Big Thinker: John Rawls
Is there a way to really get our societies to be fair for everyone?
This was the question John Rawls (1921-2002), American political philosopher and author of A Theory of Justice, attempted to answer. His work centres on social justice, privilege, and the distribution of resources in a society.
Rawl’s cake
Imagine it’s your birthday. Your parents decide to throw a party for you and your friends. When it’s time to cut the cake, your mother tells you, “You can cut the cake in whatever way you want to but you can’t choose the slice that you’ll get to have”.
Maybe you’d like a bigger slice of that cake. But since you don’t want to risk getting a small slice, you decide to cut equal sizes for everyone. Now you and your friends are happily munching away, knowing the cake was distributed as fairly as possible.
Fairness demands ignorance
Rawls thought most people’s definition of justice reflected what was good for them instead of anything shared or universal. You might think justice means owning the resources you’ve inherited, or you might think justice is about redistributing them. Whether intentionally or not, we all define justice in a way that gets us a little higher on the ladder. (Big slice for you, small slice for everyone else.)
To get to the core of things, Rawls asks us to imagine a situation where society doesn’t exist yet and no one knows where they will end up in life. What kind of society would you join knowing you could be somehow disadvantaged? If you entered this new world with no parents from childhood, a physical disability, intellectual impairment, financial hardship, or no access to school, what would you want it to be like?
If we each play along with Rawl’s hypothetical, we are likely to imagine fairness in a particular way. Rawls thought we would only join a society where everyone, no matter what circumstances we were born in, has their needs met.
Inequality needs to benefit everybody
Rawls’ conception of justice was based on society’s equal distribution of resources according to two principles.
The first principle is the equality principle. This says everyone should have access to the broadest possible range of civil liberties. Here the only limitation on our freedoms is what is necessary to give other people the same level of freedom. For this system to be fair, you can only be as free as everyone else.
The second principle is the difference principle. Any inequalities in society are only justified under two conditions:
1. There must be equality of opportunity. If there are going to be inequalities – like some people earning more money than others – they should be available to everyone. For example, if access to education increases people’s earning capacity, everyone should have the same access to education so everyone has the same chance to grow their wealth.
2. If there are any social disadvantages, they need to benefit the least advantaged people most. Rawls thought we should only be permitted to grow our personal wealth if we used it to benefit the poor. He wanted to keep the socioeconomically disadvantaged within a reasonable distance of the financially elite by redistributing resources. This was what he saw to be the fairest possible system.
If we were to imagine what the difference principle might look like in practice, it could be policies permitting people to leave inheritance to their children if the state is allowed to tax and distribute it to the poor.
Rawls’ challenge for political philosophy is to question whether a merit based system is as fair as people think. Was it only your work that got you to where you are today or did luck also play a role? If it was the latter, what does that tell us about justice?
Be consistent
Rawls was dedicated to finding the most reasonable political system possible. He believed the first step was to fill our parliaments with reasonable people. It might sound like a no brainer, but by reasonable he meant those with consistency and coherence between their various opinions and beliefs. He called this “reflective equilibrium”.
Imagine someone believes if employees do the same work, they should receive the same wage. Imagine they also opposed striving for pay parity between men and women. Rawls would say this person’s political beliefs are incompatible and therefore unreasonable. To achieve reflective equilibrium, one of these views will have to shift.
In fact, Rawls thought achieving genuine reflective equilibrium was impossible. Instead, we should try to get as near as we can to perfect synergy.
For those of us interested in ethics and politics, the reflective equilibrium is an important idea. We often form opinions based on gut reaction, instinct, or by focussing on the specifics of a situation.
Each of these approaches can at times be unreasonable and inconsistent. By forcing us to test how our different beliefs fit together, Rawls encourages us to do something very basic but very important: make sure our set of beliefs make sense.
First published March 2017. Updated August 2018.
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Doing good for the right reasons: AMP Capital's ethical foundations
Discover the ethical processes behind AMP Capital’s tobacco divestment. There are three years of thinking behind those headlines, explains Simon Longstaff. He was there to help them through.
You may have seen that AMP Capital decided to divest from tobacco and munitions. The organisation will sell A$440 million of tobacco investments and a further A$130 million in cluster munitions and landmines.
Although this is big news, it isn’t the first time a divestment like this has happened in Australia. What makes this news more significant is AMP Capital’s decision hasn’t come from traditional divestment strategies like shareholder activism or social protest. Instead, it is the product of a much larger process of ethical reflection.
