"My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift," says Father Tim Jones of the Anglican Church, providing a seasonal spiritual boon to the half-incher worrying about his heavenly credit risk. Not of course, that tea-leafin' is a good thing, says the Father, but if you're faced with starvation, better that you knock off Tesco's than Granny Smith in Tesco's carpark (see the Guardian news story here).
No surprise that Tim Jones doesn't understand the essential character of moral integrity - after all, he believes in a fairy tale character looking down on us all with a benign smile, ready to say 'there, there, there' or 'burn, baby, burn' depending on what mood he's in.
Jones is right, or would be, if this is what he meant: that there's nothing wrong in principle from stealing from anybody or any institution that will not experience any suffering from your action. Indeed, many a famous moral philosopher (J.S. Mill, for example) has argued that it would be a moral obligation to do so if your suffering would be eased at less expense than some other's (or society's) would be increased. When it comes to starving versus Tesco's not being able to account for the loss of a tin of beans in its annual accounts, Tesco's doesn't have a moral leg to stand on.
There's no need to invoke the slippery slope argument here that 'but then we'd all start doing it and Tesco's would soon go out of business', for the simple reason that the argument and its rebuttal, along with Jones, utterly miss the real point about morality.
Morality is not about doing what some people who wrote a collection of verses some thousand or more years ago said you should do according to their idea of the creator of the universe, nor is it doing what is best for the most people, nor is it doing one's 'moral duty' (whatever that is), and nor, obviously, is it doing what is legal. Morality is about acting within the confines of your own integrity. What sort of a person do you want to be? A thief, a helpless victim of circumstance with no control over your own life? or an agent of power capable of supporting yourself and earning the love and respect of people you in turn love and respect?
Stealing indicates you either have not matured enough to understand your own moral responsibility to yourself, or that you do not have the courage to find solutions that you can be proud of to get out of your predicament.
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Monday, 7 December 2009
15. Tiger - no champion of moral integrity
Tiger’s not perfect, he tells us, but that’s hardly the point. While I have no feelings and no opinion on his life (or sport), I do detest the ‘I’m sorry, I’m not perfect’ excuse for moral failings. Nobody’s perfect, but not everybody lies and cheats.
Going by his speech, Tiger Woods seems more concerned with the effect his behaviour had on others rather than on himself. That is to misunderstand what 'integrity' means, and encourages the attitude that so long as you don't get caught, it doesn't matter what you do (after all, if you don't get caught, you don't have to worry about affecting others in your life). Integrity means acting consistently with the values you hold in the quiet moments of life, the values that you would like to say you have lived by when you reflect on the question ‘what kind of a person have I been?’ at the very end of your mortal time. When our integrity fails there is always someone who knows, and there is always someone who is affected - that someone is oneself. Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Gray' made this point with force - the portrait in Gray's attic is the consciousness in each of our heads, mirroring our shames and guilts, and even hiding them away in one's subconscious "attic" fails to negate their overarching power. This is the only worthwhile answer to the question set up in Plato's 'Republic': 'Why should I be moral?'
For each of us, the values that inform our integrity are things that we have to come by and develop over time. When we are young, we typically use the examples of others as a guide, a reference point from which to start developing our own personal compass of right and wrong, of shoulds and should nots. I don't know who Tiger Woods' heroes were, but if they had moral integrity the point is not that they were perfect; it is that they were grown - moral integrity requires maturity, not perfection.
And when we do fail? Eliot Spitzer handled it best I thought in his short resignation speech, though critics scoff that this was merely political maneouvring to seed a future return. The duplicity of politicians is never to be underestimated, but if he had been drinking Hemlock along with Socrates, that speech would have been a worthy addition to Plato’s dialogues.
Going by his speech, Tiger Woods seems more concerned with the effect his behaviour had on others rather than on himself. That is to misunderstand what 'integrity' means, and encourages the attitude that so long as you don't get caught, it doesn't matter what you do (after all, if you don't get caught, you don't have to worry about affecting others in your life). Integrity means acting consistently with the values you hold in the quiet moments of life, the values that you would like to say you have lived by when you reflect on the question ‘what kind of a person have I been?’ at the very end of your mortal time. When our integrity fails there is always someone who knows, and there is always someone who is affected - that someone is oneself. Oscar Wilde's 'Picture of Dorian Gray' made this point with force - the portrait in Gray's attic is the consciousness in each of our heads, mirroring our shames and guilts, and even hiding them away in one's subconscious "attic" fails to negate their overarching power. This is the only worthwhile answer to the question set up in Plato's 'Republic': 'Why should I be moral?'
For each of us, the values that inform our integrity are things that we have to come by and develop over time. When we are young, we typically use the examples of others as a guide, a reference point from which to start developing our own personal compass of right and wrong, of shoulds and should nots. I don't know who Tiger Woods' heroes were, but if they had moral integrity the point is not that they were perfect; it is that they were grown - moral integrity requires maturity, not perfection.
