Enough, already!?

Enough, already!?
Torrey Orton
January 31, 2010


We certainly have enough, already, of almost everything conceivable, and an agreed excess of quite a few – foods, houses, cars - come to the public mind almost daily in one scandal of indulgences (obesity?) or another (Macmansions?) or another (exec remuneration?). These are remarkable for all being material excesses. We do not suffer an excess of probity, transparency, honesty, ….pick a virtue and we ain't got it much, in public at least, except for celebrations like Australia Day rituals of reward which are not media magnets for the rest of the year. So much for virtuous role modelling.


And we know we cannot constrain greed (because it's somehow incentively associated with the virtues of private enterprise and personal choice), but we will "quarantine" some benefactors of the public purse from spending their meagre takings on the needs and indulgences of their choice. They are to be quarantined for not knowing enough to buy right (see Our public moral base below for the thinking which sustains this discrimination). Can the alleged ingrained bad buying habits of the poor be any different, as habits, than those of their material betters who flourish in the greed slaking disciplines of high finance and corporate leadership?


The argument
That we over-provided for many parts of our society is undeniable, except by those who believe that there is no such thing as greed or excess – that is, that there can never be too much of anything. Many of us are confused about this. We know that people who should know better ("the best and brightest"), are unable to control reaching for luxury and that there are no objective performance constraints on them from doing so if they can put out their hands towards them. The very public case of Cherie Blair is analysed here. Further UK background is here in a report called "Sinking and swimming: understanding Britain's unmet needs". An Australian approach is outlined in The Road Home.


We also know that continued lifestyle improvements and increased acquisitions do not raise perceived life value (i.e. happiness and its affiliates like self-esteem). See AC Grayling for the insides of this apparent fact. Meanwhile, executive remuneration remains uncontrolled by performance outcomes and increasingly distant from workers' pay. It can no longer be argued that these levels are required for competitive reasons, since those have been scorched by the GFC. In addition, They are sustained by spinoff 'industries' (for example, luxury car, boat and golf club) sales. This pattern is not an artefact of the last ten years. The insights can be found in Keynes (below) and pre-configured in Adam Smith's full works which constrain the economy to a supporting cast of the human story, not the star.

"... Here I think Keynes comes closest to answering the question of why his "enough" will not, in fact, be enough. The accumulation of wealth, which should be a means to the "good life," becomes an end in itself because it destroys many of the things that make life worth living. Beyond a certain point – which most of the world is still far from having reached – the accumulation of wealth offers only substitute pleasures for the real losses to human relations that it exacts."

Robert Skidelsky - "How much money is enough?" Sunday 22 November 2009

The proposition
I believe that any human organisation of sufficient wealth to over-meet the basic needs of most of its members owes the remaining members the guarantee of a minimum sustainability – a basic needs fulfilment platform. This should be available without any implicit reproach like over-zealous policing of access or controlling of use of services provided. This would be more than a safety net. It would also be a 2 or 3 generation program, since recovery from many of the embedded deficits of intergenerational poverty are social system change matters, not individual enterprise and guts ones. This is to some extent implicit in current approaches to homelessness in Australia. A concurrent supporting argument comes from An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK
.


I don't think this proposition is a covert Nordic nostrum, a snowbound socialism converted for our sandbox, but maybe it is. That we under-provide for noticeable populations like the homeless is certain. A similar domain of human obligation negotiation is the climate change accountability/ability to pay equation. The Australian's "Ask the Philosopher" column proposed:

This is becoming all too apparent as the Copenhagen conference enters its second week. Developed countries may indeed have historical outcome responsibility for climate change and its effects.

Yet do they bear a special ethical burden?

Before we can allocate remedial responsibility, we must first determine whether countries have exceeded their fair quota of natural resources. This is, for many reasons, a much more difficult proposition.

A work program for such an ethic would cover the systematic glitches and lacunae in our basic human services – health, education, and accommodation. One obvious step would be to mandate job creation until there is no gap between employed and demand for employees – everyone has a job of some kind.


Our public moral base
The 'enemy' of such thinking about accountability / responsibility is found in many places. I'll look at two recent examples and a public counter-example next.


