The Ethics Sage Discusses the Moral Issues in the Film, Insurgent.
(Steven Mintz, the Ethics Sage give his usual intelligent analysis to a film. Please go to his web site and read the whole entry. jp)
Below is a brief excerpt from this work followed by my own comments.
The Ethics of Insurgent of the Divergent Series – Ethics Sage
What makes “Insurgent” a modern play on morality is that Tris encounters a wide variety of moral issues that can best be viewed through the lens of the film itself. Here are some quotes:
“That might be your truth; it’s not necessarily mine” – a textbook summary of moral relativism.
“I’m just one person; I’m not worth it” – spoken when Tris considers submitting to death rather than seeing others suffer, reflecting a utilitarian understanding that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, something I recently blogged about.
“Dark times call for dark measures, but I am serving the greater good” – or, in other words, “the ends justify the means.” We can relate this to the current conflict (war?) with ISIS and ISIL. That is, fighting a war may be wrong but its ends of “degrading” and “destroying” an evil enemy make it justified from a moral point of view.
“May the truth set you free.” Honesty is the best policy and leads to a clear conscience.
Films are a vital tool in teaching business ethics.
While I don’t use any of the Divergent Series in my classes, I’m confident they are useful. Why? Because most motion pictures save for those displaying our modern penchant for special effects over character development almost always deal with moral issues. Some films are more useful than others. For instance, The Wolf of Wall Street glorifies the antics of a criminal. On the other hand, there are films like Desk Set, The Apartment, and Sabrina that illustrate business and class issues, and, not incidentally are some of the greatest films of all time.
Today in class, we used My Life in Ruins to teach Business Ethics. Nia Vardalos may very well have made “The Gone With the Wind” of business ethics films. The film is so crowded with business ethics problems that my students sometimes have trouble writing them down as the film proceeds. That the film is also well-done and funny are added benefits. (Education does not always have to be painful.)
One of the interesting things about using films in class is that those who use documentaries tend to use the same ones (based on my observations and reading other people’s syllabi), while those who use movies vary widely. One of my colleagues sent me her syllabus in which all of her films are very recent whereas my films can go back to the silents (Metropolis). Now, my students give me the impression that making them watch a silent film is roughly equivalent to slowly boiling them in oil. So, that particular one is an optional extra-credit assignment.
Jesus would hate you all — and you didn’t build that: The truth about the ultra-rich and their New York Times apologists – Salon.com
IRS data compiled by Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saenz and their colleagues at the top incomes database shows how stark America’s shift from a broad-based prosperity model has been. From 1947 to 1973, the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent increased 99.2 percent, compared to 88.9 percent for the top 10 percent, and a mere 7.4 percent for the top 0.1 percent. But from 1973 to 2008, the average incomes of the bottom 90 percent fell 6.1 percent, while the average incomes of the top 10 percent continued rising by another 70.8 percent, and average incomes of the top 0.1 percent skyrocketed an astronomical 706.4 percent.
I’m told from time to time that the slow destruction of the middle class and the de-professionalization of faculty at colleges and universities are the result of globalization. This globalization process is often described like a natural phenomenon like an earthquake or a tidal wave.
But the economic changes over the last fifty years are not the result of “natural” market forces. First and foremost, the market is an artificial construct. It seems to me that the idea of a complex structure with buying, selling, currency, the problems of shipping and safety, and a vast system of law can hardly be described as a natural process in the manner of lions hunting wildebeests. Second, this is policy – cold, deliberate policy. I can list them beginning with the Reagan tax cuts that eliminated the upper brackets. I would probably end with “Citizens United,” a decision that makes sense only through the prism of the Wall Street Journal. The idea that money is a form of speech is ridiculous but worse is the idea directly expressed in the decision that the resulting enormous rise of money in politics would not give the appearance of corruption.