And when we do fail? Eliot Spitzer handled it best I thought in his short resignation speech, though critics scoff that this was merely political maneouvring to seed a future return. The duplicity of politicians is never to be underestimated, but if he had been drinking Hemlock along with Socrates, that speech would have been a worthy addition to Plato’s dialogues.
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
14. The Global Warming Conspiracy...
...or not. Well, we had 'climategate' (poor old Nixon, he'll never be rid of this), now the boffs tell us the hole in the Ozone layer is actually helping to keep the climate cool and drat and blast, banning them CFCs might just close up that hole and increase the rate of global warming.
It's a shame, it seems to me, that a perfectly sensible body of scientific data is becoming increasingly obscured by apocalyptic claims that stretch the bounds of credibility. On the other hand, there's little sense in the conspiracy theorists claims that its all a plot by 'the elite' to keep world control. Let's face it, the whole theory hit the big time in the US during the Republican's watch - the very party that are tight in with the Oil industry and other CO2 producers. The 'elite' are precisely the one's who are most negatively affected by the demands for changes in lifestyle, economics, and industry that result from accepting global warming because it is they that have got all the investments and holdings in the established industries. It is the source of their power. If it was a conspiracy theory by the powerful to completely reorder world economics, they would be undermining the very industries that made them powerful in the first place.
Looking for a sensible balance on this issue, I don't think anyone has any credible reason to deny that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is radically higher than anything that has been seen in the Earth's history, and that has to be a cause for concern. Quite what it means both in terms of global climate change and consequences to human civilization is another matter.
Indeed, the more I look into this issue the more I come round to the conclusion that the scientists predictions are subject to so many variables that there is little that can reliably be counted on. The fact that the hole in the ozone layer is now being touted as something that may be of more benefit than harm to us, is - to anyone old enough to remember the scare-mongering that went round on this issue - seriously undermining the scientists credibility to know what they are talking about.
That said, I don't see how anyone can sensibly think that pumping more and more CO2 into the air is likely to be either good or harmless: it's so far out of the natural cycle (never over 330 parts per million in over half a million years, but up to nearly double that in less than half a century, well over 600ppm now), it just makes sense to get it under control.
It's a shame, it seems to me, that a perfectly sensible body of scientific data is becoming increasingly obscured by apocalyptic claims that stretch the bounds of credibility. On the other hand, there's little sense in the conspiracy theorists claims that its all a plot by 'the elite' to keep world control. Let's face it, the whole theory hit the big time in the US during the Republican's watch - the very party that are tight in with the Oil industry and other CO2 producers. The 'elite' are precisely the one's who are most negatively affected by the demands for changes in lifestyle, economics, and industry that result from accepting global warming because it is they that have got all the investments and holdings in the established industries. It is the source of their power. If it was a conspiracy theory by the powerful to completely reorder world economics, they would be undermining the very industries that made them powerful in the first place.
Looking for a sensible balance on this issue, I don't think anyone has any credible reason to deny that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is radically higher than anything that has been seen in the Earth's history, and that has to be a cause for concern. Quite what it means both in terms of global climate change and consequences to human civilization is another matter.
Indeed, the more I look into this issue the more I come round to the conclusion that the scientists predictions are subject to so many variables that there is little that can reliably be counted on. The fact that the hole in the ozone layer is now being touted as something that may be of more benefit than harm to us, is - to anyone old enough to remember the scare-mongering that went round on this issue - seriously undermining the scientists credibility to know what they are talking about.
That said, I don't see how anyone can sensibly think that pumping more and more CO2 into the air is likely to be either good or harmless: it's so far out of the natural cycle (never over 330 parts per million in over half a million years, but up to nearly double that in less than half a century, well over 600ppm now), it just makes sense to get it under control.
13. Good political governance?
I was reading an interesting thesis the other day on why shareholders need good control mechanisms over managers, to quote
“if managers’ compensation is tied to short-term profit, they will be pressured to evaluate projects based on their immediate impact on profit rather than according to the present value of cash flows over the life of the investment. This may motivate managers to turn down profitable long-term investments”.
Not in the interests of the shareholders, obviously. Quite a good analogy with democratically-elected politicians, it seemed to me: if politicians incentive is short term (being re-elected in the next 3 to 5 years), what rationale is there for them to implement long-term policies that may be necessary but unpopular (‘carbon reduction’ springs to mind)? Shouldn’t there be some other mechanism for evaluating good political management rather than a media-driven popularity contest every couple of years?
“if managers’ compensation is tied to short-term profit, they will be pressured to evaluate projects based on their immediate impact on profit rather than according to the present value of cash flows over the life of the investment. This may motivate managers to turn down profitable long-term investments”.
Not in the interests of the shareholders, obviously. Quite a good analogy with democratically-elected politicians, it seemed to me: if politicians incentive is short term (being re-elected in the next 3 to 5 years), what rationale is there for them to implement long-term policies that may be necessary but unpopular (‘carbon reduction’ springs to mind)? Shouldn’t there be some other mechanism for evaluating good political management rather than a media-driven popularity contest every couple of years?
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