How Ought We Live?

Home , Maynard Adams, Rosalyn Diprose

How Ought We Live?

The Ongoing Deconstruction of Our Values

Mark Nielsen

This thesis is submitted to the School of History and Philosophy

at the University of New South Wales

in fulfilment of the requirements of the PhD in Philosophy

2010

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Dedication

For Theresa and Charlotte.

Acknowledgements

Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor, Paul Patton, for his generous support in assisting me in the creation of this thesis. I am particularly grateful for his patience and understanding in relation to the research method I have used. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor, Rosalyn Diprose, for her generous support. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Theresa, for her unwavering support over the years and for reminding me of what is important in life.

Table of Contents

Title Page i

Thesis/Dissertation Sheet ii

Originality Statement, Copyright Statement and Authenticity Statement iii

Dedication iv

Acknowledgements v

Table of Contents vi

Introduction: Horizontal Philosophy and the Construction of an Ethical Rhizome 1

Macro-Sociological Plateaus

1. The Salesman as Values Educator: A Lesson From a Primary School Teacher 25

2. Feeling Unhappy and Overweight: Overconsumption and the Escalation of

Desire 38

3. The Politics of Greed: Trivial Domestic Democracy 52

Philosophical Plateaus

4. The Democratic Rise of the Problem of ―How Ought We Live?‖ 67

5. Living in the Land of Moriah: The Problem of ―How Ought We Sacrifice?‖ 80

6. Welcome to the Mobile Emergency Room: A Convergence Between Ethics

and Triage 101

7. Diagnostic Trans-Evaluation and the Creation of New Priorities 111

8. Re-Learning How We Ought to Live 127

9. Freedom in the Middle of an Emergency 137

Deconstructive Plateaus

10. An Ethical Life To-Come 153

11. The Ongoing Deconstruction of Our Values 166

Tragic Plateaus

12. Nothing to be Done: Chronic Suffering and Certain Death in the Emergency

Room 186

12. Ethix: From the Hospital to the Hospice 199

References 202

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Introduction: Horizontal Philosophy and the Construction of an Ethical Rhizome

In an interview the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), who is well known for his work on difference, comments that ―we don‘t suffer these days from any lack of communication, but rather from all the forces making us say things when we‘ve nothing much to say‖ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 137). Too many unnecessary words are spoken and written all the time. In writing this essay I have tried to write only what I think is necessary and urgent. Life, I believe, is far too short to afford the wasting of time and effort (in some sense, this simple imperative to minimise waste, to make the most of the short time we have, to make valuable differences in our own and others‘ lives, summarises my entire ethical position). Unfortunately, an excess of words has become a normal characteristic of an academic career where the more publications the better, which is why I have always been deeply troubled by the idea of it. What if it is better to say and write nothing, as little as possible, only as much as must be said and written or only that which is truly important? It seems odd, even preposterous, that philosophers and others in the academy should be driven away from the minimisation of waste and have their careers and reputations built upon the amount of units mass produced, as if in a factory. But there is the risk that this work will have suffered the same fate.

This work is a meditation on the positive task of improving ―historical‖ outcomes in ethically richer directions through investigating and using philosophical thought and concepts. This does not mean the aim is to teach people how they ought to live in concrete historical terms. In fact, no historical prescription is offered at all, rather, what is offered is a ―concept of ethics.‖ I attempt to solve the central philosophical problem of ethics: the abstract or philosophical form of the problem of

―how ought we live?‖ Our project, then, is entirely problem-centred. It is not built

around a proper name or tradition of thought. The problem of ―how ought we live?‖ is as old as philosophy itself and because it is an ancient problem it immediately cuts across the various philosophical traditions that have developed since the Greeks. It is not a problem that is reducible to one tradition or another and it lends itself to the kind of ―horizontal‖ (or ―rhizomatic‖) philosophical style I have employed. The aim is ultimately practical, both in an individual and collective political sense.

This work is based on the view that life is highly variable (or mobile). Life is pure movement and difference. The same goes for the decision to live ethically. One can live either ethically or unethically. Ultimately, an ethical life begins with this fundamental decision and act of freedom. But if one wishes to be ethical, or to be more ethical (or less unethical), then one must have some philosophical sense (or concept) of what ethics is, of what it means to live an ethical life, which should then orient, by way of ―historical negotiation" (or ―effectuation‖), how we ought to live across extremely diverse historical (or ―sociological‖) states of affairs. ―Ethical sense‖ here does not refer to any fixed and identifiable norms or imperatives that would identify the ethical in history, rather the sense we are referring to is purely a ―mobile philosophical concept,‖ which goes beyond the here and now and is never reducible to one state of affairs or another. To this extent, it has a universal quality about it and can only be effective practically by way of negotiation, which is always a singular and unique rendezvous between the concept and actual states of affairs. Philosophical concepts are also variables. There are plausibly a number of philosophical concepts of what it means to live ethically, such as those that belong either to utilitarianism, liberalism or other moral traditions. Moreover, the same concept can be expressed (or described) in different ways, for our example, our concept is expressed from the angle of freedom, from the angle of sacrifice, etc. My interest is not to provide a comprehensive survey of the

various concepts suggested by others of what it means to live an ethical life (not that I do not draw upon and use the work of others), rather, this essay is an attempt to outline one concept of the ethical. It is by freshly raising the philosophical question (or problem) of ―how ought we live?‖ that the possibility of new (or renovated) ethical sense might arise for us in the form of an answer (or solution).

Very few contemporary philosophers raise the question of ―how ought we live?‖

(or a similar question) in the pure, raw and animating sense that it is raised in this essay.

Even fewer philosophers provide a sustained and detailed philosophical answer, which amounts to a concept of ethics. The British philosopher Simon Critchley (1960-) is a notable exception. In his (2007) book, Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment,

Politics of Resistance, Critchley raises what he understands as ―the fundamental question of ethics.‖ This question is to some extent similar to our question and, as with this project, Critchley attempts to construct a ―conception of ethics.‖1

1 According to Critchley,

What is lacking at the present time of massive political disappointment is a

motivating, empowering conception of ethics that can face and face down the

drift of the present, an ethics that is able to respond to and resist the political

situation in which we find ourselves. (Critchley, 2007, p. 8)

For Critchley, like myself, it is clear that the current concepts of ethics are in some sense insufficient. This gives rise to the need for the creation of a new (or renovated) concept of ethics, which would serve to guide political action. He appears to connect the task of raising questions (or problems) with the creation of new concepts, which I understand to be the Deleuzian approach to doing philosophy. Critchley claims that ―if we are going to stand a chance of constructing an ethics that empowers subjects to political action, a motivating ethics, we require some sort of answer to what I see as

I describe this work as a rhizome because it branches out in so many diverse directions, analogous to the Internet, which is also a rhizome.2 The movements across the rhizome do not follow any pre-determined pattern or algorithm and often take ethics down non-traditional avenues. One is always fleeing in a rhizome, forging new paths.

Deleuze and Guattari suggest that ―the line of flight is part of the rhizome‖ (Deleuze &

Guattari, 1987, p. 9). To take flight is to engage with ―the other‖ and make a new connection. The difference, the engagement with the other, taking flight, is precisely the process of thinking and learning. Arguably, one is not yet thinking and learning until they take flight from what they already know. Thinking, then, as ―thinking with the other.‖ What is learning if it is not to flight from what one already knows? One takes flight not in order to forget what one knows, or forget what one has learnt, but in order to add to it. One learns when they begin to encounter the other, the unknown.

The problem of ―how ought we live?‖ can perhaps never be finally or fully solved, but one can chip away. Our solution centres around the task of ―evaluation,‖ but not just any evaluation. Our solution, or concept of ethics, is ―diagnostic trans- evaluation‖ (or the ―creation of new values‖) and the ―creation of new priorities.‖ I also

the basic question of morality‖ (Critchley, 2007, p. 8). Critchley does not begin from the question of ―how ought we live?,‖ rather, he asks, ―how does a self bind itself to whatever it determines as its good? In my view, this is the fundamental question of ethics‖ (Critchley, 2007, p. 8). Clearly, there is a degree of similarity, or a zone of convergence, between our question and Critchley‘s question, however, my aim here is not to discuss the extent to which his project is similar to, or different from, this project, which would require a careful and detailed examination.

2 In the introduction to their (1987) book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and

Schizophrenia, Deleuze and Guattari outline their understanding of a rhizome.

describe it as the ―pursuit of important interests‖ (or ―strong evaluation‖), the pursuit of the ―most important among important interests‖ (or the ―strongest evaluation‖), ―ethical problem-solving,‖ ―general triage,‖ ―general emergency medicine,‖ ―democratic participation,‖ ―critical freedom,‖ the ―ongoing deconstruction of our values,‖ and a

―tragic-heroic ethics.‖ At times I simply use the word ―ethics‖ to refer to our concept of ethics. As we move across the rhizome we continuously add to our concept. In this sense, our philosophical concept is not merely one, but many. This sense of ―many‖ is absolute cohesion, not violence or contradiction. At moments I speak of the concept in a singular way, at other times, in a multiple way. Each new description is not a falsification of the previous description, rather, it is a process of making new extensions, continuously connecting up with something other and adding to the concept.

If we think of the entire rhizome (the work as a whole), then there is one ―extended concept of ethics,‖ but this extended concept is populated with many ―plateaus,‖ many

―conceptual components‖ or ―connections.‖ The challenge of understanding the concept, ultimately, is the challenge to think these multiple connections, this rhizome, which turns out to be a rather complex extended concept of ethics.

Our concept of ethics is ―effectuated‖ (or ―negotiated‖) in a mobile world without any fixed interests or values. The concept contains no values, rather, it only contains the universal (or ―a-historical‖) imperative to pursue important interests in history. It only prescribes values insofar as it is effectuated in actual states of affairs.

Regardless of the contingent historical states of affairs we find ourselves in, diagnostic trans-evaluation involves targeting the ―ethically problematic‖ ways in which a trivial

(or less important or less urgent) interest is prioritised at the sacrifice of another more valuable interest. It is an essentially transformative exercise of resisting and improving

(or ―deconstructing‖) the present. In diagnostically trans-evaluating we are not

concerned with merely reflecting upon, analysing or interpreting our existing values, rather, we are solely concerned with changing our current unjust (or ethically problematic) values and priorities. A more ethical life (or less unethical life) means that we increase the extent to which we pursue important (or less trivial) interests.

Ultimately, the aim is to work towards promoting the most important among important interests. This takes evaluation to its strongest level. Diagnostic trans-evaluation and the creation of new priorities is the life that one lives in the ―mobile emergency room‖ as one traverses the ―absolute difference‖ of history, which includes the sense in which all interests, values and priorities are contingent and subject to ongoing change. At the political level, diagnostic trans-evaluation has an essentially revolutionary and anarchic quality because it continually announces new values and priorities. This is understood as an essential element of democracy. Our concept of ethics fills me with a profound sense of failure because of the countless moments of my own life, including those moments still to come, that will have violated the demands of our concept. When I look to the Western society in which I live, which I deeply value for so many reasons, I see monumental failures. The good news, however, is that historical failure is an opportunity for ―historical improvement.‖

Talk of universality in relation to ethics may seem outdated in a multicultural society, however, the absolute lack of ―historical content‖ in our concept marries with the absolute difference of history. The only element that is universal is the concept.

―Conceptual universality‖ performs the sole function of improving singular and unique historical circumstances. Each historical state of affairs is different (involving unique

―ethical problems‖ and ―ethical solutions‖), yet in some sense ethical problem-solving is always the same insofar as it effectuates the same philosophical concept. Our project could be summarised as a combination of absolute difference and the highest demand of

ethics, as if to bring the two together to attempt to produce a new future that is ethically richer, less unjust, different and better than the injustice of the current historical state of affairs. An ethical life is a possibility that is never guaranteed, which is why I use the word ―attempt.‖ We cannot eliminate the possibility that the future might turn out to be worse than the present despite our best intentions, our best efforts and our foreseeable knowledge. There are no guarantees, only opportunities.

―Ethical content‖ refers to the actual interests and values of history that are always ―radically unstable.‖ The task of diagnostic trans-evaluation is always to invent new ethical content whilst content is constantly changing. At a certain point in time we may not value the labour of women in the workplace as highly as men, but at another point in time we might value their labour on equal terms with men. At a certain point in time accessing the Internet on your Apple iPhone was an interest that did not exist, but at another point in time you find it not only desirable, but strangely necessary. At any one time in history all we can do is glimpse at a ―fractional content,‖ which is a small slice of the totality of all the interests and values that ever have been or ever will be.

This fraction is ever changing and we never discover any ―ethical whole.‖ If we can speak of the whole, it is only in the sense that it is an ―impossible whole‖ (or a ―virtual‖ or ―non-actual‖ whole). Because historical ethical content is perpetually differing from itself it cannot be reduced to any single historical states of affairs, rather, it remains perpetually ―to-come,‖ to borrow Derrida‘s idiom.

I describe our concept of ethics as a ―minimal ethics‖ because it contains absolutely no content. In the sociologically focused chapters (chapters 1-3) we discover the same minimal ethics at work, effectuated in history as we negotiate the ―pursuit of value in a world without fixed values.‖ As we diagnostically trans-evaluate and create new priorities we are performing the task of negotiating value in a world without fixed

values. These chapters contain a number of ―macro-sociological negotiations.‖ Macro- sociological negotiation occurs at the level of society, whilst ―micro-sociological negotiation‖ occurs at the level of actual individuals and organisations. The macro level is composed of nothing more than many micro elements, which are always changing.

They are simply two levels of the same process. The difference between the levels is a difference of scope (society rather than the individual) and speed (slow change at the macro level and fast change at the micro level). In chapter 2, for example, at the macro level I claim that our society suffers from ―overconsumption.‖ On my view, this ethical content, which is an evaluation we have negotiated, is valid now and unfortunately it probably will be valid for some time, however, there is the ongoing sense in which our values and interests, and consumption as such, is in perpetual change at greater speeds at the micro level. The market moves very quickly at the micro level. We witness new items on display daily. The micro level involves negotiating the pursuit of value (or overconsumption) in specific and actual shopping centres. Micro-sociological negotiations change quickly and they are never the same. They always involve different people with different interests, whilst the overarching macro-sociological negotiation remains intact for greater lengths of time. The American philosopher Leonard Lawlor

(1954-) diagnoses the macro-sociological problem of the violent way in which we eat.3

3 Lawlor diagnoses the problem of how we are currently eating:

You have to eat, after all, but let us try to eat in the least violent way. This

transformed sense of eating means internalizing animals, letting them in, and,

especially, not sacrificing them for our own sakes. Although I will advocate a

kind of recipe for eating well, I will not advocate specific and concrete forms.

Such reforms must be made on the local level, it seems to me, where cultural

differences can be taken into account. (Lawlor, 2007, p. 2)

The concept of macro-sociology, like any other concept, can be either used or discarded. If macro-sociology is useful, it is because it involves the diagnosis of problems at the macro level of society, where change occurs at slower speeds compared with change at the micro level. The benefit is a singular diagnosis (and solution) at the macro level in order to facilitate the creation of multiple solutions at the micro level.

This work is just as much an essay on an ethical life as an essay on a political life. It is for this reason that I have not separated ethical chapters from political chapters.

An ethical life is always a life with others. We are social and communal beings. Living with others raises the question of politics and political decision-making on how we ought to live in relation to matters that concern the community—our common or collective interests. When I refer to democracy and democratic participation (which I do constantly), I am not so much speaking of something other to an ethical life, but an essential and important ingredient of it. Ethics and politics share the same fundamental

Just like the way in which overconsumption can be understood as a problem at the macro level, so can the problem of eating violently. In other words, Lawlor is concerned with ―the problem of the suffering of animals in today‘s world‖ (Lawlor,

2007, p. 1). Lawlor‘s solution, his ―transformed sense of eating‖ is that we ―try to eat in the least violent way,‖ or simply, that we start ―eating well.‖ His solution, which he describes as a ―kind of recipe,‖ also occurs at the macro level. Lawlor makes it clear that he is not advocating ―specific and concrete forms,‖ which occur at what I am calling the micro level. Despite ―cultural differences‖ at the micro level, the demand (or imperative) to eat well remains intact at the macro level. Lawlor‘s singular macro problem (and macro solution) paves the way for the creation of multiple solutions at the micro level. In other words, his macro-sociological thinking on animal suffering paves the way for many people of different cultures to eat less violently.

demand for diagnostic trans-evaluation and the creation of new priorities. Despite the focus on democracy and the sociological criticism of existing forms of Western democracy as ―trivial domestic democracy,‖ this essay does not outline a comprehensive account of how democracy might, or should, be organised (or effectuated) in historical terms. I do not suggest an account of any historical limits and conditions (such as electoral processes, parliamentary processes, etc.) of evaluation at the political level. No historical prescription is offered (beyond sociological example). I am concerned with the democratic opening to evaluation by anyone, or rather, evaluation as a certain concept of democracy (whilst I acknowledge the need for historical limits and conditions for evaluation at the political level). I am also concerned with how we value others in other political communities and how those others relate to our justification of a certain ―evaluative cosmopolitan democracy.‖ This essay explores diagnostic trans-evaluation at the political level (in chapter 7); the inclusion of the interests of others who live in other political communities (in chapter 3) and the

―aporetic opening‖ towards ―democracy to-come‖ (in chapter 11).

I believe I have undertaken this work in a certain Deleuzian spirit of the task of philosophy: An encounter with other philosophers with the aim of creating or renovating concepts. According to Deleuze, ―the function of philosophy, still thoroughly relevant, is to create concepts‖ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 136). At any rate, I have always felt most comfortable with this approach. This concept of philosophy as

―concept creation‖ is outlined in Deleuze‘s (1994) book, What is Philosophy?, which is one of the books he wrote with the French psychoanalyst Félix Guattari (1930-1992).

Concept creation is to be understood as not only the creation of new concepts, but also the renovation or re-invention of exiting concepts. Many concepts are explored, if not renovated, in the following work. Many are part of the overall extended concept of

ethics (or rhizome) I develop whilst others relate to specific problems in our current historical milieu. In addition to the concepts I have already mentioned, I explore ―active harm,‖ ―passive harm,‖ ―hidden sacrifice,‖ ―mobile history,‖ ―counter-effectuation,‖

―anarchic democracy,‖ ―resistance to injustice,‖ ―re-learning how we ought to live,‖

―evaluative values education,‖ the ―salesman as values educator,‖ ―affluenza,‖ the

―consumer treadmill,‖ ―surplus triviality,‖ ―showroom wonder,‖ the ―perhaps,‖

―undecidability,‖ the ―absolute future,‖ ―justice,‖ the ―event,‖ the ―coming of the other as other,‖ ―unconditional hospitality,‖ ―conditional hospitality,‖ the ―evaluation of the other,‖ ―chronic suffering,‖ ―certain death,‖ ―tragedy,‖ ―ethix,‖ and many more. As we move across the rhizome these concepts come to populate our multiple concepts of ethics, which include diagnostic trans-evaluation, the ongoing deconstruction of our values, tragic-heroic ethics, etc. There are layers of concepts, but these layers are not

―vertical layers,‖ rather, they branch out horizontally, effectively creating a ―web of concepts.‖

Ultimately, such concepts might serve to assist us in the wider struggle in resisting and improving the present, which is also part of the Deleuzian spirit of philosophy. This spirit of philosophy is not merely meant to be a theoretical activity, rather, it engages politically, potentially in the most radical of ways. Deleuze, however, never explicitly asserts a solution to the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ According to the Australian political philosopher Paul Patton (1950-), ―Deleuze and Guattari do not directly address the normative principles that inform their critical perspective on the present‖ (Patton, 2007, p. 43). What is interesting, however, is a certain form of perpetual resistance to the ―intolerable‖:

What is Philosophy? outlines a political conception of philosophy as the

creation of concepts in which the aim is overtly utopian: ―We lack resistance to

the present. The creation of concepts in itself calls for a future form, for a new

earth and people that do not yet exist‖ (Deleuze and Guattari 1994: 108). The

suggestion that philosophy provides a way of responding to what is intolerable

in the present implies that this resistance may assist the emergence of new forms

of individual and collective life that, in specific ways, are better than existing

forms. Nevertheless, since the contours of the intolerable are historically

determined and subject to change, there is no presumption of any end of the

current state of things or attainment of a perfectly just society. (Patton, 2007, p.

46)

Far from merely interpreting, communicating or contemplating, philosophy is seen as ―creative or even revolutionary‖ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 136). Everything I say throughout this essay ultimately aims to serve the revolutionary goal of resisting certain intolerable (or unjust, ethically problematic, etc.) elements of the present in favour of creating a better (or less shameful) future. Our project is entirely Deleuzian in this sense. Even the tragic chapters are optimistic (in a tragic-heroic sense) concerning social and political change.

It is important to note that the revolution never arrives in the sense of a complete or final revolution that would constitute a ―perfectly just society.‖ Rather, in using philosophical concepts to resist and improve the present we are engaging in a perpetual process of ―becoming-revolutionary‖ without any guarantee of success.4 One can

4 According to Patton,

Deleuze . . . links the creation of philosophical concepts to the kinds of

―becoming-revolutionary‖ available to individuals and groups in a given social

milieu. He follows Nietzsche in supposing that becoming or the pure event is an

―unhistorical element‖ that is necessary in order for new forms of life to emerge.

recognise this spirit of philosophy as a certain return of the Marxist spirit. Karl Marx

(1818-1883) was a German philosopher best known for his in-depth analysis of capitalism and his advocacy of a communist society. Like Deleuze and Guattari, Marx had no interest in merely interpreting the world. On my view, analysing or interpreting concepts, which is how some see the task of philosophy, risks a certain philosophical conservatism and is aligned with ―vertical philosophy.‖ The same goes for studying only one tradition or another. I have always seen philosophical traditions as interesting, but terribly restrictive as a basis for philosophical thinking. I am not sure, in any case, what it would mean to ―think about‖ or ―think within‖ this or that tradition or proper name. I prefer the expression ―think with,‖ which always aims for new encounters and possibilities, new additions, new horizontal extensions. Why should one be glued to one tradition of thinking? Is not any tradition, ultimately, just as arbitrary or accidental as any other? Is not all thinking ultimately born from some original accident? We would perhaps do better to embrace the accident and think with others in random encounters.

In other words, we would perhaps do well to embrace ―horizontal philosophy.‖ One

He distinguishes between the way in which revolutions turn out historically and

the ―becoming-revolutionary‖ that is expressed in a given concept but that

remains irreducible to its historical manifestations. (Patton, 2007, p. 47)

Further on he adds to the discussion:

Particular processes of becoming-revolutionary imply forms of individual and

collective self-transformation in response to what is intolerable or shameful in

the present. They do not always lead to better or more just social arrangements,

but they are the only means to achieve such local improvements in the

conditions of a given people. (Patton, 2007, p. 47)

begins horizontal philosophy the moment one takes flight from what one already knows and connects with the other.

Horizontal philosophy is analogous to the wider multicultural (or pluralistic) society in which I have grown up within and which I value so dearly. In a multicultural society it can seem odd or even unsophisticated to fail to engage with the other, with the different, even if it is as simple as eating an intriguing cuisine one has never tried before or beginning to understand a particular cultural ritual. Why should it seem normal in philosophy to insulate oneself according to this or that proper name or tradition?

Throughout writing this work I have enjoyed living in South West Sydney, which is one of the most culturally diverse areas in Australia and among the most multicultural parts of the world. It is the differences and the horizontal movements that make it such an interesting and culturally sophisticated place to live. Unfortunately, however, more than anything else, I have been struck by the power of the market to gnaw away at all other cultures, which for me is not a problem of difference, but a problem of sameness.

Horizontal philosophy is eclectic and synthetic. It is also continuously moving.

In this work I synthesise a number of thinkers who come from very different parts of the world and very different philosophical traditions, including Peter Singer, Karl Popper,

Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Arthur Schopenhauer, Samuel Beckett and others. It is a synthesis of thinkers from the so-called ―continental‖ and ―analytic‖ traditions, and therefore, it contains a sense of ―philosophical multiculturalism‖ (or ―philosophical pluralism‖). I keep moving horizontally rather than stomp on the same patch of established ground in order to move vertically. I see this eclectic horizontal approach as embracing a certain spirit of difference, of creativity and the new, rather than the risk of conservatism associated with sticking to a tired tradition or culture of thought. Why these thinkers and not others? In fact, there is really no reason why I am thinking with

these thinkers rather than others, besides the sense in which I see their work as contributing to understanding and solving our problem. I am confident that there are many others in philosophy whose work circulates around similar problems and whose work could easily have been incorporated in one way or another. I engage with these thinkers because they are the ones I have encountered through my own apprenticeship in philosophy or through other avenues. For example, I encountered the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) through discussions with a family member.

This sense of random encounter is analogous to the form of apprenticeship I received in philosophy as a student at the University of Sydney and the University of

New South Wales. I had the opportunity to choose courses from a diverse range of offerings with no apparent sense of unity other than belonging to the philosophy department. A degree in philosophy has become a smorgasbord of offerings. One might therefore speak of a certain ―horizontal pedagogy,‖ which sees learning as horizontal movement in thought. Arguably, this kind of apprenticeship is not only as good as any other, but perhaps even preferable, because it prepares one for the creativity of horizontal philosophical thinking. In some sense my whole experience of philosophy has been thoroughly horizontal from the very beginning. It has been an expanding

―rhizome of learning.‖ Looking back, those courses were a bewildering offering. One hardly knows where to start. The good thing, however, is that one can start anywhere, because in a rhizome any one place is probably as good as any other and there are no rules on the directions and movements one takes. One is free to invent their own tradition of thinking, if they wish. The only rule, of sorts, is that one does not let oneself become trapped in one zone or neighbourhood of the rhizome and confine oneself to vertical thinking, rather, one must keep moving horizontally. The best way to do this, I believe, is to have a problem that moves among diverse traditions and proper names.

We become swept up in the problem. Although we are the ones solving the problem, the problem really controls us, forcing us to think in new ways without knowing the outcome. This can be joyful, but also painful. In an interview Deleuze said that ―a thought‘s logic isn‘t a stable rational system,‖ rather, ―a thought‘s logic is like a wind blowing us on, a series of gusts and jolts. You think you‘ve got to port, but then find yourself thrown back out onto the open sea, as Leibniz put it‖ (Deleuze, 1995, p. 94).

This, I believe, is an accurate description of philosophical thinking (and no doubt a quality of other forms of thinking as well).

There is also a sense of randomness in the way that one must stop moving, stop thinking, stop writing and define an arbitrary limit. Traditionally, this is what a book achieves and there is often a conclusion. In another sense, however, one cannot stop.

How does one ever stop thinking and moving, as if such a thing is possible? As one moves across a rhizome the idea of stopping makes little sense and is extremely difficult, if not impossible. It would be more accurate to suggest that thought only briefly pauses on the rhizome, as if to get its breathe back, ready to take flight once again. The work of horizontal philosophy is never completed. In one sense, this essay stops and must stop. In another sense, such a limit is as arbitrary and artificial as its origin. Horizontal philosophy only artificially stops and starts. It is always in the middle of something. It never really ends in the final sense of the word, just as it never really began from the start, rather, it always moves around in the middle. Chapters, like the entire work taken as a whole, also give the illusion that thought has stopped and found an end point. Deleuze and Guattari were reluctant to describe their ―chapters‖ as chapters in their (1987) book, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, for this very reason. They understood that ―a book composed of chapters has culmination and termination points‖ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 22). They preferred the word

―plateau,‖ which ―is always in the middle, not at the beginning or the end. A rhizome is made of plateaus‖ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 21). A plateau is a horizontal connection. It is a concept. Understood in this way, a chapter could contain any number of plateaus. In any case, whether we use the word ―chapter‖ or ―plateau,‖ the point is that the chapters take place in the middle and other connections could have been made, or could be made, at a later date (not necessarily by me). For example, I could have made interesting connections with the categorical imperative found in the work of the

18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Alternatively, I could have made other interesting connections with the variety of pragmatism found in the work of the American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931-2007). These are just some examples of other possible plateaus (or horizontal extensions or concepts), which were never written. There is the sense in which there is always going to be any number of other connections, which were never realised. One does not so much conclude after reading, as if one has found the final answer or solution, rather, one pauses and then takes flight again. The idea of having a conclusion falls short of the demand that horizontal philosophy places upon the reader to keep moving. Rather than a conclusion, we have a ―horizontal network of concepts,‖ that is, the rhizome itself.

If I can justify why I paused here rather than there, it is because I felt that I had said enough and that more words would have added nothing of vital importance. In chapter 5 I compare and discuss at some length the work of French philosopher Jacques

Derrida (1930-2004), who is credited with founding and elaborating deconstruction, and the Australian philosopher Peter Singer (1946-), who is best known for his work on applied ethics, particularly in relation to animal liberation and alleviating extreme poverty. Singer ascribes to a contemporary brand of utilitarianism and Derrida is regarded as the founder of deconstruction. By way of philosophical tradition, Derrida

and Singer could hardly seem to be further apart. If I found something necessary in one author, something interesting and worthwhile, but not to be found in another author, then I have used them both to form something that belongs to both, but goes beyond both, creating a ―hybrid connection,‖ which is a new plateau. Every new hybrid connection is composed of three elements including the two original plateaus that connect together and the third plateau that is created by the fusion. 1 + 1 = 3. In chapter

11 I explore the sense in which deconstruction cannot be understood in isolation, rather, it must be horizontally fused with other ethical and political traditions of thought (such as utilitarianism, liberalism, etc.). The encounters in chapter 5 are quite different to the deconstructive encounters in chapters 10 and 11. So we have multiple hybrid connections (or encounters), each stretching out in a different direction. Can I sign my name to these multiple hybrid encounters, these philosophical and deconstructive plateaus? Perhaps, but it is certainly not only me when there is at least three of us. It can get rather crowded once we continue to move again, adding more and more names.

Writing my own name as an author has always bothered me because one is always writing with others. Deleuze was correct when he said that ―even when you think you‘re writing on your own, you‘re always doing it with someone else you can‘t always name‖

(Deleuze, 1995, p. 141). From the point of view of horizontal philosophy, attributing authorship at every moment in the form of an historical recount of exactly who said what can be difficult and ultimately serves little purpose. In fact, it can even stifle horizontal movement. Rather, one rides the waves of ever multiplying connections, which aim to solve a problem.

Although our work is born from an arbitrary dice throw there is always an important underlying unity according to the problem, which links all the concepts together. Horizontal philosophy, in this sense, still requires unity. As philosophers we

are perhaps always looking for a degree of stability and unity, provided by a problem, without which we would have little or nothing to think about, however, a problem can transform as one moves across a rhizome. If the problem undergoes significant change, then the entire project, one‘s entire thinking, must also move with it. Our problem shifts a number of times (for example, from the problem of learning how to live to the problem of re-learning how to live). Keeping up with these seismic horizontal movements, and not being afraid of them, which is perhaps the fear of vertical philosophy, is part of the challenge, I believe, of horizontal movement. It is the fear of being thrown into the open sea once again. The result is an expanding rhizome, a web of plateaus. This has been my method of thinking and writing from the very beginning. I never wrote and completed one chapter, and then the next, and then the next, as if in a linear fashion. Rather, I always worked from the middle outwards. Chapters appeared and disappeared. They merged or separated with one another as the rhizome expanded.

There were never any end points.

I would not expect any reader to simply accept (or stabilise) the rhizome as it is, which is not the purpose of writing this essay. My aim is to provoke movement and improvement, not stability. If a concept is to be used and not discarded, then I would expect the reader to not simply analyse or contemplate the concept (which is the work of vertical philosophy), but to do something new with the concept, whether that means the concept is renovated, connected up with another concept or effectuated in history. It is up to the reader to be at once critical and creative. Critical in the sense of deciding whether or not to use a concept, and creative in the sense of doing something new with the concept once one has decided to use it. It is all experimental and there are no guarantees of success.

We start in the here and now with macro-sociology (chapters 1-3) before turning to the a-historical abstraction of philosophy (chapters 4-9). After the sociological and philosophical chapters we transgress the traditional limits of ethical inquiry to engage with deconstruction (chapters 10 and 11) and tragedy (chapters 12 and 13). The order of presentation, then, is the macro-sociological, the philosophical, the deconstructive and the tragic. But this linear order is only a reading suggestion because there is no linear order in a rhizome. The movements contained within these elements are far from discrete, rather, they constantly intersect and link up with one another, which is the very nature of a rhizome since ―the rhizome connects any point to any other point‖ (Deleuze

& Guattari, 1987, p. 21). Our concept of ethics is developed in the philosophical, deconstructive and tragic chapters (or plateaus), whilst the sociological chapters effectuate this concept in history.

The macro-sociological chapters are aimed squarely at diagnosing problems in contemporary Western societies, especially in relation to consumption, marketing, education and democracy. Each area of concern has been chosen because of its negative

(or problematic) relationship to the pursuit of valuable interests. These problems are not meant to form a final or comprehensive list, rather, they are only historical suggestions.

The sociological chapters have the dual function of relating this essay to the here and now and providing historical examples for the philosophical chapters that follow. I address the problem of allowing the market teach values to our children (in chapter 1); the problem of overconsumption in Western society (in chapter 2) and the failure of current democratic governments to value others in other parts of the world (in chapter

3).

In the philosophical chapters I address our understanding of the question of

―how ought we live?‖ and how it relates to history (in chapter 4); our understanding of

the role of sacrifice in ethics and the problem of ―how ought we sacrifice?‖ (in chapter

5); our understanding of ethics as involving the demand to ―triage‖ patients in an

―emergency‖ (in chapter 6); our understanding of diagnostic trans-evaluation and the creation of new priorities individually and politically (in chapter 7); our understanding of the paradoxical pedagogy of a ―values education without values‖ involving an ongoing need to re-learn how we ought to live as we pursue value in a world without fixed values (in chapter 8) and using our critical freedom for promoting ―uniquely important interests‖ (in chapter 9).

The deconstructive chapters involve a close reading of a number of Derrida‘s late ethical and political texts and interviews, but they are in no way a comprehensive overview of the ethical and political writings of Derrida. I discuss the concepts of the absolute future, undecidability, the perhaps, fractional content and the impossible whole

(in chapter 10). I suggest that an ethical life perpetually remains to-come (also in chapter 10). I discuss unconditional hospitality (or the coming of the other as other or the event) and suggest that diagnostic trans-evaluation must maintain a reference to unconditional hospitality (or justice or democracy to-come) (in chapter 11). I suggest that diagnostic trans-evaluation is the ongoing process of deconstructing our values

(also in chapter 11). The deconstructive chapters present a possible picture of ethics in connection with deconstruction. By connecting ethics with deconstruction I develop an ethics that is not reducible to the present, but is able to effectively respond to the present in a targeted diagnostic and transformative mode of evaluation. This essay constantly demands the reader to consider ethics in a way that does not reduce it to what currently exists or what has existed, but opens up to the creation of new values and priorities when we recognise that our current values and priorities are in need of change. This compliments the Deleuzian sense in which philosophical concepts are not conservative,

but are revolutionary, in response to the intolerability (or injustice) of the present. By far I engage more closely with Derrida‘s ethical and political texts and interviews than with the writings of any other philosopher. This places a demand upon the reader to also engage closely with Derrida‘s thought. That is not to suggest that one needs to be a

Derridean scholar in order to read these chapters because key concepts are carefully introduced to the reader.

Although there are only two deconstructive chapters, deconstruction is in the background of the work as a whole and many of the philosophical concepts are strongly influenced by Derrida‘s work, such as general triage, diagnostic trans-evaluation, sacrifice, minimal ethics, ethical content, values education without fixed values, re- learning how we ought to live and historical negotiation. The philosophical chapters, in some sense, anticipate their own deconstruction, and ultimately, the philosophical chapters become inseparable from the deconstructive chapters. By the end of chapter 11 we have a detailed and comprehensive account of how the philosophical and the deconstructive fuse together (that is not to suggest that other connections are not possible). This is why I have chosen ―The Ongoing Deconstruction of Our values‖ as the subtitle of this essay.

Finally, in the tragic chapters we explore the ultimate failure of ethics. The tragedy appears beyond (or beneath) the traditional domains of ethics and philosophy, even beyond deconstruction, beyond ―heroic ethics,‖ which encompasses the sociological, the philosophical and the deconstructive. The tragic chapters present a possible picture of ethics in connection with tragedy, however, one does not have to read the tragic chapters in order to grasp the basic heroic ethical vision of this essay.

The subtitle to this essay can be read in either a purely heroic sense or a tragic-heroic sense. In the tragic chapters I address our understanding of the role of chronic suffering

and certain death for ethics (in chapter 12) and our understanding of tragic-heroic ethics

(or ethix) (in chapter 13). Chapters 12 and 13 cover a lot of ground and they are short and sharp, especially chapter 13. They have their own unique style, as do the other plateaus in the rhizome. The movements in these plateaus are fast and powerful, and you do not see them coming. These plateaus slice quickly. They pull the rug out from under the philosopher‘s feet and this can only be done quickly. As a result, the concept of ethix is created. We finally break ethics open to (tragic) reality and awaken ourselves from the heroic dreams of the other plateaus.

