Category Archives: Ethics

Bigotry of Low Expectations

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We rarely go out on Monday nights because we don’t want t miss ‘Q&A’, an hour-long ABC TV programme with a panel of interesting people and a live audience.  Usually there are two Australian politicians from opposites sides, but this week the panellists were all foreign writers who were attending Sydney Writers’ Festival.

The most interesting, I thought, was a woman called Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  As you can see from the screenshot below, she is remarkably beautiful.  And as you might guess from her name, she was born a Muslim.  She writes about the need for reform in Islam.  One of her books is called ‘Heretic’: I haven’t read it, so I can’t personally recommend it.

AyanHirsiAli_QandA

I was particularly taken with her accusation that white liberal infidels are reticent about criticising Islamic dogma and custom, even those aspects that stand in stark contradiction to the ideals of liberal democracy – including forced marriage, devaluation of women and persecution of homosexuals and religious minorities. She used the phrase “bigotry of low expectations,” referring to a failure to hold Muslims to account because they cannot be expected to meet the standards we demand of our own kind.

This resonated with me. I am guilty of this kind of bigotry and so are most of my fellow-citizens.  For example, Aborigines are not expected to succeed in the mainstream world of study and work.  They are patronised, subsidised, favoured and cosseted in ways that guarantee a continuation of low achievement from generation to generation.

By the same token we make excuses for unconscionable conduct for which perpetrators claim a religious pretext.  I am thinking, for example, of halal and kosher slaughtering of animals and opting out of the general obligation to vaccinate one’s children.  There was even a case, reported this morning, where a group of accused men refused to stand when the judge entered the courtroom.  Their lawyer claimed that their faith forbade them to stand for anyone but Allah, and cited precedence.

Perhaps it’s our legacy of colonial guilt that makes us unwilling to demand as much from people of other races and faiths as we demand from ourselves, but I agree with Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  This is bigotry and we should shrug it off, and tell people to pull their socks up and behave like decent, responsible citizens irrespective of their ethnicity or religious affiliation.

The Bribe Factory

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The Sydney Morning Herald and the Huffington Post claim to have uncovered a major corruption scandal. It is centred on a Monaco-based company called UnaOil that is owned and run by the Ahsani family and involves some very well-known Western companies in and connected to the oil business.

Ahsanis

The two newspapers claim to have solid evidence in the form of many thousands of leaked emails which name names and make quite clear the corrupt nature of UnaOil’s dealings in the Middle East and North Africa.

Please click on the link in the 1st paragraph. It’s a 10-minute read plus a 4-minute video clip.

Nuclear Waste

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Today is the 5th anniversary of the Fukushima accident.  It comes at a time when my state (South Australia) is contemplating setting up a nuclear waste depository.  Proponents say that this would close the circle of the nuclear fuel cycle, since Australia mines and exports much of the world’s uranium ore.  Opponents point to the obvious risks.

Mrs SG and I have second-hand experience of the consequences of mismanagement in the nuclear industry, having spent two years in Belarus and longer in Ukraine, both countries still heavily affected by the Chernobyl disaster.  But on balance I support continuation and expansion of nuclear power generation and, as a corollary, the reprocessing and safe storage of spent nuclear fuel.

NuclearWasteDrums

I also support South Australia’s entry into this final stage of the fuel cycle. We have a huge area of desert, with no ground water vulnerable to contamination, and stable geology.  And having lost our automotive and most other manufacturing industries, what else are we going to do to maintain our material living standards?

Every economic unit – be it a country, a state, a town, an enterprise or a household – has to find an economic niche where it has an advantage. Saudi Arabia has oil.  Singapore has a great harbour in a great location, a lot of smart people and ready access to cheap labour in neighbouring countries.  New Zealand has sheep and cows and the Tolkien films.

