Opinion

Doing the right thing

Sometime not so long ago, and it's annoying me that I can't remember where, I came across a definition of ethics that really appealed to me - "Obedience to the unenforceable". I like the idea that there are things that people do simply because they feel that they should, rather than because they have to.

It's weird how lots of different things can all seem to feed into one thread of consciousness - more little unconnected things than I can count have come together to focus my mind on the concept that, at its heart, is best summarised by the simple concept that we don't live alone. There is something bigger than we are that we need to respect; call it community, society, call it whatever you want to. We can't simply go through life unaware of the consequences of what we do on those around us, and there is a concept of 'doing the right thing' that it seems reasonable to assume the majority of people will recognise.

One of the things that triggered me into more actively thinking about this, rather than the low-grade background thought that is more usual, happened on my induction week at IBM. We were being introduced to IBM's workplace diversity policy, which is, I have to say, extensive and impressive, and the tutor asked why we thought it was something IBM would want to do. All the expected responses about the value of diverse experiences, etc came out, and they're all right, but the one that the tutor offered really hit it on the head as far as I'm concerned: "Because it's right.". And it is, of course.

Something else that fuelled this train of thought is that I've been reading a book called Things Can Only Get Better (subtitled 18 Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter), which is a memoir of the years of the Conservative governments here in the UK from 1979 to 1997. I remember many of the events that this book details, though not from a point of view of being politically active throughout, and one of the things that strikes me is the anger I still feel about so much that happened in that period - the years when Margaret Thatcher announced that there was no such thing as society, and that in all things the individual was pre-eminent; when basic human rights and freedoms seemed to count for very little, and the rich got richer at the expense of the poorer. It's only one of several references to the Thatcher years that I've read or heard about recently, and all of them make me realise that beneath every single outrage I felt through that period is this denial of any kind of social responsibility.

There are certain things that are generally accepted, by all but the most sociopathic, to be wrong: murder, rape, theft, the big stuff that more often than not is covered by law, precisely because of that general acceptance. But there are other things that the law rarely concerns itself with that are a lot to do with how we treat each other, and those are the kind of things that require some kind of code of ethics. We need, collectively, to accept and agree that we shouldn't hurt each other or the world we inhabit. We need to agree to treat each other fairly, and with respect. And we need to behave responsibly in order to minimise the negative impact of what we do on the world, and its people, even if we've never met and will never meet them.

And - and here's the rub - we have a right to expect, or even demand, that those from whom we accept leadership will provide direction and an example towards this kind of (dare I use the phrase?) social responsibility for us. That means leaders in all their forms, whether they be political, business, or community leaders. It's when those leaders fail in this responsibility that things go particularly wrongly - it's why companies whose leaders think they're above right and wrong often end up with particularly damaging legal battle on their hands, or where those leaders are only concerned with their own gain and status, showing no respect or loyalty to their staff, may discover that those staff find it impossible to return the same. When it's the leaders of a country who let down these standards, the results are concomitantly worse.

There's a word I want to use here that I think is appropriate on a couple of levels - all of what I'm talking about here is about behaving towards people with integrity. The reason I think the word is appropriate is that not only because by and large anyone reading this will understand broadly what is today meant by the word, but also because if you look at its history, once upon a time, it meant 'in the same skin with'. Integrity is about shared skin, about shared experience, and on some level about empathy: It's about walking a mile in someone's shoes before you criticise them.

In this context, I'd say it was a lack of integrity (in both senses) that would allow Margaret Thatcher to do some of the things that she did. The reason she thought it was okay to make a pensioner living in one room pay the same tax as the Government Minister living in a six bedroom house two streets away is that, being married to a millionaire, and with a lucrative post-Prime Ministerial career on the lecture circuit at least in prospect, she was never likely to be in the position of that pensioner, and was unable to make the empathic connection to understand the reality and injustice of it. Ditto why she thought it was okay to prevent schools being able to deal sympathetically with children struggling with their sexuality; or to cut the benefits of single parents; or...you get the picture.

The damage that was done to our society during those eighteen years was wide-ranging, and is still being felt. People I know who grew up during that period have inherited (and in some cases embraced) a society where it's okay to put yourself first, last, and all points in between. Where wider responsibility is an irrelevance, and where looking out for number one is the only option, because no one else will do it for you. And before I get painted as an inveterate and idealistic lefty, note that there are any number of infringements of social responsibility I think the existing (and presumably soon-to-be-continuing) Labour government have perpetrated. Like begets like.

I don't know about you, but I *want* there to be things that people do for no other reason than that they benefit everyone. I like the idea that there are standards, and a morality that we (most of us) share. I, for one, want to be 'obedient to the unenforceable'.