This reflection started three years ago, when AMP Capital approached me, wanting to set its entire investment portfolio on a solid ethical foundation. Together, we sought to discover what that foundation might be.
What we learned surprised us. At first, we thought ‘fiduciary duty’ would be the main issue – AMP Capital’s duty to act in the best interests of its investors. AMP Capital is totally committed to discharging this obligation.
However, it turns out that there was another equally important issue – one that is for the most part ignored.
It concerns AMP Capital itself. Is it driven entirely by the ethics of others, washing its hands of all ethical responsibility? Or does AMP Capital have a right to set the ethical boundaries within which it offers its goods and services in the expectation of reward?
We concluded that just as a person can decide not to do something that goes against their conscience, so can a business.
Once we’d agreed on this basic idea, AMP Capital was able to build an ethical investment foundation based on a few core principles that we believed to be self-evident and so firmly grounded as to be uncontroversial. They are:
- No investment may be made if it leads to or supports conduct that violates the principle of ‘respect for persons’. AMP Capital will not invest in entities or activities that undermine fundamental human dignity, like those that treat people merely as a tool for some other end.
- AMP Capital will not enable – or seek to profit from – activities that violate international human rights law.
- AMP Capital will actively consider the extent to which its investments are in entities or products that cause harm. The relevant test is this – to what extent (if any) can this product be used without causing harm to the user or others?
- In assessing harm, AMP Capital will seek to determine the extent any harm is an inescapable side-effect of doing something good. If harm is inescapable, are the adverse side-effects mitigated to the greatest extent possible?
- AMP Capital will have regard to issues of ‘materiality’ – are the ethically problematic issues central to the investment being considered? AMP Capital will also bear in mind whether engagement with a company might be a better route to achieving a positive ethical outcome.
- AMP Capital will be open to being corrected if they’re mistaken about any of the facts or assumptions that have a bearing on deciding if a company’s conduct or products are harmful.
This framework can be applied to any situation. Regardless of the product or moment, it gives a strong ethical foundation for all the choices the company might make in the future.
Good foundations are something that every company needs. If embedded and practiced, they can reassure employees and customers that business choices are based on ethical reflection rather than the pressure of public opinion or the pursuit of profits at all cost. And they bring consistency and confidence to ethical decisions.
I’m very proud to have worked with AMP Capital on developing this framework. I hope it helps them and inspires others to do the same.
BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy 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.”
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Tips on how to find meaningful work
“Find a job you’ll love and you’ll never work a day in your life!” There are different claims about who coined this phrase but it’s stood the test of time. Like most one-liners, it’s easier said than done.
Most people need two things from their work. They need to earn enough to support all the other areas of their life and they need to feel dignified while doing it. Neither is an easy find.
We tend to know how much income we need but a sense of dignity and meaning can be elusive. You might want creative output, a good work/life balance or a sense of achievement earned through a ‘hard day’s work’. It’s easier to know what kind of work will suit you if you’ve taken Socrates’ advice: know thyself.
Still, insights from philosophy and psychology can help us spot some of the things that tend to give people a sense of meaning in their jobs.
You’ve gotta want it
This is the basic idea behind the ‘find a job you love’ proverb. If you’re doing something you enjoy, it won’t feel like a chore. If you’re motivated by income, prestige or something external, it will be hard to find the work itself fulfilling.
The philosopher Bernard Williams distinguishes ‘internal’ and ‘external’ motivations. We have an external motivation to do something if it would be good for us to do it, whether we want to or not. Internal motivations are things we personally want to do.
For example, if we’re sick, it is good for us to take medicine – that’s an external motivation. If we actually want to get better, we’ve also got an internal motivation. If we want a few more days off work, there’s no internal motive to get better, even though being healthy is better than being sick, generally speaking.
Williams thought external motivations alone couldn’t make us do something. We need some internal motivators to get us off the couch. Williams might not be right. Lots of people probably show up to work because they need to make ends meet but there’s still a lesson in his distinction. Salaries, prestige or fringe benefits won’t be enough to give us a lasting sense of meaning – we need to feel personally engaged with what we’re doing.
Look beyond official duties
Sometimes the core activities of our work won’t give us internal motivation. It might be some unofficial role our job enables us to fulfil.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz uses the example of Luke, a hospital janitor (his official title was “hospital custodian”). It’s unlikely Luke wakes up passionate about working light bulbs and shiny urinals. He found meaning in the parts of his work that extended beyond his official duties:
“The researchers asked the custodians to talk about their jobs, and the custodians began to tell them stories about what they did. Luke’s stories told them that his “official” duties were only one part of his real job, and that another central part of his job was to make the patients and their families feel comfortable, to cheer them up when they were down, to encourage them and divert them from their pain and fear, and to give them a willing ear if they felt like talking.”
