Ethics

ETHICS should control a country. I had hoped that people in Australia might have started to think of ethics for any other person in this country after the murders in Christchurch, New Zealand, just over a week ago. The Australian federal government and state governments owe Australian’s population, including A&TSI people, citizens, LGBTI people, visa holders, immigrants, and refugees, habitable relationships. No person should live under unfair government, insufficient fulfilled care or even homelessness. Sacred and different religions are a personal choice. Every person has rights, but when a person takes another person’s rights away, has s/he broken the law? That is what the murderer did for the Muslim community in Christchurch.

The reader needs to read some global comments about ethics in this blog. The reader can also go onto the websites I have given. This is a plead, for everyone in Australia, to become aware of ethics. Ethics are not run by churches (Pell was charged with child abuse). Ethics are not run by Centrelink (robodebt should never exist!). Ethics are not run by coal mines (coal is no longer needed for the entire globe – read about it!). Ethics are not run by political parties (the difference between politicians and ‘normal’ people are astonishing). Ethics are not run by racism. Ethics are not run by war. Ethics are not run by individuals who set their bar very different than every other country.

Ethics must be prudent for all people in this country, and indeed in the globe.

Australian schools attempt to teach ethics.

“As cultural, social, environmental and technological changes transform the world, the demands placed on learners and education systems are changing. Technologies bring local and distant communities into classrooms, exposing students to knowledge and global concerns as never before. Complex issues require responses that take account of ethical considerations such as human rights and responsibilities, animal rights, environmental issues and global justice." 

NHMRC firmly includes ethics for A&TSI people. 

“How people see the world is generally informed by their own cultural experiences, values, norms and learning. From the earliest periods of colonisation, views about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and social organisation (including their values and mores) were based on ill-informed perceptions and assumptions. These perceptions arose from inappropriate comparisons of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander world to the spiritual, social, political and economic perspectives of European colonisers.” 

Australia has its own Ethics Centre. 

“Ethics is the process of questioning, discovering and defending our values, principles and purpose. It’s about finding out who we are and staying true to that in the face of temptations, challenges and uncertainty. It’s not always fun and it’s hardly ever easy, but if we commit to it, we set ourselves up to make decisions we can stand by, building a life that’s truly our own and a future we want to be a part of.”

Globally, ethics are defined.

WHO will “respect the dignity, worth, equality, diversity and privacy of all persons.” 

Ethics adds democracy to governments. 

"The ethics of care ... supports concepts and practices that render polities more democratic and more caring so that all voices within the political fabric will be heard and heeded and get the effective opportunity to co-shape plural understandings of collective wellbeing and the institutions that foster it."

Jorma Heier, lecturer at the political theory department of the University of Osnabrück, Germany, looks at Political Repair 

And yet it is often ignored... 

“I am intrigued by the question: how can the movement of refugees lead to conflict? For example: a migrant needs to leave his home country because of oppression but finds himself in a new country again marginalised and excluded from society, it is an immense problem for the us-them polarisation which dominates the migrant debate... Contemporary debate is dominated by fear.” 

Bernie Deekens, Project manager for Utopian Unemployment Union (UUU)

...which it shouldn’t be.

“The term ethics ... refer to rules or guidelines that establish what conduct is right and wrong for individuals and for groups. For example, codes of conduct express relevant ethical standards for professionals in many fields, such as medicine, law, journalism, and accounting... ethics provides a framework for understanding and interpreting right and wrong in society.”

It is secular rather than sacred...

“[No one should] identify ethics with religion. Most religions, of course, advocate high ethical standards. Yet if ethics were confined to religion, then ethics would apply only to religious people. But ethics applies as much to the behavior of the atheist as to that of the devout religious person. Religion can set high ethical standards and can provide intense motivations for ethical behavior. Ethics, however, cannot be confined to religion nor is it the same as religion.” 
Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer

...and looks at the good and bad or the right and wrong.

 “...discussion in this area has been grounded at least as much in the distinction between the free and the constrained as it has been in those between the good and the bad or the right and wrong... in what has likely been the single most widely influential contribution to current discussion about ethics within anthropology...” 
Joel Robbins 

It’s physical, nonphysical or metaphysical.

“Some things in the universe are made of physical stuff, such as rocks; and perhaps other things are nonphysical in nature, such as thoughts, spirits, and gods. The metaphysical component of metaethics involves discovering specifically whether moral values are eternal truths that exist in a spirit-like realm, or simply human conventions.” Kant said “although emotional factors often do influence our conduct we should nevertheless resist that kind of sway. Instead, true moral action is motivated only by reason when it is free from emotions and desires...”

(IEP also defined ‘war’: Denis Diderot said that war is "a convulsive and violent disease of the body politic...")

There is so much reading for anyone, even school children, but if you have learned or will learn about ethics, and live your own life inclusive of all other people’s rights, then perhaps this country could improve.

It really should improve.