TAKE A STAND
We all use our moral compass to make decisions each day. But what are ethics really, and what does it mean to be ethical in today’s world?
What are ethics, and what does it mean to be ethical in today’s world of social media?
The young woman is standing in the aisle of an aeroplane, her phone’s camera turned on herself to livestream the unfolding events. She is refusing to take her seat until an Afghan man whom she says is being deported back to war-torn Afghanistan is removed from the plane. Some passengers are supporting her, calling out words of encouragement. Others are furious, one even physically confronting her and grabbing her phone. She stays standing through it all. Eventually both she and the Afghan man are removed from the plane.
To some, the girl on the plane, Elin Ersson, is brave – heroic, even. To others, she may seem foolish and naïve. But whether one supports her stance or not, this is an extraordinary scene of someone literally standing up for what they believe in. The clarity of her conviction is enviable in a world that seems more ethically troubling and demanding than ever before.
We are constantly confronted with issues like animal rights, samesex marriage, gender equality, gun control, capital punishment, cloning, artificial intelligence, rights to privacy, abortion and euthanasia. On some we might hold a strong position, while others may continue to confound us.
And all of these are on top of the multitude of daily moral conundrums that require our immediate decisions – whether you should let your child accept a toy gun from a grandparent, remind your coworker to bring their re-usable cup on your morning coffee walk, tell the man on the bus to pipe down with his racist rant, or confront
the neighbour who regularly lets their dog poo on the footpath. It’s a veritable ethical jungle out there.
But perhaps what stops us in our tracks about the video footage of Elin Ersson is less the issue she is addressing, and more the way she is addressing it. ‘Could I do something so obviously brave?’ we ask ourselves. ‘Could I do something so defiant? Is there anything I believe in so strongly that I would hold up a plane for it?’
WHAT ARE OUR ETHICS?
To find an answer for ourselves, we must first understand what having ethics actually means. Dr Matthew Beard is an ethicist and philosopher, and a fellow at Sydney’s Ethics Centre. He also hosts the acclaimed Short & Curly podcast – which helps kids to get their heads around a variety of ethical issues. He explains that ethics is one of the ways in which we see the world.
“We experience the world physically, temporally, emotionally and spiritually, and we also experience our world ethically,” Dr Beard says. “We all make value judgements about the things around us. We determine that things are preferable to others. Ethics – our judging mechanism – is part of our way of processing the world.”
At its heart, ethics is a shared experience. “Yes, a personal code is important and necessary,” notes Dr Beard, “but if it is exclusive, sacred and untouchable then I think it misses the point of what ethics is really about – which is a shared conversation about what it means to live well together.”
If we are living well together, our personal opinions can be made more nuanced, more informed, and more able to withstand criticism. In fact, this is actually the ultimate test of an ethical position. As Dr Beard observes, a robust ethical standpoint is one that can be adequately defended. It needs to be able to hold up under serious interrogation from others and from ourselves. Can you hold this opinion and look yourself and others in the eye each morning? Can you take an action (or abstain from an action) and justify it? If you can, then you are living by your ethical code. And if you can’t, then perhaps it’s time to rethink your position.
Taking an ethical stand can manifest in many different ways. Sometimes it looks as dramatic as a young woman standing in an aisle of a plane – but often our moments of ethical defiance have a smaller audience and rather mixed results.
For Robyn, it was the experience of but five stressful minutes. On her daily walk she spotted some joggers hanging their sweaty T-shirts over the local Anzac war memorial, and using its structure to stretch and do push-ups.
“To me, that was just wrong – so utterly wrong and disrespectful,” she explains. “I felt compelled to say something, so I went over and told them that what they were doing was inappropriate and they should stop. They certainly didn’t like being told what to do by a middle-aged woman, and things got pretty heated. It was heart-poundingly stressful.”
But was it an ethical triumph? “I honestly don’t know whether I could say it was worth it,” Robyn states. “I just know that I couldn’t stand by and say nothing.”
Annie’s ethical experience was further complicated by the fact that it involved a friend – who was also a colleague of hers at the school where they both taught. “He made a joke about another staff member in front of a school assembly which I felt was sexually demeaning and inappropriate. Everyone was really shocked, but he didn’t seem to get just how off it was.”
Annie had a reputation for ‘doing the right thing’, and she received a lot of calls encouraging her to take it on. And so she did, telling her friend the next day that what he had done was unacceptable and he should apologise.
“He was very defensive and not apologetic at all,” she says. “It was a very nerve-wracking experience. And, looking back, I think I might have done things differently. If it had happened after the #MeToo movement started, I would have been much more inclined to report him officially to the senior management – he was a friend, but I wish he’d been properly sanctioned for his actions.”
THE MORAL DILEMMA
As much as we might like for our ethical stance to shine a bright spotlight on a problem, often it’s a wavering torch beam that illuminates part but not all of the issue. The stuff of day-to-day ethics is hard and messy. The best intentions can go awry, and the outcomes of our actions aren’t always clear-cut.
What’s more, staying true to your moral compass can be a pretty lonely and stressful experience. Yes, ethical frameworks are the stuff of shared conversation and group work – but in that moment of confrontation or calling out, it can feel deeply personal.
“Some people feel uncomfortable around those who prioritise ethics,” explains Dr Beard. “It can be seen as a kind of big-noting, as if you’re making yourself seem better than the people around you. Your decision to do what’s right can shame their decision to act differently.”
But none of this means you shouldn’t make the attempt. Luvvie Ajayi, author of I’m Judging You: The Do Better Manual, said in her 2017 Ted Talk that we need to “get comfortable with being uncomfortable by speaking hard truths when they’re necessary.”
Ajayi describes the feeling of speaking out as akin to the experience of skydiving – the freefall is terrifying but also liberating, and necessary in order to drive positive ethical change. “It’s our job,” she insists, “to speak truth … not just when it’s difficult, but especially when it’s difficult.”
It is during these moments of “freefall” that we can find ourselves grounded by what Dr Beard describes as the individual narrative into which our moral code is thoroughly woven. Our personal ethical code might, for instance, be founded in what it means for us to be, say, an Australian; to be a feminist; to be a soldier, teacher or doctor; to be a boy scout or a girl guide; to be a member of a church, a parent, a vegan, our mother’s daughter or our father’s son.
As Dr Beard says, these are what “ground an abstract philosophy in all the flesh-and-bones things that make us who we are. An ethical code is not just something we have and can pull out from time to time. It is something that we are.”
And ultimately, it is what we are that will determine whether or not we stand up and speak out in the aisle of a plane, in a supermarket, on a bus, on Twitter, at a staff meeting, around the dinner table, or even in our own backyard.