One, John Armstrong recently argued in the Australian Financial Review that "It's OK to be wealthy - the trick is to also be worthy". For a philosopher this is a disgrace. He conflates the question of exec remuneration into a "value for money" principle which he characterises as "a question of efficiency, not of ethics". There are two muddles here: first, no one in business (except perhaps money managers) thinks that efficiency is a standalone criterion of value. Electricians (his example) and their clients certainly do not. Effectiveness is usually the second term of the value equation. Second, the powers of electricians and executives to influence the terms and the interpretations of their respective remuneration agreements are near to wholly incommensurate!


Further, he later concludes: "A person is morally entitled to exactly the quantity of resources they can use for their finest flourishing." A kind of aesthetic ethics - notable for its patent individualism, or, slightly better, familism. Armstrong mentions beautiful houses and interesting holidays as soul nourishing intrinsic goods it is morally right to buy if you appreciate them properly (who's the judge?) Matters of taste have not long been a core capacity among well-being needs. For him there is no in principle limit to acquisition, and the moral case for right to acquire is subordinated anyway to his version of the value for money principle.


I can barely imagine the enjoyment corporate leaders will get from quoting a philosophy professor in residence at Melbourne Business School in defence of their reapings of our realms.


Two, a similar line is taken by Michael Keane in "Lifestyle-altering strategies more likely to reduce liberty" where he takes an ethical hammer to efforts to manage the debilitating health side-effects of late modern living. Here we are presented with the choice/legitimacy argument, a variation on Armstrong's. The field of play is bigger – the whole of health provision – than executive salaries. And the underlying interpretive assumption is the same as Armstrong's, expressed by Keane thus: "..our society is built on deferment to the fundamental ethical principle of autonomy" which is expressed in individual choices.


Strangely (?), the Armstrong/Keane thesis never recognises that people are differently able to decide sensibly. The first among these differences is pre-programmed expectations ("top of mind" choices for which billions are spent yearly to sustain automatic, thoughtless choosing in the major domains of required expenditure – food, health, clothing, transport…). I guess the advertisers, and marketers directing them, know they are getting something for their money and it isn't what Keane/Armstrong mean by rational choice.


Three, a coincidental counterpoint comes from Catherine Bennett discussing bariatric surgery as a public health offering in the UK. Working a corner of the terrain Keane commands, she explores the complexities of the boundaries between disease and social undesirability in the case of obesity – a classic case of 'consenting' adults making decisions which are guaranteed to make their lives shorter, less fun, more oppressive, less comfortable…the list is terminal. Why should the public subvene their indiscretions? She doesn't have refuge in an ideological distinction between individual and social responsibility.
My Australian readers may notice an excess (from our viewpoint) of foreign sources in my proceedings. I noticed it myself just now. The reason, I realised, is that the key terms of the discussion of these issues derive from elsewhere – notably the US and UK, with parts of the euro zone in attendance. The ethical and political arguments are framed in the big economies and traditional sources of Western life. Take a look at the lag and inappropriateness of recent citations of Joel Klein as a model for Oz school reform – a man speaking from a place where local control is not even mentioned because it's the only thing there is in education in the USA!! Translate that for our local and what have you?

Three ways of knowing in one being

Three ways of knowing in one being*

Torrey Orton

January 18, 2010

 

In a world of many divides, one of the most oppressively prominent is the religion/science one. Melbourne's recently hosted World Parliament of Religions highlighted the divide as a-theists pled their case for public subventions of their counter event this year. Neither, of course, should receive public monies. The arts decreasingly get a look-in as truth sources, being relegated to commodities, like sports, with an amusement heart, which are 'contributors" to the economy measured by jobs associated with them and their event grosses.

 

My main aim here is to remind us that we are multi-faceted, multi-modal, multi-generational beings who created religion(s), science(s) and art(s) in the process of becoming such beings. We all congenitally have the capacity, inclination and need for this triumvirate – all at once, altogether, all of the time, and in various intensities and configurations.

 

If you are of religious orientation, you might say (the) God(s) created us as religious, scientific, and artistic beings. In either case, God(s) or none, we are beings with such capacities, unless deprived of them by accident. The deprived are treated as if they have them because we think of them as whole, even in their incompleteness(es).

 

From a species sustainability viewpoint, these three capacities are foundational for our viability, not merely some witchcrafts of a wannabe universal consciousness. And they are equally necessary though variably employed moment to moment in daily life. They provide the means of organising the past (sciences), designing the future (arts) and taking the leap (faith) required to get from the past to the future through the present. The three competences provide different kinds of beliefs about the world and our selves which are our knowledges.