The meaningful work Luke performed sat outside he things the hospital paid him for. Despite this, it still gave him enough satisfaction to keep showing up.
See your role in the bigger picture
Hospital janitors are a font of wisdom. Schwartz also describes how Ben and Corey, also janitors, found meaning. They recognised their role within the broader purpose of the hospital – to provide care for people who need it:
“Luke, Ben, and Corey were not generic custodians. They were hospital custodians. They saw themselves as playing an important role in an institution whose aim is to see to the care and welfare of patients.”
They would stop mopping floors if patients were walking the corridors for rehab or hold off from vacuuming when family were sleeping in the patient lounge. They weren’t just keeping things tidy and in working order. In a hospital, cleanliness staves off infection and can save lives. The context and purpose of their work gave it new meaning.
Find space for choice
Peter Cochrane, entrepreneur and technologist, thinks many jobs are taking what’s human out of their human employees. In the documentary The Future of Work and Death, he says, “When I go into companies I often ask the question, ‘Why are you employing people? You could get monkeys or robots to do this job.’ The people are not allowed to think – they are processing. They’re just like a machine.”
At an absolute minimum, feeling dignified at work means feeling like our humanity is being recognised. We want to be treated as people, not things. It’s important we find spaces in our work where we can be autonomous: making decisions for ourselves, exercising our creativity and asserting our ability to think freely.
It’s not a perfect fix
We must acknowledge the limitations of this advice. Our basic needs for food, housing, and the rest require many of us to persevere with work we find undignifying or meaningless.
But if you’re lucky enough to enjoy some choice in where you work and are unhappy in your current role, take a second to think – are you missing one of the above? At least you’ll know what to look for next time!
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics Explainer: Freedom of Speech
Freedom of speech refers to people’s ability to say what they want without punishment.
Most people focus on punishment by the state but social disapproval or protest can also have a chilling effect on free speech. The consequences of some kinds of speech can make people feel less confident in speaking their mind at all.
Since most philosophers agree there is no such thing as absolute free speech, the debate largely focuses on why we should restrict what people say. Many will state, “I believe in free speech except…”. What comes after that? This is where the discussion on what the exceptions and boundaries to free speech are.
Even John Stuart Mill, who is so influential on this topic we need to discuss his ideas at length, thought free speech has limits. You would usually be free to say, “Immigrants are stealing our jobs”. If you say so in front of an angry mob of recently laid off workers who also happen to be outside an immigrant resource centre, you might cause violence. Mill believed you should face consequences for remarks like these.
This belief stems from Mill’s harm principle, which states we should be free to act unless we’re harming someone else. He thought the only speech we should forbid is the kind that causes direct harm to other people.
Mill’s support for free speech is related to his consequentialist views. He thought we should be governed by laws leading to the best long-term outcomes. By allowing people to voice their views, even those we find immoral, society gives itself the best chance of learning what’s “true”.
This happens in two ways. First, the majority who think something is immoral might be wrong. Second, if the majority are right, they’ll be more confident of their position if they’ve successfully argued for it. In either case, free speech will improve society.
If we silence dissenting views, it assumes we already have the right opinion. Mill said “all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”.
Accepting the limits of our own knowledge means allowing others to speak their mind – even if we don’t like what they’ve got to say.
As Noam Chomsky said, “If you’re in favour of freedom of speech, that means you’re in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise”.
Free speech advocates tend to limit restrictions on speech to ‘direct’ harms like violence or defamation. Others think the harm principle is too narrow in definition. They believe some speech can be emotionally damaging, socially marginalising, and even descend into hate speech. They believe the speech that causes ‘indirect’ harms should also be restricted.
This leads people to claim citizens do not have the right to be offensive or insulting. Others disagree. Some don’t believe offence is socially or psychologically harmful. Furthermore, they suggest we cannot reasonably predict what kinds of speech will cause offence. Whether speech is acceptable or not becomes subjective. Some might find any view offensive if it disagrees with their own, which would see increasing calls for censorship.
In response, a range of theorists suggest offending is harmful and causes injury. They also say it has insidious effects on social cohesion because it places victims in a constant state of vulnerability.