Macro-Sociological Plateaus

1. The Salesman as Values Educator: A Lesson From a Primary School Teacher

The market is naturally in the business of producing desires and packing our heads with new wants as it marches on to the profit imperative.5 It is perhaps not sufficient, however, to say that marketing merely produces desires, because the desires must never be seen for what they so often are: trivial. This sense of triviality has nothing to do with the monetary exchange value of the good or service, which is the only value that marketing understands. In fact, often the triviality we are speaking of is at complete odds with the monetary value of the market. Immediately, then, we have market-based monetary value pitched against a sense of triviality that marketing is in complete indifference to. It is disturbing enough to discover that marketing has a central role in producing desire in our society, but to find out that many of the desires it produces are worthless only adds salt to the wound. Ultimately, in relation to selling trivia, your salesman or marketing executive must take trivial wants and either focus purely on their raw desirability or construct the desires as somehow important. In either case the aim is to extract a monetary exchange value. The question of value (or evaluation) is either removed or abused. The market effectively ensures that this cover-up remains intact.

The indifference of the market removes precisely the kind of evaluation that an ethical life requires. The profit imperative does not aim for, nor understand in the least, evaluation, let alone diagnostic evaluation.6

5 I shall use the phrase ―the market‖ (or ―marketing‖) in broad terms to encompass not only the work of marketing executives, but also the work of those in advertising, public relations and sales.

6 See chapter 7 for more details on the concept of diagnostic evaluation.

Let us make no mistake over what our humble and snappy salesman really is: In our milieu he is the friendly face of a ―corporate psychopath.‖ In referring to the corporation, the Canadian legal scholar Joel Bakan (1959-) claims that ―most people would find its ‗personality‘ abhorrent, even psychopathic, in a human being, yet curiously we accept it in society‘s most powerful institution‖ (Bakan, 2004, p. 28).

Remarkably, we have largely left the teaching of values to a ―psychopathic creature‖ who knows absolutely nothing about values and at times is ―compelled to cause harm‖:

As a psychopathic creature, the corporation can neither recognize nor act upon

moral reasons to refrain from harming others. Nothing in its legal makeup limits

what it can do to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to cause

harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. Only pragmatic concern

for its own interests and the laws of the land constrain the corporation‘s

predatory instincts, and often that is not enough to stop it from destroying lives,

damaging communities, and endangering the planet as a whole. (Bakan, 2004, p.

60)

Could this corporate psychopath really be our values educator? Have we really fallen under his spell? Would we let our children go to school and let a psychopath teach our children values? I somehow doubt it, yet curiously, we have let psychopathic corporations largely take on this role.

Generally, those interests which are most important at any given time, the most valuable in terms of their dollar amount, are those items that are the ―latest and greatest‖

(in addition to antiques, collectable items, etc.). They embody the latest in technological advancement and design, such as an expensive distributed audio system in your new

home.7 Marketing, therefore, absolutely loves new technology, design and brand identity. It would sink without at least one of these elements in place for every new trivial item it sells. A technological upgrade (or a new look or a new identity) means everything, at least for a while, until it quickly means nothing, as determined by the company responsible for the item or a savvy competitor. Your salesman will not tell you that the latest product is merely trivially different to the previous model, rather, the difference is everything. It is ―strangely all-important.‖ Our attention is firmly fixed.

The new model is the centrepiece of questions, conversation and wonder. If the shopping centre can be said to be the ―vortex of our society,‖ the imposing monument around which Western life dances, then this moment of showroom wonder with a salesman is the ―core of the vortex.‖ It is the ―climactic moment of consumer capitalism,‖ the brief moment before we open our wallets, swipe our credit cards and consume more than we need, like addicts getting their hit.8 It is the climactic moment of

Western capitalism. Whether it is in an actual shopping centre or online the climax is essentially the same. After the high the rest is down hill—until we come back for

7 A salesman once questioned my motivation for studying a research degree in philosophy given the obvious lack of financial return upon completing the degree. Yet he had no such reservations for why someone would want to install an expensive distributed audio system in their home (a centrally controlled music system, which distributes music in every room from speakers in the ceiling). When I asked him what was wrong with a regular radio he had nothing to say. I was supposed to believe, as if it were plainly obvious to anyone, that a distributed audio system would be a worthwhile addition to my home (and that something like research in philosophy is obviously pointless).

8 See chapter 2 for more details on the concept of overconsumption.

another hit. At this climactic moment something is magically created from nothing, yet in reality it remains nothing. If there is any magic in our society, then it is perhaps to be found in the shopping centre. What is bizarre is that if a genuine question of evaluation were to be raised, such as, ―do I really need this massive full high definition television?,‖ then the answer, I speculate, would often be a firm ―no.‖ Many of us, I imagine, certainly have the autonomy to evaluate and say ―no‖ to the salesman, but he skilfully undermines our autonomy as we drift away in the showroom wonder of the new model. We experience an ―internal barrier‖ to freedom.9

Consider the wonder of Microsoft‘s XBox 360, which is just one example among so many. The XBox 360 game console replaced the XBox only four years after its launch. The XBox was launched in November 2001 and the XBox 360 was launched in November 2005. Although in 2001 it was an enormous leap in terms of technical advancement for console gaming technology, software support for the XBox was non- existent no more than two years after the arrival of the XBox 360, when it became increasingly difficult to find XBox games as major outlets began to stock only XBox

360 games. It seemed that the lifespan of the console was to be as little as 2 years. The message was clear: Open your wallet and buy the new machine (even if you bought the

XBox only 2 years ago or perhaps less in many cases). Microsoft consumers, it seems, were meant to be unhappy with their products. It is not good enough to be happy with the XBox, which was an impressive console. Presumably, consumers were meant to be unhappy with it only shortly after buying it, otherwise, why upgrade to the XBox 360?

However, why should we buy the XBox 360 if in a few years there will be no software support from Microsoft and if it cannot make us happy anyway? Your salesman will probably not have this conversation. If you already have an XBox and you have the

9 See chapter 9 for more details on the concept of an internal barrier to freedom.

money to buy a new XBox 360, then why not give the money away or save it for something genuinely worthwhile? This cycle of the production of ever-new desires in absence of any evaluation (combined with overconsumption on the behalf of the consumer who also fails to evaluate) is overwhelmingly considered absolutely normal.

The cycle is perhaps especially accepted in the world of information technology. In fact, it is often celebrated, such as at technology exhibitions, trade shows, etc. Ultimately, however, as consumers all we are doing is running on the consumer treadmill.10

The trick is to make nothing (or very little) seem like something, at least, seem like enough to warrant the opening of our wallets. The trick is to make wonder out of triviality. For example, the top of the range BMW or Mercedes-Benz costs a fortune for most people. It is worth a lot in terms of its monetary exchange value. However, from the perspective of the important or most important function of either car, namely to transport its occupants safely, it is as valuable as any other car such as a much less expensive Toyota, Ford, etc. Anything extra in the BMW or Mercedes-Benz is surplus triviality (or ―excess triviality‖) built into the car, differentiating it precisely from cheaper cars. Surplus triviality produces the miraculous wonder and amazement:

―Wow! These seats warm your arse!‖ Without surplus triviality the salesman can only rely on what matters and the market will never settle for this. Not that it has the slightest idea of what is important anyway. The magic of vehicle manufactures like BMW and

Mercedes-Benz is their ability to make the surplus triviality of high-end luxury vehicles seem strangely all-important and turn it into monetary value. Cinema is perhaps important, but it is excessive that everyone has their own expensive home cinema; music is perhaps important, but it is not important to have a distributed audio system in every room of your home; shoes are important, but Manolo Blahniks are excessive;

10 See chapter 2 for more details on the concept of the consumer treadmill.

everyone needs to eat, but it is excessive to eat at the finest restaurants. There are many examples of how our consumer goodies contain an enormous amount of surplus triviality.

We discover that the magic and wonder of our Western world is short lived and ultimately worthless. Often a new product is sold with a bunch of new features that make no sense to most people. We assume that the new features must be good, not wanting to be ―left behind‖—a fear that is perhaps worse than death in our society.

Some consumers understand this cycle well and so they patiently wait for the next upgrade or the next new design. But they will be waiting forever because marketing cannot stop its perpetual need for reinvention. A profit must be made quarter after quarter. Moreover, there is the chance that the next upgrade they are waiting for will be a repackaged old item with a dash of new excess triviality. Rather than waiting, it would perhaps be better to never get involved and make do with what is important. Is that possible? Is it possible to resist the excess? Is it possible to resist the billion-dollar efforts of ―the world‘s dominant economic institution?‖ (Bakan, 2004, p. 5). We could at least try.

Marketing teaches us and we listen, like well behaved school students listening to their teacher. A good advertisement or nifty piece of PR (public relations) may not explicitly say ―this is important‖ or ―this is wonderful,‖ but every multimedia device will be utilised to present the good or service in a highly positive light. Marketing will never suggest that you evaluate the surplus triviality before you decide to buy, rather, it needs you to act upon your desire without considering its value. The Canadian philosopher Will Kymlicka (1962-) suggests that we cannot assume a desire (or preference) to be valuable simply because we possess it, rather, ―on the contrary, its

being valuable is a good reason for preferring it‖ (Kymlicka, 2002, p. 15).11 Marketing must do everything it can to avoid an awkward line of questioning with your friendly salesman that shatters the surplus triviality through strong evaluation.12 The ―values education‖ of marketing is perhaps the worst kind imaginable. We are taught to accept the illusory importance of the wonder and amazement of surplus triviality and act upon our raw desires. Values education becomes a complete lack of concern with anything valuable and as far as possible from strong evaluation. This ―bastard values education,‖ if we may call it that, is pervasive within our milieu. It is therefore a ―general epidemic‖

(or ―general pandemic‖).13 The consequences are far from trivial.

The problem of the salesman as values educator has less to do with different cultures or different values and more to do with the production of desire and value by one culture and its ability to manipulate the minds of peoples of all cultures. In other words, the problem is not difference, but sameness, the ―sameness of the market‖ (or the

―monoculturalism of the market‖). In reality, the problem is an absolute lack of cultural difference. Alongside our multiculturalism there is this disturbing monoculturalism at work. Market sameness does not so much destroy or colonise cultural difference, but coexists with it, gnawing away at people‘s lives. Take a walk through any of the shopping centres in Australia‘s most multicultural areas, such as Liverpool, Parramatta,

Fairfield or Auburn in Sydney. Children of all cultural identities are eating McDonalds and KFC whilst their parents stock up on the latest consumer goodies.

11 See chapter 7 for a more detailed discussion of Kymlicka‘s comment.

12 See chapter 7 for more details on the concept of strong evaluation.

13 See chapter 6 for more details on the concepts of general epidemic and general pandemic.

This culture of the market is so deeply embedded in our society that perhaps many intellectuals have missed the forest for the trees, so to speak, by being too concerned with thinking about cultural difference rather than market sameness. What is most interesting and relevant, or even remarkable, is the single power of the market to shape our values and orient our preferences over and above all other cultural differences. All cultures are happy to stop and listen to what the psychopath has to say.

If all cultures are victims of the market, then it is perhaps surprising that there is not a stronger solidarity between different cultures to tackle the problem of marketing assuming its self-appointed role as values educator. But the problem is skilfully hidden and we are presented with the illusion of permanence, as if things could not be otherwise. Why should parents, teachers and philosophers have to keep fighting this losing battle? It is ridiculous and insulting that we must compete with a-moral psychopaths for the role of values educator.

According to Bakan, corporations ―govern our lives‖ (Bakan, 2004, p. 5). They

―determine what we eat, what we watch, what we wear, where we work, and what we do‖ (Bakan, 2004, p. 5). The market produces a ―wasted corporate life‖ composed of consuming and working. Eat, watch, wear, listen, feel and think what the psychopath says. ―Don‘t think about what‘s important after work! Consume!‖ These are marketing‘s imperatives. Sit in front of the tube (or rather, the 60‖ full high definition plasma display). How much of our work is done only to consume what we are told to consume? This view of life is insulting. It robs us of our freedom. We are capable of so much more, but waste it. Perhaps women feel they deserve those Manolo Blahniks, after all, they worked hard for them. The risk of this wasted corporate life is sacrificing what is most important, whether concerning ourselves or others.

Cigarettes have government legislated health warnings on the packaging, which inform us of the health risks of smoking. Strangely, however, we see no problem with the market attacking the mind. The damage is not just to the mind, but often to the body as well, especially for impressionable children who watch many advertisements for low nutrition and high calorie food. All advertisements by marketeers and public relations people should come with a health warning flashing on your screen in dark colours with a terrifying sound track: ―Warning! Your interests, values and priorities are no longer your own, we will have them now!‖ Our minds are being attacked on two separate, yet not completely inseparable fronts. Our minds are under attack by not only the public relations people employed by the democratic state in order to manufacture consent for unpopular policies, but also by the same public relations people employed by marketeers who turn us into good consumers. In each case the aim of the ―thought control‖ is very different, but the methods are similar. The state is looking for obedience and consent, whilst corporations are after our wallets. In either case, a robot-like state of mind with little or no room for autonomous thought that challenges our prevailing values is preferred: ―Don‘t think, don‘t evaluate and do what you‘re told.‖

Nothing is more important from the ethical point of view than the ability to weigh (or evaluate) alternative courses of action (or interests) and make informed decisions based on those strong evaluations. Ultimately, an ethical life not only demands that we try to pursue interests of importance, but that we try to pursue the most important of interests, which involves the strongest evaluation.14 However, marketing educates us with a different set of skills: ―Listen to the advertisements and PR, know the value of nothing and have your credit card ready.‖ Instead of important interests we have showroom wonder. Marketing has provided us with the worst values education we

14 See chapter 7 for more details on the concept of the strongest evaluation.

could have received, but most in agreement with the politicians and economists who do not question the economic utilitarianism of maximising utility through satisfying market-made preferences. We get this obscene values education every time we watch a commercial and open the newspaper: ―I will teach you what is important. I will teach you what you need. I will teach you how to spend.‖ Each week the answers change, as the creative machine continues to reinvigorate us with ever-new items to consume, but the lesson is essentially the same: ―Buy whatever we put on display in the showroom.‖

It would not be too much to suggest that marketing has largely replaced ethics in our consumer milieu, forcing itself relentlessly and unmercifully into the foreground of the minds of millions (at the ―hidden sacrifice‖ of millions?15).

The market produces a ―consumer confusion of value.‖ Our values have become disoriented and distorted. Needs become wants and wants become needs, but ultimately we want everything and the sky is the limit. No value is certain, nothing is what it seems, and it becomes impossible to separate the trivial from the important. All you have are advertisements to guide you, night after night on television, escalating desire and driving out evaluation. At worst, we no longer possess the ―evaluative skill‖ necessary to separate between needs and wants (or important interests and trivial interests).16 The Australian economists Clive Hamilton (1953-) and Richard Denniss

(1970-) describe the psychological (and sociological) disease of ―affluenza‖ in similar terms when they describe it as ―a condition in which we are confused about what it takes to live a worthwhile life. Part of this confusion is a failure to distinguish between what we want and what we need‖ (Hamilton and Denniss, 2005, p. 7).17 If the ground is

15 See chapter 5 for more details on the concept of hidden sacrifice.

16 See chapter 8 for more details on the concept of evaluative skill.

17 See chapter 2 for more details on the concept of affluenza.

always shifting according to what the market dictates, then obviously we are going to be left lost and confused, and I would argue, unhappy and potentially living unethically

(that is, pursuing trivial interests at the sacrifice of more important interests), perhaps without knowing it.18

Arguably, we reached this situation of mass consumer confusion in the West in our post World War Two era, especially throughout the 80‘s, 90‘s and beyond.

Sustained economic growth, combined with a lack of satisfactory ethical concept and vigilance, has allowed marketing to exploit our every weakness. That is not to suggest that economic growth is wrong, rather, the problem is how we use our wealth. If sustained economic growth satisfies not only needs, but endless wants as well, then it is no longer clear that it is achieving anything worthwhile. Although the market is largely responsible for this confusion, it is also our fault that we surrendered our autonomy and allowed marketing to flourish (but did we know the risks?). It is high time we got our autonomy and evaluative capacity back and stripped marketing of its self-appointed role as values educator. Some would say that marketeers have done nothing wrong and that they innocently present desires to us and that it is up to consumers to make informed choices. We know better. We know that our minds have already been colonised by the multimedia and the showroom wonder. The work of evaluation has been done for you.

Marketing planted the seeds in our minds long before we grew up and raised any question of value (I still remember all the advertisements during the Saturday morning cartoons, the McDonald‘s characters, etc. I still remember the desire for excess triviality

18 ―Living unethically‖ here is not to be understood in the strict sense of intending unethical actions. Rather, our values have become confused and our autonomy has been undermined. These developments have effectively resulted in unethical (or harmful) outcomes.

as a child.). Arguably, the role of marketing and corporate rule in our society has become so ubiquitous and normal that we have failed to notice the significance of the decline and bastardisation of values education in our society. We have failed to notice that marketing has replaced teachers, parents and philosophers in the teaching of values.

One of the important tasks of primary school teachers is to teach students the difference between needs and wants. On my view, being able to evaluate an interest as either a need or a want, and being able to weigh alternatives, are essential skills involved in teaching values to children, especially relevant in a world without fixed values.19 How effective is the market in teaching children the difference between needs and wants, let alone prioritising important interests? It is the last thing the market wants children to learn. Yet, if they are to lead ethically-rich lives that are not suffocated by surplus triviality and poor priorities, then they need these skills. They need to be given a genuine moral education including the skills necessary to look through the illusions and confusions of the market and pursue ends of genuine worth. On my view, students of all

SES (socioeconomic status) communities need these skills. Whether rich or poor, it is vital that all students are given the necessary skills to use their economic and social resources for genuinely worthwhile ends. It is disturbing, although perhaps not surprising, that as adults we hardly know the difference between wants and needs. We desperately need to refresh ourselves in this most crucial part of our primary moral education (although how many of us can say we ever actually had an effective values education at school?). We would perhaps do well to return to primary school.

19 In chapter 8 I explore the sense in which children (and adults) must not simply learn how to live according to fixed values, but re-learn how to live in a world of dynamic values. In this chapter I outline a paradoxical pedagogy of teaching values without teaching values.

The job of a primary school teacher is at odds with the thousands of advertisements and other marketing strategies that his or her students are subjected to every year. I find it remarkable that primary school teachers (and parents) are forced to compete with the market for the attention of impressionable young minds. If salesmen have effectively replaced teachers and parents for the education of values, then is this not an enormous act of disrespect towards teachers and parents? Instead of teaching children how to live, we would rather take them to McDonalds for a Happy Meal and hang out with Ronald McDonald. The battle is grossly uneven. How can teachers compete with showroom wonder? Teachers should be left to do their jobs and parents should not have to listen to the demands for trivia by their children. ―Mummy, can I have . . .‖ Much needs to be done, from banning advertising to children to the professional development of new pedagogical strategies for teaching values in schools

(teachers may be teaching values education, but are they equipping their students with the ethical skills needed to resist the surplus triviality and showroom wonder manufactured by the market?).

As ―ethical consumers‖ our first duty is to find our autonomy, that is, take ownership of our values and deny marketing its self-appointed role as values educator.

The aim of teaching values is to develop students‘ capacity to diagnostically evaluate and create new priorities. This general goal takes on a specific historical meaning in relation to the market, which is one of the dominant sites in our milieu where we are challenged to evaluate among a flood of ever-new and different desires that boast surplus triviality and showroom wonder. The major ethical and pedagogical challenge, then, is not only for us to own our values and resist the surplus triviality and showroom wonder as adults, but also ensure that we are teaching the necessary ethical skills to children who are most vulnerable.

2. Feeling Unhappy and Overweight: Overconsumption and the Escalation of

Desire

Capitalism has been more than successful enough for many of us in the West.

This is despite the fact that many of us continue to believe that we do not have enough.

Many of us have much more than we need and spend much of our time, wasting our time, immersed in satisfying trivial wants, rather than pursuing important needs

(although arguably we have great difficulty separating the two). According to Hamilton,

―it must be accepted that capitalism has moved into a phase of abundance, and abundance broadly spread‖ (Hamilton, 2003, p. xv). Many, although certainly not all, have much more than our grandparents or great grandparents could ever have needed or wanted. Popper, who is well known for his work in philosophy of science and social and political philosophy, observes that the ―most important‖ thing we have improved is that

―the terrible mass poverty which still existed in my childhood and in my youth has now disappeared. (Unfortunately, this is not the case in places like Calcutta.)‖ (Popper, 1994, p. ix). This success has perhaps been most acutely felt in the post World War Two era where economic growth has been steadily increasing decade after decade. Long after the great depression of the 1930s, post World War Two capitalism essentially rid itself of any competition with its enduring success at creating wealth for millions. Over time it cemented itself as the best economic system ever known. It became increasingly apparent that those in the West were getting wealthier than those in Communist Russia.

The Swiss philosopher Alain De Botton (1969-), who is well known for relating philosophical ideas to contemporary life, discusses a speech that President Nixon gave in July 1959 that boasts of America‘s success at alleviating poverty and providing new luxurious technological goods for millions:

Nixon was invited to make a broadcast on Soviet television, and used the

occasion to expound on the advantages of American life. Shrewdly, he did not

begin his speech by mentioning democracy or human rights; he started with

money and material progress. Nixon explained that Western countries had,

through enterprise and industry, in just a few hundred years, managed to

overcome the poverty and famine that had existed up to the middle of the

eighteenth century—and which still continued in many parts of the world.

Modern Americans owned 56 million television sets and 143 million radios, he

informed his Soviet audience, many of whom lacked access to their own

bathroom or kettle. The average American family could buy 9 dresses and suits

and 14 pairs of shoes every year. In the United States, one could get a house in a

thousand different architectural styles. Most of these houses were larger than a

television studio. An infuriated Khrushchev sat at Nixon‘s side, clenched his

fists and mouthed, ―Nyet! Nyet!‖—adding under his breath, according to one

account, ―Ëb' tvoyu babushky.‖ (Go fuck your grandmother.). (Botton, 2004, pp.

33-34)

Botton goes on to add that Nixon was not incorrect and that ―the countries of the

West had witnessed the fastest, most radical transformation in living standards ever known in history‖ (Botton, 2004, p. 34). Wealth was distributed widely—even if unevenly—to workers and capitalists alike. With the invention of the welfare state the unemployed were better off as well. The Russian Communist model proved to be no match. In short, capitalism proved itself as not only an economic system that could satisfy many needs for workers, but that it could boast the availability of luxury items including televisions, fridges, cars, radios, lavatories, etc., to millions of workers (today, such items are simply standard and are not considered luxuries at all). Even if one

disapproved of the uneven distribution of wealth, one could not deny the widespread success at alleviating extreme poverty. Today, extreme poverty has disappeared in the

West, however, that is not to dismiss the existence and significance of poverty— although not extreme poverty—in some corners of the West.

The post World War Two era of sustained economic growth facilitated an increase in the opportunity to satisfy more and more trivial interests in the West. Those in the West witnessed an end to need within their own country and this meant they could enter a new phase of wanting whilst others remained in need. Rather than putting an end to ―important need‖ we have overwhelmingly preferred ―trivial greed.‖ It is not as if we have not worked hard for it, but is hard work enough to ignore the need? Our desires and aspirations began to ascend new and unseen heights and this horizon continued to shift upwards. Today, perhaps more than ever, we continue to want more and more. It is what we know. It is our home. The sky has become the limit of desire.

Through years of economic success old wants have become new needs and new wants have arisen. The consequences of these new desires are hardly trivial. Hamilton and

Denniss argue that ―raising the threshold of desire‖ has created ―an endless cycle of self-deception: like the horizon, our desires always seem to stay ahead of where we are.

This cycle of hope and disappointment lies at the centre of consumer capitalism‖

(Hamilton & Denniss, 2005, p. 6). According to Hamilton and Denniss,

the sustained growth of the Australian economy in the post war period elevated

the bulk of the working class to income levels that were typical of the middle

class of a previous generation. The boundaries between the consumption

patterns of the middle and working classes began to blur, and it became

increasingly difficult to separate their financial, educational and social

aspirations. (Hamilton & Denniss, 2005, pp. 8-9)

Italian, Arabic and Vietnamese migrants from poor communities, for example, aspire just as high, if not higher, than any other Australians. It is certainly very important to have high educational and social aspirations, however, a problem arises when economic aspiration descends into greed and endless spending on trivial items including a mansion in an expensive suburb, multiple European luxury cars, a wardrobe full of designer shoes and clothes, etc. According Hamilton and Denniss,

the collapse of the demarcation between the rich, the middle class and the poor

is associated with the scaling-up of desire for prestige brands and luxury styles

of particular goods. Even people on modest incomes aspire to Luis Vuitton—if

not the handbag, at least the T-shirt. We have witnessed an across-the-board

escalation of lifestyle expectations. (Hamilton & Denniss, 2005, p. 9)

What was once luxurious has become normal and new luxuries must be invented.

The surplus triviality, the excess we do not need, accelerates through multiplying itself. It is forever growing and forever reinventing itself. We have penetrated ―new depths of meaninglessness‖ (whilst continuing to fail to help those in need). If we have learnt something, it is that we have learnt how to shop. We have learnt to soak up every last drop of wonder that the showroom has on offer. Shopping has become one of our favourite leisure activities. It is our weekend hobby and it is possible that its priority has eclipsed the very things we are out to buy. A good consumer dresses elegantly in the right brands, but also comfortably to endure the long haul; they stay a while and perhaps eat some fast food and drink coffee; they retire home and consume quickly without fuss. The following weekend they are recharged for more. It is no surprise that over time as we have grown as consumers, migrating from one shopping centre to the next, our values have become confused by the values education of the

market. We have lost sense of what is important and how to pursue value in a genuine and ethical way. We have only known the ―acceleration of desire,‖ not the ―worth of desire,‖ which depends upon strong evaluation. The values education of the market has resulted in the loss of our ability to effectively evaluate our consumption.

As a consequence of our accelerated consumer expectations many of us do not know when to stop spending and we delude ourselves into thinking that we need to satisfy more and more wants despite the fact we already have enough. This view, according to Hamilton and Denniss, is a ―psychological disorder‖:

Rich societies such as Australia seem to be in the grip of a collective

psychological disorder. We react with alarm and sympathy when we come

across an anorexic who is convinced she is fat, whose view of reality is so

obviously distorted. Yet, as a society surrounded by affluence, we indulge in the

illusion that we are deprived. Despite the obvious failure of the continued

accumulation of material things to make us happy, we appear unable to change

our behaviour. We have grown fat but we persist in the belief that we are thin

and must consume more. Perhaps we blind ourselves to the facts; perhaps the

cure seems more frightening than the disease; or perhaps we just don‘t know

there is an alternative. For these reasons the epidemic of overconsumption that

pervades rich societies has been dubbed ―affluenza.‖ (Hamilton and Denniss,

2005, pp. 6-7)

Note the medical-sounding description of overconsumption (or affluenza) as an

―epidemic.‖ Hamilton and Denniss also characterise overconsumption as a widespread form of ―oniomania‖ or ―compulsive shopping.‖20 Overconsumption is the problem of

20 According to Hamilton and Denniss,

the consumption of surplus triviality, the consumption of the excess, which is not needed, under the mistaken belief that it is needed. It is the mistake of thinking that a want is a need or that something trivial is important. This epidemic is a general epidemic, rather than a ―narrow epidemic‖ of the body.21 It might also be described as a form of ―consumer psychosis,‖ induced by your salesman who boasts the showroom wonder of the object.

Interestingly, due the global financial crisis of 2008, in October of the same year

Hamilton claimed that ―the era of affluenza‖ was ―over‖ (Hamilton, 2008, para. 1). He claimed that ―affluenza . . . defined a 15-year period marked by sustained income growth and ever-rising aspirations in pursuit of lifestyles that would give us an identity‖

(Hamilton, 2008, para. 2). Whilst the global financial crisis may have had some impact

psychologists have recently identified a pathological condition known as

―oniomania,‖ or ―compulsive shopping,‖ defined as an obsessive-compulsive

disorder characterised by a preoccupation with shopping experienced as

irresistible and resulting in frequent and excessive buying. People with

oniomania find their shopping is out of control; they buy more than they need,

often setting out to buy one or two items but coming home with bags full of

things they could not resist. They often spend more than they can afford and

rack up debts that build until crisis occurs. After shopping binges they are visited

by feelings of regret. If this sounds like the experience of almost everyone, then

that is no more than the theme of this book, and the psychiatrists have merely

identified the more extreme form of a widespread social condition. (Hamilton &

Denniss, 2005, p. 15)

21 See chapter 6 for more details on the difference between general epidemics and narrow epidemics.

upon reducing consumption in some parts of the world for a brief period of time, I do not see affluenza as spanning just 15 years, and unfortunately, far from over. Hamilton,

I believe, was mistaken. I see the phenomenon as deeply implanted within our current consumer capitalism. The vast air-conditioned shopping centres did not close and people continued to spend too much money on trivial interests. Overconsumption runs much deeper in our current historical milieu than Hamilton thinks.

How does one recognise overconsumption? Where does it begin and where does it end? Can we say ―this‖ or ―that‖ consumer goodie is too much? Overconsumption cannot be identified in the normal sense in which one identifies a pathology using a set of fixed and stable diagnostic tools. Rather, because our values and interests on the market are in perpetual change we must historically negotiate the meaning of overconsumption in actual historical states of affairs.22 In other words, we must negotiate the surplus triviality. We can understand this process of historical negotiation to occur at either a micro or macro level, which are two levels of the same process. We can negotiate at the macro level of sociological diagnosis, which means we suggest that our society suffers from overconsumption, however, there is the ongoing sense in which our values and interests, and consumption as such, is in perpetual change at greater speeds at the micro level. Change is extremely rapid at the micro level. For example, new models of televisions and other consumer goodies are being released daily. The showroom displays change from week to week. Even the salespeople change from week to week. The market is swift and adaptable, but overconsumption continues, each time appearing in a new form at the micro level. This means there is the daily and ongoing demand for micro-sociological negotiations. This chapter, then, suggests a singular macro-sociological diagnosis, but its function is to prepare the reader for multiple

22 See chapter 8 for more details on the concept of historical negotiation.

micro-sociological negotiations. These negotiations involve recognising and resisting overconsumption (or surplus triviality) at the level of your own life.

Western success is a certain vision of the American Dream, which is many things to many people. A dominant view is that the American Dream is not just the dream of having one‘s important needs met, or working hard, but the dream of being filthy rich. Even the modest Australian Dream, which used to be understood as ownership of a modest single-story home and a Ford or Holden in the driveway, has escalated to include owning a beach house, multiple prestige European cars and taking annual overseas holidays. It has also come to include owning an enormous home filled with large entertainment room, a rumpus room, a home cinema, a home gym and many frivolous electronic gadgets. The modest formulations of the American and Australian

Dreams have been eclipsed by affluenza. Affluenza is success itself. It is normal.23

It would be wrong to say that the problem is the fact that capitalism is successful or that more wealth is inherently wrong. Rather, too much wealth only becomes ethically pathological to the extent that once we have satisfied our important interests we condemn our leisure time to the long hallways of the shopping centre, ducking in and out of countless nooks filled with consumer goodies, mesmerised by the showroom wonder in a psychotic-like state. In this case our wealth no longer helps us satisfy important interests, but only plunges our lives into the triviality of affluenza (at the expense of more important alternatives). Our lives become wasteful corporate lives and we sacrifice others in the process. But this sacrifice is hidden from the shopping malls.

The harm is not active, rather, it is passive. Passive harm is the harm that results from

23 Sociological diagnosis (or ethical problem-solving, diagnostic trans- evaluation, etc.), involves not so much making the normal see abnormal, but making it seem ―ethically pathological‖ (or ethically problematic). Abnormality is irrelevant.

failing to act whereby one effectively sacrifices another or many others.24 This sense of passive harm is in addition to the more apparent sense in which consumption can cause active harm, such as through the exploitation of child labour in developing countries, environmental destruction, etc. Active harms are also hidden from the showrooms in the shopping centres. Consumer capitalism does a great job to cover up the harms (both active and passive) that it causes. Only the most critical of consumers bothers to look

―behind the scene of the shopping centre.‖

Some might object to our position to resist overconsumption and suggest that any kind of consumption is important because it is important for the economy and for jobs. Some might take a more ethically minded position and claim that so long as we are not actively harming others (such as through exploiting child labour, paying poor wages, etc.), then any kind of consumption is good because it is good for the economy.

But both views miss the problem altogether, which is the problem of consuming surplus triviality and the passive harm it creates. This goes beyond merely buying goods and services from corporations that are seen to be doing the right thing (such as by paying decent wages, not exploiting children, etc.). ―Ethical consumption,‖ on my view, involves much more. It demands a certain cosmopolitan approach to consumption. The consumption of surplus triviality should be resisted and our money should be redirected towards important ends, whether in relation to the domestic economy or foreign economies. The economy (if we think globally and not merely domestically) would be no less hurt if we only spent money on what is important (but few politicians would ever dare to think in such cosmopolitan terms because their domestic votes would no doubt suffer). And because there are always going to be plenty of important alternatives for the use of our money we should never expect to be in a position where there is not

24 See chapter 5 for more details on the concept of passive harm.

one economy or another somewhere in the world that would not benefit. If we fail to think about such global economic solutions, then we are guilty of preferring some people over others because of their accidental relationship to one political community rather than another, which I see as the essential feature of trivial domestic democracy.25

The pursuit of trivial interests is not only a sacrifice of others through passive harm, but of oneself whereby ―the obsessive pursuit of more and more fails to make us happy and that in pursuit people often sacrifice the things that really can make them happier‖ (Hamilton & Denniss, 2005, p. 17). It makes sense that the addition of worthlessness to our lives should hardly make us happier in any genuine sense.

According to Hamilton and Denniss, ―once people become affluent they continue to believe that more money is the key to a happier life when the evidence suggests that it makes no difference beyond a certain threshold‖ (Hamilton & Denniss, 2005, p. 18).

The American psychologist Barry Schwartz (1946-) makes a similar point to Hamilton and Denniss, focusing on the element of choice at the centre of affluence:

Here we are, living at the pinnacle of human possibility, awash in material

abundance. As a society, we have achieved what our ancestors could, at most,

only dream about, but it has come at a great price. We get what we want, only to

discover that what we want doesn‘t satisfy us to the degree that we expect.

(Schwartz, 2005, p. 221)

Further on he adds to the discussion:

The ―success‖ of modernity turns out to be bittersweet, and everywhere we look

it appears that a significant contributing factor is the overabundance of choice.

Having too many choices produces psychological distress, especially when

combined with regret, concern about status, adaptation, social comparison, and

25 See chapter 3 for more details on the concept of trivial domestic democracy.

perhaps most important, the desire to have the best of everything—to maximize.

(Schwartz, 2005, p. 221)

What a waste it is that so much of our lives have become consumed in trivial choices. Is this a sense of freedom that is worth having?26

Our society is running in despair on a consumer treadmill. This description captures the bittersweet (or paradoxical) quality of overconsumption and the empty sense of freedom attached to it. Energy is expended to move forward but in reality we are not going anywhere. We are wasting our freedom. Rather than reach happiness after spending our money, on the treadmill we find ourselves back where we started, unhappy with our credit card ready. If the market were to actually satisfy our interests, actually make us happy beyond one shopping excursion to the next, then there would no longer be a profit to be made. The shorter the lifespan of an interest, the better. If overconsumption also means overeating, especially overeating fast food and junk food, which I believe is often the case, then we have become victims both psychologically and physically. In short, a person may have plenty of possessions and a nice home, but still feel unhappy and overweight. Unfortunately, this is increasingly what it means to be an Australian or an American. It should not surprise us that there is a striking correlation between steady rises in obesity and affluent countries. The U.S. and

Australia are currently among the fattest nations in the world.

As we are running on the treadmill, where our desires increase and our wants become needs, our new ―needs‖ become normal and we become entirely used to them.

At first the difference between the old and new is a desire that must be bridged. But then the showroom wonder quickly wares off and we come down from our brief consumer high. We ―accommodate‖ the new item and turn it into background noise.

26 See chapter 9 for more details on a freedom worth having.

The difference between a $1000 television and a $5000 television may seem strangely all-important in the showroom. Your salesman may rattle off every feature and like zombies we listen. Suddenly it is of the highest priority to have the very highest resolution (even if no television broadcasting station supports the resolution).

Something of no real importance, the surplus triviality, miraculously becomes important. The impossible, so to speak, becomes possible in a moment of consumer psychosis. In this sense, the market is very much in the business of creating little miracles every day. Over time, I suspect, the very best resolution becomes normal as the old television was normal, until a new model television with new pointless features is released.

