Access to ethical advice is crucial
Better ethical approaches for individuals, businesses and organisations doesn’t just make moral sense. The financial benefits are massive, too.
It might seem a little ironic to take ethics advice from an intelligence agency that consciously deploys deception, yet it shows why access to ethical advice is vitally important. Indeed, we argue that the example of an ethics counsellor within ASIS demonstrates why every organisation should have (access to) an ethical adviser.
Ethics is often considered to be a personal or private activity, in which an individual makes decisions guided by an ethical code, compass or frame of reference. However, emerging technologies necessitate consideration of how ethics apply “at scale”.
Whether we are conscious of this (or not), ethical decisions are being made at the “back end” – or programming phase – but may not be visible until an outcome or decision, or user action, is reached at the other end of the process.
Miah Hammond-Errey describes in her book, Big Data, Emerging Technologies and Intelligence: National Security Disrupted, how “ethics at scale” is being driven by algorithms that seek to replicate human decision-making processes.
This includes unavoidable ethical dimensions, at increasing levels of speed, scope and depth – often in real time.
The concept of ethics at scale means that the context and culture of the companies and countries that created each algorithm, and the data they were trained on, increasingly shapes decisions at an individual, organisation and nation-state level.
Emerging technologies are likely to be integrated into work practices in response to the world itself becoming more complex. Yet, those same technologies may themselves make the ethical landscape even more complex and uncertain.
The three co-authors recently discussed the nexus of ethics, technology and intelligence, concluding there are three essential elements that must be acknowledged.
First, ethics matter. They are not an optional extra. They are not something to be “bolted on” to existing decision-making processes. Ethics matter: for our own personal sense of peace, to maximise the utility of new technologies, for social cohesion and its contribution to national security and as an expression of the values and principles we seek to uphold as a liberal democracy.
Second, there is a strong economic case for investing in the ethical infrastructure that underpins trust in and the legitimacy of our public and private national intuitions. A 10 per cent improvement in ethics in Australia is estimated to lead to an increase in the nation’s GDP of $45 billion per annum. This research also shows improving the ethical reputation of a business can lead to a 7 per cent increase in return on investment. A 10 per cent improvement in ethical behaviour is linked with a 2.7 to 6.6 per cent increase in wages.
Third, ethical challenges are only going to increase in depth, frequency and complexity as we integrate emerging technologies into our existing social, business and government structures. Examples of areas already presenting ethical risk include: using AI to summarise submissions to government, using algorithms to vary pricing for access to services for different customer segments or perhaps using new technologies to identify indicators of terrorist activity. That’s before we even get to novel applications employing neurotechnology such as brain computer interfaces.
Ethical challenges are, of course, not new. Current examples driven by new and emerging technologies include privacy intrusion, data access, ownership and use, increasing inequality and the impact of cyber physical systems.
However, an extant need for ethical rumination is, for now at least, a human endeavour.
As a senior leader of ASIS, with a background in the military, Major General Paul Symon (retd) strongly supported resourcing a (part-time) ethics counsellor. He was aware the act of cultivating agents, and the tradecraft involved, would inevitably demand moral enquiry by the most accomplished ASIS officers.
His belief was without a solid understanding of ethics, there was no standard against which the actions of the profession, or the choices of individuals, could be measured.
So, a relationship emerged with the Ethics Centre. A compact of sorts. Any officer facing an ethical dilemma was encouraged to speak confidentially to the ethics counsellor. The conversation and the moral reasoning were important.
General Symon guaranteed no career detriment to anyone who “opted out” of an activity so long as they had fleshed out their concerns with the ethics counsellor. Often, an officer’s concerns were allayed following discussion, and they proceeded with an activity knowing there was a justification both legally and ethically.
Perhaps if we’d had ethical advisers available across other institutions, we might have prevented some of the greatest moral failures of recent times, such as the pink batts deaths and robodebt.
If we had ethical advisers accessible to industry, then perhaps we’d have avoided the kind of misconduct revealed in multiple royal commissions looking into everything from banking and finance to the treatment of veterans to aged care.
We believe our work over years, including examples in defence and intelligence, demonstrates practical examples and the requirement to build our national capacity for ethical decision-making supported by sound, disinterested advice. That is one reason we support the establishment of an Australian Institute for Applied Ethics with the independence and reach needed to work with others in lifting our national capacity in this area.
Pledge your support for an Australian Institute of Applied Ethics. Sign your name at: https://ethicsinstitute.au/
This article was originally published in The Canberra Times.
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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 Major General Paul Symon
Major General Paul Symon (retd) is a former director-general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service.
I changed my mind about prisons
Every time the face of a criminal flashed up on the screen of our flatscreen TV, my parents would never hesitate to condemn the perpetrator, and demand the prolonged imprisonment of the thief or shoplifter.
For violent crimes, the death penalty would often come into conversation.
My siblings and I, perched on the leather couch, would listen open-mouthed, our young minds unable to comprehend how anyone would even consider such an act. I thought to myself: anyone who went to jail was inherently evil, different to normal people.
Yet, as I grew older and started to reach beyond the sheltered confines of our upper-middle-class home, that perspective gradually fell apart.
I have come to realise that our prison system is dysfunctional, a warped interpretation of right and wrong. A system designed for retribution, that essentially calls an end to a person’s potential in life, is both ethically and practically malfunctioning. Intended to benefit society through rightful punishment and restorative justice, it is instead one of the largest perpetrators of discrimination and often even worsens a prisoner’s life after release.
