Posts Tagged ‘ethics’

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Ethics and Culture

April 23, 2018

Ethics is cultural, we are brought up to feel that certain things are wrong, and that we should behave in certain ways. It is also bound up with political relationships between groups – if a person is a member of our group, or someone we identify with then we are likely to treat them specially; usually (but not always) we will be more sympathetic, accept excuses, assume they are really right, be persuaded by their arguments, and so on. These seem to be matters of fact. But our responses to them are ethical.

Should ethics be cultural? Should ethics be political? This is instantly an ethical question, and thus irresolvable if my initial question as to whether any ethical propositions could exist that were not already ethical, although I suspect most people would not say ‘yes’ to either of these propositions…

it seems to me that agreement with local customs cannot be a basis for ethics. It seems to be a cop out. I would expect a an ethicist to challenge local customs. That they would be socratic in the sense of seeing whether those customs had any basis in reality or were coherent, or likely to produce the results that the holders’ intended. While arguing that ethics should produce the result it intends is another ethical statement, it seems to be one most people might agree with – although they don’t have to, its not compelling. My kind of ethicist would not be socratic in looking for a definition of the good or the just, because that leads to the unreal….

When I suggest that there is no basis for ethics which is not already ethical, I’m not suggesting that ethics is always coherent, although I may assume an ethical position that coherence is usually good. For example an ‘ethics of love’, may also generate violence, oppression and hatred (especially if it is applied via rules… but that is another argument for another time), and this may not seem compatible with its initial formulation. People with this ethics may be aware of these problems (as when Franciscans were brought into the inquisition), but these ethical people may attempt to suppress awareness of unintended consequences, in order to support their ethical systems, and produce even worse consequences and incoherencies….. And it seems ethicists might challenge that, although the challenge can always be denied.

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Ethics and its basis – Again….

April 22, 2018

My recurring question is whether it is possible to find a basis for ethics which is not already ethical?

Thus some people argue that we should obey God’s commands (let us ignore the fact that almost nobody obeys the complete commands of any religious text) but the idea that obeying God is ethical is already an ethical proposition which can be challenged by other ethical propositions.

The Utilitarian idea of the greatest good for the greatest number, depends on the ethical idea that ethics should benefit the many rather than the few, this also could be challenged by another ethical proposition.

The idea that we should behave in a situation in the way that we would want all such situations to be treated (‘the categorical imperative’), contains an ethical assumption that generality should override specific context. It could be argued that ethics must attend to context. (‘should’ and ‘must’ are almost always terms implying an ethics is going on).

The idea that ethical behaviour resides in a mean (Aristotelian arête ethics), is a proposition which implies that extremes are unethical (and come in binaries!)

Anti-cultural relativism, often seems to assume similarity is ethical and unsimilarity is not.

And so on.

I think people can argue that I am cheating here because I have not given a definition of ethics. But while definitions are helpful I don’t think it solves problems.

I’m not a Platonist, so I don’t believe that giving a definition always provides understanding, or is always possible.

Sometimes people know what they mean well enough…. But let us assume that ethics has to something to do with terms like virtue, good behaviour, right behaviour, morality and things like that. I may not know what ethics is, you (as reader) may, but I all I kind of know is how people use the word.

One gentleman discussing this issue with me gave the following definition:

By “ethical”, I mean “anything that pertains or is related to some system of ethical values and duties”.

I would also stipulate that, according to my own preferred use of terms, a system of values and duties is to be called “ethical” if — at a minimum — it is designed with the (implicit or explicit) goal of protecting (and even of increasing) the well-being of some sentient entities (human or non-human).

This encapsulates part of my problem with ethics as a “set of propositions” and illustrates my question… “Is it possible to find a basis for ethics which is not already ethical [i.e., value-laden]?”

Lets look at the beginning of this definition: “By ‘ethical’, I mean ‘anything that pertains or is related to some system of ethical values and duties’.”