If one’s natural endowments cannot support the lifestyle to which one aspires, one has to look for economic activities that other people don’t want to be involved with. They may be dirty, risky or morally questionable.  In most cases they require changes in policy and law.  I’m thinking of assisted suicide services, driverless cars, drugs trials on human subjects, legalisation of marijuana, storing other countries’ unwanted migrants… and storing other countries’ nuclear waste.

Sportmanship from a Sportsman?!

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What does it say about the state of sport that a display of sportsmanship from a sportsman provokes banner headlines around the world? I am referring – in case you’ve been living in a cave – to Nick Kyrgios’s advice to his opponent, Tomas Berdych, to challenge an “Out!” call made against him.  The word “amazing” was used in many of the headlines.

Kick Kyrgios

Nick Kyrgios

Wasn’t there once a time when it would have been amazing if a sportsman, professional or amateur, had not taken issue with an umpire’s decision that he considered wrong, irrespective of whether that decision  favoured his opponent or himself?  Or am I remembering a golden age that only ever existed in fairy tales?

George Pell and Tim Minchin

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You may know about Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s most senior and most prominent Catholic.  He is suspected of having covered up cases of child abuse by priests – indeed, he has been accused of being an abuser himself – and has consequently been summoned to appear before Australia’s long-running Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.  Unfortunately he is in Rome at the moment, helping to clean up the Vatican’s finances, and he is too ill to travel.

Some mean-spirited people think he’s only pretending to be ill, because that’s what most people do when they’re summoned to face serious charges in another country.  These mean-spirited people think Cardinal Pell is afraid to come back to Australia and face his accusers – and perhaps get arrested.  Me, I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the case has inspired Tim Minchin to write and record a song.  Tim is a musical and comical genius and the video clip is worth seeing.  He’s quite rude about Cardinal Pell, which may turn out to be unfair, but it’s so clever, funny and musical that I think a little rudeness is forgivable.

In case the name is not familiar to you, Tim Minchin wrote and performs the brilliantly satirical song ‘Storm’ and wrote the musical ‘Matilda’, currently running in London, Sydney and perhaps elsewhere.

Here’s a link to a site where you can see and hear Tim singing ‘Come Home Cardinal Pell’, ‘Storm’ and other songs.

Rolf Harris

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RolfHarris_young

Like many other people, especially in Australia and the UK, I was shocked and unbelieving when allegations started being made about sexual abuse by Rolf Harris.  In 2014 he was found guilty in a British court and is now serving a 6-year prison sentence. Now I read that he is to be charged with seven more counts of indecent assault, allegedly committed between 1971 and 2004.

I don’t condone any kind of sexual activity that is not 100% consensual. Nor do I believe that serious crimes should be subject to a statute of limitations. But I would point out two things that I don’t think have been taken fully into account in the Court of Public Opinion:

  • Back in the 1960s and 70s there was a broader understanding of what was normal and acceptable behaviour between men and women. A sly pat on the bum was not considered an assault and a suggestive remark was not harassment. And celebrities were cut a lot of slack: there weren’t so many of them in those days, so it didn’t matter so much.
  • Whatever crimes Rolf Harris may have committed, they do not extinguish his extraordinary achievements as an artist, song-writer and performer. I see nothing contradictory in condemning his morals while celebrating his talent.

As soon as Rolf was sentenced there was a sudden disappearance of his paintings from the walls of public buildings and of his recordings from the airwaves. To my mind this connotes either vindictiveness or cowardice or both.  I say ‘cowardice’ because many people, I think, feared seeming to be insufficiently outraged.  It reminds me – on a different scale – of show trials in the USSR and Nazi Germany, and the enthusiastic display of support for the verdicts by people who feared they might be next.

The Apocrypha

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We use the adjective ‘apocryphal’ to mean ‘ of doubtful authenticity’, but how many of us have read or even glimpsed a copy of the Apocrypha? The word comes from Greek of course, and means ‘hidden’. The Apocrypha is a collection of 14 books that have been appended to some versions of the Old Testament but are not generally recognised as authoritative scripture.