For instance, consider the story of Wesley Ford: a gay Whadjuk/Ballardong man, who battled with a drug addiction that fuelled 13 prison stints over two decades. He was just one of the 60% of Australian prison detainees who have been previously incarcerated. We have one of the highest recidivism rates in the world and, in a world where over half of prisoners expect to be homeless after release, and it is nearly impossible to secure employment, is that really such a surprise?
Our sentences do not tend to be harsh enough to fully realise the power of deterrence, nor are the quality or quantity of support services anywhere near sufficient to rehabilitate offenders.
In the words of Ford, ‘There were services there, but it is such a farce, because … they are so few and far between hardly anyone can get onto them.’
This also promotes a cycle of crime, further disadvantaging minority groups. Despite making up only 2% of the overall population, Indigenous Australians constitute nearly 30% of prisoners. They are twice as likely to have been refused bail by police before their first court appearance.
As for a solution, the harsher approach, employed by regimes such as Russia, is evidently unethical. Criminal behaviour must be punished, but the unnecessary imposition of prolonged sentences or even death penalties for minor offenders is closer to a violation of basic human rights, rather than the intended enforcement of justice. This is supported by various ethical frameworks, be it a utilitarian goal to preserve life, or the Christian belief in grace. Instead, especially for those who are low-risk offenders, restorative justice measures should be utilised to punish behaviour whilst also incentivising criminals to make better decisions. This approach has been proven to work, as evidenced by the Norwegian system.
With a system of small, community facilities that focus on rehabilitation and reintegration into society, Norway’s prison system ensures that prisoners do not lose their humanity and dignity whilst incarcerated. The facilities are typically located close to the inmates’ homes, ensuring that they can maintain relationships, and the cells resemble dormitories rather than jails. Norwegian prisoners have the right to vote, receive an education, and see family.
This approach may seem radical, but it has been incredibly successful in Norway. The Scandinavian nation has one of the lowest recidivism rates (20% within 2 years), a dramatic decrease since the 1990s (70-80%, like modern-day USA) when it had a more traditional system. Furthermore, ensuring that prisoners can live normal lives after release benefits the economy. Fewer people in prison means more capable adults available for employment, and many prisoners even leave with additional skills, leading to a 40% increase in employment rates after prison for previously unemployed inmates.
Yet, one drawback is the higher expenses of this system. Norway spends an average of 93,000 USD per year per prisoner, which is potentially unviable for countries with larger prison populations. Such a proposal would also likely be controversial amongst voters, unhappy with their taxpayer dollars being spent on criminals.
And might it be unethical to divert taxpayer funds to lawbreakers? To what extent does one deserve forgiveness? When does an act become unforgivable?
The issue is extremely complex, and realistically, a slightly different setup might be necessary for each unique society. Yet, the approach is undeniably more ethical, and benefits of rehabilitation are well-documented. In Australia, a country with a low population and high recidivism rates, success is highly likely.
Through the recognition that lawbreaking does not definitively indicate moral character and that factors such as socioeconomic status, bias, and even racism can impact the likelihood of incarceration, we can begin to see prisoners as human, too.
Forgiveness is a moral imperative and this is something that our prison system should reflect.
‘I changed my mind about prisons‘ by Sophie Yu is one of the Highly Commended essays in our Young Writers’ Competition. Find out more about the competition here.
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BY Sophie Yu
Born in 2007, Sophie is a Sydney high school student at SCECGS Redlands. She's passionate about language, culture, politics and art, and loves to travel and write in her free time. In the future, she hopes to study law or international relations at university.
The Ethics Institute: Helping Australia realise its full potential
It has been some three years since we posed a simple question: to what extent (if any) does ethics affect the economy?
The team we asked to answer that question was led by the economist, John O’Mahony of Deloitte Access Economics. After a year spent analysing the data, the answer was in. The quality of a nation’s ethical infrastructure has a massive impact on the economy. For Australia, a mere 10% improvement in ethics – across the nation – would produce an uplift on GDP of $45 billion per annum. Yes, that’s right, a decade later the accrued benefit would be $450 billion – and growing!
Some things are too good to be true. This is not one of them.
The massive economic impact is a product of a very simple formula: increased ethics=increased trust=lower costs and higher productivity. Increasing trust is the key. Not least because without it, every case for reform will either fall short or fail … no matter how compelling. Ordinary Australians going about their lives simply will not allow reform when they believe that the benefits and especially the burdens of change will be unfairly distributed. So it is that the incredible potential of our nation is held hostage to factors that are entirely within our control.
We invest billions in physical and technical infrastructure in the hope that it will lead to improvement in our lives. We invest almost nothing in the one form of infrastructure that determines how well these other investments will perform. That is, we invest precious little in our ethical infrastructure.
My first reaction to receiving the Deloitte Access Economics report was to try to engage with the Federal Government of the day. I thought that whatever one might think about ‘ethics’ as a concept, there could be no ignoring the economics. I was wrong. The message came back that the government was “positively not interested” in discussing the findings or their implications. I have met with rejection and (more often) indifference on many occasions over the past thirty years. This ranks at the top of my list of negative responses.