I don’t have to say this is circular, and I certainly couldn’t do any better myself. ‘Ethics is about ethics.’ Obviously he moves on to illustrate what he means by ethics…

“a system of values and duties is to be called “ethical” if — at a minimum — it is designed with the (implicit or explicit) goal of protecting (and even of increasing) the well-being of some sentient entities (human or non-human).”

So he makes what seems to me to be an ethical proposition, that ethics is about ‘protection’, and ‘well being’, of ‘sentient entities’.

There is no non ethical reason why this should be the case. It is already value laden. Thus a person with a different ethical position might argue that not everyone should be protected, only particular special people (this is common in ethical systems – foetuses cannot be killed by surgery, but enemy mothers and foetuses can be killed by bombs). They might object to “well-being” saying that was the decadent ethics of bourgeois society and ‘hardiness’ or ‘spiritual discipline’ should be the end of ethics as it was ethically superior, etc. Finally a non-humanist eco-philosopher could argue that that ethics has to be directed to the environment, as there are no singly existing sentient entities, everything exists together, or that sentience is not that important ethically speaking; it is an “unethical” form of exclusion, structurally comparable to racist ethics, and so on…

If so, and if this makes sense, yet again we have an illustration of it appearing not to be the case that we can have an ethical proposition/axiom which is not already ethical, or value laden…

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Libertarianism, communism and freedom

April 17, 2018

“Liberal” is a weird word. To people in the European tradition it means someone for whom free markets are important, and personal liberty is tied up with wealth and the removal of barriers, and so a nowadays a “non-conservative” member of the right. At one time this kind of liberalism was radical, now it is simply a way of enforcing the power of money, hence it sits well with the establishment. In America this position is “libertarian” while the term liberal implies a person who thinks that we should all get on with each other, that government should be helpful, and that participation in government should not be restricted to the wealthiest.

“Communist” is equally a weird word, because communism as a aspiration is radically different from the communist powers which used to exist. There were as many varieties of communism as liberalism. Originally communism meant the withering away of the state, liberty and co-operative freedom. This kind of communism recognized that freedom and life required other people, and sometimes required help, not simply the removal of barriers. Too much poverty and violence does not grant freedom, or the capacity to act on what freedom is available. Later, official communism simply supported the power of the Communist State and its rulers. Official communism was not an egalitarian arrangement.

“Freedom” is also weird. Some people have asserted that freedom is recognition of necessity, which often seems to mean keep carrying on with oppression. Personally I think there is no liberty without enablement, and without some degree of equality. Sure there will always be some inequality as people don’t have equal abilities or good fortune, but massive inequality usually means that the society is being run for the benefit of those at the top (who may not have great ability and who have some protection from ill fortune). Consequently the liberty of those people has to be curtailed slightly for the benefit of others. It is, for example, often (but not always) agreed that a person’s freedom to use their ability to beat other people up, or kill them, should be limited, so it is with other freedoms. Freedoms can always contradict, that is why it is a struggle.

In complex systems attempts to impose either order and freedom can have unintended consequences. Imposing the freedom of the market can lead to freedom for the wealthy and non for everyone else. Imposing equality through the State can also lead to lack of freedom for some people. We perhaps need to carry awareness of these oppositions and contradictions in mind, and allow something new to arise, rather than simply assert what we believe to be true, but which has never worked, is the way to go.

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C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton and the Spiritual Problems of Our Time

January 2, 2018

In a great Post John Woodcock drew attention to the importance of visionary experience amongst other things. However he also drew attention to C.S. Lewis, and this is where I have a problem.

John reminds us of the end of the Perelandra Trilogy in which the (literally) demonic scientists aim to bring about immortality. He quotes them

It is for the conquest of death: or for the conquest of organic life, if you prefer. They are the same thing. It is to bring out of that cocoon of organic life, which sheltered the babyhood of mind, the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.

The people on the side of the angels (again literally) are joyous when Merlin (yes that Merlin) breaks up the possibility of the scientists communicating, and then summons hoards of animals to eat them. Unlike John, I don’t find this denouement either satisfying or hilarious.

