Lecture 3 Ethical Issues

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Lecture 3Ethical Issues
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Overview

• Introduction
• What does ethics mean?
• Why talk about ethics?
• Our religions
• Sustainable ethics
• The Commons
• Conclusions

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What Does Ethics Mean?

• Dictionary
• A discipline dealing with what is good and bad,
  with moral duty and obligation

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Why Talk About Ethics?

• A sense of right and wrong has to be built into
  every level of society
• -individual
• -community
• -nation
• -planet

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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Result of Economism

• Overpopulation
• Overconsumption

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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

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Why do we feel we need more stuff

• Status
• Missing non-material goals and values in life
• Media manipulation

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What We Need To Do

• Adopt a Sustainable Value System
• Respect Life
• Live Within Limits
• Value the Local
• Account for Full Costs
• Share Power

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Where?

• personally
• within a community
• within a country
• internationally

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Personally

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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.