The Ethics Centre has always been resolutely apolitical. So, we cast around to find someone in the then Federal Opposition who might engage with the findings. And that is where the current Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, comes in. He took the findings very seriously – so much so that he issued a further challenge to identify what specific measures would increase ethics by 10% and thus, produce the estimated economic uplift. That led to a second piece of work by Deloitte Access Economics – and nine months later, we received the second report. It is that report that has brought forth the current proposal to establish the world-first Australian Institute for Applied Ethics.
The proposed Institute will have two core functions: first, it will be a source of independent advice. Legal issues are referred to the Australian Law Reform Commission. Economic issues are sent to the Productivity Commission. As things stand, there is nowhere to refer the major ethical issues of our times. Second, the Institute will work with existing initiatives and institutions to improve the quality of decision making in all sectors of life and work in Australia. It is important to note here that the Institute will neither replace or displace what is already working well. The task will be to ‘amplify’ existing efforts. And where there is a gap, the Institute will stimulate the development of missing or broken ethical infrastructure.
Above all, such an Institute needs to be independent. That is why we are seeking to replicate the funding model that led to the establishment of the Grattan Institute – by establishing a capital base with a mixture of funds from the private sector and a one-off grant of $33.3 million from the Federal Government.
The economic case for making such an investment is undeniable. The research shows that better ethics will support higher wages and improved performance for companies. Better ethics also helps to alleviate cost of living pressures by challenging predatory pricing practices – and other conduct that is not controlled in a market dominated by oligopolies and consumers who find it hard to ‘shop around’.
But what most excites The Ethics Centre, and our founding partners at the University of NSW and the University of Sydney, is the chance for Australia to realise its potential to become one of the most just and prosperous democracies that the world has ever known. With our natural resources, vast reserves of clean energy and remarkable, diverse population – we have everything to gain … and nothing to lose by aspiring to be just a little bit better tomorrow than we have been today.
And that is why something truly remarkable has happened. ACOSS, the ACTU, BCA and AICD have all come together in a rare moment of accord. Support is growing across the Federal Parliament. Australians from all walks of life – are adding their names in support of an idea whose time has come.
All we need now is our national government to make an investment in a better Australia.
Pledge your support for an Australian Institute of Applied Ethics. Sign your name at: https://ethicsinstitute.au/
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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.”
Read me once, shame on you: 10 books, films and podcasts about shame
Shame is something we have all experienced at some point. Of all the moral emotions, it can be the most destructive to a healthy sense of self. But do we ever deserve to feel it?
In order to unpack it’s complexities, we’ve compiled 10 books, films, series and podcasts which tackle the ethics of shame.
Jon Ronson – Shame Culture, Festival of Dangerous Ideas
Welsh journalist, Jon Ronson in his FODI 2015 talk examines the emergence of public shaming as an internet phenomenon, and how we can combat this culture. Based on his book, So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, Ronson highlights several individuals behind high profile shaming, who after careless actions have been subject to a relentless lynch mob.
Disgrace – J. M. Coetzee
Fictional novel by South African author, J.M. Coetzee tells the story of a middle-aged Cape Town professor’s fall from grace following his forced resignation from a university after pursuing an inappropriate affair. The professor struggles to come to terms with his own behaviour, sense of self as well as his relationships around him.
The Whale
American film directed by Darren Aronofsky where a reclusive and unhealthy English teacher, hides out in his flat and eats his way to death. He is desperate to reconnect with his teenage daughter for a last chance at redemption.
The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
Fictional novel by Afghan-American author, Khaled Hosseini which tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, and how shame can be a destructive force in an individual’s life.
World Without Rape, Festival of Dangerous Ideas
This panel discussion with Joanna Bourke, Jess Hill, Saxon Mullins, Bronwyn Penrith and Sisonke Msimang from FODI 2022 examines rape and its use in war, the home and society as an enduring part of history and modern life. The panel examines the role of shame from both a victim’s and perpetrator’s point of view and whether it is key to tackling the issue.
Muriel’s Wedding
The Australian beloved classic from P.J. Hogan portrays a young social outcast who embezzles money and attempts to fake a new life for herself.
The List – Yomi Adegoke
British fictional novel by Yomi Adegoke about a high-profile female journalist’s world that is upended when her fiancé’s name turns up in a viral social media post. The story is a timely exploration of the real-world impact of online life.
Shame
British psychological drama directed by Steve McQueen, exploring the uncompromising nature of sex addiction.
Reputation Rehab
Australian documentary series that believes we shouldn’t be consigned to a cultural scrapheap, and that most people are more than a punchline and deserve a second chance. Hosted by Zoe Norton Lodge and Kirsten Drysdale, guests include Nick Kyrigos, Abbie Chatfield and Osher Gunsberg.
It’s a Sin
British TV series depicting the lives of a group of gay men and their friends during the 1980-1990s HIV/AIDS crisis in the UK. The series unpacks the mechanics of shame and how it was built into queer lives, potentially affecting their own behaviour.
For a deeper dive, join us for The Ethics of Shame on Wednesday 27 March, 2024 at 6:30pm. Tickets available here.
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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.
Losing the thread: How social media shapes us
“I feel like I invited two friend groups to the same party.”
The slowly spiralling mess that is Twitter received another beating last year in the form of a rival platform announcement: Threads. And although this was a potentially exciting development for all the scorned tweeters out there, amid the hype, noise and hubbub of this new platform I noticed something interesting.
Some people weren’t sure how to act.
