Ethical You
Page last updated: 30th Nov 2010
Ethics are a very personal affair. However, I was recently asked to comment on the following headings from an ethical point of view.
Care of the Earth
This one is very simple. If you don’t look after something you will lose it. That’s what my parents taught me and it is true of everything from possessions through to relationships. Anything we care about is worth looking after.
There are those who use the argument that, ‘The Earth is so big it can look after itself’. To these people I generally ask, ‘So if the Earth decides we are a parasite that it wants to be rid of, are you OK with that?’
For me it is incontrovertible that we should be living in harmony with the Earth. We do not own it, we do not have rights over it, we are merely lodging here for a short, very short, while. As a race, our existence is a blip in the history of the Earth.
Our ancestors survived by learning her ways, listening to her voice, working with her seasons. Originally, this would have been a passive, opportunistic arrangement, but humans learned to adapt extremely well and, once the concept of agriculture developed, they expanded.
There is much to show that our ancestors understood the art of giving thanks; of celebrating the seasonal harvest; of sharing within the community or tribe. They understood their environment and worked within her confines: harvesting water; storing grain; developing animal husbandry. This was a relationship whereby humans could live well on the Earth, without causing her any harm. And it worked for thousands of years.
Somewhere along the way greed and inequality crept in and our attitude towards the Earth changed from one of Mother Provider to Store Cupboard. Everything was plundered with little thought of the consequences and suddenly some of the cupboards became bare.
Whilst it is true that ‘Nature abhors a vacuum,’ she can only refill the cupboards from material she has left and humans are clearing the shelves like the first day of the Sale at Selfridges.
Like a footballer in need of a red card, we are on a high and don’t want to stop. Fortunately, football has referees—the human race does not.
Instead, it has developed a moral code which, it is thought, evolved out of our instinct for survival. This moral code is generally based upon fairness and equality. It is based upon caring for one another.
Care of the People
Scientists have shown that humans are essentially selfish. Richard Dawkins’ “The Selfish Gene” and Matt Ridley’s “Origins of Virtue” give a plausible explanation of how we probably developed our moral codes, our ethics.
I am not a science basher, by any means, but I do take some of it with the proverbial pinch of sodium chloride. There are many things science cannot understand and one of them is Love. I spell it with a capital ‘L’ to emphasise its importance. Love is so often left to the poets, it is nebulous, it has no formula, it cannot be proven by any lab test. So the scientist cannot include it in any equation. This is unfortunate, because it is going to play a pivotal role in the survival of the human race and the Earth as we (kind of) know it.
When we Love, we Care. Care comes from inside and again, it has no formula. We might call it ‘parental instinct’ but there are too many stories of parental exploitation to take this one seriously. From a personal human perspective, Care can get in the way of our selfishness, it is a nuisance because it makes us do things we may not wish to do.
Most of us, I wish I could say all, find it hard to look at a fellow human suffering without wanting to reach out and lend a hand, help in some way. The measure of our Care can be seen in the money that is raised quite easily when we hear of famine, flood, earthquake in various parts of the world. Currently, we are seeing fires in Russia and floods in Pakistan. Here in the UK, we put our hands in our pockets for people we know nothing about and are unlikely ever to meet.
At times like this we see that the human race really does Care, it makes you proud to be part of it and you might even get a lump in your throat. The next item on The News is about an idiot with a gun in some quiet little town. Yet part of me reaches out to that idiot, because I know something has gone terribly wrong inside his/her head.
Caring for one another is a natural human instinct. When the way is made easy for us to help those with less than us, we do it. We set up that direct debit, we pop into the charity shop, we give time and energy to good causes.
I would venture to suggest that the reason we have so much evidence of a lack of Care on this planet is down to ignorance:
- People need clothes, they don’t have much money so they buy cheap. How are they to know that some girl is being exploited in a sweat shop in China.
- People need food, they don’t have much money so they buy cheap. How are they to know about the nutritional value of pre-packaged meals; the air miles it took to bring us strawberries and beans in Winter; the sick life of a caged chicken.
- People are sick, they go to the doctor. How are they to know that a good diet with fresh foods will make them more healthy and able to fight infection.
Without a good education and an enquiring mind, there is a good chance that a lot of people will learn from TV, advertising, magazines, and all the sources that make them rife for exploitation. How should they know otherwise?
