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Lecture 3 Ethical Issues

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Lecture 3. Ethical Issues. Overview. Introduction. What does ethics mean? Why talk about ethics? ... Breakdown of ethical value system. Why do we feel we need ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Lecture 3 Ethical Issues


1
Lecture 3Ethical Issues
2
Overview
  • Introduction
  • What does ethics mean?
  • Why talk about ethics?
  • Our religions
  • Sustainable ethics
  • The Commons
  • Conclusions

3
What Does Ethics Mean?
  • Dictionary
  • A discipline dealing with what is good and bad,
    with moral duty and obligation

4
Why Talk About Ethics?
  • A sense of right and wrong has to be built into
    every level of society
  • -individual
  • -community
  • -nation
  • -planet

5
Role of Religion
  • Religion, properly understood, is a belief system
    that summons up that which is most noble in us,
    it lifts us up, and appeals to the highest and
    best selves.

6
Current Believe System
  • Our current and dominant belief system, grounded
    in economism, appeals to our lowest selves,
    drawing out greed, fear and small-mindedness. It
    is based on domination, specialization and
    competition.

7
Principles of Economism
  • 1. Other forms of life are for human use
  • - human domination of nature
  • - earth viewed as dead
  • 2. There are no limits to growth and consumption
  • - resource supplies infinite
  • -emphasis on consumption and constant growth
  • 3. Decisions are based on narrow economic
    concerns
  • -invisible handof market will guide society
  • - concern for this generation only

8
more
  • 4. Emphasis on the global economy and mass
    culture
  • - globalization of economy leads to well-being
  • - mass-media/machine mediation
  • 5. Power is centralized and exercised
  • - hierarchy/control
  • - citizens dont need to get involved in
    politics

9
Result of Economism
  • Overpopulation
  • Overconsumption

10
Why do we have overpopulation?
  • Cultural
  • Lack of education
  • Sense of power for men (defining what is a man!)
  • Sense of security in old age
  • Breakdown of ethical value system

11
Why do we feel we need more stuff
  • Status
  • Missing non-material goals and values in life
  • Media manipulation

12
What We Need To Do
  • Adopt a Sustainable Value System
  • Respect Life
  • Live Within Limits
  • Value the Local
  • Account for Full Costs
  • Share Power

13
Where?
  • personally
  • within a community
  • within a country
  • internationally

14
Personally
  • Adopt a set of sustainable values
  • Apply these sets of values in once personal,
    professional and civic life

15
Business
  • Adopt and follow a set of sustainable principles
  • As a first step adopt one of the following
    principles Valdez, CERES, Copernicus, Natural
    Step)
  • Determine the moral responsibilities to other
    life forms in our economic activities.

16
Community, Nation and International
  • Incorporate our moral concept of justice
    applicable to human interaction with non-human
    life forms and their eco-system.
  • Change constitution to protect the natural world
    besides guaranteeing democracy, individual
    freedom and rights to property
  • Share power on all levels
  • Install full-cost accounting
  • Demonstrate concern for future generations
  • Define true need and steady state

17
What are Human Commons?
  • 1. Historical and abandoned commons
  • Land for food gathering, pasture, hunting and
    mining
  • rivers and streams for fishing and water use
  • 2. Partially abandoned commons
  • Land, rivers and ocean for various waste
    disposals
  • Oceans for fishing
  • Sound waves

18
Historical View at Land
  • Indigenous people Land is part of a living being
    (Gaia, Mother Earth)
  • Europeans Nature was considered passive relative
    to human (male) activities and associated with
    the female.
  • Today's Dominant Culture Land in its natural
    state is considered undeveloped and unproductive

19
The Tragedy of the Commons
  • Resources (taking things from the commons)
  • Pollution (putting things in the commons)
  • Legislative set-up and feedback (how to supervise
    needed authority and install corrective
    feedbacks)

20
The Worlds Scientists Warningto Humanity
  • Human beings and the natural world are on a
    collision course. If not checked, many of our
    current practices put at serious risk the future
    that we wish for human society and may so alter
    the living world that it will be unable to
    sustain life in the manner that we know.
  • A great change is required if vast human misery
    is to be avoided and our global home on this
    planet is not to be irretrievable mutilated.
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