Twitter has long been associated with performative behaviour of many kinds (as well as genuine activism and journalism of many kinds). Influencers, comedians, politicians and every aspiring Joe Schmoe adopt personas that often amount to some combination of sarcastic, cynical, snarky and bluntly relatable.
Now, you would think that people migrating to a rival app with ostensibly the same function would just port these personas over. And you would be right, except for the hiccup of Threads being tied directly to Instagram accounts.
Why does this matter? As many users have pointed out, the kinds of things people say and do on Twitter and Instagram are markedly different, partially because of the different audiences and partially because of the different medium focus (visual versus textual). As a result, some people are struggling with the concept of having family and friends viewing their Twitter-selves, so to speak.
These posts can of course be taken with a grain of salt. Most people aren’t truly uncomfortable with recreating their Twitter identities on Threads. In fact, somewhat ironically, reinforcing their group identity as “(ex-)Twitter users” is the underlying function of these posts – signalling to other tweeters that “Hey, I’m one of you”.
The incongruity between Instagram and Twitter personas or expression has been pointed out by some others in varying depth and is something you might have noticed yourself if you spend much of your free time on either platform. In short, Instagram is mostly a polished, curated, image-first representation of ourselves, whereas Twitter is mostly a stream-of-consciousness conversation mill (which lends itself to more polarising debate). There are plenty of overlapping users, but the way they appear on each platform is often vastly different.
With this in mind, I’ve been thinking: How do our online identities reflect on us? How do these identities shape how we use other platforms? Do social media personas reflect a type of code-switching or self-monitoring, or are they just another way of pandering to the masses?
What does it say about us when we don’t share certain aspects of ourselves with certain people?
This apparent segmentation of our personality isn’t new or unique to social media. I’m sure you can recall a moment of hesitation or confusion when introducing family to friends, or childhood friends to hobby friends, or work friends to close friends. It’s a feeling that normally stems from having to confront the (sometimes subtle) ways that we change the way we speak and act and are around different groups of people.
Maybe you’re a bit more reserved around colleagues, or more comical around acquaintances, or riskier with old friends. Whatever it is, having these worlds collide can get you questioning which “you” is really you.
There isn’t usually an easy answer to that, either. Identity is a slippery thing that philosophers and psychologists and sociologists have been wrangling for a long time. One basic idea is that humans are complex, and we can’t be expected to be able to communicate or display all the elements of our psyche to every person in our lives in the same ways. While that’s a tempting narrative, it’s important to be aware of the difference between adapting and pandering.
Adapting is something we all do to various degrees.
In psychology, it’s called self-monitoring – modifying our behaviours in response to our environment or company. This can be as simple as not swearing in front of family or speaking more formally at work. Sometimes adapting can even feel like a necessity. People on the autism spectrum often “mask” their symptoms and behaviours by supressing them and/or mimicking neurotypical behaviours to fit in or avoid confrontation.
In lots of ways, social media has enhanced our ability to adapt. The way we appear online can be something highly crafted, but this is where we can sometimes run into the issue of pandering. In this context, by pandering I mean inauthentically expressing ourselves for some kind of personal gain. The key issue here is authenticity.
As Dr Tim Dean said in an earlier article in this series, “you can’t truly understand who someone is without also understanding all the groups to which they belong”. In many ways, social media platforms constitute (and indicate further) groups to which we belong, each with their own styles, tones, audiences, expectations and subcultures. But it is this very scaffolding that can cause people to pander to their in-groups, whether it simply be to fit in, or in search of power, fame or money.
I want to stress that even pandering in and of itself isn’t necessarily unethical. Sometimes pandering is something we need to do; sometimes it’s meaningless or harmless. However, sometimes it amounts to a violation of our own values. Do we really want to be the kinds of people who go against our principles for the sake of fitting in?
That’s what struck me when I read all of the confused messaging on the release of Threads. It’s one thing to not value authenticity very highly; it’s another to disvalue it completely by acting in ways that oppose our core values and principles. Sometimes social media can blur these lines. When we engage in things like mindless dogpiling or reposting uncited/unchecked information, we’re often acting in ways we wouldn’t act elsewhere without realising it, and that’s worth reflecting on.
It’s certainly something that I’ve noticed myself reflecting on since then. For some, our online personas can be an outlet for aspects of our personality that we don’t feel welcome expressing elsewhere. But for others, the ease with which social media allows us to craft the way we present poses a challenge to our sense of identity.
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BY Daniel Finlay
Daniel is a philosopher, writer and editor. He works at The Ethics Centre as Youth Engagement Coordinator, supporting and developing the futures of young Australians through exposure to ethics.
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.
AI might pose a risk to humanity, but it could also transform it
It’s no secret that the world’s largest and most powerful tech companies, including Google, Amazon, Meta and OpenAI, have a single-minded focus on creating Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Yet we currently know as little about what AGI might look like as we do about the risks that it might pose to humanity.
It is essential that debates around existential risk proceed with an urgency that tries to match or eclipse the speed of developments in the technology (and that is a tall order). However, we cannot afford to ignore other questions – such as the economic and political implications of AI and robotics for the world of work.
We have seen a glimmer of what is to come in the recent actors’ industrial action in Hollywood. While their ‘log of claims’ touched on a broad range of issues, a central concern related to the use of Generative AI. Part of that central concern focused on the need to receive equitable remuneration for the ongoing use of digital representations of real, analogue (flesh and blood) people. Yet, their deepest fear is that human actors will become entirely redundant – replaced by realistic avatars so well-crafted as to be indistinguishable from a living person.
