You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Ethics’ category.
In Defying Hitler, Sebastion Haffner’s disturbing 1939 memoir chronicling the rise of Nazism, the author, a law candidate, describes the insidious day-to-day changes in attitudes, beliefs, politics, and prejudices that began, for Germans, the slow descent into a “trap of comradeship” in which this culture of cruelty flourished as many of them become “owned by it”. “Comradeship” as the Nazis meant it, became a “narcotic” that the people were introduced to from the earliest age, through the Hitler Youth movement (Hitlerjugend), the SA, military service, and involvement with thousand of camps and clubs. In this way, it destroyed their sense of personal responsibility and became a means for the process of dehumanization:
‘It is even worse that comradeship relieves men of responsibility for their actions, before themselves, before God, before their conscience. They do what their comrades do. They have no choice. They have no time for thought (except when they unfortunately wake up at night). Their comrades are their conscience and give absolution for everything, provided that do what everybody else does.’
Haffner goes on to describe how this comradeship, in just a few weeks at camp, molded a group of intellectual, educated men into an “unthinking, indifferent, irresponsible mass” in which bigoted, derogatory, and hateful comments “were commonplace, went unanswered and set the intellectual tone.” The Nazis used a variety of psychological stimulations and manipulations to this end, such as slogans, flags, uniforms, Sieg Heils, marching columns, banners, and songs, to help create a dangerous, mindless “group think.” One of the most disturbing aspects of this comradeship was how the men in the camp began to behave as a collective entity, who “instinctively ignored or belittled anything that could disturb our collective self-satisfaction. A German Reich in microcosm.” This collectivity is the “and” in Arthur Eddington’s mathematical formula. The bullies and the bystanders become a deadly combination that is more than the sum of its parts.
[…]
In all three genocides [Armenian, Jewish, Tutsi], it was found that if one person (or small group of dedicated people) refused to go along with the genocidaires, some others who were potential witnesses actually became witnesses, defenders, and/or resisters themselves. This group readily admitted that if it were not for those who took the lead in desisting, they probably not would have had the courage to do so themselves. In his research in “atrocity producing situations,” Robert J. Lifton came to the conclusion, “There’s no inherent human nature that requires us to kill or maim… We have the potential for precisely that behaviour of the Nazis …or of some kind of more altruistic or cooperative behaviour, We can go either way. And I think that confronting these extreme situations is itself an act of hope because in doing that, we are implying and saying that there is an alternative. We can do better. ”
‘It is immensely moving when a mature man [or woman] – no matter whether young or old in years- is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere reaches a point where he says: “Here I stand; I can do no other.” That is something genuinely human and moving. [Max Weber, Politics as a Vocation]
-Barbara Coloroso. Extraordinary Evil – A Brief History of Genocide. pp. 85 – 87
Barbara Coloroso has done exemplary work in writing “Extraordinary Evil – A Brief History of Genocide”. Second time around on this book, now going low and slow to really get down with the text and understand what she is saying. I wanted to share some of the passages that resonated with me.
A Jewish officer in the US Army during World War II, Lieutenant Meyer Birnbaum wrote about a young Jewish boy he found near death in Ohrdruff, a concentration camp annexed to Buchenwald. The young boy requested bread and then broke down sobbing as he spoke of his murdered family:
After about fifteen minuets of bitter sobbing, the sixteen-year-old boy suddenly looked at me and asked whether I could teach him how to do teshuvah [repent]. I was taken aback by his question and tried to comfort him. “After the stretch in hell you’ve been through, you don’t need worry about doing teshuvah. Your slate is clean. Your slate is clean. You’re alive, and you have to get a hold of yourself and stop worrying about doing teshuvah,” I told him. But my words had no effect. I could not convince him. He kept insisting: “Ich vill tuhn teshuvah – I want to do teshuvah. Ich muz tuhn teshuva – I must do teshuvah.”
Finally, I asked him, “Why must you do teshuvah?” in the hope that talking would enable him to let go of some of the pain I saw in his eyes. He pointed out the window and asked if I saw the gallows. Satisfied that I did, he began his story:
“Two months ago one of the prisoners escaped…the camp commandant was furious about the escape and demanded to know the identify of the escaped prisoner. No one could provide him with the information he was seeking… In his fury, the commandant decided to play a sadistic game with us. He demanded that any pairs of brothers, or fathers and sons, step forward. We were terrified of what he might do if we did not comply. My father and I step forward.