In Australia, Race Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane is a strong proponent of this view. He believes certain kinds of speech “undermine the assurance of security to which every member of a good society is entitled”. Judith Butler goes further. She believes once you’ve been the victim of “injurious speech”, you lose control over your sense of place. You no longer know where you are welcome or when the next abuse will occur.
For these reasons, those who support only narrow limits to free speech are sometimes accused of prioritising speech above other goods like harmony and respect. As Soutphommasane says, “there is a heavy price to freedom that is imposed on victims”.
Whether you think offences count as harms or not will help determine how free you think speech should be. Regardless of where we draw the line, there will still be room for people to say things that are obnoxious, undiplomatic or insensitive without formal punishment. Having a right to speak won’t mean you are always seen as saying the right thing.
This encourages us to include ideas from deontology and virtue ethics into our thinking. As well as asking what will lead to the best society or which kinds of speech will cause harm, consider different questions. What are our duties to others when it comes to the way we talk? How would a wise or virtuous person use speech?
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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.
Between frenzy and despair: navigating our new political era
In years past, one of my roles was to take meteorological readings for the north-west sector of the Gulf of Carpentaria. My job was to relay weather readings to an operator in Katherine.
From there they would be added to the data pool used by the Bureau of Meteorology to track and predict Australia’s weather. Although my part was very basic, it was essential. And so it was that I found myself reading the weather at the height of a tropical cyclone.
I stepped into the maelstrom, physically wrestling the wind and exhilarated by this personal encounter with the unbridled power of nature. Meanwhile, other (perhaps more sensible) people were gathered together in shelters. The same cyclone that made me feel alive left them terrified. One phenomenon, two very different responses.
Whatever divides Trump’s supporters from his critics, they are united by one thing – both groups are being buffeted by powerful winds of change.
For me, that cyclone is like President Trump’s emerging impact on the world. The flurry of claims and counter-claims, fake news, alternative facts and the swirling vortex of presidential orders demonstrate enormous power and have provoked diverse responses.
For some people, President Trump is a thrilling departure from ‘politics as normal’. For others, his conduct is a frightening repudiation of all they believe in. Whatever divides Trump’s supporters from his critics, they are united by one thing – both groups are being buffeted by powerful winds of change. As such, they have a common need to find stable anchor points.
Trump supporters risk being swept away on a tide of populism that knows no boundaries and ultimately eats its own. Critics risk their scepticism giving way to outright cynicism, the kind that inevitably corrodes the bonds of human society. Of the two risks, the latter is the greater. Cynicism often ends in resignation and the hopelessness of despair. Citizens disengage and democracies unravel from within.
Neither outcome – self-defeating populism or rampant despair – is inevitable.
History is full of examples of individuals and societies who have lost their ethical bearings, only later to look back in horror at what has been done.
Core values and principles provide the anchor points needed to hold people steady. They are the ground we return to whenever making conscious decisions about how to live as individuals and as a society. Although the specifics may vary between people, places and times, the basic structure is the same. With one important exception, every human being makes choices informed by their values and principles.
The exception is the problem.
Too often, people act without giving much thought to what they are doing. Instead, habits provide the pattern for accepted behaviour. In these circumstances it is all too easy for good people to drift until they either act badly or become complicit in the bad deeds of others. History is full of examples of individuals and societies who have lost their ethical bearings, only later to look back in horror at what has been done.
An ethical life is a life for the hopeful.
In nearly every case, the majority has made no active choice to take the wrong path. Instead, they have been led there in ignorance by a demagogue or have gone along unwillingly, having lost their capacity to resist to the pits of despair.
At its heart, ethics is about living an ‘examined life’. It is about resisting the temptation to act out of habit alone – even if those habits are virtuous. Although we inherit values and principles from our parents and other people important in our lives, a mature person becomes capable of making these values and principles their own. Their lives will be more than a mere imitation of others. It is only by moving beyond inherited values and moral codes that we can genuinely take responsibility for our own lives.
From a practical point of view, the first step is to establish a conscious, personal inventory of values and principles. You do this by asking “what things are good at their core and worth choosing above other things?” and “what are the right ways to obtain those things?”
An ethical life is a life for the hopeful, a way of living that strengthens the sinews of all those affected by the political project embodied by President Trump. Political bluster can be every bit as dangerous as cyclonic winds. Let’s strengthen the ground on which we meet it.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy 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.”
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.