Indeed, the passage from Lewis reminds me exactly why I find him so disappointing. He is caught up hopelessly in surfaces and binaries. It’s spirit/matter, godly/ungodly, good/evil and so on. If God is on our side then whatever happens must be right, whatever discomfort our enemies suffer is wonderful. There are no tensions because God will win. God is all powerful after all, and the good guys are on the side of all power. Suck on that Demons!

It’s reminiscent of the bits in Narnia where the young woman is exiled because she likes stockings and make-up and the good crusaders slaughter heaps of evil Muslims in the battle to end all battles. All surface, dressed up to be deep. Faced with imagined people who think life is a bit more complicated than he does, all he can imagine is to break up their attempt at communion and praise murder. What a righteous attempt at solution! What imagination! What empathy! Lewis cannot even suspect the shadow of his spirituality, or his God, which he projects onto what he sees as science. His own spirituality can have nothing to do with the problems we face – it is all elsewhere and he is not responsible even a bit.

Its easy to imagine Lewis an inquisitor sadly condemning someone to excruciation until death, and thinking that if there is any sin in the matter its the fault of the secular authorities alone – he is innocent and unsullied. [As a caution we should all note that when we start condemning people, especially collectivities of people, we are probably engaged with the Jungian Shadow – ie the ‘evil’ in ourselves which it is less painful to see in others.]

Lewis needed to dream more freely rather than confine vision to allegory, see deeper and depend less on dogma for his interpretations.

By comparison good science is precisely about not stopping with surfaces but exploring reality and letting it impress us; not trying to trap it in binaries and given understandings. And we find an awe – even in people like Dawkins – which is perhaps more spiritual than almost anything in Lewis. The world revealed by science is weirder and more complex than anything Lewis or his characters could imagine. The God revealed in creation is not the tyrant of the Bible, but a being who delights in complexity, chance, freedom, creativity, who puts life into the fundamental bits of existence. Sure science has limits, but what doesn’t? While scientists are more Merlin than Lewis’s Merlin, science probably needs a little more more alchemy (in Jungian terms).

Perhaps Lewis’s apparent spiritual impoverishment (yes that is strong, but that is the kind of language he might use) arises not because of his Christianity, but because of his Platonism. Platonism constructs an ideal world and then regards this world as a falling away, a bad copy, which is of little value, except for the elite to transcend. Dying is good, as it could get you to reality; we must make sure everyone dies. Hence Lewis’s anger that anyone might want to live for ever, unless this life is non-material and it involves his elite and no one else. We probably don’t need Nietzsche to point out the problems with a mythology that seeks its fulfilment in death, either personal or in the death of others (indeed they might well tend to be the same). In that sense Platonism seems to be at the root of our ecological problems, and perhaps our problems of power – in which everything living has to be ordered to be good, when everything that is living is, in reality, messy and unpredictable. For platonists the only good creature is a dead creature. Platonism, and the demand for order is almost certainly one of the roots of the Anthropocene.

Let’s compare Lewis with another and far greater writer: G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton does have his low moments (in Father Brown, you always know it was the atheist what done it), but his work is full of the sense of mystery impinging on and in the world, and the joyous knowledge that arises from catching a glimpse of this reality.

Chesterton’s books on Aquinas and Francis are amongst the best of their kind, and full of the glory of spirit, faith and intellect. He does not see intellect as evil but as part of God’s way, part of the way we go beyond appearance to reality. The Man who was Thursday explores the complexity of an omnipotent God, even if Chesterton denies it does, he can do it. Chesterton fights with what he sees as the evils of the modern world; fiercely as with Shaw and Wells (although he accepts their point that unfettered capitalism is not good), but he never lets go of the insight that his enemies are also expressions of the glory of God, and he remains friends with his foes and engages in dialogue – as that communion is more important than righteousness and murder, even while he admits that sometimes war may be necessary. There is no poverty of imagination here. The real ‘material’ world is potentially holy, or even holy already (God made it and it was good).

