportunities.
“Boards should be kicking arse if management isn’t looking at these aspects of their workforce management,” says Mcilvena.
The need for businesses to stay on the front foot is a view shared by Adecco Group ANZ CEO Preeti Bajaj, who states that organisations’ ability to adapt to digital transformation depends on their levels of maturity.
“We at Adecco work with a spectrum of companies from proactive companies through to those who react in the moment,” she says. “Those that have greater maturity in understanding the reskilling/upskilling challenge have already made the case for workplace change – they have made the case to us and they also drive it internally themselves.”
“[Companies] that have greater maturity in understanding the reskilling/upskilling challenge have already made the case for workplace change.”
– Preeti Bajaj, Adecco Group ANZ CEO
Bajaj strikes a positive note for businesses that have been able to reimagine capitalism and place good outcomes for workers alongside earning a profit. She puts forward the example of Unilever as a company that has successfully reshaped its business around sustainability and practices designed to encourage and retain staff.
“The important point to make is that digital disruption is driving the structural shifts that are forcing organisations back to the drawing board. We’re seeing organisations reshape their business models and using that as an opportunity to incorporate sustainable workplace practices into those business models,” says Bajaj.
Change for the good
When considering the role organisations have to play in safeguarding the employability of their staff we must take into account the interdependent relationship that exists between business and society. “Work is such a major institution that it isn’t right to separate the world of work from the rest of society,” says Dr Lagan. “Big companies around the world recognise that they have an ethical responsibility to ensure that their employees remain employable – if not with them directly, then with someone else.”
Barriers to change exist, as is often the case when there is a need to recalibrate long-held assumptions. Companies must start to consider staff reskilling programs as an investment rather than an expense on a P&L sheet. They must have confidence in their workforce analytics so they can understand what skills they need of their staff – and generate a roadmap so they can equip them with those skills. Governments, too, have a role to play in incentivising businesses, but they need to think beyond short-term election cycles.
On the flipside, there is agreement on how organisations can more readily adapt to change, such as recognising the need for reskilling and upskilling considerations to move outside of HR departments and have them form part of a wider organisational strategy – complete with input by boards and senior management.
“These days organisations need to be learning organisations – everyone needs to have the opportunity to reskill themselves in tune with changes in the marketplace,” says Dr Lagan. “Remember that the technological shifts we’re seeing at the moment can be both an enabler and a threat to employability,” she says. “At the end of the day, to apply an ethical business lens is to make a choice – and the best choice a business can make is one that impacts positively on their employees and wider society.”
“The technological shifts we’re seeing at the moment can be both an enabler and a threat to employability.”
– Dr Attracta Lagan, Co-Principal at Managing Values
Why you should prioritise retaining – not replacing – your employees
• Businesses have a responsibility to ensure their employees remain employable.
• They’re well-placed to understand what skills are needed in future.
• Failure to keep staff acts as a burden to governments, family support networks and an underfunded mental health system.
• Employees are inspired to work for an organisation with social purpose.
• The market will reward businesses whose reskilling programs allow them to remain competitive.
• A culture of upskilling allows for adoption of new technological solutions and innovative business practices.
• Providing personalised career pathways for staff is appealing to the next generation of talent.
62% think businesses have a duty of care to reskill workers whose roles will be made redundant by automation.
– The Ethics Alliance Business Pulse survey
Reflection from Dr Simon Longstaff, Executive Director of The Ethics Centre
Economies are on the brink of changes that will be at least as profound as the Industrial Revolution in their impact on individuals and whole societies. Technological innovation has the capacity to reshape the world of work, finally relieving humans of the drudgery, exposure to danger and the back-breaking labour that has characterised the work of many, for millennia.
However, the promise of a ‘golden age’ casts a long shadow for those who might be displaced by the automated systems and robots that will usher in almost unimaginable prosperity. Indeed, if any force will slow the process of innovation, it will be the political weight of people who fear (rather than embrace) the future.
It follows that every business (and society as a whole) has a vested interest in ensuring that change is carefully managed in a just and orderly manner.
This article was published as part of Matrix Magazine, an initiative of The Ethics Alliance.
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BY The Ethics Alliance
The Ethics Alliance is a community of organisations sharing insights and learning together, to find a better way of doing business. The Alliance is an initiative of The Ethics Centre.
COP26: The choice of our lives
There is such a thing as truth. It might be difficult to discern.
Aspects of the truth might vary depending on one’s perspective. However, there are some things that can be known with a certainty sufficient to guide practical action. One of those truths is that life is fragile. The more complex its form, the greater its vulnerability. In the web of life, the severing of one strand can lead the whole to unravel. Cataclysmic failure is not inevitable. It’s just possible – and that is worth knowing. Those who gamble with life take a mighty risk.
