Ramblings on ethics

If you can do someone else a favour at very little cost to yourself, why would you not?

The URL was photographed on the other side of the vehicle. (Any advertising is good advertising?)

Altruism

1. Unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others;
2. Behaviour by an animal that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species.

I will not take the subject further here than to ask the reader to consider the Internet and in particular Wikipedia from the point of view of altruism. In an age that is at least as dominated by selfish greed as any other (consider the economic collapse that was caused by the short-sighted avarice of the powerful corporate executives who largely run the early twenty-first century world), Wikipedia is a monument to altruism. Thousands of people around the world have contributed to this store of knowledge and wisdom and the great majority of them have received nothing in return, not even an acknowledgement for their work.

Beyond Wikipedia there are many Internet sights that provide information, free of charge, to the people of the world. If you want a recipe for anything, look it up on the Net!

Perhaps the Internet is dominated by sites that are designed to make money for someone, but for those who look there is a commendable amount of generosity to be seen and enjoyed there too.

The Golden Rule

From Encyclopaedia Britannica on The Golden Rule: "Its negative form is to be found ... in the writings of the two great Jewish scholars Hillel (1st century BC) and Philo of Alexandria (1st centuries BC and AD), and in the Analects of Confucius (6th and 5th centuries BC). It also appears in one form or another in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, and Seneca."

Socrates is recorded as saying "I am a citizen, not of Athens or Greece, but of the World". This seems remarkable for a man of Socrates' time, most people have far narrower outlooks in the twenty-first century. But in this present age where Mankind has a profound impact on the global environment, I think we need to look even further. We need to think of ourselves as being citizens of the biosphere; that is, the zone on or near the surface of the Earth that contains all known life. It follows, I believe, that we should apply the Golden Rule, not just to our fellow humans, but to the biosphere. I will call this the Greater Golden Rule.

As a very simple example, the Golden Rule would forbid us dumping our rubbish over the fence into our neighbour's yard. The Greater Golden Rule forbids us dumping our waste gasses into the atmosphere if that dumping will do harm to the biosphere.

I believe that the Greater Golden Rule comes close to defining what ethics is all about. To break it, even with some 'justifying' greater good in mind, is risky; in the case of a state using torture - to require that employees break the Golden Rule, in such a terrible and systematic way, would be criminal.

Does the end justify the means?

Can immoral actions ever be justified as a means to a greater good?

This is not so simple as it might at first site seem. Taxing the rich is the means of achieving the end of helping the poor. Taxing the rich would be immoral if we did not, by doing so, produce a greater good by helping the poor. Here the means, while being bad in itself, is plainly seen as the first step toward producing a greater good. The world is not black and white, we must often compromise; but we must take great care in doing so.

The USA dropped two million tonnes of bombs on Laos during the Vietnam war. Their aim may have been, at least in part, to bring democracy to Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, but they lost the war. So the means - the bombing, a terrible act - certainly was not justified by the end, because the desired end was not achieved.

The Nazis of Germany had a vision of a great future when they started World War Two; they achieved nothing but death and destruction. The Coalition of the USA, the UK and Australia at least professed achieving some greater good when they invaded Iraq in 2003; as far as can be seen in mid 2006 they achieved nothing good, but did a great deal of harm, including causing the deaths of tens of thousands or Iraqi civilians.

Honesty

As an example of the former, suppose that a young girl asks you if you think she is beautiful (you know she is not), do you lie because it will make her feel good? As an example of the latter, suppose you promise to do something for someone; you later realise that if you are to keep your promise it will mean that your family will suffer some loss; should you break your promise?

One thing that must be considered here is the question of your credibility - if you are dishonest people will remember that and when you say something in the future people will not know whether they can believe it. This is not only bad for you, it diminishes your friends and family because we are defined not only by ourselves, but by those around us.

A society cannot function at its best if we cannot trust each other.

Can torture be justified in some cases?

Those who would have Australia adopt the use of torture say that its use would be justified in those cases where a smaller wrong (the use of torture) results in a larger good (for example, the saving of lives threatened by terrorists); that is, they claim that the means would be justified by the end. The greatest fault in this argument is that the wrong is carried out, but then the larger good may never be achieved.