Life is a constant potential for transfiguration – although Chesterton would probably use the model of the mass rather than alchemy or hermeticism. Further, he has no need to be of the spiritual elite, because he knows real humility and not the display of humility. He can celebrate the joys of ordinary people who are not perfect, because it is not his business to exclude people from ‘heaven’ or the heaven of Earth. He knows surfaces are holy, and that there are depths beyond the capacity of allegory to imagine.

My only complaint is that Chesterton is largely ignored, except by those usually on the political right) who would confine him, and pretend he was one of theirs – when he most certainly is not.

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Humanities, Universities and Neoliberalism

January 1, 2018

The problem of the usefulness of the Humanities emerges again. The problem is really “how do you do anything in a neoliberal age?” I’m not sure you can deal with the question of the value of the Humanities without some idea of what you are talking about, and some of the problems arise from this confusion so.

a) Pure Humanities is the study and understanding of, and thinking with, the best works of art, literature and philosophy that we think exist. This list should always be challengeable, because tastes and appreciations change. For example, I personally do not think the absence of Virgil from a curriculum is a problem, it’s an improvement, others will disagree. In general, this understanding requires knowing something about the socio-cultural background and reception of these works. So humanities is bound up with:

b) Social Studies. Note I’m not using the term social sciences, as there is massive dispute about the extent to which any social study can be a science in the way physics is, or biology is, or geology or astronomy are. Social studies inherently involves meaning and interpretation (so it requires (a)). Social studies is the study of how human social and cultural life works in general. Economics is a sub branch of social studies, even though it pretends not to be, primarily to protect itself from a criticism of its values.

c) Linguistics – not the learning of languages, which could be part of (a), but attempting to understand how languages work, what the impact on thinking is, and how they function in social life. For me this includes Rhetoric, because there is little language without attempts at persuasion.

There might be other divisions one can make, the categories do not have to be firm or bounded.

Humanities tend to be conservative and social studies tend to be leftist or critical. On the whole, neoliberals think both are a waste of time; subjects should simply support capitalism and corporate power. Their view seems to be that ultimately humanities (a) cannot be justified in terms of profit; criticism (b) should simply be stopped as its wrong; and everyone knows how to speak (c), so all are vulnerable in corporatised universities.

Neoliberals control universities, as they control most things in our societies. They like building, restructuring and making money, more than thinking. Money goes into CEO and star performer salaries, not to the academic staff in general or student services. Making money is the only mark of value. The idea that a university exists as a space for independent thought, or for learning how to think is, in neoliberal terms, a pointless waste of money. If there is no job at the end of it, and no profit, then subjects should go. Consequently, academics should teach paying students what they want to hear, or do research which is profitable and brings in money. I recently read of computer science academics who were not interested in supervising PhD’s that would not lead to a start up company; this may not be true of course.

If work ends up criticising the contemporary establishment, then it is usually treated as drivel by that establishment. Scientists have started to learn this point as well. We all know how climate scientists have been attacked for speaking unwanted truth to power. Nowadays pure science that is of no corporate interest, or which shows corporate ‘science’ is faulty, is unwelcome. It is seen as political, rather than as part of a search for greater accuracy. Humanities and social studies are automatically considered political, because they are about people and how people behave, and all politics makes assumptions about humans. Even historical research which challenges clichés about socially foundational events, such as Athenian democracy, the American Revolution, the invasion of Australia, or the beneficence of capitalism, is inherently political, and therefore either to be ignored or persecuted.

Humanities and social studies are useful, if useful is worthwhile considering. Writers and media people, might find courses on poetry, literature, language and rhetoric useful, as might other people who want to gain some cultural depth and independence of thought, or who might want to persuade people of something. People who want to go into governance, management or journalism had better know something about social studies, if they don’t want to mess things up in normal ways. If values or ethics are important, then having an idea of the range of possible values and how they tend to function is useful as well – although again it will seem pointless to neoliberals as it conflicts with their decided understanding. In neoliberalism, ethics is always about making money, and that is pretty obvious and may need no complex thinking.

Finally, in neoliberalism there is no such thing as ‘community’, the only class positions that are allowed to exist should be marked by wealth, and human connection should be financial – everything else is simply false. The idea of a community of scholars of intellectuals has no meaning in modern politics. If neoliberals want thinking then they will set up a think tank, and know what they are going to get in advance; that’s value for money.