Unfortunately, the development of coinage meant that we were able to remove ourselves from such matters as touching the soil; milking the goat; kneading the bread; picking the fruit. We could pay someone else to get their hands dirty for us. It is an urban ‘joke’ that many children do not know how where milk comes from.
Instead of realising that coinage was creating a rift between humans and their planet, we went on to develop credit cards.
Reduce Consumerism
If I believed in the Devil, I would say that credit cards were one of his better strokes of genius.
Buy Now – Pay Later. All those wonderful trinkets shown on QVC, in Hello magazine, or some soap on the TV can all be ‘yours’ right now, ‘because you’re worth it’. Marketing is a very clever game designed to exploit the human race at a very base level: inadequacy. It takes a strong person to stand up to their peers. At the individual level, humans are not always as strong as they would like to be.
Marketing is responsible for the ladder at the end of the street. It says, “You can climb it if you have a, b, or c. And you can have those by waving that piece of plastic. It’s that easy.”
When we climb it we find another street and another ladder, the houses are bigger and there are better facilities at the sports club but the beer tastes the same so why not try climbing this ladder and we might get a better car with Bucks Fizz, too.
After about three ladders the dice rolls against us and the snake comes along. This is when we find out that the childhood game is a lie. We are not back at the beginning. We are off the board with no hope of climbing back without help. Once upon a time we dealt with these naughty people by throwing them into debtor’s prison. These days that is not considered very Caring.
Why do we let ourselves get into this kind of trouble? I think it comes back to the lack of understanding. How do you place a value of things? The Marketing people will tell you that the right price is the one the people will pay. A work of art is only worth a squillion if someone hands over the dollars. This is how things are valued. I say this is bunkum. The value of anything should only be related to the amount of time and energy it took to produce the item and place it before the buyer.
Co-operation vs Competition
This is how it would have to work in a co-operative: I do this for you and, in return, you do this for me. Some people are good at sewing, so they make the clothes. Some have a way with animals, so they milk the aforementioned goat. Some are bakers, butchers, candlestick makers. This is wonderful in small communities, tribes. However, I would not be writing this on a computer if humans had stayed at this point, nor would I be publishing on a webpage for someone to read that I am unlikely ever to meet.
The human race was bound to expand. Once we discovered agriculture, we also found a measure of security and this gave rise to spare time and the artisan’s skill was developed. They also discovered that one valley grew better wheat than another which had better apples, so let’s trade.
Then it all got rather complicated because George wanted to trade with Alberto but Alberto wanted to trade with Hans who wanted to trade with Guillaume who rather like the look of George’s stuff. So some bright spark said, “Why don’t I give you this piece of paper in lieu of goods and you can give that to the next person and get what you want…” Somehow, the idea took off and Guillaume, a farmer in France, was able to cross The Channel with a bike full of onions and return with a hoard of cash.
This worked so well that other farmers tried it and, before long, the supply was outstripping demand. So one enterprising businessman, let’s call him Pierre Legrand, said to Guillaume and the other farmers, “I’ll take your onions off your hands and give you the coins. That way you won’t need to peddle across the continent any more and you will not have to worry about competition.”
M. Legrand stored the onions until the supply chain settled then sold them on at a profit. He also turned some into pickles and marmalade. This was also good for the glass blowers who made the storage jars.
So we now had the idea of warehouses full of goods whose price would go up when the demand grew. It’s a short hop from here to the global corporate enterprise and the invention of the computer.
Competition is a double edged sword. Guillaume was just a pedlar in onions, what was the difference between him and the next pedlar. Very little, so competition would ruin his business. But it is also competition that creates invention, that desire to make your artefact better than the next one. If we can’t do it better we exploit a basic human need and tell our customers we Care for them because they are ‘worth it’.
But the idea of possession is not new. The human race has always wanted to possess beautiful things otherwise we would not have bothered creating them in the first place. When we look through the museum glass at the intricate workmanship of artisans from the past, we have a desire to pick it up, hold it, own it. If we had the money we would buy it. Rich people pay silly prices for objects that are useless.
Is this a fatal flaw in the human race, the one that will bring about our downfall? Maybe we need to evolve our moral code to say that everyone is entitled to own just one beautiful possession and you can’t own another until all the world has one each. But, I fear, Mother Earth’s cupboards will be long empty before every last person has their prized object.