These people typically give as an example the situation where many lives have been threatened by a terrorist group, one of the terrorists is in custody and may have information that could save innocent lives. There are several ways in which this could go wrong, the 'terrorist' may be tortured and no lives saved.

• The information might be obtained, but the lives not saved for one of a number of reasons:
  • The attempt comes too late;
  • The rescue attempt is bungled;
  • The other terrorists kill their hostages or set off their bomb;
• The suspect might not have the information needed to save the lives;
• There may be no lives at risk; the whole thing may be a hoax;
• The suspect may not be a terrorist at all, but has been falsely accused, or is mentally deranged;

I believe that would be a great mistake, for the following reasons:

• It goes against two great moral rules:
  • The Golden Rule, "Do to others what you would have them do to you";
  • It fails the other great test for ethical actions: "What if everyone behaved that way?"
• The victim may be innocent of the crime of which he is suspected;
• The victim's crime may not be a crime when looked at from a point of view different to that of the torturer: "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter";
• Almost everyone would agree that the intentional inflicting of pain on any animal is, in itself, bad. Torture is a wrong that can only be justified by bringing about a greater good. But very often, when people do bad with the aim of producing a greater good, the end that is actually achieved does not justify the means employed;
• It would be quite immoral to require an employee to use torture;
• If the government of a country uses torture, then the opponents of that government will feel more justified in using cruel and immoral methods;
• It will cause fear and dread of government and authority by the citizens. In a democracy the citizens should respect police forces, not fear or dread them;
• Those who authorise the use of torture in 'special' cases will be tempted to also authorise it in other cases;
• Those who do the torturing will have a hard time living with their consciences; this will be a burden to them in later life. They will also be despised by the general populace if what they have done becomes known;
• The torturers will become brutalised by their work;

When deciding on 'the good' it has often been thought sufficient to consider other people. With the harm that has been done to our environment in the recent past (for example damage to the ozone layer and the extinction of species caused by greenhouse warming) it has become clear that we must consider the whole of the part of the earth that supports life, the biosphere.

There are simple actions that would almost universally be considered good; for example, collecting rubbish from a roadside and disposing of it properly. Other actions, generally of a more complex nature, may be thought good in one age or in one society, and less good in another. Clearing scrub to produce open farmland was strongly encouraged in Australia in the nineteenth century with the result of widespread soil salinisation and other problems in the twentieth century. Introducing Old-World animals into Australia, to make Australia more like Europe, was once thought good; it has caused huge and irreparable harm to the Australian environment.

Confucius suggested that a gentleman (who he defined as a man who lives a moral life rather than a man of noble birth) would take as much trouble to discover what is right as lesser men take to discover what will pay.

The Golden Rule, 'do to others what you would like them to do to you' is one way that you can decide on whether an action is ethical or not. Another is to consider 'what if everybody behaved that way?'>

What if everybody behaved that way?

This ethical point is also known as the tragedy of the commons, discussed elsewhere on this page.

This point is especially appropriate in this age of greenhouse warming/climate change. Consider your life-style and think what would happen to the world if everybody behaved like you do. If you live the life of a high-consumption Australian or USian, think how much worse the climate change problem would be if everyone in the world was responsible for producing as much carbon dioxide and for consuming as much petroleum as you.

The Australian government has tried to excuse Australia's very high production of greenhouse gasses on a number of occasions by saying that the total greenhouse gas produced by Australia is a very small percentage of the world's total. Australia produces about 1.5% of the world's total annual greenhouse gasses, but Australia has only about 0.3% of the world's population. So, using the rule, 'what if everybody behaved that way?', if every person in the world was responsible for the same amount of greenhouse gas production as the average Australian then the world's total would increase five fold - an absolute disaster! This ethical question is discussed in greater depth in my page on greenhouse and Australia.

The greenhouse/climate change problem has come about because people have not considered this moral question. No-one has bothered about the amount of CO2 that they are responsible for releasing because it is trivial in the big picture; but they don't go on to think that they are one of six billion people and they have a moral obligation to use no more than one six billionth of the earth's resources.