Basically the struggle everywhere is between life and neoliberalism. The more the neoliberal ‘free market’ mob win, the less there is to live for. And conservatives should know this as well; they used to.

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Materialism, Spirit and Shadow

December 31, 2017

[Re-edited 14 Feb 2018, responding to comments]

I’m sometimes surprised when people say that we live in a ‘material age’. It is true that we are governed by an economics and politics that only values money, profit and power, but that is not usually the subject of people’s disapproval, they usually object to science. To be clear, I’m not arguing that we live in an effective spiritual age – I’m not sure such has ever happened – but we hardly live in a scientifically materialist age. The urge for spiritual experience is as great as ever, and its dangers are as great as ever.

We (and it’s a Western ‘we’ here, apologies to everyone else) have probably lived in one of the most exciting spiritual and theological periods of human history. Since 1880 or thereabouts the flourishing of spiritual thought and action(of various levels of sophistication), has been extraordinary – partly because of the, perhaps beneficial, decline of religious authority.

In theological terms we have had Mary Baker Eddy, Albert Schweitzer, Paul Tillich, Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Simone Weil, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Wolfhardt Pannenberg, Rudolf Bultmann, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teilhard de Chardin and Mathew Fox to name some of the original and more well-known writers. That’s just off the top of my head and I’m not a theologian; I’m sure people will think of other influential originals. We have had important movements such as liberation theology, death of god, process theology, ‘traditionalism’, feminist theology, historical Jesus, and green/gaian theology. We have had the popular recovery of alchemy, hermeticism, gnosticism, kabbalah, sufism, goetic magic and altered states of consciousnes. We have had the ongoing (and again popular), cross fertilisation between Christianity and Buddhism (to the betterment of both in my opinion, with the shift of Buddhism from suppression of desire to active compassion, and the recovery of Christian meditation and oneness). We have had the influx of Indian religious practice, and we may have some popular understanding of Taoism. We have popular contributions from science (Haldine, Bateson, Capra), philosophy, (Bradley, Wittgenstein, Edith Stein, Heidegger, Barfield, Agamben, Vattimo), anthropology and comparative religion (Frazer, Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Victor Turner, Evans Pritchard, Rene Girard (ok this list could go on :), literature (From Kazantzakis to Dan Brown and C.S. Lewis) and of course psychology (Jung, Maslow, Ornstein, Houston, Mindfulness, AA etc). We’ve had arena’s full of popular spiritual writers and practitioners. We have probably had more channelled texts than at any time in history (from the ‘Book of the Law’ to the ‘Course in Miracles’). The world is full of spiritual healers. We have even had important and influential ‘joke’ spiritualties like Discordianism (All hail Eris!). Again this is not to say that all are beneficial; that is the point, because something claims to be spiritual does not automatically mean it is a good guide to life or ‘spirit’.

If ‘materialism’ means not limited and not dogmatic, then we have had a materialistic age. However, if ‘materialism’ means non-spiritual then this has not even remotely been a non-spiritual age. It has been an age of flourishing experiment rather than authority, and an age in which few people have been burnt at the stake for heresy. We should probably celebrate it, rather than denigrate it.

However, this does not mean we have had an age without shadow. Clearly not as the ‘spiritual’, (like everything human) is rarely without shadow or its specific ‘evils’, and it is dangerous to think that because something is spiritual it is automatically good or constructive. Part of the spiritual problem is that spirit sometimes can only see its own as spirit and protects its own and only its own, and attacks all else. Hence, perhaps, the apparent inability of ‘spiritual people’ to perceive current spiritual flourishing, and the (perhaps necessary) descent to dogma.