Let’s have a look at the “appearance of corruption.” How about this, or this (Look at the chart of spending on the last election cycles!), or this, or this, or this? How many do you want? Maybe, just maybe, the Supreme Court got it wrong? Maybe incredible sums of money and the ubiquity of the Koch brothers commercials give the appearance that you can buy any election in the United States any time you want if you’re willing to shell out enough money?
Where’s the business ethics here? It’s very simple. You build a better product. You compete in the marketplace and sell your better product. Capitalism in action! But wait, why do that when you can give several million dollars to Congress or better yet a much cheaper State or local government and be subsidized? Building a better product is hard, purchasing influence is easy. Thus the NFL pays no taxes, the oil industry in spite of being immensely profitable gets government subsidies, factory farms produce food paid for in advance by the federal government. None of these is a better product. Can there be any doubt that multiple leagues would produce more and better sports? Does it seem likely to you that oil companies would founder if left to suffer multi-billion dollar profits without government subsidy? And would farming disappear without government aid?
Where’s is innovation in all this? Is football improving? Does the oil industry compete by making a better product or is it committed to an increasingly obsolete business model? How come we subsidize certain agriculural products but don’t subsidize more healthy products?
We can adopt policies which favor a strong, vibrant middle class. We don’t have to give in to every industry demand even if it is backed by enormous political contributions. Sometimes we may fell and justly that this country is being sold out from under us. We live in society becoming more and more an oligarchy of corporate power and the wealthy. But this is not an inevitable process. Other nations have moved in this direction and yet have the soul democracy once again. The American people are a great and good people. I believe in time that a great people will realize that unrestrained greed is still one of the deadly sins to be shunned like the others.
Here is a list of films with business ethics issues. I use these in class. Some are documentaries and some are more conventional movies.
Scandalous women of the 19th century
(Write me a minimum of five sentences using the format in the syallabus to explain whether or not the changes these women inspired in the legal status of women have any relevance in your life today. 8 points extra credit.)
Love Affair
The Charles Boyer character in the film can spend his life with the woman he loves in a state of financial insecurity or marry a beautiful wealthy woman and live a life of indulgence and pleasure seeking. The film is from an earlier era and to them the choice was obvious. What would you choose and why? Is your choice simple and how time do you spend weighing the economic advantages? Could you be happy without financial security?
Three Godfathers
The three men depicted here are bank robbers. Is the film reasonable – does it make sense in the light of our current beliefs? If you were one of the three men, would you have been willing to do what they did? Are there more important things in life than wealth and ease? Could you name some?
Jane Eyre
Jane is a plain girl, with no money, no connection to the aristocratic classes and in fact, very little connection to even the gentile middle class. Rochester can marry a beautiful woman of impeccable breeding who will bring money and influence to the marriage. Is this just some silly Gothic novel designed to alleviate the pain of plain women or is it something of an eternal observation about the fulfilled life as opposed to fulfilling the expectations of society?
Persuasion
According to the film, does the heroine cravenly seek money and position? In a nation heavily influenced by neoliberalism, aren’t we supposed to use the free market to maximize our gains – why or why not? Isn’t matrimony just another form of financial transaction? Aren’t men and women objects of investment and return?
(You might want to read the brief article quote at the bottom of the page – I am commenting on that.)
One Law for the People, Another for Corporations
It is unlikely that any individual found responsible for environment damage to the state of New Jersey walked away with three cents on the dollar of what the state had laid claim to. But then it is unlikely any individual would have the power and influence of Exxon, in many ways the equivalent of a small nation without borders.
This isn’t a fine, it’s a claim. The difference is big. A fine would be a form of punishment to deter the wrongdoer. A claim is what is owed. Exxon contaminated the land and water of New Jersey for many years. This has consequences.
This is an enormous wealth transfer on several levels. First, Exxon does not have to pay the vast bulk of the claim. Second, Exxon profited from evading its responsibilities to not harm the state and country in which it operated. Third, a powerful message has been sent to every responsible public official that once a corporation has been brought to the docket and wrongdoing adjudicated, their efforts, their idealism, and their commitment to the public interest are less than nothing to political figures with other priorities.