Our society is unique for the fact that never before has so much ―social waste‖ been produced. Social waste refers to the squandered social (including economic) resources, which could be used for more important ends. Money spent on surplus triviality when we go shopping is our daily social waste. Corresponding to this massive production of waste is the production of passive harm (whenever a resource is wasted, harm is passively created). Our society has produced more social waste and more passive harm than any other society in history. It is not just our money we waste. How much time and energy is spent wandering the long and luxurious marble floors of beautiful air-conditioned shopping centres? How much of our leisure time has quietly become shopping time in these vast monuments to consumerism?

Shopping centres are interesting places to visit and if we want to understand the values, the wonder, the miracles—yet also the waste, the excess, the despair—of our society, then we need to spend time there. The shopping centre is not only the cultural vortex of consumer capitalism, but often the geographical vortex as well. At the centre of town we have the shopping centre. In Sydney, for example, major metropolitan

centres like Parramatta, Bondi Junction, Liverpool and Chatswood all have a beautiful

Westfield at their core. All life in these cities meets in these indoor mini-cities.

Everything else seems merely peripheral.

Is consumer disappointment ―significant suffering‖? Does not significant suffering involve such things as a lack of public education, public health care, food or other need? Is my unhappiness with my brand new full high definition LED television really that important? Or are we just ―whinging‖ (or ―complaining‖)? If we are damaging our health and becoming dangerously obese, then perhaps the answer is

―yes,‖ otherwise, it is perhaps not clear. We often hear people say that the rich whinge and carry on more than anyone else. To whinge is to inaccurately describe trivial suffering as important (although it is difficult to recognise whinging if the market has already blurred the distinction between importance and triviality). We might say that

Western consumer capitalism, then, has lead to the production of a ―mass of whingers.‖

A mass who whinge when their overconsumption does not match up with their expectations. Rather than chasing triviality on the treadmill, attaining ―significant happiness‖ (and the reducing of significant suffering) would mean evaluating market- made interests on the basis of whether or not they are important, and if not, then stepping off the treadmill is in order. If we are among those in the West who live in abundance, then we ought to stop whinging and use our money for important ends. We ought to replace overconsumption (or ―unethical consumption‖) with more worthwhile and fulfilling activities. Do we still need to consume? Absolutely. However, ethical consumption becomes less a matter of simply choosing to buy from corporations that seem to be doing the right thing and more a matter of rejecting the consumption of certain interests on the basis of their triviality. It is only in this way do we have any

chance at reducing our overconsumption and reducing the enormous levels of social waste and passive harm that come with it.

The people most at risk are our children as they enter this world where the dominant concept of success is not to live an ethical life, but to be wealthy regardless of the harm caused. There is clearly a demand for the education of ethical consumption for ourselves and especially for our children. Students need to be provided with opportunities that get them thinking about and recognising the problems associated with overconsumption and success. Learning fixed content is not sufficient to respond to the rapid changes that occur daily on the market. Children need the capacity to diagnostically evaluate their consumption (which involves micro-sociological negotiation) and recognise there are alternatives to overconsumption. They need to be aware of the damage that overconsumption and the escalation of desire can do to consumers and others and also recognise that success (that is, a sense of happiness that is worth having, a ―valuable happiness‖) means living an ethical life, not having it all or having the very best.

3. The Politics of Greed: Trivial Domestic Democracy

In his analysis of post World War Two American foreign policy the well known

American political philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky (1928-) reveals a radical devaluing of the lives and suffering of those outside the U.S. (and its allied and client states, such as Israel) combined with a resistance to preventing passive harm. Although

Chomsky does not present a philosophical concept of the ethical, his sociological (or historical) criticisms are located in the language of ―interests‖ and he repeatedly persuades us to pursue interests that are important. The following quote on the bombing of Sudan and other atrocities is unfortunately only one of many similarly disturbing passages we might commonly find in Chomsky‘s criticism of U.S. foreign policy spanning many years:

We might tarry at this point to look into the mirror, often a useful exercise. We

learn a lot about Western civilization by observing the reaction to the bombing

in Sudan, which led to thousands of deaths according to the only credible

estimates—perhaps less, perhaps more. It was known of course that the bombing

would probably lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, as Human Rights Watch

warned once, giving good reasons. Investigations are sparse, and interest non-

existent, apart from fury when the matter is raised. The reaction might be

different if the major producer of pharmaceutical supplies had been destroyed by

a terrorist attack in the United States, Canada, Israel, or some other place that

matters. (Chomsky, 2005, p. 21)

The value of life, absurdly, becomes a function of political community. Some people matter whilst others do not depending on whether or not they live in a ―place that matters.‖ The criterion for the worth of one‘s life is simple: Our lives are important and

others‘ lives are not. If one does not matter, then one is expendable for the sake of achieving state interests, however trivial, however elitist. Devaluing others in foreign countries is a fact we are well accustomed to, even if we would never openly admit it during polite dinner party conversation. Chomsky and Herman speak of the difference between ―worthy victims‖ an ―unworthy victims‖ in relation to propaganda:

A propaganda system will consistently portray people abused in enemy states as

worthy victims, whereas those treated with equal or greater severity by its own

government or clients will be unworthy. The evidence of worth may be read

from the extent and character of attention and indignation. (Chomsky &

Herman, 1994, p. 37)

Furthermore, remarkably, ―while this differential treatment occurs on a large scale, the media, intellectuals, and public are able to remain unconscious of the fact and maintain a high moral and self-righteous tone. This is evidence of an extremely effective propaganda system‖ (Chomsky & Herman, 1994, p. 37). The difference is present, but also deeply hidden, as if the ―differential treatment‖ did not exist at all. This differential treatment is the essential feature of trivial domestic democracy. This is in contrast to a certain cosmopolitan sense of democracy that does not value others on the basis of their accidental relationship to one political community or another. Trivial domestic democracy is an extreme, although not uncommon, form of ―nationalism‖ (or

―anti-cosmopolitanism‖) as defined by the Australian philosopher Stan van Hooft

(1945-).27 It means that we are guilty of committing the ethical crime of sacrificing the

27 According to Hooft,

Cosmopolitanism is a demanding moral position. It urges us, whether as citizens

or as occupants of positions of political leadership, to embrace the whole world

into our moral concerns and to apply the standards of impartiality and equity

most important interests of others in other political communities in order that we may save our own trivial domestic interests. This sacrifice of the unworthy is alive and well in our contemporary democratic climate, particularly in relation to the treatment of those in enemy states in the Middle East.

We are, however, more than happy to recognise and remember those who are apparently worthy. Remembering and recognising is, after all, fairly easy to do and does not present any real threat to our interests. Usually it is little more than a ceremony of some kind. Remembering is fine, however, if nothing follows on from it, such as radical foreign policy changes, then it is just PR, which means it is really not worth anything at all. Nazi policy against Jews is seen as wrong, yet our government policies against those who do not matter is seen as fully acceptable and normal. Perhaps our moral standards have dropped. It is difficult to say. The genocide in Rwanda was comparable to the efficiency of Nazi horror at its height, but the victims were Africans, not Jews.

Chomsky makes the point that not only did the West fail to act in Rwanda when it needed to, but that it fails every day:

The tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide has been marked by justified

horror, not only about the events, but also the unwillingness of the West, Clinton

in particular, to act to mitigate the slaughter—though that is far from the whole

story. There are easy ways to test the depth and character of the concern. Every

across boundaries of nationality, race, religion or ethnicity in a way that would

have been unheard of even fifty years ago. (Hooft, 2009, p. 8)

In contrast to cosmopolitanism, ―nationalism holds that national interests may override the universal humanitarian demands of cosmopolitanism‖ (Hooft, 2009, p. 6).

Trivial domestic democracy is an extreme form of nationalism to the extent that we entirely devalue others in other political communities as people that do not matter.

day, more than 3,000 children die in southern Africa from malaria, probably two

or three times that many from other easily treatable diseases. It would cost

pennies to save them. That is several 9-11s every day among children alone, just

in Africa, economist Jeffrey Sachs writes, attempting to arouse concern about

the slaughter. The Rwandan genocide, according to the official account, lasted

about a hundred days. Simple arithmetic tells us that while lamenting the

genocide, we watch Rwandan-style massacre daily, and not just for a hundred

days, while deploring our failure to act ten years ago. And this case is far easier

to deal with. It requires only bribing pharmaceutical corporations, not sending

troops. But it is our crime, easily preventable, going on every day, so it is off the

agenda. (Chomsky, 2005, p. 22)

Again, there is the sense of the tragedy being hidden, ―off the agenda,‖ yet everyone knows what is happening. It is entirely present. What makes Chomsky‘s analysis all the more penetrating is the fact that despite acknowledging the failure of the

West to respond promptly to the massacres in Rwanda in 1994, we continue to fail through failing to prevent the mass death and suffering that occurs every day in Africa, which, unlike Rwanda in 1994 as Chomsky points out, requires no risky military intervention. The scale of the crime, ―several 9-11s every day among children alone,‖ is unthinkable, even sublime (in the sense of an experience that overwhelms us with its magnitude). In fact, according to UNICEF the number could be closer to around ten 9-

11s a day among children under five alone.28 9-11, for some, was like the world coming to an end, yet every day in many countries it is just normal. It does not even make the 6 o‘clock news. The world is coming to an end every day for tens of thousands of children

28 According to UNICEF, ―at least 30,000 children under five‖ die every day

(UNICEF, n.d.).

and their families. The problem is that the world is not ending in any place that matters, like New York. Rather, the world is ending in places like Darfur, Haiti, Timor-Leste, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia and the Republic of Yemen (UNICEF, n.d.).

Imagine thousands of children dying in Australia, Canada, the U.K. or the U.S. on a single day. We can, then, think of the victims of differential treatment to include not only those worthy victims in enemy countries, but also those victims who suffer during peaceful periods who we fail to recognise as important and fail to help. According to the

German political philosopher Thomas Pogge (1953-), ―severe poverty is by far the greatest source of human misery today‖ (Pogge, 2001, p. 8). He adds that ―there is so much severe poverty in so many different countries that one can find plenty of places where money can be effectively spent.‖29 Pogge also comments on Rwanda and

29 Pogge makes a similar point to Chomsky when he acknowledges the relative ease and lack of sacrifice needed to reduce poverty and save lives without the enormous risks associated with military intervention:

Reducing severe poverty abroad is not easy, of course, but it is generally much

easier than reducing violence abroad. Attempts to stop violence often involve

violent means (as in the bombing of Iraq and Yugoslavia), often provoke

violence (as in Kosovo), and may also serve as precedents that encourage further

and perhaps dubious violent interventions. Such attempts are therefore often

associated with significant moral and economic costs, which are difficult to

measure even ex post, let alone to predict ex ante. Inaction in the face of

violence abroad is thus often the right choice or at least a choice that has strong

and morally significant reasons in its favor. Attempts to reduce poverty do not

face such problems. There is so much severe poverty in so many different

countries that one can find plenty of places where money can be effectively

acknowledges that even if we had an excuse for inaction in 1994, however weak, we certainly do not have one for inaction in the face of extreme poverty now.30

How is it that we can ignore the emergencies? How do we live with ourselves?

The dire situation of the world is not our fault, but we are failing to meet our obligations and that is our fault. However, it is not as if we are not capable of responding, either individually or collectively, when emergency strikes in our own backyard. In places that matter we have demonstrated remarkable responses to emergencies, such as recently in

Australia (February, 2009) when the whole community, including the government, major corporations and the general public, donated tens of millions of dollars to survivors of the deadly bushfires in Victoria, which was widely described as Australia‘s worst natural disaster. According to the Victorian Police, 173 people died in the bushfires (Victoria Police, 2009). There was an amazing outpouring of generosity by all

spent, especially on local goods and services: on enabling poor people to afford

more and better foodstuffs and shelter, on financing more and better schools and

basic health services, or on improving the local infrastructure (safe water,

sanitation, electricity, road and rail links). (Pogge, 2001, p. 9)

30 According to Pogge,

many have thought Western inaction in the face of the Rwandan genocide a

clear-cut indication that we simply do not care about the victims we are

abandoning to their fates. In that case, however, one might still adduce the

complexities and time pressures of a rapidly developing situation as a (weak)

excuse. No such excuse is available for our long-standing decision to tolerate the

massive death toll from starvation and preventable diseases, the reduction of

which would involve lower costs and much lower risks to ourselves. (Pogge,

2001, p. 9)

corners of society, however, why do we not witness the same generosity in relation to

Middle Eastern and African people (and let us not forget that Australia contains a significant number of Middle Eastern and African migrants and refugees)? Does being

Australian automatically make one more valuable? Are Middle Easterners and Africans only valuable once they migrate to Australia? Does their dignity increase as they cross the border? It is quite appropriate that UNICEF speaks of ―silent emergencies‖: ―There are many emergencies which you rarely hear about. They are buried within big newspapers, so small you may not notice them. We call them 'silent' emergencies because they don‘t receive the attention or money they deserve‖ (UNICEF, n.d., para.

1). But even those emergencies that make the headlines can quickly and easily be pushed into the background if they do not take place anywhere that matters. Western society, it seems, only sees the emergencies it wants to see. It engages in a ―selective triage.‖ The problem is not the problem of failing to value others who are different, such as according to race or religion, within our own political community (although this may well be a significant problem in many countries). Rather, the problem is the problem of differential treatment, that is, the problem of undervaluing those who happen to live outside our political community.

It is interesting to observe how the trivia of Western life can come to light when we are struck with a massive emergency (in a place that matters). The immediate aftermath of the deadly bushfires in Victoria highlighted the trivia of life in Australia. A visiting Hollywood movie star was promoting the release of a new film and during an interview about the film he described talking about the film as ridiculously absurd at such a time. A cricket match between Australia and New Zealand was also being played at the time and during an interview a cricketer remarked on the irrelevance of the game.

These are just some of the comments I happened to watch on television. No doubt,

many people across the nation were making similar comments at that time. At the time of an emergency it can seem absurd to focus on interests that are not important.

Unfortunately, it is not until we are faced with an emergency that the trivialities of life emerge in their full colour. The irrelevance of our wasteful Western lives comes to light, as if previously hidden, as if previously silent—―hidden trivialities‖ or ―silent trivialities.‖

Sport plays a big role in the popular culture of the U.S. and Australia. It is a significant part of ―Western trivia.‖ It sits alongside other trivialities such as celebrity gossip, fashion, shopping, horse racing, gambling, etc. Are we to believe that sport is so important that it deserves the high levels of airtime and attention it gets every morning and every evening on the news? Sport produces big scores, great goals, excitement, etc.

Sport may seem like something when in reality it achieves nothing. Our obsession with sport is tragic in this sense. A winning goal may get the crowd excited for a brief moment but the world has hardly changed for the better. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that something has been wasted. And then there are the endless conversations with sports stars about their strategies, their injuries, their feelings, etc.

Often, sport is so important that it has its own section separate from all the other news.

Obviously, for many people there is an interest in sport and sporting news and I am not denying that such interests exist, however, to suggest that such interests are newsworthy

(or eventful) is an insult to everything that really is newsworthy.

I would speculate that it does not take very long for an emergency such as the bushfires in Victoria to recede from the front of our minds. The emergency quickly shifts into the background and we let ourselves slip back into the comfort and familiarity of Western trivia. We focus once again on the ridiculous absurdity of the lives of movie stars and the irrelevance of sports scores. The trivialities hide themselves

again. Can we prevent slipping back into this comfort and familiarity? Can we see other places as places that matter? Can we see the people of such places as worthy victims during times of conflict and during times of peace? Is it possible to not forget about the absurdity and the irrelevance that engrosses Western life? The death of 173 people is highly significant. The death of one person is highly significant. But 173 people is a small number compared to the countless number of those who die from extreme poverty every day, but who are not Victorians and are not Australians. Is it possible for us to genuinely commit ourselves to those others who are valuable regardless of the political community to which they belong?

Some might argue that our moral obligations do not extend to the problems of others on the other side of the world and that our priority should always be the problems in our own country. Naturally, we must solve the problems in our own country, however, this should not suggest that we are justified in ignoring others when there is little cost to ourselves to help those others. According to Singer‘s view, which I see as the only correct one, distance makes make no difference whatsoever to our moral responsibilities. The fact that I happen to know someone by matter of chance, or that they belong to the same national and political community, should be no justification to value their well-being or life ahead of any other:

I do not think I need to say much in defense of the refusal to take proximity and

distance into account. The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we

have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist

him, but this does not show that we ought to help him rather than another who

happens to be further away. If we accept any principle of impartiality,

universalizability, equality, or whatever, we cannot discriminate against

someone merely because he is far away from us (or we are far away from him).

(Singer, 2001, pp. 107-108)31

To evaluate on the basis of distance is discriminatory as Singer suggests, not unlike the way in which a racist is guilty of preferring a person based on their race. The problem is that domestic greed is prioritised—in what can be described as a ―failed triage‖—ahead of global need. Is it possible to go beyond the ―politics of greed‖?

Chomsky and Pogge‘s diagnostic evaluations of contemporary Western democratic policy clearly indicate that Western democracies are failing in their obligations to help those outside the domestic population (with none of the risks associated with military intervention). That is not to suggest that Western democratic states are not doing something, rather, it is a criticism that they are not doing enough.

They give some money or other assistance to those in need overseas, but it is a negligible amount in many cases and much more could, and indeed should, be done.

The occurrence of differential treatment is perhaps hardly surprising. If we probe deeper into the most elementary and fundamental concept and justification of democracy we find that it is intimately connected to the promotion of self-interest above all else.

Some might argue that democratic governments exists purely for the purpose of ensuring that the common interests of the people are given absolute priority above all else. Examples may include the provision of an old age pension, a welfare system, a juridical system, a law enforcement system, a defence force, a public health system, a public education system and many other common interests. On this account, it is not

31 Although I have not suggested ―any principle of impartiality, universalizability, equality, or whatever‖ of the kind that Singer alludes to, for our purposes all that needs to be said is that distance is not regarded as a justifiable basis for evaluating worthy and unworthy people.

clear that there is any reason to have a democratic political community if it is not for the sake of advancing the common interests of that community. It may follow, then, that the redistribution of wealth (or other social resources) outside the political community undermines the very reason for having a political community. At the extreme, it constitutes an undemocratic gesture and a form of theft from the community. Consider the working population of a political community who have worked all their life and paid all their taxes, but were then told, upon retirement, that they will have a portion of their pension benefits cut because there are people in need on the other side of the world who would in all likelihood benefit more, at little cost to the retirees. It may seem unjust (or unfair) to reduce any benefits to such retirees after a lifetime of working and paying their fair share. Are they not entitled to what is owing to them regardless of the extreme poverty in many other parts of the world? On my view, this argument is compelling, but it ultimately fails because an ethical life, whether at the individual or political level, demands that we use our social and economic resources to prevent significant harm to others. To what extent should we prevent harm to others? We should prevent it to the extent that we are not sacrificing ―something morally significant‖ (Singer, 2001, p.

115).32

The Irish political philosopher Philip Pettit (1945-) offers a simple but useful philosophical justification for democratic government in terms of its capacity to advance the ―relevant interests‖ of the governed. It is a justification that resonates within our milieu:

Democracy is a system under which the process of government—the process of

public decision-making—is subject to popular control. By almost all accounts,

the guiding idea is that unless the governors are controlled in this way by the

32 See chapter 5 for more details on Singer‘s ethical position.

governed, then the relevant interests of the governed—however they are

interpreted—need not be taken into account and respected. Unless government is

controlled by the people, so the rationale goes, there is no guarantee that

government will be for the people: there is no guarantee that it will advance the

relevant interests of the governed. (Pettit, 2000, pp. 204-205)

The problem is not the justification itself, which claims that the ―relevant interests‖ of the governed ―need not be taken into account and respected‖ unless the governors are controlled by the governed. Respecting the interests of the people is one thing, but it is another thing altogether as to whether or not those interests are important and worthy of respect. The problem is that the interests of the people according to ―the guiding idea‖ of democracy are not required to be important. Democracy calls upon the governors to respect the interests of the governed, but it does not require the governed to have interests that are worthy of respect. This is far from a trivial problem. ―The guiding idea‖ of democracy, then, lacks any requirement for evaluation. But there is also the problem that the justification is entirely self-interested and completely lacks any requirement for helping those people who do not belong to the people, that is, those who are not part of the governed. Does this not mean, then, that ―the guiding idea‖ of democracy is nothing other than trivial domestic democracy?

An evaluative sense of democracy means that the domestic interests of the governed are evaluated against the important interests of other people in other places that matter. Democracy becomes cosmopolitan in this evaluative sense. This adjustment should unlock democracy from the shackles of domestic triviality, self-interest and differential treatment. Democracy becomes a system of government that supports the valuable interests of the people, both domestic and overseas. Some might object and suggest that our government has no place in projecting its Western values onto others in

other places. Our cosmopolitan sense of democracy does not so much involve projecting our values onto the other, as if to colonise the other, rather, it involves removing the ethically problematic values that we have already imposed onto the other. In this way, if we are guilty of projecting our values onto the other, it is to the extent that we begin to value the other. We begin to see that the other is an important other.

According to this revised concept of democracy, the prevention of passive harm becomes an integral part of political decision-making, not an optional extra that governments may choose to ignore. That is not to suggest that a single democratic government can prevent all of the suffering in the world, which is clearly not possible.

But governments can do much more than what they are currently doing. Any ―ethical improvement‖ should be welcomed. According to our adjusted concept, for example, it would be wrong for a government to provide the rich with significant tax cuts if it could be demonstrated that such cuts would lead to the rich using their tax savings for trivial ends, rather than valuable ends. Our adjusted concept allows us at the very least to justify skimming a minimal amount of wealth from the domestic budget (or other social resource) for others in need if the benefits clearly outweigh any frivolous costs to ourselves. The time has never been better (and perhaps the risks of inaction have never been higher). According to Pogge, our capacity to reduce poverty in the West is historically unique:

For the first time in human history it is quite feasible, economically, to wipe out

hunger and preventable diseases worldwide without real inconvenience to

anyone—all the more so because the high-income countries no longer face any

serious military threat. (Pogge, 2001, p. 14)

Rwanda was bad enough, but to fail again and again without the need for military intervention and ―without real inconvenience to anyone‖ must be regarded as worse. That must be regarded as truly despicable, even if it remains entirely acceptable.

At one level, one may lay the blame squarely at our politicians for not doing enough. However, the lack of regard for the important interests of others in places like the Middle East and Africa begins with the domestic voters who elect their politicians.

The governors are held captive to keeping the governed happy in order that the governed vote for the governors. The risk is that trivial interests come to replace important interests for the sake of increasing votes for the governors. An ethically-rich democracy can only be achieved with ethically-minded citizens voting for ethically- minded governors. This turns our attention to education. Educators need to be developing the capacity for students to evaluate effectively and autonomously. Students need to recognise that others in other political communities are just as important as those within our own country. This means that citizens of the future would happily say

―no‖ to a tax cut if it meant a minimal sacrifice in order to help others in other political communities. Interestingly, this view is at complete odds with our dominant concept of success, which knows nothing about any moral obligation to help others. Students need to be educated with a new concept of success that is grounded in living an ethical life, and they need to be educated in a new concept of democracy: evaluative cosmopolitan democracy.

Philosophical Plateaus

4. The Democratic Rise of the Problem of “How Ought We Live?”

I would like to begin by quoting a passage by the American philosopher Elie

Maynard Adams (1919-2003):

Philosophy does not play a very prominent role in our intellectual life,

education, or reading. In 1966, Time magazine had an article entitled ―What Can

We Expect from Today‘s Philosophers?‖ The answer suggested was ―nothing,‖

or at least nothing important. Philosophy, it was implied, has lived out its

usefulness in our culture. In March 1999, Time had a feature on the great minds

of the twentieth century. They were mostly scientists, technologists, engineers,

and inventors. Wittgenstein was the only philosopher included, and he was

presented as one who wanted to shut philosophy down. (Adams, 2000, p. 349)

It is deeply worrying that philosophy plays a marginal role in our society and even more worrying that might not be important. This passage goes straight to the heart of the value of the whole adventure of philosophy. The stakes could hardly be higher for philosophers. If philosophical problems are not important (for whatever reason), then philosophy is simply a waste of time. Trivial. If this is the case then we should probably be doing something else that is important. Some, including philosophers, would deny that important philosophical work is possible. Some might even laugh at the idea. Is it possible, however, that philosophical ethics is not only important, but perhaps even among the most important of intellectual pursuits?

How ought we live?

The question is far from original, yet it potentially calls us to rethink everything we do, as if to reinvent living from scratch. It might therefore be described as a fundamental problem, or even, the ―fundamental problem of living.‖ It is a question (or

problem) that might provoke a solution that guides life. Philosophers and theologians have long disputed ownership over this problem and this dispute continues today. It has been a problem for philosophers since the Greeks claimed ownership. Over the millennia many other Greek philosophical problems have slid away from philosophy and now live in other disciplines, such as physics, psychology, economics, psychology, etc., however, the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ remains a quintessential philosophical problem.

Our problem should be understood as coexisting and interacting with sociology and education in order to bring forth change in society. Sociology (at the micro level and the macro level) involves ethical problem-solving (or ―social engineering‖) in history whilst the task of values education is to teach values to new generations. It would be utterly pointless to address the philosophical problem without thinking through the sociological and the educational ramifications. These are two ways in which

I believe philosophy can, and indeed should, make an important impact upon society.

This takes ethics well beyond the hallways and meeting rooms of the academy. Far from trivial, I see change via philosophical thinking as essential. Some philosophers have unfortunately succeeded in turning ethics into something for themselves only.

According to the British philosopher John Cottingham (1943-), ―the bulk of philosophical work on ethics is now addressed to those within the specialist confines of the academy‖ (Cottingham, 1998, p. 1). There is obviously nothing wrong with undertaking ethical research, however, it is largely wasted if it is for the benefit of philosophers only. ―How ought we live?‖ is a problem for philosophers to solve by creating a ―concept of an ethical life,‖ but it is up to non-philosophers to use this solution, that is, live an ethical life. It is up to teachers to teach new generations how to use this solution, that is, teach children how to live.

The Greeks gave the problem a life that was previously denied. They raised the problem to the level of thought. In other words, they became fully aware of the problem and became able to articulate it clearly. By achieving this consciousness the Greeks robbed the problem of any pre-packaged or ready-made natural, divine or other solution

(in Western religion it is, of course, our supreme God who has already solved the problem and then passed it down to us in a pre-packaged mode, ready to be unwrapped and used, so to speak, which is why interpretation will always be the central problem for theologians). The infant Greek problem became a problem for human intelligence

(or rationality). It was ready to be understood and it was ready for a solution (or many solutions for that matter). The problem became truly anthropocentric. The Greeks were confronting the new pedagogical challenge of learning how to think for themselves in relation to how they were to live.

The democratic rise of the problem means a direct challenge to the authority and relevance of God and our relationship to God. If the problem is now my problem and I no longer need to seek God‘s approval for my actions, then I have, so to speak, elevated myself to the level of the divine. Although this reasoning may not be widespread, the symptoms of this anthropocentric democratisation are arguably everywhere. It occurs whenever someone asserts a moral imperative that no longer seeks approval from, or conformity with, religious views on how we ought to live (that does not mean that we cannot find plenty of traces of the divine). In elevating ourselves to the level of the divine and taking control of the problem we truly act for ourselves and for one another.

The problem falls from heaven and comes down to Earth (or rather, we discover that it was down here all along). We become the ultimate end towards which everything is directed, not God‘s will. This is captured perfectly in Kant‘s comment that humanity is to be understood as ―an end in itself‖ (Kant, 1998, p. 38). The risk is that we might

have, in the process, aroused God‘s anger. In any case, he may not even exist, which is another consequence of our philosophical engagement in the rational criticism of exiting cultural beliefs. For philosophers, unlike theologians, the non-existence of God is not a problem because the philosophical ownership of the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ does not depend upon God‘s existence. The question of whether or not God exists, from the point of view of ethics, is more or less irrelevant. It might be significant for other reasons, but not for ethics.

Once the problem became ours there was no returning to a pre-packaged natural or divine solution. Unfortunately, however, in some societies the problem is still not in fact a problem at all. For cultures where ―how ought we live?‖ is not yet a problem, or where it is not fully developed as a problem, it has already been solved with the least amount of reflection. One simply lives blindly or robotically according to a tradition and does not raise the problem to the level of thought. This lack of thinking, which is still alive in major religions today, lies at the heart of Popper‘s account of closed societies where ―the right way is always determined, though difficulties must be overcome in following it. It is determined by taboos, by magical tribal institutions which can never become objects of critical consideration‖ (Popper, 2003, p. 185). What is significant here is not so much Popper‘s account of ―magical tribal institutions,‖ but rather, his distinction between ―open societies‖ and ―closed societies.‖ The difference is defined by the capacity for rational criticism, which encompasses any and all forms of criticism (and not just criticism in relation to how we ought to live).

The Greeks were creating a new open society where the infant problem of ―how ought we live?‖ took flight from the tyranny of the natural and the divine. According to

Popper,

the rise of philosophy itself can be interpreted, I think, as a response to the

breakdown of the closed society and its magical beliefs. It is an attempt to

replace the lost magical faith by a rational faith; it modifies the tradition of

passing on a theory or a myth by founding a new tradition—the tradition of

challenging theories and myths and of critically discussing them. (Popper, 2003,

p. 201)

In Greece, certain male philosophers took democratic ownership of the problem whilst women, slaves and children were denied ownership. Today, however, women— and increasingly children as well (children who are provided with opportunities to think autonomously about how they ought to live)—also own the problem. The new Greek philosophically-born open society (or humanism), where the right way was not determined by a pre-packed moral law, meant that the Greeks had to accept personal responsibility for decision-making. Hence, the open society is understood as ―the society in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions‖ (Popper, 2003, p.

186). The open society involves the freedom (and burden) of having to think for oneself completely severed from God‘s will.

It is perhaps difficult to describe any society as exclusively open or closed because every society (and perhaps every individual) opens and closes various zones of life for critical consideration. In this sense, the concept of an open society is perhaps better understood as only ―approximated‖ in historical states of affairs, not unlike the way in which the concept of democracy is ever only approximated in history. The two concepts are obviously closely related. Democracy would be deeply impoverished without a robust open society where rational criticism is welcomed by all members.

Today, in the West we have gained freedom and control over the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ like never before. Thinking for oneself on how to live is everyone‘s

right. Following religious prescription on how we ought to live is still available, but it is simply one choice among others. Our current Western society is one in which we have an enormous degree of freedom and personal responsibility over deciding how we live, but how many of us had a sound ethical (or values) education to equip us with the necessary skills to make the most of our choices and live an ethical life? Ethics is more relevant now than ever before because we have so much freedom and responsibility.

We also have more wealth than ever before, which can be used for a variety of positive or negative purposes. On my view, it is simply dangerous to have the freedom of an open society without a robust values education.

Today we face new closed totalitarian-like forces, which threaten to stifle autonomous thought and the open society, in addition to the old and enduring forces of religion. Corporations, marketing, public relations and the state seek to take control over how we live by persuading us with their ingenious billion-dollar multimedia advertising and public relations campaigns. It might be an attempt to persuade us to open our wallet and buy the latest product or it might be an attempt to manufacture consent for an unpopular piece of policy. In each case there is an attempt to control how we think and act. Multimedia brings a whole ―aural and visual literacy‖ with it (which is why it is essential that children are taught aural and visual literacy alongside traditional literacy).

Thinking autonomously means we are aware of the new ways in which our values and priorities are shaped by new forms of multimedia.

On the surface it might seem that there are only two ways in which the problem

can exist: The problem is either consciousness or not, either open or closed, either

democratic or totalitarian. However, within the sphere of the ―open‖ we discover that

the problem divides between the historical and a-historical, which is to draw upon a

distinction we find in Deleuze and Guattari‘s ―theory of events.‖ The a-historical event

exists above historical concrete states of affairs. It is the concept. A concept for

Deleuze and Guattari has the same structure as a ―pure event‖ or ―becoming.‖ More

precisely, ―the concept speaks the event‖ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, p. 21) and

―becoming is the concept itself‖ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, p. 110). Furthermore,

they write, ―what History grasps of the event is its effectuation in states of affairs or in

lived experience, but the event in its becoming, in its specific consistency, in its self-

positing as concept, escapes History‖ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994, p. 110).

Patton elaborates upon the difference between the historical and the a-historical,

―they [Deleuze and Guattari] suggest that every event simultaneously inhabits both the

historical world of states of affairs and the a-historical world of the pure event or

becoming which is actualized in but irreducible to the former‖ (Patton, 2005, p. 403).33

33 I draw upon Patton‘s explication of a number of concepts in Deleuze and

Guattari‘s work. I also draw upon his explication of a number of concepts in Derrida‘s mature work. I refer to Patton‘s work for a number of important reasons. Firstly,

Patton‘s explication of Deleuze and Guattari‘s concepts and Derrida‘s concepts is insightful, accurate and clear (unlike some other commentators). At times, Patton is simply a superior writer. This is particularly useful for an English speaking readership who may not be very familiar with either Deleuze and Guattari‘s work or Derrida‘s work. Patton‘s writing is ideal for our multicultural philosophical approach, which aims to cut across traditional philosophical cultures and traditions. Secondly, in relation to the concepts I use from Deleuze and Guattari‘s work (such as pure event, effectuation, counter-effectuation, history, etc.), Patton‘s work builds upon and enhances a number of these key concepts. Much of Patton‘s research is precisely in the area that is most useful to my project, namely, thinking about problems, concepts, history and the a-historical.

Thirdly, in relation to Derrida, Patton engages with the problem of justice for

The historical (or sociological) refers to all ―lived experience,‖ not just famous past

events. It is the actual stuff of one‘s social milieu. The sociological, then, is the

historical side of the philosophical (or the conceptual). Equally, the philosophical is the

a-historical side of the sociological.

The Greeks may have invented the problem of ―how ought we live?,‖ but

arguably they did not invent a satisfactory solution. In other words, they did not invent

a satisfactory concept of the ethical (not that I believe the problem is ever fully or

finally solved in one vocabulary or another). My interest here is not to recount the

Greek history of the problem, nor its solution. On my view, what we need to do is

rethink the problem (along with a solution), which is Greek, and create something that

is completely different to the Greeks. By freshly raising the problem and creating a new

(or renovated) philosophical solution to the problem we raise ethical thought to the

level of the concept (or pure event or becoming). The Greek (and Deleuzian) enterprise

Indigenous Australians. Patton offers the example of the ongoing improvement (or deconstruction) of the Australian law with the Australian High Court‘s recognition of native title in 1992 (see chapter 11). My work draws upon this example and I suggest the additional example of the apology to Indigenous Australians offered by Kevin Rudd in 2008 (see chapter 11).

For further commentary on Deleuze‘s philosophy see May‘s (2005) book, Gilles

Deleuze: An Introduction. May presents a clear introduction to Deleuze‘s philosophy and his book is centred around the problem of ―how might one live?‖ Also see

Colebrook‘s (2002a) book, Gilles Deleuze, and her (2002b) book, Understanding

Deleuze, for further clear introductions to Deleuze‘s philosophy. Colebrook comments on a wide range of Deleuzian concepts and she comments on the Deleuzian task of philosophy as concept creation.

of philosophy is to solve problems and create concepts. A solution to the problem

provides us with the sense or meaning of how we ought to live. It suggests an a-

historical concept of an ethical life, which exists irreducibly above history and is able

to traverse absolute difference across history.

The purpose of dividing between the a-historical and the historical, between the

pure event and the everyday event, between the concept and its actualisation, is to

access a ―virtual reservoir of potential,‖ which opens up the possibility of a new history

that is different and better than current states of affairs. By way of historical

actualisation, a freshly created concept of an ethical life opens up the possibility for the

creation of a new and ethically richer future. The concept (or pure event), then, is to be

understood as an ―a-historical constant.‖ It is the vehicle through which diverse ethical

content is created.34 There is also the sense in which no concept is ever exhausted or

finalised in any one state of affairs. The work of the concept is never done. There are

always other ―unrealised possibilities‖ (contained in the virtual reservoir of potential)

for historical actualisation. What it means to live an ethical life, then, can never be

reduced to one historical state of affairs or another. We only ever see a fraction of the

―unfolding of ethical content‖ in history.35 Historical progress is to be regarded as the

ongoing process of improving the way we live in absence of any final historical goal. It

involves improving how we effectuate the concept. In other words, it involves

increasing the extent to which we pursue interests of value. There is also the sense in

which there is a history of ethical concepts: The history of many philosophical

solutions to the problem.

