Longstaff - Everyday Ethics

This book is dedicated to Suzie Longstaff
my partner in life a woman of keen
intelligence, profound good sense
and boundless decency.

First published in 2017

by Ventura Press

PO Box 780, Edgecliff NSW 2027 AUSTRALIA

www.venturapress.com.au

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Simon Longstaff 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any other information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Australia cataloguing-in-publication data:

Author: Longstaff, Simon

Title: Everyday Ethics

ISBN 978-1-925183-42-9 (Print)

ISBN 978-1-925183-55-9 (Epub)

Design and typesetting by Alissa Dinallo

Cover and internal illustrations by Alissa Dinallo

The paper in this book is FSC certified. FSC promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the worlds forests.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

Picture these situations:

Sitting in a room in Thailand, I am surrounded by senior military officers, most of them generals, from twenty-five nations in the AsiaPacific region. One of them, to my right, has just said, The truth is that we torture people. People do not shout out in outrage: they connect, seeking to understand how such a circum-stance might be possible.

In Brazil, I am standing at the site of a calamitya failed tailings dam that has caused people to die, displaced communities, disrupted the regional and national economies, and wrought deep environmental damage. I am not there to judge; I am there to help those responsible form a view about how to do what is ethically right, as opposed to legally required.

I am with a family whose fathers health has failed. He is fed through a tube, and for some he seems to exist rather than live. A number of family members want to take every medical opportunity to preserve his life; others would like to scale back the medical intervention so that their fathers inevitable movement towards death is not impeded.

A gay man has been bullied to a point where his life has become unbearable. He sits before me sobbing. All his hopes for a better life have been dashed on the rocks of another mans carelessness.

A cabinet minister, riven by anguish, needs someone to talk to about a career-definingindeed, life-definingmoment of truth. It is vital that nobody knows the conversation took place. There is no need to provide a solution: what is needed is simply a safe place to work through the options without fear of being compromised.

These are scenes from my life. They are not the most dramatic, and they are not necessarily those of greatest consequence. Nor are they, perhaps, what you might expect if someone were to ask, What does a philosopher actually do?

Of course, not all philosophers work in the way I do. Most of those who are earning a salary work in academic institutions. They research, write and teach, but usually with other academics as their focus. A few, such as the great, if occasionally mistaken, Peter Singer, change the world, their ideasand, in Singers case, the authenticity of his lifeinspiring new understanding that shapes the day-to-day choices of ordinary people and not just academic discourse. Indeed, there are more philosophers of this kind than you might think. Philosophy is the great wellspring of knowledge: science, economics, politics, art, you name it, they are all either a direct offshoot of philosophy or are shaped by its disciplines.

For all that, though, it is rare to find philosophers out on the street, their sleeves rolled up, ready to embrace the nitty-gritty of life. So, how and why did I find myself doing exactly that, every second Tuesday at lunchtime in Sydneys Martin Place?

My initial exposure to philosophy came through the classical texts in particular, the works of Plato, through which we come to know Socrates. I first encountered Socrates when reading of his last days, his trial and condemnation by male citizen jurors chosen by lot. Like those who accused and judged him, Socrates was a citizen of democratic Athens, at that time the leading city-state in the ancient world. Socrates taunted his judges, as if willing them to impose the penalty of death. They obliged. He then insisted that the execution proceed. Plato paints a picture of serene death, brought on by the poison hemlock. The reality was probably far more disturbing.

Having learnt about Socrates death, I wanted to know more about his life. What had he done to cause such offence? Where had he done these things? And why?

One of the aspects of Socrates life that attracted my attention was his desire to work in public placesmost often in the marketplace, or agora, of Athensalong with the fact that he combined his role as a philosopher with that of a citizen. For him, doing philosophy was a part of being a citizen.

I was only sixteen when I left school. Lacking money to go to university and having exhausted my share of the familys limited resources, just three days after my seventeenth birthday I started work as a service attendant (a euphemism for cleaner) at a BHP-owned manganese mine on Groote Eylandt, just east of Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

Being therebeing cared for by the Aboriginal people of Anindi-lyakwa and, no less, the miners of Alyangula and Ndungachanged me irrevocably. It also fired my interest in the world and how we make sense of it. Perhaps other experiences in my life had already opened me up to larger questions. The death of my mother, when I was seven, was undoubtedly the most momentous of those, but in its wake many other events (good and ill) have made it impossible not to dwell on some of lifes larger questions.

But it was the grounding I received on Groote Eylandt that made me imagine Socrates in the marketplace as something of a kindred spiritalbeit one with a genius, character and commitment that would dwarf anything I might hope to exhibit.

After Groote Eylandt, my life was anything but predictable. I studied some law, then graduated with a degree in education and taught in schools. I fell in and out of love and back in again. I married. And I was accepted into Magdalen College, Cambridge, where my progression from cleaner to philosopher was completednot such a big leap as one might imagine.

Eventually, the role at The Ethics Centre (known as the St James Ethics Centre for its first twenty-five years) became available. The great attraction was that this role was as part of a start-up, affording me the opportunity to create something whereby I might be able to pursue my Socratic ideal of the philosopher as citizen. There was, however, a complication. The founder of The Centre, St James Anglican Church in King Street, Sydney, and supporters from business and professional circles had envisaged a not-for-profit organisation. Indeed, when I started at The Centre there was only enough money to pay my salary for nine months. That was it. We would have to earn the funds needed or devise ways of attracting donations, or both.