Examples such as this easily polarise opinion about the general trajectory of change. At one end of the spectrum are the optimists who believe that technological innovation always leads to an overall increase in employment opportunities (just different ones). At the other end are the pessimists who think that, this time, the power of the technology is so great as to displace millions of people from paid employment.
I think that the consequences will be far more profound than the optimists believe. Driven by the inexorable logic of capitalism, I cannot conceive of any business choosing to forgo the efficiency gains that will be available to those who deploy machines instead of employing humans. When the cost of labour exceeds the cost of capital the lower cost option will always win in a competitive environment.
For the most part, past technical innovation has tended to displace the jobs of the working class – labourers, artisans, etc. This time around, the middle class will bear at least as much of the burden. Even if the optimists are correct, the ‘friction’ associated with change will be an abrasive social and political factor. And as any student of history knows, few political environments are more explosive than when the middle class is angry and resentful. And that is just part of the story. What happens to Australia’s tax base when our traditional reliance on taxing labour yields decreasing dividends? How will we fund the provision of essential government services? Will there be a move to taxing the means of production (automated systems), an increase in corporate taxes, a broadening of the consumption tax? Will any of this be possible when so many members of the community are feeling vulnerable? Will Australia introduce a Universal Basic Income – funded by a large chunk of the economic and financial dividends driven by automation?
None of this is far-fetched. Advanced technologies could lead to a resurgence of manufacturing in Australia – where our natural advantages in access to raw materials, cheap renewable energy and proximity to major population areas could see this nation become one of the most prosperous the world has ever known.
Can we imagine such a future in which the economy is driven by the most efficient deployment of capital and machines – rather than by productive humans? Can we imagine a society in which our meaning and worth is not related to having a job?
I do not mean to suggest that there will be a decline in the opportunity to spend time undertaking meaningful work. One can work without having ‘a job’; without being an employee. For as long as we value objects and experiences that bear the mark of a human maker, there will be opportunities to create such things (we already see the popularity of artisanal baking, brewing, distilling, etc.). There is likely to be a premium placed on those who care for others – bringing a uniquely human touch to the provision of such services. But it is also possible that much of this work will be unpaid or supported through barter of locally grown and made products (such as food, art, etc.).
Can we imagine such a society? Well, perhaps we do not need to. Societies of this kind have existed in the past. The Indigenous peoples of Australia did not have ‘jobs’, yet they lived rich and meaningful lives without being employed by anyone. The citizens of Ancient Athens experienced deep satisfaction in the quality of their civic engagement – freed to take on this work due to the labour of others bound by the pernicious bonds of slavery. Replace enslaved people with machines and might we then aspire to create a society just as extraordinary in its achievements?
We assume that our current estimation of what makes for ‘a good life’ cannot be surpassed. But what if we are stuck with a model that owes more to the demands of the industrial revolution than to any conception of what human flourishing might encompass?
Yes, we should worry about the existential threat that might be presented by AI. However, worrying about what might destroy us is only part of the story. The other part concerns what kind of new society we might need to build. This second part of the story is missing. It cannot be found anywhere in our political discourse. It cannot be found in the media. It cannot be found anywhere. The time has come to awaken our imaginations and for our leaders to draw us into a conversation about whom we might become.
Want to increase our ethical capacity to face the challenges of tomorrow? Pledge your support for an Australian Institute of Applied Ethics. Sign your name here.
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You might be interested in…
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.”
'The Zone of Interest' and the lengths we'll go to ignore evil
The Zone of Interest is not really a Holocaust film. At least not in the traditional sense.
Unlike Schindler’s List, there are no scenes set in a concentration camp – no footage of gas chambers, or slaughter. And unlike The Pianist, the focus is not on suffering victims. Indeed, the victims are entirely offscreen, only present as a sort of ambient, sometimes audible, force. Our cast of characters here are a German family, living an ordinary life – or as ordinary as a life can be, when the patriarch, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) is the commandant of Auschwitz, which lies just over the family’s garden wall.
The film features no literal violence whatsoever. Occasionally, we glimpse smoke from Auschwitz’s chimneys, cutting through the air; tiny touches, and the only clues that we are literally next door to the camp.
Instead, the genre that The Zone of Interest falls into – and cunningly undermines – is the domestic drama. Strip the Holocaust context out of the film, and you have a fairly humdrum story of a man trying to keep his family and his career together; working to raise his children, and rise up the ranks of his job. Insert that context back in, and the humdrum becomes terrifying.
The result is a film that tackles the question, “How did the Holocaust happen?”. It is interested in the mechanics of the slaughter – how it was enacted, and by whom. The answer lies in Höss. He has, it seems, emptied his work of all emotional context. It’s just a job to him. There are only very rare points where we see him express something like remorse – and even then, such outbursts feel uncontrolled; unconscious. In that way, The Zone of Interest has much to tell us not just about the Holocaust, but about moral responsibility, and the lengths people can go to avoid it.
Empathy and obligation
Höss has become so inured to his work – so horrifyingly, disturbingly used to it – that he acts like it has no moral quality at all. He seems to have no feelings, no empathy, and more than that, no knowledge that he even should have empathy.
