Morality.
Morality
"n 1: concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct [ant: immorality] 2: motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical motive, ethics, morals]"
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
A hornet's nest packed with subjective terms if ever there was one.
Yet there would be few people on earth who would be completely without morals.
Let's hold as self evident that both Donald Rumsfeld and Osama bin Laden both have some pretty well developed ideas about what they think is right and wrong. If they perform acts consistent with those beliefs then - by definition - those acts must be moral.
This won't be the first time you've read something like this, although when you've read it before it was probably from the mouth of some cultural relativist pinko bending over backwards to get Al Quaeda off the hook for 9/11.
This is not my intention.
It appears that my morals crusading local MP (Trish Draper) has succeeded in getting the adults only edition of Big Brother off the air. I won't miss it, as usually at that time of night I am either sleeping or doing financial mathematic nerding in Excel.
It didn't cause any harm to me, or any real and provable harm to anybody else, and accordingly probably should have stayed on as long as Channel 10 wished it to.
Trish Draper and the pentacostal church that lives in her constituency felt differently about this, and so now Big Brother Adults Only is history.
Their version of morality is a rather over simplified one. It seems to think that if there was no tits, arse, or foul language on TV the world would be a much better place. Considering this as the key variable determining the quality of people's lives, Ms. Draper waddles off to Canberra to vote for things like WorkChoices.
That nasty piece of legislation has been condemned by the Catholic and Anglican church, but largely ignored by pentacostals. I mean who needs a real moral crime when you've got shit like weed and television to worry about?
So morality is subjective, I guess we already knew that.
There have been calls to introduce morality into the duties of company directors, and ammend the Corporations Act to crystalise this into law. Currently company directors are only required to return the heaviest possible wad of mad cash to shareholders without breaking any important laws.
Corporate Social Responsiblity (for those that do not believe it is simply a cynical marketing ploy) is the intended vehicle for this morality. Corporate Social Resonsibility (CSR) and its brother 'Triple bottom line accounting' aim to raise the conduct of a company beyond that which is legally required. A company employing these priciples does the right thing, not the legally mandated thing.
OK.
The problem here is that not everybody shares the same educated, socially progressive moral framework that produces things like CSR.
What if a company's shareholders and directors share a predominantly Christian right moral framework?
Corporate resonsibility for them may include not hiring heathen scum, or homosexuals, or women who've had abortions, or women who haven't had abortions (their place is in the kitchen, remember)
What if the company is to be run along a white supremicist moral framework? A community participation initiative may be to sponsor cross burnings and lobby the government to increase the tax benefits that flow to jew hating organisations.
We avoid these problems by codifying in law not that a corporation should be responsible, but that it should not involve itself in racist and otherwise discriminatory behaviour.
Clear and direct rules are established and company directors are asked not to use their imagination about 'Morality' in the same way that Stalin and Pol Pot used theirs.
Directors are asked just to produce the cash, and the shareholders will look after their own cross burnings thank you very much.
Morality can be used to justify heaps of stuff. For example, I think it's right and proper to recover my HECS (and then some) from the Commonwealth Government through barely legitimate tax deductions.
What it cannot do is persuade people who abide by different moral rules.
As organisations such as Al Quaeda cannot be persuaded through moral appeals to stop their dirty business ,we need the next best thing.
Million. Dollar. Bombs.
Long live the crusade. Huzzah.
"n 1: concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct [ant: immorality] 2: motivation based on ideas of right and wrong [syn: ethical motive, ethics, morals]"
Source: WordNet ® 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University
A hornet's nest packed with subjective terms if ever there was one.
Yet there would be few people on earth who would be completely without morals.
Let's hold as self evident that both Donald Rumsfeld and Osama bin Laden both have some pretty well developed ideas about what they think is right and wrong. If they perform acts consistent with those beliefs then - by definition - those acts must be moral.
This won't be the first time you've read something like this, although when you've read it before it was probably from the mouth of some cultural relativist pinko bending over backwards to get Al Quaeda off the hook for 9/11.
This is not my intention.
It appears that my morals crusading local MP (Trish Draper) has succeeded in getting the adults only edition of Big Brother off the air. I won't miss it, as usually at that time of night I am either sleeping or doing financial mathematic nerding in Excel.
It didn't cause any harm to me, or any real and provable harm to anybody else, and accordingly probably should have stayed on as long as Channel 10 wished it to.
Trish Draper and the pentacostal church that lives in her constituency felt differently about this, and so now Big Brother Adults Only is history.
Their version of morality is a rather over simplified one. It seems to think that if there was no tits, arse, or foul language on TV the world would be a much better place. Considering this as the key variable determining the quality of people's lives, Ms. Draper waddles off to Canberra to vote for things like WorkChoices.
That nasty piece of legislation has been condemned by the Catholic and Anglican church, but largely ignored by pentacostals. I mean who needs a real moral crime when you've got shit like weed and television to worry about?
So morality is subjective, I guess we already knew that.
There have been calls to introduce morality into the duties of company directors, and ammend the Corporations Act to crystalise this into law. Currently company directors are only required to return the heaviest possible wad of mad cash to shareholders without breaking any important laws.
Corporate Social Responsiblity (for those that do not believe it is simply a cynical marketing ploy) is the intended vehicle for this morality. Corporate Social Resonsibility (CSR) and its brother 'Triple bottom line accounting' aim to raise the conduct of a company beyond that which is legally required. A company employing these priciples does the right thing, not the legally mandated thing.
OK.
The problem here is that not everybody shares the same educated, socially progressive moral framework that produces things like CSR.
What if a company's shareholders and directors share a predominantly Christian right moral framework?
Corporate resonsibility for them may include not hiring heathen scum, or homosexuals, or women who've had abortions, or women who haven't had abortions (their place is in the kitchen, remember)
What if the company is to be run along a white supremicist moral framework? A community participation initiative may be to sponsor cross burnings and lobby the government to increase the tax benefits that flow to jew hating organisations.
We avoid these problems by codifying in law not that a corporation should be responsible, but that it should not involve itself in racist and otherwise discriminatory behaviour.
Clear and direct rules are established and company directors are asked not to use their imagination about 'Morality' in the same way that Stalin and Pol Pot used theirs.
Directors are asked just to produce the cash, and the shareholders will look after their own cross burnings thank you very much.
Morality can be used to justify heaps of stuff. For example, I think it's right and proper to recover my HECS (and then some) from the Commonwealth Government through barely legitimate tax deductions.
What it cannot do is persuade people who abide by different moral rules.
As organisations such as Al Quaeda cannot be persuaded through moral appeals to stop their dirty business ,we need the next best thing.
Million. Dollar. Bombs.
Long live the crusade. Huzzah.
posted by Mr Schrempp @ 8:10 pm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home