5 ethical life hacks
It’s not all tough decisions – walking, sleeping and reading are some ways you can seamlessly strengthen your ethical muscles every day. Here are some activities that can help refine your ethics while you’re busy in your day-to-day life.
Get back to nature
Aristotle believed everything in nature contains “something of the marvellous”. It turns out nature might also help make us a bit more marvellous. Research by Jia Wei Zhang and colleagues revealed how “perceiving natural beauty” (basically, looking at nature and recognising how wonderful it is) can make you more prosocial. Specifically, it can make you more helpful, trusting and generous. Nice one, trees.
The apparent reason for this is because a connection with nature leads to heightened positive emotions. People are happier when they are connected with nature and other research suggests happy people tend to be more prosocial. Inadvertently, as Zhang and his colleagues learned, this means nature helps make us better team players.
Read literature to develop ‘Theory of Mind’
In psychology, ‘Theory of Mind’ refers to the ability to understand the emotions, intentions and mental states of other people and to understand that other people’s mental states are different from our own, which is a crucial component of empathy. Like most things, our Theory of Mind improves with practice.
David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano think one way of practising and developing Theory of Mind is by reading literary fiction. They believe literature “uniquely engages the psychological processes needed to gain access to characters’ subjective experiences” because it doesn’t aim to entertain readers but challenge them.
Work up a sweat
As well as the health benefits it brings, exercise can make you a more virtuous person. Philosopher Damon Young believes exercise brings about “subtle changes to our character: we are more proud, humble, generous or constant”.
Pride is usually seen as a vice but exercise can give us a healthy sense of pride, which Young defines as “taking pleasure in yourself”. Taking pleasure in ourselves and recognising ourselves as valuable has obvious benefits for self-esteem, but it also gives us a heightened sense of responsibility. By taking pride in the work we’ve invested in ourselves, we acknowledge the role we have making change in the world, a feeling with applications far broader than the gym.
Take meal breaks when you’re making decisions
In 2011, an Israeli parole board had to consider several cases on the same day. Among them were two Arab-Israelis, each of them serving 30 months for fraud. One of them received parole, the other didn’t. The only difference? One of their hearings was at the start of the day, the other at the end.
Researcher Shai Danzigner and co-authors concluded “decision fatigue” explained the difference in the judges’ decisions. They found the rate of favourable rulings were around 65% just after meal breaks at the start of the day and lunch time, but they diminished to 0% by the end of the session.
There’s some good news though. The research suggests a meal break can put your decision making back on track. Maybe it’s time to stop taking lunch at your desk.
Get a good night’s sleep
We’ve been starting to pay more attention to the social costs of exhaustion. In NSW, public awareness campaigns now list fatigue as one of the ‘big three’ factors in road fatalities alongside speeding and drunk driving. It turns out even if it doesn’t kill you, exhaustion can lead to ethical compromises and slip ups in the workplace.
In 2011, Christopher Barnes and his colleagues released a study suggesting “employees are less likely to resist the temptation to engage in unethical behaviour when they are low on sleep”. When we’re tired we experience ‘ego depletion’ that weakens our self-control. Experiments conducted by Barnes’ team suggest when we’re tired we’re vulnerable to cutting corners and cheating. So, if you’re thinking of doing something dodgy, sleep on it first.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Ethics from the couch: 5 shows to binge on
Study! Relax!
¿Por qué no los dos?
In the spirit of the Old El Paso school of philosophy, here are five TV shows you can binge watch that will also get you thinking a little about ethics. Quick warning: there are some minor spoilers below.
1. UnREAL
We’re not going to suggest you go back and watch The Bachelor or Survivor Australia (you probably watched them the first time around). Check out UnREAL instead. It’s a fictional look at the thorny ethics of reality TV based around the producers of Everlasting, which is The Bachelor in pretty much everything but name.
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It’s easy to watch reality TV and assume the people appearing on the shows are fair game for criticism because they signed up to appear on the program. What’s easily forgotten – until you watch UnREAL – is the manipulation undertaken by producers to create drama and ‘good’ television. In season 1, a contestant kills herself as a result of this kind of manipulation, which only sparks higher ratings.
2. Offspring
If you’ve never watched Offspring, you’ve got a lot to catch up on. The feel-good Aussie sitcom was rebooted for a fifth season in 2016 and brought with it a thorny bioethics conundrum: who has the right to a dead man’s sperm?
Offspring centres around Nina Proudman and her family, and also deals with the fallout from the sudden death of Patrick, Nina’s fiancé and father of her daughter. Unknown to Nina, Patrick had some of his sperm frozen during a previous marriage. His ex-wife decides to offer Nina his sperm, in case she would like to have another child to him.
