First Birthday in Poland

People have been giving me birthday presents all day. First, IA gave me a stuffed mouse, some cologne, and a rose. Then IB gave me a hug stuffed elephant and a generous bunch of flowers. Danuta gave me a wonderful box of candy and a hug. Kinga came over with a plant, some chocolate, and a bag of potato chips. When it was all said and done, I was left bewildered that so many took the time out of their day to be so generous.

I hope I can remember this when I get down on this whole thing. It shows that I am making a difference, or at least I choose to view it as such. They at least like me . . . and that goes a long way in making learning a more enjoyable process.

The phone adventures continue: I have to pay 400 zł by Wednesday if I want my phone turned on. This is ridiculous. No one ever said a single word about this. What is so ridiculous is that this money is payment in advance for telephone use. So I don’t even have a working phone and yet I have a 400 zł phone bill. I don’t have the money, and I won’t have it for a while. It’s glupi.

C told me the nature of Mark Ahlseen’s response: “You are confusing economics and ethics.” This is a ridiculous and in fact impossible categorization. One cannot say that ethics and science or ethics and economics are different categories. Ethics is present in all aspects of life, and to deny this is silly.

In defense of my position, I offer the following example: Hitler is a business man with a belief that Jews are ruining his business. He forms an organization–no, this is not what I want to say. I’ll try again.

Suppose that Hitler had incorporated the Nazi party. Now its only responsibility (according to Ahlseen’s line of thinking) is to make money. Determining that the Jews are a liability to this one responsibility, Nazi Inc. decides to take active measures to increase its shareholders’ profits by eliminating Jews. But we cannot make a moral judgment because this would be mixing business and ethics.

Now this is a ridiculous and far-fetched example, but no doubt you made a moral judgment concerning this. In this exceptional case, as it is so very far-fetched, you mixed ethics and economics. My point is simple: How do you know when an example/situation is too far fetched. How do you decide when it is a–oh, this isn’t working either.

The point I shall try to make is simple: One cannot compartmentalize life so simply. To try to remove all ethical consideration from something, to say, “This is economics, not ethics,” is to run a great risk. This renders abortion immune to moral consideration because it is a matter of medicine, not ethics. The linguist who wants to see where language comes from by isolating infants from human contact to see if they develop their own language is free from moral judgment because this is a matter of linguistics, not ethics. The biologist who wants to experiment on fertilized human eggs can do so with no thought [to] whether it is right or wrong because, after all, it’s a matter of reproductive biology, not ethics.

Ethics is not an isolated science which only Dr. Rohr has any knowledge about. While Dr. Moyer might have a highly elevated knowledge of biology when compared to the average King student, Dr. Rohr on a practical level is just the same as everyone concerning ethics. He knows a great deal about the theory of ethics, but not any more about the practice of ethics. Okay, this hit a wall too.

Ethics is not a science in the same way economics or biology is. While not everyone can understand or carry out complex microbiological experiments or analyze the insurance market in Austria to make predictions for the next year, everyone practices ethics. This is because ethics is simply the process of deciding what is right and wrong. Ethical theories, whether prescriptive or descriptive, are simply attempts to define clearly this process.

We make ethical decisions all the time. Some are minor (“Do I flip that guy off for cutting me off?”); some are major (“Should I have this abortion?”) but we are making them daily. In fact, I would argue that when we act we have already decided (except in moments of irrational haste) that our action is right, thereby engaging in an ethical consideration. When the businessman decides to build a factory in Guatamal, he as already decided it is morally acceptable. (He might not have given it much conscious thought, but it is a moral decision. when we act, we do so under the assumption that we are in the right. To do otherwise is literally unconsciously.

I am tired of this. When the time comes, I will respond . . .

While not everyone is a microbiologist, we are all ethical philosophers on a daily basis.

“Corporations’ only responsibility is to make money.” This premise operates under the faulty assumption that corporations are autonomous entities, which they are not. They are groups of people operating with a common goal, and therefore they can be held accountable for their decisions and actions. If not, it’s a good thing that Stalin, Hitler, and Karadzic were leaders of political parties instead of [corporate executive officers].

My response will run something like that. I anticipate his argument to consist of those two pointless: ethics and economics are two different things, and corporations only have to make money. So I must show that it is impossible to remove the thread of ethics rom live, and that corporations . . .

People have responsibilities (moral obligations), corporations don’t. If people and corporations are the same thing, then corporations do not have moral obligations. but this must mean corporations are not people . . .

Oh, give it a rest for now . . .