34 See chapter 10 for more details on the concept of ethical content.

35 See chapter 10 for more details on the sense in which ethical content is always a fractional content.

Counter-effectuation is the reverse process of effectuation (or actualisation). It

enables us to see one historical event as only one of many possible realities under its

concept. According to Deleuze and Guattari, ―the event is actualized or effectuated

whenever it is inserted, willy-nilly, into a state of affairs; but it is counter-effectuated

whenever it is abstracted from states of affairs so as to isolate its concept‖ (Deleuze

and Guattari, 1994, p. 159). According to Patton,

to counter-effectuate everyday events is to consider these events as processes

whose outcome is not yet determined. It is to relate them back to the pure event

or problem of which they appear only as one particular determination or

solution. (Patton, 2000, p. 28)

It is by abstracting the concept or pure event of ethics that we see one state of affairs as only one determination of how we ought to live among an infinite number of other possible historical determinations. ―One particular determination,‖ as Patton suggests, is one of many, which is the fluid and ever-shifting content of mobile history.

History forms a multiplicity without finality. Diagnostic trans-evaluation and the creation of new priorities (which is one way to formulate our concept of an ethical life) in one state of affairs might be very different to diagnostic evaluation in another state of affairs. Different evaluations across states of affairs might contradict each other. Values contain the potential to completely change. In one state of affairs paying women less than men might be morally acceptable. In another state of affairs it might be seen as deeply wrong to devalue the labour of women. That is not moral relativism (the view that all views are acceptable and no view is intolerable), rather, it is the ―radical mobility‖ of values at work. Values, then, can be (and have been) turned completely upside down—absolute difference. History is written and rewritten with completely different values. Absolute difference refers to the potential for the radical

transformation of all interests and values. Where ―x‖ used to be morally wrong it is now morally right, but it might be wrong again. We do not yet know how ethics might be effectuated in history in the future. We do not yet know whether ―x‖ will be morally right or wrong. In fact, our current values might already be in the process of becoming no longer valuable. New values might already be at work as they quietly dig under the surface. These changes might be sudden, such as the sudden tightening of freedoms in

U.S. in the aftermath of 9-11, or they may take a very long time and be perceptible only from the vantage point of decades (or centuries) in history, such as valuing the lives, customs and spirituality of indigenous peoples.

Our concept is no ordinary concept. It contains absolutely no values, rather, it only contains the imperative to pursue value in a world without fixed values. Our concept of ethics is effectuated in history in a singular and unique mode with the potential to produce absolute difference. In other words, it has the potential to produce new values involving new interests each time it is effectuated. This means that the concept is unable to be identified in history in the normal sense in which one identifies an object or idea that maintains a stable identity (or stable historical content) across space and time. Consider the concept of a car. Cars obviously change over time, but a car from the 1930s, or from the 1950s, or from any other period, remains identifiable as a car despite ongoing historical change in the automobile industry. Cars change, but the historical content holds a stable identity. New cars are also easily identified and hold their identity. Our valuable interests, however, can cease to be valuable. This is the result of absolute difference. Because values are in perpetual change, or have the potential for change, there is no such stable content or identity, rather, there is only absolute difference. New values may have no resemblance whatsoever to past values and they may fail to hold their identity over time. Good can become evil just as evil can

become good. It is because of this ―unstable identity,‖ because of this absolute difference, that I describe the process of effectuation between the a-historical (or the concept) and history as a process of historical negotiation, which is the process by which evaluation is effectuated in a world without fixed values. Negotiation produces ethical content. Each negotiation involves a singular and unique ethical problem (or diagnostic trans-evaluation).

Historical negotiation does not aim to bring stability to a fluid world, rather, it aims to intervene in the world. In a certain Marxist spirit the aim of negotiation is to change the world for the better with the production of new ethical content, which is a process that is never guaranteed. We might speak of ―ethical progress‖ whereby one state of affairs is judged as further ahead ethically than another, but this does not stop absolute difference. In fact, it is a direct result of it. Progress is only possible as a result of change. But how do we know we have changed our values for the better? If we increase the extent to which we pursue valuable interests, then we have improved historically. However, our historical sense of what is valuable, our ethical content, is constantly changing, or has the potential to change, so it is impossible to understand ethical progress outside of the specific historical negotiations we make. There are no values outside of history, only the ethical demand to pursue value. We can only evaluate change as better or worse according to the historical values we happen to hold at a given time.

Our ethical concept is capable of being identified and unified in history, however, not in the normal sense of the term. The identification of ethical content must be mediated through historical negotiation. The unstable identity can always at any time and become the absolute opposite of what it is. This is why the unity of ethical content across diverse states of affairs is a very fragile unity. It is constantly changing its shape

and form. We cannot really get a sense of ethics just by looking to the historical content of a given milieu. In order to understand ethics beyond the contingency of the present we need to dig deeper and understand the concept of ethics and how it produces ethical content through historical negotiation.

Our concept of ethics (if one can still call it a concept) turns out to have no relationship to any stable historical content whatsoever. In this sense, it is a truly

―minimal concept‖ and it is the only concept that is capable of producing absolute difference, which might turn everything, including all existing values, upside down. It is the only concept that is equal to the task of transforming our values. It is a concept that does not shy away from change. Rather, it exploits the full mobility of all our interests and values. Only a minimal concept of ethics, that is, a concept of ethics that contains no historical content (no fixed values), that is, a truly a-historical concept of ethics, allows for the full historical unfolding of ethical content. Only a minimal concept of ethics does not reduce ethical content to current values, which might already be in the process of becoming no longer valuable.

5. Living in the Land of Moriah: The Problem of “How Ought We Sacrifice?”

Singer presents his principle of ―preventing bad occurrences‖ in two forms. He presents a ―moderate‖ version and a ―strong‖ version, however, he admits that he sees

―no good reason for holding the moderate version of the principle rather than the strong version‖ (Singer, 2001, pp. 115-116). The moderate version claims ―that we should prevent bad occurrences unless, to do so, we had to sacrifice something morally significant.‖ He regards this as a ―surely undeniable principle‖ that demands ―a great change in our way of life‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 115). The principle in its strong version is much more demanding than the moderate version:

If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby

sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do

it. By ―without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance‖ I mean

without causing anything else comparably bad to happen, or doing something

that is wrong in itself, or failing to promote some good, comparable in

significance to the bad thing that we can prevent. (Singer, 2001, p. 107)

I am not advocating that one must accept the strong version of Singer‘s principle. The strong version is the most demanding version of the principle, but the moderate version, on my view, remains a sound ethical principle. The moderate version does not require us to sacrifice any of our interests that are of importance to us, since the moderate version claims ―that we should prevent bad occurrences unless, to do so, we had to sacrifice something morally significant‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 115). The moderate version only demands that we sacrifice our trivial interests (or those interests that are not ―significant‖). If one finds the strong version too difficult, or too demanding, then there is still recourse to the moderate version. At times throughout this essay I refer to

the moderate version and at other times I refer to the strong version. This demonstrates that either version is able to be used and that we are not glued to one or the other.36 On my view, the principle exists outside history. It amounts to a philosophical (or a- historical) concept of ethics that must be effectuated in history.

Singer‘s principle (in either the moderate version or the strong version) could hardly be more relevant for our current affluent and wasteful society. Already in 1971 he was speaking of our ―consumer society‖ and its dependence ―on people spending on trivia rather than giving to famine relief‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 116). Rather than reduce our spending on trivia, we have only seen it escalate over the decades. Our wealth and desires have also escalated. We have effectively violated Singer‘s principle at a much larger and more significant scale.

Singer claims that his principle of preventing bad occurrences upsets our

―traditional moral categories‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 110) and that his conclusions are

―certainly contrary to contemporary Western moral standards‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 113).

He also claims that ―the uncontroversial appearance of the principle just stated is deceptive. If it were acted upon, even in its qualified form, our lives, our society, and our world would be fundamentally changed‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 107). It is this idea of a fundamental change that is perhaps the most interesting consequence of the principle in relation to our current historical milieu. Although Singer does not use the term passive

36 In McGinn‘s (1999) essay, ―Our Duties to Animals and the Poor,‖ he argues against Singer‘s principle of preventing bad occurrences. For McGinn, Singer‘s principle ―encourages a way of life in which many important values are sacrificed to generalized altruism‖ (McGinn, 1999, p. 156). However, the moderate version does not require us to sacrifice any of our important interests. On my view, McGinn‘s criticism is a criticism of the strong version, rather than a criticism of the moderate version.

harm, its prevention sits at the heart of his principle. Failing to prevent passive harm is one of the most urgent and important problems today. It means we go beyond the concept of charity into a new, more demanding, sense of moral obligation:

Because giving money is regarded as an act of charity, it is not thought that there

is anything wrong with not giving. The charitable man may be praised, but the

man who is not charitable is not condemned. People do not feel in any way

ashamed or guilty about spending money on new clothes or a new car instead of

giving it to famine relief. (Indeed, the alternative does not occur to them.) This

way of looking at the matter cannot be justified. When we buy new clothes not

to keep ourselves warm but to look ―well-dressed,‖ we are not providing for any

important need. We would not be sacrificing anything significant if we were to

continue to wear our old clothes and give the money to famine relief. By doing

so, we would be preventing another person from starving. It follows from what I

have said early that we ought to give the money away, rather than spend it on

clothes which we do not need to keep us warm. To do so is not charitable or

generous. Nor is it the kind of act which philosophers and theologians have

called ―supererogatory‖—an act which it would be good to do but not wrong not

to do. On the contrary, we ought to give the money away, and it is wrong not to

do so. (Singer, 2001, p. 110)37

37 In Badhwar‘s (2006) article, ―International Aid: When Giving Becomes a

Vice,‖ she objects to Singer‘s view that we ought to give away money to prevent extreme poverty. She suggests that we need to enable the conditions for those in need to become self-sufficient in creating their wealth. Whilst I agree with Badhwar‘s view that we need to enable the conditions for those in need to become self-sufficient in creating wealth, I do not think that we can object to the moral obligation to give money away to

With this passage in mind we can define two radically different ways of conceptualising moral wrongness in relation to the production of harm. The first conception, which is aligned to our ―traditional moral categories,‖ sees moral righteousness and wrongness as being judged according to the harm one actively produces. Contrary to active harm, passive harm resists the idea that harm can merely be understood in relation to the harm that one actively produces, rather, harm is produced by what one fails to do. An ethics of active harm sees nothing wrong with not preventing harm, even when one does not have to make any real sacrifice to their own interests. This view clearly violates Singer‘s principle. His principle is all about the prevention of passive harm to the extent that we are not sacrificing ―something morally significant‖ (according to the moderate version of Singer‘s principle). According to an ethics of active harm, it is not that preventing passive harm (which is seen as charity) is wrong, rather, it is seen as an optional extra. According to an ethics of passive harm, there can be no room for optional extras, rather, there is the full force of the ―ought.‖ It is only in a world of moral optional extras can we say that there exists a space for

prevent extreme poverty. In McGinn‘s (1999) essay, ―Our Duties to Animals and the

Poor,‖ he does not recognise any obligation to relieve suffering that ―one has had no part in producing‖ (McGinn, 1999, p. 157). In Kamm‘s (1999) essay, ―Faminine Ethics:

The Problem of Distance in Morality and Singer‘s Ethical Theory,‖ she argues that the difference between killing and letting die has moral relevance (Kamm, 1999, p. 162).

Also see the (2009) book, Peter Singer Under Fire: The Moral Iconoclast Faces His

Critics, for a collection of recent critical essays on Singer‘s philosophy, including critical essays on Singer‘s views on preventing extreme poverty. This volume also contains clear and detailed responses by Singer to his critics.

charity, that is, a space where we are not condemned for failing to meet our obligations even when there is little or no cost to ourselves.

We certainly cannot blame our religions for our impoverished ―moral categories‖ because one can easily find evidence in religious texts of the prevention of passive harm. The Christian story of the Good Samaritan is a powerful and well known example of helping a complete stranger in need. In fact, the Good Samaritan exemplifies the demand of Singer‘s principle. It is interesting to wonder how many Christians understand and implement the Good Samaritan‘s moral lesson in their own lives. Taken seriously, some of the moral lessons of Christianity suggest a concept of an ethical life that is as challenging as any other imaginable, and one certainly does not have to be

Christian, or even religious, to appreciate this demand.

Passive harm is ―hidden harm.‖ It is hidden because it is not a moral obligation that is present in our society. It is shielded from ethical responsibility (or obligation, duty, etc.). As Singer says, ―the alternative does not occur to them.‖ Because passive harm is overwhelmingly not seen as something morally wrong, and doing anything about it is mere charity, it arouses no real sense of importance or urgency, let alone emergency. It is as if the emergencies do not exist at all. But passive harm is also the most serious and lethal form of harm. It is a ―passive killing of the other‖ or a ―passive death.‖ How many of the 30,000 deaths every day of children under five are failing to be prevented? (UNICEF, n.d.). Can we say that we are not, to some extent, responsible for these deaths? As good citizens we would never take a knife to another, yet we are happy to let countless others die at no real cost to ourselves. What is worse? Killing one person in the active sense or passively allowing hundreds, or even thousands, to wither away? Certainly, one person dying through active harm is intolerable, but what about the countless others who remain hidden and who are removed from view in our Western

lives? This is happening whilst on the weekends we walk the long marble-lined floors of our favourite shopping centre with our gaze fixed on the specials, the new arrivals and all the other distractions.

We live in an age in the West whereby we have more affluence than any other time in history. This means we have more opportunity than ever to help others in need at little cost to ourselves. Singer‘s point is that this is not something optional or charitable. It should not be for charitable people only. It is what everyone ought to be doing. Whenever we violate Singer‘s principle we are sacrificing something important, or something of greater importance, in favour of something less important. Our society, then, due to its affluence, is also the most wasteful society ever. The imperative to consume, which in many ways is the imperative of consumer capitalism, highlights our morally impoverished Western society. Our shopping centres are our monuments to the waste we produce. They are ―consumer wastelands.‖ Our society, although economically rich, turns out to be ethically poor. At least we can say that we know how to shop.

There is an obvious parallel between the moral demand to prevent passive harm and a duty of care in tort law. For example, a teacher has a duty to provide a safe classroom environment and prevent the harm of her students; a parent has a duty to prevent harm to her child; the management of a department store has a duty to ensure a safe environment for their customers, etc. However, these ―duties‖ to prevent harm do not extend beyond the classroom, the home or the department store. If we are to include the prevention of passive harm into moral consciousness in a categorical sense, then it might be understood as an extension of the concept of a duty of care. In other words, rather than just understand one‘s duty of care in relation to students, children, or customers, it would extend to any bad occurrence of importance that we are in a

position to prevent, ―unless, to do so, we had to sacrifice something morally significant.‖ Particular duties of care in tort law appear as potential examples of how an ethics based on passive harm may appear in law. It is not difficult to imagine new directions for public policy and law. Singer makes an interesting suggestion:

Anyone who has enough money to spend on the luxuries and frivolities so

common in affluent societies should give at least 1 cent in every dollar of their

income to those who have trouble getting enough to eat, clean water to drink,

shelter from the elements and basic health care. Those who do not meet this

standard should be seen as failing to meet their fair share of a global

responsibility, and therefore as doing something that is seriously morally wrong.

This is the minimum, not optimal, donation. (Singer, 2002, p. 212)

One cent in the dollar sounds like a good place to start as a minimum donation.

It provides a solid ground upon which to diagnose the injustice of passive harm. It should not, I imagine, be difficult to assess those who qualify for the consumption of

―luxuries and frivolities‖ provided that we can decide on what these are. If one fails to donate according to this minimum, preferring luxuries and frivolities instead, then one is guilty of producing the passive harm that 1 cent in the dollar would otherwise alleviate. It also means that one is wasting 1 percent of their income on trivial interests.

An ethics of active harm is also consistent with the opportunistic, yet potentially cruel, meritocratic view that one deserves whatever they earn and that one has no moral obligation to give their money away to anyone else (you might even be considered crazy to give your wealth away). One‘s obligations evaporate because one has a

―positive desert status.‖ In other words, one has worked hard for their money and now it is theirs and they deserve it. According to this wide-ranging meritocratic view, giving money away is always optional regardless of one‘s level of wealth. In fact, becoming

rich, and not having to give it away, is one possible (and perhaps likely) interpretation of the American Dream. In this sense, the American Dream, if it neglects the production of passive harm, is perhaps just as much the ―American nightmare,‖ but a nightmare that Americans do not themselves experience.

In a different way to Singer, Derrida presents a similar ethics of passive harm.

He gives us a diagnosis of civilised society that closely echoes Singer‘s diagnosis of our

―traditional moral categories‖:

The smooth functioning of such a [civilised] society, the monotonous

complacency of its discourses on morality, politics, and the law, and the exercise

of its rights (whether public, private, national or international), are in no way

impaired by the fact that, because of the structure of the laws of the market that

society has instituted and controls, because of the mechanisms of external debt

and other similar inequalities, that same ―society‖ puts to death or (but failing to

help someone in distress accounts for only a minor difference) allows to die of

hunger and disease tens of millions of children (those neighbours or fellow

humans that ethics or the discourse of the rights of man refer to) without any

moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a

sacrifice, the sacrifice of others to avoid being sacrificed oneself. (Derrida, 1995,

pp. 85-86)

Derrida distinguishes between the active ―putting to death‖ and the passive

―allowing to die.‖ On Derrida‘s account this difference, between putting to death and allowing to die, is seen as merely a ―minor difference.‖ Although Derrida does not explicitly formulate a principle or concept of what it means to live an ethical life, his thinking is clearly not far from Singer‘s principle of preventing bad occurrences. Also note that the word ―society‖ appears in inverted commas. It is as if ―society‖ ought to be

condemned and stripped of its very name for its shameful hidden harm (or hidden sacrifice). Derrida notes the lack of ―any moral or legal tribunal ever being considered competent to judge such a sacrifice.‖ On my view, Singer‘s principle of preventing bad occurrences functions as a tribunal at the a-historical (or conceptual) level. However, this tribunal must be effectuated in historical states of affairs. His minimum donation of

1 cent in the dollar is an example of such an historical effectuation. It is not clear that

Derrida would agree with either of these views, however, would it matter if he agreed or not? Is there time to worry about such a triviality? Is there not an emergency on our hands? How many have to die before a tribunal is established in the moral consciousness of ―society‖? How many bad occurrences must fail to be prevented? How long before we teach our children an ethics of passive harm, not just an ethics of active harm?

Derrida comments on our society‘s involvement in the organisation of an

―incalculable sacrifice‖:

Not only is it true that such a society participates in this incalculable sacrifice, it

actually organizes it. The smooth functioning of its economic, political, and

legal affairs, the smooth functioning of its moral discourse and good conscience

presupposes the permanent operation of this sacrifice. And such a sacrifice is not

even invisible, for from time to time television shows us, while keeping them at

a distance, a series of intolerable images, and a few voices are raised to bring it

all to our attention. But those images and voices are completely powerless to

induce the slightest effective change in the situation. (Derrida, 1995, p. 86)

The imperative to consume is a powerful way in which our society participates in and organises the incalculable sacrifice as we waste away in our excess, our surplus triviality, whilst others suffer and die. On my view, it is not only the images of suffering

on our television screens that are intolerable as Derrida suggests, but also, just as intolerable, is the waste that our society produces. It is paradoxical that our ―moral discourse and good conscience‖ should be responsible for the sacrifice. Derrida‘s failed

―moral discourse‖ sounds much like what Singer calls our ―traditional moral categories‖ whereby morality completely fails to understand the obligations of an ethics of passive harm. It is an ethics, then, that is far from ethical. Also, our ―good conscience‖ becomes anything but good, not unlike the way in which the American Dream becomes the

American nightmare. As Derrida indicates, we cannot say we are not aware of the suffering and death. We have an impoverished concept of an ethical life and we have built an impoverished ―society‖ around this concept. Those who suffer and die in many countries around the world are in one sense highly visible, yet also invisible, as we shield ourselves from their plight with an impoverished concept of the ethical. Who would think a concept, no less, paradoxically, the concept of ethics itself, would be able to do such a thing? As Derrida indicates, the images on our television screens do not

―induce the slightest effective change in the situation‖ (if there is any change, it must be regarded as negligible). It is precisely because of this high visibility on our television screens that we should feel even greater shame.

A lack of knowledge of the situation is certainly not the problem. It has never been less of a problem. Previous generations may claim to have been ignorant, but with the advent of the Internet it has never been easier to learn in great detail about the need in the world. Understanding extreme poverty and where it exists in the world is only a few mouse clicks away. The Irish singer and musician Bono (1960-) of the band U2 comments on the ethical demand to prevent extreme poverty: ―We can‘t say our generation didn‘t know how to do it. We can‘t say our generation couldn‘t afford to do it. And we can‘t say our generation didn‘t have reason to do it‖ (Bono, in Bedell, 2005,

p. 8). It is because we know and moreover because we can afford it (even if just 1 cent in the dollar) that we ought to be blamed and ought to be condemned as a society. What is our excuse? Many of us in the West should have a bad conscience every day. We should have a ―perpetual bad conscience.‖ The moment we have a good conscience is perhaps the moment we have already begun to forget about the others who we are sacrificing.

For Derrida, there is the sense in which sacrifice is something perpetually unavoidable regardless of the decisions one makes. Sacrifice for Derrida is to be understood in a passive sense, that is, failing to help another, in exactly the same sense as passive harm. The sacrifice of those who suffer from extreme poverty becomes a powerful historical example of a wider ongoing process, which consumes every moment of life. We discover that we can never eliminate the sense of passive harm (or sacrifice), even when we are living ethically. Using the example of God‘s incredible request that Abraham kill his only son Isaac, Derrida generalises sacrifice as necessary in all ethical decision-making. Abraham cannot fulfil both Isaac and God‘s demands, rather, ―Abraham is faithful to God only in his absolute treachery‖ towards Isaac

(Derrida, 1995, p. 68). Abraham, of course, acts upon God‘s demand and by doing so he offers a ―gift of death‖ to God. Derrida‘s point is that this gift of death, exemplified by

Abraham, is the sacrifice we all make at every moment:

I offer a gift of death, I betray, I don‘t need to raise my knife over my son on

Mount Moriah for that. Day and night, at every instant, on all the Mount

Moriahs of this world, I am doing that, raising my knife over what I love and

must love, over those to whom I owe absolute fidelity, incommensurably.

(Derrida, 1995, p. 68)

In order to respond to any one demand all the others at that moment must, in a certain sense, be sacrificed: ―I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another without sacrificing the other other, the other others‖ (Derrida,

1995, p. 68). Being responsible to one necessarily means failing in one‘s responsibility to all the others:

I can respond only to the one (or to the One), that is, to the other, by sacrificing

the other to that one. I am responsible to any one (that is to say to any other)

only by failing in my responsibilities to all the others, to the ethical or political

generality. (Derrida, 1995, p. 70)

It seems that what he is calling the ―ethical or political generality‖ is to be understood as all those others who we sacrifice and there are far too many of them to name or count. There is ―an infinite number of them, the innumerable generality of others to whom I should be bound by the same responsibility‖ (Derrida, 1995, p. 68).

There is the sense of an ongoing inability or failure to be ethical to all involved. The sacrifice of all the others is made on our own personal Mount Moriah: ―Every one‖ is

―being sacrificed to every one else in this land of Moriah that is our habitat every second of every day‖ (Derrida, 1995, p. 69).

If sacrifice is unavoidable, then we face the ongoing task or problem of how to sacrifice, or how to sort (or how to triage38), all of the multiple competing demands (or interests). Who are we going to be responsible towards and who are we going to be irresponsible towards? One might understand ethics as a demand to reduce the waiting time, a fight against time, not unlike the way one fights against time in an emergency situation. This sacrifice, this problem of how to sacrifice, is unavoidable and ongoing.

Even when we think we have solved it we may be wrong in our decision, which is

38 See chapter 6 for more details on the concept of triage.

always an ―undecidable decision.‖39 Derrida makes his point in rather personal terms when he discusses his obligations as a professional philosopher.40 In a sense we are always failing, however, we can perhaps fail better, which is what ethics will ultimately be about: Learning how to sacrifice, or learning how to fail, the best that one can.

In demonstrating sacrifice as essential in all ethical decision-making, Derrida is demonstrating that in order to be ethical one must always simultaneously be unethical

(or irresponsible). He is intertwining the ethical with the unethical. He is effectively

39 See chapter 10 for more details on the concept of the undecidable decision.

40 Derrida discusses how his duty as a professional philosopher is not fulfilled

without sacrifice:

By preferring my work, simply by giving it my time and attention, by preferring

my activity as a citizen or as a professorial and professional philosopher, writing

and speaking here in a public language, French in my case, I am perhaps

fulfilling my duty. But I am sacrificing and betraying at every moment all my

other obligations: my obligations to the other others whom I know or don‘t

know, the billions of my fellows (without mentioning the animals that are even

more other others than my fellows), my fellows who are dying of starvation or

sickness. I betray my fidelity or my obligations to other citizens, to those who

don‘t speak my language and to whom I neither speak nor respond, to each of

those who listen or read, and to whom I neither respond nor address myself in

the proper manner, that is, in a singular manner (this for the so-called public

space to which I sacrifice my so-called private space), thus also to those I love in

private, my own, my family, my sons, each of whom is the only son I sacrifice to

the other, every one being sacrificed to every one else in this land of Moriah that

is our habitat every second of every day. (Derrida, 1995, p. 69)

suggesting that there is no good without simultaneous evil. No ethics without a gift of death. No ethics without sacrifice (or passive harm). No good conscience without a bad conscience. According to Derrida, ―one must behave not only in an ethical or responsible manner, but in a nonethical, nonresponsible manner‖ (Derrida, 1995, p. 67).

He establishes the ―nonethical‖ (or the ―nonresponsible‖) as a condition of possibility for all ethics (or responsibility). In a sense, Derrida is absolutely correct. However, does this not suggest we had an impoverished or simplistic understanding of ethics and responsibility to begin with? Does this not point the way to a rethinking of ethics completely whereby an ethical life is no longer simply a matter of doing the right thing for one or another, no longer simply a matter of preventing the active harm of others, but involves the wider and more complex problem of how to prioritise amongst all of the interests in our own personal land of Moriah whereby sacrifice (and the irresponsibility this involves) is necessarily part of the ethical project and not something other to it? The nonethical becomes absolutely essential to our understanding of ethics, which is perhaps ultimately what Derrida is suggesting. Under this new concept, reducing passive harm is good, but the ethical demand will be even more than that. It will be the question of ―which passive harm are we to prevent?‖ If we are always passively harming (or sacrificing) others, then which harm (or bad occurrence, to use

Singer‘s term) should we prevent? How should we sort (or triage) the need in the world?

The problem of ―how ought we live?‖ migrates to the problem of ―how ought we sacrifice (or how ought we sort) the competing demands at our doorstep in this emergency room of life, ‗in this land of Moriah that is our habitat of every second of every day‘?‖ The land of Moriah is nothing other than the emergency room of a hospital where the triage nurse must make decisions concerning who is to be seen by

the physician and who must wait. The emergency room is absolutely mobile. It travels with us everywhere we go. At ―every second of every day‖ we are triage nurses in this mobile emergency room and we have to make decisions on how to sacrifice at every moment.

Although we may see the problem developing in Derrida‘s thought (―how ought we sacrifice?‖), he falls short of a solution. The solution constitutes an ―emergency concept of ethics,‖ that is, a concept of ethics that is equal to the demands of life in the land of Moriah. On my view, Derrida‘s description of life in the land of Moriah resonates perfectly with Singer‘s prescriptive principle of preventing bad occurrences.

Sacrifice may be unavoidable at all times as Derrida suggests, however, Singer gives us an a-historical solution for how we might sacrifice. According to Singer‘s principle, we are to prevent ―something bad‖ from happening only if we are not ―sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance‖ (according to the strong version of his principle).

That is the way in which we ought to be sacrificing (ourselves or others). The only problem is that Singer does not tell us which bad occurrence we are to prevent.

Naturally, in any milieu there will be any number of bad occurrences of diverse value in need of being prevented.

In order to prevent bad occurrences we must research and target the specific historical ways (whether individually or collectively) in which bad occurrences are failing to be prevented. Once we have targeted a bad occurrence we must weigh the interest that must be sacrificed in order to prevent that bad occurrence. If the sacrifice is not ―comparable in significance to the bad thing that we can prevent,‖ then we ought to prevent that bad occurrence. Alternatively, we could begin by targeting the triviality in our lives (such as trivial consumption, which was already apparent for Singer back in

1971) and look to the ways we can redirect our wasted social resources into preventing

bad occurrences. In either case, whether we begin from our triviality or from the need in the world, we are performing diagnostic evaluation. In other words, we are diagnostically targeting the ways in which our current values and priorities are failing.

Singer‘s principle clearly requires diagnostic evaluation, however, ultimately I do not think his solution goes quite far enough. I do not think it is enough to pick just any bad occurrence. Whilst it is morally good to prevent any bad occurrence of significance, I think we can do the most good by targeting the specific ways we are failing to prevent the ―most significant of bad occurrences.‖ In this way diagnostic evaluation targets not only what is significant, but what is most significant. This effectively raises diagnostic evaluation to its strongest level. If we fail to prevent the most significant bad occurrence, then in some sense we have sacrificed something of not only comparable importance, but of higher importance.

The solution to the problem of ―how ought we sacrifice?‖ should amount to an imperative to put important (or ideally, the most important) of demands first. It may be a demand of our own or it may be the demand of another. Ethics is not just about altruism. It is about ―triaging need.‖ We must do our best to triage the need and put the greatest need first. This means we must diagnostically evaluate our exiting priorities and where we are failing to put the greatest need first we must change our values and priorities. This means we must create new forms of sacrifice (or triage) that are in some sense better (or less shameful) than existing forms. An ethical life involves continually replacing one form of sacrifice with another. It involves continually reinventing sacrifice. This means that an ethical life involves the ongoing sacrifice of the existing and unjust forms of sacrifice. Lawlor provides us with a recent historical example in

relation to the sacrifice of animals.41 The solution to ―how ought we sacrifice?‖ is entirely inventive and revolutionary: It involves the invention of new values and priorities in resistance to the present.

Despite Derrida‘s resistance to allowing others to die, his lack of a solution to how we should sacrifice is a potential philosophical and political risk. According to

Derrida, we cannot justify why we sacrifice one or another (or many others). In effect, he rejects any principle for how we ought to sacrifice by rejecting the idea that we can justify how we sacrifice. On my view, this is a serious omission at the heart of ethics and it is no slip of the pen. A solution is not only possible, but necessary. It provides the criterion for justifying our preferences (or sacrifices). Derrida‘s reasoning for not justifying how we are to sacrifice is planted around the issue of maintaining secrecy (or otherness):

I am responsible to any one (that is to say to any other) only by failing in my

responsibilities to all the others, to the ethical or political generality. And I can

never justify this sacrifice, I must always hold my peace about it. Whether I

want to or not, I can never justify the fact that I prefer or sacrifice any one (any

other) to the other. I will always be secretive, held to secrecy in respect of this,

for I have nothing to say about it. What binds me to singularities, to this one or

that one, male or female, rather than that one or this one, remains finally

unjustifiable. (Derrida, 1995, pp. 70-71)

Further on he adds to the discussion:

41 Lawlor suggests that ―what must happen is that we, we humans, must stop, as much as this is possible, sacrificing animals for our own sake. It is necessary that sacrifice itself be sacrificed‖ (Lawlor, 2007, p. 73).

How would you ever justify the fact that you sacrifice all of the cats in the world

to the cat that you feed at home every morning for years, whereas other cats die

of hunger at every instant? Not to mention other people? (Derrida, 1995, p. 71)

On my view, his account of secrecy here is misplaced. Why speak of secrecy in relation to how he justifies his preferences? Secrecy here results in an apparent inability to provide reasons for why we sacrifice the one or the other. Perhaps not all reasons can be made fully present and become fully understood (and to that extent they are secretive), however, this should not suggest that secrecy becomes an excuse for failing to justify our preferences. Why do I buy a brand new luxury BMW rather than give the money away? There is hardly a secret (unless I try to cover up my real motivations for buying the car). One response might be that I bought it because I believe I deserve the

BMW, because I want it, because I want to project an image of success and perhaps those who suffer on the other side of the world do not matter to me (if they occur to me at all). Even if those others did matter I might not believe that I should have to help them. These are not good justifications, but they are nonetheless justifications. Why does Derrida feed his cat? Perhaps because his cat is the cat that he happens to live with and he probably also happens to have great affection for his cat. To the extent that his cat happens to be his, in the sense of pure randomness, we cannot explain or justify why it is that cat rather than another cat that he might have otherwise owned. Presumably, other cats are no less important. Feeding his cat (or feeding any cat for that matter) is not insignificant. His cat needs to be fed. This is the reason why he feeds his cat that he happens to live with. Naturally, he is not going to be in any position to feed every hungry cat in the world, but this is not what is at stake. What matters from the ethical point of view (which Derrida falls short of) is the extent to which he could be helping other cats (or people) without any comparable sacrifice to himself, or others, in the

process. Perhaps Derrida could feed his neighbour‘s cat when his neighbour is away on holiday.

Derrida‘s silence means that we have no means (or no principle, no concept, no sense, etc.) by which to judge one sacrifice (or preference) as better or worse than any other. Nothing is in need of greater justification than our preferences. This is especially the case in an age of widespread trivia. If we can only sit in silence, then we might as well give up on ethics. We have a decision to make. We can either change the way we sacrifice in ethically richer directions by demanding ourselves (and others) to justify our actions according to the highest of moral standards or we can remain silent with

―nothing to say.‖ Derrida‘s evaluative omission is bizarre, especially given his views on preventing starvation and sickness, which clearly indicate he is committed to pursuing important interests. Why prevent the starvation and sickness that Derrida refers to? If they are not valuable and if we are not justified, then there is no imperative to do anything at all. Ultimately, any justification should include an explanation of how we have tried to effectuate the concept of ethics in history. In other words, it should include an explanation of how we are pursuing interests of value, or even, how we are pursuing the most important of interests. Alternatively, in Singer‘s terms, how we have sought to prevent bad occurrences of significance without sacrificing other interests of comparable importance.

This evaluative void at the heart of an ethical life is not just Derrida‘s failure. In a much less sophisticated (or philosophical) way it is everyone‘s failure. We live in a culture where it is considered overwhelmingly inappropriate, if not outright wrong, to ask others in the private sphere to justify their decisions and actions. In this sense, the private sphere is too private. In the public sphere we expect politicians to provide reasons for their decisions, however, in the private sphere no reasons are necessary.

―Who the hell are you to question what I do?! It‘s my life! I don‘t have to justify anything to you! That‘s not your business, piss off!‖ Everyone is free and no one is obligated (or responsible) to prevent the passive harm of any other (other than with the kinds of duties of care enforced in law that we mentioned earlier). Our reluctance to justify how we live, whether to ourselves or others, is further supported by the meritocratic view that one can do as they please with the money they acquire, which is seen as fully deserved, regardless of any hidden sacrifice and social waste. According to this view, it does not matter how you spend money because you worked hard for it. The risk, ultimately, is the invasion of trivia and passive harm, which effectively allows thousands to die (this is precisely the crime that Derrida condemns ―society‖ for).

Some might object and suggest that having to justify one‘s decisions and actions, by whatever means (ethical or otherwise), is an assault on personal privacy and might even lead to greater harm than good. I am not suggesting that we ought to justify everything we do all the time, which is not possible or desirable. But that is not to suggest that a culture of never having to justify anything to anyone (other than decisions in the public sphere) is tolerable either. I am also not suggesting that nothing is private.

Privacy is very important at certain times, but at other times it hides unethical decisions and actions. An ethical life is certainly demanding, but it is not meant to be tyrannical and create greater harm than it prevents. An ethical life, in this case, would cease to be ethical. We need to find a balance whereby justifying our decisions and actions is effective, and not destructive, in assisting in the production of ethically richer forms of life. In regard to freedom, rather than an assault upon personal freedom, the concept of

an ethical life described here involves a freedom worth having whereby individuals are able to pursue interests that are uniquely important to them.42

Singer‘s and Derrida‘s philosophical thinking on sacrifice both exist outside of history, however, at the macro-sociological level we can say that never before have so many been sacrificed. The steady rise of wealth in the West has facilitated the rise of the greatest mass production of social waste and passive harm ever known. Never before have so many had so much and squandered so much. Never before have so many failed to respond to so many others who live in urgent need. These emergencies make our own problems seem tiny in comparison. This failure is only fuelled by the imperative to consume. Optimistically, this failure also suggests there has never been a greater opportunity to change the way we sacrifice in new ethically richer directions including the recalibration of the market where necessary. This means new effectuations of our emergency concept of ethics in our current historical milieu. We need to start sacrificing ourselves in order that we no longer sacrifice others, but this sacrifice is hardly a sacrifice if it is only consumer trivia we are sacrificing.