On the other side of the deal are the people of New Jersey. It is they who suffer from Exxon’s actions and it is they who will pay for the cleanup. They are, in effect, subsidizing Exxon and its shareholders. For the citizens of New Jersey, this will not be a one time pay off. The people are likely to suffer the effects of environmental degradation for the foreseeable future and the continuing expense will last for decades and will quite likely never be able to restore what was taken.
For the public, the deal is a disaster but for the political class, it is a bonanza. This is an off year. So, any negative publicity will die down before the election. Any left over pain can be dealt with by active public relations financed by campaign contributions given by those whose faith in the kind of justice dealt out in New Jersey justifies the expenditure.
This is not a form of bribery. These are campaign contributions. They only appear as bribery to those without the proper legal education.
Remember what Justice Kennedy said in Citizens United – “We now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
It is obvious that Justice Kennedy is right. The campaign contributions and soft money given by billionaires and giant international corporations are just speech – just like you talking to your neighbor about some issue.
A cynic would say that the interests of the nine million people were overridden in the name of corporate influence. But we in America are not cynical. We know that enormous political expenditures by corporations with more income than most nations on the earth are a form of speech representing their valid interest in the lively marketplace of ideas necessary for a democracy.
And we in America owe Exxon and Justice Kennedy our sincere thanks for making this a nation where money is speech and that freedom to speak is sacred.
But today no one owes more to our Supreme Court than the people of New Jersey who will live with the toxins from Exxon for decades or quite possibly, centuries to come.
For more than a decade, the New Jersey attorney general’s office conducted a hard-fought legal battle to hold Exxon Mobil Corporation responsible for decades of environmental contamination in northern New Jersey.
But when the news came that the state had reached a deal to settle its $8.9 billion claim for about $250 million, the driving force behind the settlement was not the attorney general’s office — it was Gov. Chris Christie’s chief counsel, Christopher S. Porrino, two people familiar with the negotiations said.
Beginning around the 25th of November, I began to deal with sinus and ear infections.
It was rough. I still managed to go to work (the life of an adjunct is what it is) and stayed even on the bills.
But anything else had to wait. So, I’ve posted but little and for that I apologize.
I finished the third bout of antibiotics last Thursday, the 4th of February. Except for a touch of bronchitis I am very much myself.
Last year, 2014 will gradually fade into memory – my dreams were shattered and what remains is pleasure in books and a love for my students – it will have to be enough.
Recently Fox “News” had a televised disaster, a terrorism expert whose knowledge and expertise were laughable. But this cannot be a surprise to those of us who pay attention to the content of cable news.
(At the bottom of the page is a piece from Addicting Info in which a capable journalist discusses the problem.)
In the far off past of the 1960’s, television news lost money. It was supposed to. The news was a return to the public by the networks in return for the use of the airwaves. It was required and expected by the law creating the FCC and part of the administrative rules of the agency.
How times have changed.
The networks were released from these responsibilities to provide a public service. This was in the name of the free market. Because we all know that only when business is freed from regulation and responsibility to the public can real benefits be expected. After all businesses are self-regulating. They will not act against the public interest – Didn’t you read Milton Friedman?
And what benefits we have reaped! Now we have the opportunity to watch “news” programs where facts, reasoning and any semblance of respect for reality are expendable.
So what’s surprising about experts on terrorism who couldn’t cross the street without a map and a boy scout? People who have no concept what they’re talking about are often far more interesting (provocative?) than real experts. After all, you go to college for years and then work in a field for more years, write scholarly papers in an almost inscrutable form of scholarly and bureaucratic English, you tend to be wordy and cautious. This is boring. Since news must turn over the big bucks – (boredom kills profits.) We gotta’ have action. That means extreme statements, and they have to be loud and certain – because that generates ratings.
