What makes us moral?

Most people accept that there are right and wrong actions- immoral and moral behaviours, if you will. This feeling presupposes some kind of framework or system for judging whether actions are immoral or moral.

What is this system? Natural or supernatural? Human-limited or utterly objective? Learned or innate?

My own instincts push me in the direction of a minimal, open-ended system, something like ‘what if everyone did what you did/you were the object of the action you’re contemplating’?

I also feel that respect and empathy (some of the key drivers for moral behaviour) are learned, so in a way, morality is learned.

I’ll need to write more on this in my final year philosophy dissertation. Watch this space for developing thinking!

Healthcare – finally, some philosophy!

There’s been a lot of debate recently about healthcare in the US, leading to some heated debate about whether ‘rationing’ treatments is right. You might have seen the ‘I ❤ the NHS' badges on Twitter, etc.

Beneath all the hype, there are some serious philosophical issues, and it's nice to finally see an article in the NYT tackle the issue at a philosophical level. For all you philosophy fans out there, Peter Singer is a preference utilitarian, strongly connected with the animal liberation movement, with his critique of ‘speciesism’.

[Some caveats- the Singer piece is on the long side for a newspaper article. And I certainly don’t advocate all of Singer’s views!]

I think the biggest challenge with making healthcare policy is that we have immediate and emotional experience of healthcare (“that time when I/my beloved was ill, and the hospital helped/harmed…”) which encourages a ‘no treatment too expensive’ view.

But when we pay our NI contributions, or insurance premiums, some people can’t bear the thought of ‘others’ (eg smokers, risk-takers) being ‘expensively’ cured. There’s also the complication that you’re might be most able to pay for healthcare (young and affluent) when you’re least likely to need it…

[And all this comes before any ideological arguments about whether the state or the private sector (and/or need/wealth)should do the ‘rationing’!]

I think this is why a small dose of utilitarian philosophy needs to come in. No-one likes it, but it seems the best option (utilitarian philosophy, that is)

Top biking tip

My usually faithful bike has been spitting off its chain recently. Time for a clean and adjustment, I think. Had a brainwave on the way in this morning- rather than get oily fingers, I used one of my tyre levers to flick the chain back on.

[Apologies if this seems a very obvious fix; I think it useful enough to share!]

Two kinds of justice

Heard a very interesting story at dinner the other night, about a High Court judge from Pakistan, who came to the UK to observe UK judges at work. It turned out that as the Pakistani judge observed two of his UK counterparts spending a day deliberating over one case, he creased up with laughter, explaining that in a typical day, he would hear around 50 cases, giving judgements in about 25 of them!

The story gets better- apparently an example of this judge’s brisk modus operandi involved him summoning government officials to court (some in handcuffs, threatened with contempt) in order to expedite the repayment of a widow’s missing pension. If true, I was quite impressed by the example of the widow, who’d struggled for nine years to receive her due, suddenly given justice literally overnight. It seemed a good example of justice standing up for the rights of the individual, against the slow-turning wheels of bureaucracy.

But as I thought about it more, I wondered at the summary powers of this judge. There was something almost regal about his ability to demand instant compliance from sheepish officials.

Is there a danger in dispensing justice too quickly? I suppose that one might argue that showing justice to be swift and effective has the benefit of discouraging people from vigilanteism. But in cases where a resolution can’t be found in a single day, does ‘swift justice’ risk stoking frustration by creating unrealistic expectations?

From my own experience of jury service, I saw the wheels of justice turn very slowly (albeit thoroughly). Perhaps the bottom line is that a plaintiff wants swift redress, but a defendant prefers an adequate chance to put their side of the story.

What do you think? Swift or slow?

Voting and the expense of scandal

I’ll be voting later today, and I’ve been thinking about the current political scandal at Westminster. I suspect it’ll hit the bigger parties hard in the Euro elections, and possibly give seats to smaller parties (some of whom you would never want to see in office).