A number of Australians who work in the mining industry air-commute to their work. For example they might fly a couple of thousand kilometres from Perth to the NW of Western Australia every few weeks. Consider the amount of plane fuel used and greenhouse gasses produced. What if everybody did something similar? Perhaps these people, as individuals, don't have a choice; perhaps that is the only way they can get to and from that job; the fact remains that it is unethical because they are producing more than their share of CO2.

Why, then, do most Australians and USians produce far more than their share of greenhouse carbon dioxide when they must know by now that the capacity of the world to handle this is overloaded? Any calculation of the amount of carbon dioxide that the world can sustainably handle shows that, per person on earth, it is a small fraction of the amounts produced by the people of Australia and the USA. In most cases it would be easy for these people to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas that they produce; buy smaller cars, use public transport more and your private car less, etc.

Consuming more than your share when you know that all will suffer for your consumption in the long run is certainly unethical. The great majority of Australians and USians must be aware of the greenhouse/climate change problem. I think the answer is that these people simple do not think of it in these terms; they are just doing what those around them are doing, they cannot see the trees for the forest. The citizens of Australia and the USA need to be educated about greenhouse responsibilities, but their governments have little or no interest in lowering greenhouse emissions so will not invest anything significant in this education.

Tragedy of the Commons

The term originates from the Commons, or common land, of Britain. Britain had land reserved for the use of all. Individuals could run a few stock on the commons or plant a small garden and grow some vegetables or fruit trees. The 'Tragedy' comes from the fact that, so long as everyone considered the needs of their neighbours and remembered that each had a responsibility to protect the commons as well as a right to use the commons all was well, but the good of all could be damaged by the greed of a few. If 90% of those who used the commons did so carefully and responsibly, the remaining 10% could still overstock the land and damage it. If the 90% reduced the numbers of their stock when they saw that overstocking was a problem, the 10% could increase the numbers of their stock, increase their profits and increase the damage done to the land.

This problem is covered by the question What if everybody behaved that way?, discussed elsewhere on this page.

This is exactly what we see with greenhouse/climate change. Instead of some people in a local community sharing some common land there is the global community sharing the atmosphere. When there were fewer people on the Earth and we all produced only a little greenhouse gas all was well, but when our numbers multiplied and some of us started producing far more greenhouse gasses than others climates started to change. But then people realised that is some tried to live within the limits of the capacities of the Earth's natural systems, but a few did not, the tragedy would continue.

The wealthy nations have done most of the damage. They have caused most of the gasses to be released into the atmosphere to cause the level of climate change that we are seeing in the early twenty-first century. As I write (December 2007), while their per-capita rates of greenhouse gasses are still well below the levels of the developed nations, several developing nations are greatly increasing the amounts of polluting gasses that they are releasing; China and India are of particular concern. The great majority of people and nations must work together to solve the problem, but while some see greater short-term gain in greed they refuse to cooperate; the USA and Australia are of particular concern.

What we need is for an agreement between most nations (we cannot wait for an agreement between all nations) to somehow share the Earth's natural systems without excessive damage. Those nations that will not agree voluntarily will have to be induced to conform by pressure from the others.

I'll give an example. It is wrong to damage the environment more than one needs to; as mentioned above, it is impossible to live without doing some harm. Mankind's production of greenhouse gasses is altering the climate. It follows, therefore, that we should, as individuals, try to minimize the greenhouse gasses that we are responsible for. Most of Australia's electricity (most of the world's electricity?) is generated by burning coal - one of the main causes of greenhouse gas production. If we want to minimize our own contributions what should we do?

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• Be aware of how much electricity we are using and always try to minimize it?
• Not use any electricity from the grid? Generate our own by using solar panels;
• Pay a little extra and buy ' green' electricity;

If one buys green electricity, should one go to the expense of buying 100% green electricity, when most other people don't buy any? Would buying 25% green electricity be enough?

I'd suggest that one does what one reasonably can; what one can afford to; that one maintains the highest standard of morals that one can reasonably achieve.