And if your network has an ideological basis, any real expert is verboten. We’re not just selling news, we’re selling ideology – a one-two punch of certainty for a specific demographic.
So, by converting to a free market formula for news and giving up any responsibility to the public, we have the opportunity for a representative democracy in which a majority of the population believe nonsense, in which science is ridiculed, conspiracy theories treated as legitimate news and demogogary elevated to an art form.
This is bad business ethics.
James Alan Pilant
Addicting Info – Watch This Journalist’s Brilliant Take Down Of Cable News Experts (VIDEO)
During an interview, Scahill told CNN’s Hala Gorani:
“CNN and MSNBC and Fox are engaging in the terrorism expert-industrial complex, where you have people on as paid analysts that are largely frauds who have made a lot of money off of portraying themselves as terror experts and have no actual on-the-ground experience. … Some of your paid analysts, that you have on this network or other networks, basically are just making money off of the claim that they’re experts on terrorism and really don’t have the scholarly background or on-the-ground experience to justify being on your network or any other network.”
Paul Singer, a billionaire, believes inflation is a serious problem and he is dumfounded by government data that show otherwise. According to him, the evidence before his eyes shows there is a high rate of inflation. He tells us that he has personally witnessed a dizzying increase in the price of up-scale real estate and high-end art prices.
Obviously, this is a silly conclusion based on the most fragmentary evidence, but why is it a business ethics problem?
Simple. Mr. Singer is a billionaire, for many, a fount of wisdom. And the fact is, he is far more influential than thousands of voters (or bloggers). Politicians shake with fear that he might give to their opponents and hope upon hope that he will give to them. Financial publications, business television and newspapers breathlessly publish his words as if he were a newly minted Old Testament Prophet.
But here, he, a major figure in the financial world, shows that he does not understand inflation. What’s wrong with his analysis?
But his analysis is worse. If you’re looking for inflation outside the numbers presented by the CPI, such analysis would seem to include a look at major nation wide prices on such things as energy. Further, if there is an actual high rate of inflation, shouldn’t it be reflected in the currency markets as well as in the countless economic transactions like those on the Chicago Mercantile?
Reasoning and logic are basic to business ethics. Before you can analysis the ethical and unethical, it is a necessity to understand what’s going on. Mr. Singer is calling for dramatic changes in economic policy. These would have the effect of more protection for already accumulated capital and make the labor market more difficult across the country causing hardship for millions. His reasoning is nonsensical but his influence is vast.
It seems to me that disregarding evidence and making policy based on that disregard is irresponsible and unethical.
It also implies that the “ruling class,” the “beltway,” and the “very serious people” (all very much the same group) have a loose grip on reasoning but a hard and strong grip on ideas that favor protecting their interests.
James Pilant
The Billionaire Price Index
An Excerpt from The Washington Post –
This billionaire thinks the Fed is missing the hyperinflation in the Hamptons – The Washington Post
Which brings us to Paul Singer. He’s the hedge fund billionaire who’s made a small part of his fortune buying bonds from countries on the edge of default, and then suing them to get paid in full.* (This hasn’t worked quite as well with Argentina). Well, it turns out that he has some very idiosyncratic ideas about what inflation actually looks like. His latest investor letter recycles all these ideas, inveighing against the Fed’s “fake prices,” “fake money,” and “fake jobs,” before zeroing in on where inflation is really showing up — his wallet:
Check out London, Manhattan, Aspen and East Hampton real estate prices, as well as high-end art prices, to see what the leading edge of hyperinflation could look like.
That’s right: Paul Singer thinks Weimar-style inflation might be coming because he has to pay more for his posh vacation homes and art pieces.
Students attending Holyoke public schools have their test scores posted in their classrooms on the walls. (See the article at the bottom of the essay.)
Humiliation used as a means of social control? – or for “encouraging students?” It sounds like a Dickens novel.