They placed my father on a stool under those gallows and tied a noose around my father’s neck, the commandant cocked his Luger, placed it at my temple, and hissed, “If you or your father doesn’t tell me who escaped, you are going to kick that stool out from under your father.” I looked at my father and told him, “Zorgst sich nit – Don’t worry, Tatte, I won’t do it.” But my father answered me, “My son, you have to do it. He’s got a gun to your head and he’s going to kill you if you don’t, and then he will kick the chair out from under me and we’ll both be gone. This way at least there’s a chance you’ll survive. But if you don’t, we’ll both be killed.”
“Tatte, nein, ich vell dos nit tuhn – I will not do it. Ich hab nit fargessen kibbud av – I didn’t forget kibbud av [honouring one’s father].”
Instead of being comforted by words, my father suddenly screamed at me: “You talk about kibbud av, I’m ordering you to kick that stool. That is your father’s command.”
“Nein, Tatte, nein – No, father, I won’t.
But my father only got angrier, know that if I didn’t obey he would see his son murdered in front of him. “You talk about kibbud av v’eim [honouring one’s father and mother],” he shouted. “This is your father’s last order to you. Listen to me! Kick the chair!”
I was so frightened and confused hearing my father screaming at me that I kicked the chair and watched as my father’s neck snapped in the noose.
His story over, the boy looked at me… as my own tears flowed freely, and asked, “Now, you tell me. Do I have to do teshuvah?”
Barbara Coloroso. Extraordinary Evil – A Brief History of Genocide. pp. 93 – 95.
Due process? Hello..hello? Is this thing on? I need to hear again how our present system of justice is serving the needs of all people in society…
https://artemiswasamerf.tumblr.com/post/178505909488/well-lets-see-danny-masterson-had-3-women-as
Things are not okay. The status quo is currently unacceptable and must be changed.
The RCC is corrupt. Let’s acknowledge this, and then move to right the situation. Neil MacDonald over at the CBC take a swipe at the papacy, but for all his erudite comments and justifications – one has to ask the question – ‘are they really necessary?’ As in, there is almost no moral ambiguity here, this is an ethical slam dunk. The RCC ruling structure is rotten and needs to be jettisoned into space, the sooner, the better.
It is an unreal situation like Americans and their tragically farcical gun control debate. One would reasonably think that the wholesale slaughter of innocents that is happening at a fairly regular interval in the US would lead to the sanction one of the primary tools that people use to enact mass murder. Not rocket science.
In the same way, child buggery, has been a very catholic thing for decades if not centuries. No ethical pining needed here folks – the catholic church’s superstructure needs to go away. Not rocket science.
What these examples are a grim testimony to are the resilience of codified hierarchical structures/beliefs in society. There is no tame liberal way of dealing with these problems, they must be torn from society root and branch, and that requires that people stand up and demand justice in society and be willing to raise hell until their demands are met.
But hey, talk of revolutionary action aside, Neil does a great job and poking the evil with a stick (enjoy?):
“The same goes elsewhere. Revelations of horrors in all the above-mentioned Western countries (here in Canada, there was documented abuse in Quebec, British Columbia, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, where the church’s Mount Cashel orphanage was operated as sort of a prison for child sex slaves) resulted in dismissals of some church officials, some lawsuits and a handful of criminal convictions, but not much more than that.
Each time, the Pope or one of his high subalterns would lament human frailty, and drone on about the sacred duty to protect the most vulnerable, while privately fighting to thwart civil suits or conspiring to keep facts from investigating authorities.
Pope Francis, who enjoys the most saintly reputation of any recent pope (except for John Paul II, who was actually made a saint, despite all the ugly revelations on his watch) released an open letter to the world’s Catholics after the Pennsylvania revelations, basically repeating the company line: gosh, sorry, that was terrible, we must do better, God bless you all, go in peace.