In ethics – facts matter. They really matter. Too often, they are ignored by those who think that good intentions are enough. By themselves, good intentions are not enough.
These and other matters are worth bearing in mind as a selection of the world’s leaders gather in Glasgow for COP26. The overwhelming consensus of the world’s leading climate scientists is that life-as-we-know-it is imperiled by the cumulative effects of greenhouse gases. We, humans, are the major source of those emissions. We are the most powerful force on this planet. Our choices shape and make the world what it is.
Ethics is about how these choices are made. It identifies and examines the drivers of choice and ultimately helps us to discern what is good or bad, right or wrong, in the choices we make. At its most fundamental level, ethics underpins the world we make.
So, in every respect, what happens in Glasgow is a matter of ethics.
It is also a matter of politics – and this is where the divorce between ‘ethics’ and ‘politics’ is a cause for concern. The division was never intended to be as great as it has become. For Aristotle, ‘ethics’ and ‘politics’ were intended to be two sides of the same coin. Ethics was concerned with questions about the good life for an individual. Politics was also concerned about questions to do with the good life – but as applied to the community as a whole.
In the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow, we have witnessed a very partial kind of politics that has no apparent concern for the national interest. Instead, the debate about climate change has been recast as a contest between country and city.
In prosecuting their case, the National Party has sought to remain part of the national government while simultaneously trashing the most basic obligation of governments: that they govern for the sake of all.
I should make it clear that when it comes to climate policy, the Ethics Centre has been one of the earliest and most steadfast advocates for a just and orderly transition to a more sustainable future – for everyone affected, not just those living under the National Party’s wing.
The attempt to weaken Australia’s position in Glasgow hinges on a couple of arguments. First, the claim is made that anything Australia does to reduce its contribution to global warming will be ‘futile’ – as our national impact is tiny in comparison to major polluters such as China and India. Second, it is argued that the cost to the economy is just too great to bear – especially for those working in ‘climate exposed’ industries. The National Party then adds to this critique by stating that people living in the cities are asking their country cousins to carry a disproportionate share of the burden.
History reveals what is wrong with such arguments. For example, consider the decision, by a Labor Government, unilaterally to slash tariffs and embark upon an ambitious program to promote free trade. The decision to do so was grounded in a commitment to the national interest and the reasonable belief that, in the long term, the benefits would outweigh the costs – and be shared by all. Back then (as now), Australia represented only around 3% of global trade. In that sense, slashing Australian tariffs could have been presented as a ‘futile gesture’. After all, why cut tariffs in advance of the world’s major economies? And that argument was made by those who opposed trade liberalisation at the time – the Coalition parties.
So, who are the major beneficiaries of free trade? It is the people whom the National Party claims to represent; those working in agriculture, mining and minerals. Who paid the price? Hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs in manufacturing – mostly in industries like textiles, clothing, footwear, automotive, etc. And where did most of these people live? In metropolitan areas. So it has been ever since. Australia’s free trade deals inevitably aim to maximise the incomes of people living in rural and regional Australia while leaving the price to be paid by people living in the cities.
Have we heard anyone from the National Party offering sympathy for those who have paid such a high price for regional prosperity? Not a word. Indeed, not a word from anyone. Why the silence? Well, you could put it down to political indifference. Or, it could be that there is now a broad consensus that despite the pain of transition (which typically has been disorderly and unjust), the national interest has been served.
Which brings us back to Glasgow.
Nearly everyone – other than the Federal Government – seems to agree that, for Australia, Glasgow presents a golden opportunity. The adoption of strong, binding targets could enable Australia to become one of the most prosperous nations the world has ever known. We have access to unlimited renewable energy, vast natural resources, a stable socio-economic environment, educated people and so on. We have everything needed to prosper. Indeed, just as it was in Australia’s national interest unilaterally to cut tariffs and embrace free trade, so it is in our national interest to embrace ambitious climate targets – not just for 2050 but by 2030. The stronger the drivers, the better the longer-term outcome.
Yet, even as I write these words, I wonder if this is to miss the point?
As noted above, Aristotle thought ‘ethics’ and ‘politics’ should concern themselves with questions about the ‘good life’. But for whom? For people in the bush? For Australians? For humanity? Or is our duty to ‘life’ itself? Is not the truth about global warming’s threat to life on this planet the ultimate ethical foundation upon which to build strong commitments in Glasgow?
