ETHC 3200 Ethics and Society Week 6 Ethics

ETHC 3200 Ethics and Society Week 6: Ethics, Technology, and Sustainability Part 2

Denton, P. (2014). Technology and sustainability. Toronto, Canada: RMB.

Technology and Sustainability ▪ Recap from last week: ▪ Technology is not inevitable; its use is the result of human choices ▪ The adoption of each and every technological invention is an ethical issue ▪ Because we live on a planet with finite resources, we need to ensure that the technology we choose to use is moving us toward a regenerative system ▪ Read the rest of Peter Denton’s Technology and Sustainability (pp. 69 -150).

Industrial Culture’s “Inevitable Technology” Story ▪ Q: Who were the Luddites? ▪ 19 th-century British industrial workers led by Ned Ludd who protested “against a social and economic system that was not providing them with wages or employment as they thought it should” (Denton, p. 73). ▪ Q: Are those reasonable requests? ▪ Q: Why have we come to see them as “anti-progress”? ▪ The industrial/mechanical culture presents them as victims/losers in its “Inevitable Technology” story. This is a story of disempowerment and degradation. While this story is persistent “to the point of social and cultural badgering that is eerily reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984” (Denton, p. 74), its power comes only from us believing it.

Values ▪ “Choices about technology are made for reasons and those reasons reflect our values” (Denton, p. 79) ▪ Q: What values are embedded in the “Inevitable Technology” story?

Consequences ▪ “[C]onsequences might be unintended, but a realistic view of the values embedded in the technological choices [we make] can give us a good idea of the outcomes. We simply should not be surprised by much of what happens” (Denton, p. 80). ▪ Q: What are some of the consequences of the Inevitable Technology story?

Values and Consequences ▪ Canned tomato soup: commonplace today, but not inevitable. It reflects choices based on values, and that choice had consequences. ▪ “Culture chooses technology—which in its turn, changes culture” (Denton, p. 90). ▪ Fewer agricultural growers because of shift from rural to urban population (which has its own reasons based on cultural values) ▪ Advertising promoted value of “convenience” ▪ Loss of cooking skills ▪ Dependence upon canned tomato soup

Values and Consequences ▪ “In the kitchen, as in so many other parts of our lives, we are experiencing the hemorrhaging of practical knowledge, the technology acquired by trial and error over thousands of years across all ethnicities and cultures…. ▪ Combine the loss of cooking skills with the inability to can, pickle, salt, or preserve that was [once] commonplace, and we have created a generation of people for whom canned soup seems like the only option. They therefore feel they have no choice but to buy it. . ▪ Use of advertising to push the ideas of personal choice and individual consumption –and watch communal cooking or even shared family meals become anachronisms. We don’t need a pot of soup anymore…and the can…now only has to be half as big” (Denton, p. 91). ▪ What are the cultural consequences here?

Cultural Consequences and Forgetting ▪ Q: What was anthropologist Margaret Mead’s fear? ▪ “Before she died, Margaret Mead spoke of her singular concern that, as we drift toward a more homogenous world, we are laying the foundations of a blandly amorphous and singularly generic modern culture… Her nightmare was the possibility that we might wake up one day and not even remember what had been lost” –Wade Davis, Light at the Edge of the World (198 -9). ▪ Did our traditional practical knowledge and skills contribute to resilience? ▪ Do the modern skills we have replaced them with contribute to resilience? ▪ Do we even know what we have lost? ▪ Shifting baseline syndrome: the “starting point” each generation of scientists assumes in their research. Can this concept be applied to cultural knowledge?

“Sustainability is thus not a scientific or technological problem; it is a social and cultural problem” (Denton, p. 93). ▪ Read Daniel Wahl’s (2017) “Sustainability is Not Enough: We Need Regenerative Culture” (Available in Moodle). ▪ Watch this short video (1: 33 min) that helps to unpack the diagram to the left https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=S pc. Dcm. Oi. LZ 0.

Industrial/mechanical culture vs regenerative systems culture Industrial/mechanical culture Regenerative systems culture Humans have dominion over nature, and machines have dominion over humans Based on the careful use of technology, by humans, within an ecological sphere of complex relationships Anthropocentric Ecological Present-focused Remembers the past and connects it to the future Linear, degenerative, wasteful Cyclical, regenerative Asks how we can afford to be sustainable Asks how we can afford not to be sustainable

“Evolution” of an Amsterdam street

Values and Consequences of Other Everyday Ethical Choices ▪ Q: What are the values reflected in using a disposable water bottle / cup, or a reusable one? ▪ Q: What are the consequences? ▪ Q: What are the values reflected in sending a text or writing a letter to a far-away friend or family member? ▪ Q: What are the consequences?

Systems Thinking ▪ Q: How is systems thinking like “contemporary archaeology” (Denton, p. 80)? ▪ It traces technological choices back to values. ▪ It helps us determine whether or not we are dealing with the right question in the first place…or ignoring it and causing negative consequences. ▪ Have we mentioned, systems thinking can be applied to EVERYTHING?

Gaps in the Existing Ethical Lenses ▪ Q: Why does Denton say “none of the existing [ethical lenses] are helpful in solving…system design problems”? What are the gaps in each? ▪ consequentialist: cannot deal with complexity nor the fact we can’t predict the future ▪ principles-based: inflexible because it depends upon a one-size-fits-all thinking ▪ virtues: does not account for cultural differences in what it means to be a “good” person

A New Systems Ethic ▪ “A new systems ethic—grounded in a respect for Creation, a concern for other people and a reference for life itself—is within our reach, if we choose it to underpin all the decisions that we make” (Denton, p. 125). ▪ Q: What are the values of a systems ethic?

Recollection ▪ “I have often wondered what it will take to change the way people see each other and the world in which they live. Perhaps a recollection is needed …. [This means] not driving forward toward a new frontier, but…recollecting and remembering, circling back to recall our relations with each other and the Earth. It means rediscovering and reimagining whatever enabled other cultures to survive and thrive for thousands of years before us” (Denton, p. 127, 138). ▪ “[And] when I am challenged about timelines, about how slow and fruitless the process of change toward sustainable lifestyles seems to be, about whether we have enough time to do what needs to be done, my response is a simple question: ‘How long does it take for a rabbit to become a duck? ’ The answer could be ‘It never will. ’ But it also could be ‘In the blink of an eye’” (Denton, p. 134).

Internalizing the Systems Ethic ▪ “How can educated, compassionate, intelligent, thoughtful and kind people make consistently foolish and destructive choices with horrific consequences? ” (Denton, p. 7). ▪ “It doesn’t make any sense – unless they are not thinking enough, or at all, about the decisions they are making until it is too late” (Denton, p. 7). ▪ “Half the explanation for the predicament in which we find ourselves … is that we make ethical choices, every day, all the time, without recognizing them for what they are” (Denton, p. 9).

Journal Entry ▪ Several questions were posed in this week’s Power. Point. Create a discussion board entry that responds to the question that you found most intriguing? Post your response to the Regenerative Discussion Forum in the Week 6 section of Moodle.