Noting first that “most of these cases belong to the past,” (don’t all cases belong to the past?) the Pope banged on for 2,000 words about feeling the pain of the vulnerable, and the necessity of ensuring it doesn’t happen again (and again and again and again), but his central theme was expressed right off the top in a line from Corinthians: “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it.”
Yes. Of course. Let’s compare the spiritual suffering the Pope claims the revelations have caused him to that of a child being sodomized by an adult stalker in a clerical collar, a monster the boy probably doesn’t think he’s even allowed to complain about.
The right thing for the Pope to do would be to waive his sovereign privilege (he is a sitting head of state), and invite criminal authorities to freely and fully access church records worldwide, and drain the holy swamp. He might also consider at this stage ordaining women, because women are God’s creatures too, perfectly able to spiritually guide the faithful, and, umm, don’t tend to rape children.
But the privileged old men who run the church aren’t going to allow any of that. They’re a bit like gun control opponents, opposing an obvious solution on doctrinaire grounds.
There actually have been a few attempts to use the RICO statute against priests, notably in Cleveland, but jurors did not convict.
When former Oklahoma governor and former federal prosecutor Frank Keating, a practicing Catholic, compared the church’s obsession with secrecy to the Mafia’s, Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles demanded his ouster from a church board examining clerical abuse. Keating resigned from the panel.
Mahony, who covered up sexual abuse by priests in California, according to church records, retired peacefully at age 75. Only after a court order compelled the Los Angeles archdiocese to open its files on abuse was Mahony gently rebuked by the church
Pope Francis condemned priestly sexual abuse and its cover-up by the Catholic Church, in a public letter. In addition to demanding accountability, Francis begged forgiveness for the pain suffered by victims and said Catholics must be involved in any effort to root out abuse. 2:11
By any secular standard, the Catholic Church is a corrupt organization. It in fact sets the standard for impunity.
Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over the coverup of the church’s famous Boston sex abuse scandals, was plucked and brought to Rome by Pope John Paul II, where he resided until he died at the Vatican, beyond the reach of American prosecutors.
Earlier this year, after Bishop Juan Barros of Chile was accused of covering up clerical abuse, Pope Francis denounced the accusers’ “calumny.” When it turned out that there was merit to the accusations, and that the Vatican had been informed of the problem, Francis claimed he’d been misinformed. A few weeks later, all 34 of Chile’s bishops tendered their resignations. Francis eventually accepted three of them.
And now, Catholic activist Susan Reynolds has gathered thousands of signatures on a letter demanding the resignation of all American bishops. It would be the right thing to do, but at a guess, the very notion amuses America’s bishopry, comfortable in their armour of piety.”
My undergraduate University days were nothing like what is routinely described as the ‘University Experience’. It was a much more utilitarian experience – go to class, take notes, and then rinse and repeat the next day. Add review said notes and study as test time rolled around. The social aspect of University was pretty much all but lost on me at the time as the group of friends I had at the time did not attend. In hindsight, not having friends doing the same thing made focusing on my studies much more difficult and it extended my stay at the lovely U by a few years. Lessons learned and what not.
So, my Uni days were, to oversimplify, just highschool but harder. My real learning started or at least the path to intellectual maturity started after I earned my degree. It also helped that my partner was smart af and pushed me to become more rigorous in developing and defending my thoughts and arguments. So when I read this essay I could understand what they where saying, but couldn’t really relate to what was being said of the state of university/college campuses regarding the moral/social development of their students.
For me, finding my moral and ethical centre was quite independent of the educational process, such as it was, during my tenure at the U. Granted, of course, I was being exposed to and learning about topics that would, in the future, inform my ethical-self and boundaries, but nothing on the level which seems to happen in the US college scene. So then while reading this quote intrigued me:
“It is entirely reasonable, then, for students to conclude that questions of right and wrong, of ought and obligation, are not, in the first instance at least, matters to be debated, deliberated, researched or discussed as part of their intellectual lives in classrooms and as essential elements of their studies. “
What? Isn’t inside the classroom where the great arguments and debates should happen? I mean, it is in the university that you can hash out and grapple with the big problems with the help of professors and the knowledge that they bring and provide of the big thinkers that have grappled with these questions in the past. The university is where you can make mistakes and get nuanced feedback that will sharpen your intellectual faculties and better equip you to lead the examine life, right?