That other people have low ethical standards should not effect one's own ethical standards. Bad behaviour in others does not excuse bad behaviour in oneself. On the other hand to live shivering in the cold rather than switching on a heater, because one believes it unethical to consume electricity and so add to the greenhouse problem, I would suggest is excessive. (I think Buddha said something to the effect of moderation in all things, walk the middle path?)

Plato held, in The Republic, that to be moral is in one's own interest, that even from a selfish perspective morality is the best course.

Consumption and the cars we drive

Six big and heavy 4-wheel-drives and one small fuel-efficient car in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The gas-guzzlers are not needed, our little car (the Jazz on the left) weighs about half as much and handles the dirt roads with ease. It is also capable of towing up to one tonne; plenty for many camper trailers.

So, if running a car is something that is unsustainable if everyone in the world were to do it, can we justify our cars? I suspect not.

Of course the size of the vehicle and its fuel consumption is also an important factor. A large four-wheel-drive (4WD, SUV) car could easily consume twice the fuel of a small car. (USians call 4WDs SUVs - sports utility vehicles - sometimes BinLadenmobiles.)

I use a car. I can't see any reasonable alterative. But I try to minimize my car use, and try to avoid running a car that is bigger than I need. It's important to think about your consumption and your contribution to global pollution; if you think about it perhaps you will become a part of the solution rather than being just another part of the problem.

An interesting page with an American point of view on SUVs is at Santa Clara University.

The graph below indicates that if we can share the use of small cars rather than using a big 4WD on our own we might reduce our greenhouse impact about nine fold. It also shows that sharing our vehicles, whether big 4WDs or minis, can greatly improve their sustainability, and therefore their ethical justifiability. (In the graph I have, for simplicity, considered the driver to be a passenger.)

Wealth brings with it advantages. Wealthy people have options, the very poor often have few choices on how they can live their lives. Wealth brings with it power, poverty equals powerlessness.

Consider my life today compared with an African peasant farmer; for the sake of the exercise think of the two of us as if we had no past. I, who am retired and financially comfortable, get out of bed and write a bit on my computer before having breakfast and going out to water some trees that I have planted along some roadsides. All things that I have chosen to do.

The African peasant probably gets out of bed and is straight into work that must be done, work that he/she has no choices in. His breakfast is much more frugal than mine, his health is more precarious, he could not afford to buy a computer even if he wanted one, he probably can not be at all confident that he will be able to feed himself, or his family, in the year to come.

Why should I be so well off and the African not? Is this situation just?

I suggest that those of us who are wealthy have a responsibility to share with those who are poor. If you have a much larger house than you need, if you have more bathrooms than you can use, if you regularly have holidays on luxury liners or in five star hotels, look to your ethics.

Animals have even less power than African peasants. Those of us who have options certainly have responsibilities to animals.

I'm still physically reasonably fit, but at the age of 58 I believe I'd have a hard time finding paid employment if I tried.

Is consuming the products of other people's labour, while producing little oneself, ethical? I suspect that Carl Marx would have had something to say about it.

In the case of my country, Australia, the period from 1996 to 2007 was dominated by the policies of Prime Minister John Howard. He presumably was motivated by a desire to 'improve' Australia, but he aligned it with the USA in that country's wars of global domination and he was George W. Bush's greatest ally in slowing the world's response to the massive climate change problem. He dominated the parliamentary Liberal Party to the point where very few other members seemed to have found the will or courage to speak out against him. Yet while his Prime Ministership was largely negative for Australia, and certainly for the world, I think it might be simplistic to just say that he was a 'bad' man.

'White collar' criminals such as embezzlers seem to have traditionally been thought less 'bad' than violent criminals, although one wonders which have caused the most harm. Surely the seriousness of a crime, or unethical act, should be measured by the amount of harm done. Then shouldn't we measure the harm done by greedy corporate bosses according to the amount of financial harm that their rapaciousness does to other people? For example, a public company chief executive officer who takes two million dollars a year more than he needs from the profits of that public company can be thought of as taking a thousand dollars a year from a thousand employees of that company and a thousand dollars a year from a thousand small investors in that company. This surely causes unnecessary hardship to a great many people; unnecessary because research has shown that increasing income, beyond the minimum level required to sustain a comfortable lifestyle, does not produce increased happiness. The greed of the corporate CEO, while doing harm to many, does not improve the lot of the CEO himself!