That’s not teaching. That is corporate culture. Teaching encourages learning and has a deep and abiding concern for the psychological welfare of the students. Because we that teach know that a damaged learner gets few benefits from an education. Corporations post results to force competition and winnow out the winners and the losers.
But these are not corporate pawns made to suffer psychological abuse to make them push for higher sales. These are children. We’re not supposed to be dividing them into winners and losers. First, of all, they are children. Children going to school can have good and bad years, good subjects and bad subjects, etc. Second, designating human beings in the midst of the development of their skills and judgment is bound to be wildly inaccurate. Is is simply not fair.
But what does fairness have to do with testing madness? It is designed to determine winners and losers – principally losers.
But what is the matter with the truth? After all they earned those scores, they should know where they stand?
No, they are not adults with a capacity to absorb criticism. This is because adults have formed self perceptions with defenses. These children are very young and they have little to filter out the devastating effects of early stigmatization. This is a definition of labeling theory? – Do you see the connection?
There is a perception among many that labeling people as losers particularly early in their lives has an effect on the rest of their lives. That testing partisans are willing to curse children by stigmatizing them does not speak well of the testing movement.
What is this competition thing, anyway? I’ve heard people speak of competition as if it were the natural process of life that everything revolves around. There have to be winners and losers. Not always. There are some things in our society that lend themselves to that but many, most, don’t. We don’t educate children into winners and losers. We educate them to have basic abilities like reading and writing but principally we educate them to be good citizens because that is what makes for successful democratic societies.
We cooperate in social settings, in obeying the law and doing such complex tasks as driving. To get to work, to successfully achieve our goals, cooperation is generally more important than knocking the other guy down.
Sometimes we compete but most of the time and in most situations we cooperate. Generally speaking education is a cooperative endeavor.
Turning it into a meat processor devoted to dividing students early and often into groupings of success and pain is only good to the most twisted of minds.
This is corporate thinking and corporate processing aimed at the most impressionable of our population. It calls into question the judgement and intelligence of our corporate elites. This kind of formulaic, one size fits all, group think is not an indicator of ability. It’s an indicator of a pervasive lack of thought. In short, an inability to understand business ethics and apply ethical thinking to the world at large.
Over and over again, I see simple business ideas of dubious quality applied to every situation apparently because if it is an idea from business it must be good.
I believe in a reliance on facts and reasoning. That is how you make good judgements in life and in education.Formulaic thinking has good results when luck and chance favor it. That’s not good enough.
James Pilant
“Poster child for tenure”: Why teacher Agustin Morales really lost his job – Salon.com
Last February, Morales and some of his colleagues, as well as parents whose students attend Holyoke public schools, spoke at a school committee meeting (the equivalent of a school board) and protested a directive from higher-ups to post students’ test scores on the walls of their classrooms, complete with the students’ names. Paula Burke, parent of a third-grader at Donahue, called the walls “public humiliation.” Some teachers questioned whether posting data publicly violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. As I reported at the time for In These Times, the superintendent tried to turn the tables on teachers, saying that they were never told to use students’ names and that the directive did not come from the administration, but the teachers released a PowerPoint from their training session that clearly showed photos of sample data walls, with first names and last initials.
The state wants to spy on us – but is it up to the job? | Technology | The Observer
Many moons ago, shortly after Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA first appeared, I wrote a column which began, “Repeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story”. I was infuriated by the way the mainstream media was focusing not on the import of what he had revealed, but on the trivia: Snowden’s personality, facial hair (or absence thereof), whereabouts, family background, girlfriend, etc. The usual crap, in other words. It was like having a chap tell us that the government was poisoning the water supply and concentrating instead on whom he had friended on Facebook.