I found a copy of the Apocrypha among my grandfather’s papers. He signed the flyleaf and dated it 26/6/02, when he was 20 years old. A label on the inside cover informs the reader thus:

Extract from the Sixth Article of Religion (Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation):

“And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine…”

It goes on to list the 14 books, some of which are very short. One of the short ones is the Story (or History) or Susanna. I found that I knew the story without knowing its provenance. It’s the one about the woman, while bathing in her secluded garden, is raped by two elders who then falsely accuse her of adultery with a young man who supposedly fled the scene. God alerts a man called Daniel to the truth of the matter and instead of executing Susanna the pious crowd turns on the elders.

The story has inspired artists including Jacob Jordaens, who painted this version (Susanna and the Elders) in 1653.

SusannaAndTheElders1653

Regrettably the custom of punishing rape victims has not died out everywhere. Perhaps we should all read the Apocrypha “for example of life and instruction of manners.”

Sportsmen Behaving Badly

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This is not a startling headline, is it? We’re used to sportsmen (not sportswomen, to my recollection) getting drunk, fighting in nightclubs, abusing women…

But today the Australian newspapers are full of a story about Mitchell Pearce, Captain of a Sydney-based rugby league team. Someone posted a video-clip of him behaving very badly indeed in a woman’s home, and it went viral. You can see it online if you want to know the details. It’s pretty disgusting.

My first thought was, “Oh no, not another one.” Then I looked at the clip and had a more profound thought. How should we expect newcomers to Australia – or perhaps I should say ‘the Western World’ because this kind of thing is not exclusive to Australia – to react?

I’m thinking of immigrants from very conservative cultures, including but not exclusively Muslims. Will they not recoil from the culture that produces such exhibitions? Will they not retreat into their own culture, beliefs and values? More to the point, will they not try to protect their children from such malign influences, sending them to separate schools and denying them contact with children from other backgrounds who might ‘pollute’ them?

Mr Pearce and his ilk may be promoting the ghettoisation of our society, with far-reaching and very negative consequences.

Reckless Adventures

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Did you read about Henry Worsley, the 55-year-old former British soldier who tried to walk across Antarctica solo and unsupported? He was taken ill after 71 days of walking, only 48km from his goal. He was airlifted to Chile for treatment but died of peritonitis.

This is a tragic story and one must admire the courage, determination and resilience of anyone who embarks on such an adventure. In this case Henry Worsley was doing it to raise money for the Endeavour Fund – a charity that helps wounded members of the armed forces.

I don’t know if the donations were curtailed because he didn’t finish the course. What I do know is that other people put themselves in some danger and incurred considerable expense in an effort to save his life. I am not convinced that such adventures, which hit the headlines because they are dangerous, are justifiable; or that others should be encouraged by the media attention that Mr Worsley and the Endeavour Fund have gained to embark on similar enterprises.

My attitude would be different if Mr Worsley’s expedition had been exploratory or scientific in its purpose. But it was intended only to move money from some people’s pockets to those of a charity – a charity whose aims I am in sympathy with, by the way – not to extend human knowledge or develop new resources.

I’m thinking like an economist, I know, and I don’t expect many people to agree with me. What do you think? Am I a narrow-minded materialistic curmudgeon who fails to appreciate the value of celebrating the human spirit? Or am I a level-headed realist who makes a valid distinction between valour and recklessness?

Jimmy Carter and the Southern Baptists

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Jimmy Carter and the Southern Baptists

I have always respected Jimmy Carter, even when his enemies portrayed him as a naive do-gooder and drew attention to his being a peanut farmer, implying that such an occupation was incompatible with his role as Commander-in-Chief.

My respect for him went up several notches today when I read that he had severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention because of its insistence on women’s subordinate place in God’s creation.  Here is a direct quotation from Jimmy Carter’s public statement on the matter:

“ I have been a practising Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service. ”

Go here to see his statement in full in the Sydney Morning Herald.