42 See chapter 9 for more details on the concept of freedom and the pursuit of uniquely important interests.

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6. Welcome to the Mobile Emergency Room: A Convergence Between Ethics and

Triage

Pursue important interests. Furthermore, pursue the most important interests among important interests. Are we not simply confronted with an event of urgency, but in fact have a full-blown emergency on our hands, not in the sense of a simile, analogy or metaphor, but in a literal sense? If the preventable death of thousands every day is not an emergency, then what is? Equal rights for homosexuals, new rights for indigenous peoples and the protection of the natural environment. Are these not also emergencies? Does not the ethical become medical just as the medical becomes ethical?

By no means a complete overlap, but a zone of convergence? Is not an emergency in the medical sense always a demand to assist those who are most urgently in need? Who weighs in the emergencies, the new patients, as they frantically arrive at the hospital?

Triage is the process of sorting (or prioritising) patients in order of need

(etymologically, triage means ―to sort‖). Beyond the emergency room of a hospital we could include emergency workers, some non-medical personnel in the army, paramedics and others who must perform triage upon occasion. Emergency medicine combines medicine and triage insofar as emergency physicians do not simply treat patients as presented by the triage nurse, but also participate in the triage process. The ethical process of diagnostic evaluation is similar, if not the same, only in a more ―general‖ sense, to that of being a triage nurse in an emergency room of a hospital.43 The emergency room becomes the intellectual (or incorporeal) home of the ethical problem-

43 This is provided that we understand the word ―emergency‖ as involving need in a broad sense, which encompasses not only suffering, but also includes any important interest. The same can be said of the word ―health.‖

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solver until the patients are corporeally treated. Triage nurses must evaluate on the spot without sufficient time. They must understand and prioritise multiple medical problems, which are all competing for assistance. They must decide upon which patient is to be seen first by the next available doctor on duty and who must wait. Patients with injuries or illnesses that are not urgent, or are of similar urgency, may be seen according to their time of arrival, however—and this is crucial—if a new patient arrives who is judged by the triage nurse to be in a far worse condition than anyone presently waiting, however long, then they ought to be able to jump the queue. It is perhaps not uncommon to see a sign in the waiting room: ―At the discretion of the triage nurse patients may be seen in order of need, not time of arrival.‖

The problem of triage is the problem of how to sort the patients as they arrive, or equally, how to sacrifice the patients as they arrive. The triage nurse does not have a choice of whether or not to sacrifice. They must sacrifice one (or many) at the expense of others, even if it is only a matter of time. Time is always important. Patients must wait, but they cannot wait. That is what makes our situation an emergency. Some patients, unfortunately, will be waiting forever and may never even be noticed. There is an ongoing tension, then, between a lack of social and economic resources (this is partly the result of the West‘s vast squandering of social waste) and the high demand. If we can reduce our social waste and reduce our consumption of trivia, then we might better be able to attend more quickly and more effectively to those patients who are waiting and reduce the passive harm. It is crucial that we evaluate the interest that is most important at that moment of evaluating. Importance and urgency go hand in hand. An important interest that can wait is not a priority at that moment and an urgent interest that is trivial is never really urgent. It would perhaps be highly irresponsible for any

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triage nurse to prioritise patients on the basis of anything other than the importance and urgency of the injuries and illnesses that arrive.

The ethical problem-solver takes triage into the general sphere. This effectively expands triage into a general triage. The ethical problem-solver, then, becomes a

―general triage nurse.‖ ―Narrow triage‖ (triage in the normal or traditional sense) becomes a potential example of the general. On my view, the general triage nurse must engage in two levels of evaluation: Firstly, he or she must recognise the ways in which trivial (or harmful) interests are being pursued at the sacrifice of important interests.

Secondly, he or she must recognise the ways in which important interests are being pursued at the sacrifice of the most important among important (or the most urgent among urgent) interests. Who is this general triage nurse? Anyone! When understood democratically (or even, understood as democracy), the general triage nurse might be anyone at any time, identifying and indicating problems with our current political priorities.

Does not ethics and medical triage ultimately face the same problem of how to sort (or sacrifice) the need in the in world? The convergence between ethics and triage should hardly surprise us. Who would deny that problems such as environment disaster in South America, extreme poverty in Asia or child labour in Indonesia, are anything less than emergencies in the strongest sense of the word? Ethical problem-solving (or general triage) includes all of the emergencies beyond actual emergency rooms and beyond the physical human body, which appears as one possible mode or extension.

General triage includes the sociological, the political, the economic, the legal, the psychological, the biological, the environmental, etc. In fact, there is no limit to what the general might become.

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A triage nurse would be reluctant, I imagine, to claim to know precisely what the problem (or disease, illness, injury) is, which is the task of the physician to diagnose.

One of the difficulties involved in working within an emergency situation is making decisions based on inadequate patient information. It is a difficulty faced by emergency physicians as well. A full understanding, or knowledge, is a luxury that nurses do not have (in either the narrow sense or the general sense). Despite this difficulty, a triage nurse must diagnose and sort the patients at the moment they arrive and make difficult decisions, impossible decisions, which are not fully informed. It is obviously vital that the triage nurse work upon an adequate understanding of the patient‘s problem. A poor understanding at an early stage in the emergency room might be deadly, even if it is all just a matter of time. A triage nurse must gain as much relevant information in as little time as possible and there is no need to get any information that is of no use. He or she certainly does not have time to waste on idle conversation and trivia. In the quiet early hours of the morning a triage nurse may enjoy the luxury of wasting time when the emergency room is empty, but when does the general triage nurse find time to waste?

The ―general emergency room‖ is never empty. It is only empty once all the need in the world has vanished.

The ethical problem-solver (or general triage nurse) is always working against poor values and priorities already in existence with the view to new values and priorities. He or she is always working against an ―ethically impoverished triage.‖ The priorities of a society provide us with evidence of the values of that society. Values and priorities go hand in hand. If an interest ―x‖ is not a priority, then clearly ―x‖ is not regarded as terribly important. If a society does not prioritise on the basis of importance and urgency, then whatever priorities are in place are at a high risk of being ethically problematic. The general triage nurse is always tackling the problem of interests of a

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low value being pursued at the expense of interests of a higher value. Their task is essentially revolutionary and inventive at the same time. He or she brings a ―new triage‖ to the world.

In being revolutionary and inventive, diagnostic evaluation is always a ―trans- evaluation.‖ In other words, it is always the creation of new values. The values it creates are other to the values that currently exist to the extent that they may ―absolutely surprise‖ everyone including every existing institution and government.44 The general triage nurse does not simply announce that one interest is more important than another, as if to pluck interests randomly from one‘s milieu. Rather, what is important is the ethically problematic way in which a trivial (or less important) interest is prioritised at the sacrifice of another more valuable interest. In other words, what matters is that evaluation is combined with a ―diagnosis of poor values and priorities.‖ New priorities

(or new solutions) are already embedded within each diagnostic evaluation (or ethical problem). If I claim that ―x‖ is more valuable than ―y,‖ and should not be sacrificed for

―y,‖ I am already implying that ―x‖ should be our new priority (or new triage or new moral imperative), which is immediately other to existing moral norms. Each time we announce deficits in our priorities we are making new evaluations (or trans- evaluations), which are always unique. Each time there will be the demand for new sacrifices (or new priorities). The result is many new resistances and they are all different. The general emergency room is highly mobile. It is essentially transformative and is able to traverse absolute historical difference. Each time it moves it creates difference in actual states of affairs.

The general emergency room intervenes in history but is not reducible to it. The general nurse has no fixed values. He or she only engages in diagnostic evaluation and

44 See chapter 11 for more details on the concept of the absolute surprise.

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the creation of new priorities. Fixed values, from the point of view of the general nurse, only bog down diagnostic evaluation, which must remain mobile. The moment one solidifies their values is the moment one reduces their ability to diagnostically evaluate.

The task of the general nurse is not to bring a prior or fixed set of values to the world or implement a grand plan for change. Change is always local, individual and specific to one‘s milieu. It does not come from only one organisation or another that claims ownership over values and evaluations, rather, it might come from anyone at any time.

It is democracy itself. If the emergency room were to become reduced to the historical values and priorities of one local milieu or another, then it would cease to be mobile. It would become static. It would be unable to move and perform diagnostic evaluations effectively throughout historical change. It would immediately close the door to the evaluations of others who have different values. It would start to become totalitarian.

All of us should feel the enormous responsibility of the triage nurse to sort those most in need, which is not just a matter of suffering, but a matter of life and death. We all have our have our patients waiting in the waiting room including ourselves, our families, our friends, the poor, the sick, those overseas, etc. We always must make the difficult decision of which demand we are going to put first, which amounts to a sacrifice of all the other demands. As Derrida says, ―I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another without sacrificing the other other, the other others‖ (Derrida, 1995, p. 68). Our emergency room is the world itself all the time. We never get any relief from this world of great need. Although we must sleep, although we must rest, our time of rest is always ―haunted by the other.‖ We are

―perpetually restless,‖ even, in a sense, when we are sleeping. Always sacrificing.

Always prioritising. We are without enough time all the time. Even in the most harmless and peaceful of moments in life we are standing in an emergency room and

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have patients waiting. But our Western society easily covers up the emergencies as if they did not exist: the shopping centres, the showroom wonders, the surplus trivia, the infinite number of leisure activities and other diversions.

One might object to the convergence of ethics with triage on the grounds that in many other occupations, such as information technology, needs are also prioritised on the basis of their importance and urgency. So what makes medical triage special? A convergence with information technology, for example, would run the risk that interests are neglected (replaced with a ―non-sentient disorder‖). There is also the risk of neglecting the full force of the emergency. It is very important that we not confuse disease with disorder (which is precisely what we see when we have, for example, a network diagnostics in information technology where only disorder is at stake). There is always the potential misunderstanding that the task of narrow triage (and ―narrow medicine‖) is to fight disorder despite the fact that many diseases are obviously disorders in the sense that the body fails in its function (or physiology). It is for this reason, this risk of confusing disease with disorder, that I am reluctant to describe the general (the social, historical, environmental, etc.) as a ―general body‖ extending beyond the narrow physical human body, unless we understand the general body to have no single or fixed physiology (or fixed anatomy for that matter). In other words, the general body is a ―fluid body.‖ It is a body that keeps changing. It is a body without any fixed organs. It is composed of a ―fluid physiology‖ and a ―fluid anatomy.‖ It is mobile history itself. In the general ethical sphere there is no normal function outside the social milieu in which functions arise. Ethics has little concern with normality. This is quite unlike ―narrow nurses‖ and ―narrow physicians‖ who work upon ―narrow bodies‖ with ―stable anatomies‖ and ―stable physiologies.‖ Ethics has no need to raise the question of ―normal function‖ or ―disorder‖ because they turn out to be ―historical

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fictions.‖ Ethics is only concerned with the value of the interests it is confronted with, not whether or not they are part of the normal functioning of anything, such as an institution, economy, nation, community, etc. The radical mobility of history ensures that there is no single or normal function to anything.

After we have performed the intellectual task of triaging patients it is necessary to make the final step: We must corporeally solve the problems. In other words, the next step is medical treatment, however, a narrow physician (or psychologist or psychiatrist45) would gather further patient information. An attempt at living ethically, then, is composed of general triage and ―general medicine.‖ The roles of a triage nurse and physician in the narrow sense are demarcated in a relatively clear division of labour.

Emergency medicine would appear to blur the distinction. We might describe the ethical problem-solver as a general triage nurse, a ―general physician‖ or a ―general emergency physician.‖ We may also describe ethics as a ―general epidemiology‖ insofar as the problems are general epidemics or general pandemics (social, political environmental, etc.), which transcend the narrow physical body.

This generalisation of triage (or medicine, etc.) does not entail that the narrow form is inherently ethical, rather, it only has the potential to be ethical. For example, it is not clear that cosmetic plastic surgery, which can cost an enormous amount of money, is always achieving important interests. Paradoxically, becoming more medical in the general sense may mean becoming more medical than those who actually work in medicine (such as cosmetic plastic surgeons). If this paradox is possible it is because the

45 When I use the word ―medical‖ (or when I refer to bodily disease) I include the mental illness of psychology and psychiatry. I have no need to separate the diseases of the body from the diseases of the mind. For our purposes, mental illness, like bodily illness, falls under the narrow form of medicine.

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concept of general triage is capable of being more medical (or ethical) than medicine in the narrow sense. Paradoxically, yet perhaps not unlikely, a modest checkout operator, a truck driver, a teacher or a cleaner may be more medical in the general sense than some physicians.

Interestingly, narrow medicine has an enormous difficulty containing itself within its own bodily limits and finds itself constantly spilling into the general. Narrow medicine effectively breaks free of its physical bodily limit and also breaks free of its narrow understanding of anatomy and physiology. Consider the recent and ongoing problem of obesity in the West (particularly in places like the United States and

Australia—two of the world‘s fattest nations). Obesity is often described as an epidemic, which I believe is entirely accurate, both in the narrow and general sense. We can speak of obesity as a medical problem in the narrow sense whereby it is purely a bodily problem in the sense of high amounts of excess fat on our bodies, reduced fitness levels, increased risk of contracting heart disease, etc. However, obesity can also be understood in wider terms including marketing, advertising, urban planning, sedentary lifestyle, television, etc. It is a problem that multiplies in many directions that intersect between the narrow and general. Obesity is a general triage (or ethical) problem of poor priorities. Far from the problem of not having enough, which is the problem for so many millions of others in other parts of the world, obesity is the problem of having too much and failing to distribute our social resources into valuable (or healthy) ends. The victims are not only the others we sacrifice through failing to attend to their need, but ourselves as we ruin our bodies. The excess fat on so many bodies in the West is unfortunate evidence of our overconsumption. Everyone loses. Only the market really wins. Some general medical treatments have begun to be effectuated in various ways including new legislation that restricts the number of junk food advertisements able to be screened

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during children‘s television programming; the development of campaigns to encourage children to eat healthily and increase their physical activity; the banning (or restricting) of high-calorie soft drink and high-calorie low-nutrition food at school canteens, etc.

Much is still to be done.

Many of the most urgent and important problems in the general sense intertwine with medicine in the narrow sense. They effectively spill into each other. Ultimately, every general problem is always a narrow problem insofar as it impacts physically (or psychologically) upon individuals. The wider point is not that we need to discern the narrow from the general. Rather, the point is that an ethical life always involves targeting deficits in our current priorities (diagnostic evaluation) with a view to the reinvention of our priorities. Ethics involves triaging those in need in resistance to our current values and priorities.

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7. Diagnostic Trans-Evaluation and the Creation of New Priorities

Kymlicka makes a critical argument against what he calls ―utilitarianism of the preference-satisfaction variety‖ according to which ―something is made valuable by the fact that lots of people desire it‖ (Kymlicka, 2002, p. 15). For Kymlicka, the mere fact of preferring something does not make that thing valuable:

On the contrary, its being valuable is a good reason to prefer it. And if it is not

valuable, then satisfying my mistaken preference for it will not contribute to my

well-being. My utility is increased, then, not by satisfying whatever preferences

I have, but by satisfying those preferences which are not based on mistaken

beliefs. (Kymlicka, 2002, p. 15)

Kymlicka‘s criticism suggests an imperative to subject our interests (and others‘ interests) to evaluation prior to prioritising them (not that there is ever any guarantee that we will not end up with a mistaken preference). Utility becomes something more than desire. It becomes ―valuable desire.‖ A ―mistaken preference‖ on Kymlicka‘s account appears to be a ―trivial preference‖ whereby there is no ―good reason‖ for us to prefer it. Evaluating our desires and avoiding mistakes is often very difficult. According to Kymlicka,

it is not always easy to tell what is worth having, and we could be wrong in our

beliefs. We might act on a preference about what to buy or do, and then come to

realise that it was not worth it. (Kymlicka, 2002, p. 15)

Often it can be very difficult to tell what is worth having. This is perhaps one of the most challenging elements of living ethically and it goes straight to the heart of the difficulty involved in negotiating value in a world without fixed values.

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The Canadian political philosopher Charles Taylor (1931-) asserts the concept of strong evaluation, which compliments Kymlicka‘s criticism of ―utilitarianism of the preference-satisfaction variety.‖ Taylor refers to the significance of interests and their relation to freedom:

When we reflect on this kind of significance, we come up against what I have

called elsewhere the fact of strong evaluation, the fact that we human subjects

are not only subjects of first-order desires, but of second-order desires, desires

about desires. We experience our desires and purposes as qualitatively

discriminated, as higher or lower, noble or base, integrated or fragmented,

significant or trivial, good and bad. (Taylor, 2006, p. 392)

Although ―desires about desires‖ perhaps sounds somewhat awkward, Taylor‘s concept of strong evaluation appears to satisfy Kymlicka‘s demand to prefer something because it is important, not simply because we happen to desire it. Desires are not desired simply because they exist (―first-order desires‖). Rather, they are desired because they are evaluated as important (―second-order desires‖). First-order desire essentially has no interest in evaluating desire before we prefer it. Evaluation begins with second-order desire whereby, at the very least, the ―trivial‖ is separated from the

―significant‖ (or ―higher or lower,‖ ―good and bad,‖ etc.). But evaluation is much more complicated than just discriminating between desires that are judged as ―significant‖ or

―trivial‖ as Taylor suggests. There is naturally an enormous range of significant desires including enjoying a satisfying career, enjoying time with family, alleviating extreme poverty, etc. On my view, all evaluation (or strong evaluation) demands that we not only separate trivial desires from important desires, but also that we prioritise the most important desires among important desires. This creates a subset of stronger evaluations among strong evaluations. Hence, second-order desire (or strong evaluation)

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does not go far enough. Firstly, we need to exclude the trivia through strong evaluation.

Secondly, we need to evaluate and prioritise the most important among important desires, which can be regarded as involving ―third-order desires,‖ or alternatively, the strongest evaluation among strong evaluations.

Diagnostic evaluation can occur at the level of strong evaluation and at the level of the strongest evaluation. As a bare minimum, ethics requires us to perform diagnostic evaluation at the level of strong evaluation. Ideally, we should be performing evaluation at the strongest level. Only the strongest of diagnostic evaluations takes an ethical life to its highest possible level, which is very much an emergency sense of evaluation. I use the word ―emergency‖ to highlight the absolute urgency and importance of the need in the world. Diagnostic evaluation is the essential task of negotiating the (a-historical) concept of ethics in history. To evaluate is to negotiate. Strong evaluations (and the strongest of evaluations) are negotiations of value in a world without fixed value.

Evaluation negotiates trivial interests, important interests and the most important among important interests. Once we have diagnostically evaluated (or identified the problem) we may begin to create new priorities (or new solutions), which are implied in the evaluations.

Diagnostic evaluation occurs whenever we identify an interest of a lower value being prioritised at the sacrifice of an interest of a higher value. There must always be at least two interests involved that have an asymmetric value in relation to one another.

Although diagnostic evaluation is a single problem-solving process, and we speak of it in a singular way, it always involves ―two asymmetric evaluations‖ involving at least two interests of asymmetric value, which are in the wrong order of priority. The ethical problem-solver changes the order of priority and the two interests come to exist in a new ethically richer asymmetric relationship of value. In other words, the interest of

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higher value comes to be newly prioritised (or triaged) ahead of the interest of lower value.

Diagnostic evaluation should not be thought of as merely random or theoretical, rather, it is practical and focused. It engages with current reality and concerns itself with change that is realistically possible. It does not have to move mountains. Rather, it only has to move enough that a difference is made, and sometimes difference is only perceptible after years of imperceptible change. Any significant difference for the better should be welcomed. The changes in priorities we are able to make, either individually or collectively (or politically), might be described simply as our ―zone of action.‖

―What can we do, here and now, to live a more ethical life?‖ ―Where can we diagnostically evaluate and create new priorities?‖

The strongest of evaluations, need, importance, urgency, emergency—do not these words immediately conjure thoughts of mitigating and preventing suffering and death? Indeed, perhaps much more often than not the mitigation and prevention of suffering and death is precisely what diagnostic evaluation leads to. Unsurprisingly, a number of philosophers have placed the mitigation and prevention of suffering as a moral priority. Popper is a notable example. He places a clear emphasis on the urgency of a diagnostic-based demand to reduce suffering. This is commonly known as

―negative utilitarianism,‖ however, Popper himself calls his approach ―piecemeal engineering,‖ which he opposes to ―utopian engineering‖ (Popper, 2003, p. 166).

Popper‘s piecemeal social engineer (who appears to be much like our ethical problem- solver) adopts ―the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good‖ (Popper, 2003, p. 167). Their fight begins with the problems in the world. In others words, their task is thoroughly diagnostic. In Popper‘s criticism of utilitarianism

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he focuses on the value and urgency of reducing suffering: ―I believe that there is, from the ethical point of view, no symmetry between suffering and happiness, or between pain and pleasure‖ (Popper, 2003, p. 317). Further on he adds to the discussion:

In my opinion human suffering makes a direct moral appeal, namely, the appeal

for help, while there is no similar call to increase the happiness of the man who

is doing well anyway. (A further criticism of the Utilitarian formula ―Maximize

pleasure‖ is that it assumes, in principle, a continuous pleasure-pain scale which

allows us to treat degrees of pain as negative degrees of pleasure. But, from the

moral point of view, pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure, and especially not

one man‘s pain by another man‘s pleasure. Instead of the greatest happiness for

the greatest number, one should demand, more modestly, the least amount of

avoidable suffering for all; and further, that unavoidable suffering—such as

hunger in times of an unavoidable shortage of food—should be distributed as

equally as possible). (Popper, 2003, p. 317)

Popper replaces the utilitarian imperative to ―Maximize happiness‖ with

―Minimize suffering.‖46 He evaluates the minimisation of suffering as more urgent and

46 According to Popper,

all moral urgency has its basis in the urgency of suffering or pain. I suggest, for

this reason, to replace the utilitarian formula ―Aim at the greatest amount of

happiness for the greatest number,‖ or briefly, ―Maximize happiness,‖ by the

formula ―The least amount of avoidable suffering for all,‖ or briefly, ―Minimize

suffering.‖ Such a simple formula can, I believe, be made one of the

fundamental principles (admittedly not the only one) of public policy. (The

principle ―Maximize happiness,‖ in contrast, seems to be apt to produce a

benevolent dictatorship.) We should realize that from the moral point of view

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more important than the augmentation of happiness: ―Pain cannot be outweighed by pleasure‖ (Popper, 2003, p. 317) and happiness is ―much less urgent than the rendering of help to those who suffer‖ (Popper, 2003, p. 256). The problem, however, is that moral urgency does not completely overlap with suffering despite the fact that moral urgency may well often, or even overwhelmingly, mean that we must minimise suffering rather than augment happiness in the positive sense. Popper is certainly not mistaken by placing an emphasis on minimising suffering, however, this does not mean that suffering is to be automatically valued as higher than any happiness, which is the outcome his argument clearly risks. Without in any way allowing for the rise of a

―benevolent dictatorship,‖ which he sees as a risk associated with the political pursuit of happiness, we can make room for the evaluation of happiness both individually and politically. The securing of the legal right to same sex marriage is an example of a political interest that is not simply a matter of minimising suffering, but a preference that contains great joy for those involved. Moreover, the legal right to same sex marriage is a strongly contested political interest, yet nothing could be more private or individual for the couples involved (it is, then, perhaps not very helpful to rely too much on the public/private distinction). Ultimately, the moral task is to evaluate all interests and adopt measures to secure those interests that are most valuable and urgent. In addition to Popper‘s imperative to minimise suffering, we might say ―reduce injustice,‖

―protect important rights‖ or ―promote valuable happiness.‖ Without in any way denying the political (and individual) task of minimising suffering, we can maintain the

suffering and happiness must not be treated as symmetrical; that is to say, the

promotion of happiness is in any case much less urgent than the rendering of

help to those who suffer, and the attempt to prevent suffering. (Popper, 2003, pp.

255-256)

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sense of urgency and importance without sacrificing the pursuit of happiness in the political arena.

The Irish writer Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), who also emphasises the mitigation of suffering, did not write philosophy in the standard non-fictional sense.

John Calder (1927-) was Beckett‘s friend and the main publisher of Beckett‘s prose texts after the success of the (1954) play, Waiting For Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two

Acts, on the London stage. According to Calder, ―Beckett‘s ethics cannot be directly quoted, only deduced. They are not clearly stated because of the overwhelming pessimism underlying his thinking‖ (Calder, 2001, p. 140). This lack of clarity due to an

―overwhelming pessimism underlying his thinking‖ is far from insignificant, but it is not our problem for the moment. In Calder‘s deduction of the ethics of Beckett‘s literature we find a diagnostic principle that is strikingly similar to Popper‘s minimise suffering, however, the focus for Calder‘s Beckett is clearly on the individual, not public policy. Calder deduces an intriguing imperative:

The message that emerges most clearly from his work is that one should do

whatever is possible to alleviate the suffering of others, and where possible

prevent it, while ignoring one‘s own problems, whatever they might be, reducing

by act of will one‘s own capacity to feel pain. But the most effective way to

reduce suffering is to bring no new life into the world. (Calder, 2001, p. 129)47

47 Interestingly, he places a ―but‖ after the ―message that emerges most clearly‖ as if to suggest the actual or correct solution to the problem: ―But the most effective way to reduce suffering is to bring no new life into the world.‖ Does this mean we ought not bring new life into the world? The answer, I believe, is far from clear. I discuss this further in chapter 12.

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An example of this message is clearly demonstrated in Beckett‘s (1972) book,

More Pricks Than Kicks, when his protagonist Belacqua objects to his aunt boiling a lobster live (Beckett, 1972, p. 22). Unfortunately, however, it is not clear what

―reducing by act of will one‘s own capacity to feel pain‖ might entail. Other questions arise, which Calder does not answer: To what extent ought we be ―ignoring‖ our own

―problems‖? When or to what extent can we say we are doing ―whatever is possible to alleviate the suffering of others‖? Singer‘s principle of preventing bad occurrences can be of assistance here. He uses a fictional example (very similar to the Christian story of the Good Samaritan) in order to demonstrate his principle:

An application of this principle would be as follows: if I am walking past a

shallow pond and see a child drowning in it, I ought to wade in and pull the child

out. This will mean getting my clothes muddy, but this is insignificant, while the

death of the child would presumably be a very bad thing. (Singer, 2001, p. 107)

We are to ignore our own problems, as Calder suggests we do, to the extent that we are not sacrificing something of comparable importance to ourselves in the process of preventing bad occurrences (or the most significant of bad occurrences), such as getting our clothes muddy in order to save a drowning child. If our own problems are merely trivial by comparison (as so many of our problems happen to be in the West), then clearly we should take heed of Calder‘s call to ignore our own problems.

At one point in formulating his principle Singer refers to ―as much suffering as we can‖ rather than ―something bad‖: ―We ought to be preventing as much suffering as we can without sacrificing something else of comparable moral importance‖ (Singer,

2001, p. 113). ―Something bad‖ is perhaps a better choice of words than ―suffering‖ because the word ―suffering‖ shares the risk we find in Popper: The risk that we might marginalise, or even eliminate, the augmentation of happiness in the positive sense.

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There is another important reason to say ―something bad‖ rather than ―suffering‖:

―Something bad,‖ like the words ―interest‖ or ―preference,‖ is able to facilitate retributive justice in a way that the imperative to minimise suffering cannot. At times retribution can be important and like all other interests it must be evaluated when necessary. It is possible that it might be a bad occurrence not to punish someone who has committed a crime. It is interesting to note that the words ―justice‖ and ―fairness‖ can refer to either the minimisation of suffering or its augmentation. The word

―happiness‖ (whether positively or negatively formulated) cannot refer to retribution in the way that justice (or fairness) can. We could not ordinarily say that the retributive justice of removing welfare benefits to welfare cheats is happiness. The word

―happiness‖ is ultimately not sufficient in this sense. Something bad, interest, preference, justice and fairness can all be understood to refer to either the augmentation or minimisation of suffering. There is no reason why we cannot describe the aim of ethics, involving the strongest of evaluations, as justice (or fairness).

It is interesting to note how Singer shifts the concept of emergency beyond the publicity of the present:

The Bengal emergency is just the latest and most acute of a series of major

emergencies in various parts of the world, arising both from natural and made-

made causes. There are also many parts of the world in which people die from

malnutrition and lack of food independent of any special emergency. (Singer,

2001, p. 106)

We have ―special emergencies,‖ which achieve a degree of mass media attention. These emergencies are constructed and presented by the media. However, we also have ―everyday emergencies,‖ which elude media attention. Everyday emergencies are not just one-offs on television, but occur all the time. They are so common that they

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barely register at all in the media. It is as if they did not exist at all. Everyday emergencies are something like what UNICEF calls silent emergencies. Ultimately, special emergencies are not really anything special. They are no more important or urgent than everyday (or silent) emergencies. An emergency should never be silent or be accepted as a normal daily occurrence. Singer discusses Bengal as an example because it is the ―present concern‖ (in 1971) and because it had ―been given adequate publicity‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 106). Bengal is the ―present concern‖ but Singer is just as concerned, it seems, with every emergency that does not make it present, every emergency that is every bit an emergency but fails to make it in the present as an emergency. He is concerned with emergencies that, completely unlike 9-11, are not monumental spectacles in places that matter.

Singer‘s principle satisfies Taylor‘s and Kymlicka‘s respective demands for the evaluation of our preferences. Ultimately, however, Singer‘s principle falls short of the strongest level of evaluation because his principle merely says that we ought to be preventing any bad occurrence from happening (without sacrificing anything as important in the process). Strongest evaluation demands that we not only prevent just any bad occurrence, but target the most urgent and important of bad occurrences. This is what gives ethics the full sense of being in an emergency. We may, then, replace

―something bad‖ with ―the most significant of bad occurrences.‖ This effectively forces ethics into an upward trajectory of preventing the most significant of harms: ―If it is in our power to prevent [the most significant of bad occurrences] without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.‖

It must be noted that the prevention of the most significant of bad occurrence is to be understood as a realistic goal. It is grounded in current possibilities for action within our zone of action. Therefore, it is highly dependent upon historical context. In

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fact, it has no fixed meaning or identity. It sways with the movements of history.

Although Singer does not speak in such terms, nothing prevents us from reconstructing his principle and understanding it in an absolutely dynamic world of changing values.

Interestingly, Singer‘s practical application of his principle suggests a deep commitment to the creation of new values and priorities. He makes us acutely aware that any attempt to live ethically must involve an assessment of our current values and priorities with a view to the creation of new values and priorities if necessary:

In comparison to with the needs of people starving in Somalia, the desire to

sample the wines of the leading French vineyards pales into insignificance.

Judged against the suffering of immobilized rabbits having shampoos dripped

into their eyes, a better shampoo becomes an unworthy goal. The preservation of

old-growth forests should override our desire to use disposable paper towels. An

ethical approach to life does not forbid having fun or enjoying food and wine,

but it changes our sense of priorities. (Singer, 2001, p. 271)

It is clear that Singer is taking up arms against the present in resistance to poor values and priorities. Note the fact that it is not simply a matter of the number of preferences, rather, it is a matter of the qualitative importance of the preferences. In each example it is a matter of what is qualitatively more important or most important and of reordering our priorities accordingly. That is not to suggest that quantity or aggregation is not at stake, because we can easily imagine hundreds, if not thousands, of people enjoying the benefits of new improved shampoo products that were developed using animal testing. I doubt, however, that any such variation in the number of new shampoo users would alter Singer‘s evaluation.

Singer also wants us to be aware that ―an ethical approach to life does not forbid having fun or enjoying food and wine, but it changes our sense of priorities.‖ On my

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view, an ethical approach to life is demanding but it is not meant to take the enjoyment out of life and it is certainly not meant to tyrannize and create greater harm than it prevents. I am not suggesting that we need to evaluate everything we do all the time.

Such a thing is not possible or desirable. Diagnostic evaluation is focused on targeting problems and is only needed at certain times, such as when significant interests are at stake. We need to find a balance whereby diagnostic evaluation is effective in targeting problems and bringing about better (or less shameful) forms of life.

Diagnostic evaluation is an ongoing warfare against our current values and priorities whereby the environment, the people, the interests and the values are always shifting. The aim is never stability. Evaluation has no interest in stabilising anything.

Rather, the aim is always to induce change in ethically desirable directions and those directions may change again and again. Each time it is a matter of understanding and responding to the unique needs of the current state of affairs. The creation of new values and priorities in history means evaluation for the ethical problem-solver is always trans- evaluation. Trans-evaluation is an evaluation that changes the values themselves. It is the essentially transformative element of diagnostic evaluation. Diagnostic evaluation contains absolutely no ethical content and no fixed interests or values. Rather, its sole purpose is the ―ongoing reinvention of ethical content‖ without ever arriving at any final values or anything like the best values.

Singer‘s argument for ethical vegetarianism is usually understood through his well known analogy-based ―speciesism‖ argument, however, he diagnostically trans- evaluates when he reinvents the value of the taste of meat (along with reinventing the value of the lives and suffering of animals) in a separate argument to speciesism:

For the great majority of human beings, especially in urban, industrialized

societies, the most direct form of contact with members of other species is at

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meal-times: we eat them. In doing so we treat them purely as means to our ends.

We regard their life and well-being as subordinate to our taste for a particular

dish. (Singer, 2006, p. 572)

Further on he adds that ―our practice of rearing and killing other animals in order to eat them is a clear instance of the sacrifice of the most important interests of other beings in order to satisfy trivial interests of our own‖ (Singer, 2006, p. 572). Does our

―taste‖ hold much weight next to the life and suffering of a cow? According to Singer, it is merely trivial, and therefore, it is not really to be considered as much of an interest at all. Singer attempts, then, to strip away the importance of the taste of meat, which effectively reinvents its value. He makes the taste of meat trivial. Although there is clearly a widespread consumer demand to buy and eat meat, this does not mean that this consumer demand (or preference) must be something more than trivial when it is weighed against the life and suffering of animals. The fact that there is a demand on the market is only evidence of Taylor‘s first-order desire. It does not suggest that strong evaluation has taken place. One might still maintain, for whatever reason, that the suffering and lives of animals are not as important as eating meat. For example, one may put forward the health benefits of meat eating. Whatever the case, the suffering and life of the animal recedes from being as important, and values may shift back in favour of meat-eaters. Values slide in and out. They rise and fall. Nothing is fixed or immobile, including the interests themselves. The high processed, high calorie and low-nutrition food items that are quintessential to the fast food industry (such as the burger meat, the shakes, the fries, etc.) are examples of new interests in food. Singer also demonstrates that it is not necessary to argue about how important exactly the life of an animal is or how important exactly the taste of meat is. In any case, it is not clear what ―exact‖ would mean in this context. Animal suffering only has to be greater (or heavier) than

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that which it competes with (our taste buds) in order for it to redefine and reinvent how we ought to live. That is how ―exact‖ we have to be in our trans-evaluation.

When oriented politically, diagnostic trans-evaluation becomes an essential component of our understanding of democracy. It is democratic to the extent that citizens are able to individually and collectively resist unjust values and priorities at the political level. Diagnostic trans-evaluation, then, is to be understood as an ―ongoing process of political resistance.‖ This is democracy itself insofar as we understand democracy as a process of self-renewal through ongoing resistance to itself. This means that democracy is inherently anarchic. The word ―anarchy‖ etymologically refers to

―without ruler.‖ To be without a ruler, in a sense, means that everyone is the ruler, which is precisely the formulation of democracy. If we fail to understand democracy in this way, then we deny people their democratic capacity, or rather, their democratic right, to resist political injustice when it arises. This sense of ―democratic anarchism‖ is not an extreme or wholesale anarchism (or revolution) in the sense that it wishes to do away with centralised government altogether. Too many important interests such as public education, public health care, the judicial system, etc., depend upon the existence of the state. Rather, this sense of democratic anarchism is a ―tactical anarchism.‖ Rather than wholesale resistance we have multiple ―tactical guerrilla battles,‖ which aim to solve one ethical problem at a time. It is important to note that these tactical guerrilla battles take place within the environment of historically determined democratic institutions, process and expectations. These battles can arise from within the walls of existing institutions or they can arise from non-traditional avenues of democratic participation. Certainly, in relation to our current forms of Western democracy, much still needs to be done in terms of welcoming ―dissenting evaluations,‖ which are essentially transformative. Arguably, we are yet to fully understand that political

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resistance is an important feature of democratic participation. If political improvement is only forged through the criticism of the policies, decisions, laws etc., of existing democracies, then there is the very real risk of the ethical problem-solver appearing anti-democratic, but in reality nothing could be further from the truth.

Someone may raise questions such as ―who evaluates?,‖ ―who has the right to evaluate‖ or ―who has the right to say that our priorities are wrong?‖ I believe it is vital that in a free and democratic society we leave the questions of ―who evaluates?,‖ ―who has the right to evaluate?‖ or ―how to evaluate?‖ open to everyone. If we fail to leave evaluation open to everyone, then in some sense we have failed to maintain a concept of evaluation that is equal to the mobility of history, individual freedom and democracy.

