Tag: David Gushee

What’s Ethical At The Cinema?

On By southwerkIn ethics3 Comments

David Gushee has some thoughts. He analyzes several recent movies for their virtuous elements. Here’s his view of True Grit –

True Grit is certainly the only movie in living memory that starts with a biblical quotation and has a musical score drawn from old Baptist hymns like “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.” This Western of fierce retribution and family honor is indeed one of the most explicitly religious major films in a long time. (If you leave out the Left Behind movies, or anything with Kirk Cameron in it.)

But this is a religiosity of law and retribution, of wrath and justice. This is eye-for-eye religion; it’s about the price in blood and sweat and risk one is obligated to pay to avenge the unjust death of a loved one. True Grit teaches the virtues of, well, true grit, courage and toughness and unflinching justice. And yet the score hits grace notes in the margins, perhaps a reminder that frontier religion mixed justice in the street with grace in the sanctuary, a paradigm that is still with us.

I have a passion for movies. Last night, my wife and I watched I Hate Valentine’s Day, a romantic comedy. The film carried no great moral weight. It was sweet and funny. I can work with that. Not to mention the fact, that while I am watching a Korean film like Cyborg She, my wife is dozing in the background. So, fnding common film ground is important if she is to remain conscious or not flee the room.

I Hate Valentine’s Day

Cyborg She

I try to watch at least one film a night. I don’t manage it as often as I like.

Many films are just entertainment. But the great films like Ikiru, The Seven Samurai, The Apartment, Lawrence of Arabia, etc. often carry a great deal of moral weight.

Movies tend to bypass our analytical abilities and go straight to our emotions and unconscious. Sending moral and ethical messages more or less unconsciously has serious ethical implications. Nevertheless, since it is already a common practice, using this unconscious loading factor we can manipulate our own morality and the morality of others through film choices.

James Pilant

Opinion: Gilded Age America redux (via David Gushee, Associated Baptist Press)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism

From the Associated Baptist Press –

Since the origin of Christian social ethics in the late 19th century as an Anglo-American academic-ecclesial discipline, economic problems have been at the center of our profession’s concerns. Christian ethics was born during the days in which the contrast between the vast prosperity of the industrial barons and the vast suffering of those who worked for them became unbearable. The moral concerns that drove early Christian ethics helped contribute to the regulation of industrialization’s excesses during the Progressive Era. The same social compassion supported the creation of a modest social safety net during the Depression and New Deal era.

As a Christian ethicist, I stand in a tradition that both rejected communism as an alternative to laissez-faire capitalism and recognized very early that the only way capitalism would or should survive was through legal regulation of its worst excesses. I don’t say moral regulation because, as Reinhold Niebuhr taught us in his formative work Moral Man and Immoral Society, huge group entities and social structures do not respond to moral suasion. If you are asking a corporation — or a group of corporations, or an entire economic structure — voluntarily to act in such a way as to limit profit, you will fail. You will have to coerce it to do so under the power of law or some other countervailing power, such as the organization of labor.

First, you should go read the whole essay. Gushee posts only after much thought, and since a Christian perspective on business ethics is much rarer than I would have believed, this is important writing.

Second, he is right that large economic units only react to force. The idea of a self regulating marketplace is only partially a reality at the best of times.

James Pilant

Ethics Roundup – June 7th, 2010

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Government Failure2 Comments

Josh Lipton writing on Minyanville discusses the major historical bills regulating Wall Street as compared to the current effort. (It’s got a video!)

Karl Stephan writing in the Engineering Ethics Blog (his blog) talks about the lessons of Nuremberg for engineers and everyone else. The Nuremberg trials were the war crimes trials held by the victorious Allies at the end of the second world war. Many prominent Nazi’s and other war criminals were sentenced to death or to long terms of imprisonment. Stephan believes that the primary lessons of Nuremberg were the reduction of human beings to objects to be manipulated. He says that culminated in abortion, euthanasia and embryonic stem cell research.
(I am quite familiar with the Nuremberg Trials and the death camps and many other Nazi not to mention Japanese and Italian war crimes. I in no way agree with Karl Stephan’s conclusions. Nevertheless, it’s a good read.)

Simon Propper writing on the web site, Ethical Corporation, discusses the corporate responsibility movement and British Petroleum. BP was an enthusiastic user of the CR model and things have not worked out well. Propper discusses the ramifications of these events.

Epic.org, the Electronic Privacy Center, wants it known that internet privacy has become a major issue in the California governor’s race.

Loren Steffy writing in the Houston Chronicle predicts a high likelihood of skyrocketing oil prices in the wake of British Petroleum’s disaster.

Chris MacDonald writing on his site, the Business Ethics Blog, discusses the phenomenon of “Greenwash.” (I recommended an article from the site, Ethical Corporation, which discusses some of the same issues. I recommend reading MacDonald’s take and then checking out Simon Propper’s views.) MacDonald’s perception is tough on BP and accurate.

David Gushee writes about marriage. Normally I would just have gone on by his article since its relevance to business ethics is very limited. But Gushee is excellent in his analysis of ethical issues from a Christian perspective and I want to encourage that. So I include it.

Jon Talton writes about a world in which “entire professions have been vaporized.” I boil with rage over off sourcing, temps instead of real jobs, – every kind of pain placed on the producers in this economy and it never stops. It has gotten worse every year that I have been alive and it shows no sign of improvement. Can we live in a country without well paying jobs and far too few of any kind of job? This is not a problem of personal initiative or re-training. This is a political problem only solvable by action at the national level. But even in Talton’s article he quotes another writer thusly,
“You have to stay on top of what’s changing, how that affects your industry and your specific job and how you’ll remain relevant and valuable. Most people don’t change until they feel the heat. Sometimes, that’s too late …” Also, “Prepare for ‘hurricanes, sinkholes and manana,’ which is all about what to do so you’re not caught off guard, but instead prepared.” As for older workers, “look for ways to demonstrate you’re ‘not old’ in your thinking, in your attitudes, in your skills and how you look.”
When whole professions have been vaporized, personal initiative is useless. When there is one job for every six applicants, there is no amount of personal drive and guts that can get more than one of those six that job. When the entire economy of the United States and the world has been severely damaged, telling everyone to tighten their belt and get tough is no cure. It’s just nonsense. At what point do you look at an international catastrophe and stop saying if we individually get tough enough we can ride it out. At what point does the nonsensical cure of personal initiative, of there’s always dawn after the darkness, light at the end of the tunnel, only thing left after you hit bottom is up, think and grow rich, have optimistic thoughts and opportunity will find you and this continuing empty drivel of self help, when the only thing that can make a difference is collective action. Is it just impossible to say that the government should implement policies to protect American jobs? It is too radical to suggest that shipping American jobs overseas is unpatriotic and counter productive? It is just plain bizarre to suggest that making the absolute last dime is not the most important thing for an individual, a company or a nation? Can we think seriously about the problem or just stay in a land of fantasy where the exercise of a mythical absolute free will makes us demi-gods upon the earth?