This dispassionate quality is a common basis of those who avoid moral responsibility. When we do not emotionally feel the pain of others, through empathy, we will not have any motivation to avoid inflicting that pain. This is the heart of moral sentimentalism. If we are emotionally blind to suffering – even if we are aware that it is happening – we will not be compelled to act to stop it. Simply put, without emotions and empathy, our moral obligations lose their force.
Indeed, Höss’s lack of moral emotions makes him the successful endpoint of the Nazi propaganda machine. This machine worked hard to try and target the emotions of Nazi guards, and in the process neuter natural sympathetic responses. Most notably, Nazi propaganda dehumanised the Jewish population, painting Jews as fundamentally different from human beings. The comics writer Art Spiegelman attributes the following quote to Hitler, which sums up the position: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.”
In this way, Nazi propaganda worked on “perceived similarity.” See, psychological studies suggest that empathy fires when we witness something that feels similar to our own experiences. We have to recognise the pain of others as meaningfully like our own in order to be sympathetic to it. This is why we don’t like seeing animals like dogs in pain – we anthropomorphise them, and see their suffering as “human”. It is also while most of us will not flinch at the torment of a bug. We think of dogs as like us, and bugs as not. The outward signs of a daddy longlegs in distress seem alien enough to us – different enough from our own – that our natural empathy is not triggered.
For Nazis like Höss, Jewish people were perceived as so alien – so dissimilar from other human beings – that the suffering of Jewish people came with no associated moral obligation. This is what we see in The Zone of Interest. Höss knows he is sending Jewish people to their deaths – how could he not? It is happening right next door – but he feels nothing about this murder. Höss is not maintaining a literal distance from the horror he is enacting, but he is maintaining an emotional distance, and this is what allows him to do what he does.
A reminder of what we share
This focus on emotional distance is what makes The Zone of Interest so timely – what expands its reach beyond the Holocaust.
We are all occasionally guilty of seeing those who suffer as being “different from us”; their pain as alien, or foreign. Those in warzones; refugees; victims of famine in the Third World – we can all see these people as being divorced from our regular life, emotionally different from us, and as a result, we can unconsciously discharge our obligation to them.
The antidote to this disaffection – to the emotional coolness that can stop us from helping when we need to – is reminding ourselves of what we share with others. It is about tapping into our essential humanity. The philosopher David Hume put this essential humanity simply – he believed as human beings, we all have an aversion to pain, and an attraction to pleasure. If we remember that, and keep in mind that all human beings want to live pain-free lives, then we will see the suffering of others as a great transgression, and will work harder to help when we can.
Indeed, this is the strange optimism buried at the heart of The Zone of Interest. The film suggests, very subtly, that we have a natural connection to those around us; that this shared wellspring of humanity can never be entirely vanquished.
Even Höss, who has worked so hard to completely distance himself from the suffering he is directly inflicting, is unable to escape his natural sense of empathy – in a key moment of the film, he has a kind of physical breakdown, suddenly overcome by all that he has tried not to see. There, in that scene, is buried a form of hope: even against all odds, sometimes, human connection survives. Because human feeling survives. And that is where our moral responsibility lives.
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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.
Ethics Explainer: Moral hazards
When individuals are able to avoid bearing the costs of their decisions, they can be inclined towards more risky and unethical behaviour.
Sailing across the open sea in a tall ship laden with trade goods is a risky business. All manner of misfortune can strike, from foul weather to uncharted shoals to piracy. Shipping businesses in the 19th century knew this only too well, so when the budding insurance industry started offering their services to underwrite the ships and cargo, and cover the costs should they experience misadventure, they jumped at the opportunity.
But the insurance companies started to notice something peculiar: insured ships were more likely to meet with misfortune than ships that were uninsured. And it didn’t seem to be mere coincidence. Instead, it turned out that shipping companies covered by insurance tended to invest less in safety and were more inclined to make risky decisions, such as sailing into more dangerous waters to save time. After all, they had the safety net of insurance to bail them out should anything go awry.
Naturally, the insurance companies were not impressed, and they soon coined a term for this phenomenon: “moral hazard”.
Risky business
Moral hazard is usually defined as the propensity for the insured to take greater risks than they might otherwise take. So the owners of a building insured against fire damage might be less inclined to spend money on smoke alarms and extinguishers. Or an individual who insures their car against theft might be less inclined to invest in a more reliable car alarm.
But it’s a concept that has applications beyond just insurance.
Consider the banks that were bailed out following the 2008 collapse of the subprime mortgage market in the United States. Many were considered “too big to fail”, and it seems they knew it. Their belief that the government would bail them out rather than let them collapse gave the banks’ executives a greater incentive to take riskier bets. And when those bets didn’t pay off, it was the public that had to foot much of the bill for their reckless behaviour.
There is also evidence that the existence of government emergency disaster relief, which helps cover the costs of things like floods or bushfires, might encourage people to build their homes in more risky locations, such as in overgrown bushland or coastal areas prone to cyclone or flood.
What makes moral hazards “moral” is that they allow people to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. If they had to bear the full cost of their actions, then they would be more likely to act with greater caution. Things like insurance, disaster relief and bank bailouts all serve to shift the costs of a risky decision from the shoulders of the decision-maker onto others – sometimes placing the burden of that individual’s decision on the wider public.
Perverse incentives
While the term “moral hazard” is typically restricted examples involving insurance, there is a general principle that applies across many domains of life. If we put people into a situation where they are able to offload the costs of their decisions onto others, then they are more inclined to entertain risks that they would otherwise avoid or engage in unethical behaviour.