An open and democratic sense of evaluation is the only sense of evaluation that is equal to the challenge of riding the waves of mobile history and the possibility of new diagnostic trans-evaluations from anyone at any time, both individually and collectively. Naturally, however, it is not possible that every evaluation can become adopted by government, especially given that there will always be a plurality of different evaluations in any democracy. Clearly, there must be historically determined

―rules of the game,‖ that is, ―historical conditions and limits,‖ such a rule of law, specific electoral processes, specific parliamentary processes, etc. These rules suggest when and where evaluation at the political level is to take place and under what conditions. Within any historical conditions and limits there are possibilities, to a greater or lesser extent, for resistances to current values, however, there must always remain an opening for evaluations to come from other avenues.

What I am suggesting is a ―modest anarchism,‖ which is completely compatible with existing forms of democratic government and sees progress in terms of the ongoing historical resistance (or improvement) of current problematic values and priorities at the

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political level. There is no reason, for example, why an elected parliament should not listen to, and take heed of, the dissenting evaluations by anarchic protestors on issues relating to climate change, child labour or whatever. That does not suggest that there must be immediate change in policy and law. Rather, trans-evaluations may lead to interesting shifts in attention and public debate on important issues. The aim of trans- evaluation is not to destroy the existing state or parliament, however, that is not to suggest that the historical conditions and limits of democracy are unable to be modified and improved.

The modest anarchism I am suggesting is not meant to be a comprehensive account of how democratic institutions and processes are to be constructed in history.

My interest here is not to outline such an historical formulation of democracy. Rather, I am concerned with the democratic opening to evaluation by anyone, or rather, evaluation as a certain concept of democracy. Naturally, such a vision of ―democratic citizenship‖ can only be achieved through a robust public education system that produces citizens who are capable of problem-solving effectively at the political level.

This means teaching our children to diagnostically trans-evaluate in combination with the anarchic sense of democracy, which goes well beyond the usual narrow electoral concept.

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8. Re-Learning How We Ought to Live

The task of an ethical life, to pursue value in a world without fixed values, is not to bring stability to a fluid world. The point is to change the world, as Marx says. Ethics needs only just enough stability (or unity) to migrate from one problem (and solution) to the next. Rather than historical mastery or stability, such as learning a list of fixed values and norms, we have diagnostic trans-evaluation and the creation of new priorities. On occasion, some philosophers and others present the illusion of historical mastery and stability when in fact any stability is only ever a fraction of historical ethical content. Stability can ultimately threaten to stifle the unfolding of ethical content by reducing it to the order of what currently exists. Ethical content is pure mobility. As we move through history good may become evil just as evil may become good.

The absolute difference across history of ethical content is an ―ongoing pedagogical problem‖ for anyone who is interested in learning how to live a more ethical life. How do we learn how to solve the problem historically (or effectuate the concept in history) if all values change in history? How are we to learn how to pursue important interests if ―importance‖ undergoes ongoing change? The mere possibility of a different ethical content beyond what passes in the contingent present rules out learning values in the normal sense whereby one learns fixed values. Learning fixed values belongs to an outdated pedagogy of teaching values whereby one evaluates nothing at all. In a mobile world, and in a world where we must evaluate, this pedagogy is no longer acceptable. This failure of learning how we ought to live may seem like a monumental historical failure, however, paradoxically, this failure of learning how we ought to live is also the condition for diagnostic evaluation and historical improvement.

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If one can learn anything, then it is everything that is not reducible to the movements of content in history. In other words, one learns the concept and one also learns to use (or effectuate) that concept. However, each time one uses the concept one does so differently from one state of affairs to the next. Each time one effectuates one learns to effectuate a new way, as if to start each time from scratch with new ethical content. We have a ―perpetual renewal of the concept in history‖ as we migrate from one problem to the next. The poor priorities of our current society dominated by the market and consumption may be very different from the poor priorities of another society. Learning how to live means re-learning new historical content at each moment as one effectuates the concept in mobile history. The ―re‖ of ―re-learn‖ is the possibility of new values (or trans-evaluations). Learning (or rather, re-learning) here is a matter of evaluative skill, which involves the capacity to effectuate the concept in history. It is never a matter of learning content alone. Evaluative skill refers to the capacity to repeatedly make judgements involving the diagnostic creation of new values in history, whether involving strong evaluations or the strongest of evaluations. It is the sense in which one is the ongoing author of new content (or new values). One effectively relates to content in a new way: Rather than merely remember content, which belongs to the old pedagogy, one creates content. Re-learning is not done with a good conscience. We are never doing enough. There is always more to be done. There is always more to re- learn. Re-learning is always restless. It is always hurried and difficult. It is not as if we have plenty of time on our hands. The problems are of the highest urgency and importance. We must re-learn how we ought to live in the middle of an emergency.

In a world without fixed values the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ becomes obsolete. Our problem, then, has migrated again. Rather than the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ we have the problem of ―how are we to re-learn how we ought to live?‖

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or alternatively, ―what is involved in re-learning how we ought to live?‖ In short, the answer is historical negotiation. Historical negotiation is the process by which we invent values in a world where values are always changing. It is the ongoing process of re- learning how we ought to live. By engaging in diagnostic trans-evaluation one is negotiating the a-historical demand for value (or concept of ethics) in mobile history.

The evaluative skill of making judgments in relation to creating new values in history is precisely the capacity to historically negotiate. Negotiation is essentially enigmatic in the sense that it is always changing. There can be no rule or law as to how one negotiates between the historical and the a-historical. It is always a unique rendezvous and it conforms to no prior plan or organisation. That is not to suggest that it is merely random or occurs all the time.

Learning in the normal sense becomes obsolete. One cannot simply be a learner, rather, one must be a ―re-learner.‖ If one does not simply learn how to live and if one must perpetually re-learn how to live, then in some sense learning is forever part of an ethical life, and not merely prior to it, which is traditionally how we understand the learning of values. Re-learning how one lives means that one does not learn fixed values and then go on to live according to those values. Rather, one learns no fixed values and goes on to perpetually evaluate. Evaluation is always at the same time a values education, but far from a values education in the traditional sense whereby one learns fixed values. Paradoxically, an ethical life becomes an ongoing values education without values. In other words, it becomes an ongoing evaluative values education, which involves re-learning with new values. This is an essentially diagnostic and transformative sense of values education.

The only a-historical constant is the concept and the need for historical negotiation between the concept and history. What do we really know in knowing the

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concept and the need for negotiation? The concept cannot, of course, speak of any values. All that we know in advance is that in the future there will be diverse interests of diverse value. We do not know what those interests will be or how valuable they will be. The ethical concept simply demands that we pursue those interests that are important, if not the most important. That is it. That is all the concept is. The concept functions as a ―mobile diagnostic evaluative tool‖ to throw us into motion in new directions. It aims to produce action and activism and not apathy. The concept should never be thought of as an end in itself. It only becomes useful once it is effectuated (or negotiated). In other words, the concept is to be used, renovated or even discarded, and not merely to be contemplated, communicated or analysed. The concept should jump- start historical diagnosis: ―Is this new game console really that important? What else can I do with my money?‖ ―Do I need a giant holiday house on the beach and multiple luxury European cars? Are there more urgent and important needs at stake?‖ The simple task of asking ourselves these sorts of questions is to already begin to locate ethical deficits in our current ways of life. Each new state of affairs will be different, but the demand for diagnostic evaluation remains intact and ready to be used again. That is the minimal concept and relevance of philosophical ethics, which exists irreducibly above and beyond historical (or sociological) movements below. In some sense, because the concept has no content, because it is neither good nor evil in itself, because it contains no values, it finds a certain ―purity‖ or even ―perfection.‖ It finds a certain purity in being prior and irreducible to history.

In negotiating the concept of ethics in history, without any guarantee of success, the best we can do is to attempt to pursue those interests (or resist those injustices) that seem to be the most important at specific local times and places. In other words, the best we can do is identify, through negotiation, ethical problems in our current priorities.

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Singer, I believe, exemplifies this negotiation. He puts forward an argument for his position that we ought to be donating money to reduce extreme poverty:

First premise: Suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care

are bad.

Second premise: If it is in your power to prevent something bad from happening,

without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.

Third premise: By donating to aid agencies, you can prevent suffering and death

from lack of food, shelter and medical care, without sacrificing anything nearly

as important.

Conclusion: Therefore, if you do not donate to aid agencies, you are doing

something wrong.

(Singer, 2009, p. 15)

Singer historically negotiates the value of ―suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care.‖ In describing such suffering and death as ―bad‖ he is making an evaluation that raises the value of the suffering and death to a highly significant level whereby we ―are doing something wrong‖ if we fail to prevent the suffering and death. My interest is not so much with Singer‘s argument, but with the historical negotiation that is embedded within his argument. Although the negotiation is presented in this way, negotiation is quite different to argumentation. Historical negotiation is the process of effectuating the concept of ethics in history. It is diagnostic trans-evaluation in history. One cannot ―argue‖ that injustice exists, rather, one can only negotiate its existence. In this sense, Singer‘s argument does not argue for the values that inform and justify his imperative to donate money to aid agencies. Rather, it is by negotiating value in a world without fixed values that Singer provides the ultimate justification for his imperative. No further justification is required and no further

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justification is possible. Singer‘s question for the reader on the following page is symptomatic, I believe, of the fact that he cannot find any further justification: ―Ask yourself if you can deny the premises of the argument. How could suffering and death from lack of food, shelter and medical care not be really, really bad?‖ (Singer, 2009, p.

16). ―Really, really bad‖ appears to be the last hope of calling out to the reader, if they had not already been convinced. But Singer is simply emphasising the same negotiation.

But what more can he do? Singer can only negotiate in history. There are no ultimate values, or justifications for our values, outside the negotiations we make in history.

Diagnostic trans-evaluation does not involve truth or opinion, rather, it only involves negotiation. Opinions come from anywhere and do not need to be justified with reference to the concept of ethics, and truth is too stable and too sure of itself.

Ethics is too often caught in a losing battle between truth and opinion, but this is a misguided battle. Ethics involves negotiations such as ―this is what I believe to be morally significant within my current milieu‖ or ―this is what I believe is really, really bad.‖ One cannot appeal to any solid values because there are none. One is out at sea and one is constantly moving. That is precisely the challenge of re-learning how to live.

One must re-invent one‘s values and what one sees as urgent and significant without anything solid to hang on to. Singer does it, but why not children who are encountering ethical thinking at school? Why not anyone anywhere anytime?

Living an ethical life cannot be regarded as merely self-evident. The ethical problem-solver may need to draw upon a wide range of other skills, such as high-level research skills, information technology skills, high level literacy, high level numeracy and many other skills. In other words, there are high educational demands.

Unfortunately, many of these high level educational skills are precisely the skills lacking from the poorest in the world. Some might say that avoidable poverty in Asia,

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for example, is obviously an important interest or injustice. However, is it evident that the American and allied War on Terrorism, which began in 2001 in Afghanistan and was extended into Iraq in 2003, was promoting democracy in the Middle East as the politicians would have us believe? If the opposite is true, that the War on Terrorism was in fact terrorism itself, then citizens needed the skills to research and criticise the prevailing political discourses on democracy and terrorism. Some skills are necessary in one historical state of affairs, but completely irrelevant in another. Less than 20 years ago it was not necessary to have any skills for using the Internet because the Internet was only beginning to emerge. Now it is not only beneficial, but necessary, to have skills in using the Internet in order to research the need in our world. Diagnostic trans- evaluation on-line. Ethical skill is always historically effectuated and intertwined with an infinite number of other skills without which an ethical life would not be possible.

We cannot know in advance what kinds of historical (or local) skills might be required in the future that might benefit the living of an ethical life. Far from teaching fixed values, educational institutions need to provide students with not only the capacity to diagnostically trans-evaluate, but the full range of other skills that citizens need to live an ethical life (I see no reason why the skills, both ethical and non-ethical, cannot be integrated in the curriculum). Educational institutions, then, must be highly flexible and be ready to change. This potential for change suggests a future of teaching and learning that cannot be anticipated in the present, that is, a future of ―skills to-come.‖

How does one teach values in a world without fixed values? We need to ―teach values without teaching values.‖ This paradoxical formulation captures the sense in which the focus is on the skill and not the values themselves. Certainly educators must teach evaluative skill in schools, however, there is the ongoing sense in which an ethical life remains to be re-learnt at every moment by everyone. The moment we teach values

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is the moment we revert to old pedagogical methods and remove evaluation and creation from the picture. Every syllabus, curriculum and policy document that prescribes values as if they were fixed is obsolete and fails in the same way. What would values education be if it were nothing more than the passing of fixed values according to the outdated pedagogical model of knowledge as transference from one generation to the next? The ethical would be lost through historical reduction and we would have citizens who are incapable of evaluating. This paradoxical pedagogy of not teaching values in order to teach values, which aims for the development of the capacity to evaluate, is a condition for welcoming the production of absolutely new values from anyone at any time. It is the teaching of, and hospitality towards, democratic citizenship.

An evaluative values education is focused on the process, not the outcome, or rather, the process itself becomes the learning outcome. One must use historical content to think with, but it is not the learning outcome. We should expect teachers to facilitate rich opportunities for students to diagnostically trans-evaluate, such as through providing real or fictional situations and scenarios for students, however, the values they invent are largely peripheral. All that matters is that students are able to justify their views (or content) based on their own unique evaluations. It is important that they have not fallen into the trap of merely having an opinion or claiming the truth, rather, they must learn to negotiate the concept in history. In a sense, students become ignorant, unable to learn how they ought to live, but rather than become dumber, they actually have to become smarter. They have to understand the concept, and then negotiate the concept in history. In other words, they must understand that ethics involves the pursuit of important interests, and then negotiate the pursuit of value in history. They must move from the concept (or the a-historical) and intervene in history. We are replacing the remembering of fixed values with diagnostic trans-evaluation. It is significantly

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more cognitively demanding to evaluate than it is to remember a simple fixed value.

Ultimately, some students (and I see no reason to speculate which age or year level) might ―learn about evaluation‖ rather than just develop evaluative skill. This means that students are not only able to evaluate, but are also able to take a step back and talk about evaluation. This takes their thinking to a higher ethical and philosophical level. It is

―meta-ethical learning.‖ How often does diagnostic trans-evaluation occur during primary and secondary schooling? I believe we can start this important evaluative values education (or values education without values) from as early as kindergarten and continue right through to tertiary education. On my view, virtually every person is capable of becoming an ethical problem-solver to some extent, not just intellectuals. On my view, even the most marginalised students are able to evaluate.

Some might object that our concept of ethics (or concept of values education) contains no ethics at all. This echoes the common charge of formalism aimed at Kant‘s categorical imperative. This assessment is not entirely wrong. There is an ethics, but only in a minimal sense. However, this minimalism does not lead to the rejection of our concept of ethics. Paradoxically, the purpose of the minimal concept is to allow for the unfolding of ethical content in history. In other words, an absolute lack of ethical content is necessary for the possibility of change and improvement. If ethics is ever reduced to any one historical milieu or another, then we have already begun to close the unfolding of ethics (including democratic participation) to current historical realities.

This effectively encases ethics into an historical straightjacket. One need not learn ethical content in order to be ethical, perhaps even to be in order more ethical than those who claim to know how to be ethical. This has been the traditional role of the teacher, who passes on their knowledge of values to the next generation. In mobile history it is quite possible, if not probable, that the next generation will be confronted with a whole

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lot of new poor values and priorities, which shall demand new solutions. The new solutions might be created with no need whatsoever for knowledge of outdated historical content.

Some might claim that too much remains undetermined or ―up in the air,‖ as we say, and that something more solid is necessary, especially when it concerns the values that we teach our young. If we fix our values, and therefore make values education seem more ―solid,‖ then we risk reducing all values to our current values. We risk destroying the possibility of new and less shameful forms of life. However, allowing for the possibility of change and improvement does not entail that we must reject all our values or change them all the time, as if to throw everything up in the air. The fact that all values are able to change does not imply that we ought to reject all our values and change them, which is not possible or desirable. The ―diagnostic‖ part of diagnostic trans-evaluation requires evaluation to be a researched and targeted process of problem- solving and not a random or uninformed attack upon our existing values. An evaluative values education requires a new kind of solid foundation: Individuals must develop the capacity to historically negotiate the pursuit of value in a world without fixed values.

They must develop the capacity to diagnose and solve ethical problems, whether at the individual level or the political level. Individuals must develop the capacity to autonomously re-learn how they ought to live.

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9. Critical Freedom in the Middle of an Emergency

Freedom is necessary from the very beginning. The decision to live an ethical life is already an act of freedom. Ethics begins with the free decision to live a more ethical (or less shameful) way of life. The French philosopher André Comte-Sponville

(1952-) identifies ethics with freedom when he claims that ―ethics begins when we are free: it is freedom itself‖ (Comte-Sponville, 2005, p. 2). If ethics only really begins when we are free, if indeed ―it is freedom itself,‖ then this is because we have the freedom to act otherwise, that is, the freedom to act unethically. Without freedom and the possibility of acting otherwise there can be no sense of improving the way one lives in ethically richer directions. There can be no moral decision-making and no ethics as such. There is, then, the sense of a ―fundamental decision‖ (or ―ultimate decision‖) involving a certain commitment (or promise) to the task of an ethically richer life. This fundamental decision is not the same as the ―ultimate choice‖ we find in Singer‘s philosophy, which involves a choice between ethics and self-interest.48 The decision to live an ethical life does not entail that one must automatically turn their back on self- interest, as if it were opposed to an ethical life. Self-interests are often those interests that are uniquely important to individuals. It would be more accurate to suggest that self-interests must be evaluated along with all other interests in the mobile emergency room.

Freedom allows each individual to pursue his or her own ―uniquely important interests‖ (or ―unique idea of a good life‖ or ―unique goals in life‖). In our current consumer milieu there is clearly something for everyone unlike any other time in human

48 According to Singer, ―when ethics and self-interest seem to be in conflict, we face an ultimate choice. How are we to choose?‖ (Singer, 2001, p. 242).

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history. The market is clearly able to cater to virtually every desire imaginable. Also, we have more wealth than any previous generation, which clearly opens up enormous opportunities for satisfying our unique interests. No more is this apparent than in the

U.S., where, perhaps more than any other Western nation, there is an abundance of choice in terms of work, consumption, leisure, hobbies, etc. The American psychologist

Barry Schwartz (1946-) notes the abundance of choice in our society:

Choice is what enables each person to pursue precisely those objects and

activities that best satisfy his or her own preferences within the limits of his or

her financial resources. You can be a vegan and I can be a carnivore. You can

listen to hip-hop and I can listen to NPR. You can stay single and I can marry.

Any time choice is restricted in some way, there is bound to be someone,

somewhere, who is deprived of the opportunity to pursue something of personal

value. (Schwartz, 2005, pp. 99-100)

Freedom forges a pathway for the individual to pursue uniquely important interests, which might not be important for others. Therefore, we have an intersection between historical individuality (or uniqueness) and the ethical demand for ―something of personal value.‖ By intersecting the two we are negotiating value in a world without fixed values. However, we must also negotiate the importance of others‘ demands.

Freedom, then, is not only an intersection between individuality and evaluation, but an intersection that takes place in an emergency. I might enjoy reading books, studying philosophy, watching movies, taking mountain holidays and driving petrol-guzzling V8 cars. You might like swimming at the beach and dancing at clubs on Saturday nights.

However, are these personal interests important interests? Are there more important alternatives available? To raise such questions opens the possibility of diagnostic evaluation and the ethical usage of our freedom. No doubt, after raising such difficult

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and sobering questions, we may find ourselves enslaved to triviality at the cost of sacrificing other truly valuable interests. If that is the case, then a change in how we use our freedom is needed. This change is not something that should appear merely optional, like the latest item on display in the department store. This change should have the full force of the ―ought‖ behind it. Are we free? Yes, however, our freedom exists in the middle of an emergency. But we also exist in the middle of seductive billion-dollar marketing, fashion and advertising pandemics, whose glamour and showroom wonder distract us from the emergencies. These pandemics skew us away from value and evaluation and effectively disorient our minds. They internally rob us of a freedom that is genuinely worthwhile.

The market is remarkable in its ability to multiply the choices available and present the illusion that more consumer choice means greater freedom. This is very much the illusion that Western societies, the U.S. in particular, vigorously maintains.

The freedom to buy trivial consumer goodies must be regarded as just as trivial as the goodies themselves. It is not a freedom worth having. ―Important freedom,‖ on the other hand, is a freedom that connects itself with those interests that are genuinely worth pursuing. It is hardly controversial to suggest that freedom is deeply valued within our society to the extent that it is considered a moral right. Oddly, however, at times, freedom is regarded as more important than what it is used for. This reasoning is backwards and it ruins freedom. Freedom cannot be regarded as valuable simply because we have elevated it to the level of a moral right. Rather, if freedom is important, if it is to be regarded as a moral right as such, it is because it facilitates the pursuit of important interests. Freedom, then, is not so much concerned with having as many choices as possible (as some believe and as Western society boasts). Rather, it is

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primarily concerned with allowing individuals to nurture and promote their own worthwhile interests (or unique goals in life).

Taylor understands the necessary role that evaluation plays in freedom: ―Is freedom not at stake when we find ourselves carried away by a less significant goal to override a highly significant one? Or when we are led to act out of a motive we consider bad or despicable?‖ (Taylor, 2006, p. 392). This sense of being ―carried away‖ by something insignificant (or bad) is precisely what the market, and in particular, its showroom wonder, seeks to produce. We are unfree whenever a less important interest gets in the way of a more important interest. This is quite different to the way freedom has been traditionally defined, such as by Hobbes, who defines freedom as simply the absence of external obstacles. Taylor criticises Hobbes because he fails to see that external obstacles only really infringe upon our freedom when the interests concerned are significant. He gives the example of waiting at new traffic lights as hardly an infringement upon freedom:

We could say that my freedom is restricted if the local authority puts up a new

traffic light at an intersection close to my home; so that where previously I could

cross as I liked, consistently with avoiding collision with other cars, now I have

to wait until the light is green. In a philosophical argument, we might call this a

restriction of freedom, but not in a serious political debate. The reason is that it

is too trivial, the activity and purposes inhibited here are not really significant.

(Taylor, 2006, p. 391)

Taylor contrasts this example of having to wait at traffic lights with a law that forbids or restricts religious worshiping, which would constitute a ―serious restriction‖ of freedom (Taylor, 2006, p. 391). He adds that ―one‘s religious belief is recognised, even by atheists, to be supremely important . . . . By contrast, my rhythm of movement

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through the city traffic is trivial‖ (Taylor, 2006, p. 391). Freedom becomes tied to strong evaluation and our ability to arrive at a sense of what is important: ―But this recourse to significance takes us beyond a Hobbesian scheme. Freedom is no longer just the absence of external obstacle tout court but the absence of external obstacle to significant action, to what is important to man‖ (Taylor, 2006, p. 391). Can we also understand freedom as access the strongest of evaluations? In other words, can we understand freedom as not just our capacity to get a sense of what is important, but also our capacity to get a sense of what is most important? Would not this later sense of freedom be a freedom that is truly able to understand and cope with the emergency situation it finds itself in?

Our freedom can be compromised by a range of internal barriers and ―external barriers.‖ Taylor further criticises Hobbes on the basis that he failed to consider ―less immediately obvious obstacles to freedom, for instance, lack of awareness, or false consciousness, or repression, or other inner factors of this kind‖ (Taylor, 2006, p. 388).

In our society some of the greatest threats to important freedom come from marketeers and public relations people. When the market manufactures desires, and we get ―carried away‖ by something insignificant, our freedom is diminished. When the democratic state manufactures consent for unpopular policies it produces a ―false consciousness‖ and our freedom (and democracy) is diminished. Each force is external (in the sense of advertising campaigns on television, public relations, etc.) yet also deeply internal, working away quietly in the background. Each force undermines our autonomy by implanting our minds with trivial desires and false beliefs. The sense of freedom that

Taylor is suggesting is not obviously apparent in our society if we simply skim the surface of consumer capitalism and Western democracy. We need to look for strong

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evaluations in absence of internal and external barriers if we are to recognise this deeper sense of important freedom.

Freedom can be easily abused by a false testimony. Without in any way destroying the value of individuality, we can acknowledge the risk that one can easily shield (or immune) their trivial preferences from the criticism of others by falsely claiming they are important. But a false testimony might also be a false consciousness, for example, whereby we actually believe that the trivialities of the market are valuable

(in this case, our strong evaluation is diminished by an internal barrier). I may claim my interest in driving petrol-guzzling V8‘s is really important, when in reality it is not. If this is the case, then either I am misled with a false consciousness or I am lying. On my view, the risk of a false testimony can hardly be understood as a justification to reduce freedom. If we deny individuals the right to pursue what they genuinely understand to be important, then we deny the unique importance of our interests.

The Australian psychologist, social analyst and novelist Hugh Mackay (1938-) observes ―a general culture-shift away from prescription and conformity towards the idea that we are all free to choose how we shall live, and that in a diverse and pluralistic society, judgments upon each other‘s choices are uncalled-for‖ (Mackay, 2004, p. 5).

This ―general culture-shift‖ is sociologically accurate and might be interpreted as a symptom of our widespread acceptance of individual differences in relation to ideas of the good life. Mackay sees this shift ―is a highly desirable state of affairs from almost every point of view‖ (Mackay, 2004, p. 5). Criticizing others‘ choices can often be seen as offensive and a no-go zone (unless, for example, one is seeking counsel from a close friend or a family member). Try telling someone that what they are doing in their life is trivial or that they have the wrong priorities: ―Who the hell are you to tell me what‘s important for me?!‖ Mackay rules out any preaching or persuasion towards others:

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If you‘re looking for someone to tell you what‘s right and wrong, you‘ve come

to the wrong place: this is a book about how to decide for yourself. I‘m not

going to preach to you. I‘m not even going to try to persuade you to take more

care in making moral choices (though I‘d like to encourage you to refrain from

making judgments about other people‘s choices). (Mackay, 2004, p. ix)

Mackay‘s primary concern is to help people to decide for themselves. It is certainly important that all of us should be able to engage in autonomous ethical decision-making, however, deciding for yourself should be a matter of subjecting one‘s own preferences to the highest of ethical standards, above all. It should never mean that one cannot (or ought not) comment on the unethical lives of others if they are clearly pursuing trivial interests at the expense of important interests. If others‘ interests are not clearly trivial, then perhaps we should refrain from making judgments in relation to others‘ choices, however, we can encourage others to evaluate their own choices.

Commenting upon others‘ choices is far from ―uncalled-for,‖ rather, it is important and urgent. But that is not to suggest that one should comment all the time on the choices that others make. My concern is not the historical extent to which we may or may not comment on the choices of others, rather, my concern is that it should not be ruled out and considered ―uncalled-for.‖

It is vital that there is room to comment on others‘ lives and it is equally important that others are given the freedom to comment on our lives. In other words, there is the sense in which we must have room for ―ethical dialogue‖ in relation to the choices we make and not just dialogue in relation to political decision-making. This is precisely what an open and democratic society involves, whereby we are free to agree or disagree with others in relation to the choices we make. What would an open and democratic society be if we could not open our mouths when we witness wrongdoing

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committed by others, whether at the individual level or the political level? Interestingly, often we rely on the comments of others to help us ―gain perspective,‖ as we say, on a particular choice: ―Should I go to university? Should I take that job? Should I buy that new car?‖ One wonders, given Mackay‘s view, how ethical dialogue fits into the above picture of society where we are encouraged ―to refrain from making judgments about others people‘s choices‖ and where it seems that the only thing that matters in relation to others, remarkably, is to not comment on others‘ actions. If we take the view that we unequivocally ought not to comment on other‘s choices, then unfortunately the consequence is that anything (or at the very least, an awful lot) becomes acceptable, and therefore ethics seems to lose its foothold, if not fall out of the picture altogether.

Mackay‘s position appears to be moral relativism, however, the wider sociological diagnosis is that his position mirrors the dominant one and that is the problem.

Freedom in the banal sense of increased choice has come to have an almost magical or fetishistic character in our society, as if more and more of it must be necessarily desirable. For some, increased choice is seen as one of the most attractive features of consumer capitalism. However, it is hardly clear that increased choice necessarily leads to greater freedom and happiness, let alone ethical improvement.

Choices that do not matter, such as the seemingly infinite number of choices that the market creates every two minutes, should hardly enhance our freedom. Our freedom is diminished not just in the sense that we get carried away by surplus triviality and showroom wonder, but in the sense in that we suffer from an ―inundation of trivia‖ masked as ―greater consumer choice.‖ Schwartz presents a sociological analysis that leads to the paradoxical conclusion that greater consumer choice can ―tyrannize‖:

When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of

available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy,

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control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and positive. But as the

number of choices keeps on growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of

options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives

escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates,

but deliberates. It might even be said to tyrannize. (Schwartz, 2005, p. 2)

Now, more than ever before in history, our lives have become inundated with trivial options, which often require a great of time and energy on our part to understand.

Our lives have increasingly become swamped with making more and more pointless decisions about things that really do not matter. Making many decisions about things that do not matter can hardly be seen as the markings of a meaningful life, rather, it is the ―burden of trivia.‖ In itself this is a problem, but also, our attention is deflected (and let us make no mistake, our attention is brilliantly deflected) from the interests that really do matter. Freedom should be the freedom to pursue important interests. It should not deflect our attention away from them. Schwartz offers a simple solution that requires strong evaluation: ―I believe that we make the most of our freedoms by learning to make good choices about the things that matter, while at the same time unburdening ourselves from too much concern about the things that don‘t‖ (Schwartz,

2005, p. 4).49 Schwartz is quite correct and this is what I understand to be an ethical

49 He also offers a more specific list of conclusions, which ―fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that the more choices people have, the better off they are‖:

1. We would be better off if we embraced certain voluntary constraints on our

freedom of choice, instead of rebelling against them.

2. We should be better off seeking what was ―good enough‖ instead of seeking

the best (have you ever heard a parent say, ―I want only the ‗good enough‘

for my kids‖?).

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sense of consumption. However, it can actually be extremely difficult to avoid the inundation of trivia. Ethical consumption takes place within this inundation and it is forced to navigate through the trivia. It has little choice not to suffer greater consumer choice.

The concept of freedom we are suggesting, when used properly, should promote one‘s uniquely important interests. This is a purely self-interested concept and justification. We have suggested that this sense of important freedom takes place in an emergency involving others‘ interests. The sense of emergency means that if your individual freedom is not being used to pursue your important and unique interests, then your individual freedom ought to be used for promoting others’ important interests.

Understood in this way, the justification for individual freedom is both self-interested and altruistic. The self-interested component ought to ―cut out‖ (and the altruistic component ―cut in‖) the moment my interests become trivial or lesser in importance, as weighed against others‘ interests. This is the basis for an ethically rich justification of freedom, which is not blind to the passive harm of failing to help others when one is in a position to do so. Sociologically speaking, America is well known for its celebration of freedom as a nation. However, American freedom (echoed closely in other Western countries) is guilty of lacking this altruistic justification, which means that American freedom is effectively the freedom to commit infinite crimes of passive harm. It is very

3. We would be better off if we lowered our expectations about the results of

our decisions.

4. We would be better off if the decisions we made were nonreversible.

5. We would be better off if we paid less attention to what others around us

were doing.

(Schwartz, 2005, p. 5)

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much a concept of freedom without any sense of emergency, and to this extent it is ethically impoverished. Freedom is only morally acceptable insofar as it serves as an effective means for pursuing important interests, not as a means for neglecting them, such as the freedom to accumulate millions (or even billions) of dollars without the least obligation to help the poor (beyond optional charity).

The British philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806 – 1873), who is well known for his writings on utilitarianism and liberty, asserts what is commonly known as the harm principle:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to

govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of

compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of

legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that

the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in

interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any

member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

(Mill, 2003, p. 94)

Although Mill‘s harm principle is not incorrect, it does not go far enough towards preventing passive harm because it is formulated purely on the basis of active harm. It is also valuable to read Mill because I believe his view, sociologically speaking, is consistent with the typical and dominant understanding of freedom within our current milieu. According to Mill‘s principle, one is free to do as they please (or rather, they should be free from the coercion of any other) to the extent that they do not actively harm others. Mill‘s formulation is the perfect justification for an ethically impoverished American (or Western) sense of freedom, which is blind to the

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emergencies of this world. His principle is a recipe for passively allowing others to die

(rather than actively putting them to death), to use Derrida‘s words (Derrida, 1995, p.

86). The real problem, perhaps, is that passive harm does not exist in Mill‘s moral universe. Mill‘s principle can be made morally acceptable and equal to a morally-rich concept of freedom provided it is read with a sense of harm that includes both the active and passive forms. If passive harm is built into Mill‘s principle, then we can be morally justified in coercing another based on their crime of passive harm, however, how this would look exactly in historical states of affairs is a separate historical question. From the a-historical point of view, we can say that without passive harm built into the harm principle we have an impoverished sense of freedom.

The challenge, then, is to include significant occurrences of passive harm as an altruistic limitation upon freedom, yet also retain room to nurture our own uniquely important interests. This is precisely what being free in an emergency entails. But this limitation of passive harm upon freedom is also, paradoxically, the only sense of freedom that is worth having. It prevents us from using our freedom for merely trivial ends because the moment we waste our freedom on mere triviality is the moment we begin to passively harm the other. It demands us to use our freedom for important ends as much as is realistically possible. Naturally, it is difficult, if not impossible, to rule out triviality from our lives altogether, especially given the fact that we must navigate through the inundation of trivia that is characteristic of consumer capitalism. Our

―revised harm principle‖ not only compliments the concept of important freedom, but is a condition of possibility for it.

The inclusion of passive harm within the harm principle means that we are morally oriented towards pursuing interests of the highest value. If we are not using our freedom to pursue important interests (or the most important interest), then we must be

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passively harming someone (or many others). This might warrant some form of coercion to prevent the passive harm or it might warrant some kind of compensation for the victims. At the very least we should expect to be condemned for our wrongdoing.

Some might object to this view on the grounds that one‘s freedom could be infringed upon simply by reading a book on the beach or partying with close friends if it can be demonstrated there are other more important alternatives available. What is the importance of a good book or a good party with close friends? There are no doubt occasions when reading a good book is important or when seeing friends at a party is important. Regardless of such historical challenges, it is a positive outcome of the revised principle if it prompts us to raise such important and difficult historical questions. It ultimately demands ourselves (and others) to justify our choices against the highest of moral standards. That can hardly be considered to be a bad thing. Ethics is not meant to tyrannize and make us suffer, but it certainly should get us to think about the importance of the choices we make and how our choices can harm others.

If our freedom is to be effective as we traverse history it must be able to accommodate for the radical mobility of our interests and values over time. The concept of freedom must be able to function locally and be adaptable to change. What is uniquely important to me now might not be uniquely important for me tomorrow.

Tomorrow I might be a different person, reinvented with new interests and values. I might begin to identify as indigenous, homosexual or something completely different. I might demand new interests, new rights and new values. It is not difficult to find examples of people who, having been oppressed for decades, finally gather the will to express an interest, or claim a right towards an interest, that was previously taboo or shamed. Ethical improvement may have been precisely the catalyst for such emancipations. The wider point is that one is free to reinvent one‘s identity, interests

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and values. This is what is meant by ―critical freedom.‖ Patton discusses critical freedom, which he recognises in liberal political philosophy and in Deleuze‘s political philosophy. It appears similar to Popper‘s open society of individuals who are able to challenge old taboos:

Liberal political philosophy now takes note of this dimension of freedom,

insisting that freedom must include not just the individual‘s capacity to act

without interference and in accordance with his or her fundamental values, but

also the capacity critically to evaluate and revise those values. (Patton, 2000, p.

84)

Critical freedom compliments the sense of important freedom, which depends upon strong evaluations in absence of internal and external barriers. It also compliments the revised harm principle. Critical freedom is essentially transformative and goes hand in hand with diagnostic trans-evaluation because it is the ―capacity critically to evaluate and revise‖ one‘s ―fundamental values.‖ Whenever one transforms their values they are using their critical freedom. It is an experimental enterprise with no guaranteed outcome

(although is life ever not experimental?). If critical freedom is important (because it is necessary for trans-evaluation), then it might be regarded as a moral right for individuals in order that they may pursue their uniquely important interests, which exist in a perpetual state of flux. Alongside this moral right is the wider sense of emergency within which all trans-evaluations take place. I might be a different person with different interests and values tomorrow, but the moral demand for the pursuit of value remains intact. My unique interests must still be evaluated and the emergencies have gone nowhere. In a sense, critical freedom is unlimited because there is absolutely no limit to what we might become, what our interests might become or how valuable our interests might be, in mobile history. However, this unlimited sense of freedom

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becomes limited by the a-historical demand for the pursuit of value, which is effectuated in history. I might become anything, pursue anything, but it always occurs in an emergency. This moral limitation only aims to exclude trivia and harm. It is really an opening to a transformative sense of important freedom.