As for the ‘darkness’: we now know about child rape in church and the protection of rapists for the spiritual good of authority, of the insistence on obedience and not thinking, of spiritual desolation in proposed saints, of spiritual violence against the failing world. There was Nazism, and if you don’t think Nazism was a spiritual movement you have not read enough of the original Nazis. We have the activity of some Christian and Islamic Fundamentalists who work in a unity of hatred to bring about the apocalypse in the middle east, with the second coming of Jesus and the birth of perfection in the death of millions of sinners and infidels, and we have religious terrorists, sexists and racists – every ‘evil’ you can think of will have some spiritual defenders.

We have many spiritual programmes that primarily seem to seek personal wealth as the mark of divine favour, and who often condemn the poor as unspiritual or undisciplined. I would tend to agree with the proposition that people are mislead by much of this kind of spirituality; that is part of the shadow I am discussing. But simply stating that one is not so mislead, and that the followers of such movements are, does not mean one is without shadow. We perhaps need to ask whether this condemnation of others is an inherent part of the shadow of spirit, which helps to justify the elite who ‘get it’ and their position as beings of influence?

Then we have Platonist spirituality where focusing on the ideal spirit, or absolute perfect forms, can lead to denigration and attacks on the ‘fallen’ ‘imperfect’ real/material world and help foster ecological crises and the destruction of Nature. In this wordview only death opens perfection as we escape the material we hate. Only a dead or transcended world seems a good world. Or we can say everything is in the hands of God, and nothing harmful will eventuate from human action – spirit is already perfect and that is all that matters. People can attack their bodies, their minds and their empathy for others, in the name of spiritual perfection. We can see murder of the ‘evil others’ on whom we have projected our spiritual shadow, as the solution to problems – particularly if our God is good because ‘he’ is all-powerful and prone to vengeance. In that case, what difference is there between our spirituality and existential fear? Our righteousness seeks to prove we are on the right side, by condemning others before we ourselves are condemned. The shadow is massive.

The idea that all that is spiritual is totally of the light, or immaterial, is dangerous. Especially when it is phrased as if people on the right path cannot be deceived. Again, this can be a basis for murderous righteousness. The idealist shadow can penetrate all modes of life, making the possible seem deadly material by comparison, and lead to the sacrifice of both humanity and nature for a perfection which exists elsewhere – and possibly only imaginally.

If we need more spirituality then we need as much care in identifying its shadow and integrating it as we do in all other parts of life. We may well need a material spirituality, in which the world itself is part of the sacred and, if we transcend, it is as in alchemy, and endless circulation in which we bring back the spirit to this world and unify the two – neither being complete without the other. We respect what is, as we live amongst it.

To repeat, just because something can be called spiritual, it does not mean it is unalloyedly good or beneficial for either humans or nature. This has to be discovered rather than claimed in advance – anything can have unintended effects.

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Economics and Climate

October 17, 2017

Its simple really.

If destroying the environment makes a profit and saving it has a potential cost, then saving the environment will not happen – especially under capitalism.

However, this point can be generalised.

If destroying the environment allows more tax payers’ money to be given to the established wealthy then that will happen especially under a ‘free market’ government

If destroying the environment conserves the power of the established elites, and saving it might challenge them, then saving it will not happen.

If it is easier to destroy the environment by continuing as we have done or persisting with the default position, and saving it takes effort and thought, it won’t happen.

That’s all the economics you need to know

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Government as business?

October 7, 2017

One of the classic neoliberal arguments is that the country should be run like a business.

But why? The country is not a business. A country has to value things that do not make a profit, and sometimes has to do things which only have monetary cost and which business would not do – such as try and preserve the ecology for future generations and their survival. Likewise, a country should ideally not treat ‘big customers’ better than small customers because they pay more or use services more. Justice should apply equally, not by how much profit administering it makes. You should not only have free speech if you can afford to pay for it, or agree with the publisher, as is usually the case in business.