 

Ways of knowing and being

From a knowledge viewpoint then, they are different ways of knowing, unified in one being, privileged with respect to each other ONLY by their special contributions required by special contexts. For example, despite the virtues of faith, few are those who rely on it alone for medical treatment, while finding strength in its offering in the face of needs to act into the uncertainties of serious injury or disease.

 

To enlarge a bit, I think the three ways of knowing have places in our lives like these:

 

(1) Science takes care of things past, complete, finished (for the moment); analysis is its competence and persistence its virtue. Its limitations in building certain appreciations of things past stand out at the borders of research technologies with the movement of the present. At that point, data become uncertain, indeterminate…a matter of informed guessing – the kind of activity which leads naturally into the competence of the art(s). Science tends to fragment the world in two ways: (1) by its pretence of certainty, expressed mainly in technology; and (2) by decomposing experience to make it subject to investigative manipulation (experiments).

 

(2) The arts provide us with design to shape meaning – the pathway to the futures in which we need new structures to find meaning. They create designs for meaning which provide part of the pathways to the future out of the present's fluid motion. Imagination is their competence and daring their virtue. Not surprisingly real art is always combustible, threatening to the different certainties of science (empirical beliefs) and religion (revealed beliefs).For this reason Plato recommended caution with poetry. It is a grand deceiver of minds by its appeal to the senses, especially the musical.

 

(3) Religion (re)assures that it's all worth the effort, that life will come to something. Its competence is faith and its virtue is fidelity. Its limitation is other worldliness, whose perspective distorts facts and pre-empts new meaning with the lure of revealed completeness whose final moment is the advertised return.

 

Claims beyond their means

Of course, in nature nothing is so cleanly segmented. So, each of these capabilities makes claims beyond its means (parts masquerading as wholes), reflected in the relatively self-sealing communities of its believers. These communities are sustained by three main factors: (1), the naturally self-aggrandising inclination of organisations to grow, arising from the need to attract resources to survive in the first instance; (2), the naturally occurring differences in individuals' orientations to the capabilities which drive them towards the organisational types reflecting their preferences; and (3), the developmental differences of cultures over time, giving some capability leanings more strongly in one direction or another.

 

Finally, each of the three ways of knowing take the whole world (universe(s)) as its objects / subjects and so pretends to speak knowledgeably of everything. This, in turn, helps bind adherents to their claims because providing a sense of completeness in their grasp. It also paves the way to endless struggle as their respective internal coherences are undermined by external realities. E.g. the religions make clearly silly claims about the physical world to maintain the consistency of their revealed / historical message(s). E.g. the sciences cannot make statements of value about anything other than themselves because values are sourced in other domains. E.g. the arts by themselves cannot create sustainable meaning pictures because the other two competences harbour essential materials for meaning – facts and faiths.

 

And so, what not? While this is not an argument about certainty, truth, etc., it is about the equality of the three capabilities covered above – they all make real and relevant contributions to knowing our world, and our world(s) cannot be known without taking all three (at a minimum) into account. It does have implications for certainty and truth – like what of the three modes of knowing and their contents may be required for any experience to be truthfully characterised.

 

At last, an example of sorts

So, this is an argument about aspects of our world(s) which must be included in any truth claims about them. For example, to understand crime in Melbourne take a dash of The Truth (P. Temple) and The Slap (C. Tsolakas) with an hour of Blessed (2009 movie); moderate with an analysis of all manner of crimes measured as costs to the economy and located geographically (demographics) with average income and poverty indicators allocated to each of the types; then, parse in some values in transition – sexualities, family structures and resiliencies – driven by excesses of all shapes, colours and durations; and, make explicit the underlying values / needs in the parsing of the factors. For instance, tell us why some factors are at this time in history more important than others, how the changed historical context moderates the values applying, and so on. Do all of this in language attractive and accessible to competent tradies and techos who share with 'elites' concern about where their worlds are going.

 

Imagine a press which did this for every major issue of our time with some consistency. I would love to start a movement (?) in this direction, if I could only find some other players.

 

*I am aware there is a developed argument for multiple intelligences, ways of knowing and so on. If you are interested in my triumvirate then expand it by looking at Howard Gardner. I warmly recommend him.

Rectifications (20) – I will not apologise for….

Rectifications (20) – I will not apologise for….

Torrey Orton– January 13, 2010

"We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense."