(It’s funny – none of this really happened for me – sit in class, get taught stuff, regurgitate stuff – was the order of the day). But yeah, in the formal sense, if you’re not going to university to grapple with the right and wrong questions, then why go? Getting a degree for job is nice and stuff, but attending higher education is supposed to be more than that.
Here is an excerpt from Wellmen’s take on the the state of the university experience in the US:
“The transformation of American colleges and universities into corporate concerns is particularly evident in the maze of offices, departments and agencies that manage the moral lives of students. When they appeal to administrators with demands that speakers not be invited, that particular policies be implemented, or that certain individuals be institutionally sanctioned, students are doing what our institutions have formed them to do. They are following procedure, appealing to the institution to manage moral problems, and relying on the administrators who oversee the system. A student who experiences discrimination or harassment is taught to file complaints by submitting a written statement; the office then determines if the complaint potentially has merit; the office conducts an investigation and produces a report; an executive accepts or rejects the report; and then the office ‘notifies’ the parties of the ‘outcome’.
These bureaucratic processes transmute moral injury, desire and imagination into an object that flows through depersonalised, opaque procedures that produce an ‘outcome’. Questions of character, duty, moral insight, reconciliation, community, ethos or justice have at most a limited role. US colleges and universities speak to the national argot of individual rights, institutional affiliation and complaint that dominate American capitalism. They have few moral resources from which to draw any alternative moral language and imagination.
The extracurricular system of moral management requires an ever-expanding array of ‘resources’ – counselling centres, legal services, deans of student life. Teams of devoted professionals work to help students hold their lives together. The people who support and oversee these extracurricular systems of moral management do so almost entirely apart from any coherent curricular project.
It is entirely reasonable, then, for students to conclude that questions of right and wrong, of ought and obligation, are not, in the first instance at least, matters to be debated, deliberated, researched or discussed as part of their intellectual lives in classrooms and as essential elements of their studies. They are, instead, matters for their extracurricular lives in dorms, fraternities or sororities and student activity groups, most of which are managed by professional staff. “
It seems less of an organic process, and more of a ritualized ‘thing ya do’ to start making the bucks in society. It seems like such a waste that we have strict qualifications to get and to graduate, but at the same time that we’re not challenging people, making them stretch and reform their assumptions about the world. Where else can we have the space to do such important life work?
The parochial attitude of North Americans is quite disturbing, and unjustified. We have unparalleled access to information and news from across the globe and by this feature alone we should be attuned to the plight of others and the injustice in the world. Yet, most of us are not. As long as shit happens ‘over there’ whether it be across an ocean, or the local river the daily pattern of our lives does not change.
Only when our routines are disrupted and our comfort zones threatened do we awake from our slumber. In our defence, there really isn’t another way to go about one’s life as the amount of horror in the world is a completely paralyzing notion and can only be examined at arms length if one wishes to remain sane.
But.
I think the balance between our safe cocoons and concern for the situations others needs to be reordered. The slow-fast human catastrophe that is Syria highlights exactly what I’m talking about.
“A chemical attack in Douma, the last rebel-held stronghold near Syria’s capital, Damascus, has killed at least 70 people and affected hundreds, rescue workers have told Al Jazeera.
The White Helmets, a group of rescuers operating in opposition-held areas in Syria, said on Saturday that most of the fatalities were women and children.
“Seventy people suffocated to death and hundreds are still suffocating,” Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets, told Al Jazeera, adding that the death toll was expected to rise as many people were in critical condition.
Al-Saleh said that chlorine gas and an unidentified but stronger gas were dropped on Douma.”
We sit complicit while the Assad regime gasses its own people in their efforts to ‘stabilize’ their country.
“We are currently dealing with more than 1,000 cases of people struggling to breathe after the chlorine barrel bomb was dropped on the city. The number of dead will probably rise even further.”
The Douma Media Centre, a pro-opposition group, posted images on social media of people being treated by medics, and of what appeared to be dead bodies, including many women and children.
Rescue workers also posted videos of people appearing to show symptoms consistent with a gas attack. Some appeared to have white foam around their mouths and noses.