It’s true that some aspects of the expenses scandal have been capitalised on by the Conservatives- the Daily Telegraph broke the story, after all.

However, all politicians claim that they’re specially equipped to represent people and work hard on their behalf. In my view, cynical and/or dodgy expense claims send something of a danger signal about politician’s attitude.

I think I’ll vote for Jean Lambert, the Green MEP. She seems very hardworking and has an impressively empty declaration of interests! Kudos to the European Parliament for making the information so easy to find.

Attend to what love requires of you, which may not be great busyness

Quakers, especially unprogrammed meetings, like to talk about how we strive to keep things simple, so we can get on with building a spiritual community and listening to what God has to say to us.

But we’re also very good at creating structure, process, and things to do.

It’s right and valuable that Quaker processes are built around wide participation. But I can’t help feeling that sometimes we have so much process going on that we end up reducing the space from which inspiration can grow.

So where does all the process come from?

I think the ‘DIY’ nature of our faith leads us to want to foster involvement and participation- we want people to find roles for themselves.

We also want to take great care to ensure ideas are tested thoroughly, so tend to appoint committees here, send minutes there, etc etc.

Unprogrammed and liberal Friends can end up using process as a kind of community ‘glue’- they replace orthodoxy with orthopraxis (an idea suggested by Ben Pink Dandelion)

Do we need all the process all the time?

Putting meat on the bones

This term, we had a great overview from AC Grayling on Kant’s metaphysics. The only problem is that the overview was so engaging that the actual reading of Kant’s actual mind-bending sentences comes as a bit of a shock!

Getting to God

Quaker worship (especially unprogrammed worship) is famously minimal. But could we de-clutter even further?

What is the minimum we need to do as a community in order to:

• befriend each other and those around us
• worship together
• share our truths
• find our visions
• and act on them?

Imagine you’re washed up on a desert island. What would you do first to build spiritual community?

I have some experience in this, as I’ve been part of a young Quaker Bible study group for a couple of years now. We asked no questions and made no plans at the beginning, but gradually evolved graceful and helpful practices which enable us to get on with the main thing- deepening our shared spiritual life.

This came to mind recently as I spoke to a friend who is thinking about starting a similar group. I had to keep racking my brains about what made our group ‘special’. What kept coming back is that we made hardly any assumptions about how we needed to do stuff, and preserved a very minimal level of organisation. We just got on with it.

That’s where the title of this post comes from; perhaps there’s a new way of practising faith together, ‘Getting to God’.

Panopticon

Many journalists claim that “if we’re not careful, we’ll end up in a ‘Big Brother’-type society”. They’re too late. Here are two perspectives on this:

First, from Simon Jenkins

When the council can bug you for fly-tipping, when prisons can record conversations with defence lawyers, when any potentially criminal act can justify electronic intrusion – and when ministers resort to the dictator’s excuse, “The innocent need not fear” – warning bells should sound.

And a lighter, but equally powerful video

The title of this post, ‘panopticon’, refers to a prison designed by Jeremy Bentham, where all inmates can be watched from a single location, and don’t know whether they are being watched or not. The idea is that this will make them behave all the time, for fear that they could be under surveillance.

I think one of the saddest things about the ‘Big Brother state’ is that its main premise is flawed- people who are motivated to break the law aren’t really discouraged by the ‘threat’ of surveillance. So the huge price we’ve paid (selling up a massive chunk of our civil liberties) buys nothing.

Clean desk = open mind?

Because of radical changes to our office layout in the past few weeks. all of our team have had to clear their desks and consider their filing habits much more than usual.

I’ve actually found the discipline of keeping a clear desk (by which I mean, empty in-tray, nothing else except phone and computer) has really helped my sense of organisation and productivity. I have the feeling that I can choose my own priorities- that I can choose what is important over what is urgent. I also appreciate having the space to spread out whatever it is I’m currently working on!

That said, I can see how keeping things filed and clearing one’s desk could easily become a substitute for ‘real’ work.