Does Nina have any right to use Patrick’s sperm? Does his ex-wife have any right to offer it to Nina? Patrick donated before he was in a relationship with Nina and we have no idea what his wishes would be for children in the event of his death. How can we respect his wishes in this case?
3. Black Mirror
This isn’t the first time we’ve discussed Black Mirror: Patrick Stokes explored the themes of one episode in his piece on digital death. Black Mirror doesn’t follow a season-long narrative. It’s a bunch of standalone dramas exploring themes around technology, the future and humanity. It can be pretty dystopian but does encourage us to think twice about where today’s technology might be headed.
One episode that hits close to home is “Hated in the Nation”, which has a detective who investigates the deaths of young people subjected to online shaming and social media pile ons. Just because we don’t see the consequences of a mean tweet or aggressive comment, it doesn’t mean we’re not responsible for them.
4. The Good Place
One for the philosopher nerds among us! When Eleanor Shellstrop is killed by a trailer advertising erectile dysfunction drugs, she finds herself in the afterlife. Everything is perfect except Eleanor herself. It turns out the hard-drinking, foul-mouthed woman was meant to go to “the bad place” but a clerical error worked in her favour.
Eleanor enlists the help of her allocated ‘soul mate’ Chidi, who was an ethics professor on earth. He proceeds to help her to reform, teaching her about Kant, Aristotle and the rest. The show basically functions as an introduction to moral philosophy for both Eleanor and viewers, but manages to sneak in a few decent jokes along the way.
5. Cleverman
Mythology and traditional stories have always been good fodder for film and television, so it’s a little surprising Aboriginal stories have been so absent from Australian screens. Ryan Griffen was aware of this absence and wanted to create an Aboriginal superhero for his son. The end product was Cleverman, a dystopian sci-fi series about the Hairypeople – an Indigenous race who live for hundreds of years, have extraordinary strength and grow thick pelts across their body.
The “Hairies” are seen as subhuman, rounded up and kept in a separate part of society called the Zone. The spiritual leader of the Zone is the Cleverman, whose powers include bringing people back from the dead. Cleverman follows a range of narratives around the internal politics of the Zone and the broader social structures that continue to oppress Hairypeople.
What’s important about Cleverman is both its representation, putting Aboriginal faces at the centre of a world based in Dreamtime stories, and the ability – like all sci-fi – to take pressing social issues and explore them in a fictional world.
Questions around Aboriginal identity in the broader Australian community, social attitudes to ‘otherness’, black deaths at the hands of white police officers and the militarisation of government departments are all explored.
You are more than your job
There are many ways we define our personal identity. Often, we define it by the roles we play in life.
We might think of ourselves as a child, parent, sibling, spouse, lover, friend… It is remarkable how we integrate all these different roles and relationships into our own, singular person.
People may often identify themselves according to their work. It’s been happening throughout history, as we can hear in occupational surnames such as Carpenter, Carter, Baker and Wheeler. We even link our identity with what we do for bureaucratic reasons. For example, every traveller is required to state their occupation when departing from or arriving in Australia.
Personal value has shifted focus from our character, personality, and relationships, to our role or place in society. It is no longer a question of who we are but what we do.
Casual conversations, too, eventually veer towards the question, “what do you do?” But a few years ago, I noticed the response to the question “How are you?” was changing from “I’m well” to “I’m busy”. I wondered what lay behind this altered response. What were they trying to say?
I concluded that the words “I am busy” are a proxy for “I am valued/needed”. My worth is affirmed by the fact I am in demand to the point of being busy.
If I’m correct, this marks a subtle but important change. Personal value has problematically shifted focus from our character, personality and relationships to our role or place in society. It is no longer a question of who we are but what we do.
Perhaps we should reflect on some of the deeper questions to do with identity, meaning and value.
For the most part, we might not notice this change in emphasis. However, if what I suspect is true, a holiday such as the enforced Christmas vacation could be a period of stress and dislocation for people who define themselves by their work – especially if they live alone and are without family or friends.
For some people, a job is not only a source of identity, it may also be their principal social environment, providing a regular opportunity for human contact. For such people, being deprived of this context can be a profound loss. To be ‘on leave’ is to be cut off from their principal source of identity.
Those of us with established social networks could help by reaching out to such people and making sure they’re included in holiday celebrations. Among other things, this sends a signal that the person is valued for more than their work.