Like the salesperson working for a business they know will be closing in the near future might be more inclined to sell an inferior or faulty product to a customer, knowing that they won’t have to worry about dealing with warranty claims.
This means there’s a double edge to moral hazards. One is born by the individual who has to resist the opportunity to shirk their personal responsibility. The other is born by those who create the circumstances that create the moral hazard in the first place.
Consider a business that has a policy saying the last security guard to check whether the back door is locked is held responsible if there is a theft. That might give security guards an incentive to not check the back door as often, thus decreasing the chance that they are the last one to check it, but increasing the chance of theft.
Insurance companies, governments and other decision-makers need to ensure that the policies and systems they put in place don’t create perverse incentives that steer people towards reckless or unethical behaviour. And if they are unable to eliminate moral hazards, they need to put in place other policies that provide oversight and accountability for decision making, and punish those who act unethically.
Few systems or processes will be perfect, and we always require individuals to exercise their ethical judgement when acting within them. But the more we can avoid creating the conditions for moral hazards, the less incentives we’ll create for people to act unethically.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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Blindness and seeing
‘Anyone who says that life matters less to animals than it does to us has not held in his hands an animal fighting for its life’. Elizabeth Costello, from J. M. Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals
‘Don’t think, but look!’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Philosophical debates about animal welfare can appear abstruse. Much scholarly ink has been spilt over whether animals possess the requisite features—an interest in the future, an ability to suffer, a mind—that would ground our duties towards them. I wonder, however, if theoretical arguments of this sort really do justice to the issue at hand, which seems not so much a matter of moral disagreement as a radical difference in ways of seeing. What for the animal rights activist is a mechanised holocaust of unconscionable scale is for the meat-eater an institution that betters their well-being. The most pressing issue, as I see it, is not whether animals have rights, but whether we are able to see them at all as fellow creatures inhabiting the same world and sharing our vulnerabilities.
In J.M. Coetzee’s novella, The Lives of Animals, the elderly novelist Elizabeth Costello is invited to give an address at Appleton College. Her chosen theme being on our treatment of animals, she prefaces her lecture by exhibiting what she calls a ‘wound’: a scar from being exposed to the haunting nature of our treatment of animals, of being surrounded by well-meaning human beings who remain bewildering blind to the atrocities she alone perceives.
Throughout the novella, Costello discusses and answers arguments but never as the theorising philosopher. When an opponent suggests that life and death cannot be to animals, who lack a sense of identity, what it is to us, she responds by the line quoted in the epigraph of this piece, that whoever would say so has not held in their hands an animal fighting for its life, a line which I find stunning. Never mind our favoured theory of the mind, can’t you see it is suffering?
Here is an affirmation of our exposure to the suffering of animals, an involuntary confrontation, before which what is called upon is not our reason but an anguished response that is a testament to our humanity. Costello is not a vegetarian out of moral convictions; instead, she insists ‘“it comes out of a desire to save my soul”’– out of a vivid awareness of her exposure. There is a sense in which any attempt at philosophising inevitably ends up deflecting us away from that immediate reality, the animals in our hands.
Costello provocatively compares the meat industry to the Holocaust. Her point, I take it, is linked to what Stanley Cavell has called ‘soul blindness’: a failure to see another human as human. Primo Levi, in his Survival in Auschwitz, vividly recalls the look from a Nazi examiner, which ‘came as if across the glass window of an aquarium between two beings who live in different worlds’. What we find so accursed about the examiner, I think, is not his false moral beliefs – rather, there seems to us a critical defect in their sensibility, a blindness to humanity which stings.
We find another illustration of ‘soul blindness’ in the film Blade Runner, which imagines a world where human-like ‘replicants’ are mass-produced and enslaved, and those who escape are tracked down.
At first pass, we might see Blade Runner as a film noir exploring the boundary between humans and intelligent replicants; yet when we realise that the replicants, who can think, feel, and interact exactly like humans, are perhaps denied moral status only by the technical stipulation that ‘humans’ are those with a specific biology, the film takes on a more sinister meaning. In particular, it might shock us with how easily we become blinded to the living humanity of another, when some abstract, in hindsight irrelevant pieces of information are introduced – ‘They do not have DNA’; or ‘They are a Jew’.
Animal rights activists often point to the difference in our treatment of pets and those whom we eat for meat; but rather than dismissing it as a sign of our irrationality, if not hypocrisy, the datum ought to be probed further. What is different is a way of seeing: the pets are companions, family members, whom we acknowledge as fellow creatures, while the pigs are just food.
Many times I have felt deeply perturbed, flipping through an illustrated children’s book, when I saw the image of a smiling pig with just the right amount of anthropomorphism that it looks uncanny. Those are eyes which I do not dare meet. The knowledge inside those images, that a pig is also a being capable of feelings and suffering, is knowledge too terrible to bear – we have been raised to suppress it. If he could explain the examiner’s look, Levi tells us, he would also have explained the insanity of the Third Reich. We might make a parallel statement about animals: if one could explain the way we look upon animals as mere food and not living creatures like us, then one would also have explained our treatment of animals.
Here is what I think the three cases – our treatment of animals, the Holocaust, and the enslavement of replicants – have in common: drawing on an idea of Simone Weil, they are issues on a separate moral plane from those to be afforded intellectualised debate. We could argue about why slavery is wrong, but we should not argue over if it is wrong. I am not saying that we should give up persuasion and begin accusing each other of the monstrosity of eating meat; rather, what I claim is that abstract disputes over rights and permissions seriously misrepresent the moral terrain.