Symptoms of a chlorine attack include coughing, dyspnea, intensive irritation of the mucous membrane and difficulty in breathing.”
Being a civilian is Syria isn’t such a welcoming proposition. Chemical warfare is an agreed upon ‘no-go’ for most of the nations of the world. There is a treaty and everything.
“The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) is an arms control treaty that outlaws the production, stockpiling, and use of chemical weapons and their precursors. The full name of the treaty is the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction and it is administered by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), an intergovernmental organization based in The Hague, The Netherlands. The treaty entered into force in 1997.”
…
…
This image released early Sunday, April 8, 2018 by the Syrian Civil Defence White Helmets, shows a rescue worker carrying a child following an alleged chemical weapons attack in the rebel-held town of Douma, near Damascus, Syria. White Helmets via AP
Yet this happens. And most of NA placidly accepts this. Maybe some tsk-tisking and/or a lament on how horrible the gassing of civilians is. But then, most of us just scroll onward past this tragedy that has been disconnected from our consciousness.
What is missing, at least in part, is the feeling of responsibility (not to mention the empathy of what it must be like trying to survive during a civil war) of our part in their ordeal.
“Joseph Massad on Al Jazeera said the term was “part of a US strategy of controlling [the movement’s] aims and goals” and directing it towards western-style liberal democracy.[17] When Arab Spring protests in some countries were followed by electoral success for Islamist parties, some American pundits coined the terms “Islamist Spring”[20] and “Islamist Winter”.
Also this from The Atlantic:
“Egyptian military officials wagered, rightly, that they could get away with what became, according to Human Rights Watch, the worst mass killing in modern Egyptian history—as well as one of the worst single-day mass killings in recent decades anywhere in the world.
America’s relative silence was no accident. To offer a strong, coherent response to the killings would have required a strategy, which would have required more, not less, involvement. This, however, would have been at cross-purposes with the entire thrust of the administration’s policy. Obama was engaged in a concerted effort to reduce its footprint in the Middle East. The phrase “leading from behind” quickly became a pejorative for Obama’s foreign-policy doctrine, but it captured a very real shift in America’s posture. The foreign-policy analysts Nina Hachigian and David Shorr called it the “Responsibility Doctrine,” a strategy of “prodding other influential nations … to help shoulder the burdens of fostering a stable, peaceful world order.” In pursuing this strategy in the Middle East, the United States left a power vacuum—and a proxy struggle. During Morsi’s year-long tenure, Qatar became the single largest foreign donor to Egypt, at over $5 billion (with Turkey contributing another $2 billion). Just days after the military moved against Morsi, it was Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait that pledged a massive $12 billion to the new military-appointed government.
The United States, along with the conservative Gulf monarchies and many others, also viewed Islamist parties with considerable suspicion.”
Being a world power, only when convenient, isn’t being a world power. Behaving only to protect the national interest places us squarely in the realm of realpolitik and the (a)moral compass associated with that mode of thinking. Syria lies on the border of two spheres of influence. The Russian empire and the American Empire. Arguably, Russia has greater influence, not least of all because of geographical proximity, on Syria and the maintenance of the current regime is in their national self interest. Thus the frisson between the American tacit support for the revolution (toward a US friendly regime) and the Russian support for the status quo and continuation within their own sphere of self-interest are the only realpolitik concerns on the table. The humanitarian disaster resulting from this friction between empires is but a footnote and not really mainstream news worthy – at least not past the ratings ‘bump’ procured for showing disconnected images of human suffering.
a
a
A non-corporate real media would be all over the context of the situation portraying the real cost in human misery of what happens when spheres of influence collide and how little the ‘national interest’ cares about people dying ‘over there’. Yet with all our glitzy internet power and googleplexes of information at our fingertips has this sort of contextual analysis even been hinted at in North American mainstream media?
a
a
Not really.
a
a
Compare how the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera frame the article (also the sources on which this piece is based). A telling difference, the focus on the ‘facts’ versus the human angle that the Al-Jazeera piece. I think we need more of the second variety as we need to inspire empathy and the common human nature that binds us all together, so we can work toward a more peaceable future.
a
a
(Unlikely as it may be.)
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…