Work-focused individuals could also volunteer with charities during the holiday season. This would provide a readymade social context and a valuable, alternative source of meaning and identity.
However, especially at Christmas time, perhaps we should reflect on some of the deeper questions dealing with identity, meaning and value. At the heart of ethics is a belief in the intrinsic worth of every person – irrespective of their gender, race, religion, sexuality… or job.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy 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.”
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.
The etiquette of gift giving
I enjoy giving gifts, especially for my children. It’s an opportunity to think about them, who they are now and how they’re developing.
I want the gift I choose to be liked by the person who receives it but I also expect it to do other things. Does this gift tell them they are understood? Loved? Appreciated? Does it reflect our relationship? It’s a bit of a gamble and is easy to get wrong, which is why I’m often a little freer with spending my money and time on a gift than I am usually.
This deeply personal way of thinking about gifts isn’t unusual but it overlooks the shared, ritualised aspects of gift exchange. In childhood we learn a polite dance of expectation and obligation. Even though gift-giving is meant to be spontaneous and honest, it follows a predictable script of performed generosity and gratitude.
In Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the dramatic Gina offers a great example of this. She secretly opens all her presents in advance so she can rehearse her ‘opening’ expressions for later.
A gift might be given freely and without coercion, but it doesn’t come without basic obligations for the receiver of the gift: to accept the gift, to express gratitude, to reciprocate. While a gift might express or help reinforce a relationship, the giver’s intention alone is no guarantee of success.
‘Charity gifts’ like providing clean water for a community overseas are undoubtedly well motivated, but do they serve the same purpose as traditional gift giving?
The rise of ‘charity gifts’ interrupts our usual expectations of a gift as an exchange between two people or families that is motivated by a relationship. Interestingly, by donating money to a charity in another’s name the ordinary social expectations of giving are preserved. The relationship between giver and the nominal recipient of the gift might even be bolstered without any tangible exchange occurring between them.
The ultimate recipient of the gift might benefit from it but they are receiving anonymous charity rather than a gift. You might even argue that they are part of the gift being given. For those considering ‘charity gifts’, it’s worth asking: what are you giving, to who, and why?
You’re unwrapping a present, surrounded by family when you unveil the most garish, knitted socks from great Aunty Mavis. Do you have to keep them? Are you obliged to wear them?
This situation makes the tacit expectations around how to receive gifts more overt. We don’t know much about great Aunty Mavis’s motivations. She might have simply enjoyed knitting the socks and have little interest in our feelings about them. The situation requires what sociologist David Ekerdt calls an “act of reception”. Without it, Mavis’s gift giving gesture will hang in the air like an unshaken hand.
A common response, I suspect, to avoid an uncomfortable situation would be to graciously accept the gift without giving offence, and then to quietly dispose of it later. Think Colin Firth’s character wearing the Christmas themed jumper in Bridget Jones.
Of course, there’s a choice here. I’d probably put the socks on immediately and see what I could discover about them and myself, but I wouldn’t pretend to like them if I didn’t.
Children are often encouraged to write ‘Christmas lists’ and send them to Santa. Later in life, lots of people are explicit in the gifts they want to receive for Christmas or birthdays. Do these trends encourage us to think about gift giving in a different way?
As I write this, my almost eight year old has stuck a sizeable birthday list on the fridge. She wants these things but she also wants me to understand her. Her list is an attempt to ensure I don’t get her wrong. The list is important, but as her parent I don’t only want to give her the things she wants. This is where gifts differ from simply an exchange of money for goods in the market. Gifts entail risky choices and unpredictable receptions.
It feels as though there’s a tension between the act of giving a gift itself, which is an act of generosity, and the general climate of the season, which seems more self-interested. Is that tension inescapable?
Gift giving usually has a dose of both. We give because we want to, but also because we expect something in return. Even if we don’t expect the straightforward exchange of a gift in return, we might hope for a stronger relationship, to be held high in someone’s opinion, or simply to be appreciated as kind, thoughtful or generous.
To be clear, this is not the same variety of self-interest as the stereotypical selfish consumer always hungry for more. It’s self-interest, yet I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong in wanting our lives to be good with caring relationships. Perhaps when it comes to choosing a gift, we don’t need to be so quick to disown having a pinch or two of self-interest in the gift-giving game. It might even lead to a better choice of gift than great Aunty Mavis’s socks.
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BY Ruth Quibell
Ruth Quibell is a sociologist based in Melbourne. Her most recent book is The Promise of Things.