Obama inauguration speech, 21 Jan '09

'I will not apologise for….' is one of the most egregiously shifty moves in current polispeak. The way to its critique must be cleared of 2 lookalike usages, the first of which I am happy to endorse in principle, though I'd quibble on specifics, as I may about almost anything of course.


That first belongs to a movement of another order occurring in a parallel universe – see here for one example. This is the proper assertion of a wholly justifiable claim like "I will not apologise for my power". This is an important self-statement, and public one if necessary, for minorities in almost any group setting. Minorities are strongly encouraged to mind the manners of their power anywhere in the view or hearing of majorities. The successful learn to repress their power, a major tool for which is the learned denial of its reality. This is often heard as a situationally appropriate assertion of role power surrounded with apologetics and disclaimers. Used as a self-statement it is an empowering tool; as a public statement, it marks the emergence into view of a power almost wholly self-accepted. Complete acceptance by self and others arrives when nothing has to be said.


The second lookalike appears as a movement here in cyberspace, at least, for 'saying it like it is'.
This is a counter to PCness and similarly repressive pabulum. It is probably a worthy enterprise in the struggle for ordinary language about ordinary things. These 'I will nots' are explicitly challenges to an imagined accepted opinion – e.g. 'I will not apologise for smoking, driving a V8, etc.'. They invite a debate, if not a punch-up. They are aggressive initiatives unlikely to attract much interest because clearly as devoted to their contrarianism as the notional counter-truths they express.


Finally there's the political, public spun discourse version, modelled in its least offensive form by Obama above. It is these I rage against. Their Australian prototypes - Rudd and Co. nationally and their state acolytes like Brumby- are represented by statements like 'we will not apologise for defending our shores from boat peoples while honouring our international obligations to assist those lost at sea' (that's a relatively undoctored version you will never hear). The difference between the latter and the Obama quote is that Obama has a disputant in mind (the terrorist Others) who have a track record of being successfully dangerous.


Boat-people are mainly a danger to themselves of course. They are more likely to die from and for their efforts to get to Oz than to damage the  locals who await them. Their fearfulness depends wholly on an ascribed status as potential terrorist Others, which 'we will not apologise' re-endorses each time spoken to reinvigorate the scared locals' fear. Shame on the hypocrisy of all those pretentiously religious leaders of our land who speak so! Their irreligious and a-religious colleagues of the spin faiths are shameful in their own theologically ungarnished ways.

Appreciations (19) … Another woolly green recovery

Appreciations (19) … Another woolly green recovery


Torrey Orton
Jan 10, 2010


I forgot something now very strikingly present in Melbourne. Deciduous trees of some sorts - especially elms – can recover from near terminal drought conditions like those in Melbourne over the last two years. Their manner of recovery is quite the same as eucalypts do from fire (see below).

(Photo by Auscape_JLR08503)

In various parks hereabouts (West Hawthorn and Burnley parks and for instance) there are 100+ year old elms sprouting all around their major limbs and trunks much in the after fires eucalypt fashion. The elms sprout more densely, an impression partly arising from leaf colour (darker greens than most gums) and partly from leaf shape – oval for elms vs. elongated for gums. The underlying elm limb structures are almost totally eclipsed by the greenery.

It always amazes me what I miss in the world, and at the same time how alike the worlds are eventually. Furry green regrowth both from fire and drought, two afflictions one would expect to have terminal outcomes for the respective indigenous plants. The drought response never occurred to me, probably because it isn't often seen in Melbourne except in the city and then only twice I can recall now in my 38 years here. It never comes into our view in the countryside because things like elms are only seen in the towns and we are usually headed for the mountains. There are, of course, plenty of drought conditions in our immediate countryside, with increasing thoroughness of late.


However, as the farmer says, it will rain, and it has with some intensity (at least 25 mm per drop) on four occasions over the last four months of last year. It is this expectable, but recently anomalous, natural excess that revived the elms. Not all have made the comeback reliably, some standing with only slight outbursts of woolly green and excesses of sprigless sticks and limbs. These are usually at the outer and upper edges of the natural flow of rain.


The countryside, as much as the city parks and our own garden, are the greenest they have been for years. Usually they would be burned out by sun and heat. We've had both, to some extremes already the last two months, but the grass is still fresh.


Enjoy…before Adelaide's weather comes to us – endless days over 35C.