What if that prized possession were a loaf of bread a day?
Give Away Surplus
When M. Legrand started up the warehouse business, he probably didn’t think that this idea would one day be used to create a false market. That grain would be stored in, say, France whilst people starved in Ethiopia because of drought. He would have sold it to them. Well, he would if he could make a profit.
Our ancestors, had they known, would have traded. There must be something in Ethiopia that they could have in return, negotiation would have been possible, after all, we are talking about surplus here.
The giving away of surplus cannot happen in a commercially based society, one that needs to turn a profit. M. Legrand had paid money for the contents of his warehouse, he needs money to part with it or he would be as poor as the Ethiopians.
We are back to that fundamental flaw: The art of possessing.
But, whilst the hand of Fate has been drawing a huge curve that is about to meet at the top, the world has changed. The Tribe no longer exists.
This time, a solution has to be found in a far greater social strata, namely, the country. What we need is a global co-operative. Food should be traded for food or services, not money. Is this possible? Not whilst government bureaucrats hold the strings. It’s not directly their fault, they are merely the one’s at Profit Centre holding the country’s purse. It’s their job to protect it.
So it is up to us to make the change happen. We are the same people who put our hands in our pockets when we hear about flood and famine in foreign parts. Why does it take a disaster for us to show that we Care? Because that is the only time we get to hear the full story.
When I was a child I was told to eat up all my food and be grateful because there were children starving in Africa. My response, along with every other child, was that the food I didn’t want should be sent to them. Thinking about it, that’s was a jolly good idea.
Those of us living in the more affluent countries are used to finding what we need on the supermarket shelves. We even get annoyed if there is a gap on the shelf where the product we want should be. Why is it not there?
Life Ethic
I’m finding increasingly hard to walk into supermarkets. All that food. All those fish and slaughtered animals, killed just in case someone fancies steak tonight. And food past it’s sell by date, perfectly good food that has past an arbitrary time stamp, has to be destroyed and made uneatable because the supermarket cannot risk being sued should it be the cause of an illness. We can’t even give it to the pigs anymore, we fill up holes in the Earth under a system called landfill.
Here it joins all the other garbage that we threw away because it became unfashionable or had short-term-ness built into it.
We are living in a time of built in surplus in all areas, not just food. We expect to have a bin full of rubbish each week. And the great thing is, we don’t have to be responsible for it, we put it out on the street and someone takes it away. Should the system break down for any reason, we complain that the place is becoming unsanitary, our own personal rubbish is a threat to us.
Too right it is! But not because of the threat of illness.
If people took responsibility for their own rubbish, there would be far less packaging. We need to understand the true meaning of the word ‘disposable’. Can it even exist in a truly moral society? Why do we produce goods that are so worthless they can be thrown away?
A lot of people are afraid that if we change the system they will be badly affected. Yet, not changing it, will be worse.
Despite the rumours of corporate paid scientists, the facts of the matter are:
- that the world is running out of oil
- that organically produced food is better for us
- that animals reared with respect taste better
- that pesticides are only good for the chemical factories
- that obesity is caused by processed foods
- that genetic modification across species is a time bomb
The average person still lives by the same moral code based upon caring for one another. Unfortunately, we hand over our morals to a body that has got caught up in coinage. We blindly assume there is nothing we can do. But the truth is very different.
The tribe is no longer about an arrangement between people, probably related, who sharing the same locality. The tribe is now a collection of people sharing the same ideals.
Perversely enough, it is the computer and the modern communication system that can make a difference. For now, we can communicate with like minds across the globe. In this vast swirl of people we can become a voice for change.
I was recently involved in the movement to end the shopping habit of ‘free’ single use plastic bags. There were only four of us in my own local community, but the movement was world wide, a tribe of like minded people. Communication made it happen.
There is very little excuse to say you don’t know about something. But we need to encourage our children to develop their enquiring minds, they love asking ‘why?’, let them find out. We need to become aware of the consequences of our actions, however small. Most of all, we need to take responsibility for our own lives and stop passing the buck. Some things just won’t fit in a rubbish bin.
If you would like to comment on this article or discuss the issues involved, please go to my ethical living blog page.