The only benefit of this neoliberal idea is that it gives the corporate sector more power and respectability, as they supposedly must know things about running a business and ideally should know how to run the country, or even be left to run the country. They are the ideal to which everyone should aspire and which should be emulated. The idea also allows a degree of pleasant abuse, of the form “those well intentioned left wingers are nice people but they don’t know how to run a business, so they are useless”. The idea also suggests that government should judge business actions by business morals: “do those actions make the business a profit?”, not whether they might harm people or the country or are a waste of government money. In this system, government should get out of the way of business, no matter what. It also justifies corruption, because it suggests all relationships are monetary, and if business wants to buy relationships with the government to give it advantages then why not? – that’s just competition? Similarly, if CEOs can get massive subsidies and special treatment, just for doing their job (even badly), then so should politicians, especially leaders, so it can be welcome to governments.

The idea promotes the lowering of government supervision of business and any efforts to prevent fraud, because clearly business knows best and the market will punish any real dishonesty or harmful behaviour – which it does not; the market may even reward such behaviour in the short term as the behaviour is profitable. The idea also suggests tax-payer subsidy of business, public private partnerships, commercial-in-confidence, because they are ‘clearly’ better than government by itself. All of these profitable relationships take responsibility away from government and distributes that responsibility where it can never be found – just as the corporate structure is intended to do (corporations are organisations designed to avoid personal responsibility). However, a government without visible responsibility for the arrangements they enter into is not even remotely democratic as that involves responsibility to the people and the whole of the people, not just the wealthy.

If we were to propose that military organization should be the model for government then we are suggesting that ‘the people’ should be fodder for the military. If we think that business is the model for government, then we are suggesting people should be fodder for business: people who consume what they have to choose whether it harms them or not; docile workers who are low paid and flexible at their boss’s request, who never think and never question business power or respectability, and who don’t have the support or information to do anything about it.

This idea can even permeate the union movement who sellout their members for business interests – after all the whole point is that business supposedly knows best, and business people are the best. So workers are perceived as merely an appendage, no longer the centre of what gets produced or gets done.

Where in life do we most heavily feel the unlistening hand of management? At work, which is usually in business, or governed like a business. Business models a form of authority which makes the state even more authoritarian and untouchable.

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The basis for ethics?

September 5, 2017

This is just a question, and a relatively serious one….

Is there a persuasive basis for any ethical position, that is not already an ethical position?

For example Utilitarianism promotes happiness or contentment as the good which should be aimed for. But deciding to aim for happiness is already an ethical decision, putting the idea of happiness ahead of ideas of wisdom, power, love etc…. Making the target the greatest good of the greatest number is also an ethical decision. We might equally claim that it is better to make life good for a particular few (if you still wanted to benefit the greatest number, we could argue that these people could then have the freedom to improve things for everyone else). Arguments from fairness are likewise based on an ethical choice in favour of fairness, there is no intrinsic logic to this position and indeed many societies violate it as part of the way they work.

Monotheistic people often argue that ethics cannot exist without the commands of God, yet obeying God beyond everything else is already an ethical decision. God may not want it…. It could be said to be a tyranny, if you took another ethical position. If God threatens those who do not obey, the position assumes violence to be the basis of ethics.

Ethical systems based upon descriptions of how people behave, is just saying what they do, not providing an argument for its ethical base or superiority, beyond ‘what we do is what we should do’.

Even saying that ethical behavior should contribute to survival is not useful as it implies survival is the ultimate good, to which all else must be sacrificed. Survival of whom and what?

Likewise arguing that ethical actions should have ethical results is also a statement which relies on ethics, as it is clearly possible to argue that some actions are good even if they result in what we might define as evil events.

So do you know of any basis for ethics which would seem to get beyond this problem of the initial decision?

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More on Neo-Nazis

September 5, 2017

In the thirties of last century it is possible that there were idealistic Nazis. However that was then, this is a long time afterward.

If you go to a rally carrying swastikas, then you are proclaiming and celebrating your ‘right’ to beat people up and stick them in death camps. You are looking for someone to victimize. You are not celebrating everyone’s right to exist in a civil political discourse.

Given this. Where there are Nazis it is highly probable there will be violence. If there are people prepared to engage in protective violence after they have been attacked then this is probably a good thing. Otherwise you are letting Nazis walk all over everyone. There is no even hand here.

Even handedness is just the usual righteous attempt to crush any resistance to anti-democratic movements.

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