When it comes to life on this planet, there is no ‘town’ and ‘country’, no ‘Coalition and ‘Labor’, no ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. We are all in this together.
I realise that politics is the ‘art of the possible’ – and that the average politician is acutely sensitive to the sentiments of their electorate. However, there are times when, at their best, politicians enlarge our possibilities and in doing so, lead their electorate to a better place. This is why politics used to be considered the most noble calling of a citizen.
Our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has been wrestling with a form of politics that falls well short of that ideal. It is open to him to choose something better. That is both the gift (and curse) of his humanity. In Glasgow we will see not only what kind of politician Scott Morrison can be on our behalf. We will also get the measure of his capacity to lead. But most importantly, he will reveal the character of his humanity.
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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.
Power and the social network
In science, power has a very precise definition. It is the rate at which energy is being transferred – a relationship that is captured in a formula and can be thought of more informally as the amount of “work” being done.
So, in a scientific context – specifically physics, the meaning of power is clear. In contrast, power is a far more complex concept in social sciences – as revealed within a diverse range of human interactions.
There are two prevailing views on the nature of power. The first regards power predominantly as a tool for subjugation, while the second acknowledges its potential for harmful use while also pointing to its potential role in maintaining balance.
Thomas Hobbes championed the first notion, conceptualising one man’s gain in power as another man’s loss. A straightforward illustration of this can be seen in a wrestling match where two people compete, with one eventually winning. That outcome is incompatible with both having equal power. Even if they do so initially, a relative increase in power eventually accrues to the victor.
The second perspective on power is provided by Michel Foucault, who considered its nature to be more subtle and varied. He proposed that power assumes many forms and is invested in many things. This latent power only arises when an individual engages in conversation around ‘regimes of truth’ or understanding. Foucault’s definition of power is thus more charitable. He thinks of power as an entity that resides in all things rather than a structure through which people/things can mobilise control. He notes that power is synonymous with knowledge and fact.
In older structures, such as government and politics, it’s challenging for an individual to lose power entirely. A benefit of having power is that can enhance the credibility and longevity of a person’s philosophy. Even though someone may lose their position and ability to make decisions in government, they often retain their power to exercise influence within their social circles provided their personal credibility remains intact. This is how ‘informal’ power (influence) can shape the exercise of formal power.
This permanence of power is an important determinant of the behaviour of those in power. Confidence in the enduring nature of power (and its ability to ward off adverse consequences) often leads the powerful to make choices that advance their personal interests.
Social media has begun to redefine the nature of power. The dominant platforms have gained tremendous traction over the past decade, and gradually personal identity has become synonymous with online presence. Widespread fame and the attainment of a quasi-celebrity status has given key ‘influencers’ the ability to exercise ‘informal’ (but none the less real) power through the vector of their online followers. But social media fame is even more fickle than that gained through traditional means as its basis is intrinsically unpredictable.
As such, social media provides some useful insights into the new dynamics of power within a technological setting. For example, in the case of social media, power is actually being exercised by those who offer a response to what ‘influencers’ post. When you use social media, you use and direct your power through likes and comments offered in response to what has been posted. However, if you disapprove of something you’ve observed, you can withhold your endorsement or even actively express your disdain through dislikes and critical comments – in other words actively withdrawing your support can be part of a conscious act to diminish the power. So, where does power lie? With the influencers or their potentially fickle followers?
The technology that underpins social media platforms has also ‘democratised’ power in that almost anyone can gain a following and thus have the potential to exert a degree of influence.
It’s much easier now to establish a position of power online than it was traditionally – because of ease of access and the fact that there is no limit to the number of people who can have a platform and broadcast their views widely.
But this increase in access to power is a double-edged sword because, as quick as it is for someone to gain power through today’s media, they can just as easily lose it.
As a result, many ‘celebrities’ have short-lived fame. The fleeting nature of power has extended beyond the realm of social media into the offline world. For example, the twenty-four-hour media cycle and the need to feed an insatiable media ‘beast’ means that politicians now operate under an intense and unceasing public gaze. Even the slightest whiff of scandal can end a career – and end access to a formal source of power.
In modern societies, scrutiny drives and confers power by facilitating influence.
Online power is probably best conceptualised as a mixture of Foucault’s and Hobbes’ descriptions of power.
Overall, we see how our old structures of power perhaps do not adapt easily to the online world. The reachability and balance of the internet make it easier to comment on those in power and hold them accountable for their actions. Ultimately, the dynamic is shifting; while the factors that give people power – influence, connection, and money – remain prevalent on the internet, the power they generate is no longer as enduring.
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