Levi remarks that one of the things the camp taught him was ‘how vain is the myth of original equality among men’. What use is there of a theory of human rights if the abuser does not see you as a human at all? This is why Costello appeals not to philosophy, but to imagination and poetry: a chasm of sensibility can only be bridged by changes in the way of seeing. And why should our response to animals be out of a sense of duty? Often, the more humane response may well be one out of kindness and a sense of fellowship.
In today’s world, our blindness to each other’s humanity is unfortunately still all too prevalent – the images that emerge from recent conflicts confirm it. One could say, however, that our blindness to the suffering of animals is just as distressing. What is most frightening is perhaps not that we come up with the wrong moral beliefs, but that we lose the ability to see animals, and other humans, as fellow beings who are like us.
‘Blindness and seeing‘ by David He is one of the Highly Commended essays in our Young Writers’ Competition. Find out more about the competition here.
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BY David He
David is a pure mathematics honours student at the University of Sydney, having completed double majors in mathematics and philosophy there. In his free time he likes to read and play Go, a board game. He aspires to become a mathematician and/or a writer someday.
BFSO Young Ambassadors: Investing in our future leaders
In 2018 ethics became a household word in financial services, partly because of the Hayne Royal Commission which identified the unethical behaviours and cultures within the industry. While behavioural and cultural change starts with individuals, empowerment doesn’t come easy, particularly at the beginning of one’s career.
Aimed at supporting young professionals, the Banking and Financial Services Oath (BFSO) Young Ambassador Program encourages people early in their careers to adopt a strong ethical foundation in the banking and financial services industry.
We sat down with three former BFSO alumni, Max Mennen (NAB), Michelle Lim (RBA), and Elle Griffin (CBA), to discuss the impact the program has had on them, and what ethics looks like in an industry that’s been through turmoil and has a responsibility to function above and beyond the legal requirements.
TEC: What first drove you to apply for the BFSO program?
Max: My experience in banking up until I did the BFSO program was in a customer facing role and I was exposed to a lot of opinions about banks – why they’re flawed and their wrongdoings. And that wasn’t just from customers, that was just the general introduction that I had while working.
The BFSO certainly aligned with me questioning these sorts of opinions that I’d heard, finding the truth to them and more so seeing how you can rectify [the behaviours that cause] those opinions. It helped me interrogate what work I was doing and how I could make it better.
Elle: I wanted to make an impact outside of my day-to-day role and feel like I was contributing to something bigger than just the bank, but to the community. It also gave me a real responsibility to think about broader issues going into becoming a banker, that we all had a role to play in improving our profession.
Michelle: Coming from a psychology background, I was really interested in contributing to understanding the culture and the conduct that led to all the issues discussed in the 2017 Hayne Royal Commission. I wanted to contribute to those discussions and hopefully be part of that cultural shift.
TEC: Five years on from the Royal Commission, where do you see the role of the BFSO?
Elle: I have always strongly identified with the idea that the BFSO promotes that we are part of a profession, which means that we are more than just employees of our particular bank. Instead, being a professional means that you have competence, care and diligence about how you approach what it is that you do.
I think that what the Hayne Royal Commission showed was that people didn’t approach banking from that kind of noble profession mindset and the BFSO fills that void for the industry. As long as people consider what we do as a profession, we’ll go a long way to avoiding those outcomes in the future.
Max: I think the BFSO could be valued in any industry because what it mainly showed me was an insight into the value chain of what, in our case, the financial services sector provides. It has an impact on the broader economy, but certainly on everyday customers as well. It’s pretty easy to just view your job quite narrowly as the process that you play rather than looking at the impact of what you stand for and what the organisation does. It certainly gave me much better recognition for the role that financial services play and how they can do it better.
TEC: Do you feel there’s more of an appetite for financial institutions to allow time for participating in programs like the BFSO?
Michelle: The BFSO gave me courage and made me feel empowered to lean into something that I was always interested in, which is social justice and equality and equity. It brings people that are like-minded together who are quite young and new in their career, and it gives them this sense of empowerment and courage to actually lean into what we value and what our principles are and then echo and extend that out and amplify that within our organisations and then beyond.
When I started, five or six years ago, I was in the risk culture space and that was still quite new but now I’ve seen that space grow so much and there’s become a heavy focus into conduct and risk. I think organisations are really seeing the value of carving out dedicated time for ethical leadership and what that looks like, and mapping that back to my ethical framework for my organisation and what our purpose is.
TEC: Has it impacted the way you behave long-term in your role?
Elle: I feel very fortunate to have done the program very early in my career because it gives you a worldview, and a really clear way to interpret who you are and the work that you do day to day working in the financial services sector. And it translates to any role that I’ve had in the past five years. It’s helped me realise that not only that you should feel comfortable to speak up, but that I’m required to speak up and I should be speaking up.
TEC: What would you say to somebody wanting to apply to the BFSO?
Michelle: Give 110% and don’t be afraid to ask questions. And invest in the networks and relationships you’ll make. The biggest thing for me is the relationships.
Max: I would say the impacts can be exponential and they’ll last with you.
Applications for the 2024 BFSO Young Ambassador Program are now open until 15 March. Find out more here.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
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