I was reading a joke the other day. It went like this:
CNN was changing its name from “The Most Trusted Name in News” to “Holy crap, we’re all going to die.” This is from the Borowitz Report from the New Yorker Magazine. This is only a short distance from the truth. The media coverage of the spread of Ebola has been sensationalism at its worst. The 24 hours new cycle has been turned over to know-nothing commentators, crank conspiracy theorists and a band of insipid hosts who appear to have given up on even the appearance of journalism. From time to time an expert appears only to be ignored or marginalized or both. It would be hilarious if the subject wasn’t so important and the stakes so high. I’m seeing comments on Facebook talking abut the millions of dead from the Spanish Flu Epidemic and classroom talk of death dealing sneezes.
The Fourth Estate is Vacant
I have graduate hours in journalism. I’m not seeing much in this crisis. It’s been replaced by a corporate inspired search for higher ratings and for at least one network, political attacks of the most base kind. It’s all about the money. And as long as it is, the money will be on lies, exaggeration and the fomenting of panic, anything to keep the gullible and uninformed glued to that empty screen and these substitutes for competent professionals.
Surely, this tells us as a society, as a people, that glorifying greed carries a terrible price. Just when we need the truth we receive ratings fodder. Can it be any clearer that honor, fairness and truth are the basic foundation of a successful society?
Is business ethics just a joke? Certainly, when I tell people what I do, I get a lot of ironic smiles, chuckles and looks of pity. Maybe that’s all I deserve, a voice in the wilderness who sees Americans increasingly devolving into prey animals, narcissists who hunt for the last dollar from the last of their fellow citizens.
If common humanity, if simple human decency, cannot compel responsible journalism, how far has the nation’s moral fabric decayed?
James Pilant
Here are some linked quotes from other bloggers whose writing is superlative –
Spare me your “femvertising”: The advertising industry’s weird, persistent woman problem – Salon.com
Recently, at New York’s Advertising Week, a hedonistic celebration of all things commercial, a half dozen panels focused on women. Discussion topics ranged from the instructional, namely how to avoid insulting women when you’re trying to sell them stuff, to the philosophical, which asked tough questions to the tune of, essentially, “Could it be women’s fault they’re not being promoted?” Panels with titles like “Women Aren’t Creative?” readily recognized that women make 80 percent of household purchasing decisions. What the smiling executives at center stage were a little slower to acknowledge is that women are only 3 percent of the creative directors making decisions about how to best sell things to these millions of shopping ladies. The word “femvertising” was thrown around a lot, but never the word “feminism.” Perhaps that’s because in an industry famous for being sexist, feminism is scary even if it sells.
Women might be smarter when it comes to selling things to other women. Certainly, they would bring experience to the table. There are differences in male and female shopping.
Yet, in the advertising field, only three percent of the creative directors are women. And this is in a world, a nation, where women go to college and graduate in larger number than men. Is it easy to believe that women are just not applying for these jobs? – that they are just no qualified – that women lack creativity and useful knowledge about marketing to women?
There has to be a suspicion about hiring practices and employment in the industry. Suspect “like hiring like” or an “old boys network” or a” set of frat connections,” there is something wrong.
Can it be that the constant horror of ads in garish poor taste directed at women is a result of women’s absence in key roles in advertising? (1)
You want to pound your head against a stone wall. How can people be comfortable with a field dominated by men when every day we have solid, clear and compelling evidence that when it comes to women, they just don’t get it. Three percent is not an accident, not a statistical anomaly; it’s a conscious decision by hundreds of men to not hire women. And by not hiring women, they damage their ability to make money and please their customers. So, this kind of hiring misogyny is foolish and counterproductive.
Surely, someone, somewhere, can view this statistic and make a better decision. It’s time to hire some women to sell to women.
While I don’t use any of the Divergent Series in my classes, I’m confident they are useful. Why? Because most motion pictures save for those displaying our modern penchant for special effects over character development almost always deal with moral issues. Some films are more useful than others. For instance, The Wolf of Wall Street glorifies the antics of a criminal. On the other hand, there are films like Desk Set, The Apartment, and Sabrina that illustrate business and class issues, and, not incidentally are some of the greatest films of all time.
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