My hypothesis is that sociologically we understand the standard harm principle well enough, but it will take a revolution in thinking to move up to the revised harm principle. We are yet to understand the radical potential of critical freedom and we are yet to understand the importance of ongoing ethical dialogue. We are yet to understand that a freedom worth having does not involve the freedom to pursue trivia, and that it depends entirely on being able to make strong evaluations in absence of internal and external obstacles, such as those propagated by the market and, at times, the democratic state. We are also yet to understand that greater consumer choice masks the inundation of trivia, which gets in the way of ethical consumption. Freedom in the middle of an emergency: The individual is free yet also not free, held hostage to the emergencies of this world and a world to come. It is the freedom of a triage nurse in the busy emergency room of a hospital. But is this not, in fact, the only sense of freedom that is genuinely worthwhile? Ultimately, it is a freedom that goes beyond strong evaluation to the strongest evaluation, and it begins with the free decision to lead a more ethical life.

To restrain freedom to important interests (whether belonging to myself or others), turns out to be no restraint at all, rather, it becomes the condition of possibility for a freedom worth having. The freedom to pursue triviality is a trivial sense of freedom and it is connected to an ―ethics‖ of active harm, which is happy to allow others to suffer and die.

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Deconstructive Plateaus

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10. An Ethical Life To-Come

The word ―deconstruction‖ has a number of synonyms. One of them, which I believe to be central, is the word ―aporia.‖ This word often appears in Derrida‘s later work, which is commonly known as the period of ―affirmative deconstruction.‖ An aporia is heterogeneous to the order of what is present to one‘s thoughts and experience, that is, everything that is knowable or thinkable at any given time, the order of possible experience. This sphere also goes by the name of the ―economy of the same‖ (Derrida,

1992, p. 341), which is a phrase that appears to have been imported from the work of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) who had an enormous and lasting influence on Derrida‘s thought. Each person has their own economy of the same, that is, their own horizon of possible thought and experience. Aporias begin where thought and experience, including all of one‘s problems and projects, are no longer possible:

It should be a matter of [devrait y aller du] what, in sum, appears to block our

way or to separate us in the very place where it would no longer be possible to

constitute a problem, a project, or a projection, that is, at the point where the

very project or the problematic task becomes impossible. (Derrida, 1993, p. 12)

Further on Derrida adds that ―in this place of aporia, there is no longer any problem. Not that, alas or fortunately, the solutions have been given, but because one could no longer even find a problem that would constitute itself‖ (Derrida, 1993, p. 12).

Strictly speaking, aporias are only possible as the impossible. In other words, they are possible only insofar as they are not possible for us in our thought and experience. They are not possible at all within our economy of the same.

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Ethics, or rather, the pursuit of an ethical life, is a ―project‖ (or ―problematic task‖) that is entirely concerned with problem-solving. The central project of ethics, according to our concept of ethics, is to diagnostically trans-evaluate and create new priorities. Aporias, then, begin where the task of diagnostic trans-evaluation is ―no longer‖ able to ―constitute itself‖ as a problem or project. Deconstruction is always concerned with that which has no limit, with that which is in some sense beyond the perceivable or thinkable limit. Hence, deconstruction is always involves a certain rendezvous or encounter between the aporia and the project, the ―limited‖ and the

―unlimited,‖ the ―possible‖ and the ―impossible,‖ the ―same‖ and the ―other,‖ the

―thinkable‖ and the ―non-thinkable,‖ the ―present‖ and the ―future,‖ etc.

It is important to note that Derrida sees all living beings, including animals and people, as ―absolute singularities‖ whose ―otherness‖ (or ―alterity‖) constantly spills over others‘ economies of the same. This means that what we know of each other is whatever is present and possible for ourselves. Everything else, the otherness of the other, remains beyond our grasp. The otherness of every being is expressed in the claim that ―every other (one) is every (bit) other [tout autre est tout autre], every one else is completely or wholly other‖ (Derrida, 1995, p. 68). For our purposes, this means that we never have direct or full access to the values and interests of the other, which resist a complete presence to our understanding. We only ever have ―analogous knowledge‖ (or

―indirect knowledge‖) of any other. Something other to us cannot help but remain and we will never know what it is that has spilt over our horizon. All interests and values of the other, then, are necessarily to some extent aporetic and the extent is unknown. For

Levinas, the word ―face‖ describes this ―overflow‖:

The way in which the other presents himself, exceeding the idea of the other in

me, we here name face. This mode does not consist in figuring as a theme under

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my gaze, in spreading itself forth as a set of qualities forming an image. The face

of the Other at each moment destroys and overflows the plastic image it leaves

me. (Levinas, 1969, pp. 50-51)

The face, which Derrida calls the otherness of the other, is also called ―infinity‖ and ―exteriority‖ by Levinas (Levinas, 1969, p. 51). Certainly, we should do all that we can to understand the others‘ interests and values, but ultimately we can never have the security of knowing with certainty. For example, I will never know with any certainty what it is like to be an Afghan refugee in desperate need of asylum. I will never know what it is like to be an Indigenous Australian stolen from his or her parents and family as a child. Derrida (and Levinas) not only want us to be aware of this overflow, the otherness of the other, but they ultimately want us to value (or respect) this overflow and show hospitality towards it.

The neologisms ―to-come‖ and ―absolute future‖ can also be regarded as roughly synonymous for the words ―deconstruction‖ and ―aporia.‖ Derrida‘s interest is in the concept of an absolute future, a future to-come, which goes beyond our thinking of the future as something envisioned (or anticipated) in the present. A future that is made present is considered to be a future without otherness (or aporia). According to

Patton, ―by this phase [to-come] Derrida means the future not understood as a possible future present but rather as something that can only ever remain in the future because of its aporetic character. This is an absolute or structural future‖ (Patton, 2004, p. 34). A mobile or contingent view of history might be said to imply Derrida‘s absolute future to- come. There is no doubt that deconstruction occurs upon the background of a contingent or mobile view of history. Mobile history and the possibility of change requires an unknown and unforeseeable absolute future to ensure that change is possible and to ensure that such change is something more than what is currently possible. Patton sees

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the absolute future as ―the condition of possibility of change in the present‖ (Patton,

2004, p. 34). If we assume to know how things are going to be different, assume to know when and how difference will come, then we have closed off difference and reduced the future to the present. According to Derrida, ―if we knew that [‗how very soon things will be different‘] things would no longer be different‖ (Derrida, 1997, p.

31). Rather, ―we must not totally know this in order for a change to occur again‖

(Derrida, 1997, p. 31). Totally not knowing when and how ―things will be different‖ becomes the necessary ―impossible condition of possibility‖ for a ―deeper sense of difference,‖ which is connected to the absolute future (and the to-come), which goes beyond any sense of difference in the present. It is impossible to understand a mobile concept of history without Derrida‘s absolute future. Otherwise historical change would be reduced to current possibilities of thought and action.

This view of the future as unknown (or aporetic), and the historical mobility accompanied by it, can be understood as one of a number of philosophical reactions against the various doctrinal forms of what Popper calls ―historicism.‖ Popper understands historicism as any ―approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principle aim, and which assumes that this aim is attainable by discovering the ‗rhythms‘ or the ‗patterns,‘ the ‗laws‘ or ‗trends‘ that underlie the evolution of history‖ (Popper, 2002, p. 3). Derrida‘s absolute future is precisely everything that cannot be anticipated, even by the very best historicist. That is why deconstruction can be so elusive and difficult to define: It is precisely everything that cannot be reduced and understood within the order of present and foreseeable possibilities. It is everything that historical prediction is not. From the ethical point of view, this means that deconstruction refers to the possibility of other people, other

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interests, other values and other priorities that are beyond every prediction and belong to the absolute future: ―ethical content to-come.‖

Historical ethical content constantly changes at varying speeds, or at the very least, it has the potential to absolutely change to the extent that good may become evil or vice versa. It is as fluid as history itself. Current ethical content occurs within one‘s economy of the same and it is the product of one‘s negotiation of the a-historical demand for value in a world without fixed values. However, the future of ethical content, the future of ethics in history as such, is completely aporetic (or impossible). It must remain to-come in order for ethical content to unfold according to the deeper sense of difference. In other words, in order for ethical content to be different we must not know when and how it will be different. The future of ethical content remains unknown and the current content is historically contingent. Therefore, the absolute future is a place that is really ―no-place‖ at all (or an ―impossible place‖) for radical, unpredictable and surprising transformations in ethical content, which could not have been anticipated in the present. The absolute future is nothing. It is a void or desert. It is sheer impossibility, yet it paradoxically contains the seeds to take history in entirely new and surprising directions. It contains the potential to completely change every last drop of our ethical content beyond anything ever imagined.

Because ethical content is to-come, it is a fiction to claim that anyone, such as a philosopher or God himself, knows how we ought to live—in the sense of providing a single and stable content in the present, in any present, either now or in the future, which informs us of how we ought to live. In a very literal sense, then, one cannot know how to live beyond what passes in the contingency of ethical content in the present. But this is hardly knowledge in the traditional sense of something fixed or stable. Change is always an imminent possibility, which threatens to undo every existing value. In any

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case, ethics does not involve opinion, truth or knowledge—at least not in any traditional senses of these words. Rather, ethics involves historical negotiation, which produces ethical content. There is also the sense in which history unfolds and looks back upon itself with different eyes. No state of affairs is able to immunize itself from sliding into the unethical at a later date. At no time does any interest ever contain a rock-solid value.

The unfolding of ethical content remains to-come, and it must always remain to-come regardless of the number of historical negotiations we make. Ethical content must not come in order, paradoxically, that it might come, in order that a change might happen that goes beyond anything we can anticipate.

Some years ago I was struck by the energy and passion expressed by the

American singer and songwriter Chris Cornell (1964-) who was the lead singer and lyricist of the band Audioslave. In the (2002) song, Show me how to live, he repeatedly belts out ―now show me how to live,‖ which is a plea to God:

Nail in my hand,

From my creator.

You gave me life,

Now show me how to live.

(Cornell, 2002, track 2)

I wonder if this plea is made because God has failed at showing him how to live after giving him life or perhaps it is Cornell‘s (or all of humanity‘s) failure and he is asking for guidance from God. It is not clear if it is God‘s failure or if it is humanity‘s failure. It is clear, however, that Cornell is need of knowing how to live, or more precisely, in need of being shown how to live. Whilst I am deeply sympathetic to

Cornell‘s desire to know how to live, or to be shown how to live, like most philosophers

I am not going to plead to God for an answer. In fact, ethics is defined precisely by its

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autonomy from God. What concerns me most, however, with this plea to God is the sense in which knowledge of how we ought to live is possible and that it can be shown and taught to others. The absolute future ensures that an ethical life cannot be reduced to the presence of what is or what has been. What is or what has been, that is, current or past ethical content, is only a fraction of all ethical content. It is a fraction of an impossible (or virtual or non-actual) whole. Naturally, we cannot capture all space and time into the present and gather all ethical content that ever was, is, or will be, into the presence of now. All we ever have in the present is a tiny fraction of an ―infinitely sized whole,‖ which is strictly impossible in the sense that it does not yet exist and remains perpetually to-come. The impossible whole also includes content that no longer exists, such as content that no longer belongs to memory or content that did not make it into an historical archive. A fraction is all we ever see in history as we move between the past that no longer exists and the future that is yet to exit. It is all we can be shown in history and it is always changing at various speeds. This fractional content harmonises with a minimal ethical concept, which prescribes nothing in history. Prescription only arises through the negotiation of the ethical concept in history, which ultimately produces no truth or opinion, only fractional ethical content.

If an ethical life cannot be shown, then is not this aporia also a ―perpetual pedagogical failure‖? It is the failure of being unable to show and teach others how to live (whether a philosopher, a teacher, a parent, etc.). It is the failure to teach and learn ethical content beyond the fraction of what passes in the contingent present. No one can show (or teach) Cornell how he ought to live, not even God himself. His plea must go unanswered. If an ethical life cannot be shown, then does not ethical content in some sense resemble God himself who does not make himself present? In other words, is there not something deeply religious (or ―messianic‖) by the idea of an ethical content

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that fails to reveal itself and perpetually remains to-come? (Derrida defines the messianic as the coming of the other as other50). If teaching values is possible (beyond the contingent values of the present), then it is only possible as a strange and paradoxical pedagogy of not teaching values in order to teach values. The aim is not to learn any values, but to learn the evaluative skill (or capacity) of being able to diagnostically trans-evaluate. Evaluative skill, unlike content, is transferable across diverse historical states of affairs. It is continuously reused in relation to changing people, interests, values and priorities. If we ground our teaching and learning upon only what we can see in history (or upon what can be shown to others in history), that is, upon a tiny fraction of ethical content, then we have failed to understand that an ethical life involves learning the capacity to effectively diagnostically trans-evaluate in diverse historical states of affairs, whereby one must constantly re-learn new content, and whereby content perpetually remains to-come.

Another important way to understand the difference between the possible and impossible, the present and the future, the same and the other, is between the decision and the undecidable. A decision in the normal sense of the term is the thinkable and calculable moment when one chooses what to do and projects a course of action upon the future. Derrida‘s undecidable is the aporia, the to-come, the absolute future, which necessarily interrupts the moment of a decision. The undecidable undermines the safety and security of a decision that can be said to be sure of itself. For Derrida, a decision

―cannot take place without the undecidable, it cannot be resolved through knowledge‖

(Derrida, 2002, p. 231). The undecidable, then, is the impossible condition of possibility for any decision. A decision is ―heterogeneous to knowledge‖ regardless of however

50 For more details on the concept of the messianic see chapter 11.

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long one takes to make that decision, regardless of the extent that one‘s ―theoretical analysis of the situation‖ shows one what is to be done.51

A decision ―must advance toward a future that is not known, that cannot be anticipated. If one anticipates the future by predetermining the instant of decision, then one closes it off‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 231). However, one also closes off a decision ―if there is no anticipation, no knowledge ‗prior‘ to the decision‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 231).

The absolute future prevents any certainty, self-reassurance or good conscience that one‘s decision will be the best one or the right one. It means that we never know,

51 Derrida discusses the sense in which decisions are ―heterogeneous‖ to the

―accumulation of knowledge‖:

If I know what is to be done, if my theoretical analysis of the situation shows me

what is to be done—do this to cause that, etc.—then there is no moment of

decision, simply the application of a body of knowledge, of, at the very least, a

rule or norm. For there to be a decision, the decision must be heterogeneous to

knowledge as such. Even if I spend years letting a decision mature, even if I

amass all possible knowledge concerning the scientific, political, and historical

field in which the decision is to be taken, the moment of the decision must be

heterogeneous to this field, if the decision is not to be the application of a rule. If

there is such a thing as a decision—the point must always be recalled—then a

decision must first be expounded. Of course, I am not advocating that a decision

end up deciding anything at any moment. One must know as much as possible,

one must deliberate, reflect, let things mature. But, however long this process

lasts, however careful one is in the theoretical preparation of the decision, the

instant of the decision, if there is to be a decision, must be heterogeneous to this

accumulation of knowledge. (Derrida, 2002, p. 231)

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historically at least, that we ought to do this or that in the present at the very moment of deciding. Rather than knowledge, there is only ―radical instability‖ in the present as a result of the absolute future. There is always a certain ―perhaps‖:

What would a future be if the decision were able to be programmed, and if the

risk [l’aléa], the uncertainty, the unstable certainty, the inassurance of the

―perhaps,‖ were not suspended on it at the opening of what comes, flush with the

event, within it and with an open heart? (Derrida, 1997, p. 29)

In advancing towards the absolute future we project our decisions into an unknown place, the place of the other, which is heterogeneous to our economy of the same. In a sense, we assume to go where we are prohibited from going. We also assume that we know what do to according to the presence of our right (or just) decision.

However, even when we think we have done our very best we still do not know how we ought to live. Naturally, the outcome can always turn out badly, but even when our decisions turn out well, or better than planned, we might later on discover that our prior pursuits of value were not valuable. Any decision always advances towards an unknown future, which contains any degree of surprising change. Ultimately, every ethical decision, every ―ought,‖ cannot help but involve a certain ―secular leap of faith,‖ which is heterogeneous to the order of possibility, belief, certainty and knowledge. The

―ought,‖ and therefore ethics as such, resembles a kind of faith, going where it cannot go, believing in what cannot be believed. The leap of announcing what is to be done despite not knowing, despite never knowing.

If I cannot decide, if my decision is not mine, then how can I say ―ought‖? I can only say ―perhaps.‖ Derrida‘s undecidability strips the ethical ―ought‖ of its strong modality at every moment. The ―ought‖ becomes helplessly reduced to ―perhaps,‖ which goes hand in hand with the sense of faith. There is never any certainty (or

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knowledge) with faith (otherwise there would no longer be any need to have faith). We can only say that we perhaps ought to do this or that. ―Perhaps‖ appears as a symptom of the undecidability and the absolute future. It destabilises (or interrupts) every ―ought‖ in the present at the instant of the decision and all ethical content becomes subjected to this ―perhaps.‖ The ―ought‖ becomes something of an illusion. It becomes artificial.

Insofar as ethics is entirely concerned with the ―ought,‖ ethics in history becomes an

―artificial ethics,‖ an ―ethics of perhaps.‖ It is important to note that the ―perhaps‖ only applies to history. It does not apply at the a-historical level. At the a-historical level we can claim to know that we ought to pursue important interests in the future, and therefore maintain the full force of the ―ought,‖ but historically speaking we cannot say, for example, ―you ought to pay more taxes‖ without uttering ―perhaps‖ in addition, which ultimately dissolves the force of the ―ought.‖ The ―ought‖ at the a-historical level prescribes nothing historical. It only announces that we ought to pursue value in history.

It does not suggest what those values will be, which remain to-come. At the a-historical level there is only the concept of ethics and the need for historical negotiation between the concept and history.

Although undecidability occurs in history, there is another deeper sense of undecidability, which occurs at the conceptual (or a-historical) level concerning a decision in relation to which concept of ethics we are to adopt and effectuate in history.

The concept of ethics we are suggesting is one of many. It is part of a wider

―philosophical history of the concepts of ethics.‖ This history includes those concepts that are contained in philosophical traditions such as liberalism, utilitarianism, etc. This history of the concepts of ethics has its own absolute future, which remains to-come. In other words, the absolute future suggests the possibility of an ―ethical concept to- come.‖ This includes the sense in which an old concept might be freshly renovated or

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the sense in which a new concept might be created through an innovative fusion between different philosophical traditions of thought. All ethical concepts come to have a certain undecidability attached to them, a certain ―perhaps‖ attached to them, as a result of the absolute future. An ethical life begins with the free decision to live an ethically richer life, but this depends upon having a concept of ethics. There is the ongoing sense in which the commitment to an ethical life requires us to make a decision, an undecidable decision, in relation to which ethical concept we are going to adopt and effectuate in history, without knowing with any certainty that it is the best one or the right one. ―Perhaps this concept of ethics, rather than another one.‖

In history, after being deconstructed, ethical content loses the full force of the

―ought,‖ however, it gains a new faith, which leaps into the unknown absolute future.

The result is a deconstructive ethics that is aware of its limitations and knows that it does not know how we ought to live in history. It is an ethics that knows that one must utter ―perhaps‖ whenever one decides and says ―ought‖ in history. We cannot ever shield ourselves from the radical instability resulting from the absolute future. The undecidable ―perhaps‖ pervades an ethical life at every moment. All we ever get is a fraction of ethical content and this fraction is completely unstable. But this should not bother us. Recall that the task of an ethical life is never to bring stability to a fluid world, rather, in a Marxist spirit, the task is always to change it.

There are two related ways in which the absolute future prevents us from knowing how we ought to live. On the one hand we do not know how we ought to live in the sense that the only ethical content we get in the present is a tiny fraction of an impossible and infinitely sized whole, which cannot be grasped in the present. On the other hand we do not know how we ought to live even at the very moment we think we know. In other words, we face the undecidable at the moment of making a decision. All

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fractional content is radically unstable (or undecidable). Insofar as decisions involve this moment of undecidability we see the imperative of ―perhaps‖ come to attach itself to such decisions.

―Perhaps‖ might be said to be our first deconstructive imperative, which is not so much an imperative to act one way or another, but a ―deconstructive cautioning‖ (or

―deconstructive warning‖) to be said of all imperatives. ―Be careful, you don‘t really know what to do. Your fractional content is radically unstable (or undecidable).‖ The absolute future ensures that an ethical life is not something that can be shown, learnt or taught, rather, it perpetually remains to-come. This has enormous implications for philosophers, teachers and parents. One cannot ever learn how to live or be shown how to live, rather, one must re-learn and reinvent at every moment with new fractional content, as if to start from scratch, and the content is always undecidable. We learn to say ―perhaps.‖

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11. The Ongoing Deconstruction of Our Values

According to Derrida, the absolute lack of expectation is the impossible condition of the possibility for the coming of the other as other, which he also calls the

―event.‖ This coming of the other (who is not yet determined, not even as a person or thing) is also described as the coming of the ―arrivant,‖ or at times, the ―absolute arrivant.‖52 A determination (or identification) is already a gesture to make the future present, and therefore, it closes the other to the order of what exists in the present. An event, prior and during which it arrives, is unable to be thought or experienced in the presence of what exists. In arriving, the event fails to arrive for me. It is the coming of the other as other, which means the other resists arriving within my economy of the same. This is because the event is an ―absolutely other singularity‖ (Derrida, 2002, p.

96). Recall earlier when we claimed that every interest and every value of every living being is in some sense aporetic: ―Every other (one) is every (bit) other [tout autre est tout autre], every one else is completely or wholly other‖ (Derrida, 1995, p. 68). If the event is a living being (naturally, any event would always involve any number of living beings), then the other‘s interests and values cannot help but arrive, to some extent, as other for me, spilling over my economy of the same. In letting the other come as other I let them come, I let them be, in a way that I do not understand, in a way that truly goes beyond me and my experience. In a sense, the event does not take place for me, at least, not in a way that is possible within my economy of the same. In letting the other come, the other, the event as such, is impossible for me. The event and the future, paradoxically, must be impossible in order to be possible, or rather, possible only as the impossible. Derrida comments that ―a possible surely and certainly possible, accessible

52 See Derrida‘s (1993) book, Aporias, for more details, especially pages 33-35.

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in advance, would be a poor possible, a futureless possible, a possible already set aside, so to speak, life-assured. This would be a programme or a causality, a development, a process without event‖ (Derrida, 1997, p. 29).

The coming of the other is also to be understood as an ―invention of the other.‖

This deconstructive sense of invention is not a concept of invention in the normal sense whereby one invents something new in the present, such as new car, a new television, a new narrative, a new theory, etc. Rather, it has nothing to do with oneself, nothing to do with one‘s economy of the same. The invention comes from the other as other:

For the other is not possible. So it would be necessary to say that the only

possible invention would be the invention of the impossible. But an invention of

the impossible is impossible, the other would say. Indeed. But it is the only

possible invention: an invention has to declare itself to be the invention of that

which did not appear to be possible; otherwise it only makes explicit a program

of possibilities within the economy of the same. (Derrida, 1992, p. 341)

The other who comes (or the event) is an invention of the other because when they arrive in their otherness, in their absolutely other singularity, they spill over my economy of the same, and I will have no idea what this otherness is, which has escaped by experience. The deconstructive sense of invention ―can consist only in opening, uncloseting, destablizing foreclusionary structures so as to allow for the passage toward the other. But one does not make the other come, one lets it come by preparing for its coming‖ (Derrida, 1992, pp. 341-342). Deconstruction appears as a certain kind of preparatory work whereby we do not make the other come, but rather let the other come. However, it must be stressed that any preparation for the other is not possible, or rather, is possible only as the impossible. Impossibly, paradoxically, I can only let the otherness of the other come, I can only prepare for the other‘s coming, insofar as the

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otherness does not come for me within my economy of the same. In other words, I let the other come only by not reducing the other to my sameness. But strictly speaking, this is never possible. In other words, I cannot help but reduce the otherness of other to the same upon arrival. But I can be aware that there is an overflow, which I know nothing about. Moreover, I can be aware that this overflow is perhaps not merely trivial.

The coming of the other (or the arrivant) is everything that one could never have expected and everything that one fails to understand:

The arrivant must be absolutely other, other than the one I expect not to expect,

that I do not expect, an expectation constituted by nonexpectation, without what

in philosophy is called a horizon of expectation, when a certain knowledge still

anticipates and prepares in advance. If I am sure there will be an event [qu’il y

aura de l’événement], it will not be an event. (Derrida, 2002, p. 96)

The coming of the other is an ―absolute surprise‖ whereby ―anything can happen at any moment‖ without any ―forewarning.‖53 The event is the coming ―of a novelty that

53 Derrida discusses ―the relation to the other‖:

The relation to the other—which in turn guides everything that I am saying

regarding the democracy to come—is without horizon. It is what I call the

messianic; the messianic can arrive at any moment, no one can see it coming,

can see how it should come, or have forewarning of it. The relation to the other

is the absence of horizon, of anticipation, it is the relation to the future that is

paradoxically without anticipation, there where the alterity of the other is an

absolute surprise. If one can be prepared for an absolute surprise, then one must

be prepared for the coming of the other as an absolute surprise—that is what I

understand by the messianic. If the relation to the other is that anything can

happen at any moment, if being prepared for this absolute surprise is being ready

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must surprise, because at the moment when it comes about, there could be no statute, no status, ready and waiting to reduce it to the same‖ (Derrida, 1992, p. 338). The coming of the other as other is a certain shock to the system, which one does not accommodate within their existing frameworks of understanding. Everything that arrives for us within our economy of the same is not an event. Derrida discusses the example of the coming of rain:

The event cannot be reduced to the fact that something arrives. It may rain this

evening, or it may not, but this will not be an absolute event because I know

what rain is, at least insofar as, and to the extent that, I know; and what is more,

it is not an absolutely other singularity. What arrives in such cases is not an

arrivant. (Derrida, 2002, p. 96.)

Rain can hardly be said to surprise us to the extent that it is something we expect to happen from time to time, but the raining of frogs, such as towards the end of the film

Magnolia (Anderson & Sellar, 1999), would perhaps constitute an absolute surprise and event.

As a contemporary historical example, consider the relatively recent occurrence of the anarchic anti-corporate and anti-global movement, which spilled onto the streets of many major cities around the Western world. This resistance movement began in

Seattle in 1999 and media analysis at the time failed to understand the phenomenon properly. For many, Seattle was an absolute surprise and it resisted understanding. It was certainly not clear for many people why there were protests against capitalism in

Seattle. Not since the protests of the Vietnam War had Americans witnessed such a

for the ―anything can happen,‖ then the very structure of horizon informing,

among other horizons, the Idea in the Kantian sense has been punctured.

(Derrida, 2002, p. 242)

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popular political movement spill onto the streets. In Melbourne in 2000, the activists were quickly dismissed in mainstream circles and regarded as economically naive. I do not recall any mention in the mass media of the need to resist global capitalism or any discussion of the sort. The event was precisely other to conservative politics and the mass media. It was completely other to the dominant economic and political discourses of the time. It was an invention of the other. What was particularly difficult for commentators to understand was the diversity of the protesters. It appeared that the only thing that united the protestors was a shared sense of resistance to multinational corporations and the institutions that support them, such as Western democratic governments, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade

Organization. The West had suddenly become a battleground for a new resistance movement with disparate and anarchic features, which were difficult, if not impossible, to fully understand. The police, subsequently, have had their powers increased and have become better prepared. Recently in Australia, for example, it became permissible for police to use ―non-lethal‖ stun gun on crowds. These state-sponsored advancements

(which can only deter such raw acts of democratic participation) do not suggest that the state has any better understanding of the event, but they do suggest that the state is much better prepared if something similar were to arise again. The protestors have lost the element of surprise, which was so potent back in 1999 and 2000. We should keep in mind that the event is always dependent upon perspective. Clearly, the protestors understood what they were doing and why they were doing it, even if the theoretical or philosophical underpinnings were still in development. There is an obvious parallel with

May 1968 in Paris, which was also an event in the Derridean sense. Like Seattle in

1999, it took mainstream politics by absolute surprise. Derrida refers to the fall of the

Berlin Wall as an event:

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What is absolutely new is not this, rather than that; it is the fact that it arrives

only once. It is what is marked by a date (a unique moment and place), and it is

always a birth or a death that a date dates. Even if one could predict the fall of

the Berlin Wall, it happened one day, there were still deaths (before and during

the collapse), and this is what makes it an indelible event. What resists analysis

is birth and death: always the origin and the end of a world. (Derrida, 2002, p.

104)

Derrida is not wrong in recognising that an event is marked by a date, which refers to a unique moment in time and space, such as Paris in 1968, Berlin in 1989,

Seattle in 1999, Melbourne in 2000, etc.

At some moments Derrida appears to be merely describing the event whilst at other times there is a clear prescription attached to the event. In other words, at times there is a clear imperative to be hospitable towards the otherness of the other whereby we let the other come and try not to reduce the other to our economy of the same.

Assembling the police riot squad, armed with tear gas and rubber bullets, is an obvious example of when the other had not been welcomed (however, which Western democracy would not have assembled the riot squad against its own dissenting people?).

If the first imperative of deconstruction is ―perhaps,‖ then the second imperative is

―yes‖ to the otherness of the other. Derrida describes this second imperative, which he also names ―justice,‖ as the ―affirmative experience of the coming of the other as other‖

(Derrida, 2002, p. 104) and the ―axiom of deconstruction‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 105). Keep in mind that this second imperative is not possible, or rather, is possible only as the impossible.

A ―yes‖ to the otherness of the other is also known as unconditional hospitality, which Derrida contrasts with conditional hospitality. Conditional hospitality reduces the

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other to the economy of the same whereby the other is only welcomed on the condition(s) specified by the one welcoming, that is, the host. There are, then, two imperatives at work, one possible and the other impossible, at once paradoxical, but not in opposition with one another. Unconditional hospitality, which Derrida also calls

―absolute hospitality‖ and ―just hospitality‖ (Derrida, 2000, p. 25), like the undecidable decision, and also like the invention of the other, is heterogeneous to the order of the possible, that is, heterogeneous to actual hospitality, decisions and inventions.

Unconditional hospitality is heterogeneous to conditional hospitality, yet they are

―indissociable‖:

Absolute hospitality requires that I open up my home and that I give not only to

the foreigner (provided with a family name, with the social status of being a

foreigner, etc.), but to the absolute, unknown, anonymous other, and that I give

place to them, that I let them come, that I let them arrive, and take place in the

place I offer them, without asking of them either reciprocity (entering into a

pact) or even their names. The law of absolute hospitality commands a break

with hospitality by right, with law or justice as rights. Just hospitality breaks

with hospitality by right; not that it condemns or is opposed to it, and it can on

the contrary set and maintain it in a perpetual progressive movement; but it is as

strangely heterogeneous to it as justice is heterogeneous to the law to which it is

yet so close, from which in truth it is indissociable. (Derrida, 2000, pp. 25-27)

The same is said of democracy. Absolute hospitality becomes heterogeneous to hospitality; justice becomes heterogeneous to the law and democracy to-come becomes heterogeneous to actual democracies. These three events (absolute hospitality, justice and democracy to-come) all come to prescribe the same thing, the same ―deconstructive affirmation‖ of ―yes‖ to the coming of the other as other. In fact, the axiom of

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deconstruction happens to go by many names, including democracy to-come, justice, invention of the other, unconditional hospitality, the absolute arrivant, the messianic, etc. In each case there is a ―division of the concept‖ between a conditional and unconditional form, such as law/justice, conditional hospitality/unconditional hospitality, democracy/democracy to-come, invention/invention of the other, etc. It is important that we recognise that the deconstructive affirmation is strictly impossible in the sense that it can never identify with any states of affairs, such as a program of distributive justice or social justice program.

Derrida‘s event suggests a specific anarchic and revolutionary sense of political participation given that he clearly wishes to distinguish the event against any existing politics. It is an anarchic opening towards an otherness that is heterogeneous to any and all existing forms of government and political organisation. He is not suggesting a revolution that posits a future that is presentable in the present, but a ―revolution of the other‖ (or an ―anarchism of the other‖). In other words, he is suggesting a revolution that is not possible, or rather, is possible only as the impossible. A surprise event, presumably, could arise from anyone at any time and threaten to put every interest, value, law and policy into a state of absolute surprise. Is this not democracy itself? In other words, does not democracy contain a reference to the event? Democracy to-come implies a radically rich concept of democratic participation whereby there is no limit to what democratic participation, or democracy as such, may become. The ―to-come‖ is the absence of a limit. Is there any other way to think democracy without this anarchic opening towards the other as other, without this reference to unconditional hospitality?

Otherwise we reduce democracy to current and foreseeable forms and concepts of democracy, such as the reduction of democracy to a narrow electoral concept.

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When referring to democracy to-come it is interesting to note that Derrida focuses on the ―to-come‖: ―What‘s important in ‗democracy to come‘ is not

‗democracy,‘ but ‗to come.‘ That is, a thinking of the event, of what comes. It‘s the space opened for there to be an event, the to-come, so that the coming be that of the other‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 182). This is in contrast to ―nondemocratic‖ systems of government:

Nondemocratic systems are above all systems that close and close themselves off

from this coming of the other. They are systems of homogenization and of

integral calculability. In the end and beyond all the classical critique of fascist,

Nazi, and totalitarian violence in general, one can say that these are systems that

close the ―to come‖ and that close themselves into the presentation of the

presentable. (Derrida, 2002, p. 182)

The anarchic opening of democracy to-come does not solve the problem of how we ought to act politically or how we can show hospitality towards the other. It is an impossible affirmation. At one point Derrida acknowledges that deconstruction will not give rise to a politics and that it is ―apolitical‖:

What I have said about the absolute arrivant will not give rise to a politics in the

traditional sense of the word: a politics that could be implemented by a nation-

state. While I realize that what I said earlier about the event and the arrivant was,

from the point of view of this concept of politics, an apolitical and irreceivable

proposition, I nonetheless claim that a politics that does not maintain a reference

to this principle of unconditional hospitality is a politics that loses its reference

to justice. It may retain its rights (which I again distinguish here from justice),

the right to its rights, but it loses justice. Along with the right to speak of justice

in any credible way. (Derrida, 2002, p. 101)

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The unconditional deconstructive affirmation cannot be politically effective in isolation, rather, it requires a possible (or conditional) politics in order to be effective in actual states of affairs. At the same time, Derrida insists that without maintaining a

―reference‖ to unconditional hospitality any conditional politics loses its ―reference to justice.‖ In other words, it reduces justice to the law. This means that it closes the coming of the other as other, thereby effectively becoming totalitarian. Deconstruction, then, ultimately becomes a ―reference to the unconditional‖ in the process of thinking and acting within the conditional. Derrida never suggests what such a conditional ethics or politics should look like (not that deconstruction was ever meant to achieve such a thing). Rather, the function of the reference to the unconditional is to ensure the possibility of change and improvement within the conditional. It would make no sense to think the deconstructive affirmation, the ―yes‖ to the event, which is ultimately not possible, unless it was somehow able to assist in the improvement of actual states of affairs. Patton discusses the ―ever-present possibility‖ of historical transformation via the reference to the unconditional:

Affirmative deconstruction invents or reinvents a distinction between two poles

of the concept in question in order to argue two things: first, that the difference

between these two poles is irreducible; and second, that the ever-present

possibility of invention, reconfiguration or transformation in our existing,

historically conditioned and contingent ways of understanding the phenomenon

in question is guaranteed by the existence of the absolute or unconditioned form

of the concept. (Patton, 2003, p. 18)

In maintaining a reference to the unconditional, as we think and act in the conditional, we are ―negotiating‖ between the conditional and the unconditional: ―What

I call negotiation does not simply negotiate the negotiable, it negotiates between the

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negotiable and the nonnegotiable‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 195). This sense of

―deconstructive negotiation‖ is not to be confused with the sense of historical negotiation, which we have already discussed in this essay. Deconstructive negotiation negotiates between the possible and the impossible and historical negotiation negotiates between the concept and history. Historical improvement is achieved in the name of justice in absence of any final or ultimate goal or sense of justice. Rather, it is by maintaining a reference to the unconditional (or justice) that we maintain the sense in which improvement, or justice, is never completed in the present and perpetually remains to-come. Justice is ―undeconstructible‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 104). ―It is the affirmative experience of the coming of the other as other‖ (Derrida, 2002, p. 104). This is in contrast to the law, which is ―deconstructible: it is infinitely perfectible‖ (Derrida,

2002, p. 104). When we negotiate and improve the present we deconstruct what exists:

We can improve the law, the legal system, and to improve means to deconstruct.

