Another post I wrote a few years ago about one of the branches of ethics. Enjoy.
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“That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing” – brilliantly said by Pliny the Younger, which wisdom acts as one of the cornerstones of Ethical Individualism. We believe that many people follow this principle to a degree in this world even though they are unaware of it themselves. These people are usually said to be forgetful, selfish, lazy, egocentric, greedy, and in more friendly words: laid-back and utterly enjoys fishing.

The Ethical Individualist tends to keep a positive attitude towards his own incompetency, especially when it comes to short-term memory. He is often considered to be street-smart, a scavenger, and a brute. In other-words, he is a survivor. He pillages the weak, trades with the strong; what he can’t remember, doesn’t exist; what he finds, is what he keeps. And of course, he likes to spend his days by the lake and fishing.

Most people mistake Ethical Individualism with Anarchy. Although similar, the statement is false. For example: an Ethical Individualist would never consider robbing a big bank. The bank is strong and therefore a true follower of Ethical Individualism would try to trade with the bank and rob the old lady coming out of the bank with her month’s pension in her purse instead.

If the Ethical Individualist doesn’t feel like going to school in the morning and instead wants to go fishing – he will. He will be considered selfish because now his lab partner will have to do without him and he will be considered a lazy and forgetful coward for not having done his English homework, skipping school and not facing the consequences of his actions. But to him, he is just enjoying life… and fishing.

Now one might also see Ethical Individualism as the ultimate ethical principle to follow. However it does have minor flaws. This is best demonstrated with another example: If our ideal Ethical Individualist wants to marry another person, he can no longer rely on Ethical Individualism for moral judgment. If the individual’s happiness depends on another individual, Ethical Individualism will not apply because according to the principle, it is oafish to depend on other people for your own happiness. This flaw is only minor because people “are dishonest and do not keep faith with [other people]” -Niccolo Machiavelli. These kind of foolish reliance will not occur often in this world, at least not by Ethical Individualists.

Another example would be using Ethical Individualism to judge the moral correctness of ”A Modest Proposal”. To those who are not familiar with this work by Jonathan Swift, here comes a brief summary:

“The author argues, by hard-edged economic reasoning as well as from a self-righteous moral stance, for a way to turn this problem into its own solution. His proposal, in effect, is to fatten up these undernourished children and feed them to Ireland’s rich land-owners. Children of the poor could be sold into a meat market at the age of one, he argues, thus combating overpopulation and unemployment, sparing families the expense of child-bearing while providing them with a little extra income, improving the culinary experience of the wealthy, and contributing to the overall economic well-being of the nation.”
-Jonathan Swift

To the Ethical Individualist this brilliant proposal by Jonathan Swift is arguably satirical. This way the poor people would transform their former financial burden into a profit, all for greed of money and every bit selfish. The rich would then have a delicacy on the dinner table for them to enjoy. This form of enjoyment would almost match fishing. According to Ethical Individualism, Jonathan Swift is quite ingenious in coming up with this proposal, making him the ideal Ethical Individualist. Eating babies might seem barbaric and inhuman, but it has to be taken account that just because something is judged to be morally correct doesn’t mean one has to actually perform these deeds for other reasons. One might not enjoy eating babies, therefore one might consider it to be morally incorrect because, in the end, one should enjoy life’s pleasantries.

Now.
Enjoy life, and remember:
your happiness is worth a thousand times the happiness from others.

[pic: CC-BY-ND, jaroslavd]

I’m reading a book called ”The Social Study of Information and Communication Technology”. One part of the book takes up an example that shows how a tool can be perceived very differently from a slight incident. They are unaware of the surveillance until they see it and they don’t like the spying on their every action even if they have nothing to hide.

”The case dealt with a fairly large application of Lotus Notes used for new product development within a worldwide team-based organization. Dedicated Notes applications were built to allow multidisciplinary and multinational teams to work jointly on common projects, regardless of distance between locations. Implementation of the new system was carried out according to a participative methodology, an incremental introduction of the system, and comprehensive training. Usage was immediate, ubiquitous, and successful. One day, however, a cheering message broadcasted over the network by a top marketing manager in London made every user realize that the new transparent platform could be deployed by headquarters as a powerful controlling eye, able to access any working document and local bulletin board of all the distant teams. Such a possibility made usage fall immediately and significantly. Attempts to revamp the system succeeded only when the applications were redesigned to replicate the pre-existing routines and organizational structures, thus losing much of the original innovative design, transparency, and collaboration opportunities.
This case provides evidence, among other things, about the ambiguity of new technology. Despite the careful planning and design, and the extensive training, the new groupware technology appeared to the user suddenly as an ambivalent, threatening stranger. The latent tensions between the professional dimension and the existential one exploded as a consequence of a small incident” (p. 26)

This story tells us a lot of useful things. One of the most significant ones being that the average user is very unaware of what the technique actually does and how it can be used until someone ”misuses” it. The surveillance of people is normally not a problem as long as they are not aware of it.

Another issue that becomes clear through this is that people are not comfortable sharing everything with others even if they have nothing to hide. Right now there is a lot of argument about not having to be afraid of surveillance unless you have something to hide. This is clearly not the case in this example.

The third thing we learn is how little is needed to shift the usage and opinions of people. Find the right thing to say and we can change everything instantly. One wrong (or right) thing to say changes the focus of the mass from seeing a productive and efficient tool to seeing a tool for controlling and spying.

The public space is important for people to have a space to live and feel free. Unfortunately with the progress of commercialism the public space is shrinking and becoming more sparse. What you can do in an open area is becoming more restricted at some places.

One example of the restriction of public space is that in Sweden (and many other places) we are not technically allowed to take pictures of what we want. I’m not sure of the exact details but I remember a lecture this spring with Staffan Teste, a copyright lawyer, that told us we were not allowed to take pictures of famous buildings (e.g. city hall) since the copyright was owned by the creator. Not being able to take pictures of what we want becomes a small problem.

If you walk by a mural or a graffiti piece you like it has copyright by creation that limits the use and spread of the pictures. This is probably against the will of the creator but we still have to find the creator and ask if it’s ok to use the picture since copyright is automatic. Even billboards and advertisements with a hint of creativity has copyright protection. Showing the pictures in this case is important for a high diffusion where as many as possible can take part of the pictures.

Another very interesting article I found the other day is about a guy that lost an eye in a hunting accident. He replaced the eye with a prosthetic eye that doubles as a video-camera. This raises a lot of interesting copyright issues about where he can go and what he can do if he constantly records everything. There is some very interesting comments in that post as well.

[pic: CC-BY-NC-ND Xavier Donat]

Time for an update for my readers about what kind of person I am and a few things that matter to me. I use Twitter a lot and the lists that people have put me in there summarize me pretty good. What I have not yet been able to be listed as is a dual-citizen (Swedish and American) and my love for traveling and exploring cultural patterns and local parts. I am also very found of organizational learning as well as how to improve the pedagogy in various fields. Transparency and entrepreneurship are two other fields that highly interest me. Most of the rest of the areas I have a burning interest for I have been listed for in Twitter.

A few of my twitter-listings:
Netpolitics
Sweden
Overseas
Advertising-Marketing-PR
SM-Internet
PR-Students
Public Relations
Jonkoping
Communications-Expert
Art-Design-Media
Advertising Folks
PR of Sweden
Creative Marketing
Design
Knowledge
Educators Sweden