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.
Risky business: lockout laws, sharks, and media bias
The New South Wales lockout laws were introduced in early 2014 in the wake of a great tragedy – the loss of human life to alcohol-fuelled violence.
Following the recommendations of an independent inquiry by Ian Callinan QC in 2016, the government decided to soften them. It shows that when we legislate in the wake of a tragedy, our judgement can be reactive. In the future, let’s measure our reactions against evidence.
When lockout laws were introduced in Sydney, alcohol related violence was on a downward trend. Even if people were afraid of becoming victims of violence, they were actually less likely to be attacked than in the past.
There is something to be learned from reflecting on the climate in which these laws were passed. We should be thinking about risks in terms of their likelihood, not in terms of how much we fear them. But that’s very hard, as we can see with another example – shark attacks.
People overestimate the likelihood of a shark attack in the same way they do other events they seriously fear, like terrorism and natural disasters. A study on Australian perception of sharks found that Sydneysiders believe shark attacks occur twice as often as they actually do, and fatal ones four times as often.
“Exposure to television media depicting violence and crime leads to a substantial rise in how often people believe they occur. This effect is particularly strong for vivid images.”
This isn’t surprising. Research tells us we believe things are more likely to occur if we can easily call to mind examples of when they’ve occurred. And disturbing examples are easier to recall. The process of judging the probability of an event by how easy we find it to think of examples is known as the availability heuristic.
Emotional information is easier to remember, and so the availability heuristic has an interesting relationship with news coverage. Emotional news content prompts our attention, invariably placing demands on further coverage, which we will remember more easily.
News media is highly responsive to issues its audiences are interested in, and as a result those issues get more coverage. This pulls people into a feedback loop whereby their demands for further coverage lead them to believe events are more probable than they really are.
“Passing legislation in a climate of fear is risky business and can deliver us further problems down the line.”
For example, exposure to television media depicting violence and crime leads to a substantial rise in how often people believe crimes occur. This effect is particularly strong for vivid images.
Knowing all this, we should expect people to overestimate the probability of events that provoke fear – violence, terrorism, plane crashes and natural disasters – particularly while they’re fresh in our memory. This effect is seen not just in how we speak and think about probability, but in how we act to protect ourselves, which brings us back to NSW policy.
Passing legislation in a climate of fear is risky business and can deliver us further problems down the line. Lockout laws are said to have been bad for Sydney’s culture and night-time economy. The public backlash forced the review that recommended loosening the reins of the lockout laws.
“Once news providers and their audience are responding only to one another without consideration for evidence or facts, the public’s ability to accurately judge risk has been seriously distorted.”
The point is not whether lockout laws are effective in decreasing the threat of violence (which they have been in Sydney CBD), but the conditions through which they came about. These included media coverage on disturbing and unusual events – in particular, ‘one-punch’ killings – which caused fear and demanded attention, plus a campaign to increase awareness.
When the media reports on disturbing and unusual events at the same time that campaigns are run to increase awareness for them, the basic ingredients for a feedback between news media and its audiences are met. Once news providers and their audiences are responding only to one another without consideration for evidence or facts, the public’s ability to accurately judge risk has been seriously distorted.
Shark nets are installed with the expectation of reducing the risk of shark attacks but they do this at the expense of marine life. They come as a response to the fact Australia has an above average incidence of shark attacks, which appear to be increasing. But let’s put this in perspective – the risk posed by sharks is still extremely low, accounting for two deaths in 2016 and one death in 2017.
The availability heuristic has unconscious components. Usually, people aren’t aware they’re estimating probability based on their fallible and selective memory. When people are unaware of how emotions, personal experiences and exposure to similar events can affect their judgements, they make unconsciously biased decisions.
Without appropriate consideration, people are at risk of basing important decisions on forces they aren’t consciously aware of. They may be led to support invasive or expensive regulations to protect themselves from risks that are highly unlikely. Where these regulations have undesirable side effects, like marine animal deaths, cultural damages to nightlife or the closure of businesses, this can mean real consequences for unreal problems.
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BY Jack Hume
Jack studied Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Sydney, completing his Bachelor of Arts in 2017 with First Class Honours. He has supported The Ethics Centre's Advice & Education team in research capacities over the last two years, contributing to their work on cognitive bias in decision making, and ethics education in financial services. In 2018, he joined the Centre full-time as a Graduate Consultant. He brings insights from contemporary political philosophy, moral psychology and skills in qualitative research to consulting projects across a variety of sectors.