It is to criticise a previous state of the law and to change it into a better one. That

is why the law is deconstructible. On the other hand, justice, in the name of

which one deconstructs the law, is not deconstructible. So you have two

heterogeneous concepts, if you want, two heterogeneous ends, the law and

justice. (Derrida, 2001, p. 87)

Between the ―two heterogeneous concepts‖ of the law and justice one criticises the law and creates actual historical change: ―In the middle, you have to negotiate, you have the least bad law‖ (Derrida, 2001, p. 87).

Consider the developing (and improving) historical relations between

Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. In this case, the other is the indigenous (or colonised) other. In posing a question to Derrida in relation to thinking about justice towards the colonised other (during a seminar at the University of Sydney), Patton

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suggested that the Australian High Court‘s recognition of native title ―provides a striking example of a partial deconstruction of an established and historically contingent body of law, in the name of justice towards indigenous people‖ (Patton, in Derrida,

2001, p. 82).54 For Patton, despite the ―justice‖ of the High Court‘s recognition of native title, there is still the sense of an ongoing injustice: ―But, of course, at the same time, and to the extent that this involves a judgement formulated in law of the colonising power, this act of justice toward colonised indigenous peoples presupposes the perpetuation of a fundamental injustice‖ (Patton, in Derrida, 2001, p. 82). In his response, Derrida agreed with Patton:

The example that you gave was not pure justice, but it was a negotiation to

improve as much as possible a given state of law, but in the name of justice. But

of course it‘s not just. We cannot have a good conscience, and obviously you

don‘t have a good conscience about that: it‘s not enough, but it‘s better than

nothing. And so, deconstruction goes on, and it will be an endless process.

(Derrida, 2001, p. 87)

The fact that any act of justice towards the other, that is, any negotiation, is framed from within one‘s economy of the same (such as the contingent body of

Australian law) means that one‘s response is unavoidably a compromise. This prevents us from having a good conscience.

Derrida seems to simplify matters between the option of either ―nothing‖ or any kind of negotiation, whereby the latter seems preferable. Improvement in history cannot be just any negotiation. If this is the case, then deconstruction contains a deep ethical void because there is no means to understand any negotiation as any better or worse than any other. In regard to the above example, we might ask, ―what makes the

54 See Mabo v. Queensland No. 2 (1992).

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recognition of native title, as a negotiation, preferable or better than another, or even, better than nothing?‖ On my view, what makes it ethically defensible is the fact that native title aims to recognise indigenous interests in land, which are highly significant to

Indigenous Australians. This is hardly a controversial statement. If indigenous interests in land were merely trivial, then native title would hardly be a significant improvement in Australian law. On my view, the unconditional demand for justice must always be anchored in the important interests of those concerned, such as the colonised other.

These interests are completely other. They spill over the economy of the Australian law.

The challenge for deconstruction is to establish an ethical basis for what might make one negotiation preferable and better than any other, which suggests a basis for how we might go about negotiating. Deconstruction alone cannot secure such a basis.

Deconstruction remains heterogeneous to all ethics and politics. That is its limit.

Deconstruction must be fused with a conditional ethics and politics (that maintains a

―reference‖ to the unconditional), whatever that may be, which is precisely the ―other to deconstruction.‖ Deconstruction must be rhizomatically (or horizontally) connected up with some form of ethics and politics. With this in mind, it not only makes sense that deconstruction can be combined or merged with other traditions in philosophy (such as utilitarianism, liberalism, etc.), but that this horizontal connection is essential to deconstruction becoming ethically and politically effective in history. Our concept of ethics functions as a conditional ethics and politics. Once we have connected our concept of ethics with deconstruction we shall have one possible vision of what ethics might look like in fusion with deconstruction. In order to achieve this we need to have a clear understanding of what the deconstructive affirmation specifically means for us.

The coming of the other as other cannot be merely trivial or harmful. It must be important for the other. If the otherness of the other is not important for the other, then it

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is not clear that it matters whether or not the other comes. This is a fact that Derrida does not give adequate attention to. It means that we must shift our thinking of the other whereby we consider otherness as not just any otherness, but a ―valuable otherness,‖ despite the fact that it spills over the economy of the same. In other words, I am thinking of an otherness that is worthy of great respect. I would like to briefly turn our attention to an important passage that, when read a certain way, anticipates the sense in which the deconstructive affirmation requires an understanding of otherness in terms of being a valuable otherness:

The openness of the future is worth more; that is the axiom of deconstruction,

that on the basis of which it has always set itself in motion and which links it, as

with the future itself, to otherness, to the priceless dignity of otherness, that is to

say, justice. It is also democracy-to-come. (Derrida, 2002, p. 105)

According to Derrida, otherness (or justice, democracy to-come, etc.) has a certain ―priceless dignity.‖ But how can one evaluate the otherness of the other, of which one knows nothing, as ―priceless‖? Strictly speaking, I cannot evaluate absolute otherness. I cannot say that the otherness of the other is either important or trivial.

However, if the otherness of the other is not important, then what is left of deconstruction? How else can it be justified? Deconstruction requires this evaluation of the otherness of the other. Surely deconstruction cannot be justified on the basis of a trivial otherness, which would make the deconstructive affirmation just as trivial. If deconstruction is not saying ―yes‖ to the importance of otherness, even though it is impossible, then in some sense it is unable to justify itself. Deconstruction would risk alignment with the harmful and the trivial (not that there are any guarantees that the harmful and trivial will not arrive or will not develop upon arrival). Derrida performs an

―impossible evaluation.‖ He evaluates in the place, or rather, the non-place, where there

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is nothing present to evaluate. How is this possible? Well, it is not possible, or rather, it is possible only as the impossible. An impossible evaluation is the only evaluation that values the otherness of the other. Alternatively, is it possible to think of any evaluation that does not involve the impossible? Does not every evaluation we make concern the interests and values of others who are always at the same time completely other to us?

Our deconstructive affirmation, which is possible only as the impossible, can never identify with any interests, values, evaluations or priorities. It can never identify with any form of historical ethical content. In fact, it is defined precisely as completely other to any ethical content we experience within the economy of the same. Our deconstructive affirmation, our sense of justice, which is the name by which improvement is made, is the affirmation of ethical content to-come. It affirms the

―important interests of the other,‖ or rather, the ―ethical inventions of the other.‖ These interests fail to arrive within the economy of the same, but this should not make them any less important. This affirmation is also the ultimate justification of deconstruction, unless the coming of the otherness of the other does not matter. Our affirmation is an opening towards the impossible whole of ethical content, which remains to-come. It is an opening towards the otherness of the other as the completely other interests, values and evaluations of the other. In one sense an ethical life (or a less unethical life) arrives, however, in another sense it perpetually remains to-come. Regardless of how ethically we live, we cannot help but fail to meet the ongoing demand of the other‘s important interests.

Our affirmation unconditionally welcomes the other who takes ethical content in unexpected and absolutely surprising directions. This other brings other interests, values and evaluations that spill over the economy of the same. The alternative, to close the coming of the interests and values of the other, seems worse (although there are never

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any guarantees either way). If we close the coming of the other we effectively reduce all values and evaluations to the values of the economy of the same. This means we reduce all trans-evaluations to those we transform, and therefore, we ultimately rob trans- evaluation of being truly transformative. We would close the unfolding of ethical content and effectively reduce ethical content to the current unstable historical fraction.

We would reduce the absolute future to the present and reduce the otherness of the other to the same. We would become less democratic and more totalitarian. Democracy to- come (or the revolution of the other or the anarchism of the other) involves a sense of democratic participation whereby anyone at any time can assert absolutely surprising political diagnostic trans-evaluations, which contain values that are completely other to what currently exists, completely other to the dominant economic, legal and political modes of understanding. What would a government controlled by the people be if it did not welcome the evaluations of the other? It would be a democracy glued to current values and evaluations. It would be a democracy incapable of being open to a people to come.

So how does our deconstructive negotiation work? The task of diagnostic trans- evaluation is to take content in better (or less shameful) directions. It begins in a world of poor priorities (or a poor triage) and invents new and ethically richer priorities (or a new triage). It is essentially transformative. It contains no fixed values, rather, its task is to perpetually reinvent an ethical life in history. In other words, its task is to achieve ethical improvement in history. Diagnostic trans-evaluation is precisely the ongoing process of deconstructing our values, whether at the individual level or at the political level. It is infinitely perfectible. Our ethical problem-solver knows that there are no fixed, final or perfect interests and values. They know that there is only the ongoing improvement of our values, the ongoing improvement in the way we live. They know

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that regardless of how well we live, an ethical life perpetually remains to-come.

Diagnostic trans-evaluation affirms change in the name of the ethical (or the just, the important, the good, the better, the fair, etc.) but it maintains a reference to the unconditional, to the to-come, to the otherness of the other, etc. Our problem-solver does not have a good conscience. They know that ethical improvement is always at the same time perpetuating an injustice towards the other to the extent that any improvement is framed within the terms of the ethical problem-solver.

Diagnostic trans-evaluation goes even further. Our problem-solver also knows that we never really know how we ought to live. They know that an ethical life cannot be shown or taught in the present. They know that the current content is only a small fraction of the historical unfolding of ethical content, and at any time all we ever see is a glimpse of the impossible whole. They know that the current fractional content is radically unstable and that the ethical ―ought‖ is undermined by the undecidable

―perhaps‖ at every moment. They know that ethical improvement might turn out to be no improvement at all because either things turn out badly or because history looks back upon itself with very different values. They know that deconstructive negotiation alone is not enough in order for ethics to be effective in history. In order to deconstruct (or improve) current values, the ethical problem-solver must historically negotiate the (a- historical) concept of ethics in history. In other words, the ethical problem-solver must historically negotiate the pursuit of value in a world without fixed values. On my view, by understanding deconstruction in this ethically rich sense, that is, as a process of diagnostic trans-evaluation and the creation of new priorities, we provide deconstruction with the conditional ethics and politics it needs to be effective in making actual change.

At the same time, it is impossible to think of diagnostic trans-evaluation without deconstruction, that is, without maintaining a reference to the otherness of the other, the

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evaluation of the other, the important interests of the other, the ethical content that is to- come, etc.

I shall end this chapter with a further example of justice towards Indigenous

Australians, which compliments Patton‘s example of the Australian High Court‘s recognition of native title. The former Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (1957-), read the speech, ―Apology to Australia‘s Indigenous Peoples,‖ on February 13, 2008.

This speech contains a deconstruction of our values towards Indigenous Australians, particularly in relation to the ―Stolen Generations, their descendants‖ and ―their families left behind‖ (Rudd, 2008). The apology is diagnostic in the sense that it targets the harmful values and priorities of previous Australian governments over a long period of time. As a result, the apology indicates new values for the Australian government

(which represents new values for a significant number of many non-Indigenous

Australians). The apology recognises that injustices occurred in the past and that the suffering of Indigenous Australians was not only important for those who suffered in the past, but is also important for current Indigenous Australians:

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and

governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our

fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

children from the families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants

and for their families left behind, we say sorry. (Rudd, 2008)

The ―pain, suffering and hurt‖ of past and current Indigenous Australians has become newly evaluated, or reinvented, as important, or rather, ―profound.‖ According to Rudd, no longer is Indigenous Australians‘ suffering to be understood as merely

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insignificant. This is a small step towards mitigating suffering in the present.

Interestingly, Rudd admits that the apology is ―inadequate‖ (Rudd, 2008). There is the sense in which historical ethical improvement, or justice, has come, but it also remains to-come. It is not surprising, then, that Rudd turns his attention to ongoing historical improvement based on ―a real respect‖ for Indigenous Australians: ―Today‘s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs. It is also aimed at building a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt‖ (Rudd, 2008). ―A real respect‖ clearly suggests the sense in which Indigenous Australians and their interests are now to be regarded as genuinely valued, or worthy of respect, contrary to the ―thinly veiled contempt‖ of the past.

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Tragic Plateaus

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12. Nothing to be Done: Chronic suffering and Certain Death in the Emergency

Room

According to Calder, ―one of the great errors by which we live, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, is that the purpose of life is happiness‖ (Calder, 2001, p. 141).

Calder discusses how Beckett viewed life as a life of suffering: ―He does not share

Kant‘s wonder at the stars that shine above us. In nature he sees only cruelty and pain and states quite clearly that the reason for our existence might simply be to allow pain to exist‖ (Calder, 2001, pp. 9-10). Calder also claims that ―suffering, whether human or animal, was never far from his mind, and he knew that it was unavoidable for all that lives‖ (Calder, 2001, p. 129). We find a strikingly similar view on the unavoidability of suffering in the thought of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860).

Schopenhauer is a figure who Calder constantly refers to and who he said ―appealed‖ to

Beckett ―closely‖ (Calder, 2001, p. 6):

If the immediate and direct purpose of our life is not suffering then our existence

is the most ill-adapted to its purpose in the world: for it is absurd to suppose that

the endless affliction of which the world is everywhere full, and which arises out

of the need and distress pertaining essentially to life, should be purposeless and

purely accidental. Each individual misfortune, to be sure, seems an exceptional

occurrence; but misfortune in general is the rule. (Schopenhauer, 2004, p. 3)

It is clear that for Calder‘s Becket and Schopenhauer our purpose is to suffer.

What might this mean exactly? The word ―purpose‖ would suggest an enduring (or chronic) sense of suffering or what we might also call a tragic sense of suffering. On the surface, Beckett and Schopenhauer may appear to be presenting a doctrine that is at odds with the view (such as the standard utilitarian view) that life is concerned with

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aiming at promoting happiness (or reducing suffering). It may also appear at odds with our specific ethical aim, which involves not simply promoting happiness (or interests), but promoting valuable happiness (or valuable interests). However, I do not see their view at odds with our view (or the standard utilitarian view), rather, I see it as coexisting with it. Life (and indeed an ethical life) attempts to aim at reducing and preventing suffering whilst simultaneously our purpose in life is to suffer. The words

―purpose‖ and ―aim,‖ then, are in absolute opposition with one another. They are incompatible extremes. We are trying to go in one direction whilst being pulled in the exact opposite direction. We are swimming against the current. We are trying to paddle north whilst being pulled south. Our aim is what we chase whilst our purpose is where we repeatedly end up.

These two opposing forces in fact compliment and require one another like the way in which a hero needs a villain. Is not the call to an ethical life built upon the recurring sense in which life is a life of suffering, that is, a life of chronic suffering? If suffering were to stop one day, as if by miracle, then ethics would be able to pack up its bags and retire. The word ―purpose‖ might tend to suggest the work of someone or something, perhaps a cruel creator behind the scenes cleverly orchestrating our suffering, such as an evil God. Schopenhauer seems to think that suffering can be no mere accident, which indicates the work of a God, but it could well be that our purpose is the situation we happen to find ourselves in without any prior divine plan. There is also the possibility that a reckless God made everything by mistake. We do not know.

We can only speculate.

We can appreciate the brief happiness of life and perhaps be grateful for our existence, and yet at the same time (perhaps precisely because of the happiness of life) we can also be more than acutely aware of the suffering of life. Life is chronic suffering

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and yet it is punctured with happiness, or at the very least, it is punctured by moments whereby we suffer less. Perhaps the opposite is the case for some, whereby life is often happy and punctured by suffering. Some may be more lucky than others, however, a life immune from ongoing suffering is virtually impossible to imagine regardless of when or where one lives. Some might object and suggest that suffering in affluent Western countries is all but gone, given that extreme poverty is gone. Critchley comments on the ongoing existence of suffering in affluent countries:

The curious fact about human beings is that when you given them food, even

more food than they can eat, when you shower them with every earthly blessing,

then they will concoct new miseries for themselves, new neuroses and

pathologies, and even a new ―science‖ to deal with those new neuroses and

pathologies: psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, aromatherapy, reflexology, or

whatever. (Critchley, 2001, p. 6)

Critchley‘s view only seems to cement the shared views of Beckett and

Schopenhauer even if, oddly enough, we are the ones who are guilty of concocting our misery. Abundance makes a significant impact upon satisfying many of our important interests, but it will not remove chronic suffering. It is absurd to suggest that a better toaster, a fancy espresso machine, a luxury European car, a larger television, a pool, an overseas holiday, or whatever, will save us from ongoing suffering. It is not difficult to find many examples in many forms of art, such as in film, literature and television, of wealthy people who are shown to suffer despite their wealth, or even, because of their wealth. Far from a solution, the overconsumption that currently plagues Western societies only fills our lives with trivia and diverts our energy and attention away from the important suffering in the world. Some might further object and suggest that chronic suffering is just whinging (that is, assuming a problem where there is none) and that we

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will never be happy regardless of how much we have. Well, whilst it is perhaps true that we will never be happy regardless of how much we consume, I doubt it is true that our suffering is merely trivial. Trivia and whinging are much more closely related to overconsumption. Given Critchley‘s view that we ―will concoct new miseries‖ for ourselves despite ―every earthly blessing‖ it would appear that either we need something above and beyond this Earth to save us from our suffering or nothing at all will save us.

The Butterfly Effect (Bender et al., 2004) is a film that expresses not only the sense that life is painful, but the sense that if we could travel back in time and remake our lives we would still find that life is painful in a different way for ourselves or others we come into contact with. Evan Treborn (played by Ashton Kutcher) discovers that by reading his childhood diary he is able to travel back in time and change the past in order to recreate the present. On the surface the film looks like nothing more than an adventure in science fiction time travel, determinism and the butterfly effect of chaos theory. However, arguably the most innovative theme of this film has little to do with either time travel, determinism or the butterfly effect. Evan‘s childhood sweetheart,

Kayleigh (played by Amy Smart), suicides soon after he visits her after a long period of absence. During the visit he asks her questions about her childhood sexual abuse committed by her father, George. Evan considers that he may be able to save her by travelling back in time and preventing the abuse committed by Kayleigh‘s father. He achieves just that, however, in correcting one problem another problem emerges. As

Evan travels back in time he creates a new causal chain leading to new unexpected problems in an alternative dystopia. The blurb acknowledges that ―every change he makes transforms his life and that of those around him, often to unexpected and disastrous consequences‖ (Bender et al., 2004).

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In the first world Evan creates he goes to prison for murdering Kayleigh‘s brother, Tommy. In Evan‘s second attempt, whilst still in the past, Evan‘s friend Lenny murders Tommy and Lenny ends up institutionalised. At this point Evan firmly believes he can fix things but is not sure how. He travels back to when he was a child visiting his father, Jason, in prison. Evan asks his father for answers on how to fix what he has done

(his father also has the ability to change the past). Jason makes it clear that there is no way to fix things and that he may be killing his mother just by being there, in the past.

Evan refuses to listen and tells his father that he will send him a post card when he has made everything perfect again. When Evan returns to the present he looks up Kayleigh and discovers she has become a junkie prostitute. In Evan‘s next attempt, whilst still in the past, he blows his arms off, but Lenny, Kayleigh and Tommy turn out fine. Evan tries to commit suicide, but is saved by Tommy. He also discovers that his mother is dying of lung cancer due to chain smoking, which she started after Evan blew his arms off. Evan still believes he can fix things and his mother tires to stop him. In Evan‘s next attempt, whilst still in the past, he blows up Kayleigh and becomes institutionalised. In his next and final attempt, which is in the director‘s cut, he returns to the womb and strangles himself. Although Evan was never born, everyone else appears to have turned out okay.

Although Evan keeps believing that he can fix things, whatever world he creates becomes a tragic state of affairs filled with various forms of suffering and death. Evan saves one only to sacrifice another. Ultimately, he chooses to sacrifice himself. This sense of sacrifice is consistent with the sense of unavoidable sacrifice we find in

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Derrida, whereby we cannot respond to one without sacrificing another in the process.55

Evan is able to make a difference, but the only difference he makes is merely a difference in who suffers or dies. He is ultimately unable to prevent either suffering or death in some form or another. In a sense, changing past events makes no difference at all. His father and mother, it seems, had come to a similar conclusion.

The Butterfly Effect demonstrates that tragedy prevails regardless of the decisions and actions we happen to take, and moreover, that it takes multiple and unexpected forms. Although we cannot travel through time like Evan, his time travel provides a tragic lesson for all of us: Ourselves (or others) shall suffer one way or the other regardless of our very best efforts, regardless of whatever causal chain unfolds.

How we suffer in the future, however, remains largely undetermined. We can anticipate tragedy in some specific forms, like the onset of lung cancer, but we cannot anticipate the full extent of how we may suffer and die in the future. This compliments the sense in which the future is an absolute future to-come in the Derridean sense, whereby the future cannot be thought or experienced in the present. Tragedy, then, as ―tragedy to- come.‖ If we could time travel and change a past event, then we should only expect to find another new and perhaps surprising form of suffering (or death) to emerge. Evan‘s lesson does not prevent us from seeing some forms of suffering (or some forms of sacrifice) as preferable, or more significant, than others. Ultimately this difference, between one form of suffering or another, between one sacrifice or another, somewhat modestly, is the entire sphere within which ethics is able to create change. In trying to live an ethical life we may not be able to overcome our purpose of suffering, but we can

55 Derrida writes that ―I cannot respond to the call, the request, the obligation, or even the love of another without sacrificing the other other, the other others‖ (Derrida,

1995, p. 68).

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try to change the way we suffer in less worse directions. In other words, we can try to prevent the most important and urgent forms of suffering (or death) at any given time without any certainty that a worse chain of events may unfold. Like Evan, we do not know exactly how the causal chain may unfold despite our very best intentions.

Given the chronic suffering of life, it is not clear that life is preferable to death.

Some of us suffer to the extent that death becomes preferable to living. Although ethics is completely concerned with the interests of living beings, the interests of living beings extend beyond life. An 80 year old in a hospice with inoperable cancer may find life no longer worth enduring. We cannot, then, say that life is inherently valuable. If death can be more valuable than life, then this is because life has no fixed value. Although suicide and euthanasia may be preferable at times, this does not mean they are not at the same time deeply tragic. Whether life is worthless or valuable, tragedy seems to prevail as inevitable. Ultimately, certain death is the tragedy that must overtake suffering in the end. However, at the very least we can say that death is our relief and release from the world of chronic suffering (assuming that we do not continue to suffer after death).

Only death is truly chronic (or permanent) in this sense.

For Beckett and Schopenhauer non-existence is clearly preferable to existence.

Schopenhauer writes that ―perhaps at the end of his life, no man, if he be sincere and at the same time in possession of his faculties, will ever wish to go through it again.

Rather than this, he will much prefer to choose complete non-existence‖ (Schopenhauer,

1966, p. 324). According to Calder,

the most effective way to reduce suffering is to bring no new life into the world,

thereby symbolically avoiding the mortal sin of Adam, which for Schopenhauer

and Beckett—they use almost the same words—is procreation, not, as in

Genesis, the acquisition of forbidden knowledge. (Calder, 2001, p. 129)

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Further on, Calder comments that Beckett expressed ―a passive anger at those who insisted in having families.‖56 It is not clear that parents are creating life all on their own. Perhaps God is using parents like little puppets. In either case, parents (or God) should perhaps be condemned for the suffering created, yet parents (or God) also create everything happy and valuable in life. On my view, it is not clear (at least not from any a-historical point of view) that non-existence is preferable to existence. It may well be the case that we are pulled in both directions, pulled towards affirming life and death, because life is always a life of happiness and suffering (to a varying extent and significance for different people). The desire to be and the desire not to be. But we must decide between the two. There cannot be a single universal (or a-historical) answer for all. Preferring non-existence does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that one should suicide. Despite their shared belief that non-existence is preferable to existence, neither

Beckett nor Schopenhauer suicided.

Like chronic suffering, death is to be understood as a tragedy and it will not be overcome by any change in how we live. We can prevent death for periods of time, such

56 According to Calder,

time and time again he targets parents as irresponsible criminals although, of

course, in life courtesy prevented him from expressing his real feelings. Hamm

denounces his parents in Endgame as ―accursed progenitors‖ and Molloy is

bitterly unable to forgive his mother for bringing him into the world. In private I

knew Beckett to express a passive anger at those who insisted in having families,

however gloomy the future outlook, but in everyday life it is not possible to be

both honest and logical in front of others who don‘t think about such things in

terms of consequences and take a conventional view of life as a ―gift.‖ (Calder,

2001, pp. 130-131)

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as when we treat the victims of cancer or AIDS, avoid war, prevent extreme poverty, etc., however, above and beyond the sense in which death is prevented and preventable, there is the sense that death is unavoidable for all. For Schopenhauer, our awareness of our death is a cruel fact of life, which adds greatly to our suffering. He claims that man‘s suffering is ―greatly enhanced specifically by the fact that he actually knows of death, while the animal only instinctively flees it without knowing of it and therefore without ever really having it in view, which man does all the time‖ (Schopenhauer,

2004, p. 8). What causes our life-long suffering of death, then, is not so much death itself, but our awareness of the certain coming of our death. Not just the awareness of our own death, but the awareness of the coming of the death of loved ones around us.

The awareness of the coming of death is something that animals, children, the intellectually impaired, etc., have overwhelmingly been spared (how, then, can we not be deeply envious of them?). Calder comments on the ―ever-present knowledge‖ of mortality:

In his writings we sometimes find a boy, seldom a girl, except where one is

invented or remembered by one of his female characters on stage. The boy is

nearly always the young Samuel Beckett himself, either as he remembered

himself, or symbolically. The boy is pictured freshfaced and eager for the life

ahead that he will find so different from expectation, and dominated by the ever-

present knowledge of his own morality. (Calder, 2001, p. 131)

Surely, this chronic suffering of one‘s morality is not merely trivial.

Remarkably, religion offers ―solutions‖ to the tragedies of life by offering eternal life and happiness in God‘s heaven. This is especially clear in the two largest religions: Christianity and Islam. Religion solves both of the problems of chronic suffering and certain death. Unfortunately, however, religious solutions are purely a

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matter of faith.57 We may have faith in religion to solve the tragedies of life, but this never a belief in the solutions. Having faith does not mean we have really ―solved‖ the problem of tragedy in the sense of the certainty of a solution. Faith is something closer to the hope (or prayer) of a solution. It is the hope that God, or Jesus, or whoever, will save us from our tragic situation. In this sense, religious faith is not only compatible with tragedy, but a likely outcome of it. If life were not tragic, then perhaps we would no longer have any need for religious faith and the ―solutions‖ it offers. Ultimately, however, any amount of faith cannot remove the tragedy, which persists for believers and non-believers alike.

Beckett‘s (1954) play, Waiting For Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts, opens with Estragon trying to take his boot off. He repeatedly fails and makes a remarkable comment, which is repeated throughout the play: ―Nothing to be done‖ (Beckett, 1954, p. 2). This phrase resonates with a life of chronic suffering and certain death, whereby any change in how we live, however ethical it may be, is ultimately futile. For

Schopenhauer, how we live similarly appears to amount to nothing when he says that ―it matters not how individuals‖ . . . ―arise and pass away in time, like fleeting dreams‖

(Schopenhauer, 1966, p. 281). It is for this reason that Beckett and Schopenhauer have the last word on ethics and pull the rug from under its feet. However, recall ―the message that emerges most clearly from his work,‖ namely, that ―one should do whatever is possible to alleviate the suffering of others, and where possible prevent it‖

57 On my view, faith must involve an aporetic (or impossible) belief in the unknown. It means that we must believe in precisely that which cannot be believed (or known). Faith involves not believing in the normal sense of believing in something that is present to one‘s thought and experience. Faith, or rather, ―aporetic faith,‖ begins where belief and knowledge ends.

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(Calder, 2001, p. 129). Yet for Beckett there is nothing to be done! ―Nothing to be done,‖ and yet, at the same time, ―one should do whatever is possible.‖ Beckett, it seems, was not only acutely aware of the tragedy of life, but was also aware that all that is left to be done, if there is still anything to be done, is to live an ethical life.

From the tragic point of view, any difference in how we live makes no difference at all. Nothing to be done. That is the tragedy and limit of ethics, even when ethics is doing all that it can. The outcome of whatever we do, whatever is possible, will always be the same: suffering and certain death. This transforms the problem of ―how ought we live?‖ into a trivial problem (and therefore it is no longer really a problem at all). Our solution, the pursuit of important interests, becomes just as trivial. Ethics, then, becomes entirely trivial. What could be worse for ethics, particularly for an ethics that tries to do all it can to avoid trivia? Unfortunately, there is really no hope that ethics can recover from the tragedy, rather, ethics must learn to live with the tragedy. But in any case, pursuing valuable interests is also the most worthwhile thing we can do, regardless of how trivial it may be. On the surface our interests are important. We should pursue value, but deep down at the ―subsurface layer‖ of tragedy we will have changed nothing. We are ultimately wasting our time, but it is still more important than anything else. Everything important we can do, even the most important thing, becomes trivial.

Therefore, it is no longer clear that anything we can do is really important at all. It is vital that we understand that it is not ourselves and our chronic suffering that become trivial, but how we live that becomes trivial. If our existence is trivial, or our chronic suffering is trivial, then there is no tragedy at all because a ―tragedy of the trivial‖ is hardly a tragedy. If our situation is tragic at all it is because we are significant beings whose existence is not trivial and whose suffering is not trivial. However, there is no guarantee that our existence and suffering are not trivial. These plateaus on tragedy are

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built upon the assumption that human existence and suffering are important, however, this assumption is a contingent and historical human value. It is a negotiation of value.

In any case, whether human beings and their suffering are important or not, the contingent important ends we create for ourselves (our negotiations, our ethical ends) all come undone.

There is another possibility that also threatens to remove our tragic status.

Perhaps we deserve our chronic suffering and a certain death, such as in the sense that we are being punished for a crime. There is no doubt that humanity has committed plenty of wrongdoing. Any honest assessment will suggest that we are guilty every day of enormous crimes, both individually and politically, which are easily preventable. But how much is too much? Or have we been forgiven for our wrongs? But who could (or would) forgive? Could we forgive ourselves or do we need God to forgive us? If we deserve our suffering and death, then where is the tragedy? Tragedy is only for those who are not stained with unethical lives. For those who deserve to suffer and die, rather than a situation of tragedy, their situation is closer to justice. Perhaps God‘s plan is justice for all of us. Perhaps the only ones who would most certainly be undeserved would be children, animals and the intellectually disabled. If our suffering and death is justice, then any human attempt to reduce it, such as through ethics, potentially becomes a violation of justice. Any distributive justice in an already just world of retributive justice would instantly become unjust. Remarkably, it is no longer clear as to whether ethics is just or unjust.

Living on the surface, and unable to overcome our purpose of suffering and certain death, ethics becomes modestly reduced to making decisions (undecidable decisions) between one form of suffering or another, between one sacrifice or another.

Therefore, there is the ongoing problem of how to sort (or triage) the diverse need in the

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world. Everything we have said so far, including on sacrifice, freedom, democracy, deconstruction, etc., takes place on this surface. Below the surface everything is being

(tragically) undone. Ethics becomes all ―surface work‖ or ―skin work.‖ Our problem- solver becomes a kind of dermatologist. Difference is merely on the surface whilst at the subsurface layer sameness is really in control. Difference (and therefore ethics as such) comes to be an illusion. It is the illusion that difference actually makes a difference. Rather than provide a cure to tragedy, difference merely provides a treatment for incurable disease. The surface is transformed into a surface of ―illusory difference.‖ This transformation should not, I believe, prevent us from doing all we can to prevent the most important and urgent forms of suffering (or death) at any given time.

Our hero, our ―tragic hero,‖ is our ethical problem-solver. We may think of the surface as an heroic surface, where difference appears to be really making a difference.

But our tragic hero, our problem-solver, knows that ethics is merely surface work.

Traditionally, as if living in a childish dream, ethics has been unable to understand itself as surface work. It has been happy to understand itself in purely heroic terms, not tragic-heroic terms. Our tragic-heroic ethical problem-solver must not only pursue value in a world without fixed values, he or she must also pursue value in a world where suffering persists and everything valuable comes to an end. Their work is consumed by tragedy, yet their work on the surface is never done. It is never equal to the emergencies of this world (precisely because suffering is chronic). They know that nothing is to be done, yet they work at doing all that they can. Nothing is to be done, yet everything is to be done. No difference, yet difference. Nothing, yet everything. Tragic, yet heroic.

Ultimately, we must think the tragic and the heroic together, effectively fusing to create a tragic-heroic ethics.

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13. Ethix: From the Hospital to the Hospice

If we were to think of a symbol for the tragedy of ethics, a symbol for tragic- heroic ethics, then would not the most obvious symbol be the most famous religious symbol of the largest religion in the world? The Christian cross acutely represents the double event of suffering and death. According to the Bible, Jesus suffered and died for us, however, if we all suffer and die, then would not the cross be an appropriate symbol for all of us, regardless of our faith or lack of faith? Jesus‘ suffering and death can be understood as a most everyday occurrence for Christians and non-Christians alike.

Perhaps Jesus had it much better: Not all of us can take comfort in an afterlife in God‘s heaven. It could not be more appropriate that the cross is the most common of all symbols in the world. Tragedy everywhere.

Is it odd that the symbol of the Christian God‘s religion, the symbol of his work, is the most perfect symbol for suffering and death? Would it not also be the perfect symbol for the work of the devil? The well known problem of evil in philosophy is the problem of how God could allow all the suffering in the world, which he, according to his infinite power (omnipotence) and infinite knowledge (omniscience), should be able to remove and prevent. Either God is powerless, dead or unaware of the suffering he has caused (or allowed to exist). Perhaps he chooses to let us suffer. Perhaps the devil has taken control, which would suggest that the devil has become God, would it not? Calder sees a speculative thought of the possibility of an evil or reckless God in Beckett: ―As

Beckett speculated on the creation of the world, he increasingly envisaged the creator as a monster, but not necessarily a conscious one‖ (Calder, 2001, p. 130). Some might claim that we humans put the suffering and death here on Earth and that God‘s role is not dissimilar to a concerned parent who grants a child freedom for which the

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consequences are entirely the child‘s own responsibility. We have certainly created much suffering and death, which we ought to be condemned for, however, we cannot be blamed for everything. God‘s hands are far from clean.

It is perhaps most appropriate to symbolise the difference between heroic ethics and tragic-heroic ethics with a cross in the form of a lower case ―x.‖ Rather than just ethics, then, we have ethix. We have replaced two letters with one, yet we have retained the same sound. This visual change effectively scares ethics with chronic suffering and certain death. The lower case ―x‖ symbolises not only Jesus‘ suffering and death, but the chronic suffering and certain death of all of us. It symbolises the tragedy that ethics cannot overcome. Ethics effectively carries its own little cross. On the surface, ethics and ethix share the same aim (of promoting important interests), however, ethix is aware of the subsurface movements. From the point of view of ethix, ethics becomes an illusion. It is the illusion of heroism without tragedy. Ethix becomes the only real

―ethics‖ as such. It becomes the only ―ethics‖ that is not an illusion. It is the only

―ethics‖ that is aware that any difference will amount to no difference, yet it still fights for everything.

If we can only treat our tragedy, rather than cure it, then a medical description of ethics as general triage (or general medicine) is no longer sufficient because medicine is interested only with cures. Palliative care is concerned with treating those patients who are terminally ill in absence of any hope of a medical cure. It begins where medicine ends. Although in common usage we understand terminal illness to occur for those people with a life-threatening incurable disease, all of us, because we are all sentenced to certain death and life-long suffering from the moment of birth, are terminally ill in exactly the same way. The only difference is that those with terminal illness are closer to the same end we all must face. The difference is merely a difference of proximity.

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We do not have to wait until we get an aggressive cancer at 80 to become aware that a cure is not possible. We do not have to wait to suffer. All of us, even the young and healthy, are close to death like palliative care patients in a hospice.

Just as ethics is general triage (or general medicine), ethix is ―general palliative care.‖ Rather than patients waiting in the emergency room, general palliative care has only palliative care patients. Helpless to cure their situation, it can only provide treatments. From the tragic point of view, there is no such thing as a cure. All cures turn out to be palliatives. Heart surgeon heroes are really only performing palliative procedures. Just as ethics becomes an illusion, medicine also becomes an illusion.

Medicine becomes a treatment masquerading as a cure. Just like ethix is the only real

―ethics,‖ palliative care is the only real ―medicine.‖

Have you ever been struck by the sense of closeness to reality when visiting the terminally ill in a hospice? It might even be said to be our society‘s monument to reality. It is perhaps the farthest one can get from the showroom wonder and surplus triviality of the shopping centre. Heroic ethics might be said to take place in the hospital where cures seem to exist, as if in a childish dream, whilst the tragic-heroism of ethix takes place in the hospice where cures no longer exist. Is there ever an emergency in a hospice? Naturally, the imminent death of a terminally ill patient risks diffusing the sense of emergency. The difference between dying sooner rather than later seems important to us, but ultimately none of us have long to go. In reality, how much further from death are we than those who wait to die in the hospice? Life will always have been so short. Perhaps the passage into death, living in a hospice, life as such, is not merely trivial. If there is no emergency in a hospice then there is no real sense of emergency at all. Perhaps palliative care is important and urgent, and if it is not important, then nothing is important because palliative care is all we have got.

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