Considered this way, are avaricious corporate CEOs among the worst, most unethical, people in the modern world?

As I got older I developed the idea that while I could not return the favour to the individuals that helped me - in many cases I lost track of them - I could help other people and at least 'balance my ledger' in that I would do good for as many people as had done good to me.

I do not recall ever discussing this principle with anyone until a visit to some long-time friends in England in 2004. They took my family and me to an expensive dinner and refused to allow me to pay any part of the cost. When they realised that I did not feel comfortable that they had paid the whole cost of the restaurant meal, they explained that they had many favours done for them in the past and they felt that by doing favours to us they were moving a step toward balancing their 'good deed ledger'.

Balancing your budget with the environment

There are two things that we must be careful of here. First, it is certainly wrong to punish some people for wrongs done by others, whether or not those others happen to belong to the same group as those who did wrong. Second, our anger can harm ourselves.

Anger and hatred do at least as much harm to the person who feels them as they do to the person to whom they are directed. It is impossible to be happy at the same time as being angry and hating. We all want to be happy.

I believe that it is a valid aim in life to be happy, so long as that happiness is based on a solid foundation. One cannot meaningfully be happy, for example, by taking drugs. Certainly one will never become happy by collecting material possessions. We may feel some satisfaction if we obtain revenge, but it is not the way to happiness.

So, do we allow people to do bad things to us and 'get away with it'? No, I do not advocate that, sometimes we should seek justice; but we must not allow our own anger and hatred to harm us. Overcome them, be happy! Consider too, that the person who has harmed you may well learn in later life that he has done wrong and, in so doing, has harmed himself; what sort of happiness can anyone obtain by harming others?

People change. Many go through periods in their lives when they behave badly; most eventually move out of that error. If possible, we should help them see that it is an error rather than become angry or hate them. Easy to say, hard to do!

I don't remember who the writer was, but I remember reading an excellent analogy. For every theory that may be true or may be false (as an example think of organic evolution) imagine a horizontal wire attached to a wall. On the wire representing evolution there is a bead. At each end of the wire is a cup. If the bead is pushed along the wire until it falls into the left cup this indicates that you totally disbelieve that organic evolution happens. If the bead is in the right cup then it indicates that you have absolutely no doubt that organic evolution is a fact. We must all endeavour to keep all our beads on the wires and not in the cups.

We must never believe that we 'know' what is right and what is wrong. We certainly should pursue this knowledge, but we should never condemn those who disagree with us simply for their disagreement.

Looking at the balance of good and bad; some people will be offended if they see their national flag burned, but perhaps more good will be achieved by encouraging them to think about whether their nationalism can really be justified. My page on Patriotism discusses similar concepts. Patriotism is very close to nationalism. We should be thinking of the Earth, rather than an individual nation, as our home; nationalism/patriotism was probably never a good idea.

Nationalism implies either "The government of my country is always right in its dealings with other nations" or "I will always support my country, whether it is right or wrong". The first assertion is plainly factually wrong, the second is morally wrong; both are dangerous.

Some people claim that Australians (or whatever your national group is) fought in the First and Second World Wars (or whatever your great conflicts were) for the flag. Surely they did not. Surely they fought for principals such as freedom from tyranny and the right to pursue happiness in their own ways. I would hope they did anyway.

Governments have an interest in the patriotism or nationalism of citizens. They can use it to obtain the support of their citizens against some real or imagined outside threat (as the US and Australian government have done very effectively in the fake 'war against terror'). I see no ethical argument in favour of nationalism or the sanctity of a national flag.

Index

On this page...
Altruism
Anger and hatred
Avarice
Better government
Consumption and the cars we drive
Doubt
Eat half the cake
Flag burning
Golden Rule
Good deed debt
Honesty
How do we define good?
How should we live our lives?
Introduction
Means justified by end?
Proper disposal of rubbish
Related pages
Responsibility of wealth
Rubbishing Gallipoli
Small capitalism
Top
Torture: should it be used?
Tragedy of the Commons
What if everybody did that?
What standard of ethics?